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The Catholic World, Vol. XXVII
The Catholic World, Vol. XXVII
A Monthly Magazine Of General Literature and Science
Vol. XXVII.
April, 1878, To September, 1878.
Copyright: Rev. Isaac T. Hecker. 1878.
New York:
The Catholic Publication Society Co.,
9 Barclay Street.
1878.
Contents.
A Bishop’s Liberty of Conscience in the New German Empire, 66
_Acta Sanctorum_, The Bollandist, 756
Among the Translators, 35
Anglican Development, 383
Archiepiscopal Palace at Beneventum, The, 234
Atheism, Pantheism _versus_, 471
Beatitude in Human Nature, Principle of, 532
Beneventum, The Archiepiscopal Palace at, 234
Blessed Virgin, Breton Legends of, 696
Breton Legends of the Blessed Virgin, 696
Caxton Celebration, Lessons of, 359
Christianity, Preparation for, 4
Conrad and Walburga, 163, 312, 487
Coronation of Pope Leo XIII., 280
Destiny of Man in a Future Life, The, 145
Diplomatic Service, A Sectarian, 223
Dr. Ewer on the Question, What is Truth?, 577
English Press, The, and the Pan-Anglican Synod, 850
English Statesmen in Undress, 549, 813
English Tories and Catholic Education in Ireland, 829
Ewer, Dr., On the Question, What is Truth?, 577
Faith, The Future of, 417
France, Respectable Poverty in, 276
French Proverbial Sayings, 204
Future of Faith, 417
German Glossaries, 259
German Socialism, 433
Have we a Novelist?, 375
Helen Lee, 405, 454
Hell and Science, 321
Hermitages in the Pyrénées, 302, 460
His Irish Cousins, 794
Home-Rule Candidate, The, 16, 210
Human Nature, The Principle of Beatitude in, 532
Humanity, The Religion of, 660
Italy, Regionalism _vs._ Political Unity in, 27
Judaism, Relations of to Christianity, 351, 564
Kitty Darcy, 337
Lessons of the Caxton Celebration, 359
Liberty of Conscience in the New German Empire, 66
Literary Extravagance of the Day, 248
Lope de Vega, 819
Mabel Willey’s Lovers, 627
Man’s Destiny in a Future Life, 145
Marshall, The Late Mr., 106
Mathematical Harmonies of the Universe, The, 721
Montserrat, 74
My Friend Mr. Price, 519
New York, The Newspaper Press of, 511
Newspaper Press of New York, 511
Novelist? Have we a, 375
Pantheism _vs._ Atheism, 471
Parisian Contrasts, 597
Papal Elections, 97
Pearl, 671, 734
Pilate’s Story, 51
Pius IX., The Death of, 129
“Political Rapacity of the Romish Church,” Strictures on, 111
Pope Leo XIII., Coronation of, 280
Preparation for Christianity, The, 4
Prohibitory Legislation, 182
Proverbial Sayings, French, 204
Prussian Persecution in its Results, 644
Pyrénées, Hermitages in, 302, 460
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 90
Regionalism _vs._ Political Unity in Italy, 27
Relations of Judaism to Christianity, 351, 564
Religion of Humanity, The, 660
Respectable Poverty in France, 276
Science, Hell and, 321
Sectarian Diplomatic Service, 223
Socialist Idea, The, 391
St. Paul on Mars’ Hill, 779
Thoreau and New England Transcendentalism, 289
Three Roses, The, 837
Tombs of the House of Savoy, 765
Tractarian Movement in its Relation to the Church, 502
Transcendentalism and Thoreau, 289
Translators, Among the, 35
Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation, 608
Voltaire and his Panegyrists, 688
Poetry.
A Romaunt of the Rose, 404
A Soul’s Holy Week, 1
A True Lover, 777
Child-Wisdom, 595
Created Wisdom, The, 486, 607, 818
Dante’s Purgatorio, 272, 498
Espousals of Our Lady, The, 754
Juxta Crucem, 247
Lac du Saint Sacrement, 834
Lines, 161
Malcolm of Scotland, 374
On Calvary, 64
One to One, 793
On the Summit of Mount Lafayette, 643
Palm Sunday, 104
Rosary Stanzas, 180, 349, 470
Sorrow, 336
St. Ceadda, 15
St. Cuthbert, 50
St. Francis of Assisi, 390
The Blue-Bird’s Note, 258
The Fountain’s Song, 300
The Moral Law, 659
Unconscious Faculties, 670
New Publications.
A History of the United States, 857
Ancient History, 858
An Introductory History of the United States, 857
A Saint in Algeria, 859
Art of Knowing Ourselves, 717
Book of Psalms, 432
Books for Summer Reading, 432
Cantus Ecclesiasticus, 144
Church and the Gentile World, The, 142
Daily Meditations, 717
De Ecclesia et Cathedra, 140
Divine Sanctuary, 576
Dosia, 859
Elements of Ecclesiastical Law, 430
Erlestone Glen, 719
Ethics, or Moral Philosophy, 855
Forbidden Fruit, 719
Frederic Ozanam, 716
“Ghosts,” 144
Good Things, 576
History of John Toby’s Conversion, 144
History of Rome, 859
History of the Middle Ages, 859
Holy Church, 712
Ireland, 718
Legends of Holy Mary, 860
Leo XIII. and his probable Policy, 143
Le Progrès du Catholicisme Parmi les Peuples d’Origine Anglo-Saxonne,
858
Letters of John Keats, 286
Life of Henri Planchat, 286
Life of Pope Pius IX., 285
Manual of Nursing, 716
Mysterious Castle, The, 717
New Ireland, 137
One of God’s Heroines, 287
Our Sunday Fireside, 715
Philochristus, 711
Sayings and Prayers of the Foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, 143
Select Works of Venerable Fr. Lancicius, S.J., 716
Seven Years and Mair, 714
St. Joseph’s Manual, 144
St. Teresa’s Own Words, 717
St. Winfrid, Life of, 713
Thalia, 718
The Christian Reformed, 715
The Four Seasons, 288
The Nabob, 140
The Notary’s Daughter, 717
The Precious Pearl, 718
The Young Catholic, 860
Thirty-nine Sermons, 288
Total Abstinence, 719
To the Sun, 287
Vacation Days, 716
Vatican Library, The, 143
Voyage of the Paper Canoe, 714
Way of the Cross, 144
Wrecked and Saved, 719
Young Girl’s Month of May, 288
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXVII., No. 157.—APRIL, 1878.
A SOUL’S HOLY WEEK.
PALM SUNDAY.
What shall I spread beneath thy feet, dear Lord,
Meek Son of David drawing near to-day
With wide hearts’ worship for thy king’s array,
With love’s full measure for thy blessing poured?
How shall my weakness its deep longing prove?
Not mine the martyr’s fadeless branch of palm,
Nor mine the priestly olive giving balm,
For hearts’ consoling, healing wounds with love.
Alas! not mine baptismal robe unstained
To offer thee with pure and child-like trust:
Dark are its folds with clinging wayside dust.
Yet even this poor raiment, world-profaned,
Thou wilt not scorn, since veils it heart contrite
Grieving so sore its trespass in thy sight.
MONDAY.
Rabbi, one little moment only, wait
Till I kneel down and wet with tears of shame
Thy blessed feet, thy garment’s sacred hem—
O thou so long unheeded, loved so late!
Let me pour forth the ointment of my soul,
The precious store wherewith thou fill’st my vase,
My love’s devotion and my sorrow’s grace;
Withholding naught from thee that givest all.
The more I give the richer grows my share,
Since unto thee one cannot give and lose.
Thou givest e’er; we but thy gifts diffuse.
Worthless all gold unless thy stamp it bear.
Worthless my tears unless their source be thee:
What gem shall, then, outshine their purity?
TUESDAY.
I dare not wish that my life’s days had been
When thou, O Christ! didst come in human guise
As seeming weak as poorest child that lies
On mother’s breast in infant sleep serene;
When thou the Father’s wisdom unto men
Didst speak with lips of little more than child;
Didst preach the kingdom of the undefiled;
Didst pardon sin and pity human pain.
I know thee now, although I have not seen.
Perchance in those old days I had denied,
With Bethlehem’s matrons turned my face aside,
Spurned from my threshold heaven’s chosen Queen,
And—O dread thought!—my God a mockery made,
Even as Judas with a kiss betrayed!
WEDNESDAY.
“Thy Saviour cometh.” O my soul, behold!
Arise and greet Him smitten for thy sin,
Wounded for thee the Father’s grace to win,
True Shepherd, stricken for the frightened fold.
Art thou asleep, my soul? Art thou afraid
To meet the sorrow of that face despised?
Ah! see the love with which thy love is prized:
He bleeds for thee that hast so oft betrayed;
His soul is sorrowful to death for thee,
For thee is borne the crown of pitying thorn,
For thee his people’s cruel taunts are borne,
Carried the heavy cross to Calvary.
He weeps thy sins: weep thou his infinite woe.
What have we done that he should love us so?
HOLY THURSDAY.
Was’t not enough, dear Lord, that thou shouldst give
Thy body to the scourge, the thorn, the reed,
That thou in dark Gethsemani shouldst bleed,
The purple garment from rude hands receive,
But that thou still must give thyself to bear
New stripes, new Calvary in that dim life
That is our refuge in the weary strife
Earth offers all who seek thy life to share?
O Love divine! was’t not enough to hold
Thine own so dear thou lovedst to the end,
Deep-wounded hands on Calvary to extend,
Seeking poor earth in Love’s wide arms to fold,
But still thou giv’st thyself, Love’s sacrament,
As with thy love and sorrow uncontent?
GOOD FRIDAY.
Dear Mother, unto thee I come to-day,
Because I dare not look upon the face
Of Him in whose least wound my sins I trace:
Dear Mother, for his love’s sake bid me stay.
He calls: “I thirst.” Ah! offer him my tears
Repentance hath made pure of all their gall.
Tell him, who nothing has would offer all,
But yet to bring the gift unworthy fears,
Lest so some added thorn be wreathed within
The crown wherewith the wounded brow is bound,
The mocking people’s sovereignty’s round
That saints, with joy, shall lose all life to win.
Mother, thy Son gives me in thy fond care:
Fold thou my helpless hands in perfect prayer.
HOLY SATURDAY.
“This day in Paradise.” O fortunate thief!
What strange surprise, what happiness, was thine
In that dim land to see the Sun divine,
To win so soon the crown of late belief.
This day in Paradise! O soul released
By cleansing sign of Resurrection cross,
Earth may bewail thy Lord: thine is no loss,
With fresh forgiveness holding wealth increased.
Soul, hast thou hung on Calvary’s cross with him,
Thou, justly, like the thief, for thine offence,
Breathe thou thy prayer of humble penitence:
Glory of dawn shall break thy shadows dim,
’Mid which the Sun of Justice glad shall rise—
Poor pardoned thief!—this day in Paradise!
EASTER SUNDAY.
Through Lent, dear Lord, I seemed to walk with thee
As thy disciples once; thy tender voice,
From Mary won, making my soul rejoice
E’en through the sorrow of Gethsemani,
Though oft I wept such infinite love to grieve.
And seemed thy human life to mine so near
That ever shadowed all my joy the fear
The end must come, and thou that life must leave.
To-day with Magdalen I weep once more—
My Lord is risen and my life’s love lost.
O silly soul, on sorrow’s ocean tossed,
Does he not tell thee, as to her before,
“Be not afraid”?—to thee is he less near?
Dead, yet arisen; crucified, yet here!
THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE SIX CENTURIES BEFORE CHRIST.
The period of six centuries before Christ may be taken as the immediate
period of preparation for Christianity—not in a precise numerical sense
of exactly six hundred years, but as a general term denoting an epoch
whose beginning is somewhat vague and indeterminate. Some of the great
events are prior to B.C. 600, and the larger number of those which are
important are much later. What we would do is to describe an historical
cycle including the great prophetic cycle of Daniel, which embraces
seventy weeks in the mystical numeration of Holy Scripture—_i.e._, a
period of four hundred and ninety years; beginning at the rebuilding of
the city and temple of Jerusalem, and ending with the promulgation of
the New Law to the nations of the earth by St. Peter. We consider this
last event as the culmination and ultimate term of the preceding
historical period of preparation, from which history takes a new point
of departure, thenceforward moving directly towards its final
consummation through its last period, the one in which we live. These
six centuries comprise what is specially the pre-Christian historical
period. The greatest part of ancient profane history is taken up with
the record of its events. The history of the ages going before is vague
and scanty, and even the chronology is uncertain. A few dates will show
how great a portion of what is known to us from childhood as historical
antiquity is comprised within this relatively recent and modern period.
Herodotus, the father of history, is said to have recited parts of his
history at the Olympic games, B.C. 456, and Thucydides, who was then a
boy, to have heard him; and this is also the date of the death of
Æschylus. The date of the battle of Thermopylæ is 480, of the death of
Socrates 399, of the birth of Alexander 356. The period of Confucius,
Lao-Tseu, and Pythagoras is in the vicinity of the year 550. The
beginning of the Persian Empire under Cyrus was in 559. The common date
of the building of Rome is 753 B.C. Carthage was destroyed in 146.
Julius Cæsar began his career in the year 80. Within this period
occurred also the restoration of the Jews to their own country, the
founding of the Jewish temple and community at Alexandria, the
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, the rise and triumph of
the Asmonæan dynasty of the Machabees, the usurpation of Herod, and the
beginning of Roman supremacy in Palestine.
We now proceed to show the relation between this period and its great
events, as making the most important chapter in ancient universal
history, with the origin and extension of Christianity. The modern
rationalist theory of a purely natural origin of the Christian religion
by development from previous stages of purely natural phases of the
human intellect, should be refuted by a true exposition of the
connection between the natural and the supernatural causes which
concurred in producing the great historical phenomenon of Christianity.
The history of the one true and revealed religion, and specifically of
its latest form in Christianity, is not isolated and separate from the
general history of mankind.
It is a topic in universal history. The Christian era succeeds by a
close historical connection to the period which preceded it, and that
period was the outcome of the ages going before. These preceding ages
appear to us historically under a merely natural aspect. That is to say,
the nations of the earth have no divine revelation or religion. Their
religions are different and national, mere human creations, and their
polity, morals, philosophy, and literature are products of natural
intelligence. Their early history loses itself in obscurity or fable.
Hence the manifest connection of the Christian period with the ages
foregoing gives some plausible ground for the hypothesis that the origin
of Christianity is natural, that it is only an outcome of mere natural
progress and development. When we proceed to show a preparation for
Christianity in the ages immediately preceding, we may be asked if we do
not thereby tacitly admit and argue from this hypothesis. If God created
all mankind for a supernatural destiny, under a supernatural providence;
needing a divine revelation, in which a divine religion, one,
unchangeable, demanding absolute, universal faith and obedience, is made
known and imposed on the intellect and will of man as obligatory; how is
it that we seek for the causes and events which prepared the way for its
promulgation in a previous state of things so unlike that which we
declare God intended to produce by Christianity?
The answer to this is easy. God began by giving a revelation and a
divine religion to all mankind. The general falling away from this
primitive religion was not so far advanced as to make it necessary for
God to select a special race as the recipient and preserver of a renewed
form of the divine religion until two thousand years before Christ. The
period of the old and universal form of religion, therefore, embraces
all the time from the calling of Abraham to the creation of man, at
least two thousand years, and, according to the opinion of many, from
two thousand five hundred to four thousand years. During the entire
period of human history, therefore, from the creation of man to the
present moment, embracing from sixty to eighty centuries, the divine
religion derived from revelation has been more or less universally
promulgated, with the exception of its mediæval portion—that is, during
a time including from two-thirds to three-fourths of the whole time in
which the human race has existed. The period in which the mass of
mankind was left to itself apparently, without the law of God manifested
by revelation—the period called by St. Paul “the time of ignorance which
God winked at”—embraces only the remaining third or fourth part of time,
that is, twenty centuries. This state of ignorance was not original, and
not natural in the sense of being conformed to the exigencies of human
nature and human destiny, or intended and directly produced by the
Author of nature. It was the result of an apostasy, a degeneration, a
wilful departure, a rebellion, a schism, a voluntary fall from the
primitive state. Moreover, in this very state of apostasy, the
principles of all the good which remained, the principles of
civilization, science, virtue; political, social, and personal
well-being and improvement; were all remnants from the first period in
which the divine religion was universal. Therefore, when we point out in
heathendom the preparation for a new promulgation of the universal
religion, we are not tracing Christianity back to its natural causes and
to its origin, but are tracing the movement of humanity along its
re-entering curve, from the ultimate term of its departure, to its point
of contact with a new motive power, the true and divine cause of the
re-conversion and restoration of mankind through Christ, _qui restauret
omnia_.
In addition to this, we must remember that it is only wilful ignorance
and sophistical perversion of historical truth which assigns the origin
of the human race and its institutions to an unknown, pre-historic
chaos. Far back of the period of written, profane history, of
hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions, of the scattered, uncertain
records of every kind which we can gather up from the remote past, the
authentic, written documents of the people of Judea throw a clear light
on the beginning of things. Divine revelation is in possession from the
beginning. Profane history is modern history. We alone are ancient; and
we may say to the infidel, as the Egyptian said to Solon: “You have
neither knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of knowledge.”
Even during the period of the universal excommunication of mankind from
the church of God that church existed, the divine revelation was
preserved and increased, and the line of continuity between the past and
the future was kept unbroken, in the nation of the children of Abraham.
It was from Juda that the Lawgiver and the law came forth to the
subjugation of the nations. The historical and rational basis of the
supernatural origin and power of Christianity reaches down, therefore,
to the first foundations of the world and the human race. So, then, we
can have no fear of searching after and pointing out any natural and
concurrent causes in the progress of human events which have prepared
the way for Christianity and facilitated its universal conquests. The
state of heathendom is not to be considered as a normal, natural, and
necessary stage in the evolution and progress of mankind, from which
Christianity was educed. The plan of divine Providence proposed to
conduct mankind from one degree of development to another, until the
perfection of religion and civilization was attained in the Catholic
Church and carried forward to its last results in the universal
resurrection and the everlasting kingdom of heaven, for which all the
progeny of Adam, without exception, were destined. According to this
plan, the church would always have been one and universal, and whatever
might have been the special mission and privileges of the people of
Israel, the covenant of God with them, and the possession of
divinely-revealed doctrine, discipline, and worship would not have been
exclusive. The national and exclusive constitution of the church in the
posterity of Abraham and Jacob through the Law of Moses was a
dispensation established on account of the general apostasy of mankind,
a measure of protection against an absolute and final defection of the
human race. And the preparation which went on in heathendom for the new
promulgation of the divine law to all the world by Jesus Christ was also
a measure of remedy and rescue, a “second plank after shipwreck,” thrown
to the nations who were drowning in a sea of errors and miseries.
The object of that preparation was to furnish a sufficient ground and
territory for the kingdom of Christ, the Catholic Church; to make ready
the people who were fit to receive his law and doctrine; to produce the
conditions and circumstances requisite for the universal conquest and
permanent dominion of Christianity in the world. The discipline of
divine Providence over the nations during the long centuries of their
wandering through the waste and howling wilderness of ignorance, error,
sin, warfare, and misery of all kinds, is like that over the children of
Israel during their wandering of forty years in the desert which lay
between Egypt and Palestine. They were condemned to this wandering as a
punishment for their unbelief and disobedience. This punishment was
nevertheless made the means of their training and education as a nation,
and a better generation, born in the wilderness, was formed, which was
fit to go into, conquer, and possess the Promised Land. We can also draw
an illustration front individual examples, of which history furnishes a
great number. A youth, highly gifted, brought up in faith and virtue,
well educated, and with every kind of means and opportunity for pursuing
a noble career to the glory of God, the welfare of men, and his own
highest advantage both in time and eternity, comes to the morning of his
manhood, with the straight path of duty stretching out its narrow and
ascending course before him. Instead of pursuing this path steadily from
the beginning, he is seduced to turn aside and wander over the more
pleasant lands which are on the border of his right road, following the
illusions of ambition, of pride, and of pleasure. For a while God leaves
him to his wanderings, but his mercy does not abandon him. Through
circuitous paths, through the lessons of experience, through trials,
disappointments, and sufferings, he is led back to the right road. He
becomes a hero, a saint, an apostle. The science, the fame, the
influence, the wealth, the experience he acquired during those years,
and which he labored to acquire for a low and unworthy end, are all now
made the means and instruments of fulfilling a noble and holy purpose.
Even his errors and sins serve as a warning lesson to others, and cause
in himself a more vivid appreciation of the goodness of God, the value
of divine faith and grace, and the happiness of a holy life.
In like manner the human race, in its youth, went forth from the
cradle-land of Armenia to take possession of the wide inheritance of the
earth. Carried away by the illusions of the senses and the imagination,
in the pride of its youthful strength, the human race sought to find its
destiny and create its paradise on the earth, forgetful of God, of his
law, of his doctrine, and of his promises. The colonization of new
countries, the foundation of empires and cities, the cultivation of
science, literature, art, and every sort of commerce, handicraft, and
industry, all that is included in the term civilization, employed the
energies of that portion of mankind whose doings find a place in
universal history, until everything was accomplished which was possible
to man and God saw fit to permit him to achieve. As for his relations
with the world above this earth, with the duration which is beyond time,
and with superhuman and divine powers, since he could not ignore them or
confine his intellect of divine origin and immortal destiny to merely
temporal and earthly things, he invented religions, or sought by the
light of reason to discover the truth about the supersensible world. The
result of all was that a state of things was produced in which mankind,
unable to proceed further, dissatisfied and sighing after something
better, cried out for God to come and accomplish the work which was too
much for man. A young man or a young woman, feeling deeply the emptiness
of all the enjoyments to be obtained by wealth, gives up his or her
fortune for charitable purposes. A prince, tired of war and politics,
devotes his castle and domain to the foundation of a monastery and
assumes the religious habit. An artist, a poet, an orator, a great
scholar, convinced of the futility of chasing the shadow of earthly
glory, consecrates his gifts and acquisitions to religion. In like
manner all that the human race had gained in civilization, in empire, in
wealth, in philosophy and literature and art, was so much material
accumulated for the spirit and genius of Christianity to appropriate and
employ in the work of the regeneration of mankind.
This statement is, of course, restricted to that part of the human race
which forms the principal subject of universal history and is included
within the sphere of the Greco-Roman intellectual and political
dominion. The Chinese, and the nations of similar origin and character,
are a nullity in universal history. The Hindoos have remained to this
day outside of the current of the catholic movement of Christianity. The
barbarian and savage races have only been capable of receiving
Christianity together with civilization from nations previously
civilized. What conquests Christianity may yet make among the great mass
of the heathen who constitute the numerical majority of mankind, only
the future can disclose. Probably the dominion of European intelligence
and political power will be a necessary condition for the extension of
the spiritual dominion of the Catholic Church in those regions of the
world, if it is ever accomplished. Leo says of the Mongolian races:
“It seems to us that it is only their conversion to Christianity
which can entitle them to admission into the domain of universal
history as we have conceived its plan, and this conversion can
hardly become general except through some kind of political
subjugation and dependence. Certainly, the place of these nations in
history is one foreseen by God; but the period of their intellectual
importance for us has not yet arrived, and will perhaps never come
until they are conquered by the Caucasian race and mingled with it.
It is therefore only upon the Caucasians, in their great division of
Semites, Japhetians, and Chamites, that we can direct our view, as
being hitherto the workmen whose labors are recorded by universal
history.”
It is only with the past history of that select portion of the human
race which has advanced steadily on the road of progress toward the
completion attained in Christianity that our theme is concerned. Even
some portions of the Aryan race, as the Hindoos, have but little
connection with it. And in that later period upon which our attention is
at present specially directed, the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans make
the principal factors in producing the result which we wish to
estimate—viz., the preparation for the actual conquest and extension of
Christianity as a universal religion, which has been thus far achieved,
and has become an historical fact. Jewish faith, Hellenic intellectual
culture, Roman polity, were the chief agents in preparing the way for
Christianity as the world-religion and the world-subduing power. The
Hellenic philosophy and literature we leave aside for the present. The
Roman imperial and universal monarchy is the topic to be specially
considered in this article. This great world-subduing power is
historically and logically connected with the great monarchies of a
similar character which preceded it, and which are all presented under
one figure, that of a colossal statue, whose members are cast from
different metals, in the celebrated vision of Nabuchodonosor,
interpreted and recorded by the prophet Daniel. It is remarkable that
this vision, which presents emblematically a summary of the universal
political history of the world in prophecy, was given to the monarch of
the great Assyrian Empire, yet in such a way that it passed before his
mind like an evanescent flash. He could not understand or even remember
it until the great prophet of Juda repeated and explained it. The date
of this vision is a little later than B.C. 600, just at the beginning of
the period we are considering. “Thou, O king! didst begin to think, in
thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and He that revealeth
mysteries showed thee what shall come to pass. Thou, O King! sawest, and
behold there was, as it were, a great statue: this statue, which was
great and tall of stature, stood before thee, and the look thereof was
terrible. The head of this statue was of fine gold, but the breast and
the arms of silver, and the belly and the thighs of brass: and the legs
of iron, the feet part of iron and part of clay. Thus thou sawest, till
a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands: and it struck the
statue upon the feet thereof, that were of iron and clay, and broke them
in pieces: but the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain
and filled the whole earth.”
Daniel then interpreted the vision as a prophecy of the destinies of the
world under four universal monarchies, the Assyrian being the first,
represented by the head of gold. The other three are manifestly the
Medo-Persian, Macedonian, and Roman. The weak feet and toes of the
statue are the extension of the empire among the barbarians of the West.
The prophet finishes by declaring that after the decadence of the last
empire God will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed or
transferred to another power, but which shall destroy entirely the whole
fabric of world-monarchy which was represented by the statue of gold,
silver, brass, and iron, terminating in clay—_i.e._, the Babylo-Roman
Empire. Thus, at the very beginning of the course of events which took
place during the six centuries of the period preceding the Messianic
epoch, the great prophet who is inspired to foretell with minute
distinctness the times of the Messianic kingdom is made the counsellor
and prime minister of the last monarchs of the Assyrian Empire, and of
the first of the succeeding Medo-Persian kings, and Nabuchodonosor and
Cyrus are instructed by divine revelation in the designs and purposes
for which God has raised them up to prepare the way for the coming and
reign of his Son upon the earth. The great world-empire, whose seat is
first established in Babylon, and afterwards transferred to Rome, has a
mission to accomplish, and, when that has been fulfilled, it is finally
abolished to make way for the Catholic Church and the Christendom of
which it is the nucleus, the Christian political, social, and moral
order, the unification and restoration to one universal fraternity of
the regenerated human race.
The Roman Empire, the inheritor of all the power, the civilization, the
intellectual and material wealth and grandeur of its predecessors, with
its own new and specific force in addition, made of the whole world one
dominion, brought the East into subjection to the West, and established
in Rome, the Eternal City, the permanent capital of the earth. Thus the
way was prepared, by the general diffusion of the Greek and Latin
languages, by universal commerce and communication between all nations,
by the organizing and educating force of political and military
discipline, and by many other efficient agencies, for a rapid and
irresistible transmission of the spirit, the doctrine, the moral law,
the entire supernatural and regenerating grace of Christianity
throughout the civilized world. At the same time the civilizing power
was brought into contact with that great mass of European barbarians who
were destined to form the most vigorous portion of Catholic Christendom.
Julius Cæsar is considered as the great author of modern European
civilization. The empire reached its acme in the reign of Augustus. Near
the close of his reign, and somewhere in the vicinity of A. U. C. 747,
the Temple of Janus was closed, and the epoch of universal pacification,
the effect of irresistible, triumphant Roman power, came to a world
which was expecting the advent of the Prince of Peace, and made a
moment’s stillness, a brief pause of silent wonder through the universe,
while the mystery of the incarnation and human birth of the great King
was accomplished.
Let us turn now to Judea, whose mission was much higher in the order of
moral grandeur, though not so dazzling to the imagination as that of
Rome. Daniel foretold the end of the captivity of the Jews when a period
of seventy years should be completed, and the birth and death of the
Messias after another period of seven times seventy years from the
rebuilding of the city and Temple. The schism and captivity of the ten
tribes had freed the kingdom of David from putrescent parts and given a
more pure and healthy life to Juda. The corruption of Juda found a
severe and efficacious remedy in the captivity which befell that tribe
also at a later period. A purified remnant, the _élite_ of the nation,
were restored to their own land under Cyrus. The city and temple were
rebuilt. Alexander the Great extended the same favor to the Jewish
nation which had been granted by the Persian monarchs. Under his
successors, the kings of Syria and Egypt, Judea flourished both in a
political and a religious sense for three centuries, although not exempt
from vicissitudes, a second temple was established in Egypt, and in
Alexandria, the new capital founded by Alexander, the Jews became
numerous and attained to great consideration and importance. The Hebrew
Scriptures were translated into Greek and the important books of the
second canon were written. Under Antiochus Epiphanes a new crisis
arrived, which threatened the total extinction of Judaism. A large
portion of the priests and people were infected with the corrupted Greek
civilization of that period, the practice of the Mosaic law was
forbidden and suppressed by the most oppressive edicts sanctioned by the
most cruel penalties, and Jerusalem was changed into an apparently
heathen city. The sacred ark containing all the hopes of the world in
the ages to come seemed about to be wrecked. But God raised up the
heroic family of the Machabees to rescue once more Jerusalem and Judea
from the ruin which seemed to be imminent.
There is no greater and more wonderful hero in all history than Judas
Machabeus, a new and more sublime Leonidas, standing with his small but
invincible host in the world’s Thermopylæ, as the defender, even unto
death, not of Greece but of all mankind; the saviour, not of mere
national and temporal interests, but of the precious inheritance of
faith, the supernatural treasure by which all men were to be enriched
with those blessings which are eternal. The history of the Asmonæan
dynasty, its period of glory and of decay, and, next, of the Idumæan
usurpation in the person of the cruel tyrant, Herod the Great, a mere
creature and dependent viceroy of the Roman emperor, brings us to the
end of the dispensation of Abraham and Moses, to the epoch of the new
Prophet, Priest, and King, who teaches, sanctifies, and rules mankind by
his own personal and inherent might and right, as the Emmanuel, who is
both the Creator and the Redeemer of the world.
St. Paul declares that the mystery of divine Providence respecting both
the Jews and the Gentiles, made known in the full Christian revelation,
was to “establish all things in Christ, in the dispensation of the
fulness of times” (Eph. i. 10). We infer from this statement, that all
the ages preceding the birth of Christ were a preparation for the
foundation of the Catholic Church, which was completed at the epoch of
his coming. The work of Judaism was done and its mission completed.
Henceforth it was only an obstacle in the way of the universal religion
which it had been created to serve. The oracles of God which it
preserved and transmitted, the faith which it inherited from Abraham,
its genuine spirit, the essence of religion which had been embodied in
its outward organization, were transmitted to Christianity. The lifeless
mass which was left behind was only fit to be buried as a putrescent
carcass. The mission of the Roman Empire was also completed, its
destruction decreed, and dimly foretold by the apostles. The entire
Greco-Roman civilization, with its philosophy, its literature, its
religious superstitions, had run its course, and its ultimate result was
an intellectual and moral abyss of vacancy and unfulfilled longing for
the truth and the good which alone can fill the frightful void in the
human soul and in universal humanity caused by the absence of God. St.
Paul says that Christ, having first descended to the lowest depth,
ascended to the highest celestial summit, “_ut impleret omnia_”—that he
might fill all things. The Emmanuel, the God in humanity, the very
sovereign truth and sovereign good impersonated in a twofold nature,
divine and human, is the only fulfilment of universal history, of human
destiny, as the term and expression of the thoughts and purposes of God.
His kingdom on the earth, the Catholic Church, is the instrument and
medium by which he extends his action through time and upon universal
humanity during the period of universal history which is now in the
process of fulfilment. The material part of the substantial essence of
this new Messianic empire was furnished by the commingling of the
elements of Judaism and Greco-Roman civilization. The vital and
informing principle was supernatural and divine, inspired into the now
organic structure by a new out-breathing of the creative and life-giving
Spirit.
This supernatural character of Christianity is capable of a rigorous
historical and rational demonstration. Rationalists, as they call
themselves, having first made themselves their own dupes, have duped the
great mass of the unlearned and the unthinking in this age, and even
imposed to a greater or a lesser degree on numbers of Catholics whose
instruction in sound Christian knowledge is defective and superficial,
by a shallow and pretentious system vaunted under the name of scientific
criticism. Like the pseudo-Smerdis, its pretence to be the true,
legitimate possessor of dominion, and heir to the acquisitions of reason
and experience historically transmitted from the past, is founded on an
illusory semblance of likeness to genuine science. As the impostor who
passed himself off on a credulous people for the son of Cyrus was
detected and exposed by stripping off the royal head-dress which he had
stolen, and showing that his head had long since been deprived of the
ears as an ignominious punishment for crime, so this base-born
rationalism, when the logic of facts and sound reasoning seizes hold of
it, meets the fate which befell the Persian usurper under the iron grasp
and death-dealing sword of Darius, the son of Hystaspes. It is an old
culprit, long since marked by the sword of truth, and doomed to perish
under the blows of the genuine offspring of the noble, ancestral chiefs
in the intellectual kingdom. Christianity is historical and rational,
resting on the principles of contradiction and of the sufficient reason.
That which has occurred and which exists cannot be denied or doubted,
and must be referred to a sufficient reason and an adequate cause. The
facts and events of the religion of Christ, as well those which preceded
as those which have followed his human birth, are historically certain.
The flimsy hypotheses of sceptical criticism have been destroyed by
critical science. The penetrating acid of critical investigation, a
solvent which is destructive of all counterfeits and semblances, has
only made more manifest and clear of all accidental adhesions the real
substance and imperishable solidity of the great historical structure of
the primeval and universal religion. The books of Moses and his
successors, the four Gospels and the other apostolic documents, together
with all else that is accessory and corroborative of sacred history in
the genuine records and works of antiquity, have come unscathed, and
with brighter and clearer evidence than before, out of the restless and
audacious researches of that modern school of rationalists who have
sought to destroy all ancient science and belief, to make way for a new
fabric of hypothesis which they call modern science and philosophy.
Their visionary systems stand confronted with unassailable facts and
convicted of falsehood. These great facts, from the creation of man to
the resurrection of Christ, and from his resurrection to the present,
actual existence of the Catholic Church, irresistibly, and with all the
force of invincible logic, demand the recognition of their sole,
assignable sufficient reason, a supernatural cause. It is because of
this necessary connection of the great facts upon which Christianity is
founded with a supernatural cause that rationalists deny, in so far as
that is possible, these facts. But, as they cannot deny altogether the
reality of all, they deny the principle of causality itself, like Hume
and the whole sceptical sect of pseudo-philosophers, or, at least, by
their hypotheses, ignore and subvert the principle of causality, through
the contradiction of necessary deductions from the principle which is
contained in these hypotheses.
The fact of Christianity cannot be denied, because it is too immediately
present and evident before the minds of all men. Unless one avowedly
abjures reason, it must be accounted for. The hypothesis of the
rationalists supposes that a young man of Galilee, without education,
evolved out of his own mind and the Scriptures of the Old Testament a
doctrine which he taught for about one year to the people of Judea and
Galilee, and was then crucified as a teacher of false doctrine and a
disturber of the religion of his country. The effect of his moral
excellence and heroism in dying for his convictions, together with that
of his teaching of a few simple and sublime doctrines of theology and
ethics, was the astounding revolution which has resulted in historical
Christianity. This is a theory of lunatics. The birth of Jesus precisely
at the period which was the fulness of the times, the promulgation of a
universal religion which appropriated and subjected to its dominion and
utility all the results of previous preparation, combined opposite
elements into a new form, conquered and regenerated the human race; and
all the phenomena of the origin and progress of Christianity; prove the
intervention of the same power which created the world and has governed
it since the beginning. The divine mission of Jesus is proved by the
work which he accomplished. The precise nature and comprehension of that
mission and work, as God intended it, and as Jesus Christ revealed it to
his apostles, is proved by the effect actually produced, by the argument
_a posteriori_, from the effect to the cause. The religion which
actually became universal is the religion which is founded on the
confession of the Trinity, the true and proper divinity of the Son of
God, his assumption of human nature by a miraculous birth from the
Virgin, his redemption of the human race, fallen through the sin of the
first Adam, by the cross, his absolute sovereignty over the earth and
the whole universe, and his delegation of authority to the apostles
under their prince and head, St. Peter. The conversion of the Roman
Empire to this religion demands a sufficient cause, and the only cause
to which it can possibly be traced is the divine power of its founder,
Jesus Christ. The law did not go forth from Sion and Jerusalem to the
whole world by virtue of any power which Judaism put forth. The Roman
imperial power did not undergo a transmutation into the kingdom of
Christ. Catholic theology was not the fruit of Greek philosophy, and the
regeneration of mankind was not the natural result of Greco-Roman
civilization. All these forms were overmastered and supplanted by a
superior force which overcame a most violent and stubborn resistance on
their part. They had only prepared the way, and were destroyed when
their work was done. Jesus Christ proved himself to be the possessor of
that divine power which had employed them to prepare his way before him,
by establishing his new kingdom upon their territory, and making their
work subservient to his own conquest and dominion. Rome was made the
seat of his own Vicar, the monarch of his spiritual kingdom. The
thirteen great dioceses of the Roman Empire were parcelled out to the
great princes of the church, the patriarchs, exarchs, and primates, who
received a delegated share of the supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff of
the city of Rome. The great provincial cities were made the seats of the
metropolitans, and the thousands of minor cities the sees of the bishops
of the Catholic Church. This great work was substantially accomplished
within three centuries from the death and resurrection and ascension of
Jesus Christ. One must be demented not to recognize a supernatural cause
for this effect, and, as directed by and concurring with this first,
supreme, efficient cause, a chain-work of second causes extending
through all previous history backward to the origin of the human race
and of the great nations of the earth.
Mgr. Delille, Bishop of Rodez, thus contrasts the theory of universal
history which presents the incarnation of the divine Word as the central
fact of the whole circle of human events with that of modern
rationalism:
“In presence of all the remains of the past actions of the human
race which are buried in the catacombs of history, only two theories
can be found by which to account for them—the theory of chance or
fatalism, and the theory of a divine plan.
“The first explains nothing, because it professedly ignores the
final destination of humanity. Sitting amid the ruins, with its back
turned to the future, it contents itself with making an inventory of
the bones of the defunct generations, and weighing their dust. As
the conclusion of this fruitless and melancholy work, it says:
Things were thus and so, because they had to be so; they are either
games of chance or evolutions of the universal substance. It is
quite otherwise with that theory derived from the revelation of the
divine plan by the way of faith, in which all the events of the
world are viewed as an execution of a pre-conceived design of
Providence, being nothing else than the restoration of fallen
humanity by the Mediator. This is the true philosophy of history,
illuminating the past of which it furnishes the explanation, and the
future of which it gives foresight. In accordance with its results,
the ancient era of the world can be defined, the preparation for the
reign of the Messias, and the modern era, the reign of the Messias.”
In this present article it is especially some parts of the preparation
which immediately preceded the epoch of the Messias that are presented
to the reader’s consideration. It is one of the most interesting and
useful fields of exploration upon which any one who has taste and time
for solid reading can enter. There are not wanting in our modern
literature some excellent works in which the desirable information can
be obtained. In the German language the _Universal History_ of Leo, in
the first part, on ancient history, presents a condensed but most
complete, learned, and philosophical sketch of the great historical
events of the pre-Christian period, conceived entirely in accordance
with the idea we have here endeavored to present. In French, the
_History of the Universal Church_, by Rohrbacher, has remarkable merit
in this respect and is very full in its details. This subject is treated
most explicitly and comprehensively in a work by M. l’Abbé Louis Leroy,
entitled _Philosophie Catholique de l’Histoire_. In English the learned
works of Father Thébaud, and a recent one entitled _De Ecclesiâ et
Cathedrâ_, by Colin Lindsay, are especially valuable. As a French
bishop, Mgr. Angebault, of Angers, has said: “For the last hundred years
an effort has been kept up to make history lie by perverting it; it is
requisite that men of learning and sound faith should bring it back into
the right path from which it has been drawn away.”
History, like all the treasures of the past, belongs to Christianity and
the Catholic Church. A few years ago some marbles belonging to Nero,
which had been laid aside and become buried under the accumulated
deposit of ages, were unearthed, and became the property of Pius IX. as
sovereign of Rome; who made use of them for decorating a church. In like
manner it is our right to claim all the costly materials we can find and
dig out of the dust of all foregoing centuries, and our duty to use them
in adorning the walls of the temple of God on earth, his universal and
eternal church.
ST. CEADDA.
Hark! what sweet sounds beneath these lonely skies!
St. Mary’s Convent deep in yonder dell
Lies hidden. Echoes thus the minster bell
Through the thin air? or hear we litanies
That, sung by monks at even-song, arise
And heavenward, full of holy rapture, swell?
No; but within the walls of yonder cell,
Where, near his death, God’s faithful servant lies,
Led by his brother’s soul, an angel throng
Welcomes St. Chad, whose prayerful life is o’er.
His feet shall tread the Mercian vales no more.
His work is done. Hark! fainter sounds their song,
While his glad spirit leaves its frame outworn,
And homeward turns, on seraph-wings upborne.
THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE.
_A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”_
CHAPTER III.
THE RIVALS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE CHAPEL AT MONAMULLIN,” “THE ROMANCE OF A
PORTMANTEAU,” ETC., ETC.
On the return to Kilkenley I placed my guest beside Father O’Dowd in the
car, as I saw that the former was bursting with impatience to get at the
Home-Rule question. During the luncheon he had made several ineffectual
attempts at drawing out the priest, which were deftly shunted off in
favor of lighter subjects; but having extracted a promise from Father
O’Dowd that during the drive he would discuss the “idea” with him, no
sooner had the horse commenced to tear up the gravel in the little lawn
than the member for Doodleshire opened fire by asking if there was any
real issue at stake in the question.
“What is Home Rule? Is it Fenianism veiled or unveiled? Is it Repeal? Is
it less than Repeal or more than Repeal? Is it a surrender or—ahem!—a
compromise of the national demand, or is it a demand founded upon
the—ahem!—supposed necessities of the country at this present time?”
“I must go back a little in order to reply to your queries; as the
French say, _Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter_—one must draw back a
little, in order to make a better spring. You have heard, Mr. Hawthorne,
that the law of defeats separates the vanquished into two or three
well-defined parties or sections: one party more bitter in opposition
than ever, one party quietly put out of the way, who retire upon their
shields, and a little party who recognize no defeat. This is just the
outcome in Ireland of forty-eight and forty-nine. The Young Ireland
movement in forty-eight was never national in dimensions or acceptance—”
“Thrue for ye, father darlint,” exclaimed Peter O’Brien from his coigne
of vantage, and whose heart and soul were in the discussion. “The boys
wasn’t riz properly.”
Without noticing the interruption Father O’Dowd continued:
“O’Connell’s movement was from forty-two to forty-four; but from that
date, although Smith O’Brien and John Mitchel came to the front, the
country was not at their back.”
“Did not the Young Irelanders break with O’Connell on a war policy?”
“That is a fallacy. _They_ had no war policy, nor had he. It was the
blaze of revolution lighted in Paris in forty-eight that set men on fire
here. They seceded from O’Connell on the point of the celebrated test
resolutions, which declared it would not be lawful to take up arms for
the recovery of national rights. The non-acceptance of this declaration
led to the Irish Confederation. The confederates were decidedly
unpopular, especially after the death of O’Connell, whose demise was
laid at their door, and they themselves became the victims of secession.
John Mitchel and his following were for preparing the people for war
against England. Thus we had three parties and no real national
movement. When Paris hurled Louis Philippe from the throne, the pulse of
Ireland became intensely agitated, and two schools of insurrectionists
were to be found in the new insurrectionary party: one that declared
that Smith O’Brien wanted a rose-water revolution, the other that
Mitchel was a Red and wanted a _Jacquerie_. The refusal to rise for the
release of Mitchel led to bad blood, and the subsequent rising resulted
in a _fiasco_. The men who ordered it had no command from the nation,
and were but a fraction of a fraction.”
“Were you opposed to them, father—I mean your order?”
“Assuredly not in a combative sense, but in the sense of a decided
disapproval of the insurrection. They had also against them the bulk of
the Repeal millions.”
“But the cities—”
“Yes, the cities became imbued with the spirit of the revolution and a
desire to see it out, but, beyond their national antipathy to English
rule, the rural population had little or no participation in the
forty-eight movement.”
“They wor aisy enough beyant in Kilpeddher, where they bet Mickey Rooney
wud his own pike-handle an’ called him a bladdher-um-skite, no less,”
cried my coachman.
“Peter, be good enough to keep your observations to yourself,” I said,
struggling with a laugh.
“Faix I will, thin, Masther Freddy, for sorra a word the darlint father
is spakin’ I’d like for to lose. But as for th’ other _omadhaun_,”
lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, “I’d as lave be spakin’
to—”
“Silence!”
“After the forty-eight movement had exhausted itself in transportations
and expatriations,” continued Father O’Dowd, “and the flower of
Ireland’s intellect and patriotism was literally pining away in
England’s penal settlements, the gaze of the country turned
instinctively toward one man, Charles Gavan Duffy, and behind him
crouched the terrible problem: ‘What next?’”
“Is this—ahem!—the Mr. Duffy who holds a somewhat prominent position in
Victoria?”
“Only that of prime minister,” laughed the priest.
“And what was his—ahem!—policy in the crisis you mention?”
“A retreat all along the line. He tried the original Irish Confederation
policy, but received no support. He at last got together a party under
the banner of ‘tenant right.’ This was a move that brought the
Presbyterians of Ulster to take counsel with the Catholics of Munster;
it brought Repealers, and Anti-Repealers, and men of every shade of
politics and religion upon one common platform, and an organization was
formed to compel Parliament to pass a measure which would prevent the
eviction of the tenant farmer, except for the non-payment of rent, and
to prevent also the arbitrary raising of the rent.”
“That’s me jewel!” cried Peter, in an ecstasy of approbation. “Faix ye’d
think it was on th’ althar he was.” This latter observation being
addressed to me.
“You flooded us in the House, if I remember—ahem!—rightly, with a very
strange set of representatives as the outcome of this movement,”
observed Mr. Hawthorne.
“Yes, we sent you about thirty-five or forty members, returned at the
instance of the Tenant League and to work out its programme. They used
the new shibboleth to suit their own ends, and many of them being both
corrupt and dishonest, the pass was sold and the party bought up through
its leaders, Sadlier and Keogh. Some of us thought it was a goodly step
in the right direction to see Catholics on the bench, and lulled our
consciences with this soporific; but the cause of the poor tenant was
lost, and we grasped the shadow while the substance floated beyond our
reach.”
“The curse o’ Crummle on Sadlier and Billy Keogh! Amin,” muttered Peter.
“A cohort of the exasperated section of the forty-eight party now came
to the front, who, seeing the utter and shameful defeat of the
Gavan-Duffy following, instantly raised their voices for war to the
knife, war to the bitter end, and out of this cry arose the Fenian
movement.”
“I should like to hear your ideas upon this insane movement,” observed
the M.P., endeavoring to face Father O’Dowd, and succeeding only in
jerking himself partly off the car, to the hand-rail of which he clung
with the tenacity of an octopus. “What support did it receive?”
“It did not represent anything like the full force of Irish patriotism,
or even, indeed, a considerable portion of it. The bulk of the millions
who believed in O’Connell and Smith O’Brien stood with folded arms
outside this movement. Its policy was disbelieved in, although the
Fenians worked with an energy worthy of the highest admiration, while an
honest, manly, self-sacrificing spirit of patriotism marked the men who
were its martyrs. Never did braver men stand in the dock; and to the
Fenians Ireland owes that stirring up of public opinion upon Irish
subjects which hitherto had slumbered in a masterly inactivity. You see,
Mr. Hawthorne, as we say at whist, I am leading up to your strong suit,
and if I have been a little prolix—”
“My dear sir, I am receiving more information than the Bodleian Library
or all the blue-books could possibly give me.”
“Sorra a lie in that! Ah! wud ye?” The latter addressed to the horse, in
order to parry my inevitable censure.
“Well, sir,” continued the priest after he had duly acknowledged the
compliment bestowed upon him by my guest, “we had arrived at that stage
when, as Phædrus says:
_Gratis anhelans, multo agendo nihil agens._
We had been checkmated, and Britannia smiled contemptuously at us from
behind the glistening bayonets of the regiments with which she flooded
the country. It was again the horrors of the lash and triangle,
loathsome details of the treachery of informers and prosecutors, the
chain-gangs at Portland and Chatham, and the terrible outrages inflicted
upon men whose only fault lay in loving Ireland not wisely but too well.
I shall pass over that, because there is a wicked beat underneath my
waistcoat, and _curæ leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent_. I shall come at
once to the question of Home Rule and dismiss it briefly; for there is
the stable dome of Kilkenley right over beyond that group of firs.”
“Yev more nor a quarther av an hour, yer riverince, for the baste’s
purty well bet up.”
“Five minutes will do me, Peter,” laughed Father O’Dowd. “The Irish
passion for national existence still glowed in our bosoms, and we cried
for light. A field for Irish devotion and heroism was what was wanted.
We were sick of the hecatombs of victims offered up by the last sad
effort. As you are well aware, Mr. Hawthorne, the Tory party came into
power during the Fenian scare, and they went to their work in a spirit
which would have shamed Oliver Cromwell himself. They fined, fettered,
imprisoned, and hanged, until a glut of vengeance seemed an
impossibility. ‘This is my chance,’ says Mr. Gladstone. ‘I’ll make
capital out of this Fenian scare, and, dashing at the Church
Establishment, I’ll gather in the straying bands which once formed the
rank and file of the liberal party. England wants a salve, and when she
finds herself doing a virtuous thing she will purge her conscience of
all her recent evil-doing.’”
“I never heard of Mr. Gladstone’s having used those words,” exclaimed
the member for Doodleshire pompously. “If he had used them in the House,
they would have been ordered to be taken down by the Speaker.”
“They are my words, not Mr. Gladstone’s.”
“Blur an’ ages!” began Peter O’Brien, but, upon my administering no
light touch of the whip to his shoulders, he suddenly pulled himself in.
“Now, I ax ye, Masther Freddy, isn’t that the hoighth, now—the hoighth
av an ignoraymus? Why, a turf creel—”
“Silence, sir!” I exclaimed, in a frenzy of terror lest my guest should
by any possibility overhear him.
“With the war-whoop of ‘Down with the Irish Church!’ Mr. Gladstone
bounded into office at the head of a majority only equalled by that of
Sir Robert Peel in forty-one, and, with the faculty of persuading
himself into a fervid conscientiousness upon any subject he likes, he
flung himself body and soul into the disestablishment of the church
established in Ireland. At this uprose the Irish Protestants, who
declared that, as faith had been broken with them by the English
government, they would repeal the Union by way of retaliation, and kick
another crown into the Boyne. ‘Break with us,’ said they, ‘and we’ll
break with you. We’ll become Irishmen first and anything else
afterwards.’ Well, Mr. Hawthorne, the Irish Church was disestablished—”
“I am happy to say that my humble vote was recorded in favor of that
measure,” interrupted the M.P.
“More power to ye for that, anyhow,” muttered Peter.
“And a good vote it was, Mr. Hawthorne. Well, sir, the Irish Protestants
were in a craze of indignation, and eagerly sought a vent for their
feelings of revenge. They wouldn’t touch Fenianism, and their minds
insensibly reverted to eighty-two, and to such Protestants as Grattan,
Flood, Curran, and Charlemont. Some of our most influential Protestant
countrymen were now prepared to take up the cudgels—peers, dignitaries
of the Protestant Church, large landed proprietors, bankers, merchants,
deputy lieutenants, and even fellows of Trinity College. This was no
Falstaffian army, no mere food for powder, but a band of men who had a
vast property at stake in the country, who saw a thousand reasons why
Irishmen alone should regulate Irish affairs. And now Mr. Butt comes
upon the stage.”
“The sorra a shupayriorer man in the counthry,” observed Peter, despite
my previous admonition. “An’, be the mortial, me own first cousin wud
have got six months for delayin’ Jim Fogarty’s ould ram from goin’ home
wan night, an’ he as innocint as a cluckin’ hin, av it wasn’t for the
shupayrior spakin’ av Counsellor Butt. ‘There isn’t a bigger rogue in
the barony, me lord,’ sez he, addhressin’ the binch, ‘but this wanst, me
lord, he wasn’t in it at all, at all.’ That’s what _I_ call spakin’ up.”
“Mr. Butt, in addition to defending Peter O’Brien’s kinsman,” said
Father O’Dowd, “was called to the front from an obscurity into which a
wild recklessness had hurled him, to defend the Fenian prisoners in
sixty-five. Mr. Butt became then a centre figure, and through the
meetings of the Amnesty Association, larger than any since Tara and
Mullaghmast, a centre figure he remained. The Protestants, who now
chafed under the disestablishment, were many of them Butt’s old
comrades, college chums, and political associates, and to them he
turned, urging them no longer to act the secondary _rôle_ of an English
garrison. ‘Act boldly and promptly now,’ he said in one of his powerful
addresses, ‘and you will save Ireland from revolutionary violence on the
one side and from alien misgovernment on the other. You, like myself,
have been early trained to mistrust the Catholic multitude, but when you
come to know them you will admire them. They are not anarchists, nor
would they be revolutionists if men like you would but do your duty and
lead them—that is, honestly and faithfully and capably lead them—in the
struggle for constitutional liberty.’ Mr. Butt made a great impression,
but of course was met with the old cry of ‘wolf,’ ‘Catholic ascendency,’
‘the tools of the priests,’ ‘yoke of Rome,’ and all that sort of low
Orange claptrap. The incidents of the defeat of ‘honest John Martin’ for
Longford are too recent to bore you with now, but in that election you
saw a Catholic people fighting their own clergy, who had foolishly
pledged themselves to support the Fulke-Greville-Nugent candidate, as
vehemently as they and their own clergy had ever fought the Tory
landlords. It was an exceptional and painful incident, but it vindicated
both priests and people from the unworthy sneers to which I have just
alluded. You are familiar with the meeting in Dublin held under the
presidency of a Protestant lord mayor, and the resolution
enthusiastically adopted that the true remedy for the evils of Ireland
was an Irish Parliament. And now, Mr. Hawthorne, having given you an
owre true but also an owre lang tale, I am happy to find ourselves
within hail of the hospitable roof of Kilkenley, and—yes, to be sure,
there are the ladies awaiting our arrival upon the steps.”
“Av that discoorse isn’t aiqual to the House o’ Lords, I’m an
_omadhaun_,” was Peter’s muttered observation as we rattled gaily up to
the house.
* * * * *
“Papa is enchanted with the priest,” said Miss Hawthorne.
It was just before dinner, and we were standing upon a small balcony
overlooking the lawn.
The moon was rising in all the consciousness of her harvest beauty.
“I am so glad.”
“He says that his reverence has the Irish question at his fingers’ ends,
and gave him more information than a dozen Commons debates or ten dozen
editions of Hansard. We are going over to visit Father O’Dowd, are we
not?”
What induced me to say: “I shall send you with great pleasure”?
“Send us! Are you not coming?”
“I fear not. Welstone will go. He is much better company.”
What a boy I was!
She looked at me in a puzzled, inquiring sort of way.
“What a glorious moon!” I said, bitterness in my heart.
“Don’t you find it a little chilly?” was her reply, as she turned into
the drawing-room.
My own, shall I call it temper, or insanity, or what? lost me this
chance, for which I had been longing with such fervent yearning. I felt
terribly irritated with myself and angered against her. She should have
expressed sorrow at my being prevented from going over to Father
O’Dowd’s. Had she cared one brass farthing she would have declined the
expedition; but instead of this she silently accepted Welstone’s
ciceroneship, and exclaiming, “Don’t you find it a little chilly?” left
me standing all alone, like the idiot that I was. And yet had I not
acted strangely, rudely, in intimating my intention of remaining at
Kilkenley? Was I not her host, and should I not make every effort within
the scope of my power to render her visit as agreeable as possible?
I followed her into the drawing-room. The light of two moderateur lamps
muffled in pink shades threw a delightfully tender glow all over the
apartment. Our furniture was very old-fashioned. It bad all been
purchased when my great-grandmother had been brought home, and was
esteemed a wonder of its kind then. The rosewood settees and
spider-legged chairs were upholstered in the richest flowered brocade,
very faded now, but highly respectable in their antiquity. The mirrors
were oval in gilt frames, an eagle holding a chain, to which was
appended a golden ball, surmounting each. A sofa large enough to seat a
dozen people in a row graced one wall, while a thin old-fashioned
card-table, over which many hundreds of guineas had changed hands,
adorned the other. In the alcove, in a stiff, formal, uncompromising
arm-chair, so utterly different from the inviting lounges of to-day, sat
Mabel, turning over the leaves of a scrap-book that had been made up by
my grandmother.
Dressed in simple white, with a sprig of forget-me-not in her golden
hair, she looked so lovely that my heart flew to her.
“I hope you haven’t caught cold. Shall I close the window, Miss
Hawthorne?”
“Oh! dear, no; it was just a passing sensation, a shiver.”
“Somebody was treading upon your grave,” I said, alluding to the popular
superstition.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
When I had told her, “I should like to know where I shall be interred.”
“I know where I shall be, if I am not hanged or lost at sea.”
“Where?”
“In the little churchyard close by; it’s in the domain.”
“Are all your family interred there?”
“We have head-stones since 1650. Cromwell’s troopers destroyed
everything, digging up the graves in the hope of finding armlets and
golden ornaments of our race.”
“I should like to visit the churchyard.”
“By moonlight?” I said laughingly.
“Oh! yes.
“‘If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight,’
sings Scott.”
“Your wish shall be gratified.”
“When?”
At this moment Mr. Hawthorne entered the room, carrying in his hand two
telegrams.
“Startling news!” he exclaimed.
“What is it, papa?” asked his daughter somewhat affrightedly.
“Nothing alarming, my dear.” Turning to me, “Your county member is
dead.”
“Dead?” I cried.
“Dropped dead on the steps of the Carlton Club.”
“Is it Mr. Bromly de Ruthven?”
“Yes.”
“That’s awfully sudden. I had a visit from him not ten days ago. He was
quite a young man, and, for his party, a rising one.”
“I cannot agree with you there, Mr. Fitzgerald,” said my guest in his
usual pompous style. “His speech—if speech it might be called—on the
malt question was a tissue of illogical absurdity. But now, Mabel, I
have a big surprise for you. The great conservative party—I call them
great, sir, although in opposition—have not been idle, and already has a
candidate been selected.”
“That’s rather quick work, Mr. Hawthorne.”
“Military machinery, sir—one man down, the next man forward. And whom do
you think they have selected, Mabel?”
“How should I know, papa?”
“Guess.”
“I cannot. Some of the rejected at the last dissolution.”
“No; guess again. A friend of yours.”
“A friend of mine?” somewhat surprised.
“A particular friend, who telegraphs me to say that he will arrive here
to-morrow,” with a knowing smile.
I guessed the name. My heart told it me with a pang of envy.
“Not Wynwood Melton?” she said.
“The very man!”
_I_ knew it.
“I’m so glad!” she cried, clapping her dainty hands together. “It will
be great fun to have him in the house! What capital imitations he will
give us of Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, and Whalley! And what stories!
Mr. Fitzgerald,” she added with considerable earnestness, “you must vote
for him.”
I think I was about to pledge myself to do so, forgetful of the dire
consequences of such a proceeding on my part, when her father
interrupted:
“He cannot, my dear. Mr. Fitzgerald is one of us—a liberal.”
“I am a liberal,” she laughed.
“I presume he will have a walk-over,” said Mr. Hawthorne.
“Who will have a walk-over?” asked Father O’Dowd, who had entered
unperceived.
“My friend, Mr. Wynwood Melton.”
“For a seat in Parliament?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a vacancy?”
“Yes.”
“In an Irish constituency?”
“You have not heard the news, then?”
“Not a word; and I may exclaim with Horace, _Est brevitate opus, ut
currat sententia_.”
“Well, reverend sir, your county member, Mr. Bromly de Ruthven, is
dead.”
“Dead!”
“Dead, sir. And Mr. Wynwood Melton is to have a walk-over.”
“Is he?” asked Father Dowd with a quiet smile. “Who says so?”
“Well, I suppose so. He is young, clever, rich, and, better than all,
the nominee of the Carlton Club, which means, of course, the De Ruthven
interest.”
The priest gave a short laugh.
“Mr. Wynwood Melton will _not_ have a walk-over; _I_ promise you that.
Neither will he win the election; _I_ promise you that, too.”
“Is there another candidate in the field?”
“There _will_ be, please God.”
“Are you at liberty to name him?”
“I shall name him _now_, as I mean to carry the county for him; and,”
taking me by the shoulder, “a very good figure he will cut in St.
Stephen’s.”
My heart gave one beat backward. Of name and fame I thought nothing. To
defeat Wynwood Melton I would give half my life. Here was a chance—one
of those marvellous chances which the whirl of the wheel turns out
occasionally to fit into the exact moment. It was a high stake, but I
would play for it. It was my solitary hope for an advantage over the man
whom Mabel Hawthorne loved. Yes, I would stand the hazard of the die.
“Mr. Fitzgerald dislikes politics,” observed Mabel.
“You may bring a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink,”
added her father.
“Besides, he will not be ungallant enough to oppose my nominee,” she
laughed.
“I shall be greatly disappointed if my young friend will not stand in
the gap for the old county and the old faith,” said Father O’Dowd.
“How can you expect to carry him in the teeth of the overwhelming
majority which the conservatives possess in this county?” asked the M.P.
“Thank Heaven! we have the ballot, and now or never is the time to try
its efficacy.”
“Well, Mr. Fitzgerald, may I hope to meet you in St. Stephen’s?” asked
my guest.
“You may.”
“To oppose _my_ nominee?”
“Yes.”
I braved even _her_ displeasure in my agony of anxiety to cross swords
with my rival.
“_Bravissimo!_” cried Father O’Dowd. “The day is ours. I knew you had
the Fitzgerald pluck, dashed with the hot blood of the Ormondes. I look
upon victory as certain. All the tenants on the De Ruthven estate are
good Catholics and will vote with us—_I_ know it. All the
Derryslaghnagaun people will come up to a man. Father Brady and Father
Tim Duffy will work the northern side of the county; Father Quaid and
Father Ted Walsh will carry the southern side; I’ll take the Ballytore
district, and—but no details now; dinner, and then I’m off. We’ll send
the ‘hard word’ round like wild-fire, and, Miss Mabel, you’ll see real
Irish bonfires on the hills to-morrow night. Tell your friend to stay
where he is, Mr. Hawthorne; for with Virgil I may say, _Animum pictura
pascit inani_. Why, I feel like a war-horse:
“‘My soul’s in arms, and eager for the fray.’”
“What’s all this about?” asked my mother.
“Allow me to present to you the Hon. Frederick Fitzgerald Ormonde,
M.P.,” gaily exclaimed Father O’Dowd, informing her in a few words of
what _had_ happened and what was expected to happen.
“God bless my boy!” she faltered, and, bursting into tears, kissed me as
if I had been in my cradle.
It was a moment of fierce inner glow. I almost tasted the sweets of
victory—of victory over Mabel, for whom, had I consulted my own self, I
would have sacrificed anything—everything.
“We haven’t a minute to lose,” exclaimed my Mentor, all ablaze with
excitement. “We shall have to rush out and fight helter-skelter. A
surprise has been sprung upon us. Oh! for one week. My brave people will
be taken at a disadvantage if we be not up and stirring. Every dexterity
will be used to outwit us, every dodge resorted to, bribery especially.
We must arrange committees in every town and village to sit _en
permanence_ until you are elected. We must have special messengers by
the hundred. Ormonde, you will place all your horses at my disposal.
North, south, east, and west we must nail the Home-Rule flag to the
mast. North, south, east, and west the cry _Pro aris et focis_ must go
forth. This is our first genuine election under the ballot. We allowed
ourselves to be cozened by false promises when Mr. Gladstone sprung his
mine last year, but now the ballot, and free and fearless voting. No
more coercion, no more intimidation by landlords, no more bullying or
bribing. At last we have a chance of freeing the country from the yoke
which has been put upon its neck for centuries, and now we have a chance
of letting its voice be heard and to pass a verdict on the Act of
Union.”
“I _do_ wish Mr. Melton was not in the field against _you_,” almost
whispered Mabel as I led her into dinner.
There was a something in her tone, like a faint note in melody, that
vibrated through me. What was it?
Father O’Dowd would only swallow a few mouthfuls of food. “Up, guards,
and at them! Eh, Mr. Hawthorne?”
“The duke never uttered those words. I can give you exactly what
occurred. When Napoleon was advancing at the head of the remnant of his
shattered army the duke—”
“Excuse me, my dear sir, but I have to marshal an army for _my_
Waterloo. _Animum curis nunc huc, nunc dividit illuc_—this way and that
way my anxious mind is turning. Ormonde, you’ll come over to me
to-morrow, and be prepared to address a meeting of your constituents.
Don’t be later than one o’clock. And now _sans adieux_ all!” And the
worthy priest, buttoning up his ulster, sprang upon the car.
In vain we implored of him to stay. In vain I asked to be permitted to
accompany him. No. “I am all aflame,” he cried. “I go to light a fire
that will not be extinguished until the high-sheriff is compelled to
declare a Catholic and a Home-Ruler the member for this Orangest of all
Orange counties. I feel like one inspired. _Nemo vir magnus sine aliquo
afflatu divino unquam fuit._” And with this quotation ringing in our
ears Father O’Dowd sped upon his mission out into the night.
“An’ so yer goin’ for to be the mimber? Good luck to ye, Masther Fred
darlint!” exclaimed Peter O’Brien, who was wild with delight at the
intelligence, regarding the election as a foregone conclusion.
“I hope so, Peter.”
“For to repale the Union, Masther Fred?”
“Not quite so fast, Peter.”
“Och, murther!” he groaned, with disappointment delineated in every
feature. “I thought ye wor for tee-total separation like Dan.”
“I’ll go as near to it as I can.”
“Do, avic; an’ begorr, av ye don’t take the consait out av some av thim
on th’ other side, I’m a boneen, no less. Mind the dalin’ thrick, and
keep your thumb on the ace av hearts—the card that always is thrumps.”
On the following morning, as I was preparing for my drive over to Father
O’Dowd’s, and endeavoring to pull my ideas together on the burning topic
of the hour, my mind being a prey to love, jealousy, politics, and
despair-a crushing _mélange_—an outside car whirled up the avenue, and
gracefully lounging upon the back cushion, attired in the fulness of
fashionable travelling costume, a cigar in his mouth, and dainty
lavender-colored kid gloves upon his hands, sat, or lay, Mr. Wynwood
Melton. I recognized him even before he came within clear eye-shot, and,
despite my bitter feeling against him, could not help paying him an
involuntary tribute of admiration.
I knew what brought him to Kilkenley. It was not to seek my vote, it was
not to visit Mr. Hawthorne—it was to see Mabel; and now, with a dull,
dead ache at my heart, I should play host to my rival in love and my
opponent in the hustings. I hastened downstairs and met him in the hall.
I resolved that no one should come between me and my _devoir_ as a
gentleman.
Melton was a pale, finely-featured, almost effeminate-looking young
fellow, whose _Henri Quatre_ beard and thin, dark moustache set off a
round, carefully-groomed head—one of those heads that reveal the
execution done by double brushes and hand-mirrors, as a woman’s bespeaks
the delicate manipulations of the _fille de chambre_. He was quite
pictorial in his get-up, from a Vandyke collar to black velveteen coat,
knee-breeches, purple stockings, and shoes with great strings almost
resembling those coquettish rosettes so much in vogue with ladies whom
nature has blessed with Lilliputian feet. He might, but for his soft
plaid woollen ulster, have represented one of the old portraits of my
ancestors that hung in the dining-room; and as he stood thus I could not
avoid contrasting my own homely appearance with his, and bitterly
flinging the heavy odds into the scale against myself.
“Mr. Melton?” I said.
“Yaas,” with a drawl and a bow.
“You are welcome to Kilkenley,” extending my hand.
“Mr. Ormonde! Ah! glad to meet you. What a drive I’ve had, over such
roads and such a vehicle! Caun’t say I like your cars. _Per Bacco!_
one’s spine gets divided into sections during the drive. You’ve got old
Hawthorne here. I suppose he has bored you to death. I expected to find
this place like the enchanted wood—everybody asleep, even the princess.”
“Whom you would like to awaken as in the fairy tale,” I added bitterly.
“Don’t care for kissing. How does Miss Hawthorne like this precious
country?”
“I assume she will like it all the better for your arrival.”
I was going to resent the impertinence, but withheld the burning retort
that rose to my lips.
A self-sufficient smile appeared as he almost yawned:
“I should hope so.”
At this moment Mabel appeared upon the steps.
“Ah! Mr. Melton,” she exclaimed, a bright, happy flush upon her lovely
face; “this is a surprise,” shaking hands with him.
“Agreeable?”
“Of course. You have introduced yourself, I see, to Mr. Ormonde.”
“How’s the governor?” not noticing her observation.
“Papa is wonderfully well; his trip has agreed with him _à merveille_.
He will be able to encounter the late hours of the coming session
without flinching.”
“They shau’n’t catch me sitting up, except at the club. You know what
brought me over?”
“Oh! dear, yes.”
“I saw the De Ruthven lot, and, as I could have been elected without
leaving London, I’m doosid sorry I came away, except,” he added, “for
the pleasure of seeing you.”
“Are you quite sure of being returned?” she asked.
“Rather,” with a quiet, self-satisfied smile.
Miss Hawthorne glanced at me.
“You are to be opposed,” I said.
“Haw! haw!” he laughed. “That for opposition,” flinging away his
cigar-butt.
“But I tell you it will be a fierce fight, Mr. Melton,” exclaimed Mabel.
“You’ve got a foeman worthy of your steel.”
“Some cad of a farmer’s son or a briefless Irish barrister. Ireland
wants Englishmen to sit for her and _upon_ her.”
“I am going to oppose you, Mr. Melton,” my heart beating very fast as I
uttered the words.
“Aw!” And extracting an eye-glass from the folds of his coat, he
deliberately stuck it in his eye and coolly surveyed me from head to
foot.
I would have knocked him heels over head, if Miss Hawthorne had not been
present.
“Fire away,” he said; “but, if you take my advice, you will not run your
head against a stone wall.”
“And if you take my advice,” I hotly retorted, “you’ll take the next
train _en route_ for London, for you have come upon a bootless errand.”
“_Nous allons voir_,” with a shrug.
“Yes, we shall see the outcome.”
“You don’t mean to go on?”
“To the bitter end.”
“The sinews of war are at my command.”
“The sinews of the county are at mine; but come,” I added, suddenly
recollecting my position of host, “let us talk the coming campaign over
a cutlet and a bottle of champagne.”
We entered the house together. Mr. Hawthorne met us in the hall.
“Glad to see you, Wynwood, although,” with a ponderous laugh, “I find
you in the camp of the enemy.”
As I proceeded cellarwards to look up the wine I heard Mr. Melton say:
“_That_ cad; I’ll lick him into a cocked hat.”
“You’ll eat those words, my fine fellow,” I muttered, “or my name isn’t
Ormonde; and for every sneer against Ireland you’ll have my riding-whip
across your shoulders.”
I couldn’t play the hypocrite, I couldn’t act the Arab, and, while
sharing bread and salt with mine enemy, plot his downfall as soon as he
quitted my tent; so, making a very plausible excuse, I betook myself to
my gay little dog-cart, and was about to give the mare her head when
Peter O’Brien whispered to me:
“Isn’t that the spalpeen that’s cum over for to thry a fall wud ye,
Masther Fred?”
“That is Mr. Melton,” I replied.
“That’s enough. The boys is waitin’ for to ketch him below at the
crass-roads; and faix it’s little he’ll be thinkin’ av Parlimint if
Teddy Delaney wanst gets a rowl out av him.”
“Peter,” I said, “if there is any insult offered to Mr. Melton while on
my land, I’ll take it as to myself, and I will not contest the county. I
pledge my honor to this.”
“Shure a little bit av a fight wudn’t be amiss.”
“I won’t have it.”
“The pond below is convaynient.”
“Silence, sir!”
“Tim Moriarty, the boy that dhruv him from the station, only wants the
word for to land him in Brierly’s Pool”—a great slimy ditch about half a
mile from the gate lodge.
I’m afraid I swore at my retainer.
“_Wirra, wirra!_ is there to be no _divarshin_ at all, at all?” he
muttered to himself as I ordered him to let go the mare’s head.
Miss Hawthorne suddenly appeared upon the steps.
“_Bon voyage_,” she gaily cried. “Go where glory waits you.”
“I am going to lick that cad into a cocked hat!” I fiercely shouted,
dashing from her presence like a lightning-bolt.
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
REGIONALISM _VERSUS_ POLITICAL UNITY IN ITALY.[1]
Matters do not run smoothly in United Italy. There is a screw of
considerable magnitude loose in the national machine. It jerks in its
motion, pitches, staggers, and men who affect a knowledge of the
mechanism of nations predict for Italy—unless the screw adverted to
receive proper attention—a dead, disastrous standstill. There are
fashions in politics nowadays, as there are in the styles of dress, just
as capricious, just as irrational, equally expensive in their own
sphere, but unconscionably malicious. It is the fashion, then, in the
politics of Italy, to attribute to the Papacy the only obstacle to the
full enjoyment of political unity and its consequent blessings. The
deep-rooted antipathy of the Vatican to a _nationality_ in Italy, its
traditional hatred of new institutions, and its equally prolonged and
powerful influence over the people—who, after all, are the mainspring of
action—all this is adduced by the liberal party in explanation of the
palpable want of unity in Italy.
The explanation may be satisfactory to conceited sciolists, especially
if a hatred of the Papacy be one of the component parts of their moral
constitution. Latterly, however, a veritable enemy to the political
unity of Italy has begun to assert itself, in a manner so striking as to
alarm even the most sanguine liberals. Not a spectre but a startling
reality assists at the deliberations of the Italian legislature, and,
insinuating itself with deadly effect into every department of
governmental administration, produces jealousies, feuds, and schisms
which threaten ultimately to dismember the nation. This danger is what
is called _Regionalism_.
Solomon’s apothegm on the newness of nothing under the sun is applicable
to Regionalism. It is of ancient birth in Italy, albeit of recent
manifestation, at least in its present form. It may be defined as the
interested affection which an Italian has for the geographical part of
the Peninsula in which he was born—for the abode of his domestic gods,
so to say, with its surroundings. The affection must be _interested_,
and of its very nature aim at effecting the prevalence of the interests,
moral or material, of his own region over those of the others. A
Platonic affection for one’s own natal region does not, according to the
liberals, constitute Regionalism; for, say they, such an affection
merely contemplates historical rights, and the love of one’s rights is
purely Platonic. Moreover, this affection should be directed to the
_region_ and not to the city or town of one’s birth. An interested
affection for the latter has its own appellation already, being known as
_amore di campanile_, and bears the same relation to Regionalism as a
part to a whole. But the Regionalism of today, which threatens to
produce fatal consequences in Italy, is referable to those portions of
Italy which in times past formed separate states, or at least notable
portions of an independent state, which, in its history, its traditions,
its genius, its style of speech, and its interests, differed from the
other states of Italy—as, for instance, Tuscany from Piedmont, the two
Sicilies from Lombardy and Venice, or even the island of Sicily itself
from continental Sicily, Venice from Lombardy.
Having explained our terms, we would remind the reader of the fact that,
when the question of uniting Italy into one body with Piedmont at the
head was first mooted, a formidable obstacle at once presented itself in
the shape of the difficulties arising at once from the different and
almost contradictory elements to be united. It was argued—and with
reason, too—that to build up a new state upon the foundation of new
institutions, and annul disparities which had existed for centuries, was
easier to plan than to carry through. The conflict of interests, of
local affections and jealousies, notoriously characteristic of the
Italian states, was pronounced by the distinguished statesmen of Italy
and Europe a fatal obstacle, if not to the formation, at least to the
preservation, of unity. Count Cavour himself was of the number of those
who proposed such a consideration, and, for his own part, expressed
himself perfectly satisfied if Lombardy and Venice were but annexed to
Sardinia. But the liberals and sectarians were urged on to the
unification of Italy by the irresistible force of Mazzini’s mind, and to
do so quickly, even without Venice and Rome, because the arms of
Napoleon III. were at their disposal. A happy opportunity had presented
itself, and they seized it. They obviated the difficulties alleged above
by a heroic compact. Arrogating to themselves the right of representing
the sentiments of the Italian people at large, and assuming the moral
personality of the various regions to which they belonged, they
proclaimed to the whole world that the all-absorbing desire of the
people was to be united in one nation, and that they sacrificed for ever
upon the altar of their country the interests, traditions, jealousies,
and local affections which had hitherto divided them, and swore to seek
no other glory for the future but the one only glory of Italy united.
Cavour resigned himself with so much tact to the situation that he
seemed to have created it. And thus, by assiduous application of his
maxim, that, in order to _make Italy, morality must be put aside_, and
of that other, promulgated by Salvagnoli, _one cannot govern and tell
the truth_, the great undertaking was accomplished. Two Italies soon
began to exist, the _legal_ and the _real_, which, as Iacini, a minister
of the Italian Cabinet, wrote, are directly contradictory to each other.
_Legal_ Italy, the supplanter, conquered, and _real_ Italy had to bow
the head and submit to a series of civil and fiscal persecutions without
example in modern history. But Regionalism was immolated to unity, and
the world lauded the sacrifice.
Italy is a land of promise, or rather a promissory land. Promises are
given with amazing facility—only to be equalled, however, by the
reluctance with which they are fulfilled. While it was a question of
sacrificing the interests of some one else—the majority of the liberals
who labored in the construction of the national fabric had very little
of their own to sacrifice, but everything to gain—all went well,
especially while the novelty of the situation lasted. But when the
excitement consequent on the formation of the nation had subsided,
people began to perceive that the much-vaunted political unity of the
country was not real. The promissory notes of the liberals touching the
eternal sepulture of provincial differences remained unhonored. The
practical sacrifice was impossible. It is now more than eighteen years
since the promise was given, and during that time Venice and Rome have
been added to the kingdom of Italy, with a view of consolidating for
ever the nationality. But the great obstacle remains unmoved, ay, and
avows itself, by the eloquence of facts, immovable.
We assert this much on the authority of a member of the Italian
Parliament. In an address to his constituents, delivered on the 9th of
September last, Federico Gabelli said: “Do differences and divisions
exist in the country? Yes, great ones; and no wonder. We have had in
Italy different histories, different glories, different sufferings, and
different styles of education. We have ideas, habits, tendencies, and
characters, different in different regions. For many years we were
unknown to one another. The sole fact of our accomplished unity—the
living together, so to speak—has revealed to us the existence of these
great diversities. But the most profound diversity has been constituted
by the material wants of the different parts of Italy. I do not take
into account the petty desires of municipalities. I look at the matter
very broadly. A real difference exists between the wants of the
northerners and southerners, greater still between the demands of the
two parties. There, the great word is said, the fearful phrase
pronounced—a real and profound disparity between _meridionali_ and
_settentrionali_ (southerners and northerners). But why hide it? Is it
possible to hide it? This division is felt by all, but all are afraid to
declare its existence. They are afraid (and their fear is honorable,
because inspired by the holy love of country) to compromise, by the
declaration, the grand fact of the unity of Italy.”
Great was the scandal produced among the liberals by this declaration of
Gabelli, and greater still when he subsequently made a careful diagnosis
of the evil, and prescribed a remedy—nothing less, by the bye, than a
confederation similar to that proposed by Pope Pius IX. thirty-one years
ago.
When the first Italian legislature assembled in Turin it was observed
that nearly all the deputies formed themselves into groups, separate and
divided, not politically in parties, but geographically in regions.
There was the Tuscan group, the Sicilian group, the Neapolitan group,
and later on the Lombard and the Venetian groups, which were the
occasion of constant lamentations on the part of the Piedmontese. Then
began the general struggle for power, to the almost incurable laceration
of poor, real Italy. All the _martyrs_ and _confessors_ of the country
clamored for offices in compensation for their heroic sufferings. As
their number bordered on the infinite for such a puny state as Italy, so
infinite was the number of positions created, and, consequently,
infinite was (and continues to be) the number of peculations. But with
masterly tact the Piedmontese element maintained the preponderance in
power, and so great was the fury of the other patriots that they
finally, with one accord, devoted all their energies to the
extermination of _Piedmonteseism_. The molestations and bitternesses
which fell to the lot of Count Cavour in the struggle that ensued were,
in the opinion of many Piedmontese, among the causes which hastened his
death. Whenever a new ministry was to be formed, to the personal
rivalries which are inseparable from such an occasion were superadded
the jealousies, the intrigues, and the pretensions of the different
regions. Every region clamored for the exaltation to the ministerial
bench of its own representative, not as the exponent of a political
principle, but as the defender of some provincial interest. The _Unità
Cattolica_, apropos of this, observes (September 21, 1877): “When it is
a question of forming a cabinet in England, in France, in Spain, do they
take care to have representatives of the various English, French, and
Spanish regions? Certainly not. Personages are chosen according to their
opinions, not according to the regions from which they come. But here in
Italy a ministry cannot spring into existence but there enters at least
one Piedmontese, one Neapolitan, one Lombard, one Sicilian, one Tuscan.
Examine all our ministries, from 1861 down, and you will find that they
were formed more on a regional than a political basis.” This is quite
true as regards the past few years. Formerly, however, as we have
already intimated, the Piedmontese held the majority in the cabinets, to
the unquenchable ire of the other provincials.
Another cause of jealousy to the provinces, and the occasion, at least,
of the pre-eminence of the Piedmontese, was the existence of the capital
at Turin. The Peruzzi-Minghetti ministry, however, according to the
convention with Napoleon III. of September 14, 1864, succeeded in having
the capital transferred to Florence. This roused the hatred of the
Piedmontese against the Tuscans, and was the cause of some bloody scenes
in Turin. But Lanza and Sella, both Piedmontese, vindicated their
countrymen by bearing the national _lares_ away from the banks of the
Arno, and enshrining them for ever, as they thought, on the banks of the
Tiber. Nor did the evil disappear with the annexation of the Venetian
province and the Pontifical territory. The Venetians constituted another
group in Parliament, and, if the Romans did not do likewise, it was
simply in default of the necessary elements, considering the aversion of
the Eternal City and the neighboring provinces for the invaders. Rome
became what the Baron d’Ondes Reggio predicted—a very Tower of Babel.
The war of interests broke out afresh and was carried on with redoubled
fury. The combatants ranged themselves into two grand divisions of
northerners and southerners. The Tuscan group alone enacted the part of
moderator. The Piedmontese element asserted its pre-eminence anew in
Rome, and invaded not only every department of state, but extended its
ruling influence even over municipal matters. The patriots of meridional
Italy prepared themselves, during the intervals when a common attack
against the church did not withdraw their attention from provincial
feuds, to give battle to the Piedmontese, whose ascendency was stoutly
maintained by Ponza di San Martino, Lanza, Sella, and General Cadorna.
The language of the southern papers was in something like the following
tenor: “Here we are at last in Rome! It is high time now that the
patronage of the Piedmontese should be suspended, and a check put upon
that political monopoly which they arrogate to themselves as a right of
conquest. They gave us a dynasty—good. They also gave us a constitution,
but we mean to perfect it and adapt it to the demands of progressing
civilization. But in Rome Italy belongs to the Italians, not to the
Piedmontese. Piedmonteseism oppresses us. Everything in the kingdom has
a subalpine odor—the organic laws, bureaucratic systems, fiscal
arrangements. The administrative machine is run entirely by Piedmontese.
The ministers, their secretaries (with rare exceptions), the
supernumeraries who lackey these—all Piedmontese. The secret offices are
given to Piedmontese, and the Piedmontese enjoy the sinecures of the
secret funds. The national bank itself is but a transformation of the
old subalpine bank. The army is in the hands of the Piedmontese, with a
Piedmontese as the Minister of War. In short, the nerve and fibre of
government is Piedmontese. There must be an end of this!”
It took seven years of laborious intrigues, amalgamations, and
combinations of parties to effect the downfall of the Piedmontese. Their
obituary notice is dated March 18, 1876. On the same day began the reign
of the Neapolitans, and within the short space of nineteen months they
have so thoroughly disposed of Piedmonteseism in every branch of civil
and military administration that even the word _Buzzurri_
(chestnut-roasters), applied seven years ago by the Romans to their new
masters, has become obsolete. The Venetian Gabelli has given us a
description of the condition of affairs at present. In the discourse
alluded to he proposes a league of the septentrionals. He says: “There
is nothing, gentlemen, that drives people to an abuse of power more than
the certainty of having so much of it that there is no danger of being
made responsible for the abuse. The meridionals are in this position
to-day, because they are supported therein by the division of the
septentrionals. A part, and a great part, of our votes and forces is
subordinate to the votes and forces of the meridionals. But is it true
that in Parliament they vote for regional interests?” He answers in the
affirmative, and adduces a series of amusing yet startling facts to
prove his assertion. He then continues: “I might go on indefinitely with
the enumeration of facts proving the existence of the struggle of
interests between the northerners and the southerners. This struggle is
real and active. Many preach that, even admitting the unfortunate
existence of these divisions in the country, they should be kept secret,
should not be proclaimed or discussed; above all, they should not be
considered as a test in government. What would you say, gentlemen, of
the logic of a physician who would reason in this wise: ‘I have a
patient prostrate with typhoid fever. But, as this disease is very
serious, I will hide it from myself, deny its existence; and because
this disease can terminate fatally for my patient I will treat it as a
simple inflammation of the bowels.’ That physician would be a fool. But
would those rulers be more logical who, recognizing the existence of a
condition so serious for the country, would persist in governing without
taking it into account? The struggle of interests is an evil. Let us
cure it. But to cure it let us begin with an exact diagnosis, and with a
recognition that the evil exists. Without an exact diagnosis an
efficacious cure would be a miracle. I am for unity. But the unity, and
even the existence, of Italy might be threatened by mistrust in our
systems of government, by the ever-increasing discontent. The country
will always be governed badly, unless consideration be had for its
actual condition. I am for unity. But I hold it to be _fatal_ for Italy
to pass through a crisis determined by the war of northern and southern
interests. What the vicissitudes of this war will be, or who will
prevail, no one can foresee. If we northerners remain united and form a
compact party, our more advanced civilization, and, let us speak
frankly, our honesty, more extensive and serious, will ensure for us a
just predominance. If we continue to be divided, while the southerners
form one phalanx, we will have to submit to the law of their interests,
to the influence of a social condition entirely different from our own.”
We have said nothing in reference to Regionalism—of that faction in the
liberal camp which is always conspiring against the _monarchical_ unity
of Italy, with a view of substituting a regional confederation of
independent republics; nothing of the multitude of liberals who are
clamoring for administrative decentralization, as a restoration, in
part, of the independence in administration which was taken from the
individual regions by political unity; nothing of the absolute
impossibility of having a territorial army in Italy, for the reason that
Regionalism might assert itself in a more material style, to the
imminent peril of the government. We have simply narrated facts
furnished by the liberals themselves—_by legal_ Italy, which assumes to
be the nation. Narration has the force of demonstration in this
instance, and clearly establishes the fact that Regionalism exists in
the very core of Italy, nay, rules supreme, regulating politics,
constituting parties, biassing every discussion, and threatening, in the
long run, not only the unity of the nation but the monarchy personified
in the unity.
This much established, a very reasonable doubt may be put forth as to
whether the unity of Italy be accomplished, even among the liberals, who
arrogated to themselves the right and the faculty to unite it, spite of
the nature, the history, the traditions, the genius, and the diverse and
contrary interests of the Peninsula. That there is a species of unity we
do not question. But it is neither moral nor organic unity, such as
forms one whole, ordained to a living purpose, founded on the same
principle, agreeing in its operations, harmonious in its members. It is
a mechanical and artificial unity, without bonds of life, without order
in purpose, without concord in action, without harmony in its parts; in
short, it is merely _fiscal_, not national, unity. This is a logical
conclusion, derived entirely from a consideration of _legal_ Italy.
Our conclusion does not assume a more favorable aspect for the unity of
Italy if we consider its passive subject—that is to say, the immense
number of Italians who were united against their own wish; who never
entered into the calculations of the demagogues; who, in deference to
the Unity described above, have been outraged in the tenderest
affections of the heart and in the most sacred rights of nature; who
have gathered no other fruits from unity than regional, municipal, and
domestic impoverishment; who perceive that, in the name of this unity,
their nation is perverted and their religion vilified, and who
consequently recognize in the government naught but an enemy of their
purse, their conscience, their family, and their liberty.
From what has been said already the absurdity and, we will add, the
malice of the accusation that the Papacy is the only obstacle to the
perfection and enjoyment of political unity in Italy become quite
apparent. The most powerful obstacle to such unity is not in the Papacy,
but in the very nature of things; it is in the history of ages, in the
varied character of the people, in the contrariety of the material and
moral interests of the different portions of the country. Let liberalism
eradicate from its bosom the gnawing worm of Regionalism; let it
reconcile opposing interests, quiet regional passions, which are the
seeds of civil war; and, having done this much, let it effect a unity
with the _real_ country. Until this much be accomplished, to charge the
Papacy with the ill success of the national unity is absurd. It is
malicious, also, inasmuch as it manifestly tends to separate the people
from the Catholic Church, making them regard the spiritual head of the
church and their father in the faith as an enemy of their country. Nay,
were the liberals successful in effecting their daring purpose, which is
the separation of the people from the see of Peter, then indeed would
the political unity of Italy receive its death-blow; then indeed would
the bond which unites the Italian people be severed, the bond of one
faith, the bond of the only unity they really can boast of—religious
unity. It were well if the demagogues of Italy bestowed the necessary
consideration upon the incomparable uniting force of religion to a
people, instead of promoting and hailing with delight every measure
devised to destroy it. Since they deem it advisable to affect Prussian
and Russian ways and means, why do they not perceive the manifest wisdom
of Bismarck’s measures against the Catholic Church?—measures the
fundamental purpose of which is not the extinction of the church, as
much as the establishment of a firm and lasting basis to the unity of
the empire in a uniformity of worship—Protestant, of course. And with
this intent were the Falk laws promulgated. Russia, too, fully alive to
the importance of a religious uniformity as the indestructible basis of
political unity, has peopled Siberia and the squalid prisons of the
empire with non-conformists to the so-called _Orthodox_ creed of the
land. Never yet was there a dynasty which did not find its main support
and perpetuation in the religious unity of its subjects. True or false
though the religion may have been, the principle of support was there.
And Italy’s patriots, with the connivance, not to say the active
concurrence, of a petty provincial dynasty, would perpetuate unity by
sowing religious discord among the people; by making of a people, one in
faith, in baptism, and actual religious profession, a discordant,
divided multitude of Evangelicals, Calvinists, Waldensians, Quakers,
Presbyterians, and Methodists. The discord produced in Italy to-day by
Regionalism is a great and, in all probability, a fatal evil to the
unity of the country. Add the religious disunion of the people to that
caused by Regionalism, and the result will be simply chaotic.
The reader may add to these conclusions: If the Pope came to terms with
Italy, as she now exists, would not the political unity of the country
improve, not to say receive its formal perfection, in consequence? We
answer, the hypothesis is inadmissible. Waiving the fact that, as
governments are conceived nowadays, the Pope cannot be the subject of
any one of them, and that he cannot in conscience accept terms from the
Italian government without compromising rights which he is bound to
maintain—though in fact they be trampled under foot and no human
probability predict their restoration—it is sufficient for us that he
declares a _Non possumus_. But admitting the supposition of a
reconciliation, of a cession of imprescriptible rights, would the
confusion which now predominates in Italy give place to order? Would the
only beatitude to which Italy now aspires be realized? Would the
political unity of the nation be established for ever? Would the war of
interests cease? Would the interests themselves change their nature?
Would the “more civilized” northerners of Italy leave off increasing
their prosperity at the expense of the southerners, and these be content
with contributing as taxpayers of the land, not as rulers? Would
Sicilians and Calabrians live _en famille_ with Venetians and Ligurians?
Would Turin, and Venice, and Modena, and Parma, and Florence, and Naples
forget that they were once the flourishing capitals of separate,
independent states, and be beatified in their present condition, simply
the residence of a prefect, and he a favorite of an ill-favored
ministry? The glory of being made the capital of Italy _presumably_
satisfies Rome. Think you, however, that the old city is never
retrospective? If the puny provincial cities and regions, in struggling
for their own regional interests and asserting their importance, cause
people to yield to dark forebodings, and to re-peruse and reflect upon
the history of the Italian states, what confusion could not the mistress
of the world produce, were she to fall back upon her eighteen centuries
of glory as the centre of Christendom?
The great obstacle to the enjoyment of political unity in Italy is not
in the Vatican, but in the character, genius, history, traditions, and
conflicting interests of the Italians themselves, and it is called
Regionalism.
Footnote 1:
_Del Regionalismo in Italia—Civiltà Cattolica, Quad._ 656.
AMONG THE TRANSLATORS.
VIRGIL AND HORACE.—IV.
In passages of quiet beauty such as the first six books are full of—the
_Odyssey_, we may call them, of the _Æneid_, as the last six are its
_Iliad_—Conington is almost always happy. Take, for instance, the
picture of the happy valley in Elysium (book vi. 703):
“Meantime, Æneas in the vale
A sheltered forest sees,
Deep woodlands where the evening gale
Goes whispering thro’ the trees,
And Lethe river which flows by
Those dwellings of tranquillity.
Nations and tribes in countless ranks
Were crowding to its verdant banks;
As bees afield in summer clear
Beset the flowerets far and near,
And round the fair white lilies pour,
The deep hum sounds the champaign o’er.”
In such lines, too, Mr. Morris, judging from his own poetry, should be
at his best; and here again it is hard to choose between him and his
predecessor:
“But down amid a hollow dale, meanwhile, Æneas sees
A secret grove, in thicket fair, with murmuring of the trees,
And Lethe’s stream that all along that quiet place doth wend;
O’er which there hovered countless folks and peoples without end.
And as when bees, amid the fields in summer-tide the bright,
Settle on diverse flowery things, and round the lilies white
Go streaming, so the fields were filled with mighty murmuring.”
Hypercriticism might here point out as a blemish the use of the same
word “murmuring” to express the different sounds indicated in the Latin
by the words _sonantia_ and _murmure_; these are just the delicacies to
be looked for in Virgil and not to be overlooked by his translator.
Moreover, the line,
“A secret grove, in thicket fair, with murmuring of the trees,”
asks considerable good-will and knowledge of the Latin to make it sound
quite reasonable, and “diverse flowery things” we have some private
doubts about. But “hovered” is certainly a better equivalent for
“_volabant_” than “crowded,” which gives no hint of the shadowy,
unsubstantial nature of these dwellers in the realms of Dis—_animæ,
quibus altera fato corpora debentur_:
“Là, les peuples futurs sont des ombres légères,”
as Delille puts it by an anticipative paraphrase. Here Mr. Cranch may
meet his antagonists on somewhat better terms, though still we seem to
miss in his lines the poetical flavor, which he rarely catches
throughout:
“Meanwhile, Æneas in a valley deep
Sees a secluded grove, with rustling leaves
And branches; there the river Lethe glides
Past many a tranquil home; and round about
Innumerable tribes and nations flit.
As in the meadows in the summer-time
The bees besiege the various flowers, and swarm
About the snow-white lilies; and the field
Is filled with murmurings soft.”
The pathos, too, of his author—that exquisite pathos of Virgil which
pervades the _Æneid_ like a perfume, which one feels not more in the
eloquent compression of the _En Priamus_ wherewith Æneas recognizes his
country’s painted woes on the walls of the Carthaginian temple, or the
passionate heartbreak of the
“O patria, o divûm domus, Ilium, et incluta bello
Mœnia Dardanidum,”
or the subtle, touching beauty of the epitaph on Æolus, scarcely to be
read even now without a quiver of the eyelids:
“Domus alta sub Ida,
Lyrnessi domus alta, solo Laurente sepulcrum,”
than in the
“Vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta
Jam sua,”
of the farewell to Helenus, or the manly fortitude of the hero’s
admonition to his son:
“Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis”
—the pathos of the _Æneid_ Prof. Conington has not been unsuccessful in
preserving, as we might show in more quotations than we have room for.
But for the expression of sublimity or intense emotion the octosyllabic
verse is scarcely so apt; and in striving to do justice to the tragic
grandeur of the second book, the passionate despair of the fourth, and
the elevated majesty of the sixth, or even the splendid rhetoric of Juno
and Turnus in the tenth and eleventh, Prof. Conington must often “have
been made sensible,” as he says in his preface, “of the profound
difference between the poetry of Scott and the poetry of Virgil.” In the
battle-scenes, however, he takes his full revenge, and in his
nimble-footed verse Turnus falls on with a fire and fury, or swift
Camilla scours the plain with a grace and lightness, which most of his
competitors toil after in vain. And in rendering those epigrammatic
turns of phrase of which the _Æneid_ is full, and which are so
characteristic a feature of Virgil’s style, we know of no version which
surpasses his. Take such examples as these:
“Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem”:
“No safety can the vanquished find
Till hope of safety be resigned”;
“Mixtoque insania luctu
Et furiis agitatus amor et conscia virtus”:
“A warrior’s pride, a father’s pain,
In mingled madness glow”;
“Sed neque currentem se nec cognoscit euntem
Tollentemve manu saxumque immane moventem”
(how well in the heavy movement of the last line the sound echoes the
sense!—a beauty which the translator certainly misses):
“Running, he knew not that he ran:
Nor, throwing, that he threw”;
the description of Turnus’ horses in book xii.:
“Qui candore nives anteirent, cursibus auras”:
“To match the whiteness of the snow,
The swiftness of the breeze”;
or Corœbus’ appeal to his comrades in book ii.:
“Dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?”
“Who questions, when with foes we deal,
If craft or courage guides the steel?”
Have we not here all needful fidelity united to the air of genuine
poetry? Compare Mr. Cranch’s versions of the first and last of these
examples:
“The only safety of the vanquished is
To hope for none”;
and
“Whether we make use
Of stratagem or valor who inquires
In dealing with an enemy?”
If Æneas and Corœbus had harangued their fellow-Trojans in this wise, we
doubt if they would have helped them so gallantly to make some of the
finest poetry in the _Æneid_. There is no trumpet in such lines as
these.
Nevertheless, in spite of many suspicious flavors of prose in his
version, Mr. Cranch, we suppose, is to be called a poet. The Boston
muses are liberal to their votaries, and do not ask that a man shall be
Shakspere or Milton before crowning him with all their laurels. At
least, we may fairly say that he is a gentleman of accomplishments
and—we should be tempted to add culture, the proper term, we believe,
for a person “in society” who knows all the things that are proper for
“persons in society” to know, were it not that glib dilettanteism and
newspaper sciolists have well-nigh sent that much-abused word into the
Coventry of cant. Mr. Cranch is, moreover, a writer of much poetic taste
and no little poetic faculty, as he has shown in many pleasant essays in
many varieties of metre. Among the kinds of metre which he can write,
however, his version of the _Æneid_ has not convinced us that
blank-verse is included; or, to put it more agreeably, if not more
justly, we are not persuaded that the kind of blank-verse he writes is
best fitted to do justice to Virgil.
So much we are led to say, because in his preface Mr. Cranch hints that
only a poet can or should attempt to translate the _Æneid_, and asserts
that only in blank-verse can it be fitly translated at all. Into that
interminable controversy as to whether any but a poet can translate a
poet, or whether rhyme is a curb or a spur, a help or a hindrance, to
the judicious translator who knows how to follow its inspiration, we do
not propose to enter. But Mr. Cranch, in declaring against the rhymed
couplet of Dryden and his followers, delivers himself in a way which to
us seems to imply a curious misconception of Virgil’s manner, and leads
us to anticipate on the threshold one of the points in which Mr.
Cranch’s version most strikingly fails. “The incessantly-recurrent
rhyme,” he says, “gives an appearance of antithesis which disturbs the
very simplicity and directness of the original.” Adjectives are apt to
be used somewhat vaguely—or, as our Western friends would say in their
delightful, breezy idiom, “to be slung about with a looseness”—in
speaking of the style of ancient writers, of which so few of us nowadays
know enough to be justified in speaking at all. We have no desire to
meddle more than is needful with these dangerous epithets, double-edged
weapons as they are. But unless we have read Virgil quite amiss, he is
especially fond of antithesis, which Mr. Cranch seems to think he is
not; and he is not especially simple or direct, which Mr. Cranch seems
to think he is. Not that he cannot be, as in truth he often is, both
simple and direct; but that simplicity and directness are not the
features of his style which we should select to characterize it, as we
should select them, for example, to characterize the style of Homer.
Whatever simplicity Virgil has belongs, we think, to the general
conception and conduct of his story, by no means to the manner of his
telling it, to the general quality of his thought or style. What
directness he has belongs to the general movement of his verse and the
necessities of epic composition, and is in spite of a tendency to dwell
curiously on incidents not in the track of his narrative, to turn, as it
were, from his epic path and linger over wayside flowers of rhetoric or
sentiment—a tendency illustrated by that subtlety of allusion which all
his critics have remarked, and the habit of hinting at two or three
modes of expression while employing one. These characteristics of his
poetry would naturally have resulted from the quality of his genius—the
genius of taste the Abbé Delille calls it; he was the first of the
_racinien_ poets, says Sainte-Beuve[2]—and the character of his time.
The age he wrote for was one of extreme literary and social refinement,
of keen philosophical speculation; the Latin he wrote in was already a
literary language—as much so as the French of Racine or the English of
Pope. The age of Augustus, in many points, was strikingly like that of
Louis XIV. in France and of Charles II. or, still closer, of Queen Anne
in England, as has been more than once pointed out. Sainte-Beuve, with
his usual insight, has seized upon this resemblance to explain why
Virgil, in the account of the shipwreck in the first book (vv. 81
_seq._), which is an ingenious cento from the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_,
should have dropped two of Homer’s most striking similes: that the
pilot, struck by the falling mast, went overboard “like a diver,” and
that the scattered swimmers—_rari nantes in gurgite vasto_—were borne
like sea-birds on the wave. Virgil omits these images, says the French
critic, just because they are so salient, so life-like, so frank and
real. “Comparisons of that sort the age of Augustus, like the age of
Louis XIV., rather eschewed. They were by no means to the taste of
Frenchmen in the days of Saint-Evremond and Segrais (I use extreme terms
purposely)—men of society, of the drawing-room, nice scholars who had
been often in the Hôtel Rambouillet but little at sea, and to whom
divers and sea-birds were unfamiliar sights. The Frenchman of that time
preferred general descriptions to images too minutely particularized,
and so, too, in a measure, did the Roman of the time of Augustus and the
circle of Mæcenas. Mæcenas is not so far, either in taste or philosophy,
from Saint-Evremond.”
With some reservations, much the same thing applies to the ages of
Dryden and of Pope—to Pope’s age and to Pope himself more strictly,
perhaps, than to Dryden or his time; so that one is half inclined to
think it a caprice of literary destiny that Pope should have been set to
translate Homer, and Dryden Virgil, rather than the reverse. Not that
the result would have been a better Homer, if we may judge from Dryden’s
sample work in the first book of the _Iliad_; a better Homer than Pope’s
was perhaps not to be looked for in an age which in its poetry thought
it fine to call a spade—about which it was apt to be only too
plain-spoken in free fireside prose—an agricultural implement, and the
bucolic person who wielded it a swain. Pope’s famous ironical essay in
the _Guardian_ on his own and Ambrose Phillips’ pastorals is a curious
illustration of the then passion for putting Nature into hoops and
periwig. Phillips, in a dim, blundering way, is nearer right with his
Cecilias and Rogers, who talk at least like ploughmen and milkmaids,
than Pope with his gentle Delias and sprightly Sylvias, who converse
like masquerading duchesses; but as all the world happened to be
masquerading, the laugh was with Pope.
Yet, as between the Greek and Roman poet, it should seem that the former
_ought_ to have been more congenial to Dryden, and the latter to Pope.
In many of the points where Pope was farthest from Homer he was nearest
to Virgil—not least in his love of antithesis, his epigram and point,
his brilliant rhetoric, the studied elegance, nay, the artifice, of his
style. Even in his most didactic vein he would scarcely have been so far
from Virgil as in his most epic strain he was from Homer. Virgil is not
averse to a bit of sermonizing _sub rosa_; he writes with a moral; his
Æneas is a sort of fighting parson born before his time. One cannot help
feeling, too, in his most impassioned moments, that he is writing with
his eye on his style, as Pope always is, as we can never fancy Homer
doing. Is the rhetorical artifice any less plain in
“O dolor atque decus magnum rediture parenti”
than in
“Daphne, our grief, our glory, now no more”?
Is the antithesis less pointed in
“Qui candore nives anteirent, cursibus auras”
than in
“Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind”?
There are hardly more lines of the kind in Pope than in the _Æneid_.
When, therefore, Mr. Cranch tells us that he has taken blank-verse
rather than the rhymed couplet in order to avoid the appearance of
antithesis, and to secure the clear simplicity and directness of his
original, he shows us where to look for some of his failures. His
simplicity is too often baldness, his directness not seldom prose, and
to the pointedness of the Latin he does much less than ample justice.
His blank-verse seems to us monotonous in its modulation and is not
always correct. Lines like the following occur too often:
“Thou seekest counsel, gracious sovereign,
In matters which to none of us are dark
Nor needing our voices. All must own
They know what best concerns the public good,
Yet hesitate to speak.”
Indeed, we must confess that we are at a loss to know what Mr. Cranch
means by saying: “I am far from pretending that my versification may not
frequently fail to convey the movement of the Latin lines to the ear of
those to whom they are familiar.” If he means that his versification
often, or even sometimes, or at all, conveys the movement of the Latin
lines to his own ear, then his ear must be as curiously constructed as
the “arrected ears” he bestows on Æneas in the famous shepherd simile in
the second book.[3]
But it is ungracious to linger on faults which we have only dwelt on
because they seemed to flow from what we must take to be a misconception
on the part of Mr. Cranch of the true spirit of his author. His version
has certainly the merit of fidelity to the sense of the original, though
this, it seems to us, is sometimes bought by a sacrifice of the spirit.
His verse is, for the most part, what he claims it to be, smooth,
flowing, and compact, though it does not recall to us, as to him, the
best models of blank-verse, and he does not sin, as one other of our
translators does, against that “supreme elegance” which is Virgil’s
chief fascination. We find him best in the least essentially poetic
passages, which is, perhaps, not so bad a sign as it appears. The speech
of Juno in the tenth book is no unfavorable specimen of his best style:
“... Then, stung with rage,
The royal Juno spake: ‘Wherefore dost thou
Force me to break my silence deep, and thus
Proclaim in words my secret sorrow? Who
Of mortals or of gods ever constrained
Æneas to pursue these wars, and face
The Latian monarch as an enemy?
Led by the fates, he came to Italy;
Be it so: Cassandra’s raving prophecies
Impelled him. Was it we who counselled him
To leave his camp and to the winds commit
His life? or to a boy entrust his life
And the chief conduct of the war? or seek
A Tuscan league? or stir up tribes at peace?
What gods, what unrelenting power of mine,
Compelled him to this fraud? What part in this
Had Juno or had Iris, sent from heaven?
A great indignity it is, forsooth,
That the Italians should surround with flames
Your new and rising Troy, and that their chief,
Turnus, should on his native land maintain
His own, whose ancestor Pilumnus was,
Whose mother was the nymph Venetia.
What is it for the Trojans to assail
The Latins with their firebrands, and subdue
The alien fields and bear away their spoils?
Choose their wives’ fathers, and our plighted brides
Tear from our breasts? sue with their hands for peace,
Yet hang up arms upon their ships? Thy power
May rescue Æneas from the Greeks, and show
In place of a live man an empty cloud;
Or change his ships into so many nymphs.
Is it a crime for us to have helped somewhat
The Rutuli against him? Ignorant
And absent, as thou sayst, Æneas is;
Absent and ignorant, then, let him be.
Thou hast thy Paphos, thy Idalium too,
And lofty seat Cythera. Why, then, try
These rugged hearts, a city big with tears?
Do we attempt to overturn your loose,
Unstable Phrygian state? Is it we or he
Who exposed the wretched Trojans to the Greeks?
Who was the cause that Europe rose in arms
With Asia, or who broke an ancient league
By a perfidious theft? Did I command
When the Dardanian adulterer
Did violence to Sparta? Or did I
Supply him weapons and foment the war
By lust? Thou shouldst have then had fear for those
Upon thy side; but now too late thou bring’st
Idle reproaches and unjust complaints.”
In rendering the phrase _fovive cupidine bello_ (“or battles flame with
passion fanned,” says Conington) Delille has a characteristic touch
almost worthy of Segrais:
“Me vit-on allumer, pour embraser les terres
Au flambeau de l’amour les torches de la guerre.”
In the speech of Turnus in the eleventh book the Trojans become
“brigands” and “barbarous assassins,” quite as if the Rutuli chief were
a deputy of the Left Centre addressing his friends on the Right. If the
good abbé had written a few years later he would no doubt have made them
Communists. But his speech of Juno, though rather free, has many fine
touches; and, indeed, the French seems to hit off the women’s part of
the _Æneid_ better than our English. Thus, the dumb rage with which Juno
must have listened to Venus is well hinted in the line,
“Junon muette écoute auprès de son époux,”
though it is by no means so literal as Cranch’s.
Of the three translators of Virgil we are now considering, Mr. Morris
certainly brought to his task the greatest natural and acquired gifts.
Nay, had we been asked from the ranks of living English writers to pick
out the one who could give us Virgil most fitly, with least loss of
majesty or beauty, in an English dress, we think we should have named
the author of _Jason_ and the _Earthly Paradise_. For Mr. Morris is not
only a poet—a poet of very nearly the first order; whereas Mr. Cranch,
we are constrained to say in the teeth of the Boston muses, is hardly
more than a poet by brevet—he is also a classical scholar who, in point
of general acquirements at least, is a rival whom even Prof. Conington
would respect. Since the time of Dryden, and not excepting him, we know
of no English poet—unless, perhaps, Pope and the present laureate—whose
natural genius should seem to have fitted him so well as Mr. Morris to
interpret the _Æneid_. His own poetry shows many of the most distinctive
qualities of Virgil’s verse: its elegance, its pathos, its pregnant
allusiveness, above all the pensive grace, the under-note of tender
sadness, that runs through all the strain of the _Æneid_, the underlying
_motif_ of its theme. And though the form of narrative verse, in which
Mr. Morris has chiefly exercised his powers, is sufficiently remote in
tone and spirit from the tone and spirit of epic narrative, yet here and
there, as in passages of _Jason_ and of the _Lovers of Gudrun_, he has
come as near to striking the true epic note as any modern poet we
recall, unless it be Mr. Matthew Arnold in his admirable and touching
fragment of _Sohrab and Rustum_. Add to this his minute and
well-digested knowledge of classic mythology and legend, and his rare
mastery of the Saxon and Romance elements of the language, in which so
much of its tear-compelling power resides—what Joubert might have called
_les entrailles des mots_—his possession of the secret, so hard to
learn, of the sweetness of short and simple words,[4] and we had every
reason to expect from Mr. Morris a version of the _Æneid_ which should
be in the highest degree original, elegant, and fresh, which should even
take rank as the best English translation of Virgil’s poem that had yet
appeared. That pre-eminence, indeed, has by many English critics been
assigned to it; but to their verdict we cannot assent.
Fresh and original this version certainly is; for it is altogether
unlike any that has preceded it, in conception, in method, in treatment,
we might almost say in metre, since Mr. Morris’ long Alexandrines are,
in metrical effect, no more the Alexandrines of Phaer than those of
Chapman. Elegant it is, too, so far as regards artistic workmanship and
finish; that everything that Mr. Morris sets his hand to is sure to
have. But it is not the elegance of Virgil; it is not even the elegance
of the _Earthly Paradise_. The final grace of proportion and fitness it
has not, and in spite of many and singular beauties—of beauties which
scarcely any living English writer that we know of, except Mr. Morris,
could give us—it is not to us, upon the whole, a satisfactory version.
Nay, it is most unsatisfactory, and it is so because of the two
qualities which should otherwise have made its chief charm—its freshness
and its originality; because to the attainment of these Mr. Morris seems
to us to have sacrificed the most important quality of all in a
translation—fidelity to the spirit of his author.
We need go no farther than the title-page to read the story of his
design and, as we incline to hold, his failure. “The _Æneids_ of Virgil
_done_ into English verse” is what he offers us, and the affectation of
the title runs through the performance and mars it. If from the result
we may derive the intent, Mr. Morris set out to produce such a version
of the _Æneid_ as might have been written anywhere between the time of
Chaucer and Phaer, had any poet then lived who joined to the simplicity
and freshness of his own age the culture and self-consciousness of ours.
At least, this is the only way we can account for Mr. Morris’ choice of
the peculiar style in which he has seen fit to couch, we might almost
say to smother, his version—a style which is not, indeed, the style of
Chaucer, or of Phaer, or of Chapman (to whom it has been rashly referred
by an English critic in the _Saturday Review_), or, for the matter of
that, of any other English author we are acquainted with, living or
dead; but which is nevertheless plainly inspired by the same effort in
the direction of mediævalism and the earlier manner that has borne such
pleasant fruit in the author’s former productions. But the effort is
here carried, it seems to us, to “a wasteful and ridiculous excess,” and
is, besides, quite out of place in a translation where the writer is not
free to form his own manner, but is bound to the manner of his original;
unless, indeed, Mr. Morris finds in the style of Virgil the same effect
of quaintness and antiquity which he has striven but too successfully to
give his translation, and that he is too good a scholar to permit us to
believe. Virgil’s style was that of his age, and his unfrequent
archaisms, such as _faxo_ for _fecero_, _aulai_ for _aulæ_, and the
like, can scarcely have produced on the reader of the Augustan era any
stronger impression of quaintness than such poetical forms as “spake”
and “drave” and “brake” produce on us when we meet them in English
poetry today. We must, therefore, assume that Mr. Morris aimed at some
such reproduction of the literary manner of a past age as Thackeray
gives us in _Esmond_, or Balzac, with still greater ingenuity but much
worse art, in the _Contes Drolatiques_. This, and a resolve to use only
Saxon words as far as possible—a right idea in the main, perhaps, for
translation from the Latin, certainly a most interesting and instructive
one—and (a less useful idea) to say nothing in the common way which
could at all be said out of the common, seem to have been his
controlling influences. To these he has subordinated all else but verbal
fidelity, and the result is a queer composite production of a strong
mediæval flavor—a romanticized _Æneid_ which one of the seekers after
the _Earthly Paradise_ might have told his comrades
“Under the lime-trees’ shade
By some sweet stream that knows not of the sea,”
but which, except for fidelity to its meaning, seems to us hardly nearer
being Virgil’s _Æneid_ than Pope’s _Iliad_ was to being Homer’s. Close
it certainly is; we may say marvellously close. Indeed, so far as we
have been able to collate, it surpasses in this respect all previous
rhymed versions, even Conington’s, and falls but little below any of
those in blank-verse. Not only does it render the Latin line for line—no
trifling task, even for the Alexandrine, with its unvarying fourteen
syllables against the average fifteen of the hexameter—but not seldom
word for word. Moreover, notwithstanding its exactness, it reads as
smoothly and as spiritedly as an original poem; it is everywhere set off
with those verbal graces of which Mr. Morris is a master, and the metre,
which has many merits for the purpose, is throughout handled with
admirable skill. Wherein and how, then, does it fail of giving us
Virgil?
Because, we answer, not only is Virgil’s tone—his coloring, his local
atmosphere-conspicuously absent from Mr. Morris’ translation, not only
is the tone of the latter as unlike the tone of the _Æneid_ as can well
be, but it is even carefully, studiously, nay, laboriously, removed from
it. It may be taken as a rule in translation that any word is out of
place which violently disturbs the associations that belong to the
original, the train of ideas raised by the original in the reader’s
mind. For instance, when Mr. Theodore Martin makes use of the word
“madrigal” in his translation of the _Carmen Amœbæum_ of Horace, we
somehow feel that he has struck a false note; we are sensible of a
discord. The word to the English reader brings up associations wholly
foreign to Horace and his time, turns the thoughts of the English reader
into a widely different track, and dispels the Horatian effect. Mr.
Morris not only does this in single words, but his very design is based
on doing it as often as he can; his entire vocabulary is carefully
selected with a view to doing it uniformly throughout his work. From the
stately towers of Ilium, city of the gods, the _arces Pergameæ and
incluta bello mœnia Dardanidum_; from the splendid temples of Carthage;
from the fertile plains of Hesperia, the royal city of Laurentum, and
the mighty hundred-pillared palace of Picus; from the Ausonian
battle-fields, ringing with the clatter of chariots, the clang of sword
on helm and spear on buckler, the shouts and shocks of the contending
heroes—from all the scenes and characters so familiar to us in the
Virgilian story, Mr. Morris ushers us into a strange, remote, wild
Westland, where all the famous doings we thought we knew so well are
transformed in the most grotesque fashion. It is a land of “steads” and
“firths,” of “meres” and “leas” and “fells,” he takes us into, inhabited
not by a people but by “a folk,” who are not named but “hight”; who
dwell in “garths” and “burgs” and worship “very godheads” in “fanes”;
who never by any chance go anywhere, but either “wend” or “fare” when
they are not engaged in “flitting”—a mysterious kind of locomotion which
they sometimes achieve by means of “wains”—and who hold converse among
themselves not in words but in “speech-lore,” which they at times
condescend to speak, but very much prefer, when the rhyme will give them
the ghost of a chance, “to waft” through “tooth-hedge” (_ore locutus_).
In this mysterious region are neither times nor numbers, but only
“tales” and “tides”; what would be mere tillers of the soil (_agricolæ_)
in Virgil are here become “acre-biders” or “field-folk,” who for cattle
have “merry, wholesome herds of neat” (_læta boum armenta_), and for
horses “war-threatening herd-beasts.” Here things are rarely carried,
but, like the “speech-lore” above spoken of, are “wafted” whenever
humanly possible, and are never done or made when they can by any means
be “dight.” Here we are puzzled to recognize our old friends, the Muses,
under the disguise of “Song-maids”; we fairly cut those amiable sisters,
the Furies, when they are introduced to us as the “Well-willers”; and of
the heroes who roar and ruffle so gallantly through the battlefields of
the _Æneid_ we have scarcely a glimpse, but instead a “tale” of “lads of
war,” “begirded” with “war-gear” and led by “Dukes of man,” who are for
ever falling on and smiting or being smitten by a “sort of fellows”
dight in “war-weeds,” who fare around in “war-wains” and “deal out
iron-bane” (_dant funera ferro_) with “shot-spears” or “weapon-smiths”
and “wound-smiths” instead of simple javelins and swords. Following Mr.
Morris’ lead, in short, we find ourselves in a land where Virgil would
be as much at home as he would in Asgard or Valhalla, or as the hero
Beowulf might be in Elysium. It is a pleasant land enough in its way,
and the folk are entertaining folk, but we feel that we have left the
_Æneid_ behind us.
It is far from our wish or aim to set Mr. Morris’ work in an unworthy or
ridiculous light. Our respect for him is too great, our admiration too
sincere, to treat any performance of his lightly. But some such
impression as that we have given above is the chief one left on our mind
by reading his _Æneids_. We are no longer in Italy but in Norseland, or,
if in Italy, an Italy after the Gothic irruption; Æneas and Turnus,
Pallas and Lausus, _fortisque Gygas fortisque Cloanthus_, are no longer
Trojans or Rutules, but Norse jarls and vikings. They bear their Latin
names, but that is all that is Latin about them: the hand is the hand of
Esau, but the voice is the voice of Jacob. What associations connect
themselves in the mind of the English reader with such words as “garth”
and “burg” and “firth”? Are they not as unlike as possible to any that
belong to Virgil? Do they not disturb and trouble, even totally obscure,
the effect the English reader habitually derives from Virgil—these
incongruous words dropped into the clear current of the poet’s manner—as
a stone flung into a limpid pool may trouble and obscure it? What is
there in common between Morris’ “lads of war in vain beleaguered” and
Virgil’s _nequidquam obsessa juventus_?—between Morris’ “very Duke of
man” and Virgil’s _ipsis ductoribus_? (v. 249). What impression is the
English reader apt to get from phrases like “flitting by in wain”? It is
certainly not that of a hero rushing to battle, but, if any—and we are
not sure that upon our own mind any very tangible impression is left at
all—rather of a bucolic ghost disappearing somewhere in a spectral
hay-cart. To say Carthage is to be “Lady of all lands” is surely to
produce an utterly different effect from that of _dea gentibus esse_ (i.
17); and they must have shrewder eyes than ours who can find in such
lines as
“Lo! what was there to heave aloft in fashioning of Rome,”
or
“Those fed on good hap all things may because they deem they may,”
anything more than the shell of Virgil’s
“Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem”
or,
“Hos successus alit; possunt quia posse videntur,”
where the pretence of verbal fidelity only makes the verbal affectation
more annoyingly weak. These ever-recurring eccentricities of phrase
tease the reader and spoil half his enjoyment. In a translator whose
daily speech was of “trowing” instead of “trusting,” of “tale” for
number or “sort” for company, of “wending” and “wafting,” and “folk” in
the singular, and who used “very” rather profusely, and on slight
provocation, as an adjective, and “feared” and “learned” as transitive
verbs, and agreed with some modern great men in thinking grammar
generally a bore, such lines as
“O Palinure, that _trowed_ the shies and soft seas overmuch”;
“These tidings hard for us to _trow_ unto our ears do win”;
“In all thou needest toil herein, from me the deed should _wend_”;
“A hundred more, and youths withal of age and _tale_ the same”;
“There with his hand he maketh sign and mighty speech he _wafts_”;
“From the open gates another _sort_ is come”;
“And her much _folk_ of Latin land were fain enow to wed”;
“Hard strive the _folk_ in smiting sea, and oar-blades brush the
main”;
“The straits besprent with many a _folk_”;
“To Helenus his _very_ thrall me very _thrall_ gave o’er”;
“So with their weapons every show of _very_ fight they stir”;
“But _learn_ me now who fain the sooth would wot”;
“About me senseless, _throughly feared_ with marvels grim and
great”;
“And many a saying furthermore of God-loved seers of old
_Fears_ her with dreadful memories”;
“Nor was he _worser_ than himself in such a pinch bestead”
—such lines in a translator to whom this dialect was still a living
language would not seem unnatural. They would be simply the expression
of the effect made by Virgil on the mind of that age, and so far, since
every age has its own idiom, they would not necessarily be un-Virgilian
at all. Even such extraordinary phrases as
“An ash ...
Round which, sore smitten by the steel, the _acre biders_ throng,
And strive in speeding of the axe,”
for
“Ornum
Cum ferro accisam crebrisque bipennibus instant
Eruere agricolæ certatim”;
or
“When Jove, a-looking down
From highest lift on sail-skimmed sea, and lands that round it lie,
And shores and many folk about in topmost burg of sky,
Stood still,”
for
“Cum Jupiter, æthere summo
Despiciens mare velivolum terrasque jacentes
Litoraque et latos populos, sic vertice cœli
Constitit”;
or
“An ancient mighty rock, indeed, which lay upon the lea,
Set for a landmark, _judge and end of acre-strife to be_,”
for
“Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat,
Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis”;
or,
“No footstrife but the armed hand must doom betwixt us twain,”
for
“Non cursu, certandum sævis est comminus armis”
—such phrases as these, if to any translator at any time they could have
seemed a natural way of saying things, would not then, in such a
translator’s version, have struck us with more than the passing and not
unpleasant sense of quaintness which is part of the charm we find in the
diction of a past age when used by its lawful owners. But when a poet of
the nineteenth century sacrilegiously invades the tomb and seizes upon
this castoff and moth-eaten verbal bravery of buried ages to bedeck
himself withal, it is much as if he should come to make his bow in a
modern drawing-room arrayed in the conventional dress-coat, Elizabethan
ruff and trunks, Wellington boots, and a Vandyke hat. The novelty might
please for a moment, but the incongruity must offend in the end. In the
very time which Mr. Morris so much admires they knew this to be false
art. “That same framing of his stile to an old rusticke language,” says
Sir Philip Sidney in his _Apologie for Poesie_, speaking of _The
Shepherd’s Calendar_, “I dare not alowe, since neither Theocritus in
Greeke, Virgile in Latin, nor Sannazar in Italian did affect it.”
Still worse is it when our amateur of second-hand finery, the
_bric-à-brac_ of language, selects such a poet as Virgil—Virgil, whose
name is a synonym for supreme, for perfect elegance, whose “taste was
his genius”—as a lay figure to drape with these shreds and tatters of an
obsolete, fantastic verbiage, “mouldy-dull as Eld herself”—to quote and
illustrate at once from Mr. Morris[5]—and smelling of the grave. This
persistence in going out of the way to hunt for archaisms at once—to
repeat a word which best hits our own feeling—teases the reader and
distracts him. We seem to feel Mr. Morris amiably tugging our
coat-sleeve at every turn to point out this or that fresh eccentricity
of language. We fancy we see him chuckling and rubbing his hands
gleefully here and there over the discovery of some more than usually
exasperating way of violating the usages of modern speech. So vexed and
harassed, it is impossible to get much taste of the _Æneid_; through
this word-jugglery we catch such glimpses of it as of the painted scene
a conjurer has set behind him to throw his tricks into relief Of a piece
with this laborious renaissance of a forgotten tongue are the studied
mispronunciations, such as Ænĕas for Ænēas and Erāto for Erăto:
“So did the Father Ænĕas, with all at stretch to hear”;
“To aid, Erāto, while I tell what kings, what deedful tide”;
the false rhymes, such as “wrath” and “forth,” “poured” and “abroad,”
“abroad” and “reward,” which might be forgiven to the stress of so
long and difficult a task had we not such reason for suspecting them
to be intentional; the occasional use of phrases familiar, even low,
and totally at variance with Virgil’s lofty and cultivated style, such
as “gobbets of the men” for _frusta_, iii. 632; “Phrygian fellows”
(_Phrygii comites_); “those Teucrian fellows”; “the other lads” for
_juventus_; “but as they gave and took in talk” (_hac vice sermonum_);
“he spake and footed it afore” (_dixit et ante tulit gressum_);
“unlearned Æneas fell aquake” (_Horruit ... inscius Æneas_)—surely a
most undignified proceeding for a hero; “so east and west he called to
him, and _spake such words to tell_” (_dehinc talia fatur_)—the list
is long, scarce a page but would swell it; or the compound epithets
which Mr. Morris—herein, no doubt, taking his cue from Chapman, but
not so happily or with such good reason—has coined profusely. “In the
Augustan poets,” says Prof. Conington, “compound epithets are chiefly
conspicuous by their absence, and a translator of an Augustan poet
ought not to suffer them to be too prominent a feature of his style.”
This assertion must be qualified with regard to Virgil, who, in
imitation of his model, Homer, and in obedience, perhaps, to a
supposed law of epic composition, has too many compounds to permit it
to pass unchallenged—such, for instance, as _armisonus_ (_Palladis
armisonæ_—“Pallas of the weapon-din”), _velivolus_ (“sail-skimmed”),
_legifer_ (_legiferæ Cereri_—“Ceres wise of law”), _letifer_
(“deadly”), _cælicolus_ (“heaven-abider”), _laniger_ (“woolly”),
_noctivagus_ (“nightly-straying”), and the like. Yet, not content to
render these by English compounds even where it is not always
expedient—since the compound form in our own language will often, from
its strangeness in a familiar tongue, seem strained and awkward, where
in the less familiar Latin it seems only natural and elegant[6]—Mr.
Morris has introduced many other compounds of his own invention for
which there is no authority in Virgil at all, which in many instances
are discordant with his style and not seldom downright grotesque—such
combinations as “hot-heart” for _ardens_, or “cold-hand in the war”
(_frigidus bello_) or even “fate-wise,” “weapon-won,” “war-lord,”
“battle-lord,” “air-high,” “star-smiting,” “outland-wrought,”
“heaven-abider” (_cœlicolus_), “like-aged,” “goddess-led,” etc., which
meet us at every turn. And what _are_ we to say of such inventions as
“murder-wolf,” “death-stealth” (“on death-stealth onward the Trojan
went”—_hic furio fervidus instat_), “dreaming-tide” for _somnus_,
“war-Turnus,” “weapon-great,” “helpless-fain” for _nequidquam avidus_,
“hero-gathered stone” (_lapis ipsi viri_), “anger-seas,”
“wounding-craft,” “bit-befoaming,” “speech-masters,” or those others,
if possible still more extraordinary, already mentioned,
“weapon-smith,” “wound-smith,” “tooth-hedge”? These, and scores of
other such we have marked for notice, are surely as little like Virgil
as they are like any English that is spoken to-day; and they are
scarcely less potent than Mr. Morris’ archaisms in disturbing and
altering the Virgilian tone. Of a like effect are the quaint and
unconsequential translations now and then of Latin names—as of _Musæ_
into “Song-maids,” _Eumenides_ into “Well-willers,” _Avernus_ into
“Fowlless,” and soon—whereby for a perfectly familiar and intelligible
term of the Latin is substituted in the English a grotesque and
puzzling word, and which again stops the current of the story until
the reader can readjust his mind to the novel ideas it awakes. The
most unclassical of readers has his notions formed of the Muses and
the Furies, at least, if not of the Eumenides; but of these
Song-maids—who might as well be milk-maids—and of these
Well-willers—who rather suggest well-diggers—he must form a new notion
as he reads. And one might add, at the risk of seeming to split hairs,
that in thus translating the word _Eumenides_ we lose much of the
effect of that euphemism with which the Greeks, like all strongly
imaginative peoples, sought to keep disagreeable subjects at arm’s
length—the form τι παθεῖν, as a synonym for dying, is exactly
paralleled by the Irish phrase “suffered,” applied to an executed
rebel—or perhaps to ward off the wrath of these ticklish neighbors, as
Celtic races, again, are in the habit of calling fairies “the good
people.” A more substantial objection is that Mr. Morris seems
capricious in the matter, for we see no particular reason for his
translating one such name and others not at all—-why he should not
give us Quail-land for Ortygia, or Chalk Island for Crete, as well as
Westland for Hesperia, or Fowlless for Avernus.
It is a result of these affectations, or—for we are loath to press the
charge of affectation against a poet whose own writing is so genuine and
sincere—of these peculiarities of style, which have on the reader all
the seeming and effect of affectation, that the pathos of Virgil, the
one quality to which Mr. Morris should have been best fitted to do
justice, he has greatly impaired. Affectation is fatal to pathos; one
cannot have much feeling for the woes which are carefully set forth in
verbal mosaic. Take but a single example—a passage in Virgil already
referred to—which sets forth admirably that faculty the Latin poet has
to so curious a degree of infusing sadness into mere words, but in which
Mr. Morris is little behind him. It is the death of Æolus, which Mr.
Morris renders thus:
“Thee also, warring Æolus, did that Laurentine field
See fallen and cumbering the earth with body laid alow;
Thou diest, whom the Argive hosts might never overthrow,
Nor that Achilles’ hand that wrought the Priam’s realm its wrack.
Here was thy meted mortal doom: high house ‘neath Ida’s back—
High house within Lyrnessus’ garth, grave in Laurentine lea.”
It only needs to compare this with the original to see how far it misses
the pathos of the Latin; it needs only to compare it with Mr. Morris
himself, where he has forgotten or failed to be sufficiently archaic, to
see the reason of the miss. Take, again, the passage from the shipwreck
in the second book already referred to:
“Now therewithal Æneas’ limbs grew weak with chilly dread;
He groaned, and, lifting both his palms aloft to heaven, he said:
O thrice and four times happy ye that had the fate to fall
Before your fathers’ faces there by Troy’s beloved wall!
Tydidĕs, thou of Danaan folk, the mightiest under shield,
Why might I never lay me down upon the Ilian field?
Why was my soul forbid release at thy most mighty hand,
Where eager Hector stooped and lay before Achilles’ wand,
Where huge Sarpedon fell asleep, where Simois rolls along
The shields of men and helms of men and bodies of the strong?”
The word “wand” for _telo_ has an odd look, but that may be forgiven to
the rhyme; and the rest is simple, emotional, and true. In like happy
moments of oblivion we catch an echo of _Jason_, as in the opening of
book vii.:
“The faint winds breathe about the night, the moon shines clear and
kind;
Beneath the quivering, shining road the wide seas gleaming lie....
The fowl that love the river-bank and haunt the river-bed
Sweetened the air with plenteous song and through the thicket fled.”
The rising of the Rutules in vii. 623 is an animated picture unmarred by
too many of the mannerisms we have spoken of:
“... All Ausonia yet unstirred brake suddenly ablaze;
And some will go afoot to field, and some will wend their ways
Aloft on horses dusty-fierce; all seek their battle-gear.
Some polish bright the buckler’s face and rub the pike-point clear
With fat of sheep; and many an axe upon the wheel is worn.
They joy to rear the banners up and hearken to the horn.
And now five mighty cities forge the point and edge anew
On new-raised anvils: Tibur proud, Atina stanch to do,
Ardea and Crustumerium’s folk, Antennæ castle-crowned.
They hollow helming for the head; they bend the withe around
For buckler-boss; or other some beat breastplates of the brass,
Or from the toughened silver bring the shining greaves to pass.
Now fails all prize of share and work, all yearning for the plough;
The swords their fathers bore afield anew they smithy now.
Now is the gathering trumpet blown; the battle-token speeds,
And this man catches helm from wall; this thrusteth foaming steeds
To collar; this his shield does on, and mail-coat threesome laid
Of golden link, and girdeth him with ancient trusty blade.”
Passages like this—and, indeed, there are many of them—only deepen our
regret that Mr. Morris should let a whim of doubtful taste deprive us of
what might have been otherwise the best rendering of the _Æneid_ yet.
One other passage we will give, and then cease to tax longer the
patience of the reader. It shall be the gallant picture of Turnus
sallying forth to battle (xi. 486), which, as it is taken from the like
description of Paris, near the end of the sixth _Iliad_, will permit us
to compare Morris’ manner with Chapman’s:
“Now eager Turnus for the war his body did begird:
The ruddy gleaming coat of mail upon his breast he did,
And roughened him with brazen scales; with gold his legs he hid;
With brow yet bare, unto his side he girt the sword of fight,
And, all a glittering, golden man, ran down the castle’s height.[7]
High leaps his heart, his hope runs forth the foeman’s force to
face;
As steed, when broken are the bonds, fleeth the stabling place,
Set free at last, and, having won the unfenced open mead.
Now runneth to the grassy ground wherein the mare-kind feed;
Or, wont to water, speedeth him in well-known stream to wash,
And, wantoning, with uptost head about the world doth dash,
While wave his mane-locks o’er his neck, and o’er his shoulders
play.”
Compare Chapman, _Iliad_ vi. 503 (Οὐδέ Πάρις δήθυνεν ἐν ὑψηλοῖοι
δόμοιοιν):
“And now was Paris come
From his high towers, who made no stay when once he had put on
His richest armor, but flew forth; the flints he trod upon
Sparkled with lustre of his arms; his long-ebb’d spirits now flow’d
The higher for their lower ebb. And as a fair steed, proud,
With full-giv’n mangers, long tied up, and now his head-stall broke,
He breaks from stable, runs the field, and with an ample stroke
Measures the centre; neighs and lifts aloft his wanton head,
About his shoulders shakes his crest, and where he hath been fed,
Or in some calm flood wash’d, or stung with his high plight, he
flies
Amongst his females; strength put forth his beauty, beautifies,
And like life’s mirror bears his gait: so Paris from the tower
Of lofty Pergamos came forth.”
Is not the modern older in style than the ancient?
We lay aside Mr. Morris’ book with a mingling of admiration and regret.
The critical and poetical ability shown in it is of the first order—no
man could have spoiled Virgil so thoroughly as we think Mr. Morris has
in places who did not know him _au bout des ongles_, just as a clever
parody shows true appreciation of an author—and its ingenuity is
amazing. But one feels it to be a wasted ingenuity, and the predominant
sentiment with which we leave the book is one of annoyance that a man
should so wilfully do ill what his very errors prove him capable of
doing so well. Yet for all that the book wins upon us as most of Mr.
Morris’ work has a way of doing; and if one could but get reconciled to
a Norseland Æneis, we should no doubt find it pleasant enough.
Perhaps we cannot better dismiss our subject than by saying, in the
old-time fashion of comparison, that of these three translations
Conington’s will probably be read for the story by those who know Virgil
not at all; Mr. Cranch’s for its literalness by those who half know
Virgil and are willing to know him better; and Mr. Morris’ for its very
ingenuity of perversion by those who know Virgil so well that to see him
in any new light, even a false light, only adds a fillip to their love
for him.
Footnote 2:
Cf. what Joubert says of Racine: that “his genius, too, lay in his
taste,” and that he is “the Virgil of the ignorant.”
Footnote 3:
“And stand and listen with arrected ears”—_atque arrectis auribus
adsto_. We may add that to our mind Simmons’ version of this simile,
which we regret not to have space to quote, is one of the very best.
Footnote 4:
Dr. Johnson never learned it. “His heroic lines,” he said of Cowley,
“are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are often sweet and
sonorous.”
Footnote 5:
“Eld the mouldy-dull, and empty of all sooth,” is Mr. Morris’
equivalent for “_verique effeta senectus_,” _Æn._ vii. 439.
Footnote 6:
Mr. Matthew Arnold’s remark to a like effect in his admirable essay on
translating Homer was curiously anticipated by Tickell in the preface
to his (or Addison’s) version of the first book of the _Iliad_, where
he says the double epithets of the _Iliad_, “though elegant and
sonorous in the Greek, become either unintelligible, unmusical, or
burlesque in English.” He adds: “I cannot but observe that Virgil,
that sunge in a language much more capable of composition than ours,
hath often conformed to this rule.”
Footnote 7:
Mr. Morris here unaccountably sacrifices an opportunity. _Decurrens
aureus arce_ the Latin is, and yet he gives us “castle” instead of
“burg,” which, in his own translating dialect, is the true meaning of
_arx_. To such shifts will rhyme reduce the ablest translators!
ST. CUTHBERT.
Behold the shepherd lad of Lammermuir
Tending his small flock on the uplands bleak.
Alone he seems, yet to his young heart speak
Voices that none may hear except the pure.
His dreaming eyes—where duller souls, secure
Of earth alone, see naught—are quick to seek
Angels howe’er disguised; and week by week
The higher call within grows clear and sure.
Now see him, humbly clad, with staff in hand,
Thread the wild vales of Tweed and Teviot,
To bear God’s Word through a benighted land,
And bless with prayer each peasant’s lonely cot.
Brave soul wert thou, though few thy worth may sing,
Thou chosen saint of England’s noblest king.
PILATE’S STORY.
Caligula was reigning, C. Marcius was prætor at Vienne, in Dauphiny,
when a litter, escorted by a number of cavaliers, one evening entered
the triumphal gate of this metropolis of Gaul. Many gathered together at
the unusual display. On the door of the modest little house before which
they stopped, and which stood close by the Temple of Mars, was the name
of F. Albinus in bright red letters. An old man, tall in stature, but
now bent with age and fatigue, alighted from the litter, and, preceded
by two of his attendant Hebrew slaves, entered the reception-room, where
he was greeted by his friend, the master of the house.
After having bathed and received the usual attentions at the hands of
the slaves, he proceeded with his host to the supper-room to enjoy the
evening meal. The lamps were lighted, and Albinus was alone with the new
guest, with whom he entered into conversation as soon as the dish of
fresh eggs was placed before them.
“Many years have passed since we separated,” said Albinus; “let us empty
a cup of Rhone wine to your return.”
“Yes, many years!” sighed the old man; “and cursed be the day whereon I
succeeded Valerius Gratus in the government of Judea! My name is
unlucky; a fatality is attached to all who bear it. One of my ancestors
left the stamp of infamy on the name of Roman when he passed under the
yoke in the Caudine Forks, after fighting against the Samnites; another
perished in Parthia, fighting against Phraates; and I—I—”
The wine remained untasted, while his unbidden tears fell into the cup.
“Well! you—what have you done? Some injustice of Caligula exiles you to
Vienne; and for what crime? I read your affair in the _tabularium_. You
were denounced to the emperor by your enemy, Vitellius, the prefect of
Syria; you punished a few Hebrew rebels who, after assassinating some
noble Samaritans, entrenched themselves on Mount Garizim. You were
accused of doing this out of hatred to the Jews.”
“No, no, Albinus; by all the gods! it is not the injustice of Cæsar
which afflicts me.”
“What exactions did you impose?”
“None.”
“Did you carry off any Jewish women?”
“Never!”
“Did you gibbet any Roman citizens, as Verres did in Sicily?”
Pilate did not reply.
“I always took you to be good and sensible,” continued Albinus; “hence I
did not hesitate to proclaim aloud in the city that your spoliation and
exile were an outrage. It was never referred to the senate. The whole
affair was evidently owing to some caprice of Vitellius.”
“Albinus, let us talk of other things. I am tired, having just arrived
from Rome. Serious things for to-morrow, says the sage. This Rhone wine
is exquisite.”
“Beware of it, Pontius; it disturbs the brain.”
“So much the better. But I am not afraid of it. I am accustomed to the
wine of Engaddi; that is a potent Bacchus.”
“As you please. But tell me, you who come from Rome, what stirs men’s
minds there? Have you aught to interest my ear?”
“The auguries are bad. I did not recognize Rome; she no longer goes
forward, but steadily sinks!”
“What say you?”
“I say what is. From here you cannot detect the mysterious subterranean
noise which rumbles as with the approach of that invisible, superior
power now irresistibly pushing the empire to its ruin. Our gods are
vanquished; they abandon us. Listen, Albinus; let me this evening throw
a smile to your _Penates_, and no more words of what is sorrowful. Night
is the mother of sadness, but the _triclinium_ counsels gayety. Tell the
child to turn me a cup of wine of Cyprus, and ask the slave to bring my
sandals and prepare my bed. I love not the gloom of night; let us haste
to sleep, that the day may sooner come.”
Albinus bowed, and the desires of Pilate were complied with. As the
slave approached him with a silver hand-basin for washing his hands,
Pilate’s face turned pale as with fright, while the light of his eyes
was terrible to behold.
The next day was the eve of the kalends of August. Pilate took a walk
with Albinus in the Roman city of Vienne, and listened abstractedly to
the conversation of his friend, who pointed out the various localities
as they passed along, and the many splendid monuments rising on every
side.
“There is left no trace of the domination of the Allobroges here,” said
Albinus. “Since the death of Julius Cæsar they have ceased to disturb
the city. Life is quiet and peaceable at Vienne, and you can spend here
the years which the gods still grant you in secure contentment.
“Here before us is the palace of the emperors; it is not so grand, so
sumptuous as that on Mount Palatine, but it is good enough for those who
never visit it. Look to the left, and see the temple of Augustus and
Livia; unless your eyes are weakened by the sun of Judea, you can read,
from here, the inscription: _Divo Augusto et Liviæ_. Beyond is that
dedicated to the Hundred Gods. If we go down to the river we can get a
little fresh air on the bridge. Vienne, as you may have already
remarked, is a very pleasant place of residence; the climate is quite
mild, being so thoroughly sheltered by the surrounding mountains from
the violence of the winds. We are only fifteen leagues from Lyons; and
by the Rhone our away to both Marseilles and Arles is shortened. These
three important cities are under the government of Vienne, as Tiberius
has decreed; so thank fate, which has sent you to so pleasant a place of
exile.”
Albinus remarked a look of trouble in the face of the old man, whose
eyes were fixed on a point of dust in the direction of the river-bank,
and from which were seen gradually to emerge horsemen with armor
glistening in the sun.
“It is the prætor,” said Albinus; “he has been visiting the works at the
amphitheatre. That is his daily ride.”
“Let us avoid the prætor,” said Pilate; “may he never know my face!”
As they reached the “Quirinal” street on the way back, they were met and
separated by a crowd of idlers who, attracted by the trumpets, had
gathered from every side to witness the passage of the prætorian escort.
Pilate found himself isolated, and soon became an object of interest, as
is the case with one who seeks alone to stem a popular current. His
dress was enough to attract insulting remarks. For from his long sojourn
in Judea Pilate had insensibly adopted Hebrew fashions in dress,
gesture, and deportment. His very figure, black hair, and dark
complexion (he was of Iberian origin) betrayed more the Hebrew than the
Roman.
“Let the Jew pass; he is going to the synagogue,” said one at his side.
“Mothers! watch your little ones,” said another; “the wolf is out of the
Quirinal.”
“We had better take him and crucify him,” muttered a third.
But nothing further was done to molest him, and Pilate passed safely
through the crowd, with head sunk upon his breast and suppliant bearing,
as far as the head of the street, where a different scene awaited him.
Seeing a house which closely resembled that of Albinus (for a number of
them were similar in construction), and finding the door standing open,
he hastily entered, glad to find its shelter at last, and closed the
door behind him.
A fearful cry chilled the blood in his very veins; he heard his own name
uttered, and thrust his fingers in his ears at the ominous sound.
The master and his family were at their daily labor, as basket-makers,
beneath the interior peristyle called the _impluvium_. When he entered
the master recognized Pilate, for he knew the more than famous name of
the stranger whose exile to Vienne had been made public. “Pilate!
Pilate!” he cried; and the women and children dropped their wicker-work
as they, too, repeated this formidable name, stained with the blood of
God himself. The family were Christians.
Pilate asked an asylum, but they did not understand him, as he spoke a
sort of Hebrew-Latin and they were Gallic Allobroges. Still, as they
caught the name of Albinus twice or thrice repeated, the father made
signs to the rest of the family to be seated, and, as if recalling some
divine precept of charity learned in the secret assembly of the
faithful, he approached Pilate and quietly showed him the house of his
neighbor Albinus. Pilate crossed the street and entered his friend’s
house.
Albinus was not over-displeased when the rude crowd separated him from a
companion whose appearance bade fair to compromise him before the
public. Like a good courtier he prudently stayed to see the prætor,
shouted _Vivat imperator!_ and praised the rare magnificence of the
escort and the beauty of the horses; after which he quietly returned to
his house, where he found his friend in an agony of despair.
“I am recognized,” cried Pilate as Albinus entered; “the little children
pointed their fingers at me on the street. O Albinus! remember that our
lips as very children uttered words of friendship; remember that we
played together on the banks of the Tiber; that we have sat at the same
banquets and raised our cups in the same libations. Remember the past
and protect me beneath the inviolable shelter of thy roof. I seek a
refuge beneath the sacred wings of thy hospitality.”
Albinus was too moved for utterance, and silently pressed the hands of
Pilate.
“There are Christians, then, at Vienne also?” asked Pilate, as he passed
his hand over his aching brow.
“Oh! yes, as there are everywhere,” replied Albinus, “except in our
temples. You are afraid of those people, then?”
“Ah! yes, yes. I fear them. I fear everybody. Jews, Romans, Pagans—all
are odious, terrible to me! The Romans see in me a criminal fallen into
disgrace before Cæsar; the Jews, a severe proconsul who persecuted them;
and the Christians, the executioner of their God!”
“Their _God_! their _God_! The impious wretches!”
“Albinus, have a care what you say!”
“They adore as a God that Jesus of Nazareth who was born in a stable and
put to death on a cross?”
“They would not adore him if he had dressed in garments of velvet and
lived in princely halls.... Albinus, I am about to submit my life to
your judgment; you will see whether I am worthy of the hospitality which
you offer me.”
Changing his seat for one more comfortable, Pilate continued:
“Albinus, order your doors to be closed, and let a slave watch at the
porch, as when a young virgin first enters the doors of her spouse. The
ear of Cæsar is everywhere on the alert. And now listen. All my
misfortunes spring from the death of this man, this Nazarene. Tiberius
cursed me because of him; Caligula now exiles me because of him; for
this boldness of the Christian sect, which to-day threatens the empire,
began at the foot of Calvary. If Jesus had not been put to death, his
followers would never have crossed the Jordan nor the sea of Cæsarea. It
is the death of that man which has made so many martyrs. But could I
prevent that death?
“When I was about to set out as successor to Valerius Gratus, Sejanus
summoned me to the Palatine and gave me his instructions. ‘You are
intimate,’ he said, ‘with the Roman policy; hence a few words will do.
Judea is a beautiful country; after completing its conquest we must
strengthen its possession by a paternal government. Let all your care be
to draw blessings down upon the Roman name. We have left the Jews a king
of their own race, their temple, their laws, their religion. They are a
brave and haughty race, with heroic deeds inscribed in their history,
and which they well remember. Govern them wisely, that they may regard
you more as a stranger visiting than as a master holding the reins.’
“I set out with my wife and my servants. When near the quarter of the
_Tres tabernæ_ I met Tiberius, then returning from Pannonia. Recognizing
the imperial escort, I immediately alighted to salute Cæsar. He had
received at Brundisium my nomination, and confirmed it, and now,
offering me his hand most graciously, he said:
“‘Pontius, you have a fine government; let your hand be firm and your
speech conciliatory. Act in public matters according to your own good
sense, and never forget the eternal maxim of the Romans:
‘Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.[8]
Go and be happy.’
“The auguries were favorable, you see.
“I reached Jerusalem, took solemn possession of the government, and gave
orders for a splendid feast, to which I invited the tetrarch of Judea,
the high-priest, and the other Hebrew dignitaries and princes of the
people. At the appointed time not a guest appeared! This was a mortal
affront. Some days later the tetrarch deigned to honor me with a visit,
but he was cold and full of dissimulation. He pretended that their
religion did not permit them to sit at our table nor offer libations
with Gentiles. I thought best to accept this excuse graciously; but from
that day the conquered were in declared hostility with the conquerors.
“Jerusalem was, at that time, the most difficult subject-city in the
world to govern; the people were so turbulent that from day to day I was
always expecting a sedition. To suppress this I had only a centurion and
a handful of soldiers, so I wrote to the prefect of Syria to send me a
reinforcement of troops, but he answered that he had hardly enough for
himself. Ah! what a misfortune that the empire is so large; we have more
conquests than soldiers.
“Among the thousand rumors which circulated about me there was one that
attracted my special notice. Public rumor and my secret agents alike
reported that a young man had appeared in Galilee with a remarkable
sweetness of speech and a noble austerity of manner, and that he went
about the city and the borders of the sea, preaching a new law in the
name of the God who had sent him. I at first thought that this man
intended to arouse the people against us, and that his words were
preparatory to a revolt. But my fears were soon dissipated; Jesus the
Nazarene spoke as a friend rather of the Romans than of the Jews.
Passing one day, in my litter, near the pool of Siloe, I saw a large
gathering of people, and remarked in the midst a young man standing with
his back to a tree and quietly addressing the crowd. I was told that it
was Jesus, but I could have guessed it at once, so different was he in
appearance from those who listened. He seemed about thirty years of age,
and the wonderful reddish-blond tint of his hair and beard gave a
luminous appearance to his noble countenance. Never have I seen so mild
a glance, so calm a face; he was a striking contrast to the dark skins
and black beards of his auditors. From fear of disturbing the liberty of
his speech by my presence I passed on, leaving my secretary to mingle
with the crowd and hear his words. This man’s name was Manlius; he was
grandson of that chief among the conspirators who awaited Catiline in
Etruria, and, having dwelt many years in Judea, understood perfectly the
Hebrew tongue. He was, moreover, sincerely devoted to my interests, and
I could always trust him. On my return home I found Manlius awaiting me
with a detailed account of the speech which Jesus had pronounced. Never
in the Forum, never in the books of sages, have I met anything
comparable to the maxims which had that day reached the ears of Manlius.
One of those rebellious Jews such as abound at Jerusalem having asked if
tribute were to be paid to Cæsar, Jesus answered him: ‘Render under
Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, and unto God what is God’s.’
“Thence the great liberty which I gave to the Nazarene; it was doubtless
in my power to arrest him at any time, put him on a galley, and send him
to Pontus, but I should have felt myself acting against justice and good
Roman sense. The man was neither seditious nor rebellious. I gave him,
perhaps without his knowledge, the benefit of my protection; he was free
to act, to speak to the people, to fill a whole square with his
audience, to create a legion of disciples to follow him from city to
desert, or lake to mountain, and never did an order from me interpose to
trouble either orator or auditory. If some day—may the gods forefend!—if
some day the religion of our fathers fall before the religion of Jesus,
Rome will pay a noble tribute to her own generous toleration, and I,
unhappy I! will be called the instrument of what the Christians call
Providence—what we call fate.
“But this great liberty which Jesus enjoyed from my protection
displeased the Jews—not the common people, but the rich and powerful.
True, they were the very ones whom Jesus did not spare in his discourse,
and that was for me an additional political reason for allowing him free
speech. He told them—that is, the Scribes and Pharisees—that they were a
race of vipers and no better than whited sepulchres. And another time he
sharply criticised the ostentatious charity of the rich man, saying that
the mite of a poor widow woman was far more precious to God. New
complaints against the insolence of his speech came to me nearly every
day. Deputations came with their griefs before my tribunal. I was told
that he would be assaulted; that it would not be the first time that
Jerusalem had stoned those who called themselves prophets; and that if
the prætor refused them justice they would appeal to the emperor.
“So I was beforehand with them. I at once wrote letters to Cæsar, and
the galley _Ptolemais_ carried them to Rome. My conduct was approved by
the senate, but I was refused the reinforcement of troops which I asked,
or at least I was given to hope that the garrison of Jerusalem should be
strengthened after the war with Parthia was terminated. That was an
interminable delay, for our wars with Parthia never end.
“Being too weak to repress a sedition, I determined to make a move which
would pacify the city, without obliging me to make any humiliating
concessions; so I at once sent for Jesus of Nazareth.
“He received my messenger with due respect, and came straightway to the
prætorium.
“O Albinus! now that age has weakened every part of my bodily frame, and
that my muscles in vain ask a little vigor from my thin and cold blood,
I am not astonished if Pilate occasionally trembles; but I was younger
then, and my Spanish blood, mingled with the Roman which coursed through
my veins, was proof against any ordinary emotion of fear. When I saw the
Nazarene enter my _basilica_, where I was walking, it seemed as if a
hand of iron held me to the marble of the pavement. I thought I heard
the very bucklers of gilt-bronze, dedicated to Cæsar, sigh as they hung
against the columns. The Nazarene was as calm as innocence itself; he
stood before me, with a single gesture, as if to say: Behold me. For
some time I remained contemplating, with mingled terror and admiration,
this extraordinary man, type of a physical perfection unknown to any of
the innumerable sculptors who have given face and form to so many gods
and heroes. ‘Jesus,’ said I at last, when my emotion had subsided—‘Jesus
of Nazareth, for nearly three years I have allowed you freely to speak
in public and everywhere, nor do I now regret it. Your words have ever
been those of a true sage. I know not whether you have ever read
Socrates or Plato, but there is in your language a majestic simplicity
which raises you far above even those great philosophers. The emperor
has been informed of it, and I, his humble representative at Jerusalem,
count myself happy to have allowed you the toleration of which you are
worthy. I must not, however, disguise from you that your words have
provoked against you powerful and terrible enemies; be not astonished
that you have thus become an object of hatred, for so was Socrates to
those who encompassed his death. Your enemies are doubly irritated,
against you and against me: against you, because of your sharp
criticisms; against me, because of the liberty which I have allowed you.
I am even accused of complicity with you to destroy what little civil
power has been left to the Hebrews by Rome. I give you no commands, but
I charge you seriously to spare the pride of your enemies, that they may
not stir up against you a stupid populace, and that I may not be obliged
to detach from these trophies the axe and the fasces, which should serve
here only as an ornament and never as an occasion of fear.’
“The Nazarene answered me:
“‘Prince of the earth, thy words spring from a false wisdom. Tell the
torrent to stop midway on the mountain-side, lest it uproot the trees of
the valley. The torrent will tell thee it obeys the voice of God. He
alone knows whither goeth the water of the impetuous stream. Amen, amen
I say unto thee, before the roses of Sharon bud the blood of the just
shall be shed.’
“‘I do not wish your blood to be shed,’ I exclaimed hastily. ‘You are
more precious in my eyes, because of your wisdom, than all those
turbulent and haughty Pharisees, who abuse our Roman patience, conspire
against Cæsar, and mistake our forbearance for fear. The dolts!—not to
know that the wolf of the Tiber sometimes conceals himself under an
innocent fleece! But I will defend you against them; my prætorium is
open to you as a place of refuge. You will find it an inviolable
asylum.’
“He shook his head quietly with an air of godlike grace, and replied:
“‘When the day comes, there will be no shelter on earth, nor in the
depths, for the Son of Man. The only asylum of the just is above. What
is written in the books of the prophets must be accomplished.’
“‘Young man,’ said I, ‘I have just made you a request. I now give you a
command. The preservation of order in the province confided to my charge
requires it. I demand that the tone of your speech become more moderate.
Beware of opposing my will! You know my intentions; go and be happy.’
“With these words my voice lost its severity and became mild again, for
it seemed that a harsh word could not be uttered before this
extraordinary being, who calmed the storms of the lake with a motion of
his head, as his own disciples testified.
“‘Prince of the earth,’ said he, ‘I do not bring war to the nations, but
charity and love. I was born the very day when Cæsar Augustus proclaimed
peace to the Roman world. Persecution cannot come from me; I expect it
from others, and do not flee before it. I go before it, in obedience to
the will of my Father, who has appointed my way. Keep thy foolish
prudence. It is not in thy power to stop the victim at the foot of the
altar of expiation.’
“Saying these words, he disappeared like a luminous shadow behind the
curtain.
“What could I do further? Fate could not be averted. The tetrarch who
then reigned in Judea, and who has since died, devoured by worms, was a
foolish and a wicked man. The chiefs of the law had chosen this man to
be the tool of their hate and vengeance. To him the whole cohort
addressed themselves in their thirst for vengeance against the Nazarene.
“Had Herod consulted only his passion, he would have put Jesus to death
at once; but although he regarded his impotent royalty as a matter of
importance, still he shrank from an act which might injure him with
Cæsar.
“Some days later I saw him coming to the prætorium. He began a
conversation with me on indifferent subjects, in order to conceal the
true object of his visit; but, as he rose from his seat to go, he asked,
with an air of indifference, what I thought of the Nazarene.
“I replied that Jesus seemed to me one of those grave philosophers such
as arise among the nations from time to time; that his language was by
no means dangerous; and that it was the intention of Rome to leave to
this sage perfect liberty of speech and action.
“Herod smiled at me with malignity, and with an ironical gesture
departed.
“The great feast of the Jews was near at hand, and their leaders
determined to take advantage of the popular exaltation which is always
manifested at the Paschal season. The city was crowded with a turbulent
rabble, who shouted for the death of the Nazarene. My emissaries
reported that the treasure of the Temple had been used to stir the
popular feeling. The danger was imminent, and my very power was insulted
in the person of my centurion, whom they hustled about and spat upon.
“I wrote to the prefect of Syria, then at Ptolemais, and asked for one
hundred horse and as many foot-soldiers, but he reiterated his former
refusal. I was alone, in a mutinous city, with a few veterans, too weak
to suppress the disorder, and with no choice but to tolerate it.
“They had already seized Jesus, and the triumphant people, knowing that
they had nothing to fear from me, and hoping, on the word of their
leaders, that I would tacitly acquiesce in their designs, rushed after
him through the streets, shouting: ‘Crucify him! crucify him!’
“Three powerful sects had coalesced in this plot against Jesus: first
the Herodians and the Sadducees, who had a double motive—hatred against
him and impatience at the Roman yoke. They had never forgiven me for
entering the holy city with the banners of the empire; and although I
made them an unwise concession in this matter, the sacrilege still
remained in their eyes. Yet another grief stood against me, because I
had wished a contribution from the treasures of the Temple towards
certain buildings of public importance, and which had been coarsely
refused. Then the Pharisees, who were the direct enemies of Jesus: they
did not trouble themselves about the governor, but for three years they
had angrily heard and endured the severe language of Jesus against their
weaknesses. Too weak and pusillanimous to act alone, they eagerly
embraced the quarrel of the Herodians and Sadducees. Besides these three
parties, I had also to struggle against a crowd of those idle, worthless
beings who are always ready to rush into a sedition out of love for
disorder and a taste for blood.
“Jesus was dragged before the council of priests and condemned to death;
after which Caiphas, the high-priest, made a hypocritical act of
submission by sending the condemned man for me to pronounce the sentence
and have it executed. My answer was that as Jesus was a Galilean it did
not concern me; so I sent him to Herod. The wily tetrarch pretended
great humility, protesting his remarkable deference for the lieutenant
of Cæsar, and left the fate of the man to be determined on by me. My
palace resembled a citadel besieged by an army; for at every moment the
seditious crowd was reinforced by fresh arrivals from the mountains of
Nazareth, the cities of Galilee, the plains of Esdrelon. It seemed as if
all Judea had invaded Jerusalem.
“My wife was from Gaul, and had, like most women of her nation, the gift
of reading the future. She now came, and, throwing herself in tears at
my feet, exclaimed: ‘Beware of laying a violent hand on this man. His
person is sacred. I saw him in a dream this night; he walked upon the
waters, he rode upon the wings of the wind, he spoke to the tempest, to
the palm-trees of the desert, to the fish in the waters, and they all
responded to his voice. The torrent of the brook Kedron was as blood
before me; the imperial eagles were in the dust, and the columns of this
very prætorium were crumbled, while the sun was in darkness, as a vestal
at the tomb. There is misfortune about us, Pilate; and if you do not
believe in the words of the Gaul, listen hereafter to the maledictions
of the senate and of Cæsar against the cowardly proconsul!’
“Just then my marble staircase trembled, as I may say, beneath the steps
of the angry multitude. They had returned with the Nazarene. Entering
the hall of justice, followed by my guards, I demanded in a stern voice
of the crowd: ‘What will ye?’
“‘The death of the Nazarene!’ shouted the mob.
“‘What is his crime?’
“‘He has blasphemed; he has predicted the ruin of the Temple; he calls
himself the Messias, the Son of God, and says that he is the King of the
Jews!’
“‘The justice of Rome does not punish these crimes by death!’
“‘Seize him! Crucify him! crucify him!’
“Their ferocious cries seemed to shake the very foundations of the
palace, and but one man amid all this tumult was calm: it was the
Nazarene! One might have taken him for the statue of innocence in the
temple of the Eumenides.
“After many useless efforts to withdraw him from the hands of the
self-willed multitude, I had the fatal weakness to command what, at the
time, occurred to me as the only thing that might perchance save his
life. I ordered him to be beaten with rods, and, calling for a basin,
washed my hands before the crowd, which, if not hearing my voice, might
at least catch the allegorical meaning of my act.
“But they would have his life. Often in our civil troubles I have seen
what an angry crowd can be capable of, but all my memories and
experience of the past were effaced by what I saw then. I might almost
say that Jerusalem was peopled by all the infernal spirits of Hades, and
as they crowded about me there seemed an odor as of sulphur exuding from
their bloodshot eyes and inhuman countenances. Their very movements were
not as of men, but, like the waves of an angry sea, they rolled and
dashed, in ceaseless undulations, from the prætorium to Mount Sion;
yelling, shouting in a most unearthly manner, such as never in the
troubles of the Forum or the seditions of the Pantheon assaulted a Roman
ear.
“The day had slowly darkened, as in a winter evening, such as we saw it
when the great Julius died—’twas also near the ides of March—and I, the
mortified governor of a province in full and unrestrained rebellion,
stood leaning against a column, gazing through the gray, unnatural light
at the infuriated spirits who bore the innocent Jesus to his death.
“It became gradually quiet about me, for the whole population had
followed to the place of execution, leaving the city as silent and as
mournful as the tomb, even my very guards having disappeared, save the
centurion alone. I, too, felt alone; isolated from the rest of mankind,
and in my strangely-excited heart, I understood that what was passing
around me pertained rather to the history of the gods than to that of
men. The sounds brought by the wind from Golgotha announced to my
horrified ear a death-agony such as never human nature underwent before.
Dense leaden clouds shrouded the pinnacle of the great Temple, and
thence seemed to envelop the vast city as with a veil of impenetrable
darkness. Terrible signs of perturbation were manifest on earth and in
the air, prodigious enough to make Dionysius the Areopagite exclaim:
‘Either the Author of nature suffers or the whole universe is being
dissolved.’
“At the first hour of the night I wrapped myself in a cloak and walked
down into the city towards the gate leading to Golgotha. The sacrifice
was consummated! The attitude of the people was no longer the same, for
the crowd re-entered Jerusalem, disorderly, of course, but silent and
moody, as if filled with shame and despair. Fear and remorse were in
every heart. My little cohort passed by, as silent as the populace; the
very eagle had been draped as in mourning, and in the last ranks I heard
some soldiers talking in a curious manner of things which I could not
comprehend. Others were relating prodigies somewhat like those that have
often terrified Rome by the will of the gods. Now and then I came across
groups of men and women in grievous sadness as they moved over that
sorrowful way, or as, in some cases, they turned back towards the mount
of expiation, expecting, perhaps, some new prodigy.
“Returning to the prætorium, my own breast seemed to embrace all the
desolation of this painful scene, and as I climbed the stairs I saw, by
the lightning flash, the marble still covered with His blood. There
stood, awaiting me in most humble attitude, an old man, accompanied by
several women, sobbing in the darkness.
“Throwing himself at my feet, the old man wept.
“‘What do you ask, my father?’ I said in a mild voice. He answered:
“‘I am Joseph of Arimathea, and I come to beg, on my knees, the favor of
burying Jesus of Nazareth.’
“Raising him up gently, I promised that his wishes should be complied
with. At the same time I called Manlius, who went with some soldiers to
superintend the burial, and to place a few sentinels over the grave,
that it might not be profaned. A few days afterwards the grave was
empty, and the disciples of Jesus published everywhere that their Master
had risen again, as he had foretold.
“There now remained for me a last duty to perform: to send a full
account of this extraordinary event to Cæsar, which I did that very
night; and the minute relation which I gave was not yet completed when
daylight appeared.
“The sound of trumpets drew me from my task, and, glancing towards the
gate of Cæsarea, I saw an unusual stir among the soldiers and sentinels,
and heard in the distance other trumpets playing Cæsar’s march; it was
my reinforcement of troops, two thousand in number, who had, in order to
arrive more promptly, made a night-march. ‘Oh! the great iniquity had to
be completed,’ I cried, wringing my hands in despair. ‘They arrive the
next morning to save a man who was sacrificed the day before. O cruel
irony of fate! Alas! as the Victim said on the cross: ”All is
consummated.“’
“From that moment, invested with abundant power, I set no limits to my
hatred against the people who had forced me into both crime and
cowardice. I struck terror into Jerusalem. And, as if further to excite
my vengeance, I shortly afterwards received a letter from the emperor,
wherein he blamed my conduct very severely. My official account of the
death of Jesus had been read before a full senate, and had excited a
profound sensation. The image of the Nazarene, honored as a god, had
been placed in the sacred place of the imperial palace. The courtiers,
who were opposed to me, seized the pretext to begin that long series of
accusations which now, years after the death of Tiberius, have at last
brought me to this city of exile, where my life is to go out in anguish
and remorse.
“I have told you all, Albinus, and my words have opened to you my
innermost soul; you will surely do me the justice to say that Pilate was
more unfortunate than wicked.”
The old man ceased; tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks, while his
fixed and hollow eyes seemed to gaze with fright upon some scene,
invisible to other eyes, the lugubrious phantasm of an ever-present
past. Albinus was wrapt in sombre thought, seeking in what manner of
speech to simulate pity for his guest.
“Pontius,” said he, “your misfortunes are not ordinary ones, yet there
may be a balm for the ulcers of your memory and heart. You must invoke
the Fates, whose good-will may disarm the anger of the gods.”
Pilate gave such a smile, amid his tears, as distressed the prudent
Albinus.
“The city is a bad place for you,” pursued Albinus; “hatred is at home
in public assemblies, and Janus, who watches at the threshold, cannot
protect the domestic hearth against violence from without. Why not ask
of our mountains the quiet and peace which seem refused to you here? The
air of the fields invites repose and counsels forgetfulness of canker
care.”
“I fear to understand you,” said Pilate, turning suddenly pale and with
quivering lips. “Yes, I am afraid I comprehend your meaning too well;
like a serpent, you take a long turn to attain your end. You wish to
close the door of your house against the old man!”
“The gods, whom I invoke, and who hear me,” said Albinus, “know that I
have never violated the sacred laws of hospitality, but—”
“Yes,” interrupted the old man—“yes, towards others, but towards me you
will find an excuse for violating them. I understand—do not finish! I
must spare a friend the embarrassment of words which his lips refuse to
utter. Albinus, I feel the spirit of a Stoic revive in me; the waxen
torch flashes up yet once before going out. Listen; I am about to salute
your _Penates_. I will depart.”
Albinus lowered his eyes and was silent.
“Well! well! your silence speaks, as Marcus Tullius says. I will call my
servants.”
“Your servants?” said Albinus, as Pilate rose from his seat. “Your
servants? You have none; they have fled from you!”
“It is well!” answered Pilate.
“One alone has remained faithful—an old soldier.”
“Ah! that is Longinus; I know him. Tell the servant to call Longinus,
and permit me to blow out your lamp; the oil is exhausted, and here is
the dawn.”
“Oh! blame me not, Pontius. Let not your farewell insult my household
gods!”
“I blame you? No, I pity you. The blood of Rome weakens in every vein;
there are no Romans now. Let altars be everywhere erected to Fear; the
house of Albinus is built on the very threshold of the Temple of Mars!”
And Pilate uttered a loud, hard laugh, which ceased at the entrance of
the soldier.
“May your fidelity be rewarded, Longinus! You did not follow the
deserters. Albinus, do you know what this soldier did? He was in the
spearmen; he was at Golgotha, at the foot of the gibbet, when the
Nazarene died; he pierced his heart with his lance. Longinus will die a
Christian. Have you girded on your sword, old soldier, my last friend?”
The soldier made a sign of assent.
“All is, then, ready.” And Pilate saluted Albinus.
* * * * *
An hour after these two men had reached midway the side of a mountain
overlooking the city of Vienne. The sun was rising in all the calm
beauty of a summer morn; its first rays glistened upon the gilt-bronze
dome of the Temple of Victory and the marble roof of the Temple of the
Hundred Gods. Mysterious night still reigned in the sacred woods which
crowned the dwelling of the Immortals. The city, inclined towards the
Rhone, seemed listening in unbroken silence to the harmonious murmurings
of the stream; the hill-tops floated in an atmosphere of molten gold,
while the noise of cascades, the song of birds, and the countless
melodies of a fresh, delicious morning, rising from valley to
mountain-top, filled all whose hearts were light with joy and gratitude
to the Powers above.
Pilate halted, his eyes fixed on a dark chasm which, yawning, stood
before him. In the depths below could be heard the mournful plash of
waters, to the eye unseen; dense brush, interwoven with dwarf oaks and
the wild fig, hung over and, half-concealing, yet increased the horrid
abyss, and a piece of the rock, detached and hurled over, struggled and
tossed awhile among the resisting vines before dropping into the gloomy
waters to send up a series of ill-boding, mournful echoes.
Pilate smiled at the gulf of horror, then turned to contemplate the
immense sublimity which surrounded his agony of despair; he thought of
the death of the Nazarene—that death so calm amid the universal distress
of nature—and wept bitterly.
“Longinus,” said he, “put up your sword; I do not need it. I can die
without you; I do not wish you to soil your hands with my blood, for you
are yet covered with another blood which will never be effaced. Yes,
Longinus, the Sage of Golgotha was one of the superior intelligences;
retain that belief. All who stained their hands with his blood have
perished miserably; think of Herod and Caiphas. Tiberius likewise was
suffocated in his bed at Capreæ, and I yet survive—I! See how I imitate
them!”
And he threw himself into the abyss. Longinus heard the interlacing
branches crack, but saw only the torn remnants of a toga here and there
adhering to the thorny plants which grew upon the sides. He heard the
dull bound of the body from rock to rock, and a last unearthly cry of
agony, enhanced by echo, and fading to the splash of water as its
disturbed surface leaped and glistened in the rays of the now
penetrating sun.
So died the man under whom Christ suffered.
Footnote 8:
Spare the submissive and crush the haughty.
ON CALVARY.
SUGGESTED BY A PAINTING BY J. L. GÉRÔME.
In the strong sunshine lies Jerusalem,
Undarkened yet by shadow of the doom
That hideth in the terror-freighted gloom
Lying afar along the low hills’ hem.
Twinkle the silver-leavèd olive-trees,
Resting in garish light ’neath heaven’s cloudy seas.
From Calvary’s Mount descends the winding train;
Glitter the Roman eagles in the sun,
Leading the soldiers and the people on
To tread the city’s dolorous streets again,
Whose blood-tracked stones would cry, had they but breath,
“Woe! woe! Jerusalem, for this day’s deed of wrath.”
Almost unheeding passes on the crowd,
Save, here and there, turned from the populace,
Rests look of doubting or malignant face
On That we see not in death’s anguish bowed.
Wild cries of hate mount up and break the still
And ominous glare that broodeth dumbly o’er the hill.
Our sad hearts hear the very footsteps fall,
The horse-hoofs striking hard against the stones,
And distant echoes of heart-broken moans—
Jerusalem’s daughters mourning so the thrall
Of Him, their fairest one, to death betrayed,
The hands that blessed their little ones so sore arrayed.
Where is the dying King the cross uplifts?
We cannot see him, and our upraised eyes
Meet but the awful gloom in far-off skies,
The lurid moon dull gazing through the rifts
Of gathering darkness; here the waiting glare
Of cruel sunshine making all the city fair.
Fain would we kneel with Magdalen and weep,
Clasp wounded feet in passionate embrace,
Win with the loved disciple word of grace,
Vigil with God’s woe-stricken Mother keep:
We cannot find Him, and blaspheming cries
From that retreating train still in fierce chorus rise.
Is He not here? Lo! sadly looking down,
Just at our feet a shadow strange we trace
Falling across the sunlit grassy place—
The likeness of three crosses darkly thrown,
And His, the centre one, e’en so most fair
Through semblance of a form divine it dim doth bear.
Here, ’gainst the sunshine traced, lie those bent knees
That knew the sorrow of Gethsemani
As trembled they ’neath its dread mystery;
Here droops the thorn-crowned head in silent peace,
And here, in the unswerving shadow lined,
Are stretched the arms that bear the ransom of mankind.
So rests unseen the presence of the Lord
Whose shadow seems as blessèd aureole,
A holy writing on a sacred scroll,
Rich oil from consecrated vessel poured—
All merit his, the Infinite Son of God,
Whose death so lightly falls on earth’s poor, soulless sod.
Within the painted shadow is no life,
Save in the grassy sward whereon it falls.
Beyond arise the city’s firm-built walls.
With spring’s swift-coursing sap the boughs are rife
Of the gnarled olives with their silver leaves
Shining against the dusky veil the storm-wind weaves.
We see the wild-faced moon in skies far-off,
The bare and weary light of undimmed sun,
And Caesar’s glittering eagles leading on
The thoughtless people, who, with jeer and scoff,
An abject God in proud derision scorn,
Alike from barren shade and living presence turn.
O weary thought! hath earth lost sight of Him?
And do her children with dulled vision grope,
With fain-believing heart and doubting hope,
His cross a parable with meaning dim?
A shadow resting in the feeble clasp
Of them that fear the bitterness of truth to grasp?
Is all that sorrow of the Son of Man
A dreary darkness shutting out the light?
Poor human pain dwarfing eternal might?
An o’ergrown bramble with its prickly span
Piercing the delicate leaves of earth-born flowers,
And blighting with harsh touch kind nature’s generous powers?
Alas! that men that Infinite Love should fear,
Should dread its glory and its shade despise,
Banish its semblance from imploring eyes,
Give men but empty shadow to revere—
Blind beggars leaving them unto whose cry
None answereth when He of Nazareth goes by.
Of this sad modern world of ours to-day
The artist’s picture seemeth counterpart,
When men erase old lessons from the heart,
Striving who farthest from the cross may stray—
Swift, swift descending ’neath the eagles’ shine,
Some longing face still turned to meet the gaze divine.
In her long-ordered way the earth moves on,
The moon doth change with steady law her face,
Swift-growing grass still hides our footsteps’ trace,
And dew falls softly when the day is done:
All nature’s tale seems old, but one thing strange—
The Christ of God a shade the westering sun shall change!
Nay, fear not! Stand to-day as e’er of old
The faithful Maries, who brave vigil keep,
The loved disciple with a love as deep
As in old days lay shrined in heart of gold;
And rests God’s patience till from shadowed sod
The piercing cry break forth, “This was the Son of God.”
A BISHOP’S LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE IN THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE.[9]
The diocese of Paderborn is one of the largest in Germany. Its bishop,
Dr. Conrad Martin, has just published a little work[10] which may vie
with Silvio Pellico’s _Le mie Prigioni_, being an account of a three
years’ banishment from his see. It is not “poetry _and_ truth,” remarks
the writer of this pamphlet in his preface, “but only the truth which is
written down in these pages.”[11] And true to his statement, the bishop
tells us in dispassionate language of his captivity, of its joys and
sorrows, of the friends who were so true to him in his adversity, of the
whole Catholic Church, who shared his banishment in a measure, and of
that most august prisoner whose sympathy is so freely given to his
suffering brethren, and whose captivity is in itself, perhaps, a pledge
that they too must taste of his own chalice.
With the presentiment of future events, or rather of the storm which was
about to break over their pastor on account of the _Kulturkampf_, the
people of Paderborn came in large numbers in the spring of 1874 to
assure him of their love and devotion. The demonstration began on the
25th of March, when the train deposited five thousand pilgrims in the
ancient city of Paderborn. They repaired to the bishop’s house, and
terminated the meeting by simultaneously falling on their knees to
recite aloud the Apostles’ Creed. These deputations lasted for two
months, and on one occasion the number of deputies amounted to fifteen
thousand. It is not an insignificant fact to see how well and bravely
the flock stood by the pastor in his hour of need. But at last the cloud
burst. Repeated infringements of the May Laws were laid to the bishop’s
charge; and the fine in proportion rose to a sum altogether beyond his
means, and a corresponding term of imprisonment was the only
alternative. Here an unknown, and therefore doubly generous, benefactor
interposed, and paid the money required without the bishop’s knowledge.
But, to use his own simple language, Dr. Martin, “from higher
considerations, thought he could not accept the benefit,” and protested
against it,[12] whereas the local authority said that he could. At last
an answer came from Berlin deciding that he should submit himself to
imprisonment. As the bishop would not consent to that, force was used,
and on the 4th of August, 1874, he was taken from his house through a
dense crowd of sympathizers to his prison, where he was witness of a
scene “not to be described by words.” Bouquets of flowers fell at his
feet from all sides, and the steps leading up to the abode of his sorrow
were thick with them. Two works had been near his heart as a pastor—the
establishment of ecclesiastical institutions for the fitting education
of the clergy, and the labor of love which is expressed by the perpetual
adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. This touching devotion was therefore
one of the first-fruits of his own workings, and it has become widely
known through the world. But never before had the bishop of Paderborn
shared the prison common to malefactors of every degree. The prisoner
was then conducted to his two cells. One he describes as “certainly not
roomy, but still not wholly unpleasant”;[13] the second was to serve
merely as a bed-room. Loneliness is the prisoner’s trial, and when first
the bishop heard the lock and key tell him of his utter solitude, sad
thoughts pressed themselves upon him. Many years before he had paid a
pastoral visit to this same prison, and his own encouraging words spoken
then came home to him now. “Could you only have imagined then,” he said
to himself, “that you yourself should be confined in the same dungeon,
and come to need the recommendation to resignation and patience which
you gave to those prisoners? Oh! what a change, what a comparison _then_
and _now_—_then_, when there was no _Kulturkampf_, but an undisturbed
and joyous peace. _O tempora, o mores!_”[14] But the angel of
consolation was at hand. The thought of that divine Providence whose
care of us is so beautifully specified in Holy Scripture brought peace.
“Every hair of our head is numbered.” The bishop determined upon active
endurance, and during those first few hours of his imprisonment planned
for himself an order of duties for the coming solitary days. That night
the breaking of a pane of glass in his bed-room window, caused by the
hurling of a stone from an unknown hand outside, was a little alarming,
and, in spite of inquiries on the subject, it could not be discovered
whether the missile was directed by a friend in a serenading spirit, or
by a foe who might have taken umbrage at the demonstrations of intense
affection on the part of the people of Paderborn.
For the rest the bishop, according to his own account, had small cause
for complaint during his confinement at Paderborn.[15] His food was
provided and sent from his house. He was allowed to read and write when
and what he liked. Strict supervision was, however, exercised on his
correspondence and on the visits which he received. These were permitted
in the presence of a third person only, and letters might be read and
sent under the same condition. The Holy Sacrifice, which was his daily
refreshment, supplied many deficiencies in that lonely heart. But the
“body of death” had still to suffer much from privation of air and
exercise. It is true that once a day the prison bolt was withdrawn for
an exercise of two hours in the court-yard. This had to be taken in
common with the other prisoners, in a very limited space, so that the
bishop often preferred to sit by an open window in his room, there to
enjoy what air he could get.
On the 17th of August, the eighteenth anniversary of his episcopal
consecration, the widowed cathedral of Paderborn was filled with an
assembly of the bishop’s faithful children, who celebrated the occasion
by heartfelt prayers for him to God. Flags adorned the houses of the
Catholic inhabitants. But the pastor’s heart was further gladdened by
the intelligence that from the very first day of his captivity a certain
number of the faithful gathered every evening in the _Gaukirche_ to
offer up the rosary for their oppressed church. And now, after the lapse
of three years, the same practice is kept up, and who would be so
presumptuous as to say that the divine Head of the whole body will not
allow pleading so constant finally to bring about the desired end? It
reminds us of that supplication of the infant church to remove Peter’s
chains, or of a case which was brought before our personal observation
in Germany.[16] Our Lord’s presence in the Holy Eucharist had been
banished from his sanctuary through the working of the May Laws, but the
villagers succeeded each other during the day in unremitting prayer
before the altar where he once dwelt.
Upon the bishop’s six weeks of confinement followed eighteen of custody.
The only distinguishable difference between the two consisted in the
non-bolting of the prison-door from the exterior. On the outset he was
saddened by the command to surrender his office as bishop. The summons
came to him through the Oberpräsident von Kühlwetter, whose attitude to
Dr. Martin from the beginning of the _Kulturkampf_ had been most
hostile. One act in particular of the bishop’s seems to have roused the
enmity of the non-Catholic party, but the principle of authority must
fall to the ground where demands wholly contrary to his conscience are
urged upon a spiritual ruler. The act in question had been a certain
pastoral letter in the affair of the Old Catholics. The bishop replied
immediately that “devotion to the Catholic Church had been his first
love, and that it would be his last.” Ten days of respite were allowed
for the reconsideration of the question, under the threat of ultimate
expulsion from his dignity. But, thanks to an energetic nature and the
quiet peace which is the fruit of a brave determination, it had small
influence over the bishop. He labored to finish his work on the
_Christian Life_, and time, which is so often the greatest trial of the
prisoner, passed rapidly away. His feast-day was the next small event to
break the monotony of his life. From his window he could see the festive
appearance of some neighboring houses, and from far and wide came wishes
of sympathy and affection. The telegraphic messages and letters of
congratulation numbered over eight hundred on this day, and proved a
provision of encouragement for several succeeding days. They were the
flowers of persecution, and as such most dear to the bishop’s Catholic
spirit.
Oppression does indeed often bring the work of the Lord to a timely and
palpable development, and we may echo the prisoner’s words: “Would years
of hard work have given evidence of so close a union as well as this
short and fleeting sorrow?”[17] At the same time two other addresses
reached him which were a source of particular joy: the one from a good
number of Belgian noblemen, who thereby drew forth a remonstrance on the
part of Prince Bismarck, the other from two imprisoned bishops of the
far west who were themselves confessors of the faith, and protesting by
their personal suffering against the evil spirit of Freemasonry. They
were the bishops of Para and Pernambuco, who, profiting by the journey
of a priest to Europe, took occasion to express their love and sympathy
to the fellow-sufferer in Germany who was bearing the self-same
testimony to Catholic truth as they themselves. Comfort, too, came from
the Holy Father, who sent first a gold medal, and then, on the feast of
St. Conrad, a telegraphic message of greeting and good wishes. But the
price of these favors was suffering and greater suffering. The threat on
the part of the secular power to depose the bishop was now carried out.
Many and grievous had been his shortcomings, according to the standard
established by the May Laws, and amongst the accusations brought against
him was the erroneous charge that he alone amongst the German bishops
had worked in favor of the Papal Infallibility at the Vatican Council.
Extensive quotations from his pastoral letters were given in the
indictment, whilst the words he had addressed on various occasions to
his faithful children, their constant devotion to him, the legal
measures recently carried out, and the cause now pending were alleged as
the ground why he could not continue to exercise his office. He was
invited to appear on the 5th of January, 1875, to answer these charges,
after which day, and having simply refused to accept the act of
deposition, it was nailed to his door inside. There it remained quietly
hanging, says the bishop with dry German humor, “without my casting one
single glance upon its contents.”[18] The feast of Christmas, which
occurred in the midst of these cares, found him not altogether joyless.
The prison chapel bore for him a resemblance to the lonely grotto of
Bethlehem.
The bishop fancied that after enduring his twenty-four weeks of
imprisonment he might hope for fresh air and liberty. That hopefulness
was rather surprising. Instead of the accomplishment of this
expectation, his house was stripped of its furniture (which was
afterwards sold), and he himself was conveyed on very short notice to
the fortress of Wesel, it being explicitly stated that this penalty was
the consequence of the before-mentioned pastoral regarding the Old
Catholics. The same sympathizing crowd met him on his way to the
station, and his private secretary accompanied him by choice to the
scene of his new imprisonment. It was on the 20th of January, 1875, that
the bishop entered on the two months’ penalty at Wesel, and there he
seems on the whole to have been better off than at Paderborn. He could
walk freely on the ramparts, and enjoy to a certain extent social
intercourse with the other prisoners, who were in most cases priests of
his own diocese. Three cells were assigned to him for his use; the third
was an act of thoughtfulness on the part of the commandant, who had
reserved it for the bishop’s daily Mass. If, indeed, it had not been for
the Holy Sacrifice—for every day, Dr. Martin remarks, “holy” Masses were
said up till ten o’clock by the imprisoned priests[19]—the fortress
would have borne a resemblance to the middle state where souls are
detained for a time on account of their sins. The supervision exercised
was slight, beyond the visitation of all the cells twice every day. Once
when the bishop was taking exercise on the ramparts which overlooked the
Rhine—in itself like the face of an old friend to Dr. Martin—some of the
faithful who descried him in the distance knelt for his blessing. The
act, the bishop knew not how, was communicated to the commandant, who
forbade him in writing to repeat it. At Wesel correspondence was free,
and even newspapers of all kinds were permitted. Feelers were sent out
by the government to test the bishop’s sentiments with regard to his
civil deposition, but his consent could never be obtained. And he was
cheered and supported by an address which was brought to him towards the
middle of March by a nobleman on the part of his diocese. It contained
these words: “It is true that your lordship as bishop has been deposed
by the Royal Court of Justice in Berlin, but you are, and will remain,
our bishop, and we will be faithful to you until death.”[20] Two thick
volumes bore the signatures to this statement, and they numbered
ninety-six thousand.
After his life in the fortress the bishop was refreshed by a little
breathing-time in a friendly house in Wesel itself. His host had just
married and taken his bride to Rome. On their return they brought to the
exiled pastor a new token of sympathy from the Holy Father in the shape
of another gold medal. The days passed pleasantly for the bishop, as far
as that was possible out of his diocese, until he made the discovery
that he had not yet paid the entire penalty of the famous pastoral. He
was sentenced to another month’s imprisonment in the fortress. “I had
always thought,” he writes, “that for one offence it sufficed to be
punished once. But the powers of the state said no.”[21] Summer had
come, and a return to the fortress in that season was no small penance.
The sun’s penetrating rays made the prisoner’s little cells almost
intolerable, and the bishop’s health began visibly to decline. He lost
his appetite and his sleep, and the only remedy, according to the
doctor, to produce return of vital power would have been change of air
and a course of sea-baths. But for this desired end he learned from the
mayor of Wesel that it would be necessary to undergo an examination from
the district doctor, and to procure a written statement that such
treatment was necessary. Moreover, it was enjoined that the place chosen
for the cure should be at least twenty miles distant from the diocese of
Paderborn. A Protestant district doctor was accordingly consulted, and
his opinion exactly corresponded with the bishop’s own account of his
state, whereupon Dr. Martin gave himself up to the pleasant hope of soon
being able to leave Wesel. “I wished for haste the more,” he says, “as
my state became worse from day to day. The continual agitation in which
I was kept helped to aggravate things. For day after day I received
tidings of new ruins which the unhappy _Kulturkampf_ worked in my poor
diocese.”[22] In the autumn of 1873—that is, after the promulgation of
the May Laws—the bishop had given faculties to four newly-ordained
priests. This is the most natural and harmless action of a bishop, for
what spiritual act can take place without that exercise of his
jurisdiction? Pronouncing a priest competent for the care of souls is
analogous to the action in law of giving a brief to a barrister. What if
the church should require a barrister to present himself to the bishop
for approbation before he received such a brief? But the May Laws
completely confuse spiritual and temporal things. The bishop was accused
of breaking article fifteen of those regulations, which runs that
“spiritual rulers are bound to present such candidates as are about to
receive a spiritual office to the _Oberpräsident_, whilst at the same
time the office is specified.” If the barrister obtain briefs after he
has been called, the bishop does not meddle with him; but because the
priests in question _had_ exercised their faculties Berlin thought well
to condemn the bishop to a further imprisonment of six months.
But now a new phase began in the life of Dr. Martin. Having “waited and
waited” for the permission to follow out the cure which a disimpassioned
authority had pronounced absolutely necessary, he resolved to act in
spite of the law, and to fly from Wesel. He considered this course not
only allowable, but even obligatory, seeing two principal reasons. His
health was seriously endangered, if he could not have the required
treatment, and that health belonged not to himself but to his diocese.
Furthermore, in Wesel his movements were so closely watched that one
single act of the pastoral office might give the government a plea for
still more rigorous measures. Therefore on the 3d of August he wrote an
official letter stating his intended departure from Wesel on the morrow;
and so, as the clock struck the hour of midnight, he was quietly
crossing the bridge over the Rhine, and on the following day, the 5th of
August, he was received at the Castle of Neuburg by the family of
Ausemburg. How full his heart was of his appointed work we may gather
from the attempt to return to Paderborn. At Aix-la-Chapelle two railway
authorities recognized him, and he was counselled by a valued friend to
go back to Holland in “God’s name!” The document which reached him a few
days later proved the soundness of the advice. It was from the Minister
of the Interior at Berlin, announcing to him the fact that he was from
henceforth an outlaw in the eyes of his country. The May Laws further
exhausted their bitterness against him by the warrant which was issued
from the district court in Paderborn for another imprisonment of six
months. But it seems that these punishments did not affect the bishop’s
peace of mind. Amidst tokens of universal love and devotion he was
spending his time chiefly with the Ausemburg family, occupying his
leisure with writing on religious subjects, amongst which one was
Devotion to the Sacred Heart. After his fruitless attempt to join his
bereaved flock he had directed his efforts in the first place towards
his own physical restoration. After a three weeks’ cure in Kattwyk,
which worked a wonderful change for the better in his state, he visited
the bishops of Haarlem and Roermond, and rejoiced his spirit by
witnessing some of the fruits of the new and vigorous Catholic life
which has been promoted in Holland by the re-establishment of the
hierarchy. Whilst Dr. Martin was with the bishop of Haarlem he received
intelligence of the dreadful fire which the “dear Paderstadt” had
sustained.
These peaceful days, however, were not of long duration. They were
shortened by one of the bitterest experiences which a pastor can be
called upon to endure—that is, an unfaithful friend. A priest of his
diocese (the only one besides Mönnikes, he remarks) had gone over to the
enemies of the church, and vainly had the bishop tried the power of
loving exhortation. He was obliged at last to use that spiritual weapon
which has ever been obnoxious to a world impatient of restraint, and to
pronounce excommunication, fully conscious of the possible consequences
of the step, and therefore prepared to accept them. The government of
Holland was too weak to protect an exile. It gave way under more
powerful pressure, and the bishop was ordered to leave.
“I prayed to God for light,” he says. “I asked St. Joseph (it was in
March, 1876) to lead me where I should go.”[23] His steps were directed
to Catholic Belgium; but whatever the character of the population may
be, that of the policy of its government is rightly defined by the
bishop as the effort to keep out of the way of Prince Bismarck’s
complications, which effort is the _ne plus ultra_ of political wisdom.
He was not, therefore, much astonished when he received orders to leave
the Belgian frontier.
A homeless, houseless exile, the bishop once more wandered forth in
strict _incognito_, we are not told where, but the place must have been
wisely chosen, for there he remained in great retirement from April,
1876, till the following April. Then it was that Rome, the home of all
Catholic hearts, once more awoke his desires; but, owing to the
well-known sentiments of the Italian government, he was aware that the
journey had its dangers for a bishop under the ban of the _Kulturkampf_.
He set out, nevertheless, and on his journey through France experienced
numberless consolations and the warmest reception from the French
bishops. Persecution imprints on the heart the device, _Cor unum et
anima una_.
On the 24th of May, 1877, the feast of St. Monica, he arrived in Rome
for the fifth time. Men are trying to make even the Eternal City new,
and as the bishop walked through the familiar streets he felt that the
voice might indeed be the voice of Jacob, whilst the hands were the
hands of Esau. The Colosseum, consecrated by remembrances so
heart-stirring, now appeared to him as a dearly-loved face whence the
spirit had fled. It is the nature of Rome to be the most conservative of
cities, and never are natural laws overturned with comfort. These were
the German bishop’s thoughts as again he compared what had been to what
was, the more so as he found the improvement wholly exterior and
material, and, along with finer streets in course of erection, was
obliged to notice a lowering of moral tone in their inhabitants. Even
the faces of the men he met seemed to have altered; for, he says, they
are mostly not Romans, but a kind of heterogeneous mob gathered from all
quarters of the globe.
When Pius VII. returned to Rome after the persecution which had
threatened to annihilate his power, he invited his enemy’s family to
partake of hospitality in that city, as the land of great misfortunes;
but now the Holy Father, his successor, could offer nothing but an
affectionate greeting to a bishop who had borne so noble a witness to
the truth. The shadow of Pius IX.’s captivity must fall upon all his
children. An exiled bishop sought refuge in Rome as the home of his
father, and Rome could not give him what he sought. By the advice of
several cardinals Dr. Martin changed his residence and went out only in
secular dress, but not before he had been denounced by unfriendly papers
as one who was under arrest. On the 24th of May, in consequence of
continued persecution from the press, and in honest fear of more serious
ill-treatment, strengthened by the loving farewell and the apostolical
blessing of the Holy Father for himself and his diocese, the bishop of
Paderborn set out for an unknown place of exile, happy at least in his
resemblance to One who, coming unto his own, was not received by them.
The early church wrote the acts of her martyrs, in order that the
remembrance of their deeds should never perish, and the church of the
nineteenth century may be allowed to record the struggle of her
confessors not only for a perpetual memorial of them, but also that
others who are not in the fight may realize at once the presence of the
battle-field and the nature of the warfare. We have seen that it exists;
its nature cannot be better defined than by the words of him whose
confessorship we are recording:
“The Papacy is in fact the one and only point round which the
_Kulturkampf_ is raging, and I am convinced that if the ‘deposed’ and
banished bishops were to break off their connection with the Papacy
to-day, to-morrow they would be re-established in all their honors and
privileges.... On the 3d of August last it was three years since I
parted from my beloved flock. After God that flock is daily my first and
last thought. My prayers, my anxieties, my studies, and my occupations
of whatever nature belong to it. I will be true to it till death, and I
hope by God’s grace that it will be true to me. Hours of temptation come
upon me sometimes, it is true—hours when the painful doubt suggests
itself whether I shall ever return to it. But I take courage to myself
again through a trusting look up to God. He has counted every hair of
our heads, and, if my return is in accordance with his providence, no
_Kulturkampf_ will have power to prevent it. But should it be his good
pleasure that I close my eyes to this world separated from my flock, I
say with most humble resignation: May His will be done!
“But even supposing that all we ‘deposed’ and exiled bishops should die
in banishment, the church, and the church in our German Fatherland, will
finally conquer. He to whom all power in heaven and on earth is given is
her protector; and, let her enemies be as numerous and powerful as it is
possible to be, an hour will come when of them also it will be said:
‘They who sought after her life are dead.’”[24]
Footnote 9:
_Three Years of my Life._ By Dr. Conrad Martin, Bishop of Paderborn.
Mainz, 1877.
Footnote 10:
_Drei Jahre aus meinem Leben._
Footnote 11:
_Ibid._ p. 3.
Footnote 12:
_Ibid._ p. 8.
Footnote 13:
_Ibid._ p. 14.
Footnote 14:
_Ibid._ p. 15.
Footnote 15:
_Ibid._ p. 16.
Footnote 16:
At Künigstein, in Nassau.
Footnote 17:
_Drei Jahre aus meinem Leben_, p. 23.
Footnote 18:
_Ibid._ p. 30.
Footnote 19:
_Ibid._ p. 37.
Footnote 20:
_Ibid._ p. 41.
Footnote 21:
_Ibid._ p. 45.
Footnote 22:
_Ibid._ p. 51.
Footnote 23:
_Ibid._ p. 83.
Footnote 24:
_Ibid._ pp. 160, 169.
MONTSERRAT.
O streams, and shades, and hills on high,
Unto the stillness of your breast
My wounded spirit longs to fly—
To fly and be at rest;
Thus from the world’s tempestuous sea,
O gentle Nature, do I turn to thee!
—_Fray Luis de Leon._
No one visits Barcelona, or ought to visit it, without going to
Montserrat, the sacred mountain of Spain, and one of the most
extraordinary mountains in the world: the naturalist, to study its
singular formation and the thousand varieties of its flora; the mere
tourist, to visit its historic abbey and explore the wonderful grottoes
with which the mountain is undermined; and the pilgrim, as to another
Sinai, torn and rent asunder as by the throes of some new revelation,
where amid awful rifts and chasms is enthroned its Syrian Madonna, like
the impersonation of mercy amid the terrors of divine wrath. It is one
of those wonderful places in Catholic Christendom around which centres
the piety of the multitude. Hermits for ages have peopled its caves. The
monks of St. Benedict for a thousand years have served its altars.
Saints have kept watch around its venerable shrine. The kings and
knights of chivalric Spain have come here with rich tributes to offer
their vows. And the poor, with bare and bleeding feet, have, century
after century, climbed its rough sides out of mere love for their
favorite sanctuary.
Poets, too, have come here to seek inspiration. Several Spanish poets of
note have celebrated its natural beauties and its legendary glory.
Goethe could find no more suitable place than this wild, mysterious
mountain for the scenery of one of the most wonderful parts of
_Faust_—the scene where he makes the _Pater Ecstaticus_ float in the
golden air, the hermits chant from their mystic caves, and the bird-like
voices of the spirits come between like the breathings of a wind-swept
harp.[25]
We took the Zaragoza railway, and in an hour after leaving Barcelona
were in sight of the towering gray pinnacles that make Montserrat like
no other mountain in the world. It rises suddenly out of the valley of
the Llobregat more than three thousand five hundred feet into the air,
and looks as if numberless liquid jets, sent up from the bowels of the
earth, had suddenly been congealed into colossal needles or cones. These
cones unite in a rocky base, about fifteen miles in circumference, which
is cleft asunder by an awful chasm, at the bottom of which flows the
torrent of Santa Maria. The base of the mountain is fringed with pines,
but the cones are ash-colored and bare, being utterly devoid of
vegetation, except what grows in the numerous clefts and ravines. This
serrated mountain, standing isolated in a broad plain, strange and
solitary, seems set apart by nature for some exceptional purpose. It
looks like a vast temple consecrated to the Divinity. Even the Romans
thought so when they set up their altars on its cliffs. It is the very
place for the gods to sit apart, each on his own pinnacle, and talk from
peak to peak, and reason high, and arbitrate the fate of man.
The sharp needles which give so peculiar an appearance to the mountain
are mostly of a conglomerate stone composed of fragments of marble,
porphyry, granite, etc., and not unlike the Oriental breccia. Some say
that these enormous clefts have been produced by the agency of water or
volcanic force; others, that the mountain, like Mt. Alvernia in Italy,
where St. Francis received the sacred stigmata, was rent asunder at the
great sacrifice of Mount Calvary, of which these profound abysses and
splintered rocks are so many testimonials. Padre Francesco Crespo, in a
memorial to Philip IV. on the Purísima Concepcion, says of it:
“Astonishing monument of our faith, divided into so many parts in
sorrowful proof of the death of the Creator!” And Fray Antonio, a
Carmelite monk: “And in Montserrat is verified that which was spoken in
St. Matt. xxvii.: And the earth did quake and the rocks were rent.”
We stopped at the station of Monistrol, two miles from the town of that
name which stands at the very foot of the mountain, and walked along the
banks of the Llobregat by an excellent road, often bordered with olives
at the right, while the other side was overhung by cliffs fragrant with
rosemary and wild thyme. We passed several cotton manufactories, for
this is the region of contrasts: Industry is running to and fro in the
fertile valley, while Contemplation kneels with folded palms on the
rocky heights above. But what divine law is there that makes physical
activity superior to moral, or productive of greater results, as so many
would have us believe in these _cui bono_ days? Who knows what rich
returns the cloud-wrapped altar above has rendered to these heavens? or
how much the proud world owes to the solitary Levite who in the temple
keeps alive
“The watchfire of his midnight prayer”?
Monistrol derives its name from monasteriolum—a little monastery, which
was built here by the early Benedictines. It is said that Quirico, a
disciple of St. Benedict, came to Spain in the sixth century, and,
hearing of an extraordinary mountain in the heart of Catalonia, called
Estorcil by the Romans, he came to see it and said to his disciples: “On
this mount let us build a temple to the _Mater pulchræ dilectionis_.”
His project was not realized till three centuries after, but he is
believed to have built a small convent at the foot of the mountain.
It was late in the afternoon when we drew near the spot where St.
Quirico and his disciples set up their altar, and the little white town
of Monistrol lay closely hugged in at the foot of the mountain, behind
which the sun sets by two o’clock, so that it was already in the shadow.
On the outskirts we were surrounded by a swarm of swarthy gipsies ready
to tell our future destiny for a _real_, as if we did not already know
it! We crossed one of those bombastic bridges so common in Spain, as if
there were a flood for the immense arches to span, and just beyond met
the cura—a tall, thin man, with an abstract, speculative look, but who
proved himself able to give good practical advice, which we followed by
going to the little _posada_ hard by for the night, and awaiting the
morning to ascend the holy mountain. It was a clean little inn, but as
primitive as if it had come down from the time of St. Quirico. Not a
soul could we find on presenting ourselves at the door, and it was only
by dint of repeatedly shouting _Ave Maria Purísima!_ that a brisk little
woman at length issued from some cavernous depth, as if called forth by
our magical words. She gave us a dusky little room, with a crucifix and
colored print of St. Veronica over the bed, and, after exploring the
town, we took possession of it for the night while the tops of the
mountain, that rose up thousands of feet directly behind the house, were
still flushed with light.
The following morning was warm and cloudless, though in the middle of
February. The _tartana_ came at ten o’clock—a wagon with a hood, drawn
by three stout mules—and we set off with two men and three women, all
Spanish, and all as gay as the crickets on the wayside. If their
forefathers ascended the mountain with streaming eyes and unshod feet,
they, at least, went up on stout wheels, and with many a song and quirk,
though perfectly innocent withal. They were light-hearted laborers,
released from toil, going with their lunch to spend a holiday at Our
Lady of Montserrat’s. Just after starting we passed the little chapel of
the Santísima Trinidad, built, as the tablet on it says, to commemorate
the happy ending of the African war in 1860. We soon left Monistrol
below us. The view at every moment became more extended as we wound up
the steep sides of the mountain. At the right was always the towering
wall of solid rock, while the left side of the road was often built up,
or at least supported, by masonry. Vines and olives clung to the crags
as long as they could find foothold, and here and there was an aloe on
the edge of the precipice. The bells of Monistrol could be heard far
below. The plain began to assume a billowy appearance, swelling more and
more to the north till lost in the mountains. The air grew more
exhilarating. In two hours’ time we came to a chapel with a tall cross
before it, and nearly opposite suddenly appeared the abbey of Our Lady
of Montserrat, seven or eight stories high, with a cliff rising hundreds
of feet perpendicularly behind, divided by deep fissures, and
terminating in needles that looked inaccessible, but where we could see
a hermitage perched on the top like the nest of an eagle. There is no
beauty about the convent, or pretension to architecture, but there is a
certain austere simplicity about it that harmonizes with the mountain.
The narrowness of the terrace has prevented its extending laterally, so
it has been forced to tower up like the peaks around it. The mountain,
as M. Von Humboldt says, seems to have opened to receive man into its
bosom. But nearly everything is modern, and everywhere are ruins and
traces of violence left by the French in their ravages of 1811. Passing
through an arched gateway, we found ourselves in a close, around which
stood several large buildings for the accommodation of pilgrims. These
are of three classes, according to the condition of the visitor, and
named after the saints, such as Placido, Ignacio, Pedro Nolasco,
Francisco de Borja, etc. The poor have two houses for the different
sexes, where they are lodged and fed gratuitously. Bread is distributed
to them at seven in the morning; at noon, more bread with olla and wine;
and at night the same. Pilgrims of condition sometimes go to receive the
bread of charity, which they preserve as a relic. No one, rich or poor,
is allowed to remain over three days without special permission. Even
the better class of rooms are of extreme simplicity, containing the bare
necessaries for comfort. They are paved with brick, and the walls are
plastered, but not whitewashed. A man brought us towels, sheets, and a
jug of water, and left us to our own devices. The visitor offers what he
pleases on leaving. Nothing is required. Meals are obtained at a
restaurant at fixed prices. After taking possession of our rooms we went
to pay homage to Our Lady of Montserrat.
The first thing that struck us on entering the large atrium, or court,
that precedes the church, was a marble tablet recording one of the
greatest memories of Montserrat:
B. Ignativs—A—Loyola—
hic-mvlta—prece—fletv-
qve—Deo—se—virginiqve
devovit—hictamqvam
armis—spiritalib’—
sacco—se—mvniens—perno-
ctavit—hinc—ad—socie
tatem—Iesv—fvndan
dam—prodiit—an
no M—D—XXII.—F. Lavren ne
to. Abb. dedicavit.
An. 1603.
For here it was that in 1522 came the chivalrous hero of Pampeluna, who
had passed his youth in the court of Ferdinand V., trained in the
practice of every knightly accomplishment, but now smitten down, like
St. Paul, by divine grace, and come here in accordance with the
principles of Christian chivalry in which he had been nurtured, to
devote himself to Jesus and Mary as their knight. He laid aside his
worldly insignia, and put on the poverty of Christ as the truest armor
of virtue, and, on the eve of the Annunciation, kept his vigil of arms
before the altar of Our Lady, whom he now chose as the _Señora de sus
pensamientos_—“no countess,” as he said, “no duchess, but one of far
higher degree”—and he hung up his sword on a pillar of her sanctuary as
a token that his earthly warfare was over.
“When at thy shrine, most holy Maid,
The Spaniard hung his votive blade
And bared his helmèd brow,
‘Glory,’ he cried, ‘with thee I’ve done!
Fame, thy bright theatres I shun,
To tread fresh pathways now;
To track thy footsteps, Saviour God!
With willing feet by narrow road;
Hear and record my vow.’”
So, in the _Book of Heroes_, Wolf-dietrich, “the prince without a peer,”
stopped short in his career of glory, and, going to the abbey of St.
George, laid his arms and golden crown on the altar and consecrated
himself to God.
On the other side of the entrance is a similar tablet relating to St.
Peter Nolasco, a knight of Languedoc, who, after serving in the
religious wars of the times, ascended Montserrat on foot, and, when he
arrived at the threshold of the house of Mary, fell on his knees, and in
this position approached her altar, where he spent nine days in watching
and prayer. It was during one of his prolonged vigils that he conceived
the project of founding the celebrated Order of Mercy, which required of
its members to give themselves, if need were, for the liberty of their
brethren in bondage, and which in the course of about four hundred years
(1218-1632) ransomed, at the price of millions, four hundred and ninety
thousand seven hundred and thirty-six Christians (among whom was the
great Cervantes) from the prisons of the Moors, where they had endured
sufferings no pen could describe.
Dwelling on these saintly memories, we passed through the arcades of the
court, green and damp with mould, and came to the church. The exterior,
of the Renaissance style, is by no means striking. There are columns of
Spanish jasper on each side of the door, with niches between for the
twelve apostles, of whom only four remain. And over the entrance stands
our Saviour giving his blessing to the pilgrim. There is a single nave
of fine proportions, divided transversely by one of those iron _rejas_,
or parcloses, peculiar to Spain, with a succession of chapels at the
sides, by no means richly decorated. It was noon, and there was not a
person in the large church. Divested of its ancient riches, and simply
ornamented, it needed the crowds of pilgrims for whom it was intended to
give it animation and effect. But the antique Virgin was there, in the
centre of the retablo over the high altar, surrounded by lights, and we
were glad of the silence and solitude that surrounded her.
The sacred image of Our Lady of Montserrat is believed to be one made by
St. Luke the Evangelist at Jerusalem, and brought to Spain by St. Peter,
and long preserved in a church erected by St. Paciano at Barcelona under
the title of the Blessed Maria Jerosolimitana,[26] where it was still
venerated in the time of San Severo, a bishop under the rule of the
Goths. According to an old chronicle, it was to preserve it from the
profanation of the Moors that, on the tenth of the kalends of May, 718,
Pedro the bishop, and Eurigonio, a captain of the Goths, took the holy
image of the Blessed Mary, and carried it to the mountain called
Asserado, and hid it in a cave.
Amid all the wars and commotions of that age, it is not surprising that
the remembrance of the holy statue became a dim tradition, and the
precise spot of its concealment utterly forgotten. It was not till two
centuries after that some young shepherds, guarding their flocks at the
foot of the mountain, observed that every Saturday night, as soon as the
darkness came on, a light descended from the heavens and gathered in a
blaze around one of the lofty peaks. Their story was at first made light
of at Monistrol, but, coming to the ear of the curate, a great servant
of God and Our Lady, he resolved to ascertain its truth for himself.
Accordingly, the next Saturday night, he set forth at an early hour with
a number of people for the most favorable point of observation. As soon
as it grew dark the supernatural light was seen, and a soft, delicious
music heard issuing as from the depths of a cave. The curate did not
venture to approach, but returned to consult the bishop of Vich, then
residing at Manresa, the former place being in the hands of the Moors.
This bishop, whose name was Gondemaro, took the curate and other members
of the clergy, and, accompanied by several knights, ascended the
mountain at the usual hour of the wonderful occurrence. They found the
cliff enveloped in a cloud of fragrance. A shower of stars settled
around the summit like a crown, and dulcet symphonies came forth from
its bosom. This phenomenon lasted till midnight, when the music died
away, the stars returned to their spheres, and silence and darkness
resumed their empire.
The bishop passed the remainder of the night in dwelling on what he had
witnessed, and at the first ray of dawn summoned the curate and
requested him to take the necessary means for examining the place by
daylight. He was not obliged to repeat the command. The curate took his
parishioners, and, accompanied by the bishop, went in procession along
the banks of the Llobregat, and up the sides of the mountain as far as
practicable. Then he despatched several young shepherds, who could climb
the rocks like goats, to explore the cliff. After no little fatigue and
danger they discovered a cave on the edge of a precipice, and within it
the sacred image of the Mother of God, surrounded by an odor like that
of a garden of flowers. The joyful cries of the shepherds, repeated by
all the echoes of the mountain caves, made known their discovery. The
bishop took the statue in his arms, and, desirous of carrying it to
Manresa, they went circling the wild peaks with songs of joy in the
direction of Monistrol; but when he attempted to go past a certain place
on the mountain his feet became fastened to the ground like iron to a
loadstone. The Virgin had chosen the mountain for her abode, and would
not abandon it. After the first moment of astonishment the bishop
comprehended the meaning of the Soberana Señora, and a chapel was soon
built to receive the statue, which he entrusted to the care of the
curate of Monistrol.
But this was not the first chapel on the mountain. The oldest was that
of San Miguel, on the other side of the ravine of Santa Maria, said to
have been built out of the ruins of a temple of Venus. We went to see it
that afternoon. It stands on a lofty ridge of the mountain to the north,
commanding a magnificent prospect. Beneath is the whole valley of the
Llobregat, but what below seemed like a vast plain here looked like the
sea in a storm, in which wave after wave succeeded each other till lost
in the Pyrenees. And these, capped with snow, looked like the foaming
sea, run mountains high, all along the northern horizon. The whole
country was dotted with villages. The river looked like a thread of
silver winding through the surging valley. The sounds came up from below
in a subdued murmur. At the right lay the Mediterranean, calm as a sea
of crystal. Behind the chapel rose the tall cones, like the watch-towers
of a vast fortress.[27] The solitude, the wildness, the awful depths
over which we hung made a profound impression on us all. “How easy for
the soul to rise to God in such a place!” we said. “Let us remain here
the rest of our lives. With books to read, the chapel in which to pray,
the mountain-side on which to meditate, and such a glorious view of
God’s world around us, what more in this world could we ask for?” Every
now and then came the peal of the convent bells. The air was fragrant
with the balsamic odor of the shrubs. The glowing sun lit up mount and
sea. And a certain melancholy about these gray peaks and unfathomable
abysses, the ruined hermitages and violated chapels, and even the wintry
aspect of yonder plain, gave them an additional charm. While sitting on
the rocks a Spaniard came along with his daughter, and, entering into
conversation, we learned that they were visiting the holy mountain for
the last time together, she being on the point of entering a sisterhood.
They both showed the most lively faith, and talked with enthusiasm of
Montserrat, telling us how it had been rent asunder at the Crucifixion.
After they had gone on in the direction of Collbato we sat a long time
in silence, and then went slowly down the winding path, bordered with
laurel, holly, heather, and shrubs of various kinds. On the way we met a
long file of pupils from the abbey, ranging from ten to twenty years of
age, all in gowns and leather belts like young monks. Two of the
Benedictine fathers came behind them.
It was nearly night when we got back to the monastery, and as soon as we
had dined we went to the church. It was wrapped in utter darkness, all
but the sanctuary, which was blazing with lamps around the Madonna and
the tabernacle. We knelt down in the obscurity close to the _reja_. In a
short time thirty or forty students entered in their white tunics, and,
encircling the altar, began the _Rosario_ in a measured, recitative way
that was almost a chant. Then they gathered around the organ and sang
the _Salve_ and _Tota pulchra es_ with admirable expression. The
lateness of the hour, the vast nave shrouded in darkness, the blazing
altar, with the black Madonna above in her golden robes after the
Spanish fashion, the groups of worshippers motionless as statues, the
venerable monks of St. Benedict in the choir, and the white-robed
singers around the organ, gave great effect to the scene. We wished we
might keep our vigil before the altar, like St. Ignatius; but one of the
lay brothers, with a queer old lantern that must have been handed down
from the Goths, began to hustle us out of the church as soon as the
devotions were over, and we went stumbling through the dark court into
the open air; and giving one look at the violet heavens, across which
flashed a shooting-star, and to the tall black cliffs that overshadowed
us, we went to our rooms, our hearts still under the influence of the
music. The bells of the monastery kept ringing from time to time as long
as we were awake, and they roused us again at an early hour the
following morning, as if the _laus perennis_ were still kept up as in
the olden time.
It was not yet day, but we hurried to the early Mass, which is sung with
the aid of the students, followed by another chanted by the monks, and
the sun was just rising out of the sea when we came from the church. As
soon as breakfast was over we went to visit the cave of Fray Juan Garin,
which is in the side of an enormous cliff it seemed fearful to live
under. He was lying there in effigy, with his book and rosary, a
water-jar at his feet, and a basket at his head, as if he had just gone
to sleep. His legend, though not pleasing, is too closely connected with
the early history of the mountain to be wholly omitted. It has been
sung, too, by poets, and one scene, at least, in his life has been
perpetuated in sculpture.
Fray Juan Garin is said to have been born in the ninth century of a
noble family of Goths at Valencia, and in the time of Wifredo, Count of
Barcelona, became a hermit on the lone heights of Montserrat. He is
represented as a man of wasted aspect, with a long beard, who lived in
the cave of an inaccessible cliff, and, when he went forth, carried a
long staff in his hands, which were embrowned by the sun. Here he
attained to such consummate sanctity that the very bells which hung
between the two pillars before the ancient chapel of SS. Acisclo and
Victoria rang out of their own accord whenever he approached. Every year
he made a pilgrimage to the capital of the Christian world, and
tradition says the bells of the Holy City spontaneously rang out at his
arrival, like those of Montserrat. It would seem as if this holy hermit,
regardless of the world, and by the world forgot, could have nothing to
disturb his peace. But the great adversary had his evil eye on him, and
resolved on his fall. For this purpose he turned hermit himself, as in
the old rhyme, and put on a penitential robe and long white beard, which
made such an impression on the count of Barcelona, when he presented
himself before him, that he took his advice and brought his beautiful
daughter Riquilda, who was thought to be possessed, to try the efficacy
of Fray Juan’s prayers.
Meanwhile, the devil established himself in the very cave on the top of
the cone above the monastery still known as the _Ermita del Diablo_, and
soon after the two hermits met as if by accident.
They looked at each other, but without at first breaking the holy
silence that set its seal on their contemplative life. At length the
Diablo addressed Fray Juan, saying he was a great sinner who had come to
the mountain three years previously to seek pardon of God for his
innumerable offences in solitude and mortification, and expressing
surprise that they had never met before. Garin at first repulsed his
advances, as if by instinct, but the Diablo continued to speak with so
much unction on the redoubled fervor that would result from a holy union
of prayer and penitential exercises that Garin at length yielded, and
finally let no day pass without meeting him and unveiling the innermost
recesses of his heart.
We will not enter into the details of the tragedy which ended in the
murder of the beautiful Riquilda. But when Fray Juan awoke to a sense of
his crime, he was seized with so terrible a remorse that he once more
set off for Rome to throw himself at the feet of him to whom are given
the keys of earth and heaven, and confess his heinous sin. But the bells
no longer rang out as he drew near. He was now
“A wretch at whose approach abhorr’d,
Recoils each holy thing.”
Even the pope, with the power to him given to wash men’s sins away, had
no ghostly word of peace for him. But he sent him not away in utter
despair. He imposed on him by way of expiation to go forth from his
presence like a beast of the earth, to live on the herbs of the field,
and keep an unbroken silence till a sinless child a few months old—O
power of innocence!—should assure him God had remitted his sin.
And Fray Juan submissively went forth from the Holy City on his hands
and feet, and directed his weary course once more to Montserrat.
Meanwhile, the Virgin, as Mr. Ticknor says, “appearing on that wild
mountain where the unhappy man had committed his crime, consecrates its
deep solitudes by founding there the magnificent sanctuary which has
ever since made Montserrat holy ground to all devout Catholics.”[28]
In the course of time Fray Juan’s garments were worn out; exposed to the
blazing sun of Spain, he grew swarthy of hue, and his body became
covered with hair that made him look like a wild beast, for which, in
fact, he was taken by the royal foresters, who fastened a rope around
his neck and led him to Barcelona, where he was put in the stables of
the count’s palace of Valdauris, and became at once the wonder and
terror of the people.
Not long after the lord of Catalonia made a great feast to celebrate the
birth of his son, now four or five months old, and one of the guests
expressing a wish to see the curious beast from Montserrat, Fray Juan
was led into the hall. As soon as he appeared the infant prince,
speaking for the first time in his life, said: “Rise up, Fray Juan
Garin; thou hast fulfilled thy penance. God hath pardoned thee.” And the
penitent rose up and resumed his original form as a man.[29] He then
threw himself at the count’s feet and confessed his crime. Wifredo could
not refuse a pardon God had granted through his child. He ordered Fray
Juan to conduct him to his daughter’s grave, and, followed by all the
lords and knights of his court, he went to the mountain, and there,
beside the newly-erected chapel of the Virgin, he found the tomb of the
princess. When it was unsealed, to their amazement Riquilda opened her
eyes and came forth from the grave. Around her neck was a slight mark,
like a thread of crimson silk. As Faust says of Margaret:
“How strangely does a single blood-red line,
Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife,
Adorn her lovely neck!”
The overjoyed count took his daughter back to Barcelona, where an
immense crowd came to see her whom the great _Madre de Dios_ had
awakened from the sleep of death. One of the knights of the court,
struck with her beauty, requested her hand in marriage, but Riquilda
felt that after so strange a restoration to life, she ought to
consecrate herself to God on the mount where the wonder had been
accomplished.
Wifredo, who was a great builder of churches, determined to erect a
magnificent convent on the mountain. Fray Juan worked on it with his own
hands, and after its completion retired to a cave, where he penitently
ended his days. The convent was peopled with nuns of noble birth, and
Riquilda placed at their head. Eighty years after Count Borrell, who was
now lord of Catalonia, fearful of a Saracen invasion, substituted monks
and transferred the nuns to the royal foundation of Santa Maria de
Ripoll.
This legend of a rude age, gross in some of its details, has been
celebrated in several poems, one of which, still read and admired, takes
a high place in Spanish literature. This is _El Monserrate_, by
Cristóbal de Virues, a dramatic poet, who was a great favorite of Lope
de Vega’s. Virues had served as a captain in the Spanish wars, and taken
part in the battle of Lepanto. He belonged to an age when, as Mr.
Ticknor says, many a soldier, after a life of excess, ended his days in
a hermitage as rude and solitary as that of Garin.
The old counts of Barcelona made great donations to the convent of
Montserrat, as well as the kings of Aragon after them. The monks were
exempted from imposts and taxes, and made honorary citizens of
Barcelona. They not only had possession of the mountain, but held feudal
sway over several towns and lordships. The rule of St. Benedict is known
to have been observed here in 987, when Prior Raymundo was at the head
of the house. It was a dependence of the abbey of Ripoll until the
fourteenth century, but on account of its miraculous Virgin, and the
extraordinary history of its foundation, it at once acquired great
celebrity, and not a day passed without numerous pilgrims. In the
twelfth century there were so many that Don Jaime el Conquistador
ordered all who went to the mountain to take with them the provisions
necessary for their subsistence. These pilgrims, who were often from
distant provinces, used to come with bare feet, sometimes with torches
in their hands, or bearing heavy crosses, or scourging their bodies, or
with a halter around their necks and manacles on their hands, as if they
were criminals. And when the monks saw them coming in this manner, they
went out to meet them, and released them from their vow by special
authority from the pope, and brought them in before the holy image of
the Mother of God, where their sighs and tears broke forth into piteous
prayers.
These pilgrims had a kind of sacred character which prevented them from
being cited before tribunals till they returned, except for crimes
committed on the way, under a penalty of five hundred crowns. Leonora,
the wife of Don Pedro el Catolico, was the first queen of Aragon to
visit the sanctuary, and Don Pedro the Great the first king. The latter
passed the night before the altar of Our Lady, imploring her aid against
the French, who were invading Catalonia. Don Jaime and his wife Blanca
came together and endowed the monastery, of which their son was then
prior. Don Pedro el Ceremonioso came twice: on his way to the conquest
of Majorca, and again at his return, when he presented a silver galley
in thanksgiving for his success. Queen Violante, wife of Juan I., came
here with bare feet, out of pure love for the Virgin, bringing with her
rich gifts.
When Ferdinand the Catholic was nine years old his mother brought him to
Montserrat and consecrated him to the Virgin. After the conquest of
Granada he and Queen Isabella came here together, with Prince Juan,
their son, Isabella, widow of Don Alonso of Portugal, Doña Juana,
afterwards called _la Loca_, and others of the royal family. They
brought with them the two young sons of the last king of Granada, who
were baptized under the names of Juan and Fernando. In the retinue were
the great Cardinal Mendoza and a number of prelates. On this or some
other occasion their Catholic majesties presented two magnificent silver
lamps to burn before Our Lady of Montserrat, and Queen Isabella gave
twelve yards of green velvet, and two of brocade, to the sacristy.
It was about this time that thirteen monks from Montserrat were chosen
to accompany Christopher Columbus in order to establish the faith in the
new regions he might discover. At their head was Dom Bernardo Boil, a
noble Catalonian, who was raised to the dignity of patriarch and papal
legate. Columbus gave the name of Montserrat to an island he discovered
in 1493, on account of the resemblance it bore to the holy mountain of
Spain, and the first Christian church erected in America was called
Nuestra Señora de Montserrat.
Charles V. came to Montserrat when nineteen years of age, accompanied by
his tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, afterwards pope. They found the court full
of soldiers, with lighted torches in their hands, and the Count Palatine
at the head of an embassy to offer him the crown of Carlo Magno in the
name of the electors of Germany. Charles went to prostrate himself at
the feet of the Virgin, and the following day left for Barcelona, after
giving the father abbot the title and privileges of _Sacristan Mayor_ of
the crown of Aragon. He subsequently bestowed many gifts on the abbey,
and gave it rule over the town of Olessa and other places. He visited it
repeatedly, and not only remained several days at a time, but is even
said to have tried the monastic life he afterwards embraced in the
convent of Yuste. The third time he came here was in 1533, and on Corpus
Christi day he walked in the procession with the monks, carrying a
lighted candle in his hand. He liked to pass such great solemnities in a
monastery, contributing by his presence and generosity to the brilliancy
of the festival. He always invoked Our Lady of Montserrat before
engaging in battle, and attributed to her his victories. He was at
Montserrat when he received notice of the discovery of Mexico by
Hernando Cortes, and when he heard of one of his important victories
over the Moors. And on St. Margaret’s day, 1535, the parish of Santa
Maria del Mar at Barcelona sent a deputation of twelve persons to the
mountain, habited as penitents, to pray for the success of the royal
arms. They united with the monks and hermits in a devout procession
around the cloister, and made such prevailing prayer at the altar of Our
Lady that Charles V. that very day took possession of Tunis. When the
emperor, in 1558, found he was dying, he called for the taper blessed on
the altar of Montserrat, and holding it in one hand, with the crucifix
that had been taken from the dead hand of his mother Juana in the other,
this great monarch, who, as he acknowledged to his kinsman, St. Francis
Borgia, had never, from the twenty-first year of his age, suffered a day
to pass without devoting some part of it to mental prayer, now slept for
ever in the Lord.
Isabella of Portugal, wife of Charles V., likewise came here, and in her
train the Marques de Lombay, afterwards Duke of Gandia, and Viceroy of
Catalonia, now venerated on our altars under the name of San Francisco
de Borja. With him was his wife, the beautiful Leonora de Castro, lady
of honor to the empress. As a memorial of her visit, Isabella presented
the church with a silver pax of artistic workmanship worth two thousand
ducats, and a little ship garnished with diamonds valued at 10,800
_pesos_.
Some years after Doña Maria, daughter of Charles V., came here with her
husband, Maximilian II., Emperor of Austria, to obtain a blessing on
their marriage, and she spent several days here on her return to Spain.
Her page, at that time, was the young Louis de Gonzaga, son of the
Marquis of Castiglione, who afterwards entered the Society of Jesus, and
is now canonized.
With this empress came also her daughter, the Princess Margarita, who
prostrated herself at the feet of the Virgin and implored the grace of
becoming the spouse of her divine Son. Tradition says the Virgin gently
inclined her head in token of consent. At all events, the princess,
after her prayer, took a dagger from one of the cavaliers, and with
blood from her own veins thus wrote:
“I solemnly pledge myself to become the spouse of Christ, to whom I here
offer myself, begging his Virgin Mother to be my mediator. In faith of
which I subscribe myself,
“MARGARITA.”
She placed this vow in the Virgin’s hand, and afterwards fulfilled it by
becoming a nun in the royal foundation of the Carmelites at Madrid under
the name of Sr. Margarita de la Cruz. This interesting document was long
preserved in the abbey, but disappeared when the house was ravaged under
Napoleon.
Philip II., the monarch who boasted that the sun never set on his
dominions, visited Montserrat four times, one of which was on Candlemas
day, when he took part in the procession, devoutly carrying his taper.
He presented Our Lady with a silver lamp weighing over a hundred pounds,
and an elaborate retablo for her altar which cost ten thousand
_ducados_.
Don John of Austria came here after the battle of Lepanto, and brought
several flags taken from the enemy, as trophies to the Virgin of
Montserrat, and hung up in the centre of the church the signal-lantern
taken from the vessel of the Turkish admiral.
The abbey at this time was one of the richest in Spain. It was
surrounded by ramparts and towers for defence. It had its courts and
cloisters full of sculptures, and carvings, and tombs of precious
marble, whereon knights lay in their armor, and abbots with mitre and
crosier. But the church was too small for the number of pilgrims, and
dim in spite of its seventy silver lamps. Abbot Garriga, one of the
ablest men who ever ruled over the monastery, resolved to build a new
one. This distinguished abbot rose from the humblest condition in life.
When he was only seven years old his father, a poor man, ascended the
mountain on an ass, with a kid in one pannier and his son in the other,
and offered them both at the convent gate. The porter accepted the kid,
but refused the boy. The father, however, persisted in leaving him, and
the abbot, struck with his intelligence, gave him a place in the school.
He received the monastic habit at the age of nine. While a novice he
used to lament the inadequate size of the church, and predicted he
should rebuild it. He subsequently became abbot, and fulfilled his
prophecy, but he ended his days in the lofty hermitage of St. Dimas,
where he had retired to prepare for eternity.
When the new church was completed, as the Virgin could not be removed
under penalty of excommunication, the sanction of the pope had to be
obtained. Philip III. came to take part in the ceremony, and with him a
crowd of courtiers and Spanish grandees. On Sunday, July 11, 1593, the
king and all the court went to confession and holy Communion in the
morning. In the afternoon the sacred image was taken down from the place
it had occupied for centuries, and clothed in magnificent robes, given
by the Infanta Isabella and the Duchess of Brunswick. Then the
procession was formed, preceded by a cross-bearer carrying a cross of
pure silver, in which was set a piece of the Lignum Crucis surrounded by
five emeralds, five diamonds, a topaz as large as a walnut, and a great
number of pearls. Then came forty-three lay brothers, fifteen hermits,
and sixty-two monks, chanting the _Ave Maris Stella_, each one carrying
a wax candle weighing a pound. After them were twenty-four scholastics,
and then the statue of Our Lady, borne by four monks in orders, wearing
rich dalmaticas. Over it was a gorgeous canopy supported by noble lords.
Behind followed Abbot Garriga and his attendants, and, after the
peasant’s son, King Philip III., bearing a torch on which was painted
the royal arms, and a long train of lords and ladies, the highest in the
realm. With all this pomp the Madonna was borne up the nave of the new
church, and, amid the ringing of bells and the chant of the _Te Deum_,
was placed on her silver throne, given by the Duke of Cardona.
All the kings of Spain, down to the end of the eighteenth century, came
here with their votive offerings. The church had a font of jasper, a
_reja_ of beautiful workmanship that cost fourteen thousand ducats, and
around the altar of the Virgin burned over two hundred costly lamps, the
gifts of kings, princes, and nobles. She had four gold crowns studded
with gems; one estimated at fifty thousand ducats, sent by the natives
of Mexico converted to the faith. The monstrance for the exposition of
the Host gleamed like the sun with its rays of sparkling jewels.
Chalices were covered with rubies. There were golden candlesticks for
the altar, and ornaments of amber and crystal, and vestments of cloth of
gold embroidered with precious stones, and a profusion of other valuable
things that may to Judas eyes seem uselessly poured out in this favored
sanctuary.
To this wonderful church, for the gilding of which he had contributed
four thousand crowns, came Don John of Austria in the seventeenth
century, and, penetrating into the sanctuary, he placed his hands on the
sacred altar, and in a distinct voice pronounced the following: “I swear
and promise to maintain with my sword that the Blessed Virgin Mary was
conceived without the stain of original sin from the first instant of
her being,” which vow was repeated by all the knights in his train.
There was formerly a painting in one of the chapels to commemorate this
scene.
Many children of the first families of Spain used to be brought to
Montserrat and consecrated to the Virgin. Sometimes they were even left
here to pass their boyhood. Don John of Cardona, a Spanish admiral, who
distinguished himself in the wars with the Turks, and at one time was
viceroy of Navarre, was educated here, and said he valued the honor of
being a page of Our Lady of Montserrat more than having been the
defender of Malta against the infidel. He took for his standard her
glorious image, and, when he died, was buried, at his own request, at
her feet. So were many others, famous as soldiers or statesmen, reared
on this secluded mountain. The pupils, as now, wore a semi-monastic
dress. They daily recited the Office of the Blessed Virgin, sang at the
early Mass, and ate in the monks’ refectory. Nor were they all nobles.
There were peasants’ children, too, among them, but they were all reared
together in that simplicity of life that seems traditional among the
Benedictines. The divine words that for ever ennobled the innocence of
childhood have done more to efface artificial distinctions in monastic
houses than the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence has
ever done in our beloved republic. But in Spain there has always been a
certain courtesy towards the lower classes that has tended to elevate
them, or, at least, to maintain their self-respect. It is said that the
dignity of man in that country seems to rise in proportion as his rank
descends.
Among the more recent memories of the school, it is told how, September
30, 1860, Queen Isabella II. came here with her son, now King Alfonso
XII., then only three years old, and had him made a page of Our Lady of
Montserrat, and he was clothed in the dress of the pupils in the
presence of the court.
But to return to the history of the abbey. The day came when all its
riches were suddenly swept away. Catalonia was the first to rise against
the government of Napoleon. Montserrat, being considered almost
impregnable, was made a depot of provisions and munitions of war. It was
fortified, and bristled with cannon like a citadel. Suchet attacked the
mountain. It was vigorously defended by three hundred Spaniards
entrenched in the defiles, but the French succeeded in gaining
possession of it. The monastery was blown up. The hermitages were
ruined. The hermits were “hunted like chamois from rock to rock,” and
the treasures of the church were carried off as spoils of war. All the
testimonials of the faith of Spain that had been accumulating here for
centuries were swept away: the gold and the jewels, the paintings and
carvings, the Gothic cloister and the tombs of alabaster—all, all
disappeared. Only one priceless jewel remained, around which all the
others had been gathered—the ancient Madonna brought from the East,
which was once more concealed in a cave, as in the time of the Moors.
Towards the close of our second day on Montserrat we passed through an
avenue of cypresses behind the monastery, and came to a small terrace on
the very edge of the precipitous mountain-side, around which was a wall
adorned with great stone saints that were gray and mossy, and worn by
the elements. Against the wall were seats, and, in the centre of the
plot, a tank for gold fish, with a few plants and shrubs around it. Here
is an admirable view to the northwest, and we stood leaning a long time
against the wall, looking at the broad _Vega_ beneath, and the long
range of Pyrenees that stood out with wonderful distinctness against the
pure evening sky. Directly beneath us was Monistrol, and, beyond,
Manresa, only three leagues off, but seemingly much nearer; and along
yonder road winding through the Valley of Paradise, as it used to be
called, must have gone St. Ignatius from Montserrat in his newly-put-on
garments of holy poverty, which could not, we fancy, hide his courtly
bearing or eagle glance.
Nothing could surpass the exquisite gradations of light and color that
passed over the landscape while the sun was going down. The pleasant
valley grew dim. Manresa receded, and her white walls soon looked like a
ship at sea. A purple mist began to creep up the mountain-sides. The
snowy summits were suffused with a blush of rosy light. The last gleam
of the sun, now below the western horizon, flashed from peak to peak
like signal-fires, and then died away. The purple hills grew leaden. The
rosy peaks became paler and paler till they were actually livid, and
finally faded away into mere fleecy clouds.
Then we walked reluctantly back through the tall, dark cypresses to the
convent, and through the shadowy cloister to the church, which we found
dark but for the usual cluster of lamps around the altar, suspended
there—beautiful emblem of prayer—to consume themselves before God, in
place of the hearts forced to live amid the cares of the world.
There is an old legend, embodied in a Catalan ballad, that tells how an
angel one night ordered Fray José de las Llantias, a lay brother of
Montserrat, now declared Venerable, to quickly trim the dying lamps lest
the world be overwhelmed in darkness because of iniquity.
The next morning, after the usual offices, we went to receive the father
abbot’s blessing and visit the treasury of the Virgin—no longer filled
with countless jewels, but containing many touching offerings that tell
of perils past, such as soldiers’ knapsacks and swords, sailors’ hats,
innumerable plaits of hair, etc. Then we went up a winding stair, on
which, at different turnings, three white angels pointed the way, to
kiss Our Lady’s hand, according to the custom of pilgrims. Afterwards we
took a guide, and went to visit several of the hermitages, most of which
are still in ruins. That of the Virgin has been restored, and from below
looks like a small château rising straight up from the edge of the
precipice overhanging the ravine of Santa Maria. The ancient _Cueva_, or
cave, where the Madonna was found, is now converted into a pretty chapel
lighted by small stained windows. The adjoining cell has a balcony that
hangs over the abyss, commanding a lovely view.
The hermitage of San Dimas, or Dismas, is on one of the most
inaccessible peaks.
“Gistas damnatur, Dismas ad astra levatur,”
says the old Latin rhyme. This cell is now in ruins, but it was once
fortified and had a drawbridge. Col. Green entrenched himself here in
1812 with a detachment of soldiers, and cannon had to be put on a
neighboring height to dislodge him. It was in one of its chapels the
great Loyola made his general confession, and to a Frenchman. In ancient
times there was a den of robbers here, for which reason it was placed
under the protection of the Good Thief when it was converted into a
hermitage.
The hermitage of Santa Cruz is approached by a flight of one hundred and
fifty steps cut in the solid rock. It is said to be so called because
Charlemagne, when fighting against the Moors in the north of Spain,
ordered a white banner, on which was a blood-red cross, to be set up on
this peak. Here lived the Blessed Benito de Aragon for sixty-three
years. The hermits generally lived to an advanced age, to which the pure
air, as well as their simple life and regular habits, conduced. There
are about thirteen of these hermitages scattered over the mountain. That
of Santa Magdalena, one of the most picturesque, is two miles from the
monastery. They are all built on a uniform plan. There is a chapel, and
connected with it is a small house containing an antechamber, a cell
with an alcove for a bed, and a kitchen. On one side there is a little
garden with a cistern. The hermits made a vow never to leave the
mountain. On the festival of St. Benedict they received the Holy
Eucharist together and had dinner in common. On certain days in the year
they descended to the abbey, and always took part in the great
solemnities. Their director, appointed by the abbot, lived in the
hermitage of San Benito. Their rule was very austere. They observed an
almost continual fast, and their abstinence was perpetual. Fish, bread,
and the common wine of the region constituted their food. Most of their
time was passed in exercises of piety, varied by the culture of their
little gardens. They were allowed no pets of any kind, but the birds of
the air became so familiarized with their presence as to approach at a
signal and eat from their hands. This was no small pleasure, for there
are nightingales, goldfinches, robin red-breasts, larks, thrushes, etc.,
in abundance on the mountain. When ill they were removed to the
infirmary at the abbey.
The most elevated hermitage is that of San Geronimo. The way to it lies
along the edge of deep ravines, over steep cliffs, through narrow
fissures—a rough, fatiguing, enchanting excursion. There is a fresh
surprise at every instant, from the continual variety of nature. We
gathered fragrant violets, daisies, the purple heather, delicate ferns,
branches of holly and box, that grew in crevices along the
mountain-paths. We were so fatigued when we arrived that we were glad to
sit down against the crumbling walls of the hermitage, and eat our
lunch, and take a draught from the cool cistern. The cell is on the
brink of a gulf worn by torrents, into which it makes one giddy to look.
Close by rises a tall cone which is the highest point of Montserrat.
Here is a magnificent prospect of mountain, and sea, and four provinces
of Spain. On the north is Catalonia and the glorious Pyrenees; at the
east the blue Mediterranean, with the Balearic Isles in the distance; to
the south the coasts of Castillon and Valencia; and to the west Lerida
and the mountains of Aragon.
The hermit of San Geronimo was always the youngest, and as the others
died he descended to a cell less exposed to the inclemency of the
seasons, leaving his place to a new-comer. It is a solitary peak,
indeed, to live on, and yet in sight of so vast a world. We were there
at noon, when the sun was in all its splendor, lighting up the snows of
the mountain and the waves of the sea. The wind began to rise with a
solemn swell, giving out that hollow, ominous sound which De Quincey
says is “the one sole audible symbol of eternity.” The holy mountain,
shivered into numberless peaks; the abysses and chasms that separate
them, only inhabited by birds of prey; the variety of aromatic plants
that grow in the rich soil collected wherever it can find room; the
exhilarating air; the marvels of creation on every side, seemingly
“boundless as we wish our souls to be,” constitute an abode in which one
would wish for ever to live. The lines of Fray Luis de Leon in his
_Noche Serena_ might have been inspired by this very spot:
“Who that has seen these splendors roll,
And gazed on this majestic scene,
But sighed to ’scape the world’s control,
Spurning its pleasures poor and mean,
And pass the gulf that yawns between?”
Footnote 25:
Mr. Bayard Taylor.
Footnote 26:
This church is now that of San Justo y San Pastor which perpetuates
the memory of the holy image by a chapel and confraternity of Our Lady
of Montserrat, as well as by frequent pilgrimages to the mountain
itself.
Footnote 27:
The Moors called Montserrat _Gis Taus_—the watch-peaks or towers.
Footnote 28:
_History of Spanish Literature._
Footnote 29:
There was formerly an old sculpture in this palace of the counts of
Barcelona, representing the prince in the arms of his nurse, and the
hermit of Montserrat at their feet. This is now in the museum of
antiquities in the old convent of San Juan at Barcelona.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Tall, gaunt, with clear-cut and unmistakably New England features, and
feet that would not admit of Cinderella slippers, is the _tout ensemble_
which Emerson photographed upon our retina when we heard him lecture
recently. We liked his calm and self-poised manner. There was no heated
concern when the Sibylline leaves on which his lecture was written
became inextricably mixed. Paradoxically enough, his theme was “Orators
and Oratory.” His high, shrill voice, his ungainly manners, and his
utter absence of gesture make him the most unattractive of speakers. But
there was a certain “fury in his words” which fastened the attention.
The next thing to being an orator is to love oratory; and his reverence
and admiration for the eloquent in speech pass his own eloquent
expression.
Emerson’s sentences are so pointed that frequently the point is so fine
as to be lost. His eloquence is anything but Asiatic, and, indeed, its
terseness very much resembles affectation. He is called the American
Carlyle, but his proper title is the American Montaigne. There is not an
idea in Emerson that cannot be traced to the garrulous old Frenchman.
The first reading of Emerson is an era in a young man’s life. The short,
apothegmic sentences strike him with the force of proverbs. The happy
quotation and illustration seem inspirations of genius. The misty
transcendentalism has a roseate hue, in delightful contrast with the
bald practicality of Watts’ hymns and orthodox sermons. The stimulating
style, resultant from exquisite taste and the manly resolve to carry out
Pope’s advice about the “art to blot,” is high perfection when compared
with the weak and weary prosing of moral essayists. Yet there is nothing
original in Emerson. He has contributed little or nothing to the body of
ideas. Not even his poetry, which is supposed to be productive of ideas,
presents anything new or striking. The passion for nature-worship, which
Wordsworth carried to its highest expression, becomes tiresome and
unnatural in Emerson’s short metre and careless versification.
What is the source of his power? Why do New England critics rave over
him? Even J. Russell Lowell, who, with all the limitations of a narrowed
culture, ranks respectably as a literary critic, cannot find words in
which to laud the New England philosopher. _He_ finds the secret of his
influence to consist in his “wide-reaching sympathy” and his being able
to understand the use of a linchpin equally with the stellar influences.
Lowell himself is under the witchery of mere words. His cultivated mind
is drawn to the beautiful by acquired æsthetic taste. His estimate of
Dante, as published in the _New American Cyclopædia_ and afterward in
_Among my Books_, fills the thoughtful Italian student with amazement.
He is a critic of words, and is childishly led by a bright figure or
exquisite metaphor. Emerson, whilst seeming to disregard words, pays
profound attention to their collocation and effectiveness. This school
is not a school of thoughts but of words; and it is under this aspect
that we intend examining it. It is the thorough embodiment of poor
Hamlet’s objection to the book which he is reading: “Words, words,
words.” We read and read, and are charmed with Thucydidean terseness and
Solomonic wisdom; but when we begin to reflect “all the riches have
escaped out of our hands.” It is about time to expose this wily old
philosopher, who has been throwing rhetorical dust into the eyes of
several generations. He may have a noble manhood; he may be sincere; but
there can be no question that it is the _ignotum pro magnifico_ which
has been the cheap cause of his popularity.
Thomas à Kempis tells us that “words fly through the air and hurt not a
stone.” There is certainly no objection to a writer’s careful
elaboration of his style. The study of words is a part of rhetoric. But
there is a subtle and elusive application of words, outside of their
obvious and generally-used meaning, which is at once a rhetorical and a
logical vice. And as ideas fail, so words are sedulously cultivated. The
style is the man, as Buffon did _not_ say; but what of an affected
style? If there is any truth in the saying, it convicts Emerson of being
stilted, unnatural, and affected. No man thinks by jerks and starts, and
no man writes so. The fanciful and abrupt indicate either affectation or
an unbalanced intellect. All the great philosophers write calmly and
equably. The sustained strength of Plato, on whom Emerson professes to
model himself, is in direct contrast with the abruptness of Seneca, who
was a mass of conceit and hypocrisy. We have no quarrel with Mr. Emerson
on account of his studied style; only, with Sydney Smith, we object to a
discourse in which are hung out preconcerted signals for tears or
excitement. It is quite easy to form a quaint style. The success of
Charles Lamb’s imitation of Sir Thomas Browne, or of Bret Harte’s or
Thackeray’s burlesques of popular novels, shows how quickly a ready
writer can fall into a philosophical diction. Emerson attempts the
epigrammatic. Like Pythagoras, he disdains reasons. The _ipse dixit_, he
supposes, will suffice for his disciples. He contradicts himself on his
very self-satisfactory theory of “not being in any mood long.” He
admires opposite characters; but, to the credit of American good sense
be it said—good sense even in a _philosophe_—he does not “boil over,”
like Carlyle, in all sorts of oddities of hero-worship. The Yankee hard
head which he has cannot be softened by all the philosophy and poetry in
the world; and, notwithstanding his ethereal views, he drives a hard
bargain.
Can we review this philosopher to the satisfaction of our readers, or
must they peruse him themselves in order to form a vague idea of his
system?
It may be Emerson’s boast that he has no system. This restlessness under
any, even nominal, _régime_ is a characteristic of contemporaneous
philosophy outside the church. There is liberty enough in the church;
and, in fact, beyond it we see nothing but imprisonment, for nothing so
practically chains the intellect of man as irresponsible freedom. It is
like the liberty of the ocean enjoyed (?) by a mariner without sails or
compass. A Catholic philosopher can speculate as much as he pleases. The
security of the faith gives him a delightful sense of safe freedom. Like
O’Connell’s driving a coach and four through an act of Parliament, he
may go to the outermost verge of speculation. St. Thomas moves the most
outrageous fallacies, speculations, and objections, and discusses them,
too, with all the boldness of intellectual freedom. It is Dr. Marshall,
we think, who shows that all intellectual activity and freedom are
enjoyed within the spacious bounds of Catholic truth. Even in theology
there are wide differences. The Catholic intellect is supposed to be
completely bridled. We once read a powerful arraignment of our
Scriptural proofs for purgatory, written by an eminent Protestant
theologian. He must have been surprised to learn that Catholic
theologians do not attach all importance to the Scriptural argument for
purgatory. The different schools of Catholic theology argue _pro_ and
_con_. as keenly as old Dr. Johnson himself would have desired, but
without the slightest detriment to the unity of the faith. Nothing can
be falser than the received Protestant notion that we are helplessly
bound by a network of petty definitions and regulations. There are,
however, great and immovable principles which are understood to guide
and vivify the Catholic intellect. And such systemization is necessary
to all knowledge. Without it a man’s mind, like Emerson’s, wanders
comet-like, attracting attention by its vagaries, but is of no
intelligible use to the universe, and gives no light, except of a
nebulous and perplexing nature.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, of all American writers, had the true
transcendental mind, ridicules it unsparingly. His doleful experience
upon Brook Farm, when he attempted to milk a cow, may have had a
practical awakening effect upon his dreams. In a little sketch entitled
_The Celestial Railroad_, in which he whimsically carries out Bunyan’s
_Pilgrim’s Progress_, he introduces Giant Transcendentalism, who has
taken the place of Giant Pope, and Giant Despair, that interrupted
Christian’s progress to the Delectable Mountains. Giant
Transcendentalism is a huge, amorphous monster, utterly indescribable,
and speaking an unintelligible language. This language, which Emerson
strives to make articulate, we read with mingled amusement and
astonishment in the German writers. Emerson is not a member of the
_Kulturkampf_, like Carlyle. His mind does not take in their wild
rhapsodies. His essay on Goethe (in _Representative Men_) is cold and
unappreciative when compared with the Scotchman’s eulogies. We firmly
believe that no healthy intellect can feed upon Fichte, Schelling,
Hegel, or even Kant, who was the most luminous intellect of the group.
Emerson has not the stolid pertinacity of Herr Teufelsdröckh. His genius
is French. He delights in paradox and verbal gymnastics. Carlyle works
with a sort of furious patience at such a prosaic career as Frederick
the Great’s. He gets up a factitious enthusiasm about German _Herzhogs_
and _Erstfursts_. Emerson would look with dainty disdain upon his
Cyclopean work among big, dusty, musty folios and the hammering out of
shining sentences from such pig-iron.
Whence his transcendentalism? We believe that it has two elements,
nature-worship and Swedenborgianism. Of nature-worship we have very
little. Like Thomson, the author of the _Seasons_, who wrote the finest
descriptions of scenery in bed at ten o’clock in the morning, we are
frightfully indifferent to the glories of earth, sea, and sky, whilst
theoretically capable of intense rapture. This tendency to adore nature,
and this intense modern cultivation of the natural sciences, we take as
indicative of the husks of religion given by Protestantism. Man’s
intellect seeks the certain, and where he cannot find it in the
supernatural he will have recourse to the natural. The profound
attention paid to all the mechanical and natural sciences, to the
exclusion, if not denial, of supernatural religion, is the logical
result of the absurdity of Protestantism. Perhaps Emerson’s poetic
feeling has much to do with his profound veneration for fate, nature,
and necessity, which are his true god, with a very little
Swedenborgianism to modify them.
And here we meet him on his philosophy of words. A word, according to
St. Thomas, should be the _adæquatio rei et intellectus_, for a word is
really the symbol and articulation of truth. Where words convey no clear
or precise idea to the mind they are virtually false. The terminology of
Emerson falls even below Carlyle’s in obscurity. What does he mean by
the one-soul? What by compensation? What by fate and necessity? _Explica
terminos_ is the command of logic and reason; yet he maunders on in
vague and extravagant speech, using terms which it is very probable he
himself only partly or arbitrarily understands. He is not master of his
own style. His own words hurry him along. This fatal bondage to style
spoils his best thoughts. He seems to aim at striking phrases and ends
in paradox. His very attempt to strengthen and compress his sentences
weakens and obscures his meaning. The oracular style does not carry
well. He is happiest where he does not don the prophetic or poetical
mantle. When we get a glimpse of his shrewd character, he is as gay as a
lark and sharp as a fox. He muffles himself in transcendentalism, but
fails to hide his clear sense, which he cannot entirely bury or
obfuscate. It seems strange to us that such a mind could be permanently
influenced by the fantasies of Swedenborg, whom he calls a mystic, but
who, very probably, was a madman. The pure mysticism of the Catholic
Church is not devoid of what to those who have not the light to read it
may seem to wear a certain air of extravagance, which, apparently, would
be no objection to Emerson; but it is kept within strict rational bounds
by the doctrinal authority of the church. We do not suppose that Emerson
ever thought it worth his while to study the mystic or ascetic theology
of the church, though here and there in his writings he refers to the
example of saints, and quotes their sayings and doings. But it must be a
strange mental state that passively admits the wild speculations of
Swedenborgianism with its gross ideas of heaven and its fanciful
interpretations of Scripture. Besides, Emerson clearly rejects the
divinity of Jesus Christ, which is extravagantly (if we may use the
expression) set forth in Swedenborgianism, to the exclusion of the
Father and the Holy Ghost. He is, or was, a Unitarian, and his allusions
to our Blessed Lord have not even the reverence of Carlyle.
Naturalism, as used in the sense of the Vatican decrees, is the proper
word to apply to the Emersonian teaching. He has the Yankee
boastfulness, materialistic spirit, and general laudation of the natural
powers. His transcendentalism has few of the spiritual elements of
German thought. He does not believe in contemplation, but stimulates to
activity. In his earlier essays he seemed pantheistic, but his last book
(_Society and Solitude_) affirmed his doubt and implicit denial of
immortality. He appears to be a powerful personality, for he has
certainly influenced many of the finer minds of New England, and, no
doubt, he leads a noble and intellectual life. His exquisite æstheticism
takes away the grossness of the results to which his naturalistic
philosophy leads, and it is with regret that we note in him that
intellectual pride which effectually shuts his mind even to the gentlest
admonitions and enlightenments of divine grace.
It is a compliment to our rather sparse American authorship and
scholarship that England regards him as the typical American thinker and
writer. We do not so regard him ourselves, for his genius lacks the
sturdy American originality and reverent spirit. But Emerson made a very
favorable impression upon Englishmen when he visited their island, and
he wrote the best book on England (_English Traits_) that, perhaps, any
American ever produced. The quiet dignity and native independence of the
book charmed John Bull, who was tired of our snobbish eulogiums of
himself and institutions. Emerson met many literary men, who afterward
read his books and praised his style. He has the air of boldness and the
courage of his opinions. Now and then he invents a striking phrase which
sets one a-thinking. He has also in perfection the art of quoting, and
his whole composition betokens the artist and scholar.
There is a high, supersensual region, imagination, fantasy, or
soul-life, in which he loves to disport, and to which he gives the
strangest names. One grows a little ashamed of what he deems his own
unimaginativeness when he encounters our philosopher “bestriding these
lazy-pacing clouds.” He wonders at the “immensities, eternities, and
fates” that seem to exert such wondrous powers. When Emerson gets into
this strain he quickly disappears either in the clouds or in a burrow,
according to the taste and judgment of different readers. There is often
a fine feeling in these passages which we can understand yet not
express. Sublime they are not, though obscurity may be considered one of
the elements of sublimity. They are emotional. Emerson belongs rather to
the sensualistic school; at least, he ascribes abounding power to the
feelings, and, in fact, he is too heated and enthusiastic for the
coldness and calmness exacted by philosophical speculation. Many of his
essays read like violent sermons; and his worst ones are those in which
he attempts to carry out a ratiocination. He is dictatorial. He
announces but does not prove. He appears at times to be in a Pythonic
fury, and proclaims his oracles with much excitement and contortion. It
is impossible to analyze an essay, or hold on to the filmy threads by
which his thoughts hang together. It is absurd to call him a philosopher
who has neither system, clearness of statement, nor accuracy of thought.
It is a subject of gratulation that Emerson, who has been before New
England for the past half-century, has wielded a generally beneficial
influence. With his powers and opportunities he might have done
incalculable harm; but the weight of his authority has been thrown upon
the side of general morality and natural development of strength of
character. We know, of course, how little merely natural motives and
powers avail toward the building up of character; but it is not against
faith to hold that a good disposition and virtuous frame of mind may
result from purely natural causes. He has preached the purest gospel of
naturalism, shrinking at once from the bold and impious counsellings of
Goethe and from the muscularity of Carlyle. He has given us, in himself,
glimpses of a noble character, and his ideals have been lofty and pure.
New England could not have had a better apostle, humanly and naturally
speaking. Its cultivated and rational minds turned in horror and disgust
from its rigid Calvinism, its _outré_ religious frenzies, and its sordid
and prosaic life. They found a voice and interpreter in Emerson. He
marks the recoil from unscriptural, irrational, and unnatural religion.
Puritanism, always unlovely, despotic, and gloomy, began to lose its
hold even upon the second generation of the Puritans. Its life will
never be thoroughly revealed to the sunshiny Catholic mind. Perhaps its
ablest exponent was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, in the _Scarlet Letter_,
revealed its possibilities and, in fact, actualities of hideousness. We
have no fault to find with any elements of stern self-control or ascetic
character that it might develop, but its effect on the intellect was
darkening and crippling. The whole Puritan exodus from England was a
suppressed and blinding excitement. The rebound from their harsh and
unbending discipline was terrific. The frowning-down of all amusement,
the irritating espionage over private life, the high-strung religious
enthusiasm which it was necessary to simulate if not feel, the abnormal
development of ministerial power and influence, and the baleful gloom of
Calvinistic doctrine, were elements that had necessarily to be
destroyed, or they would madden a nation. They could no more endure, if
it were possible to extirpate them, than could a colony of rabid dogs.
Human nature, as created by God, tends to preserve the primal type. It
asserts its functions, its rights, its powers, and its aptitudes. After
a century, in which religious intolerance ruled New England with a rod
of iron, the long-pent-up storm burst with indescribable fury and
scattered orthodoxy to the four winds. The people breathed more freely;
the atmosphere cleared; there was a healthy interchange of sentiment.
The predominance of public-school education, combining with the
multiplication of books, developed that crude and half-formed culture
which has characterized New England to the present day. The
best-educated portion of the Union, filled with all the insolence of a
little learning, aspired to rule the nation, and succeeded. Its ideas
were zealously propagated. Wherever a Yankee settled he planted all New
England around him. The peddler did not need religion, but the
philosopher did. The culture of æsthetics engaged some; others went off
into Socinianism. The doctrines of Fourierism had charms for many, among
whom was Emerson. He longed for an ideal life. The country was not
leavened then, as now, by the solid thought and practice of Catholicity.
The mystic radiance and grace of the Adorable Sacrament did not sweetly
pervade the whole atmosphere of the land. Satan was busy and jubilant.
The strangest and most eccentric forms of religion sprang up like rank
mushroom growths, with neither beauty nor wholesome nutriment. It was
then that Emerson’s call to a high manhood seemed to have the right ring
in it. At least, it attracted and fixed the wandering attention of New
England. For many a winter he lectured, speaking great words, the heroic
wisdom of old Plutarch and the practical sense and insight of Montaigne.
His fine scholarship won the scholars and his homely maxims charmed the
farmers. It was well that in that dreary, chaotic period there was a
brave and bold speaker who did not entirely despair of humanity, even
when he and his companions had broken adrift from their anchorage in the
rotten and worn-out systems of Protestant theology.
The grace of the faith has thus far escaped the Concord philosopher, but
who shall speak of the ways of God? The theologian will solve you
quickly all questions in his noble science, except questions upon the
tract of grace. There he hesitates, for the most intimate and personal
communications of God with the soul take place in the mystery of grace.
Every man has his own _tractatus de gratia_ written upon his own heart
in the all-beautiful handwriting of God, sealing us, as St. Paul says,
and writing upon us the mark that distinguishes us as his beloved. It is
the miserable consequence of the New England system of early education,
which inheres in a man’s very spirit, that it perversely misrepresents
the Catholic Church. It is simply astounding how little Americans know
about our divine faith. They have never deemed it worth their while to
examine it, taking it for granted that all that is said against it is
true. We remember, as a boy, reading Peter Parley’s histories, which
were very popular in New England, and not a page was free from some
misrepresentation of the church. Emerson classes “Romanism” with a
half-dozen absurd theories; which goes to show that he has not even
reached that point of culture which, according to its advocates,
understands and embraces all the great creeds of humanity, in their best
and most universal truth.
Mr. Emerson is now in the sere and yellow leaf, and it is to be feared
that his intellectual pride, and that nauseating flattery which
weak-minded people assiduously pay to men of great intellectual
attainments, have left in him a habit of vanity which is fatal to truth.
We have known very able men who were prevented from seeing the truth of
Catholicity by the dense clouds of incense that their admirers
continually wafted before their shrines. The fulness of divine faith
which he lacks, and for which he seems mournfully to cry out, is in the
happy possession of the humblest child of the Catholic religion; not, as
he would think, merely instinctive or the result of education, but
living and logical, the gift and grace of the Holy Ghost. Emerson is no
theologian, though once a Protestant minister, which fact, however,
would not argue much for his theology. But he has a heroic and poetic
mind whose native strength manifests itself even in the very eccentric
orbit through which it passes.
PAPAL ELECTIONS.
III.
In view of the sad affliction which has so recently befallen the church
in the demise of Pope Pius IX.—now of happy memory—we shall preface this
article on papal elections with a brief account of the ceremonies that
follow upon the death of a Sovereign Pontiff.
As soon as the pope has breathed his last amidst the consolations of
religion, and after making his profession of faith in presence of the
cardinal grand-penitentiary—who usually administers the last
sacraments—and of the more intimate members of his court, the
cardinal-chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, accompanied and assisted
by the right reverend clerks of the apostolic chamber, takes possession
of the palace and causes a careful inventory to be made of everything
that is found in the papal apartments.[30] He then proceeds to the
chamber of death, in which the pope still lies, and, viewing the body,
assures himself, and instructs a notary to certify to the fact, that he
is really dead. He also receives from the grand chamberlain of the
court—_Monsignor Maestro di Camera_—a purse containing the Fisherman’s
ring which His Holiness had used in life. The cardinal, who, by virtue
of his office of chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, has become the
executive of the government, sends an order to the senator of Rome, who
is always a layman and member of one of the great patrician families, to
have the large bell of the Capitol tower tolled, at which lugubrious
signal the bells of all the churches throughout the city are sounded.
Twenty-four hours after death the body of the pope is embalmed, and lies
in state, dressed in the ordinary or domestic costume, upon a bed
covered with cloth of crimson and gold, the pious offices of washing and
dressing the body being performed by the penitentiaries or confessors of
the Vatican basilica, who are always Minor Conventuals of the Franciscan
Order. It is next removed to the Sistine Chapel, where it is laid out,
clothed in the pontifical vestments, on a couch surrounded with burning
tapers and watched by a detachment of the Swiss Guard. On the following
day the cardinals and chapter of St. Peter assemble in the Sistine and
accompany the transport of the body to the chapel of the Blessed
Sacrament in the Vatican basilica, where it remains exposed for three
days, the feet protruding a little through an opening in the iron
railing which closes the chapel, that the faithful may approach
and kiss the embroidered slipper. The nine days of funeral
services—_Novendialia_—which the Roman ceremonial prescribes for the
pope now begin. These are his public obsequies. For the first six days
the cardinals and prelates of the court and Holy See assemble daily in
the choir chapel of the canons of St. Peter, where, the Office for the
Dead being chanted, a cardinal says Mass; but during the remaining three
days the services are performed around an elevated and magnificent
catafalque which in the meanwhile has been silently erected in the great
nave of the basilica. This structure is a perfect work of art in its
way, every part of it being carefully designed with relation to its
solemn purpose, and in harmony of form and proportions with the vast
edifice in which it is reared. It is illustrated by Latin inscriptions
and by paintings of the most remarkable scenes of the late pontificate,
and adorned with allegorical statues. A detachment of the Noble Guard
stands there motionless as though carved in stone. Over the whole is
suspended a life-size portrait of the pope. A thousand candles of yellow
wax and twenty enormous torches in golden candelabra burn day and night
around it. On each of these three days five cardinals in turn give the
grand absolutions, and on the ninth day a funeral oration is pronounced
by some one—often a bishop, or always at least a prelate of distinction
whom the Sacred College has chosen for the occasion. In former days the
cardinal nephew or relative of the deceased had the privilege, often of
great importance for the future reputation of the pontiff and the
present splendor of his family, raised to princely rank, of selecting
the envied orator. Ere this, however, the final dispositions of the
pope’s body have been made. On the evening of the third day, the public
having been excluded from the basilica, the cardinal-chamberlain,
cardinals created by the late pope, clerks of the chamber and chapter of
St. Peter, headed by monsignor the vicar—who is always an archbishop _in
partibus_—vested in pontificals, assemble in the chapel of the Blessed
Sacrament, in which the pope still lies in state. The body is then
reverently enfolded in the gold and crimson cover of the couch, and
taken up to be laid in a cypress-wood coffin, into which are also put
three red purses containing medals of gold, silver, and bronze, as many
of each sort as there were years of the pontificate, bearing the pope’s
effigy on one side, and a design commemorative of some act of his
temporal or spiritual government on the other. If there should be a
relative of the late pope among the cardinals, he covers the face with a
white linen veil, otherwise this last office of respect is performed by
the major-domo. When the coffin has been closed it is placed inside of a
leaden case, which is immediately soldered and sealed, while the metal
is hot, with the arms of the cardinal-chamberlain and major-domo. A
brief inscription is cut at once on the face of this metal case, giving
simply the name, years of his reign, and date of death. The coffin and
case are now enclosed in a plain wooden box, which is covered with a red
pall ornamented with golden fringes and an embroidered cross, and
carried in sad procession to the uniform temporary resting-place which
every pope occupies in turn in St. Peter’s, in a simple sarcophagus of
marbled stucco which is set into the wall at some distance above and
slightly overhanging the floor of the church, on the left-hand side of
the entrance to the choir chapel. A painter is at hand to trace the name
of the pope and the Latin initials of the words High Pontiff—_Pius IX.,
P.M._ Before the pope’s body is taken up from the chapel of the Blessed
Sacrament, some workmen, under the direction of the prelates and
officers of the congregation for the supervision of St.
Peter’s—_Reverenda Fabrica di San Pietro_—have broken in the sarcophagus
at the top and removed its contents (which in this case were those of
Gregory XVI., who had been there since 1846) to the crypt under the
basilica until consigned to the tomb prepared, but not always in St.
Peter’s, either by the pope himself before his death[31] or by his
family or by the cardinals of his creation, and the new claimant for
repose takes his place there.
During the nine days that the obsequies of the pope continue the
cardinals assemble every morning in the sacristy of St. Peter’s to
arrange all matters of government for the States of the Church and the
details of the approaching conclave. These meetings are called general
congregations. At them the bulls and ordinances relating to papal
elections are read, and the cardinals swear to observe them; the
Fisherman’s ring and the large metal seal used for bulls are broken by
the first master of ceremonies; two orators are chosen, one for the
funeral oration and the other for the conclave; all briefs and memorials
not finally acted upon are consigned to a clerk of the chamber, etc.,
etc. On the tenth day the cardinals assemble in the forenoon in the
choir chapel of St. Peter’s, where the dean of the Sacred College
pontificates at a votive Mass of the Holy Ghost, after which the orator
of the conclave—who, if a bishop, wears amice, cope, and mitre—is
introduced into the chapel, and, after making the proper reverences,
ascends a decorated pulpit and holds forth on the subject of electing an
excellent pontiff: the pope is dead; long live the pope; the Papacy
never dies![32]
After the sermon and the singing by the papal choir of the first strophe
of the hymn _Veni Creator_, the cardinals ascend in procession to the
Pauline Chapel in the Vatican palace, where the dean recites aloud
before the altar the prayer _Deus qui corda fidelium_, and afterwards
addresses his brethren on the great business which they are about to
engage in, exhorting them to lay aside all human motives and perform
their duty without fear or favor of any man. All the persons who are to
remain in conclave, as the prelates, custodians, conclavists or
attendants on the cardinals, physicians, barbers, servants, are passed
in review, and take an oath not to speak even among themselves of
matters concerning the election. Every avenue leading into the conclave,
except the eight loop-holes or windows, as mentioned in a former
article, are carefully closed by masons; one door, however, is left
standing to admit any late-coming cardinal, or let out any one expelled
from, or for whatever cause obliged to leave, the conclave. It is locked
on the outside by the prince-marshal, and on the inside by the
cardinal-chamberlain, both of whom retain the key of their own side. The
lock is so combined that it requires both keys to open the door. On the
following day the cardinal-dean says a votive Mass _de Spiritu Sancto_,
at which all the cardinals in stoles receive Holy Communion from his
hands.... _Fervet opus_....
* * * * *
As soon as the cardinal upon whom the requisite two-thirds of all the
votes cast have centred consents to his election, he becomes pope. This
consent is absolutely necessary, and, although the Sacred College
threatened Innocent II. (Papareschi, 1130-1143) with excommunication if
he did not accept,[33] it is now admitted that no one can be constrained
to take upon himself such a burden as the Sovereign Pontificate.
Thirty-eight popes, from St. Cornelius, in 254, to Benedict XIII., in
1724, are recorded in history as having positively refused to accept the
election, although they were afterwards induced by various motives,
however much against their own inclinations, to ratify it. As soon as he
has answered in the affirmative to the question of the cardinal-dean,
proposed in the following very ancient formula: _Acceptasne electionem
de te canonicè factam in Summum Pontificem?_ the first master of
ceremonies, turning to certain persons around him, calls upon them in an
audible voice to bear witness to the fact.[34] The new pope then retires
and is dressed in the ordinary or domestic costume of the Holy Father,
three suits of which, of different sizes, are ready made, and disposed
in the dressing-room for the elect to choose from. It consists of white
stockings, cassock and sash with gold tassels, white collar and
skull-cap, red mozzetta, stole, and shoes. He then takes his seat on a
throne and receives the first homage—_adoratio prima_—of the cardinals,
who, kneeling before him, kiss his foot and afterwards his hand, and,
standing, receive from him the kiss of peace on the cheek. We see, from
the ceremonial composed in the thirteenth century by Cardinal Savelli,
that the present custom is not very different from the mediæval one;
for, speaking of the pope’s election, he says: _Quo facto ab episcopis
cardinalibus ad sedem ducitur post altare, et in ea, ut dignum est,
collocatur; in qua dum sedet electus recipit omnes episcopos cardinales,
et quos sibi placuerit ad pedes, postmodum ad osculum pacis._ The custom
of kissing the pope’s foot is so ancient that no certain date can be
assigned for its introduction. It very probably began in the time of St.
Peter himself, to whom the faithful gave this mark of profound
reverence, which they have continued towards all his successors—always,
however, having been instructed to do so with an eye to God, of whom the
pope is vicar. In which connection most beautiful was the answer of Leo
X. to Francis I. of France, who, as Rinaldi relates (_Annal. Eccles._,
an. 1487, num. 30), having gone to Bologna, humbly knelt before him and
kissed his foot, _se lætissimum dicens, quod videret facie ad faciem
Pontificem Vicarium Christi Jesu_. “Thanks,” said Leo, “but refer all
this to God himself”—_Omnia hæc in Deum transferens, et omnia Deo
tribuens_. To make this _relative_ worship more apparent a cross has
always been embroidered on the shoes since the pontificate of that most
humble pope, St. Gregory the Great, in the year 590. It is curious to
read of the objection made to this custom by Basil, Tzar of Muscovy, to
Father Anthony Possevinus, S.J., who was sent to Russia on a religious
and diplomatic mission by Gregory XIII. in the sixteenth century. His
eloquent defence of the custom, appealing, too, to prophecy,[35] is
found in the printed account of his embassy (_Moscovia_, Cologne, 1587,
in fol.)
When the pope is dressed in the pontifical costume he receives on his
finger a new Fisherman’s ring, which he immediately removes and hands to
one of the masters of ceremonies to have engraved upon it the name which
he has assumed. The popes have three special rings for their use. The
first is generally a rather plain gold one with an intaglio or a cameo
ornament; this is called the papal ring. The second one, called the
pontifical ring, because used only when the pope pontificates or
officiates at grand ceremonies, is an exceedingly precious one. The one
worn on these occasions by Pius IX., and which his successor will
doubtless also use, was made during the reign of Pius VII., whose name
is cut on the inside. It is of the purest gold, of remarkably fine
workmanship, set with a very large oblong diamond. It cost thirty
thousand francs (about $6,000), and has a contrivance on the inside by
which it can be made larger or smaller to fit the wearer’s finger.
(Barraud, _Des Bagues à toutes les Époques_. Paris, 1864.) The
Fisherman’s ring, which is so called because it has a figure of St.
Peter in a bark throwing his net into the sea (Matthew iv. 18, 19), is a
plain gold ring with an oval face, bearing the name of the reigning pope
engraved around and above the figure of the apostle, thus: _Leo XIII.,
Pont. Max_. On the inside are cut the names of the engraver and of the
major-domo. The ring weighs an ounce and a half. It is the official seal
of the popes, but, although the first among the rings, it is only the
second in the class of seals, since it serves as the privy seal or papal
signet for apostolic briefs and matters of lesser consequence, whereas
the great seal of the Holy See is used to stamp the heads of SS. Peter
and Paul in lead, and sometimes, but rarely, in gold, on papal bulls.
This ring was at first a private and not an official one, as we learn
from a letter written at Perugia on March 7, 1265, by Clement IV. to his
nephew Peter Le Gros, in which he says that he writes to him and to his
other relatives, not _sub bulla, sed sub piscatoris sigillo, quo Romani
Pontifices in suis secretis utuntur_. From this it would appear that
such a ring was already in well-known use, but it cannot be determined
at what period it was introduced, or precisely when it became official,
although it is certain that it was given this character in the fifteenth
century; but another hundred years passed before it became customary to
mention its use in every document on which the seal was impressed by the
now familiar expression, “Given under the Fisherman’s ring,” which is
first met with in the manner of a curial formula in a brief given by
Nicholas V. on the 15th of April, 1448: _Datum Romæ, apud Sanctum
Petrum, sub annulo Piscatoris, die xv. Aprilis, MCCCCXLVIII.,
pontificatus nostri II._[36]
Briefs are no more sealed with the _original_ ring, which is always in
the keeping of the pope’s grand chamberlain, who, as we have said,
delivers it to the cardinal-camerlengo on the pope’s decease, to be
broken in the first general congregation preliminary to the conclave,
according to a custom dating from the death of Leo X. A fac-simile is
preserved in the _Secretaria de’ Brevi_ which serves in its stead; but
since June, 1842, red sealing-wax, because too brittle and effaceable,
is no longer used, but in its place a thick red ink or pigment is
employed. _Briefs_ are pontifical writs or diplomas written on thin,
soft parchment and more _abbreviated_ than bulls, and treating of
matters of less importance, requiring, therefore, briefer
consideration[37]—whence, perhaps, they derive their distinctive name,
although it has been suggested that the word comes from the German
_Brief_, a letter, and was introduced into Rome from the imperial court
during the middle ages. They are signed by the cardinal secretary of
briefs, and differ from bulls in their manner of dating and their forms
of beginning and ending. Their heading always contains the name of the
reigning pope and the venerable formula, _Salutem et apostolicam
benedictionem_, which was first used by Pope John V. in the year 685.
When the pope sends a brief to a person who is not baptized he
substitutes for this form the other one, _Lumen divinæ gratiæ_. Both
briefs and bulls are always dated from the basilica nearest to which the
pope resides at the time; thus, we understand why the brief erecting the
diocese of Baltimore was dated (6th of November, 1789) from St. Mary
Major’s, although Pius VI. was then living at the Quirinal palace.
Another of the very ancient and venerable forms used by the popes is
_Servus servorum Dei_—Servant of the servants of God. It is a title
first assumed by St. Gregory the Great in the sixth century as a hint to
the arrogant patriarch of Constantinople, John the Faster, who had taken
the designation of _universal bishop_, which belongs only to the Roman
Pontiff: “Whoever will be first among you shall be servant of all” (Mark
x. 44).
As soon as the cardinal who has been elected gives his assent to the
election, the cardinal-dean asks him what name he would wish to take.
This custom of assuming a new name is very old, and has been much
disputed about by writers on papal matters. The great Baronius has
expressed the opinion in his _Ecclesiastical Annals_ that John XII., who
was previously called Octavian, was the first to make the change, which
he did probably out of regard for his uncle, who was Pope John XI.
Cardinal Borgia has observed in this connection, as showing that the
change of name was yet a singularity, that the pope used to sign himself
_Octavian_ in matters relating to his temporal, and _John_ in those
relating to his spiritual, government. Martinus Polonus started a fable
that Sergius II., elected in 844, was the one who first changed his
name, because known by the inelegant appellation of Pigsnout—_Bocca di
Porco_; but the truth is, as Muratori says in one of his dissertations
on Italian antiquities (_Antiquitatum Italic._, tom. iii. dissert. xli.
p. 764), that Sergius IV. (1009-1012), and not Sergius II., had this
only for a surname or sobriquet, as was commonly given in that age at
Rome, but was baptized Peter. He changed his name, indeed, according to
the custom then becoming established as a rule, but, as Baronius
observes, not _ob turpitudinem nominis (Os porci), sed reverentiæ causa:
cum enim ille_ PETRUS _vocaretur, indignum putavit eodem se vocari
nomine, quo Christus primum ejus sedis Pontificem, Principem
Apostolorum, ex Simone Petrum nominaverat_. It has long been usual for
the new pope to take the name of the pope who made him cardinal. There
have been, however, several exceptions even in these later times. In
some special cases, as in the signature to the originals of bulls, the
pope retains his original Christian name, but, like all sovereigns, he
omits his family name in every case. There have also been exceptions to
this change, and both Adrian VI. and Marcellus II. kept their own
names—the only two, however, who have done so in over eight hundred
years.
The word pope—in Latin _Papa_, and by initials _PP._—was once common to
all bishops, and even to simple priests and clerics; but when certain
schismatics of the eleventh century began to use it in a sense opposed
to the supreme fatherhood of the Roman Pontiffs over all the faithful,
clergy as well as people, it was reserved as a title of honor to the
bishops of Rome exclusively. Cardinal Baronius says, in a note to the
Roman Martyrology, that St. Gregory VII. held a synod in Rome against
the schismatics in the year 1073, in which it was decreed “_inter alia
plura, ut _PAPÆ_ Nomen unicum esset in universo orbe Christiano, nec
liceret alicui seipsum, vel alium eo nomine appellare_.”[38] Another
singularity about one of the pope’s titles deserves to be noted. The
word _Dominus_ in Latin—lord—was originally used only of Almighty God,
and a contracted form—_Domnus_—was employed in speaking of saints,
bishops, and persons of consideration; but in course of time, although a
vestige of the once universal custom still lingers in the _Jube Domne
benedicere_ of the Office recited in choir, the term _Domnus_ came to be
specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff, for whom we pray in the litany
as _Domnum Apostolicum_. Cancellieri, who, as usual, has sought out an
abstruse subject, gives everything that can be said upon the matter in
his _Lettera sopra l’Origine Delle Parole Dominus e Domnus e Del Titolo
Don che Suol Darsi ai Sacerdoti ai Monaci ed a Molti Regolari_. In Roma,
MDCCCVIII.
Footnote 30:
The apostolic chamber, called in Rome the _Reverenda Camera
Apostolica_, dates from the pontificate of Leo the Great, who
constructed in the year 440 a small but elegant suite of chambers
which served as a sanctuary for the bodies of the apostles SS. Peter
and Paul until proper crypts, called _Confessions_, had been prepared
for them beneath the high altars of their respective basilicas at the
Vatican and on the Ostian Way. When these relics had been deposited in
their present resting-places, the Leonine sanctuary was used, as a
strong and venerable place, to contain the public treasury of the Holy
See, which was given into the safe-keeping of certain officials called
_camerarii_. Their successors are the present _chierici di camera_,
who are eight in number and form one of the great prelatic colleges of
Rome. The present institution was reorganized by Pope Urban V. in the
fourteenth century. The cardinal-chamberlain is _ex officio_ its head,
and it acts as a board of control over the finances.
Footnote 31:
It is known to all visitors to Rome that Pius IX. prepared a beautiful
tomb for himself before the high altar of St. Mary Major’s.
Footnote 32:
Roman bibliophilists anxious to possess—what is rare indeed—a complete
set (_una biblioteca_, as the Italians say) of the funeral orations
pronounced over the popes, and of the hortatory discourses addressed
to the Sacred College about to enter conclave, eagerly contend at
book-sales for these pamphlets, which are always in the choicest Latin
of the age, and sometimes have a sentimental value on account of the
subsequent fortunes, or misfortunes, of their authors. They are much
more than mere literary curiosities for book-worms to feed upon. The
form of the title-page, excepting of course in proper names and dates,
is about the same in all; for instance, _Oratio habita ad Collegium
Cardinalium in funere Innocentii IX., Pont. Max., vi. Id. Januarii,
1592_: Romæ, 1592, in 4to: by Father Giustiniani, a famous Jesuit; and
_Oratio habita in Basilica SS. Apostolorum Petri et Pauli pridie
Kalend. Aprilis, 1721, ad Emos. et Rmos. cardinales conclave
ingressuros pro Summo Pontifice eligendo_: Romæ, ex Typographia
Vaticana, 1721, in 4to: by Camillo de Mari, Bishop of Aria.
Footnote 33:
Arnulfus of Seez apud Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, tom.
iii. p. 429, says that on this occasion the cardinals told the elect
of their choice: _Si acquiescis, exhibemus obsequium; si recusas,
exigimus de inobedientia pœnam_; and on his still hesitating _parabant
excommunicationis præferre sententiam_.
Footnote 34:
This notarial function which the first master of ceremonies here
performs is the reason why he is always an apostolic prothonotary; but
his title to this prelatic rank rests entirely on _custom_, since he
is not appointed by papal brief, as others are. It is by a similar
analogy, although in matters theological, that the master of the
Sacred Palace, who is always a Dominican, ranks with the auditors of
the _Rota_.
Footnote 35:
“Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nurses: they shall
worship thee with their face toward the earth, and they shall lick up
the dust of thy feet.”—Isaias xlix. 23, which St. Jerome interprets of
the apostles; but in Peter’s successors all honors and prerogatives
continue. A very learned writer of the last century, Gaetano Cenni,
has gone profoundly into the historical and antiquarian part of this
singular and most venerable custom, in his dissertation _Sul Bacio De’
Piedi Del Romano Pontefice_, which is the thirty-fourth of the third
volume of Zaccaria’s great collection of dissertations on subjects of
ecclesiastical history—_Raccolta Di Dissertazioni Di Storia
Ecclesiastica_.... Per cura Di Francesco Antonio Zaccaria, etc.
Seconda edizione. Four vols. Rome, 1841.
Footnote 36:
The celebrated antiquarian Cancellieri has written with his usual
diffuseness and erudition on this matter in a little work, _Notizie
sopra l’Origine e l’uso dell’ Anello Pescatorio_, etc., etc.,
published at Rome in 1823.
Footnote 37:
Briefs, says the learned Benedictine Mabillon, _De Re Diplomaticâ_
(lib. ii. cap. xiv.), _brevi via, seu manu, remotis omnibus ambagibus,
absolvuntur; quippe quæ a Pontifice, ut plurimum sponte et absque rei
longa discussione conficiuntur_.
Footnote 38:
We had the good fortune once to pick up at a book-sale in Rome for a
few cents a rare and curious little book on this topic, which gives
the very marrow of the subject in a very agreeable form: _Lettera di
A. L. Nuzzi, Prelato Domestico Del Sommo Pontefice Sull’ Origine ed
Uso Del Nome PAPA_. Padova, 1 Settembre, MDCCXCVIII.
PALM SUNDAY.
Claiming the hill-crowned city as its own,
The gray cathedral rears its rough-hewn front
Like ancient fortress built to bear the brunt
Of leaguering ram on e’er unyielding stone;
Signing with holy cross the land it claims,
Its walls protecting seek the infinite blue
Grown, softly falling painted window through,
High heaven brought down to shape life’s noblest aims.
In this strong fortress, safe from those salt waves
Of doubt that curve and break and evermore repeat
The weary lesson of life incomplete,
Moaning and groping in unsunny caves,
Beating against a rock that will not break,
Flinging their bitter anger far on high,
Seeking to chill the tender flowers that lie
Close nestled to the rock for its warmth’s sake,
I kept sad feast one doubting April day,
When robins’ song had drifted from the hills,
When buds were bursting, and the golden bells
Of town-nursed bloom were ringing ill away.
With folded hands St. Helen’s glance beneath,
I trod in thought the highway of the cross—
Jerusalem’s triumph blending with her loss,
The palm-bough changing for the thorny wreath.
And clasped the folded hands about the bough
Of northern hemlock that as palm I bore,
Listening the words of sorrow chanted o’er—
The old evangel’s solemn voice of woe;
O wondrous power of a passing breath!
O tearful sweetness of that voice of God
Breaking amid the clamor of the crowd
Of Jews and soldiers hastening him to death!
Often the chant bad stirred my soul before
In humbler church, till had familiar grown
Almost each word and every varying tone
That with each added year a new grace wore;
But never grace so pitiful as this
That filled the arches with all deep distress,
With passionate sense of human guiltiness—
Our God sore bruised for our infirmities!
Oh! blinding sweet the vision that awoke
Within my soul to fill my eyes with tears!
To-day was it, not in those long-past years,
That Heart divine, with love unbounded, broke.
Oh! blinding sweet in its strange melody
The voice that, rending heart, called from the cross,
In that dark hour of life’s bitterest loss,
“_Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani!_”
O strong gray walls! blessed was that little space
Ye left our souls with Christ on Calvary,
Where hearts might weep their living cruelty,
In their own depths Jerusalem’s lesson trace.
O cross-boughed branch of spicy northern spruce
That witness bore on that dim April day
To faith no waves of doubt shall wash away,
To love’s dear chains no envious state shall loose,
Blessing was ours who bore thee that gray morn
Through all the heedless glances of the street,
Through longing looks that knew thy meaning sweet,
And spoken words of unbelieving scorn.
Alas! for those, of eyes and heart both blind,
Who in such symbol find but empty rite,
Who, dazzled by a false and flickering light,
See not the cross wherewith the palm is signed.
CATHEDRAL OF THE HOLY CROSS, BOSTON, MASS.
THE LATE Mr. T. W. M. MARSHALL.[39]
On the 14th of December, 1877, died, at the age of sixty-two years and a
half, Mr. T. W. M. Marshall. He had borne a long and trying illness of
many months with invariable patience and resignation, and gave up his
soul to his Maker and Redeemer after a most Christian preparation. He
has well deserved that some more explicit notice of his life and what he
did in it should be made public than what has hitherto, so far as we
know, been given in any native or American source of information. The
following slight account is drawn up by one who has known him well for
nearly a quarter of a century.
Mr. Marshall was born the 19th of June, 1815; was educated under Dr.
Burnup at Greenwich and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained
in the Anglican Church by the bishop of Salisbury in 1842. In 1844 he
published his _Notes on the Episcopal Polity of the Church of England_,
for which he received the thanks of the then archbishop of Canterbury,
Dr. Howley. This was the prelate, it may be remarked, to whom the
writers of the famous _Tracts for the Times_ dedicated their translation
of what they called “this library of ancient bishops, Fathers, doctors,
martyrs, confessors of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church,” with, as they
added, “his grace’s permission, in token of reverence for his person and
sacred office, and of gratitude for his episcopal kindness.” We mention
this, because thanks from such a man in such an office for a work on the
episcopal polity of the Church of England in 1844, when that polity was
not a little canvassed, was an omen of good things to come for the
writer, who was then nestled in a very small and poor cure among the
Wiltshire downs, once a house of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
These prospects were blighted for ever by Mr. Marshall’s conversion in
the following year, 1845. Indeed, he seems in that year to have
committed two acts, one blameless and the other highly to be commended,
which yet in their conjunction foreboded a life of no small anxiety in
temporal matters; we mean to say that his marriage was followed in a few
months by his reception into the church at Oscott by Dr. Wiseman. Thus
the nest in the southern hills was lost just as he wanted its shelter
most, and instead of the future protection of him whom the Tractarian
dedication called “The most reverend Father in God, Lord Archbishop of
Canterbury, Primate of all England”—a patron, it may be added, of one
hundred and seventy livings, besides canonries and options—Mr. Marshall,
at the age of thirty, with a young wife, commenced a new life without a
profession and without prospect, and with fifty pounds in his pocket. It
may be said Mr. Marshall was true all his life long to the spirit which
he thus showed at the first crisis of it.
It may be conjectured that the studies made by Mr. Marshall in composing
his work on the episcopal polity of the Church of England predisposed
his mind in the following year to seek admission into that world-wide
community over which presides the head and source of the episcopate.
It was hardly possible that a clear and conservative and eminently
logical mind such as that with which he was naturally endowed could have
its attention fixed for so long a time as is requisite to compose a
well-thought-out work upon the relations of the bishops to each other
throughout the world, without coming to the conclusion that the Anglican
episcopate rests on no definite basis whatever; without noticing that no
one of its defenders has ever yet been able to state on what positive
basis it claimed to stand. It exists, in fact, by reviling the Church of
Rome, being itself nothing else but a fragment of Western Christendom
severed by Tudor lust and despotism from the _compages_ of Christian
unity to which it once belonged, and dragging on an existence in
subjection to the state which eminently represents in ecclesiastical
matters the insular pride and independence of the English mind. Its root
is national, not Catholic; its soil human, not celestial; and for a
thinking mind, such as Mr. Marshall’s, to examine its position could
lead but to one result when it was accompanied by such honesty of
purpose as, by the grace of God, Mr. Marshall possessed and manifested.
For let none misconstrue what Mr. Marshall was doing. To give up at
thirty years of age, just married, with no private fortune, the
profession of clergyman in the Church of England to become a Catholic
layman, was an act not only of remarkable honesty but of superhuman
courage. At thirty human life presents a long avenue of years. The
prospect of traversing these in poverty and obscurity, with a young wife
by your side, when the reasonable hope of honor and affluence has just
been presented, is one which perhaps it requires greater trust in God,
greater fortitude to meet, nay, to choose, than those, for instance,
exhibited who heard themselves ordered to summary execution by the
“abagi jussit” of the refined and philosophic Roman gentleman, Pliny the
Younger, for having addressed their hymns in the early morning to Christ
their God.
Anything, humanly speaking, more absolutely hopeless than Mr. Marshall’s
position, after taking that step in 1845, as a married ex-clergyman
convert, cannot be conceived. At that time private education offered no
emolument, for pupils were entirely in the hands of institutions taught
by priests or of individual priests; and as even now the services of a
priest, well educated and intellectually gifted, are thought among
Catholics in England to be adequately remunerated by the salary of one
hundred pounds a year, what chance had a married convert to pick a
living out of that mode of employing his brains? Much more was
writing—that is to say, for Catholic objects—unremunerative. Brains are
still at a fearful discount among Catholics in England. They are not
paid as much as the lowest unskilled labor; and if this is true in 1878,
judge how it was true in 1845. The writer believes that it was the very
last time he saw Mr. Marshall when he complained bitterly of the
inadequate remuneration that he received for writing. Then, further, for
any occupation in the outside world, to be an ex-clergyman Catholic
convert was the worst possible recommendation. The writer remembers a
most distinguished author in Anglican history quitting the railway
carriage in which he was sitting, in order not to converse with one who
had lately deserted what was called “the church of his baptism”—as if
Christian baptism was insular in its nature, and was a peculiar
possession belonging to the “penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.” Such
is the lot which, for a whole generation since Mr. Marshall’s conversion
in 1845, he and a host of others have voluntarily encountered. Mr.
Marshall may be taken as a typical instance of the class. He may be
spoken of freely now. He has run his course; he has kept the faith; he
knows now fully, as none of us yet know, the wisdom of such a course; as
he knew once, as none of us can more fully feel, the folly of such a
course in the estimation of the world.
Most unexpectedly, however, and in a way that he could not the least
have foreseen, this common lot of indigence and inaction, in which the
_work_ of life and the _head_ which supports it are together taken away
in the case of a married clergyman-convert, was terminated about three
years after by his appointment as an inspector of schools in the
government system of primary education. The Catholics were entering into
that system in 1847, and, as a consequence of the rules and conditions
obtained by the Catholic poor-school committee with reference to such
entry, the appointment of a Catholic to the office of inspector by the
government, whose nomination, however, was to be approved by the
committee as representing the Catholic body, became necessary. The first
so appointed was Mr. Marshall, and he held the office from 1848 to 1860.
There cannot be a doubt that the functions which he there had to
discharge were in certain respects functions which required great
delicacy of touch. It was not without many suspicions that Catholic
clergy admitted an officer of the government into their schools. That
those who had been in old times forbidden every act of their ministry,
pursued by ferocious spies of the state into their most secret
lurking-holes, unearthed in order to be tortured by the race of Cecils
and Walsinghams, and then hanged, drawn, and quartered—this in the first
stage of the state’s enmity; then, in the second, who had been
contemptuously ignored, and left to struggle with every trial of
poverty, and to collect their scattered sheep in holes and corners—that
the descendants and inheritors of such men, in whom the royal blood of
Peter was flowing, should suspect at first the servants of a government
which had done such things in hatred of Peter’s royal blood, this was
most natural. We are convinced that during the five years in which Mr.
Marshall was the only Catholic inspector of primary schools, he did much
by courtesy, and yet more by his character as an uncompromising
Catholic, to do away with this suspicion, and to lead an ever-increasing
number of Catholic primary schools to accept inspection. By this conduct
he indirectly raised greatly their standard of efficiency in secular
instruction; and he commenced that union of the spiritual and the
secular authority in the work of education which is now bearing great
fruit, and which is incomparably fairer to the dearest interests of
Catholics than the system existing in the primary schools of the United
States. We think, indeed, that Mr. Marshall, in his anxiety to
conciliate, may sometimes have pushed the limits of indulgence somewhat
too far. It is honorable to him that he never spared in his reports to
government the open commendation of religious teachers. Some of those
reports contain the most enthusiastic praise of Catholic teaching which
we remember to have read. And they were reports of a government
official.
His occupation of inspector ceased in 1860; and being fully conversant
with the circumstances which led to his quitting a post of honor and
trust, which was then producing to him an income of eight hundred pounds
a year, we must express our strong feeling that it was a great error of
judgment on his part which led him so to act that it was possible to
deprive him of this office. He was thus thrown back into all those
difficulties of maintenance which he had so bravely encountered fifteen
years before. It is true that Mr. Marshall was in fibre an author; the
elementary character of the education he had to control, and the
constant iteration of its petty details, besides the exclusion from his
range of inspection of all those religious instructions in which he
would naturally have taken a great interest—these things galled him. He
fled for refuge to the more interesting subject of “Christian Missions,”
on which he composed the well-known work published by him at Brussels in
1862, but which, in spite of the vast number of volumes which it
required him to look over for his facts, he managed to compose before he
quitted the inspectorship. If he could have had the place of a professor
in some great Catholic institution, which would have afforded him a
moderate income and a fitting subject on which he could have thrown the
powers of his most active and apprehensive mind, that would have been to
him an earthly elysium. But elysiums are not of the earth, at least not
of nineteenth-century earth to Catholics in England. He gave up eight
hundred pounds a year to be for the rest of his life a vigorous, witty,
sarcastic, and trenchant Catholic champion and a wanderer on the face of
the earth. From henceforth he was of those who have “no abiding city.”
If he began this second stadium of his life with an act of imprudence
which religion did not call for, which, in our individual judgment, we
think it did not even justify, he traversed those seventeen years of
bitter trial with the spirit of a confessor, and he ended them with the
death of an humble, contrite, earnest Christian. He on whose words,
defending Catholic doctrines, illustrating Catholic truths, excited
multitudes in great cities have hung, who could make them thrill through
with the emotions which he felt himself, died in a small room over a
shop in an obscure outskirt of London, tended by an unwearied,
uncomplaining affection which had been proof against every sorrow and
every trial, and was the only earthly consolation left to him. In the
eyes of the world it was a sad end of an agitated life. But we make bold
to say that he is not sorry now for his choice; and that what he
accepted rashly he transformed by endurance into matter for lasting
reward, for the praise which does not pass away.
For in this last stadium of his life he showed most conspicuously that
which we consider to have been the special honor of it. Let us state
succinctly the remaining facts in that life, and then pass to a brief
consideration of them. Mr. Marshall went in 1869 to the United States
with his family, intending to settle there, which intention, however, he
abandoned on a further acquaintance with the country. He lectured there
during the winters of 1870-1 and 1871-2 on “The Liberty of the Catholic
Church,” “St. Paul and Protestantism,” “Ireland’s Providential Mission,”
in most of the large cities. In 1872 he brought out _My Clerical
Friends_, and later on _Protestant Journalism_, reprinted from the
London _Tablet_, for which he wrote a series of articles on Russia and
on ritualism. It was the latter series which was brought to an abrupt
termination by his illness in June, 1877. In 1866 he was decorated with
the Cross of St. Gregory the Great by the Holy Father as a recognition
of his services in the cause of the church; and in 1871 he received the
honorary degree of LL.D. in the Jesuit College at Georgetown, near
Washington. He broke down at the age of sixty-two. A life which, under
less trying circumstances, might have been considerably prolonged, in
the possession and exercise of those mental gifts with which he was
richly endowed, was thus terminated before its natural time.
What is the lesson which it presents to us? We say without hesitation
that the Cross of St. Gregory which the Holy Father presented to him
hung on the breast of a true Christian knight. Not for gold nor earthly
honor would he sacrifice one jot of Christian liberty. He preferred to
be paid poorly for his work as a Catholic than to be paid richly, as he
might have been, had he chosen to lay out the gifts of eloquence and
clear reasoning and the power of satire which he possessed, in some of
many non-Catholic causes. Had he even chosen to write, as many Catholics
think themselves constrained to do, on secular subjects, merely taking
care not to offend the spirit of the time—intensely anti-Catholic as
that spirit is—had he written with all his energy and wit, not against
his religion, but keeping it in his pocket, he would, we think, not have
died at sixty-two nor in penury. But, so doing, he would not have been
worthy of the Cross of St. Gregory; he would have been the world’s
journeyman, not the Cross’s knight. Rather than so live, he has died
_sans peur et sans reproche_, with his career shortened, as is the wont
of knights; with his shield battered but stainless; with his lance
unlowered. God grant many knights of such temper to his church in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, for the times are coming when
they will be wanted!
Footnote 39:
In our last number we published an article on the works of this
illustrious Catholic layman by one closely connected with him.
Immediately on receiving the sad news of Dr. Marshall’s death we wrote
to his friend, Mr. T. W. Allies, who will be known to our readers as
the author of _The Formation of Christendom_, asking him to prepare
for THE CATHOLIC WORLD a more adequate notice than we had seen of one
who had done so much for the Catholic cause. The result is the present
article, which, though it comes after the other, will be none the less
pleasing to our readers, coming from such a pen as that of Mr. Allies,
and dealing as it does rather with the personal life and character
than with the public work of its subject.—ED. C. W.
STRICTURES ON AN ARTICLE ENTITLED “POLITICAL RAPACITY OF THE ROMISH
CHURCH.”
Following the advice once given by an old Anglican preacher to a
newly-fledged brother, “When you have nothing else to say, pitch into
the pope,” Rev. Mytton Maury contributes to the January number of the
_American Church Review_ an article having for title “The Political
Rapacity of the Romish Church.” Intrinsically the article hardly
deserves a reply, owing to the recklessness with which it puts forth
mere assertions and inferences as though they were facts; while yet it
should, perhaps, under present circumstances, not be silently passed by
without at least a statement of historical truth in regard to some of
the events and their causes, which are therein so perverted as to seem
to present a sort of partial foundation for deductions that are utterly
false. The explicit aim of the article is to show that “in recent as in
past times, the unalterable aim of the Church of Rome has been the
establishment of its unconditional supremacy, as in things spiritual, so
in things political.”
It is the old, often-exploded tale that took very well with the
_gobemouches_ in the days when everything said against the church, true
or false, was grist to the Protestant mill, but which cannot stand for a
moment against a clear, full, and impartial examination of history. The
gist of Mr. Maury’s argument is that, as the demeanor of the Papacy was
intolerably overreaching and overbearing during the pontificate of
Gregory VII., as the Church of Rome is always the same, as not even the
gratitude which Pope Pius VII. owed (_teste_ Maury) to the Allied Powers
who overthrew Napoleon was sufficient to make that pontiff bate a jot or
tittle of the rights of the church, and as not even outrage, injustice,
and spoliation were sufficient to induce Pius IX. to forget or barter
any of the doctrines or claims of the church, so there is nothing to be
expected of any future occupant of the Holy See but that he shall be
politically a ravening wolf. _Q. E. D._ There pervades the article a
curious after-taste of a once straight-forwardly-asserted but
throughout-insinuated straining on the part of the church in these
United States after political aggrandizement—a charge well suited in
itself, could it only be made plausible, and we think intended, to catch
the ears of the groundlings. Reference is made to a late pamphlet of Von
Sybel, from which the writer would seem to have culled his one-sided
statements; and we have in the meantime tried to procure that pamphlet,
deeming it far better to examine the original than to refute mere
_excerpta_. The _brochure_ in question has not yet been received, and we
must content ourselves with a refutation of the ill-founded charges and
an exposition of the baseless statements contained in Mr. Maury’s
article.
There is an exquisite appropriateness in the fact that the charge of
_political rapacity_ comes from a minister of that sect of which Henry
VIII., half-Catholic, half-Protestant, and wholly beast, was the
acknowledged supreme head, the so-called bishops of which sit in the
British House of Lords, and owe their appointment to anybody, Jew or
Gentile, who may happen to be prime minister. Lord Melbourne—by no means
a model Christian, unless as entitled to the name by being an adept in
profanity—leaves us ample testimony of the cliquing and caballing by
which the appointments to vacant sees were secured, and puts on record a
jocose saying that they (bishops and deans) just died to plague him. It
is true that their presence in the Lords means nothing, and that they
have no power but that of being a little obstructive. That, however, is
not their fault. They would fain have more power, if they could. Even in
their dioceses they have no sort of effective power belonging to a
bishop. Neither clergy nor laity obey them even in spiritual matters,
whether in England or in the United States; nor can we for our life see
why, on Protestant grounds, in view of the utter nullity of their
office, so far as its influence for good is concerned, they have not
long ago been abolished, as much more valuable articles have been done
away with. In political life other sinecures have in this century been
got rid of. Irish disestablishment, which these bishops opposed to their
utmost, will infallibly prove the precursor of a similar _fait accompli_
in England. If, after that, the members of their sect choose to maintain
them, and even to add to their number, we can have no sort of objection,
because then those who utterly repudiate their ministry will not, as
now, be obliged to contribute to their support. They may, if they
please, match the American army in the proportion of highly-paid, showy,
and useless officials to the number of rank and file; in fact, they come
in the United States pretty near doing so already. But that is not our
business, since we do not pay for them; still, we cannot help having an
opinion in the matter.
Again, an impartial observer might reasonably think that a preacher of a
sect whose ministers, and, we suppose, their congregations, are of every
persuasion or utter want of creed touching the essentials of faith, from
the narrowest Calvinism to the most pronounced Puseyism—some of whose
highest dignitaries deny the inspiration of Scripture, while others are
Universalists, and others, again, denounce the doctrine of baptismal
regeneration—a sect which has, in short, less claim to consistency
either of faith or practice than any other of all Protestantism—would
have enough to attend to in trying to find out what his church did
believe and what he should preach, without travelling away to Rome and
back to the days of “Hildebrand” for the purpose of raking up falsehoods
or misapprehensions with which to bespatter or cast suspicion upon the
Church of Rome. This is, perhaps, but a matter of taste; and Mr. Maury’s
idea both of taste and duty differs from what ours would be in the same
premises. In any case let us see what he has to say, giving his
statements such credit as they may prove to deserve.
It is strange, by the way, how the ignorant and insane prejudice which
exists among many Protestants against the church warps otherwise fair
minds and kindly hearts in the consideration of any question in which
she is a party or her rights are in question. We venture to say that if
any government attempted the same sort of tyrannical interference at
this day with the Jews, not to speak of any Christian sect, that Prussia
is now striving to exercise over the Catholics of her dominion, a cry of
righteous indignation against the wanton and palpable injustice would go
up from all the rest of Christendom. We should, perhaps, except the
Anglicans, who are less a sect of Christendom than a clique or set of
recipients of government pap, with no fixed doctrinal or moral
principles save an overweening idea of their own eminent respectability,
a thorough knowledge of the buttered side of their own bread, and a keen
appreciation of number one. They have become hereditarily accustomed to
consider Anglicanism less as a scheme of doctrine and morals than as an
institution for distributing government patronage among their ministers,
and for securing in these a somewhat superior police in aid of the
state. Yet some of the best minds even among these have been very
outspoken in condemnation of the aggressions of Prussia upon the
principles of religious freedom. Let us imagine even a George Washington
appointing the rabbins who should minister to the adults, and the
teachers who should instruct in Judaism the rising generation of Hebrews
in this country. Is there anybody who does not see at a glance the wrong
thereby done these people? Does any one need argument on the subject?
Suppose, in addition, he were to claim the right to appoint the
instructors in the rabbinical seminaries, to select schismatic or
suspended rabbins for the purpose, and to insist on prescribing the
curriculum of the establishment in which young men are instructed for
their ministry. Would we not all consider them very unjustly treated,
and do our utmost to rectify the wrong? Yet this is exactly what the
Prussian government has for some years been attempting to do with the
Catholics within their territorial limits; and the vast majority of
Protestants either look on with indifference or actually encourage the
efforts made for rendering the church but a subordinate bureau of
government under Bismarck and Falk, of whom it would be exceedingly
difficult to say whether they are Protestants, simply infidels, or
downright atheists. What is certain is that they are not Catholics and
that they hate the church. Not long since the body of a drowned man was
being towed ashore in the East River, and a considerable crowd had
gathered to see it, when some one on the edge of the dock remarked, “Oh!
it’s only a negro.” Nobody took any further interest in the corpse, and
the crowd dispersed at once, every one going his way. So, in this case,
the idea seems to be that it is only the Catholics that suffer. But
these gentlemen will find out, in the long run, that it is a blow at
liberty of conscience (for which theoretically they express great
regard), struck, it is true, at Catholics only as yet; they will find
out, if any sect of Protestantism but holds together long enough, or
ever believes anything with sufficient seriousness to imagine it vital,
that the same Prussian government has just as strong an objection to any
other decided conscience as to the Catholic. In the references that Mr.
Maury makes to this struggle we will assume him to be honest; and, in so
doing, we must also take for granted that he does not understand the
nature of the contest between Prussia and her Catholic population, else
he would not attempt to represent it as a flaming instance of “unsparing
political rapacity” on the part of the church. The fable of the wolf and
the lamb has rarely had a more apt illustration.
It will simplify matters very much if we state once for all at the
outset that Mr. Maury entirely mistakes the ground held by the church or
by Catholic writers on her behalf when he represents them as apologizing
for what he calls _mediæval pretensions_, and deprecating any
apprehensions as to their renewal. No Catholic writer takes any such
ground; and as the salient instances adduced of such mediæval
pretensions is the controversy about investitures, and the action of
Pope Gregory VII. towards Henry IV. of Germany, which produced their
meeting at Canossa, we, as Catholics, have no apology to make for
either. As head of the church, Pope Leo XIII. must to-day protest just
as strongly against the right of lay investiture in spirituals; and had
he lived at that day, he could, as minister of the sacrament of penance,
in view of the shameless debaucheries, atrocious cruelties, monstrous
acts of injustice, and heinous sacrileges of Henry, not have done
otherwise than impose on the emperor a penance that should be known of
all men. The church has yet to learn that one of her members, though he
may wear a crown, is any more exempt from her spiritual jurisdiction
than if he were clad in corduroy and wielded the pick. St. James would
seem quite to have agreed with her; and as before God in heaven, so
there can be within the church of God no exception of persons. We
accept, then, as crucial instances by which this alleged political
rapacity of the church is to be tested, both the question of
investitures and the excommunication and deposition of the Emperor Henry
by St. Gregory. They really contain all that can or need be said on the
subject at issue. If it be shown that only malevolence and ignorance of
the times and circumstances could have twisted them to an apparent
support of the accusation founded upon them, and not now for the first
time brought against the church, we shall have accomplished our task.
Apart from what he says on these matters, which are essentially but one
transaction, the rest of Mr. Maury’s article is but _des paroles en
l’air_.
In the middle ages and under the feudal system all the lands of each
separate country were looked upon as belonging to the sovereign, and
were held of him _in feudum_ (hence the name of that system)—on
condition, namely, of certain services to be rendered. In no country had
the feudatory process got such vogue and attained such magnitude as in
that portion of the Holy Roman Empire now going by the name of Germany,
about the beginning of the eleventh century. There is no Holy Roman
Empire now. Each separate parcel of it has had perhaps twenty different
forms of government since, and may within a hundred years have as many
more. That emperor was at that time essentially the master of
Christendom; and between him and the few smaller monarchs then existing
there was no breakwater, no umpire, but the pope. Now, it came to pass
in course of time that many bishops and abbots in Germany became
possessed, by legacy, gift, purchase, or otherwise, in their own
personal right or as appanages of their sees or abbeys, of farms,
estates, demesnes and castles, to the possession of each of which was
attached the condition of rendering at stated times some certain
services to the sovereign as their liege lord. Many archbishops,
bishops, and abbots there also were who were not simply ecclesiastical
rulers but at the same time temporal lords. The people, who
unfortunately had then and for ages afterward very little to say, or at
least could say but little effectively, in regard to how they should be
governed, have left on record an enduring monument of the view they
entertained as to the difference between the rule of the secular knights
and the ecclesiastical regimen in that most trustworthy of all forms,
that evidence which cannot be forged—_i.e._, the proverb. To this day
there is not a dialect of Germany that has not, in one form or other,
the saying: “Unterm Krummstab ist gut leben”—_Happy the tenant whose
landlord bears the crosier_. They were well cared for, kindly treated,
and their complaints attended to by their clerical landlords, which, we
all know, was far from being the case with the serfs and _villeins_
under the marauding knights. There was no reason for objection to the
service or homage by which ecclesiastical persons, dioceses, or abbeys
held those lands; and with the usual care of the church, which has
always laid stress first on the physical well-being of the people and
then on their moral improvement—deeming the former at least highly
conducive to the latter, and esteeming it of no use to leave a moral
tract in a house where there is no bread—the church, we repeat, for the
benefit of the people, encouraged at that time the holding of these
lands by ecclesiastics, and neither pope, prelate, nor people complained
for over two hundred years of the acts of homage—observe that the homage
of the middle ages is not our homage of to-day—by which those estates
were held. And this, too, though the rulers of the church, having nearly
all the prudence, wisdom, and learning then existing in Christendom,
must have known, just as well as we do to-day, that every acre of land
beyond what is indispensably necessary held by the church, and every
building that can be utilized for any other than an ecclesiastical
purpose, is simply an inducement to the extent of its value, a
temptation to plunder, sure to be acted upon sooner or later by the
civil government, until that one shall arise which the world has never
yet seen, in which right shall ever be stronger than might.
But under Conrad II. and Henry III. the possession of these lands began
to give rise to an abuse which had not been foreseen. Both these
emperors were chronically in want of money. They were afflicted with a
standing incapacity to pay what they borrowed; and there resulted, as a
natural consequence, an exceeding hesitancy on the part of lenders to
take the royal word in lieu of funds. The name was no doubt regal,
imperial, and all that, but the paper to which was attached the
signature or _thumb-mark_ of his imperial majesty was not what would now
be denominated on ’Change gilt-edged; and money must be procured. In the
words of another and later august emperor: _Kaiser bin i, und Knödel
muss i hale_. So these emperors commanded on sundry occasions, when a
bishop or abbot died, that the ring and pastoral staff, emblems and
insignia of spiritual dignity and jurisdiction, should be brought to
them. They appropriated the revenues during the vacancy of the diocese
or abbey, prevented the canonical elections from being held, or refused
to allow the prelates elect to exercise their functions. But to men of
this stamp a lump sum of money in hand was of far more importance than a
regularly-recurring income, and they began to give over the ring and
crosier to that cleric (of course noble, and of course unfit) who could
pay the highest price for them. This knave was then supposed to become
bishop or abbot, so far, at least, as to have a right to the
temporalities of the see or abbacy—generally all that such a man would
care about. In this way dioceses were kept vacant for a series of years
and flourishing monasteries went to ruin, since the pope would not (save
where a deception was resorted to) permit the consecration of flagitious
persons. We need not argue to show that this was simony of the basest
sort. The thing had become so general in Germany, and the effect such,
at the time of the accession of Henry IV., that, instead of the election
of a bishop by the clergy of the diocese, or of an abbot by the monks of
the monastery (which is the only canonical mode), the power of
appointing and installing both had been seized by the emperor; and it
may more readily be imagined than described in words what sort of men
the purchasers were. Bishoprics and other prelacies were shamelessly put
up at auction; and not merely the right to the temporalities (in itself
sufficiently unjust) but the sacred authority itself was currently
believed to be conferred by the investiture _per annulum et baculum_. It
was only when things had come to this pass—one plainly not to be borne,
unless with the loss of all ecclesiastical liberty and the grievous
detriment of religion—that the Roman pontiffs, who had previously
intervened but in special instances of complaint, deemed that the foul
system must be plucked up by the roots. A more flagrant abuse, or one
more imperatively demanding redress, it would be hard to find in all
history.
Henry IV. made no scruple whatever of selling all ecclesiastical
benefices to the highest bidder, and had already twice disposed in that
way of the archiepiscopal see of Milan. He seems to have been a sort of
prototype of Henry VIII. of England, but to have ruled over a people of
a much less elastic conscience and possessing a stronger sense of
religion. In the early part of his reign he sought by all means in his
power to procure from the pope a divorce from his wife, Bertha, using
the basest means for the purpose of tempting her into seeming
criminality. He saw at the time a Gospel light beaming from the eyes of
another Anne Boleyn of that day. The refusal of the pope, coupled with
the threats of his subjects (we mean the nobility, for there were at
that time no subjects in the modern sense), who were more willing to put
up with his tyranny than to see the innocent empress treated as poor
Katharine of Aragon subsequently was, caused him to desist; but he was a
monster of lust, injustice, mendacity, and cruelty. Hildebrand, while
yet cardinal, wrote to him that, should he ever become pope, he would
surely call him to account for his tyranny, licentiousness, and for his
making merchandise of benefices. Having been elected in 1073, Hildebrand
assumed the tiara under the name of Gregory VII.; wrote at once to the
Countess Mathilda not to recognize or countenance in any way the
simoniacal bishops of Tuscany; to the archbishop of Mainz to the same
effect concerning the intruding prelates of that country; and to Henry
himself he addressed at intervals three several letters, warning him of
the injury he was doing to religion by his uncanonical and simoniacal
course toward the church of God, and exhorting him to desist from his
detestable presumption. These several letters and all of them having
proved of no effect, he issued his decree, the important words of which
begin: _Siquis deinceps_.
This decree, repeated and confirmed in several Roman synods under St.
Gregory, iterated and amplified by Victor III. in 1087, and reiterated
by Urban II. in two councils, ended in an agreement between Paschal II.
and the Emperor Henry V. that the emperors should cease henceforward to
claim the right of investiture, while the bishops and abbots should give
up the estates for which they owed service to the crown. It was found
impossible to carry this agreement into effect, principally on account
of the unwillingness of the people to accept the proposed change of
masters; and the last-mentioned pope granted to the emperor that he
might go through the form of investiture _per annulum et baculum_,
“providing the elections of bishops and abbots were freely and
legitimately held by the clergy and monks, _all stain of simony being
removed_.” However, this agreement, notwithstanding that the liberty of
the church was fairly guarded by its provisions, was regarded by the
Catholic world as but a temporary repressal of the arrogant claims of
the state, which would infallibly be but held in abeyance, to burst
forth again under the pretext of the form by ring and crosier; and the
agreement was recalled in 1112. The matter was at length finally
settled, to the entire satisfaction of the church, by a convention at
Worms between Callistus II. and Henry V., which mutual agreement was
definitely sanctioned by the First Council of Lateran.
It would be hard to imagine anything more absurd in the face of history
than the charge of rapacity, and that, too, _political_ rapacity,
alleged against St. Gregory because he would not allow ecclesiastical
benefices, abbacies, and bishoprics to be sold like meat in the
shambles, and the miscreants who could gather together the largest sums
of money to minister at the altar and bear rule over God’s people. That
controversy was not excited on account of, or in opposition to, the
homage exacted or the investiture conferred on the transfer of secular
estates. Those ceremonies were both legal and right. Nobody objected to
them then, nor would anybody object to them at this day if lands were
held on feudal tenure. If Mr. Hayes chose to grant an estate to the
archbishop of Cincinnati in trust for the church (the archbishop has no
other use for it), on condition that the archbishop should appear on a
certain day of every year and bow three times reverentially toward him,
we suppose there is not a Catholic in the State of Ohio that would enter
the smallest objection to the annual ceremony. But let Mr. Hayes, or any
President of the United States, on the death of, say, the bishop of
Columbus, send for or take his crosier and ring; still more, let him
appoint some one (cleric or not), who is willing to pay for the billet,
to the vacant see, and we promise that there would be unpleasant times
and doings. There never has been but one legitimate way to preferment,
high and low, in the church—that is, the canonical; and now, as in the
days of the apostle, he that comes not in by the door, the same is a
thief and a robber. As to the statement that the action of the pope, in
abolishing investiture by ring and crosier, was in any sense a blow
aimed at the independence of civil government, it is simply false; while
it is manifest that neither the dignity, the liberty, nor even the very
existence of the church was consistent with simony and the advancement
of the most unworthy men to her dignities. The pope, whoever he might
be, could not have acted otherwise than did St. Gregory; and had the
latter not done as he was inspired by the Almighty to do, he could, when
dying at Salerno, not have used those words which thrill one as do no
other dying words, save those uttered from the cross: “_Dilexi_,” said
the dying saint—“_dilexi justitiam et odi iniquitatem: propterea morior
in exilio_.”
So far is the whole, or any portion, of the history of the church from
lending even a semblance of color to the alleged political rapacity of
the popes, or any of them, that the plain inference of the man who reads
true history in order to find out truth will be that they invariably
spurned every consideration of the kind. To keep what influence they
held, or to gain any in future, their plan would have been to divorce
those bestial monarchs whenever they desired it—to play (like Parker and
the Elizabethan bishops) a perpetual minor accompaniment to the
monarch’s fiddle. Had they done these things, leaving duty undone and
right disregarded, there would have been fewer execrable, political
anti-popes in history, fewer popes would have died in exile, and there
would have been no trouble whatever about investitures. The complaisance
displayed by Luther and Melanchthon toward the landgrave of Hesse, if
shown by the pope toward the original head of Anglicanism, would have
obviated the necessity for any outward change of religion in England
herself. It must be admitted that conscience and not interest seems to
have carried the day at Rome.
Under the head of this controversy about investitures, of which we have
given the true, as Mr. Maury has given a false and garbled, history
(principally from Mosheim, who seems to have manipulated every event
simply with a view to favoring Protestantism), he has made incidentally
several random and several false assertions. Observe that we do not
attribute to him wilful falsehood; but his zeal outruns his judgment,
and, if a statement seems to make in his favor, he is not sufficiently
careful in verifying it; _e.g._, “In view of the fact that this church
(the Catholic) is making rapid advances in the acquisition of political
influence in the United States,” etc.
Here is a statement very glibly uttered and flatly untrue. The church,
as such, neither has nor desires to have any political influence in this
or in any other country; and we challenge the assertor to the proof of
his slander. Her members have votes like other people; and there are
probably in the United States within her communion (taking the ordinary
statistics and ratio of voters to population) about a million voters.
But they vote on both sides, like their neighbors; and whenever there
are three parties the third always presents a sprinkling of Catholic
voters. The proportion of Catholic office-holders in our country never
has been in any sort of proportion to the Catholic population; nor do we
mention the fact to complain of it. Our prayer is that they may be long
kept out of the foul wallow. The only prominent official that we can for
the moment recollect was Judge Taney. We believe there is one Catholic
in the present Senate, but we doubt very much whether the present House
of Representatives contains ten Catholic members. Men like James T.
Brady and Charles O’Conor are not apt to be chronic office-holders.
These alleged advances toward political aggrandizement, if made at all,
have not been made in the dark or in a corner. They must be capable of
being pointed out. Put your finger on them; show them to us. What are
they? Where are they? Where were they made? We had occasion lately in
these pages to insist that the statement was false by which Catholics
were represented as all voting one way, or as voting under the direction
of their priests and bishops; and we reproduce the words then used,
viz.:
“But we appeal to the Catholic voters of this country, of American
or foreign birth, to answer: Has your bishop or parish priest ever
undertaken to dictate to you how you should vote? Has your vote, on
whatever side given, interfered in the slightest degree with your
status in the church? Do you know of a single instance in which one
or the other of these things has taken place? We cannot lay down a
fairer gage. If such things happen, they cannot occur without the
knowledge of those among and with whom they are done. Had the proof
been forthcoming, the country would have rung with it long ere this.
We demand and defy the proof.”
We stand now by what is therein said, adding that people who are
unwilling to be brought to law should not assert, at least in print,
what they do not know to be true, or might, with very little pains,
ascertain to be false. It will not do to make hap-hazard assertions,
merely on the ground that they will be well received by a portion of the
community, whether small or large. There are people who do not think
that it is honest, and who characterize such conduct by a very harsh
name. If a writer in the _Church Review_ chooses to address
Episcopalians, and those alone, on matters connected with their own
special organization, we shall care but very little what he says, and
shall certainly not interfere. With them be it. But he shall not make
sweeping, false statements about the Catholic Church, without being
informed that, however it may have happened, these utterances lack the
essential element of truth.
Again, he says: “They (the bishops and abbots) assumed the leadership of
the soldiers of the district over which they had jurisdiction,” etc.
We did not imagine that there was any man at this day, pretending to an
inkling of education, who did not know that it has at no time been
lawful for a clergyman of the Church of Rome to bear arms. Clergymen
bearing arms are excommunicated by the law of the church. Mr. Maury, in
another part of his article, undertakes to give a definition of canon
law which is misleading, and bears every appearance of having been
culled from some writer who knew as little of the canon law as does Mr.
Maury. The drill-master needs only to see a recruit take up a musket in
order to state positively: “My lad, you never had a lesson on
musket-drill in your life.” To us Mr. Maury’s uncouth and largely false
definition of canon law is proof positive that he never opened a book on
the subject in his life. And yet he undertakes deliberately to enlighten
people upon its nature in print. Fie, Mr. Maury! Let us give you your
first lesson on canon law, and it is this: Those clerics who enlist are
irregular, and it is prescribed by canon law that “_they shall be
punished by loss of their grade, as contemners of the holy canons and
profaners of the sanctity of the church_.” Of course we, like others,
have frequently read that little story, well befitting a Protestant
ecclesiastical history, in which it is stated that a certain bishop of
Beauvais was taken prisoner in arms, and that, on the pope’s interceding
for him, the coat of mail in which the prisoner is said to have been
clad was sent to His Holiness with the message: “_Discerne an hæc sit
vestis filii tui._” It is more than probable that the story was made for
the sake of the supposed jest. Certain it is that the attempt to trace
it deprives it of any authority, while even as a fiction it shows on the
part of its author what Mr. Maury has not—viz., a knowledge of the canon
law on the subject. Did not a late bishop of Louisiana act as a
major-general in the army? Now, canon law is not binding on members of
that sect, nor are its ministers at all bound to know the canons,
unless, indeed, they undertake to instruct others upon them, and then we
humbly submit that things are different.
Once more: “It (the state) expressly limited its right to the temporal
advantages belonging to the endowments, and made no claim to conferring
the spiritual functions,” etc.
What the state actually did was this. It said: “We have sold to the
highest bidder this see or that abbacy. We know full well that to be
simony, and that the person on whom we have conferred the crosier and
ring is _ipso facto_ excommunicated by reason of that simony. We also
know him to be an unfit, and even a grossly immoral, person. But there
he is; and you must either consecrate him or that prelature shall not be
filled. At all events he shall have the revenues. He has bought and paid
for them.” How any man of ordinary honesty, how any one not previously
determined by his prejudices to make out a case, should talk of its “not
suiting the views of the ambitious pontiff that the church should be
subjected to the state even to this limited (_sic!_) extent,” is one of
those things that must remain a mystery till the day when we shall be
able to look back on the affairs and actions of this world with a
clearer mental vision than any we have borne while in it. Mr. Maury’s
sect, founded by a king, the doctrines of which (if it have any) are in
England defined by a parliament and its practice decided by the courts,
the convocation of which has for two hundred years not ventured to
cheep, and then hardly above its breath, can of course endure, in view
of the loaves and fishes, to be subject to the state in _all_ matters.
But the church of God can only, like her Master, render to Cæsar the
things which are Cæsar’s; and she does not deem conscience to be one of
his perquisites. Instructive, if not edifying, reading in regard to the
results brought about by the secular power’s appointment of bishops,
deans, etc., may be found in the lives, autobiographic and otherwise, of
the prime ministers of England. The doctrines of Anglicanism are now,
notwithstanding parliaments and courts, just what they have been from
the beginning—a series of incomprehensible shifts and evasions, a set of
enigmas with no fixed response to any of them. The columns of the London
_Times_ will show how “livings” are disposed of, canted at public sale,
puffed into fictitious value by representations of the age of the
present incumbent and the short-livedness of his family. If we must take
instructions from anybody, surely ministers of such a sect as this are
not the persons to be listened to either in matter of religion or of
taste.
Further on, and in relation to the decree of Pope St. Gregory, we find:
“It is impossible to conceive of (_sic_) presumption surpassing that
which inspired this, or to imagine a more absolute disregard of the
rights of sovereigns. It was a declaration of war by the church upon the
state. Disobedience to it was absolutely unavoidable under the existing
system of feudal tenure,” etc.
After what has been given of the history of this controversy it is but a
work of supererogation to show that each one of the statements in these
three sentences is a separate and distinct falsehood. St. Gregory
excommunicated and debarred from entrance into the church the simoniacal
holders of bishoprics or abbacies, as also every emperor, duke, marquis,
count, knight, or other person who should presume to confer the
investiture of a bishopric or other _ecclesiastical_ dignity; he finds
no fault with the temporal homage or service due on account of secular
estates, whether pertaining to the incumbent or to the prelature. Being
head (not of a sect nor of _a_ church, but) of the church, he was not,
like a titular archbishop of Canterbury, a mere figure-head, whose
presence served to give a false show of authority to ecclesiastical
decrees made by a collection of laymen, perhaps not even Christians; and
his excommunication must consistently strike all the accomplices in a
most nefarious work. It is impossible for a Catholic to conceive how the
pope could have acted otherwise than he did, since the church knows to
this day, and will till the end of time know, no different rules to
apply to those of her members who are highest in temporal dignity from
those which affect the poorest inmate of the almshouse. The state had
now for nearly a century been making war upon the church; and as to the
impossibility under feudal tenure of anything but disobedience to the
decree of His Holiness, we see in point of actual fact that the matter
was quietly and satisfactorily settled by the withdrawal on the part of
the state of the offensive and impious claim to confer investiture _in
spiritualibus_. No one found any fault with the purely temporal homage,
and it was only when, by seizure and sale of cross and crosier (with
which, according to the rude ideas of many people in that age, was
involved the spiritual authority), the king put forth a claim to the
power of appointing bishops, that the church withstood him to the face.
He strove to usurp a spiritual power which never belonged to him or to
any other temporal authority. We can all see in history what has been
the fate of those sects of Protestantism which, for the sake of mere
existence or of temporary courtly favor, have given up the rights and
powers that would have been inherent in them, were they a church. Their
doctrines are a mass of doubt and contradiction. Their ministry, having
neither authority nor message to the world, consists of dumb dogs that
bark not. Perhaps Anglicanism has been the most successful of them. Is
there any thoughtful man, even among its own members, that can in reason
look hopefully forward to its future?
But it will be objected: “All this, however satisfactory so far as it
goes, only proves that Henry IV. attempted a very gross outrage against
the church; and we freely admit that the pope could then, as he can, in
case of necessity, now, excommunicate from the church. The church would
be a sham if he could not. But how about the claim to the right of
deposing kings, set up by the popes and carried out by St. Gregory
against the emperor of Germany?” We entirely acknowledge the
reasonableness of the question, not merely from the Protestant point of
view, but from the general standpoint of our own days; and we propose to
answer concisely (allotted space allowing nothing else) the question
put, though a complete response thereto would require a separate book.
Meantime, we refer such as wish a full and expansive treatise on the
subject to M. Gosselin’s “Pouvoir du Pape au Moyen-Age.”
This power was not, nor was it ever claimed to be, inherent in the
Papacy, but was simply the result of a necessity, alike felt and
acknowledged by all in those turbulent and unruly times, for some
tribunal of final arbitrament. It had its source in the common consent
of all Christendom—in the fact that the popes were, in the language of
Count de Maistre, “universally recognized as the delegates of that power
from which all authority emanates. The greatest princes looked upon the
sacred unction as the sanction and, so to speak, as the complement of
their right.” Even the highest of all the monarchs of the middle ages,
the German emperor, derived his august character and was regarded as
emperor in virtue of the unction and coronation by the pope. It was “the
public law of the middle ages,” as Fénelon has well explained; and it is
the universal acquiescence in that law which explains the conduct of
popes and councils in deposing incompetent or vicious rulers. “In
exercising this power,” says M. Gosselin, “the popes but followed and
applied the principles received, not merely by the mass of the people
but _by the most virtuous and enlightened men of the age_.” We sometimes
nowadays have sense enough to avoid a war by leaving the decision of a
question to a convention of arbitrators, as in the case of the Geneva
conference; sometimes to a single umpire, as the difficulty about the
occupancy of the island of San Juan was submitted to the decision of the
late king of Belgium. Several international disputes, which might
doubtless otherwise have eventuated in war, have been left to the
emperor of Brazil as arbiter. We know very well that the right to bind
by such decisions is in no way inherent in the sovereignty of Brazil or
of Belgium, but in the fact that mankind agrees to abide by their
decision in the matters submitted to them. Now, in those days, while
unfortunately, as history shows us but too many proofs, knaves and
scoundrels existed as now, yet while feudalism lasted the theory was
that civil society was completely swayed by the spirit of Christianity.
All the new governments which had sprung up from the _débris_ of the
Roman Empire were indebted both for foundation and nurture, during what
may be termed their infancy and childhood, to the fostering care of the
popes and bishops. Had it not been for the church, mankind would without
doubt have relapsed into a state of barbarism. It is not, then, matter
of surprise that common consent should, under those circumstances, have
vested in the pope the right of deposing a sovereign in cases where no
other remedy existed. Our sole remedy nowadays for such evils rests in
the power of insurrection, which may or may not be successful, but must,
in either case, be the cause of at least as much misery and far more
actual bloodshed than the evils it was meant to remedy. There is room
_extra ecclesiam_ for difference of opinion on the subject, and minds
do, no doubt, honestly differ as to which of the two is the better plan.
For our own part, while we utterly disclaim the remotest sympathy with
the feudal system, yet we are not prepared to say that it was not the
best possible in that age, and should most unhesitatingly give the
preference, first, to papal intervention, as being least likely to be
biassed, and, second, to any fixed and recognized, fairly impartial
tribunal, rather than risk the doubts and undergo the horrors of
rebellion, successful or otherwise. Far be it from us to wish to recall
the middle ages with their utter disregard for the rights of the people,
who, but for the popes, would have had none to put in a word in their
behalf; and it was only under the feudal system that the public law of
Europe could call for the interference of him whom all then believed the
vicegerent of the Almighty. Laws, nationalities, customs, languages, and
religion have all changed. What then was legal and desirable, nay,
absolutely necessary, is no longer law; and the lapse of whole nations
and of large parts of others from the faith of Christ has abrogated a
custom which, like all other civil regulations, could but derive its
authority from international consent. It may, however, “be doubted
whether in a historical light,” to use the words of Darras, “the system
of the middle ages was not quite equal to our modern practice.” But this
troublesome and invidious duty thus thrown upon the popes was, however,
never claimed to be an integral or essential part of their authority,
but simply to attach temporarily to the office by law, consent, and
necessity. Of course there were then, as there are now, men who imagined
that the political system of their day would never change, and that the
Holy Roman Empire and the feudal system would last for ever. It is well
to remember that there is but one institution that is sure and steadfast
among men—the church to which He has promised who can perform.
The right and duty of excommunicating professing Catholic kings and
princes is, on the other hand, and always has been, inherent in the
Papacy, to be exercised by the pope when all other means have failed, in
case of stern necessity and for the good of the church. Such right is
inseparable from his office, and can be exercised just as fully from the
Catacombs or from a dungeon as from the high altar of St. Peter’s at
Rome.
It astonishes us somewhat to find that the mind sufficiently clear to
indite the following sentiments should have failed so completely to
understand the nature of the struggle over the investitures, and should
have seen but through a glass darkly the condition of governments, men,
and things requiring the application of his doctrines to practice. Mr.
Maury says, and says well:
“It is to be admitted that the intervention of the popes in foreign
political affairs in early and mediæval European history was not
unfrequently matter of moral necessity. The papal authority
constituted for those periods the High Court of International
Arbitration. Not seldom the pontiffs stood forth as the solitary
champions of right and justice.... We cannot but make ample
allowance for their interference; nay, in many cases we must admire
it.... In the case of the popes themselves moral necessity must
often be allowed to have more than justified their interference in
the domestic policy of foreign governments,” etc.
We must hasten through the remainder of Mr. Maury’s article. A great
portion of it strikes wide of the mark, having no application to the
point at issue, which we understand to be the political rapacity of the
“Romish” Church. The sketch of the career of Napoleon, his imprisonment
of the pope, the theological opinions of the _canaille_ of generals that
the Little Corporal gathered about him, and the action (not of the
French people, but) of the rude rabble of the large cities at the time
of the Revolution, would seem even to evince that the rapacity existed
elsewhere. Again, it would be mere waste of ammunition to argue with an
opponent who seriously maintains that gratitude for what he terms “the
restoration of the Papacy” ought to have induced Pius VII., or any other
pope, to govern the church thenceforward on such principles as would
meet the approval of the so-called Holy Alliance. The man who can
entertain such a notion has not the first rudimentary idea making toward
a conception of what the church of God is, however well he may
understand that of Queen Victoria.
Only two further points shall we briefly notice. One is the restoration
of the Jesuits by Pius VII.—a fact upon which Mr. Maury lays great
stress, as indicating the political rapacity of the church. The order
had been suppressed by Pope Clement in 1773, not as having been proved
guilty of any wrong whatever, but simply because their existence as an
order, under the then circumstances and state of feeling in Europe,
seemed to that pope and his council to give not cause but pretext for
scandal to a certain portion of nominal Christendom. It is admitted that
the prime movers in exciting this enmity against the Jesuits were the
infidels in France, the Pombal faction in Portugal, the persons bearing
in Spain the same relations to the monarch which were in France held by
Madame de Pompadour, and those weak people who believe all that is
diligently sounded in their ears from the rostrum or presented to their
eyes by the press. Pope Clement deemed it the most prudent course to
suppress the order, and he did so. It was their duty to obey, and they
obeyed to the letter. Had he been a Protestant archbishop or bishop,
would he have been so thoroughly obeyed? Would there even have been a
pretence of obedience? Had the Jesuits been the wily knaves they are
frequently represented as being, would they have disbanded on the
instant? Has any association in history, we will not say so powerful,
but even one-tenth part so numerous, so able, and so well disciplined,
ever been extinguished by the myrmidons of the most powerful civil
government? Had they been Protestants, we should at once have had a new
and powerful sect. Had they been merely a conscienceless, oath-bound
society, they could have gone on, despite all the civil governments on
earth. Being Jesuits, they obeyed the mandate of the Vicar of God. Pius
VII. deemed the time opportune for their revival. It may be that his
experience of the favor shown to the usurping Napoleon during the period
of his own imprisonment, and the manifest tergiversations of nearly all
the higher French clergy at that unhappy time, caused him to long for
the faithful Jesuits. Of this we know nothing. His right to restore them
was just as clear as had been that of Pope Clement to suppress them. We
propose neither to go into a eulogy of the Jesuits nor to defend them
from the slurs and slanders cast upon them, mostly by those who know
little more of them than the name. They need no eulogy from us, and are
quite competent to defend themselves by word and pen. Mr. Maury (who
seems to be an ardent Jesuit-hater; we know nothing of him but his
article) is evidently one of those who fancy that the church is a
political party, and that, on gaining an advantage over her opponents,
she may bargain to shift principles and suit discipline to those who
have been instrumental in bringing about the result. We quite agree with
him, however, that, judging by all history, the church does not seem to
regard herself in that light. Very many popes have died in exile. For
seventy continuous years the head of the church was in captivity at
Avignon. Pope Pius VII. was long a prisoner at Savona. For all that we
know, the present pontiff may yet have to hide in the Catacombs. But
neither in the past has there been, nor will there be found in the
future, a pope who for personal duress or temporal domain (however clear
his right thereto) will barter away one iota of the sacred deposit of
faith and practice. The church leaves it to the politicians to seek foul
ends by base means—to bargain that “in case you commit this forgery or
that perjury for me, I shall, on attaining power, see that you are not
only held guiltless but rewarded.” Were this her way of acting, she
would be very unlike her Founder, and certainly would not be the
institution with which our Saviour has promised to be till the
consummation of the world. Mr. Maury would seem to think that he is
making a point in charging the church with being true to her principles,
with being changeless, with not giving way to feelings of gratitude (?)
so far as, upon occasion, to give up her position as the conservatrix of
faith and morals. He repeats the charge, under different forms, sundry
times in the course of his article. Does he perchance not know that this
is exactly the characteristic of the church in which Catholics glory?
Did he never hear of the church before? Does she now come before his
mental vision for the first time? One is really tempted to think so from
the fact that he speaks of the pope’s styling himself “God’s vicar upon
earth,” as though it were a new title never assumed until Pope Pius used
it in his encyclical of March, 1814. If it will do Mr. Maury any good or
save him future labor in writing, we can inform him that we Catholics
would have neither faith nor confidence in a church that could sway and
swerve, that allowed herself to be ruled by politicians or by heretics;
and that we all believe Pope Leo XIII. to be, like his predecessor St.
Peter, “God’s vicar here on earth.” Let him stop the first Catholic boy
he meets who attends catechism class, ask him what is the pope, and he
will get that answer in so many words.
The other point is this: Mr. Maury takes it very ill that the church
should find fault with the Falk laws and the supervision that the German
government claims and attempts to exercise over her in that country;
while he asserts that no fault is found with the Bavarian government,
which (he says) exercises the self-same jurisdiction over the church
that Germany is now striving to carry out. The latter part of his
statement is untrue. But, admitting that it were true, cannot even Mr.
Maury see that there would be all the difference in the world between
permitting to a Catholic ruler certain rights of supervision touching
ecclesiastical matters, and giving the same rights to infidels,
rationalists, transcendentalists, atheists—in any case to non-Catholics?
Perhaps we should hardly expect this, since, unless our information be
very incorrect, wardens or vestrymen, or both, may be, and often are, in
his own sect, not mere non-communicants but of no profession of religion
whatever. That such is the case in England we know; and Mr. Thackeray
painted from life both the Rev. Charles Honeyman and Lady Whittlesea’s
chapel, which is there depicted as a speculation of Sherrick, the Jewish
wine-merchant. True, the Bavarian government has adopted a new
constitution subsequent to the establishment of its concordat with the
Holy See; and we are far from denying that things would be on a very
unsatisfactory footing in Bavaria were the reigning house to become
Protestant, or the government, by an accidental (and we admit possible)
influx of free-thinkers, to determine to give trouble. This, however,
has not yet taken place, and the proverb holds that it is unnecessary to
greet his satanic majesty till one actually meets him. We doubt not but
that any overt act against the freedom of the church will, in that
country, be as promptly resented and rendered as thoroughly ineffective
as has hitherto been the case in Prussia. All the power and influence of
the German government has, so far, been unable to push the so-called Old
Catholics into even a decent show of repute; and no Catholic in
communion with the pope will ever lend himself to any such thing as the
Bismarckian scheme of a German national church, or national church of
any other empire, kingdom, or republic. An independent provincial church
is to the mind of the Catholic an utter absurdity; and no proposition
looking to any such end would for a moment be entertained at Rome.
Catholics do not and cannot exist without being in communion with the
pope, whosoever or wheresoever he or they may be. It seems grievously to
vex Mr. Maury that in no single instance has the church allowed herself
to be made, as has the legal sect in England, a mere tool in the hands
of the state; and he takes pains to stigmatize what he ironically
describes as the “gentle suavity” of Pope Pius and the Cardinal
Consalvi, intimating that it was mere stratagem; but he forgets that
there is no sort of hypocrisy in doing the best that can be done under
given circumstances, providing always that no principle be given up.
Even on his own showing the church has under no circumstances abandoned
for a moment the principle that she should and must be entirely free
from any control of the state _in matters spiritual_. Were it any one of
the little sects that set up such claim for religious freedom as against
governmental interference, a cry in its favor would go up along the line
from Dan to Beersheba; but in the case of mother church it only
furnishes a reason for an article on her political rapacity. Some
original genius once remarked that consistency is a jewel. It certainly
is very rare; and here is a radiant instance of it on the part of our
opponents. The moment that the state presumes to trench upon the domain
of conscience we must all obey God rather than man. _Usque huc et ne
plus ultra._ Up to that point we stand ready to act and obey loyally as
citizens. Beyond that line we neither can nor will be bound; and they
who demand that we should put our consciences in the keeping of
Reichstag, Parliament, or Congress know but little of human rights and
less of the rightful domain of civil law.
A little reflection might have shown Mr. Maury the absurdity of his
statement that Consalvi demanded of the Bavarian government the
expulsion of the Protestant population of that country, then amounting
to nearly a million. Surely Mr. Maury is joking! In the many centuries
during which the popes have had full sway in the Eternal City, not one
of them has ever proposed the expulsion of the Jews, a large number of
whom have at all times resided in Rome. Mr. Maury represents Cardinal
Consalvi as an eminently shrewd man, whereas he must have been little
better than an idiot to entertain such an idea, much more to express it
in writing, even to the dullest court in Europe. He never did do so.
Surely this must be, like several other statements of the writer which
we have not time at present to take up, a _lapsus pennæ_ into which
haste in writing and zeal for “the good cause” betrayed him. Authority
for it we have been utterly unable to find, though the account of the
negotiations of that cardinal are in the main given with tolerable
fulness in the books at our hand.
That system of religion is surely in a very bad way the hold of which on
the minds and consciences of its adherents cannot be maintained without
the aid of government; nor does it deserve the name of religion at all
when its ministers are such as those must be who owe their appointment
to the back-stair intrigues by which men attain political offices. The
Roman Curia has shown both wisdom and a high sense of honor in
persistently refusing, on principle, to recognize any other than the
canonical election of her prelates. But it does seem somewhat hard that
her unwillingness to curry favor with the various reigning houses and
their ministries should be attributed to _political rapacity_. So far as
the pope is concerned, he was just as much the head of the church under
the persecution of Diocletian as in the days of Leo X., and is just as
really and effectually the father of all the faithful to-day as on the
day when the Papal States were restored to him by Pepin in 768. The
minds of men have, however, become so accustomed to acts of injustice
that they regard them with comparative indifference. The justice of the
pope’s claim to the patrimony of St. Peter is infinitely clearer and of
far more ancient standing than that of any sovereign in Christendom to
the throne he occupies. Necessary to the existence of the Papacy those
states certainly are not, save in the sense that he who is not a
temporal sovereign must to a certain extent be a subject, and that an
ill-disposed government, under or within control of which the pope may
be, will always be in a condition to hamper him, and to put trammels on
his intercourse with his people over the entire world. As it may well be
doubted whether there ever was a period when the Holy Father was more
firmly entrenched in the affections and confidence of his faithful
children than now, when despoiled of territory, courtly pomp and
splendor—all of which he might have retained had he been willing to
stretch principle to compliance with iniquity—so a more unsuitable
season could hardly, in the view of any impartial on-looker, have been
selected for charging the church with political rapacity. Had she
possessed that, or desired its results, her position, however high in a
worldly point of view, would hardly have been so honorably glorious in
the eyes of her faithful members.
THE DEATH OF PIUS IX.
THE CONCLAVE AND ELECTION.
(FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD IN ROME.)
ROME, February 21, 1878.
He is no more! As a Christian, he loved justice with the charity of his
divine Master; as a priest, his vows; as a bishop, his flock; as a
Sovereign Pontiff, he kept the deposit of faith with a great,
intelligent love. And we loved him dearly in life, as pontiff never was
loved before, and shall ever think of him as the one colossal figure of
justice, unmoved and immovable, of the nineteenth century. _In memoria
æterna erit justus ille; ab auditione mala non timebit._
We thought, as we gazed upon his loving face on the Feast of the
Purification, and the seventy-fifth anniversary of his First Communion,
that he never looked better. He looked younger, ’twas said by those
present. His face had a glow that suggested his early manhood. His
voice, too, was vigorous and robust as he addressed the parish priests,
the heads of the religious orders, and the rectors of the colleges, who
had presented him with the Candlemas taper, according to custom. And
when he had thanked all present, and requested them to bear his thanks
to the faithful for having offered up prayers to God and the Virgin
Immaculate for his recent recovery from illness, he pronounced the
sweetest little homily, so characteristic of Pius IX., on the necessity
of giving religious instruction to the little ones. Alas! it was the
sweetest song of the swan, because the last.
THE LAST HOURS.
Towards evening, on the 6th inst., it was observed by his physicians
that the Holy Father was somewhat feverish. This excited no alarm, for
such attacks seemed but the lingering traces of his recent illness. The
Pope retired to bed at his usual hour, about ten o’clock. His rest,
however, was not tranquil. He seemed to be oppressed in his breathing.
About four o’clock on the morning of the 7th he was seized with a
shivering chill, his breathing became quick and hard, his pulse excited.
About half-past six o’clock the fever came on with greater force,
producing an utter prostration of the august patient. His mental
faculties remained clear and undisturbed, and at half-past eight he
received the Viaticum with great devotion from the hands of his
sacristan, Mgr. Marinelli. The malady became more intense, the
catastrophe inevitable; so at nine o’clock he was anointed. Meanwhile,
the news of the Pope’s sudden and dangerous illness had spread through
the city, and the cardinals hastened to the Vatican. By order of the
cardinal-vicar the Blessed Sacrament was exposed in all the churches of
the city. That fact contained the dread significance that the Pope was
dying. The Romans flocked to the churches and prayed fervently against
the crisis, yet trembled at the thought that, when the Blessed Sacrament
would be restored to the tabernacle, all would be over, well or ill. The
cardinals and prelates assembled around the bed of the sufferer knew too
well what the issue would be. He knew it himself, for, taking the
crucifix from under his pillow, he blessed them. His suffering
increased. At one o’clock p.m. Cardinal Bilio, the grand-penitentiary,
began to repeat the last prayers of the church for the dying. The Holy
Father pronounced distinctly, though with the greatest difficulty, the
act of contrition. Then he subjoined in a voice that betokened great
trust, _“In domum Domini ibimus”_—We will go into the house of the Lord.
When the cardinal came to pronounce the last address to the departing
soul, he hesitated at the word _proficiscere_ (depart); but the Pope
added quickly, “_Si! proficiscere_”—Yes! _proficiscere_. When he had
repeated the exhortation the cardinal knelt down and asked the dying
Pope to bless the cardinals. There were present Cardinals Borromeo,
Sacconi, De Falloux, Manning, Howard, and Franchi. He raised his right
hand and made the triple sign of the cross. It was the last Apostolic
Benediction imparted by Pius IX. At half-past two in the afternoon the
rumor spread through the city that the Pope was dead. Telegrams to the
same effect were sent to all parts of the world by the correspondents of
the press. The secretary of the Minister of the Interior had caused a
bulletin of the same tenor to be posted up in the vestibule of
Parliament. But the agony of death had not even set in upon the
venerable patient, though all hope of a change for the better was
abandoned. At half-past three the struggle began in very earnest. It was
a sight that brought copious tears to the eyes of the beholders—Pius IX.
in his agony. Never more strongly than during those supreme moments did
the youthful vitality of the Pontiff manifest itself. Two hours and a
half of a death-agony is something we associate only with robust
constitutions in the flower of manhood. At five o’clock the physician
requested Cardinal Bilio to pronounce a second time the recommendation
of the departing soul. He did so, and then, kneeling down, he began the
rosary, giving out for contemplation the Five Sorrowful Mysteries. At
the fourth—the carrying of the cross—he stopped, looked anxiously at the
face of the Pontiff, stood up, and gazed still more eagerly upon those
loving features. The eyes had closed sweetly, a pearly tear, just born,
glistened on the lids, the lines of agonizing pain seemed to disappear
perceptibly—it was all over, and the _Angelus_ bell rang out over a
fatherless city, ay, a fatherless world.
HOW ROME RECEIVED THE NEWS.
The news created no excitement. There was no crowd to speak of in the
Square of St. Peter. Only a few loiterers stood for a moment gazing up
at the bronze doors which open into the Vatican; but they “moved on” at
the quiet request of a policeman. There were no soldiers visible—nothing
war-like, if exception be made to the bristling bayonets of the Swiss
Guards. Soon after the _Ave Maria_ the bronze doors were closed, and the
loiterers betook themselves across the Bridge of St. Angelo into the
city. There all was quiet, too, save and except the theatres; _they went
on performing_, though the authorities had a superabundance of time to
order them to be closed. The two lesser theatres, in which Pulcinella
gives nightly amusement to the unlaved of Rome, closed of their own
accord on hearing of the Pope’s death. The other theatres received
official notice to suspend performances until further notice, on the
following day. During the day of Pius IX.’s suffering King Humbert and
Queen Margherita sent repeatedly to the Vatican to inquire after his
health. During the night the following notification from the
cardinal-vicar of Rome was affixed to the churches:
“TO THE CLERGY AND PEOPLE OF ROME.
“Raffaele, of the title of _St. Croce in Gerusalemme_,
cardinal-priest of the Holy Roman Church, Monaco La Valletta,
Vicar-General and Judge-Ordinary of Rome and its district,
Commendatory Abbot of Subiaco.
“The Majesty of God Omnipotent has called to himself the Sovereign
Pontiff, Pius IX., of holy memory, as we have just been advised by
the most eminent cardinal-chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, to
whom it belongs to give public testimony of the death of the Roman
Pontiffs. At this announcement the Catholic people in every corner
of the world, devoted to the great and apostolic virtues of the
immortal Pontiff and to his sovereign magnanimity, will mourn. But
above all let us weep profoundly, O Romans! for to-day has
unfortunately ended the most extraordinarily glorious and prolonged
pontificate which God has ever granted to his vicars on earth. The
life of Pius IX., as Pontiff and as sovereign, was a series of most
abundant benefits, both in the spiritual and temporal order,
diffused throughout all the churches and nations, and especially
upon his own Rome, where at every step monuments of the munificence
of the lamented Pontiff and father are met with.
“According to the sacred canons, in all the cities and distinguished
places solemn obsequies and suffrages shall be celebrated for the
soul of the deceased hierarch, and every day, until the Holy
Apostolic See be provided with a new chief, solemn prayers shall be
offered up to implore from his divine Majesty a most speedy election
of the successor of the never-to-be-sufficiently-lamented deceased.
“To this effect, 1. Notice is given that public and solemn funeral
services will be celebrated in the patriarchal Vatican basilica by
the chapter thereof, whither, as soon as possible, the body of the
immortal Pontiff will be carried, and placed, according to custom,
in the chapel of the Most Holy Sacrament. 2. It is ordained that in
all the churches of this illustrious city, as well of the secular as
the regular clergy, and privileged in any way, all the bells be rung
in funeral notes for the space of an hour, from three to four,
to-morrow. 3. As soon as the precious mortal remains of the
Sovereign Pontiff be carried into the Vatican basilica, solemn
obsequies shall be celebrated in the aforesaid churches. 4. The
reverend clergy, secular and regular, are exhorted to offer up the
unbloody Sacrifice in suffrage for the soul of the august deceased,
as has always been done, and the communities of both sexes, as also
all the faithful, are invited to recommend his blessed soul in their
prayers. 5. Finally, it is prescribed that in each of the aforesaid
churches, in the Mass and other functions, the collect _Pro
Pontifice_ be added as long as the vacancy of the Apostolic See
shall last.
“Given from our residence, February 7, 1878.
“R. CARD. MONACO, Vicar.
”PLACIDO CAN. PETACCI, Secretary.”
Soon after the soul of Pius IX. had departed his physicians returned to
the chamber of the dead, now guarded by two of the Noble Guards—who
never lose sight of the body until it is consigned to the tomb—and made
a formal autopsy, which they couched in these terms: “We, the
undersigned, attest that His Holiness Pope Pius IX., already affected
for a long time by slow bronchitis, ceased to live, through pulmonary
paralysis, to-day, February 7, at 5.40 p.m.—Dr. Antonini, physician; Dr.
Ceccarelli, surgeon; Dr. Petacci, assistant; Dr. Topai, assistant.”
Dr. Ceccarelli then composed the body reverently on the bed, and covered
it with a white cloth; whereupon it was carried into a neighboring
chamber, looking north, towards the Belvedere wing of the palace.
Detachments of the chapter of St. Peter’s kept a vigil, reciting psalms
the night long. On the following morning, the 8th inst., Mgr. Macchi,
Master of the Chamber, attended by Mgri. Casali del Drago and Della
Volpe, Participating Secret Chamberlains of His Holiness, repaired to
the apartment taken possession of the previous evening by Cardinal
Pecci, Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, and gave him a formal
announcement of the death of the Pope. The cardinal, having put on robes
of violet, which is the mourning of the church, repaired in procession
with the rest to the room in which the venerable remains lay, to effect
a solemn mortuary recognition. All knelt down and prayed for a while in
silence. His eminence then recited the _De profundis_, and, standing up,
he reverently raised the cloth from the face of the dead. Taking a
little silver hammer from the hand of a master of ceremonies, he struck
the forehead of the Pontiff with it thrice, pronouncing at each stroke,
in a loud voice, the name of the Pope. After a momentary silence he
turned to those present and said: _Papa vere mortuus est_—The Pope is
indeed dead. The cardinal then tendered a request to Mgr. Macchi, Master
of the Chamber, for the Fisherman’s ring, which was still on the finger
of the Pope. The monsignore removed it and gave it to the cardinal, who
wrote a receipt for it. Thereupon Mgr. Pericoli, Dean of the Apostolic
Prothonotaries, knelt down and read the following attestation: “This
morning, February 8, at eight o’clock A.M., the Most Eminent and
Reverend Cardinal Pecci, Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church,
accompanied by the College of Clerics of the Chamber, by Mgr. the
Vice-Chamberlain, by Mgr. the Auditor of the Reverend Chamber, by the
advocate-general of the Apostolic Chamber, by the procurator-general,
and by the two secretaries and chancellors of the Chamber, repaired to
the private rooms of His Holiness, in one of which he found on the death
bed the corpse of his same Holiness.
“Having ascertained the death of the Holy Father, and recited opportune
prayers in suffrage of the blessed soul, his aforesaid most reverend
eminence made a request to the Most Illustrious and Reverend Mgr.
Macchi, Master of the Chamber of His Holiness, for the Fisherman’s ring,
which was immediately consigned by the same Mgr., the Master of the
Chamber, to the most eminent chamberlain, who received it, with a view
of presenting it in the first cardinalitial congregation (to be broken);
for which ring his most reverend eminence gave an act of receipt to the
aforesaid Mgr. the Master of the Chamber.
“Whereof, at the request of the most eminent and reverend chamberlain, a
solemn act was drawn up, _rogated_ by the Most Illustrious and Reverend
Mgr. Pericoli, cleric of the Chamber, and Dean of the College of
Apostolic Prothonotaries, the act being signed by the most eminent and
reverend chamberlain, by the others above named, and by the two secret
chamberlains of His Holiness, the Most Illustrious and Reverend Mgri.
Casali del Drago and Della Volpe, in the quality of witnesses.
“According to the injunctions made by the eminent and reverend
chamberlain to the clerics of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, these
assembled in the presence of his most reverend eminence, in an apposite
congregation, and in the regular manner, divided among themselves the
different offices.”
THE INTERREGNUM.
The supreme government of the church during the vacancy of the Apostolic
See belongs to the cardinal-chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, and to
the deans of the three orders of cardinals—bishops, priests, and
deacons. These are respectively Cardinal Pecci, Cardinal Amat, dean of
the cardinal-bishops, Cardinal Schwarzenberg, dean of the
cardinal-priests, and Cardinal Caterini, dean of the cardinal-deacons.
Cardinal Simeoni’s office as Secretary of State ceased with the death of
Pius IX., and will be discharged _ad interim_ by Mgr. Lasagni, secretary
of the Council and of the Consistory. He retains the office of prefect
of the apostolic palaces. Every day during the _Novendiales_ (that is,
the nine days on which solemn obsequies are celebrated for the deceased
pontiff) there is a congregation of the cardinals, whereat their
eminences appear with the rochet uncovered, as a sign of jurisdiction.
They are all popes _in fieri_. In consideration of this a cardinal
always rides alone in his carriage during the vacancy. Moreover, during
the conclave, in the general reunions of the cardinals, each one has a
canopy erected over his seat. When the election takes place all the
canopies are removed, save that which is over the seat of the
pontiff-elect.
Immediately after the ceremony described, an extraordinary congregation
of the cardinals was held in the palace of the Vatican. Object, the
manner of celebrating the funeral services; and the question, Where is
the conclave to be held? The first question was disposed of quickly, it
being unanimously resolved to observe the constitutions as regards the
funeral. The question of where the conclave should be held presented
many difficulties, considering the political circumstances of the Holy
See at present. The foreign cardinals, and Cardinal Manning in
particular, supported the proposal of not holding the conclave in Rome,
not only because little faith was to be placed in the Law of the
Guarantees, but for the reason that it would be a new and powerful
protest against the usurpations consummated by the Italian government.
The Italians overruled these considerations, and constituted a majority
in favor of holding the conclave in Rome. Cardinal Manning’s project of
holding the conclave at Malta received thirteen votes.[40] Some city on
the Adriatic coast of Austria was also proposed, but with little favor.
Pending this discussion the canons of St. Peter’s washed the body of the
Holy Father in scented water, and then gave it to the physicians to be
embalmed. This was on the evening of the 8th inst. They performed the
operation in the traditional way, taking out the _præcordia_ and
embalming them separately; afterwards the body. The _præcordia_,
according to an old tradition, are interred in the parish church near
which the pontiff dies; consequently those of Pius IX. will be buried in
St. Peter’s. Had he died at the Quirinal, the church of SS. Vincenzo and
Anastasio would receive them. The operation of embalming was brought to
a successful termination on the morning of the 9th.
The city on the 8th presented a sad appearance. All the shops were
closed, traffic for the most part was suspended, the Bourse was closed,
and the soldiers marched to and from their regular stations without
music. There were no amusements in the evening, and very few people to
be seen in the streets. A shadow rested on the city. There was a great
blank. Something was wanting—is wanting. The world seems strange,
purposeless, and unutterably dreary without Pius IX.
THE DEAD PONTIFF.
After the embalming process his body was vested in the white cassock,
the red cope bordered with ermine, and the _camauro_, or red cap,
likewise bordered with ermine, placed on the head. He was then laid out
on a modest catafalque, under a canopy, in one of the halls of the
Vatican. The Roman nobles and persons of distinction were permitted to
see him. Never have we seen death so beautiful as in Pius IX. His face,
always aglow with a sweet smile, was now doubly sweet and restful. There
was not a trace of pain left on it, and its beautiful whiteness seemed a
supernatural glow which God had breathed there for his well-meriting
servant. The hands, too, clasping his beloved crucifix, seemed to have a
warmth about them which is not associable with death. Indeed, he seemed
to sleep, did our Holy Father. Towards nightfall the body was habited in
full pontificals, golden mitre, red chasuble, red satin gloves,
gold-embroidered, and red satin slippers, also richly wrought in gold;
and when darkness descended upon the Eternal City they carried Pius IX.
down into St. Peter’s. The Swiss Guards formed themselves into a double
line in the halls of the Vatican and along the _Loggie_ of Raphael,
whose classic beauty, recently restored and enhanced, will bear
testimony ages hence to the munificence of Pius IX. as a Mæcenas.
Masters of the horse in their fantastic and quaint liveries, the canons
of St. Peter’s bearing torches and chanting the psalms, mace-bearers
robed in sable velvet, and a detachment of the Swiss, bearing their
pikes reversed, preceded the bier. This was borne on the shoulders of
the throne-bearers, and a square was formed around it by the Noble
Guards in full uniform and the penitentiaries of St. Peter’s. They were
followed by the domestic prelates of the papal household, and the
secular and military officials, likewise in dress uniform. The cardinals
succeeded, marching two abreast, bearing torches, and responding to the
psalms as intoned by the clergy in advance. They were followed by a
detachment of the Palatine Guard. The Roman nobles, and other personages
of distinction, brought up the rear of the procession. The flaming
torches lighting up the halls, the corridors, the regal stairway, down
which the _cortège_ moved, the liveries of the servants, the uniforms of
the soldiers, the robes of the priests, the purple of the cardinals,
and, above all, that already heaven-lit face looking upwards, as if in
placid and joyous contemplation of the Truth Eternal, the assertion and
vindication of which was his dearest object in life, produced a
sensation in the beholder which baffles description, there being no term
of comparison to which we can liken it. And the muffled psalmody in
those silent halls, inexhaustibly silent because of the circumstance and
the hour, seemed to be, what it indeed was, the music of another and a
tranquil sphere, where there is no “hostile domination,” no death.
The procession entered St. Peter’s, by an inner door communicating with
the palace, at seven o’clock. It was met by the chapter of St. Peter’s,
who led the way to the chapel of the canons in the right aisle. The bier
was placed precisely within the iron railing of the chapel, so that the
feet of the venerable Pontiff extended outside sufficiently far to allow
the people to kiss the papal slipper. It gently inclined towards the
railing, thus giving a perfect view of its precious burden even at a
distance. It was covered with a red silk pall, delicately embroidered
with gold thread. At either side hung a red cardinalitial hat of the
primitive form, which used to be carried before His Holiness in grand
processions.
At an early hour on Sunday morning, long before dawn, the steps of the
great temple were crowded with people, waiting for the moment when the
bronze doors would swing open and admit them to view the remains of
their father. Detachments of the Italian soldiery had taken up positions
within the vestibule and outside. Others marched around the basilica and
entered by the sacristy door. They formed a double line from the door of
entrance on the left, up along the corresponding aisle, across the nave,
and down to the door of egress. Those stationed at the iron gates of the
vestibule had a difficult task in trying to stem the onflowing and
irresistible tide of thousands of people when the gate at last swung
open. They acquitted themselves well, poor fellows, and as reverently
too, both within and without the temple, as could be expected under the
circumstances. As the people entered the temple at half-past six A.M. a
solemn Mass of requiem had already commenced in the chapel of the
canons. It was the first of the _Novendiales_. Throughout that day and
the three following a continuous stream of people of all classes flowed
into and out of St. Peter’s, and every individual paused, at least, to
contemplate that figure lying in peaceful repose, a heavenly contrast,
to the intelligent, against the pleasure-surfeited and revolting mass
which defied the embalmer’s art, yet was enshrined at the Quirinal not a
month since. And thou, Mark Minghetti, who didst abandon this sainted
figure to serve that other in the name of liberty, forsooth, what has
brought thee into St. Peter’s, and face to face with the holy dead?
Speak, thou whose deeds for the past quarter of a century have been at
cross-purposes with good faith; unbosom thy sentiments as thou didst
linger at the catafalque of thy old and too-trusting master! Thou, too,
Visconti Venosta, author of the notorious _Memorandum_ of 1870, wouldst
gaze once more on the face of him thou conspiredst to betray? Many a
traitor besides these two went there, and the exponents of their
iniquity, the liberal papers, said that Pius IX. seemed to sleep, and
commended the martial bearing of the four Noble Guards who stood erect
and vigilant around the catafalque.
On Wednesday, the 13th, in the churches of St. Mary Major and St. John
Lateran, solemn obsequies were also celebrated, and every parochial
church in the city was on that day the scene of pious suffrages for the
soul of Pius IX. In the basilicas lofty catafalques were erected,
surmounted by a tiara, and surrounded with blazing torches. That in the
church of St. Mary Major bore, inscribed on its four sides, a pithy yet
adequate panegyric of the Pontiff—_Religio, Fides, Spes, Caritas_.
THE LAST ACT.
It is Wednesday evening; the great aisles of St. Peter’s at seven
o’clock are empty. The bronze doors are shut. Torches, blazing in the
nave of the basilica, reveal to our gaze a procession of cardinals
emerging from the door of the sacristy, and moving with measured and
reverential steps to the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament; the domestic
prelates of the papal household, already there; the canons in
surplice—one of them, Mgr. Folicaldi, in black pontificals and a snowy
mitre, attended by deacons and subdeacons of honor, also in black; the
officials, civil and military, of the palace in full dress; the Noble
Guards; the Swiss in burnished helmets and cuirasses; the little
garrison of the Vatican; the gentlemen of the pontifical court, and the
Roman nobles. All form themselves into a procession. The choir sings the
_Miserere_. Eight canons take up the catafalque. The procession moves up
past the bronze statue of St. Peter, around the tomb of the apostles,
and down the further aisle, to the chapel of the canons. It is the
funeral of Pius IX. The catafalque is placed in the middle of the
chapel. Arranged in order on the floor are three coffins—one of
cypress-wood, one of zinc, and a third of chestnut. The officiating
prelate blesses the first, sprinkling it with holy water, and then
incensing it. Meanwhile, the cardinals press around the bier, and
reverently kiss that sacred right hand which had so often blessed them,
and the feet of the Pontiff. All who can come near enough do likewise.
Mgr. Ricci, major-domo, spreads a white cloth over the face of the
Pontiff, thus hiding it for ever from the view of man. The canons take
up the pall, with its precious burden, and place it in the coffin. When
the body had been properly composed, Mgr. Macchi, Master of the Chamber,
placed beside it three purses of red velvet, containing respectively as
many medals, gold, silver, and bronze, as there were years of the
pontificate of Pius IX. A violet ribbon was sealed crosswise over the
body to the edge of the coffin, with four separate seals: that of the
cardinal chamberlain, that of the major-domo of the palace, a third of
the archpriest of St. Peter’s, and a fourth of the chapter. Two masters
of ceremonies spread a red silk cloth over the body, and a third dropped
at the feet a tin tube containing a roll of parchment, on which was
written in Latin the eulogy of the Pontiff. The carpenters do the rest.
On the lid of the zinc coffin there is the following inscription:
CORPUS.
PII. IX. P.M.
VIXIT. AN. LXXXV. M. VIII. D. XXVI.
ECCLES. UNIVER. PRÆFUIT.
AN. XXXI. M. VII. D. XXIII.
OBIIT. DIE. VII. FEBR. AN. MDCCCLXXVIII.
When the workmen had closed the last coffin they carried it out of the
chapel to a place on the left, where there was an opening in the wall
high up. It was the temporary resting-place of Gregory XVI., and is of
every deceased pope until he obtain permanent sepulture. It is
surmounted by a marble sarcophagus adorned with a tiara. By means of
ropes and pulleys they hoisted the coffin into the niche, and, after
having walled up the aperture with bricks and cement, they laid on the
outside a small slab of marble, with this inscription:
PIUS IX. P.M.
A cardinal was heard to say in a voice of emotion, as all quietly moved
away: _Tanto nomini nullum par elogium_!
Two days after, the will of Pius IX. was opened by the
cardinal-chamberlain in the presence of the relatives. It was written
with his own hand, and dated in the year 1875. A few codicils were added
since that date. He bequeathed 100,000 francs to the poor of Rome. He
always loved them, and it was to perpetuate the memory of that love that
a subscription was immediately opened after his death by the Italian
Catholic journals, under the title of “Pius IX. Eternal in charity.” To
this end, by the advice of the cardinal-vicar of Rome, a sumptuous
church will be erected on the Esquiline, and dedicated to the Sacred
Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Conception. Side by side with the
church will rise up two extensive asylums for the poor, old and young,
of both sexes.
THE CONCLAVE.
The funeral services performed by the Sacred College of Cardinals
began in the Sistine Chapel on Friday morning, the 15th. They were
attended by the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, by the
Roman nobility, and persons of distinction who received invitations. A
wish was expressed indirectly by the King of Italy to be present. The
cardinal chamberlain took no notice of this indirect wish. The
obsequies lasted for three days. After each service the Sacred College
gave a reception to the diplomatic personages in the Hall of the
Consistory. Pending these events, the preparations for the conclave
were completed. The story of the Vatican above the apartments of the
Holy Father was divided off into little cells for the cardinals and
their attendants. The windows outside were covered with gratings, and
the court of St. Damasus entirely walled up to prevent any
communication with the outer world. Physicians, an apothecary,
barbers, cooks, and bakers, were appointed. On Monday morning, the
18th, the Mass of the Holy Ghost was celebrated in the Pauline Chapel
by Cardinal Schwarzenberg. All the cardinals and officers of the
conclave were in attendance. The diplomatic corps assisted in stalls
allotted to them. A Latin oration _De eligendo Summo Pontifice_ was
read after the Mass by the Secretary of Briefs. This might be termed
the formal inauguration of the conclave. At half-past four of the same
evening the cardinals all, of the Holy Roman Church, with but three
exceptions—their Eminences Cullen, McCloskey, and Paya y
Rico—assembled in the Pauline Chapel, whence, having recited the usual
prayers, they proceeded in procession to the Sistine Chapel, singing
the _Veni Creator Spiritus_. There the sub-dean of the Sacred College,
Cardinal di Pietro, read the Papal Constitutions on Conclaves, after
all but the cardinals had been invited to withdraw. The reading of the
constitutions was followed by a solemn oath, pronounced by the
cardinals in a body, to observe them faithfully. This oath had
previously been sworn in the presence of the cardinal-chamberlain,
Pecci, by the patriarchs, archbishops, and auditors of the Rota, who
were to mount guard at the cells of the cardinals to prevent their
communicating each with the other. The marshal of the conclave, Prince
Chigi, had also been sworn. The doors of the chapel were then opened,
a cleric took up the processional cross, reversing the figure toward
the cardinals, who followed, each one accompanied by a Noble Guard,
and all entered the precincts of the conclave. Each cardinal entered
the cell which had fallen to him by lot. That night, in company with
the cardinal-chamberlain, and the deans of the three cardinalitial
orders, and the apostolic prothonotaries, the marshal made a formal
visitation of the cells and precincts of the conclave, after which the
chamberlain consigned to him a purse containing the keys, and, with
the other cardinals, retired to his cell. The doors of the cells and
the general entrance of the conclave were locked, and a formal
document attesting the operation was read and subscribed to. The reign
of silence and communion with the Paraclete began. Pending the
inspirations of the Holy Spirit, let us glance at the world outside.
ROME DURING THE CONCLAVE.
In deference to the conclave the government postponed the opening of
Parliament until the 7th of March. Whether this was done from a sense of
genuine reverence for so sacred and imposing an assembly, or with a view
of showing their loyalty to the Law of the Guarantees, is not definitely
known. But the fact aroused the indignation of the radicals. They at
once proposed to organize a mass meeting of disapproval of the
Guarantees, and, accordingly, demanded the required permission from the
Minister of the Interior. He refused it. _Inde ira_. As may be supposed,
speculations were rife in all circles as to the future Pontiff. It was
hoped, and asserted pretty generally, that Cardinal Pecci would be
elected. It was _feared_ by all Italians, liberals, conciliators, and
non-compromittals, that Cardinal Manning, who is exceedingly unpopular
in radical Italy, would, through some unexpected combination of
circumstances, come out of the conclave a pontiff. It was reported that
the Sacred College itself was divided into three parties—the
conciliating, of which Cardinal di Canossa was supposed to be the
exponent and hope; the extreme rigorists, of whom the favorite was the
young Cardinal Parocchi, of Bologna; and the _statu-quoists_,
represented by Cardinals Bilio and Simeoni.
On Tuesday, the 19th of February, an immense concourse of people,
assembled in the Square of St. Peter’s, witnessed the traditional
_sfumata_, or smoke, rising from a particular chimney of the Vatican,
which signalized the burning of the votes at the first scrutiny in the
Sistine Chapel. This meant no election. It has been ascertained since
that Cardinal Franchi’s name was called out twenty times at that
verification. On the following day, the memorable 20th, at half-past
twelve p.m., the smoke again arose over the Vatican, and the multitude
began to move away towards the Bridge of St. Angelo. Comparatively few
people remained. But about an hour after they observed the window of the
great balcony of St. Peter’s to open. An acolyte appeared bearing a
cross, and then Cardinal Caterini, who, from old age, infirmities, and
the emotion of the moment, could scarcely make himself heard to the
following effect: _“Annuncio vobis gaudium magnum: habemus Papam
Eminentissimum et Reverendissimum Dominum Pecci, qui sibi nomen
imposuit_
“_LEONIS DECIMI TERTII!_”
This announcement was received with cheers in the square below. The
great bell of the basilica began to ring joyously, and every bell in the
Eternal City re-echoed the glad news to the people, and hurried them in
haste to St. Peter’s. Let us go back an hour in our narrative. The votes
were counted at noon, and the name of Cardinal Pecci was read aloud
_forty-four_ times, thus giving him the two-thirds majority required for
election. The sub-dean of the Sacred College then opened the door of the
chapel and ushered in the master of ceremonies. With the assistance of
others, he lowered all the canopies which covered the seats of the
cardinals, with the exception of number _nine_ on the gospel side of the
altar. The sub-dean of the Sacred College, accompanied by Cardinals
Schwarzenberg and Caterini, approached his Eminence Cardinal Pecci, and
asked him if he accepted the election: “_Acceptasne electionem in Summum
Pontificem?_” He replied that, albeit unworthy of the great charge, he
would submit to the will of God. The sub-dean continued: “_Quomodo vis
vocari?_” “_Leo Decimus Tertius_” was the reply. He was then conducted
into the sacristy by two cardinal-deacons, Mertel and Consolini, and
attired in the white cassock, red slippers bearing the cross, the
rochet, red cope, stole, and white cap of the Sovereign Pontiff.
Returning to the chapel, he received the homage of the Sacred College,
after which Cardinal Schwarzenberg, just nominated pro-chamberlain of
the Holy Roman Church, placed upon his finger the Fisherman’s ring. The
Pope immediately retired to his cell. The cardinals followed his
example.
Meanwhile, the people had assembled in great numbers in the square and
in the basilica, awaiting the appearance of His Holiness. It was not
known whether he would give his blessing from the outer or the inner
balcony of the temple. The traditional place was outside. Consequently,
on the appearance of any one at the window of either balcony, there was
a precipitous rush of the people in that direction. The noise in the
basilica was like the roar of a storm-tossed sea. At last—it was
half-past four o’clock—two prelates opened the window of the balcony
which looks into the church, and hung over the railing some red bunting.
Soon after the anthem _Ecce sacerdos magnus_ was heard, and then a
powerful, robust voice, _Sit nomen Domini benedictum_. It reminded
people of another voice which erst rang out benedictions with the
clearness of a trumpet from the outer balcony. But the figure which now
appeared was tall, spare, yet imposing, and the features, worn and wan
with rigid austerities, were lit up by large, brilliant orbs, that
beamed gladly on the excited people below. When he had pronounced the
trinal blessing in a firm voice, a great, deafening cheer arose,
startling the dormant echoes of the vast edifice, and sending them
quivering from nave to transept, and thence aloft into the gigantic dome
itself. Again and again did the _evvivas_ burst forth from every lip,
and high, unmistakably pronounced above them all rang out the Saxon
_hurrah_! Every difference, political and religious, was forgotten in
that moment of joy. Jew from Ghetto, deputy from hostile Parliament,
officer and private of invading army, dissenting Anglican from Albion,
and downright, practical American joined in the shout of _Viva il Papa!
Viva Leone!_ His Holiness stood for a moment gazing on the enthusiastic
multitude, then motioned with his hands, as if to deprecate any
demonstration, and moved away. He did not appear at the outer balcony.
We forbear putting any construction on this circumstance. The conclave
was opened formally in the evening by the marshal, and the cardinals
retired at nightfall to their homes. The new Pontiff moved to his
apartments, and the attendants read in the severe lines of thought which
had settled on his brow that he wished to remain alone for the night.
Glad words of congratulation are exchanged in all circles throughout the
city, and a universal, spontaneous confidence has sprung into existence;
for the man who has just blessed the Catholic world as its father is
pious, learned, and very severity itself in firmness.
The Church is no longer a widow.
Footnote 40:
The Roman Correspondent of the London _Tablet_, February 23, denies
the truth of this “project” so far as Cardinal Manning is
concerned.—ED. C. W.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
NEW IRELAND. By A. M. Sullivan, Member of Parliament for Louth.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1878.
Mr. Sullivan has invented for his country a new name that is pregnant
with meaning and significance. At least, the name is new to us, and it
represents a great fact. The old Ireland, the land of confiscation and
bitter penury, of enforced ignorance and compulsory poverty, of chronic
revolution and periodical famine, the exercise-ground of political
proscription and religious persecution, is passing away under our eyes.
A new Ireland is indeed springing up in its place—by no means a land as
yet flowing with milk and honey, and stripped of all that cumbered it
and darkened its life before, but a land full of hopeful possibilities
for all good in itself and for good to its neighbors and the world at
large.
It was less to describe this hopeful and bright land, whose day has not
yet come, but whose morning we see dawning in the east, than to set
forth in a clear light the stages that led up to it, that, we take it,
induced Mr. Sullivan to write his brilliant, most interesting, and
valuable book, which, perhaps, no pen but his could have written, or at
least written so well, with its series of graphic pictures, its
passionate reasoning, flecked with the gayest humor and most mournful
pathos. It is in itself an epitome of the Irish character, with a
notable improvement. The despairing courage of a “forlorn hope” that
marked such writings in the past has yielded here to a resolute and
practical purpose, which of all things is the most striking and hopeful
sign of a really new Ireland.
Ireland as it stands to-day presents a problem of the deepest interest
not only to a thinking Christian man, but also to the student of
political history. It, of all nations and peoples, has resolutely
refused to follow after the _ignis fatuus_ of the revolutionary spirit
of the age. This it has done in the face of the most pressing incentives
to join hands with the agents of social and political disorder. From the
first day of English rule in Ireland that country has been, perhaps,
_the_ worst-governed country in the world; and this ill-government is
only _beginning_ at last to cease. No better soil could have been
offered as a battle-ground for the agents of evil. Yet, owing chiefly to
the essentially conservative and Christian character of the Irish race,
informed and strengthened by a true conception and grasp of the religion
of Jesus Christ, the Irish people, as a people, has steadfastly refused
to achieve right by doing wrong. For this the English government has to
thank that religion which it was its avowed and persistent purpose to
root out of the Irish heart, in which most wicked and revolting purpose
it would certainly have succeeded long ago, were not God more powerful
than all the force and machinations of man, inspired and guided by the
spirit of evil. Ireland has at last shaken off some of the strongest
chains that bound her, a bleeding nation, to her own earth; and she has
succeeded in doing this by a persistent adherence to the right. She
would not die, because Heaven made her immortal, and because the
principle of immortality was grafted deep in her soul by an Almighty
hand. She would not live at a gift; she would not accept a false life at
a sacrifice of principle. She waited and suffered on. Her patience and
her constancy, her virtue and her faith, have overcome all things. A new
era opens before her. The question of questions is: What will she do
with it?
Mr. Sullivan goes back in his narrative fifty years, and gives us the
salient measures and movements that have affected the Irish people
during that period. The state of education in Ireland fifty years ago,
“O’Connell and Repeal,” “The Ribbon Confederacy,” Father Mathew and the
temperance movement, the famine in “the black forty-seven,” the “Young
Ireland” movement, agrarian crime and its causes, the land question, the
“Tenant League” party, the “Phœnix” conspiracy, the Fenian movement, the
Disestablishment of the Irish Church, and the “Home-Rule” movement—these
form the chief headings of Mr. Sullivan’s chapters. They are all worthy
of study, and must be studied in order to get a right view of the actual
state of Ireland—not under the Tudors or the Stuarts or Cromwell, but
here and now, within the knowledge of most of us. Much of what Mr.
Sullivan has written was already sufficiently well known. It was well,
however, to link all of these together, to weave them into a continuous
narrative, and show how singularly one played into the other, how
necessarily one was a sequel of the other, until the story is laid down
at our own doors. We are thus enabled to see how this series of
catastrophes, acting, apparently, independently of each other, wrought
up secretly to the whole that is before us. The awful shocks that moved
the nation, now this way and now that; that tossed it up as by a
volcanic eruption; that shattered it and cast it to the ground as though
by the convulsion of an earthquake, senseless and bleeding, and bereft
of life; the storms that devastated it; the famine that decimated it—all
were instruments of Heaven rudely, to all seeming, but surely working to
a great end. Or, if the political philosophers prefer it, they were
mighty and gigantic social and political forces working through the dark
up and into freedom and light. They made Ireland a spectacle to the
nations; they scattered her children over the world, bearing their
crying wrongs to all lands; they welded together those who were left at
home into a hard and compact mass; they shocked and shamed the power
that was chiefly answerable for them into a sense of dawning justice. It
was in such throes as these that the new Ireland had its birth.
It seems to us that never before was Ireland so well fitted to play a
large part in history as it is to-day. It is now, to a great extent,
certainly it is in the right way of being, its own master, its own
law-giver, its own educator, its own priest. It has grasped the
realities of political life and political power. These it has in its
hands, and we do not well see how they can be taken from it. This fact
ought to smother any smouldering fires of revolution that may be left,
and it will smother them effectually, if the English legislature, as
seems to us likely, can only rise to the fact that the best cure for
discontent is to remove the discontent by removing its cause. We do not
say that Ireland will leap at once into full national life, prosperity,
and social happiness. That, even in a far from complete state, must be a
work of time, and care, and struggle, not alone to the Irish but to all
peoples. The Irish, however, have now in their own hands the adequate
means of national representation; and this, it seems to us, is the great
first step towards a true national life. Whether in after-years that
life will have its centre in London or in Dublin seems to us a question
hardly worth discussing just now. We like to take hold of actual facts
and shape the future out of them. At present Ireland is represented in
the English Parliament by a strong, resolute, and able body of Irishmen.
These men may not be collectively or individually the ideals of
political wisdom and sagacity. They may not have any great leader among
them. They may be a little new in their harness yet. But their power, as
a united body, is very great and undeniable, and it can be constantly
exercised and increased. To expect that in a session or two they are
going to wring from the English government repeal of the Union, or total
separation, or even one-tenth part of the measures that Ireland needs in
order to secure such prosperity as she has, or to advance it, or to do
away with crying and cruel evils now existing, is to expect altogether
too much. It is like expecting a city to be built in a day because some
of the chief artisans and implements and material for the building are
already on the ground.
Great and grave and manifold grievances still exist in Ireland.
Steadfastness and patience and right political representation must
succeed in removing these in time. Great dangers also threaten the
country, not the least of which is the very freedom to which it is at
last rising. The hardest problem in regard to freedom is to use it
wisely and well. It would be a sad thing for the Irish people if on the
altar of a new-found freedom they sacrificed their grand old
conservative spirit, their deep sense of the supernatural, their
reverence for the church and the things of God. For them to drift into
the liberalism of the age would be to destroy them. They have gained
what they now possess by having been steadfast Catholics and steadfast
Irishmen. Let them so continue. We rejoice at the growing sympathy in
political and social life between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants.
There is no harm in that; on the contrary, it is a great good. But to
pass beyond that in matters vital to the faith would be wrong. To
renounce, for instance, the right principles of education would be
wrong. Let the Protestants go their way in all freedom, security, and
peace, but let the Catholics also hold to their way, and insist on it.
Mr. Sullivan is least satisfactory in a point on which we are most
deeply interested—the actual position of Ireland to-day, in its
industries, its mode of life, its social condition, its educational
status, its income, its outlay, how money circulates in the country, how
the people are housed, fed, and clothed, compared with former years.
These are matters on which, of all things, we desire as full and
accurate information as could be obtained, for they are the outward and
most visible signs of a people’s progress. Indeed, they are practically
the only gauge by which to measure the actuality of that progress. But
on this subject Mr. Sullivan gives us only a few rather hesitating words
in his last chapter, with the consoling assurance that, “despite all
disaster and difficulty, Ireland is marching on.” This is a very serious
defect in a work dealing with “New Ireland,” and to remedy it we have
applied to another quarter, as seen in the preliminary article on
“Ireland in 1878” (THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1878). This will be
followed by others on the same subject, taking up just the matters which
Mr. Sullivan has allowed to escape him.
With this exception, we heartily congratulate the author on his latest
volume. He is himself one of the political chieftains who has nobly
helped to make a new Ireland. He is a very able and ready man, whose
value was at once recognized in the English Parliament, and whose
services to his country and to the party which he materially helped to
form have been of the most marked and important character. His life has
been an honorable one, and he has well earned the fame that now attends
him. No man who looks hopefully to the new Ireland can help following
with sympathy and interest the future career of A. M. Sullivan.
DE ECCLESIA ET CATHEDRA; or, The Empire-Church of Jesus Christ. An
epistle by the Hon. Colin Lindsay. Vols. i. and ii. London:
Longmans, Green & Co. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication
Society Co.)
Mr. Lindsay, who is a Scottish convert of some ten years’ standing, and
was formerly one of the principal lay-leaders in the ritualistic party,
has already won a high reputation by a valuable work on St. Peter’s
Primacy. The present one is original in its conception and different
from any other on the same subject in its method of treating the topics
indicated by the title. The grand principles and laws of the church and
the Papacy are considered in their universal character as forming the
ground-plan of the government of divine Providence over the human race
from the beginning. It has a wide historical sweep, and embodies a great
mass of solid learning and sound reasoning. The author is sometimes
fanciful in his theories and occasionally deficient in theological
accuracy of expression, as well as in his style and construction of
sentences. These are but faults of minor importance, however, not
seriously detracting from the great merits of his most interesting and
instructive work. It is quite in the same line of argument with the
articles on Historical Christianity we have lately published, and those
who are interested in that important and very attractive aspect of
religion will find the greatest profit and pleasure in perusing it. One
most valuable and quite novel portion of the author’s exposition of the
apostolic and divine institution of the Papal Supremacy, is his
application of the principle of reserve contained in the discipline of
the secret to the particular doctrine in question, as explaining the
guarded and reticent manner in which the sacred writers and the early
Fathers speak of those high prerogatives of the Christian hierarchy and
its chief, which would give umbrage to the Jewish priesthood and the
Roman emperors. Full justice could not be done to Mr. Lindsay’s
comprehensive and elaborate production without making a long and careful
analysis and review of his positions and his manner of supporting them.
We trust many of our readers will gain a much better knowledge of its
contents than we could possibly give them in this way, by making a
careful study of the work itself. It contains a complete historical
demonstration of that which we think will soon be as universally
admitted as any other great fact of undisputed history—that Catholicity
and Christianity are identical and convertible terms, and that ancient
and modern Catholicity are one and the same identity in respect to all
which pertains to their essence and integrity as the one, universal
religion, whose continuity has remained unbroken since the creation, and
is destined to be coeval with the world.
THE NABOB. From the French of Alphonse Daudet, author of _Sidonie,
Jack_, etc. By Lucy H. Hooper. Author’s edition. Boston: Estes &
Lauriat. 1878.
_Sidonie_ and _Jack_ have been briefly noticed in these columns. _The
Nabob_ is a large advance upon either. Possessing all the
characteristics that individualized those stories, it is larger in
scope, firmer in touch, fuller in character, more vigorous and finished
in execution. As far as writing, plot, and development go, it is a very
remarkable book. We must say of it, however, as we said of its
predecessors, it is not a pleasant story. There is a kind of hot-house
effect about it, a forced process, so to say, that, while fascinating
for the moment, is not natural and healthy. We breathe in an overcharged
atmosphere. There is any quantity of intoxicating odors, of lights and
flowers, and soft music and rich costumes and beautiful faces. But the
light is not the blessed sunlight; the odors and flowers oppress us with
their heaviness like those around a bier; the beautiful faces are
painted, and we sigh for something fresh and free, even if it be not
half so elegant or well “made up.” There is from the beginning a
brooding sense of a storm coming, and the storm comes with awful and
repulsive vehemence.
Doubtless the author meant to produce just such an effect and to achieve
just such a result. If this were his chief intention he is to be
congratulated on his success. He has given a highly dramatic
story—melodramatic, in fact. There is wit enough and humor enough
throughout; but even the wit is biting and the humor sour. The laughter
has the sardonic tone of Mephistopheles, and an honest man shivers a
little even while he joins in it. Every scene fits with niceness; the
curtain always falls on a strong situation; there is not a dull incident
throughout; and if nearly everybody in whom you have been interested
gets murdered, or destroyed, or run away with, or debauched at the end,
what will you have? A melodrama is a melodrama, and Paris is its
paradise.
_The Nabob_ is a story of Parisian life, as Parisian life is popularly
supposed to have been when Napoleon III. was the arbiter of Europe and
Paris Europe’s capital—a capital, if the novelists are to be believed,
of political, social, literary, scientific, and moral charlatanism.
Doubtless this is true to a great extent; for the leader of it all had,
unfortunately for France and himself, much of the charlatan in his
disposition. There is everything there but honesty and purity; or if
honesty and purity there be, they are kept severely in the background.
Their garb is too homely, their faces are too fresh, for this garish
light and exotic atmosphere. They are out of place in this fashionable
dance of death, as we say here the scholar and the gentleman are out of
politics. There is a wonderful duke and statesman—De Mora—whose habit is
to give a bored half-glance to the affairs of France, and the rest of
his time to dilettanteism and _amours_, looking all the while to a quack
doctor’s globules to keep his eyes bright, his step elastic, and his
nerves steady enough for an evening party. There is a sculptor—Felicia
Ruys—full of the noblest aspirations, but whose bringing up has been
bad. She has been among Bohemians from her infancy, and she is left
alone among them, under the care of an old aunt, a famous dancer in her
day, whose wonderful toes had turned the crowned heads of Europe.
Felicia’s noble nature finds itself bound in by an iron barrier of
wickedness. She is surrounded always by a vicious circle from which she
sees no outlet or escape. Is it so wonderful that she mistakes her
narrow circle for the universe, and sees nothing but wickedness in all
the world? How many do this in real life!
There is the wonderful Nabob himself, risen from nowhere, to whom one of
the strange turns of Fortune’s wheel sent a fabulous fortune gathered by
his own hard and not too scrupulous hands in Algeria. He is ignorant,
vulgar, low, without any very strong moral sense, but with a really kind
and good heart: he goes to Paris with his millions, and his millions
conquer Paris—as long as they last. All the charlatans circle around
him. He is a rich man; he wants now to be a great and a distinguished
man; and it is truly wonderful to see how many kind friends spring up to
make this rich man great and distinguished in a day. Even the Duke de
Mora condescends to sell him his cast-off pictures at ducal prices; the
illustrious and philanthropic Dr. Jenkins—Jenkins the great—feeds him on
his globules at fees that are fortunes; Felicia Ruys makes a bust of
him, and would have married him only that he is stupid enough to have
been burdened with a wife; Moessard, one of the vampires of the press,
writes the Nabob up, and, when the Nabob at last closes his pocket,
writes the Nabob down. And so they go on all of them, in a whirl of
gold-dust and pearl-powder and moral filth that is their world until
they are swept out, each in his or her way, on the strong eddy that is
for ever noiselessly, silently, relentlessly sweeping off human lives
into the vast and eternal hereafter.
Alphonse Daudet has all the gifts that a powerful novelist needs, and
has cultivated them to the highest degree. He writes with that
passionless tone of an intense but calm observer who sees things as they
are, and sees deeper and farther than other men, and paints his picture
with pitiless truth. He misses nothing that can add even incidental
effect to the firm yet delicate stroke of his pencil. He writes with
that apparent effortless ease which is really the result of the
strongest effort in a man who is perfectly master of his work. He has
even, we believe, that highest quality—a moral purpose in what he
writes. But though he sees virtue and the possibilities of virtue even
in his Paris, vice seems too strong for it and always to get the best of
the bargain, even if in the end it goes out in darkness, disaster, and
despair. This undertone of despair of the good is principally what
imparts so unhealthy and morbid an air to his stories. Thackeray
pictured bad enough people, and with an awful accuracy. But the devil
never had it all his own way in Thackeray’s stories, as he has not in
real life. He invariably came out of the fight with his tail between his
legs, very limp and woe-begone, and in a disgraceful condition
generally. There was rude health and pure blood in all Thackeray’s
stories strongly set off against the other side. If M. Daudet could only
muster moral pluck enough to make his virtuous people a little more
robust and aggressive—and there are plenty of such virtuous people in
Paris—his stories would gain rather than lose in tone and make much more
pleasant reading than they do at present. After all, we tire of a crowd
of “awfully wicked” people, going through all their wickedness for our
special edification and instruction.
Miss Hooper’s translation is excellent.
THE CHURCH AND THE GENTILE WORLD AT THE FIRST PROMULGATION OF THE
GOSPEL. Considerations on the Catholicity of the Church soon after
her Birth. By the Rev. Aug. J. Thébaud, S.J. Vol. I. New York: Peter
F. Collier. 1878.
We can do no more now than acknowledge the receipt of advance sheets of
this first volume of a work that promises to be one of great value and
importance. Father Thébaud needs no introduction to our readers. He is
known to them as a man of wide and accurate knowledge, keen observation,
and deep thought. These qualities are not conceded to him idly and for
the sake of saying something graceful. They are too rare in these days,
and are still more rarely found united in one person. Nothing, then,
that comes from the pen of this learned Jesuit can be thought unworthy
of careful attention by an intelligent Catholic reader. The title of the
present volume gives some indication of the scope and aim of the work.
These are still further set forth in the following words, which we quote
from the preface:
“Her (the church’s) expansion took place instantaneously, as soon as the
apostles began to preach. Thenceforth her universal sway on earth began,
never to end until the last day, when she will be transferred to heaven.
The whole world at the time was comprised in the three old continents.
It is doubtful if there were already on this western hemisphere any of
the nations which were found in it when it was discovered by Europeans
at the end of the fifteenth century.... The church, therefore, became at
once universal if she filled the greatest part of the old world, and
subdued the chief nations that inhabited it. It can be proved at this
time that her conquests in Asia went much further than was for a long
time believed, and that she was rapidly spreading toward the Eastern
ocean when Moslem fanaticism arrested her in her career. A like result
follows an attentive study of her early progress in the interior of
Africa. Of Europe all concede that she rapidly attained the leadership,
and that she was afterwards mainly instrumental in giving birth to
European civilization.
“But what renders more attractive the detail of all these considerations
is the enumeration of the obstacles she had to surmount in so arduous a
task as this. The main one was not only the natural opposition between
the leanings of corrupt human nature and the doctrines of the Gospel,
but in particular the extreme dissimilarities existing between the
various races of man—dissimilarities in aptitudes, in thoughts and
ideas, in language and manners, but especially in religion and worship.
For the Gospel of Christ was preached not only at a time of a high
civilization, but also of great corruption and religious disintegration.
The primitive traditions of mankind were then nearly all forgotten; the
pure religion and morality which existed at first had given place to the
most degrading polytheism; and, worse yet, this polytheism had lost all
the homogeneity it may have possessed formerly in many countries, and
had become a mere jumble of absurd superstitions.
“This is, in a few words, the portraiture of humanity which met the
apostles at every step, and which must be examined in detail to
understand the difficulty of their task.”
We defer to a later number the criticism which a work of this kind
demands.
THE VATICAN LIBRARY. New York: Hickey & Co. 1878.
The “Vatican Library” has been started by Mr. P. V. Hickey, the active
and enterprising editor of the _Catholic Review_, with the aim of
supplying the general Catholic public with the best Catholic works in
the cheapest possible form. Such an object is on the face of it its own
best recommendation. Two volumes from the “Library” have already reached
us: a twenty-five-cent edition of Cardinal Wiseman’s beautiful story of
_Fabiola_, one of those stories that is destined never to grow old, and
an original story (price ten cents) entitled _The Australian Duke_. The
latter we have not yet had an opportunity of examining. Both volumes are
handsomely produced—very much more so, indeed, than many far more costly
books. Quite a series is promised of “cheap, amusing, entertaining, and
instructive Catholic literature.”
An attempt of this kind, seriously undertaken, and not in a haphazard
fashion, cannot be too highly commended. Whatever tends to cheapen
Catholic books—books, that is, that are really Catholic—and spread them
abroad among the people is a good and noble work. More harm is probably
done by cheap literature in these days than by any other means. The
readiest and most effectual antidote to this universal literary poison
is undoubtedly a literature such as the projectors of the “Vatican
Library” aim at supplying. But they cannot work alone. Generous and
earnest Catholics must help them generously and earnestly. It goes
without saying that the attempt must prove a failure unless it is
seconded on all sides. The purchase of a single copy of a ten cent book
will not help the publishers very materially. The books are chiefly
intended for those who have the will to read but not the means to
purchase. In such a case it is for those who have the means to come
forward and help their poorer brethren all they can by placing in their
hands books that cost next to nothing, yet are in themselves a long
delight and unceasing source of sound instruction.
LEO XIII. AND HIS PROBABLE POLICY. By Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, D. D.
New York: Peter F. Collier. 1878.
This little biographical sketch of ninety-six pages has for title on the
cover, “Who is the new Pope? and What is He Likely to Do?” As to who the
new Pope is, Dr. O’Reilly gives a pleasing and picturesque sketch of him
whom it has pleased Providence to call to the highest dignity in the
church and on earth. The personal familiarity of the author with the
scenes where the present Pontiff passed his early youth and strong and
vigorous manhood add value to the charm of a brisk and stirring
narrative. Those who wish to know the character of Leo XIII., what
manner of man he is, and how he passed his life previous to being
summoned to sit in the chair of Peter, will find Dr. O’Reilly’s sketch
by far the best of any that we have thus far seen. Speculations as to
the future policy of the Pontiff can hardly prove very satisfactory just
yet. It may be as well for impatient men to wait a little, and not
attempt to forestall the Holy Father. What his future policy may be can
only be made plain by his own words and acts. He has thus far spoken
very little and done very little. Indeed, he has scarcely had time to do
either one or the other. His position is one where the most extreme
caution and circumspection are needed, and it augurs well for his future
“policy” that he is so very slow to declare any policy at all. The
present state of Europe hardly admits of a hard-and-fast line of
“policy” to be drawn by any one. It is enough for us to know that the
church is safe in whatever hands it falls, so far as regards the deposit
of faith. For the rest, the march of circumstance must greatly influence
the actions of the supreme head of the church. Prayer is rather needed
at this crisis than advice. These observations are not at all intended
disparagingly of Dr. O’Reilly’s interesting _brochure_, but of a
well-meant tendency manifesting itself, among our non-Catholic friends
chiefly, to map out beforehand a convenient little policy for Leo XIII.
which shall make everybody happy here and hereafter.
A FEW OF THE SAYINGS AND PRAYERS OF THE FOUNDRESS OF THE SISTERS OF
MERCY. Edited by a member of the order, authoress of _Catherine
McAuley, Venerable Hofoauer_, etc. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society Co. 1878.
A beautiful little book made up of beautiful maxims and prayers. Such a
gem will, we are sure, meet with a welcome reception by religious of all
orders. Its reading will also benefit those who are not religious.
“GHOSTS.” Father Walworth’s Reply to Robert G. Ingersoll. A Lecture
delivered at St. Mary’s Church, Albany, Jan. 20, 1878. Albany:
_Times_ Company Print.
THE HISTORY OF JOHN TOBY’S CONVERSION. With his Views on Temperance,
the Liquor Trade, and the Excise Law. A Lecture by the Rev. C. A.
Walworth. Albany News Company. 1878.
These are two excellent lectures, deserving of a wide circulation. The
first is a plain, common-sense yet effectual and eloquent reply to a
lecture by Mr. Ingersoll, who has recently gained some notoriety as a
preacher of a very “cheap” and very “nasty” form of infidelity. Father
Walworth’s is just the kind of argument to apply to men of average
intelligence who are as open to the teachings of truth, when plainly
presented to them, as they are apt to be carried away by a bold assault
of scoffing infidelity. The lecture is a straightforward, manly,
matter-of-fact defence of religion as against no-religion, none the less
effective and thorough because the lecturer has contrived to conceal
under the guise of a popular form of address the wide knowledge and
learning which give its inherent force to what he says. Mr. Ingersoll
ought to feel peculiarly flattered at being answered by a gentleman and
a man of real power and culture.
The second lecture is the story, very tenderly and charmingly told, of a
drunkard’s conversion. It brims over with real humor and flashes with
“palpable hits”; while there is a touch here and there of pathos that
brings tears to the eyes, and that could only be the outcome of a tender
heart that loves its fellows and sorrows over the woes for which their
vice and folly are chiefly answerable.
ST. JOSEPH’S MANUAL: Containing a selection of Prayers for Public
and Private Devotion. With Epistles and Gospels for Sundays and
Holydays. Compiled from approved sources. By Rev. James Fitton.
Boston: Thomas B. Noonan & Co. 1877.
This is an old friend with a new and very pleasing face. The _St.
Joseph’s Manual_, compiled by the skilful hand of Father Fitton, has
long been, and is likely to continue long to be, a favorite prayer-book
with Catholics. It is formed on an intelligent plan. It is a book of
wise instruction as well as devotion. The first seventy pages are
devoted to a clear and sound exposition of Catholic doctrine and
practice. With regard to this valuable portion of the book we would
offer two suggestions for future editions: 1. The English here and there
would be better for a little trimming; 2. A special chapter on the dogma
of Papal Infallibility, which might be made brief and concise as the
rest, would do no harm. For the rest, the volume is everything that
could be desired. It contains over eight hundred pages, printed in a
large, clear type very grateful to the eye. The illustrations are,
without exception, excellent. Indeed, the whole work reflects real
credit on the publishers.
CANTUS ECCLESIASTICUS PASSIONIS D. N. JESU CHRISTI, secundum
Matthæum, Marcum, Lucam et Joannem, editus sub auspiciis Sanctissimi
Domini nostri Pii Papæ IX., curante Sacrorum Rituum Congregatione.
Fasciculi III. Chronista, Christus, Synagoga. MDCCCLXXVII.
Ratisbonæ, Neo Eboraci et Cincinnatii sumptibus, chartis et typis
Frederici Pustet, S. Sedis Apost. et Sacr. Rit. Cong. Typographi.
These three superb volumes exhibit the same elegance and taste in
composition that mark all the ritual and choral works edited by Mr.
Pustet, and for which his house has earned a so deservedly high
reputation. Besides the chant of the Passion as appointed for Palm
Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Good Friday of the Holy Week, the second
volume contains a form of chant for the _Lamentations_, and the third
volume the chant of the _Exultet_.
THE WAY OF THE CROSS. Drawn by N. H. J. Westlake, F.S.A. With a
letter of approbation by His Eminence Cardinal Manning. Devotions by
St. Alphonsus Liguori. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1878.
A very beautiful little volume, whose title explains itself. It is
brought out in a tasteful and convenient form, and is admirably adapted
for the Lenten season. The name of Mr. Westlake is sufficient guarantee
for the superiority of the drawings.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXVII., No. 158.—MAY, 1878.
THE DESTINY OF MAN IN A FUTURE LIFE.
Doctrine and speculation concerning the destiny of man in that future
which follows the termination of his earthly life, have always held a
most important place in all religions and systems of philosophy. Nothing
interests the human mind so much, when it escapes in any degree from the
spell of present, sensible preoccupations, and is awakened to the
sentiment of its own perennial nature and duration. The recent agitation
of the public mind in England and the United States concerning
retribution in a future life has shown how universal and deeply seated
is the anxiety to know what lies beyond the veil which separates the
period of existence on this side, from the endless duration on the other
side, of the common grave into which all human generations descend. The
question of eternal punishment has occupied the pulpits and the press,
as the one most deeply disturbing the general mind of that great mass of
men whose traditions and beliefs are derived from Christianity, although
they are themselves actually separated from the great Christian body,
the Catholic Church. That which strikes the mind of an instructed
Catholic most forcibly in all this discussion is the want of clear and
settled principles in philosophy and theology, the lack of the requisite
premises and data, the absence of any sure criterion for deducing
certain conclusions, testing and determining doctrines and opinions. The
controversy seems to be interminable, for all those who have no lawful
and unerring external criterion in authority. And it really is so. For
this reason, we regard it as the only practicable way for a Catholic to
take in treating of this subject, that he should present the doctrine of
revelation as defined and declared by the church; and resort to reason
and the Holy Scripture, only to refute objections to the Catholic
doctrine from these sources, and to present corroborative proofs and
explanations, in so far as these can be found and their validity as
certain or probable established.
We do not propose to discuss directly the subject of the reality and the
nature of eternal punishment. There is a previous question respecting
the destiny for which man was originally created, upon which depends the
whole solution of the subsequent one concerning the necessity or
contingency of its attainment. We must know what this destiny is, and
what are the means ordained by the Creator for securing its fulfilment,
before we can know whether there is a danger of final and irretrievable
failure on the part of those who are placed in the way of attaining
their end, involved in the very nature of these means.
In plain words, is there a heaven for man hereafter, and what is the way
to obtain it? The doctrine of hell is the shadow of the doctrine of
heaven, and follows it necessarily, when it is rightly presented.
The idea of heaven is that of a state of endless and perfect beatitude,
in the possession of the sovereign good, and of every kind of inferior
good suited to the nature of man. This idea is absolutely incompatible
with every form of atheism, which does not acknowledge the existence of
the sovereign good. It is entirely above the scope of philosophy and
natural theology. For, although God, the sovereign and infinite good, is
manifested by the light of reason, as the first and final cause of all
things, the light of reason does not disclose the possibility of a light
intrinsically superior to the natural light, by which the created spirit
can see God in his essence, and thus obtain the sovereign good as its
own proper possession. Much less can it discover any reason why man
should be regarded as destined to such an elevation above his own
natural mode of knowledge. The utmost that can be proved by pure
philosophy is the possibility of a perfect and permanent state, in which
the ideal of humanity only partially realized in this life is brought
into complete and actual existence. It is certainly most consonant with
the dictates of sound reason to expect that God will bring all
reasonable creatures to a state of permanent felicity, unless they
voluntarily thwart his benevolent purposes. But it does not seem
possible to determine with certainty whether this benevolent will of God
determines him to put an end to all moral and physical evil in the
universe or not, from arguments of pure reason. The whole subject of the
existence of evil must remain covered with obscurity, so long as it is
considered in the light of mere rational philosophy. It is only by the
light of divine revelation that the dealings of God with the human race
become intelligible, and we are able even to reason about the future
destiny of man in a satisfactory manner. Even those who profess to be
guided by this light, if they follow the rule of private judgment, fail
to obtain clear and consistent ideas. The proper idea of the heaven for
which men were created, if not lost, is obscured in the minds of the
greater part of those who profess to be Christian believers and yet
reject the authority of the Catholic Church. All other doctrines
connected with this fundamental one are similarly obscured and
perverted, rendering the theology which rests on them absurd or
inadequate.
It is supernatural beatitude which the revelation of God proposed by the
Catholic Church discloses to faith as the end for which man was created.
By its very essence and definition it is infinitely beyond and above the
end which human nature spontaneously aspires to attain, in which it
finds the perfection and scope corresponding to its essence and its
capabilities. To attain this end it needs grace, or a supernatural mode
of being and acting, elevation above every nature excepting only the
divine, transformation, and, in a sense, deification. Such a destiny for
a mere creature, especially one which is lowest in the intellectual
order, would be inconceivable, and incredible, unless explicitly
revealed by God. Even when it is made known by revelation, its intrinsic
possibility cannot be apprehended or proved by reason. It is one of the
mysteries which is above reason, and the utmost we can do by a rational
argument is to prove that it has been revealed by God, and therefore
rationally demands our assent to its truth because of the divine
veracity. We can, however, by a rational argument, prove that such an
elevation of a created nature must necessarily be supernatural and
cannot be effected by any evolution of a natural capacity, or expansion
of the intrinsic being even of a pure spirit, although it were to
increase in intelligence by an indefinite progress for ever.
Cognition is a vital act, immanent in the intelligent spirit, determined
in perfection by the essence of the spirit itself, and incapable of
transcending its limits as a created and finite being. By this act other
beings are received into and united with the intelligent being,
according to the mode of the recipient; that is, ideally, by a
representation through which they are perceived and known as objects in
their own proper reality outside of the subject. This representation
cannot exceed the capacity of the intelligence which is its active
recipient. The idea by which a created spirit receives God into itself
and unites itself to him, cannot represent his essence and produce
immediate cognition, because the essence of God absolutely and
infinitely transcends all genera and species of created beings. The
highest angel can perceive no essence which intrinsically transcends his
own, and must therefore represent God to himself by and through himself,
that is, analogically and by abstractive not intuitive cognition. His
intellectual vision is as utterly incompetent to perceive the essence of
God, as the sensible vision of man is to see a pure spirit, or his
finger to touch the points of an argument. The indefinite increase of
the power of sensible vision will never bring it any nearer to spiritual
vision, and, in like manner, the indefinite increase of intelligence
will never bring it any nearer to divine intuition. The essence of a
created spirit is finite and its intellectual light is finite. Its
immediate intelligible object is within the limits of its created
nature. As the mind of man cannot rise to any natural knowledge of God
except by discursive reasoning from first principles on the works of
God, that is, by the argument from effects to the first cause, so the
purely spiritual being cannot rise above his own intellectual cognition
of God as the cause and first principle of his own intelligent nature.
It is vain, therefore, to think that it is the grossness of the body, or
the body itself, which hinders the human spirit from seeing God.
Separated from the body, and elevated to an equality with the highest
angel, it could never possess itself of an intelligible object outside
of its own supreme genus as a created spirit, outside the limit of
created and finite being.
It is evident that all the perfection and felicity of an intelligent
being is measured and determined by its intelligence. It possesses the
object in which it voluntarily rests as its chief good by cognition, and
according to the mode of its cognition. No creature, therefore, by its
nature, can rise to that state of immediate communion with God which is
properly called friendship, which demands as its basis a similitude and
equality resulting from a real filiation, such as the creative act
cannot impart to a being brought into existence out of nothingness. The
possession of the sovereign good belongs exclusively to the nature of
God. To the created nature is due only a participation and imitation of
that sovereign good within its own specific and finite limits of being.
The heaven in which God eternally dwells in his own infinite beatitude
is not therefore the natural term and end of man’s future destiny, nor
of the natural destiny of any higher order of creatures. The distance
dividing the most perfect beatitude of created nature from that of the
uncreated and creative nature is equally infinite with the distance
between the essence of God and created essences. The Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit alone have natural society, each person of the
Blessed Trinity with the other persons, in unity of intelligence and
volition, in the possession of the divine essence, the sovereign good,
the absolute beatitude.
A created spirit cannot be raised to this divine level, unless God so
unites his divine essence with the essence of his creature, in an
interior and vital union penetrating to its very centre and the seat of
its intelligent and vital action, that in the essence of God present to
it as immediately as it is present to itself, it sees as through a
divine medium that same divine essence as its immediate object, without
losing its own proper act and distinct individuality.
That God can and does thus elevate created nature we know by divine
revelation. Jesus Christ is true God and true man in two distinct
natures and one person for ever. All the blessed in heaven are
affiliated to God after his likeness, in an inferior degree which leaves
them in their distinct personalities. This state of glory is properly
speaking what is called the kingdom of heaven. Annexed to it, as the
proper inheritance of those who share in the royalty of the Son of God,
is every kind of the most perfect natural beatitude, in the possession
and enjoyment of everything which the universe contains, according to
the different natures of men and angels.
It is evident, without any reasoning on the subject, that in proposing
this supernatural and purely gratuitous beatitude to created beings, God
might select whom he pleased as the recipients of so great a grace, and
prescribe any conditions which are possible and reasonable for securing
its permanent possession. It is perfectly consonant with justice and
goodness, that it should be made a prize and reward of merit, and that a
state of trial and probation should be appointed for those who were
permitted to aspire to this reward. Divine revelation, whose teachings
are confirmed by universal experience, makes known to us, that in fact
God did place the angels, and afterwards mankind, in a state of
probation for this supernatural destiny. A probation must be real and
not illusory. It involves the possibility and danger of failure. It must
have a prescribed period for each individual and for the whole number.
When this period is finished, those who have failed are by the very
terms of the probation finally excluded from the hope of retrieving
their loss. Divine revelation informs us that the probation of the
angels was terminated long ago, and resulted in the winning of eternal
beatitude by a certain number and the loss of it by the others. One
among the chiefs of the angelic hierarchy rebelled against God and drew
after him many other spirits, and with these fallen angels for his
ministers and associates, he has continued and will continue on the
earth the revolt he began in another sphere, until the day appointed for
the final judgment. He has continued it on this earth, by seducing men
to join in his rebellion, and making war against Jesus Christ and his
kingdom, the universal church. The conditions of human probation are of
a very special and peculiar nature, in accordance with the specific
nature of mankind, which is extremely different from that of the angels.
The angels, as pure spirits and having a simple, intellectual essence,
were created singly, and in the actual possession from the first instant
of existence of their complete being. Man was made a rational animal, by
the law of his nature increasing numerically by generation, and
progressing from an inchoate state to his perfection through gradual and
successive stages of growth. The first progenitors of the race alone,
were immediately created, in full maturity of perfection, and endowed
with all the natural and supernatural gifts suitable for their high
destination, to be transmitted to their offspring. Their disobedience
and fall entailed on themselves and their descendants the loss of the
supernatural destiny and of all the gifts and privileges connected with
it. Nevertheless, the human race was restored again by another
dispensation, which is that of the Redeemer Jesus Christ. All those who
receive from him the grace which he merited by his atonement, and do not
wilfully and finally reject this grace, obtain in the end a complete
resurrection to the glory and beatitude of heaven. The rest of mankind
are for ever excluded from the kingdom of heaven. This is a summary of
first principles and fundamental truths pertaining to the very essence
of Christianity. In so far as the destiny of mankind is concerned, the
first constitution of human nature in the person of the common
progenitor of the race in the state of grace and integrity, with a right
to the kingdom of heaven; the ruin of the whole human race by the sin of
Adam; the redemption of the race through Jesus Christ; are the sum of
the teaching of the Old and New Testaments, of the traditional doctrine
concurrent with it, and of the common belief of all generations of men
who have professed to make this doctrine their rule of faith, especially
those who have lived in the full light of Christianity. It is idle to
pretend to call any doctrine different from this by the name of
Christianity, for the whole world knows that this is of the very essence
of the genuine, historical religion which acknowledges Jesus Christ as
its founder. Those who reject it, and yet call themselves Christians,
are only philosophers, professing a merely natural religion, partly
constructed from materials borrowed from Christianity and altered to
suit their own private notions, but really in its fundamental principles
and distinctive character nothing more than a system of rationalism. The
traditional and orthodox Christianity has invariably taught that all men
naturally descending from Adam and Eve need salvation, and can receive
it only through an act of gratuitous mercy on account of the merits of
the divine Redeemer. No man is entitled by the rights of his natural
birth to heaven, or capable of obtaining a right to it by any exertion
of his natural powers. All are under a doom of exclusion from the
kingdom of heaven. That future state, with all its circumstances of
locality and other adjuncts and environments, to which all are destined
by virtue of this doom, is called in the authorized language of the
Catholic Church _Infernum_, in the English language, _Hell_. The
doctrine of hell as an eternal state is therefore necessarily the shadow
which must accompany the doctrine of heaven. It is impossible for any
one to believe in salvation by grace through Jesus Christ, without
implicitly at least acknowledging that all men might have been left
under the doom of destination to the infernal state, without any
prejudice to the justice or the goodness of God. The case is not one
whit altered, if one supposes that all men are actually saved because
Christ died for all. If the mercy of God were universal, it would still
remain evident that mercy is not identical with justice. It could not be
argued that any man has a natural right to salvation, because salvation
is bestowed as a boon upon all men. It is vain, therefore, to argue on
_à priori_ grounds, that all men must eventually be saved. In truth, it
has never been a doctrine of traditional and orthodox Christianity, that
the simple fact of redemption placed every one of the human race in the
possession of an inalienable right to final salvation. That many never
recover the lost right to heaven, and that many who have obtained it
lose it again irretrievably and for ever, is the common and universal
doctrine of Christians. The efforts made to twist the language of Christ
and the apostles into a contrary sense are so futile, that only a fixed
determination to force the Holy Scripture into agreement with one’s own
private opinions and feelings can account for them. The doctrine of the
Catholic Church is unalterably determined. The fallen angels were not
redeemed by Jesus Christ, and for them there is no restoration to the
place which they have forfeited. Of men, all, be their number greater or
smaller, who have been regenerated by the grace of Christ, and have
passed out of this life in the state of grace, will obtain the kingdom
of heaven, and the remainder will be forever excluded. The notion of an
ἀποκατάστασις or future restitution of all angels and men, proposed as a
mere theory by Origen, and alluded to by one or two other Catholic
Fathers of the early ages as a possible conjecture, was universally
reprobated and condemned by the church as soon as it attracted general
attention. There is no doubt as to the Catholic faith on this matter.
The recent discussion has turned chiefly on the question of moral
probation, the cause and reason of the mutability and liability to error
in the intellect and perversion in the will of rational beings, and the
manner and extent of their passing through the state of mutability to a
state of permanent stability in good or evil. The errors of Origen were
derived from the Platonic philosophy. So far as the _Periarchon_ really
presents his fanciful conjectures, we must consider them as vagaries of
a man who, although richly endowed with intellectual gifts and moral
virtues, was destitute of a truly rational and Christian philosophy, and
therefore unable to think consistently, when he ventured beyond those
primary doctrines of the faith which were clearly known to him. We
perceive the same cause of aberration and incoherence in most of the
current statements and expositions of theological opinion which appear
in our modern publications. It would seem that Origen considered it to
be a necessary law of creation, that God must create all souls alike,
and in an elementary state, with a most capricious and uncontrollable
liberty to choose good or evil, so that they were for ever liable to
indefinite mutations of character and condition, and could never become
stable in one fixed position. His state of restitution was no more
permanent and eternal than the previous one of degradation. There is no
eternal heaven possible, according to his hypothesis, or rather that of
the _Periarchon_, any more than an eternal hell. Our modern Protestant
religious writings are affected by a similar tendency to a chaotic
confusion of ideas. It would be an endless task to attempt to follow
them through the maze of conflicting and incoherent reasonings with
which they contend mutually, and strive to construct some sort of
rational and credible eschatology. It is only in Catholic theology based
on dogmas of faith, and a philosophy in harmony with this theology
derived from the ancient masters of intellectual science, that a remedy
for this chaotic state of things can be found. We cannot do more at
present than merely state a few sound and certain principles, without
attempting to reproduce the arguments by which they have been often and
fully demonstrated.
The first principle we lay down is, that God can impart his own
immutability of intelligence and will to intelligent beings. It is
because his intelligence is infinite that God is immutable, that is, can
never change his mind. His will necessarily conforms to his
intelligence, and he therefore is, and is in full possession of, the
sovereign good, by his self-existing essence.
The intelligent creature participates in this intelligence, in that
degree of being which God gives him. The object of the spontaneous and
natural act of intelligence is the real verity of being, and by his
intelligent nature he can never be deceived. The object perceived by the
intelligence contains in it the good, toward which the will moves by a
spontaneous and natural act. It is only necessary that the object be so
placed before the intellect that it compels assent, to make all error,
voluntary or involuntary, impossible. The good which is thus perfectly
presented necessarily draws the will to itself, and thus immutability in
good is produced. Error in the intellect is an accident and a defect in
nature, and all perversion of will or evil choice is a consequence of
error. The liability of sinning is therefore no necessary adjunct of the
spontaneity or liberty of will which is an attribute of intelligent
beings. It is removed by making the intelligence perfect. It is easy,
therefore, for God to make any intelligent being immutably good, even
from the beginning of his existence, since it is easy for him to give to
nature any degree of perfection, within the purely natural order.
In the supernatural order, the gift of the intuitive vision of the
divine essence imparts to the recipient the knowledge and possession of
the sovereign good, with which it is immovably united by a spontaneous
and necessary act. It can no more lose its beatitude than it can lose
its essence. It is as impossible for one of the blessed to be changed
into a sinner, as for an angel to become an ape.
Liability to error and sin belongs, therefore, not to any necessary
order of things, resulting from natural and necessary laws which God is
obliged to follow in creation and providence, but it is a condition of
defectibility pertaining to a law of probation which God has established
by his sovereign will.
This defectibility supposes an equilibrium or indetermination of the
will in respect to contraries which is overcome by a self-determining
power. Such an equilibrium can only exist, when opposite objects, in
which some good corresponding to the spontaneous tendency of the will is
contained, are presented to the intellect as desirable and worthy of
choice; in such a way that the motives for choice balance each other.
The will must follow the intellect, and therefore an error in the choice
must be preceded by an erroneous judgment, which is possible only when
the object presented to it does not compel assent. Moral probation
requires that there should be an obligation, arising from the eternal
law of God or a positive command, to choose one of the opposite objects
and reject the other. It is this which makes these objects contrary to
each other in a moral respect, and is the reason why liberty of choice
between them is called the liberty of contrariety, and the determination
to the one is a virtuous, while that to the other is a vicious act. It
is easy to understand this liberty of contrariety and the moral
discipline which is requisite for its due control and direction, in
respect to human nature. From its complex constitution, the sensible
good is often opposed to the rational good, and reason, which ought to
govern, is easily deceived by the imagination. In the case of pure
spirits, it is more difficult to see how they can be subject to any
illusion, or capable of undergoing any moral probation. In the natural
order, they are perfect, and cannot err in the apprehension of that
which is truly desirable as their chief good. They are not, therefore,
capable of probation in the moral order of pure nature. But in the
supernatural order, the object proposed to them being presented in an
obscure, supernatural light, which does not compel assent, there is room
for a suspension of the act of consent, and a power of rejecting the
sovereign good by a voluntary self-determination, in adhering to the
inferior object which they naturally comprehend and love. In fact, it
was in this way that the fallen angels sinned and rebelled against God.
In like manner, Adam, who was elevated to a perfect state like that of
the angels, and enjoyed absolute dominion over all sensible
concupiscence, underwent a supernatural probation, in which he fell
through the seduction of Eve, who was the instrument of the demon, who
had previously made her the victim of his diabolical sophistry.
The only moral order which is known to exist as an order of probation,
in reference to an ultimate destination and end of intelligent
creatures, is the one which is supernatural. If we conjecture that the
universe is filled with intelligent beings who are neither angels nor
human beings, we have no need and no reason to imagine that they are
subject to a moral probation with the trials and pains connected with
the order under which angels and men were constituted. The great problem
of the reason of probation is one which is restricted within the sphere
of those beings who have been constituted by the Creator in the order of
a supernatural destiny. The difficulty of the problem arises exclusively
from the moral and physical evil which is an incident of probation. In
itself, the sufficient reason for probation is obvious and evident. The
origin and nature of evil really present no insoluble difficulty, when
the principles of sound theology and philosophy are understood. The
difficulty consists in accounting for the permission of sin and misery
in view of the known attributes of infinite goodness and almighty power
in God. If the final conclusion of the vicissitudes and temporary evils
of the state of probation were a universal ἀποκατάστασις, including the
eternal abolition of evil in the universe and the attainment in general
and in each individual of a permanent good of the highest order, to
which the temporary conflict of good and evil was a necessary means, the
human reason might be completely satisfied. But, although in general,
and in a multitude of individuals, this is really the predestined and
certain result, it is not the case with another multitude, the whole
number, namely, of those who finally forfeit the sublime destiny to
which they had an original right, but which they have lost
irrecoverably. There is a repugnance in the human mind to the
contemplation of permanent and eternal evil in the universe, and this is
much increased by the human sensibilities, and natural sympathy with
those of our own kind who suffer even the consequences of their own
violation of the eternal law. This repugnance causes the effort to find
a way of escape, or at least of mitigating the severe integrity of the
truth by resorting to some kind of fatalism. These efforts are all
futile and foolish. It is absurd to question the infinite goodness or
the infinite power of God. The fact that moral and physical evil exists,
is only too well known by experience. There is but one way to account
for it, which is that God permits it as incident to the law of moral
probation. We can have no knowledge of the finality of evil except from
the divine revelation. And, that revelation having made known to us that
the decision of destiny for each individual at the term of his probation
is irreversible, it is reasonable, as well as imperative in respect to
faith, to assent to the judgment of God because of his own knowledge and
veracity, whether we can or cannot understand how and why that judgment
is consistent with his goodness.
There is no prohibition placed on the exercise of intellect and reason
in seeking to understand these revealed doctrines, provided we respect
the authority which God has established as our extrinsic rule and
criterion of truth. Under this regulation, reason can go very far toward
solving the problem of the origin, nature, and reason of evil.
The origin of evil is in the abuse of free-will by intelligent beings
who are placed by the Creator in a state of probation. Its nature is
merely privative, consisting in deficiency and disorder. The sufficient
reason for permitting it is either that it is a necessary incident to
any order of moral probation, or to such an order as the one actually
established, in view of the greater glory of God and the greater general
good of the universe. The evil condition, or state of deficiency and
privation, into which intelligent beings are degraded in consequence of
their abuse of the power of free choice, is the natural consequence of
their voluntary sin, and is, in itself, permanent and irremediable.
Since the order of probation is supernatural, and the power of
efficaciously electing the sovereign good is a grace freely given by
God, sin, which is a supernatural death, is eternal in its duration and
consequences, unless God restores the lost state of grace by his divine
power. He can easily do it, and it is therefore vain to attempt, as it
were, an apology for the Almighty, by pretending that he actually does
all that is possible, to restore the fallen, and to bring every
intelligent being to the perfection for which he was originally
destined. It is by the will of the Almighty, that each one who has been
placed in a state of probation, if he passes out of that state with the
guilt of sin upon him, is for ever deprived of the grace which is
absolutely necessary for expiation and restoration. The probation of
angels ended long ago, and those who sinned were left without any offer
of pardon and reconciliation. The pardon which is offered to men, is
offered to them as a gratuitous act of mercy on the part of God, which
is available so long as they live and have the use of reason and
free-will. Probation ceases with death, and all merit and demerit become
eternal. The doom awarded to merit is eternal reward, to demerit eternal
punishment. The final privation of that good which is the reward of
merit, and of that grace which is necessary for making the least
movement toward it, is a penalty which God has annexed to sin. This is
the Christian and Catholic doctrine, and to deny it is equivalent to a
complete renunciation of the genuine Christian religion. The recent
developments of the extent to which this fundamental tenet of orthodox
Protestantism is disbelieved or doubted among the various sects, are an
evidence that their dogmatic and historical basis is crumbling and
passing away with unexpected rapidity. The genuine dogmatic system of
Protestantism is Calvinism. And although the Calvinistic system retains
a number of the fundamental articles of Catholic faith, its omissions
and additions and perversions make it as a whole self-contradictory and
absurd. The principle of private judgment logically results in
rationalism, and no such system as Calvinism can long stand a rational
test. All other theological systems which have sprung up as
modifications of the Luthero-Calvinistic system are too incoherent and
incomplete to be permanent. An irresistible current is sweeping away all
these fabrics hastily built upon the sand, leaving only a confused
_débris_ of truths and errors to the amazement of mankind. While this
breaking up of old and general beliefs and convictions is in many
respects lamentable and dangerous, we recognize, nevertheless, that
there is a divarication in the irresistible logical current which is
sweeping them into the sea of oblivion. The tendency of the general mind
is not exclusively destructive. There is a yearning and an effort toward
universal truth, and a deeply-seated conviction that this truth is
really contained in Christianity rightly understood, which makes a
strong and wide counter-current, bearing away from the tide that sets so
strongly toward materialism and atheism. We recognize in the views and
arguments more or less rationalistic which have been recently put forth
in respect to the future destiny of the human soul, a revival of ethical
and theological ideas in respect to the relation of the soul toward God,
which are more in harmony with the Catholic faith than those of the old
Protestant belief. The intrinsic, inherent good qualities and state of
the soul itself, its voluntary determination to the good, its actual
perfection in spiritual excellence and virtue, are acknowledged to be
the ground and measure of the relation of friendship with God, and the
want of this subjective fitness and worthiness is confessed to be a
necessary cause of a corresponding alienation. The state of interior
rectitude, integrity, and likeness to God, is acknowledged to be the
necessary qualification of congruity and condignity in the soul, which
gives it an aptitude to receive from the Creator that permanent and
perfect enjoyment of its highest good which constitutes its everlasting
beatitude. Sin is acknowledged to be the supreme evil of the soul which
deprives it of its true good and degrades it below the order in which
its proper excellence and felicity are placed. Therefore, the whole
question of the final restoration of all intelligent beings who have
lapsed from good, is resolved into a question respecting the cessation
or the perpetual continuance of a moral order, under which renovation is
possible, and the possibility sure to become actual, by a necessary and
eternal law, in every individual instance. What is the criterion by
which those who maintain this ἀποκατάστασις intend to determine its
truth or falsity? It must be either divine revelation distinctly and
certainly made known, or pure human reason. Every one who thinks
logically must select between the two. As we have before said, we judge
it by the criterion of revelation. What is the Christian, that is, what
is the Catholic doctrine, founded on the veracity of God, clearly
declared, and unalterable? We have already stated it, and it is known to
all men. Those who still profess that they have in the Scriptures
interpreted by their own private judgment an infallible rule of faith,
are bound to demonstrate that their doctrine is clearly taught in the
Scriptures, or is at least compatible with what is taught in them. It is
open to any Catholic writer to discuss the matter with them on that
ground if he thinks fit to do so, and it may be of some utility. It is
equally suitable to discuss the question on purely philosophical grounds
with those who do not admit revelation. But, as this is not our present
purpose, we confine ourselves to the statement of what is the Catholic
doctrine, and merely affirm that it is impossible to bring any
conclusive argument against it, either from Scripture or from reason. It
is really only the objections from reason which have any weight in the
minds of men. Now, it is impossible to prove from reason that God may
not propose to intelligent creatures a supernatural end to be attained
by their voluntary operation under a moral law, and fix definite limits
to their probation; or that it is not just to leave those who have
misused their liberty by turning away from their prefixed end, in the
permanent state of privation of their sovereign good. Nor is it possible
to prove that penalties are not justly inflicted as a retribution for
violations of law, in the state which succeeds the term of probation. It
is God alone who is the judge of the nature and quantity of retribution
which is due according to justice to individual demerits. Reason is not
qualified to criticise the divine judgment which has decreed an eternal
penalty for sin. The only rational mode of inquiring into the penalty
for sin in the future life, is by seeking to ascertain what the divine
revelation actually discloses and teaches on this momentous subject.
This is determined with certainty by the Catholic rule, and taking all
that is contained in this certain doctrine as a point of departure and a
regulating principle, a theological and philosophical exposition of its
relations with the other known principles and doctrines of revelation
and reason manifests its harmony with all these truths, in a
sufficiently clear light to command a firm rational assent. If all
difficulties and obscurities are not completely removed, many
misconceptions and apparent objections are dissipated, while the
obscurity which finally remains is shown to be a necessary accompaniment
of the dim light, by which the human mind, in its present condition,
perceives these remote objects of eternity; and to make part of that
limitation of knowledge which is an element of our moral discipline.
It is a demonstrable truth, contained in the first principles both of
natural and revealed theology, that God has made all things for good,
and that he will not permit the abuse of free-will by his creatures to
thwart the final attainment of the end he has proposed, by causing
permanent disorder in the universe. St. Thomas teaches that the
punishment of the future life is decreed for this very reason. “It
pertains to the perfect goodness of God, that he should not leave
anything inordinate in existing things. Now, those things which exceed
their due quantity are comprehended in the order of justice which
reduces all things to equality; but man exceeds his due measure of
quantity when he prefers his own will to the divine will by satisfying
its desires inordinately; and this inequality is removed, when man is
compelled to suffer something contrary to his own will according to
God’s established order” (_Con. Gent._, iii. 146). F. Liberatore,
commenting on this text, says: “Punishment is therefore a certain
reaction of reason and justice for the restoration of the disturbed
order. The argument which demonstrates the necessity of a sanction for
the natural law, shows also that when God punishes those who commit
mischievous acts he is not impelled by a movement of vengeful ire, but
only by the love of goodness and order. For retribution, which proceeds
from the order of justice according to the quality of the works done,
imports in its very notion the concept of rectitude and goodness”
(_Eth._, c. iii. art. 2).
In respect to the essential nature of the punishment, the same author
lays down the proposition: “That the punishment of retribution for the
impious consists principally in the loss of their ultimate end. By those
good works which are commanded by the law, man puts himself on the road
which leads straight to his end. For virtuous actions are a kind of
steps by which a man walks toward this end; while on the other hand by
vicious actions he deflects from his end and goes in an altogether
opposite direction. Therefore, when the time destined for the journey
has expired, it will necessarily follow that the one who has travelled
by the road leading to his end should attain his end. Again, it is
necessary for a similar reason that the one who through disregard of his
end has followed a road leading in an entirely opposite direction should
be deprived of the attainment of his end. It is a contradiction to
assert that a way leading to a certain term does not lead to it; and
equally absurd to say that this same term is reached by a way which
leads directly away from it. Therefore, it necessarily follows that at
least the loss of the ultimate end should follow the violation of the
natural law and be, as it were, a certain internal and natural sanction
for it. But the loss of the end inflicted in view of the acts which one
has committed has the nature of a punishment.
“Nevertheless, that by no means suffices for a complete retribution
corresponding to the works done; but a positive infliction of
punishments according to the diversity existing between individuals is
requisite. Therefore they are not all to be made to receive an exactly
equal punishment (which would happen if they were only deprived of the
attainment of their end), but to be chastised by a greater or lesser
positive punishment according to the quality of their transgressions.
This is required for still another reason, viz., that by their vicious
acts they have not only despised their end but also positively disturbed
the right order.” (_Ibid._)
The reproach of dualism, and of a failure to establish a final
subjugation of evil by good and of disorder by the triumph and
domination of order, made against the orthodox doctrine, is shown by
these arguments, in connection with other well-known principles of
Catholic theology and philosophy, to be groundless. There is no dualism
in God, for his creative act, and all that he does for bringing it to
its ultimate term, proceeds from love diffusive of the good of being in
a wise and benevolent order. There is no dualism in the essence and
being of intelligent creatures, in respect to God or each other. Their
essence is good, and all nature whatsoever is essentially good. No evil
substance does or can exist. Evil is privation and disorder. The
temporary disorder, which is permitted as an incident to the liberty of
a state of probation and movement toward a stable order, is rectified in
the final ordination of all things under the supremacy of sovereign law.
The loss of some good, which might have been added to the actual sum of
good if all had attained their end, is compensated by the greater good
which God has brought out of evil. Reason and order and law are
vindicated and satisfied, by the compulsory subjection and homage of
those who have refused to give their concurrence and pay their just
tribute of obedience and labor freely. Privation does not disfigure the
spiritual universe in which all that is requisite to consummate order
and beauty exists, any more than empty space disfigures a stellar
system. The good has therefore a complete and universal triumph, which
leaves no deordination in the universe.
Disorder is only in the moral order of liberty in the election of
contraries, by which the permanent order of those who exercise this
power is determined. Those who rise above the moral order go to a higher
order which is permanent; those who fall below it go to an order beneath
which is permanent. The moral order passes away, and with it all
conflict between opposing moral forces. Those who have fallen below
their proper destiny receive precisely what is due to them and results
naturally from their voluntary choice. Whatever is superadded to the
misery naturally involved in the state of alienation from God and the
frustration of their proper end, is directed to remove and prevent but
not to perpetuate and increase deordination; and thus eternal
punishment, whatever its nature, qualities, and instrumentalities may
be, really restricts the limits of evil. It is the _bonum honestum_ and
not the _bonum delectabile_ which is the just and reasonable object of
the primary and direct complacency of intelligent beings. The _bonum
delectabile_ is secondary. That which is most contrary to this highest
good is the revolt of free-will against the will of God. When the term
allowed by the Almighty for the rebellion of Lucifer to run its course
has been reached, it will be suppressed by that act of sovereign power,
which places each one of those who have merited exclusion from heaven in
a fixed and unchangeable state, precisely suited to his character. No
further disturbance of the moral order is possible, no further privation
can be incurred, no new injuries can be attempted against any of God’s
creatures. Those who suffer, actually endure nothing beyond the
retribution justly due to the demerits of their state of probation, and
their suffering compensates in the order of the _bonum honestum_ for
their offences against that order, restoring the disturbed equilibrium
of justice. It is an effect of the divine goodness frustrated (in
respect to them) of its intention, and deprived of its due quality as
_bonum delectabile_ by their own voluntary opposition to the benevolent
will of God. Socrates and Plato taught that it is better even for the
one who deserves punishment to undergo it than to remain in impunity.
Assuredly it is better for the common order which he has violated.
Impunity for great political frauds is the greatest of disorders in a
community, and the punishment of the criminals is a reparation to the
public honor and the sanctity of right, which adds decorum to a state.
This is in virtue of an eternal and universal law, and holds good in the
supreme order, with which the ethical constitution of human society is
in an analogical resemblance. Justice reduces all things to equality, by
subjugating the inordinate wills of created beings under the coercive
force of the reaction of reason and order against their rebellion. The
inequality removed by this violent reaction is measured by the voluntary
and free excesses of the rebels and transgressors against the sovereign
will of God. Beyond this measure, there is no violence done to the
spontaneous desires and natural tendency to good intrinsic to the
essence of every intelligent being. Unless there is an inequality caused
by voluntary contrariety to the divine will, there is no opposition, and
therefore there must be a perfect harmony and equality of proportion
between the eternal order and the wills of those who are subject to it.
Therefore, there is no such thing possible as pain, discontent,
deficiency from the _bonum honestum_ and _bonum delectabile_ of nature,
in the eternal world, except that which is the retribution for voluntary
transgressions.
The thousands of millions of human beings who never attain the use of
reason, never run the risks of probation, and pass into the eternal
state without merit or demerit, enjoy the good of being which is
consonant to their nature in whatever actual condition it exists. Those
whose nature is regenerate, and spontaneously seeks the sovereign good
of the supernatural order, go immediately into the kingdom of heaven.
Those whose nature is not regenerate possess an immortality in which
they enjoy the natural good of being. There is no such thing as
fatality, calamity of chance, misfortune, or deordination of any kind in
the true ἀποκατάστασις and restitution of all things, which succeeds the
present inchoate, temporary order. It is the absolute and universal and
eternal reign of God by his eternal law, which is identified with the
physical and spontaneous laws of being, and gives liberty of action
within the ordained circumference, without any possibility of escape
from the orbit assigned to each individual existence.
We return now to that which we proposed at the beginning as a primary
question, not for those who are already certain by Catholic faith, but
for inquirers into the mystery of human destiny beyond the veil. Is
there a heaven, and what is the way by which it can be attained? Modern
rationalism presents at best nothing higher that the eternal state into
which human nature fell by the transgression of Adam, and from which we
are redeemed by Christ. This species of philosophical and semi-Christian
Theism, which is respectable in pagans and those who are in a similar
condition of dim enlightenment, has no intellectual foundation which can
stand or give support, in opposition to the clear Christian revelation.
The firm assent to its really sound and rational principles and their
logical conclusions, inexorably demands a further assent, to the
physical, moral, and metaphysical demonstration by which the certain
truth of Christianity is made evident to reason. A consistent and
thorough rejection of Christianity reacts with irresistible logical
violence against the first premises of natural theology. The prevailing
rationalism is materialistic and atheistic. The contrary of Catholic
faith, the real error of the age, the logical alternative of genuine
undiluted Christianity, is anti-spiritual, anti-theistic Nihilism. To
those who have a repugnance for the hell which is the shadow of heaven
in Catholic doctrine, the night-side of the supernatural, this system
cannot be very attractive; unless they are in despair, and already so
unhappy and hopeless that existence seems to them an intolerable evil.
In this system there is nothing besides hell. Hell is the necessary,
eternal reality, the only being. The negation of all eternal good, of
all beatitude whether natural or supernatural, is the one, fundamental
dogma of Pessimism.
The aspiration and longing for beatitude which cannot be wholly
extinguished in any human soul, and which manifests its vehemence even
in the most gloomy and despairing utterances of scepticism, is strong
and vivid among the multitude of half-believers, whose Christian descent
has left in their minds, as an heirloom, some indistinct idea of the
heaven of Christian theology. Even though they practically seek to
satisfy their thirst for the true good by the pleasures of the present
life, they wish to cherish the hope of a higher future happiness in the
next world. Therefore, they eagerly welcome any plausible teaching or
speculation which seems to make a happy immortality their sure ultimate
destiny, and are glad to think they run no risk of losing it, and need
not give themselves trouble to find the way to gain it. Conscience, and
the moral sense which has had a semi-Christian education, will not
permit those who still cling to their traditional religion to believe
that the majority of adults are actually fit for perfect happiness, or
capable of passing out of this life at once into heaven, without
undergoing some thorough transformation of character. The view presented
by the most reasonable and high-toned of the writers and preachers who
have recently advocated universal salvation, or a doctrine tending in
that direction, places a prospect of indefinite trial and suffering
before those who have sinned during their mortal career, as awaiting
them hereafter. Its happy termination in the heaven promised to the good
is something which is inferred by their own reasonings and conjectures,
but which cannot be proved with certainty by reason, much less shown to
be a promise of the divine word. Over against this there is the general
belief of mankind; the general consent of those who have read the Holy
Scriptures in the interpretation of their plain and obvious sense; and
the teaching of the Catholic Church from the very beginning, which she
will certainly never change. It is much more reasonable to take the
authority of the church as the criterion of truth in regard to this
momentous matter than to decide it by private reasonings or private
interpretations of Christian doctrine. The Catholic doctrine proposes a
heaven of supernatural beatitude and glory to every one, and points out
a sure way by which any one may secure it, no matter how much he may
have sinned in the past. It is the most rational course to begin at once
to follow the road which leads to the right end, and leave with God the
responsibility of administering his own just and sovereign laws by
giving to each one that retribution which he has deserved.
NOTE.—The reader is referred for a more full exposition of the
relation of the supernatural to the natural order, and the other
principal topics belonging to the subject of the future destiny of
man, to the following works: _Aspirations of Nature_, by the Rev. I.
T. Hecker; _Problems of the Age_ and _The King’s Highway_, by the
Rev. A. F. Hewit; _Catholicity and Pantheism_, by the Rev. J. de
Concilio; _The Knowledge of Mary_, by the same author; and _Catholic
Eschatology_, by H. N. Oxenham.
LINES.
SUGGESTED BY ST. FRANCIS DE SALES’ TREATISE ON THE “LOVE OF GOD.”
O precious book! in lines of fire I see
Upon each page the record of a soul
Which soared above the clouds, serenely free,
Which read with eagle eye the mystic scroll;
To whose ecstatic love th’ Eternal Three
Sublime and hidden mysteries did unroll.
A heart, a living heart, is throbbing here!
A heart whose every fibre[41] thrilled to One
Unknown to human wisdom, yet most clear
To him, whose spirit, as a luminous sun,
Caught from the splendors of high heaven’s sphere,
A light for centuries set in shadows dun.
O shadows dark and sad! with prophet-gaze
Did he foresee your baneful, blinding cloud
Enwrap man’s reason, soul, and heart? the ways
Of God enveloped in a death-like shroud
Of folly, prejudice, and pride? Amaze
Had seized that noble soul! Yet he had bowed
’Neath persecution’s fury; toiled with heart
Undaunted, while upraised were savage hands
To strike, as Jews of old, the deadly dart.
Through sufferings borne with joy he won those bands,
Through burning zeal and (his own heavenly art)
Divinest meekness, which all power commands.
What secret charm had he so early learned
Which made a joy of pain? of sacrifice
His life-long pleasure? Soul and heart had burned
Within love’s fiery crucible where dies
Nature and self and sense; for God he yearned;
For God and souls were poured his nightly sighs.
Thou sacred volume, fruit of years of prayer,
Of holy contemplation, seraph love,
Dost unto me this hidden charm declare;
With his own life each word is interwove.
His holy pen would oft, methinks, repair
To Calvary’s shade or to the olive grove,
And, deep within the Wounded Side, would seek
The living flame, as strong as death, which breathes
In each dear line. Methinks he still doth speak,
And with celestial sweetness still bequeathes
His dying legacy of love; his meek
And gentle lessons in the soul inwreathes
Like flowers, the garden of the Spouse to grace.
O zeal inflamed and generous! No rest
While heart and hand the path to heaven may trace
For souls brought back on Calvary’s bleeding crest;
No rest while he one tender lamb may place,
All bruised, for healing on the Saviour’s breast.
No sweet repose of prayer and love while pure
And virgin hearts, aspiring heavenward, pine
For light and guidance in the way obscure
And thorny leading to the mystic shrine—
The “inner temple,” where God, throned secure,
Binds fast the soul in his embrace divine.
No rest for him while still on earth the fire
His Master brought remains unkindled; while
One human heart, Grief’s trembling, deep-toned lyre,
Vibrates not to his Master’s touch with smile
Of peace, ev’n while the chords are breaking; higher,
And higher still! the sacrificial pile
Awaits a host of generous souls who mount
With ardor at his word; new strength endows,
And, like the phœnix,[42] they from Light’s own Fount
Draw odorous flames of love; while sacred vows
Bind them, like Isaac, hand and foot, who count
The sword and fire but pleasure with their Spouse.
O priceless heritage of poet-saint!
What wisdom born of Heaven adorns each page!
To fancy seems some master-hand to paint;
To intellect speaks philosophic sage;
Passion impulsive yields to sweet constraint,
And heart and will bow down in every age.
Strange spell which o’er the soul it casts! the strong,
Clear message more like ancient prophet’s tone;
Again, to his full gaze as mysteries throng,
Its breathings are the loved disciple’s own;
And now it rises like th’ ecstatic song
Of some grand seraph veiled before the throne!
Footnote 41:
If I knew there was one fibre in my heart which was not all God’s I
would instantly pluck it out.—_St. Francis de Sales._
Footnote 42:
St. Francis draws many beautiful illustrations from this mythical
bird. The ancients asserted that when age had exhausted the strength
of the phœnix it built a funeral-pile of aromatic gums and wood on the
top of some high mountain, and, ascending it when the sun was in his
meridian splendor, lit the pile by the fanning of its wings, and was
consumed to ashes. From these ashes sprang another phœnix.
CONRAD AND WALBURGA.
CHAPTER I.
Among the many beautiful paintings by world-known artists which adorn
the old Pinakothek in Munich is one symbolizing Innocence, by Carlo
Dolce. It represents a lovely, rosy-cheeked girl gazing frankly at you;
down her shoulders floats a stream of golden hair, and clasped to her
bosom is a lamb.
Before this picture, one spring day in the year 1855, stood a gentleman
admiring it with all the rapture of one who knows how difficult it is to
achieve such a miracle of art—to place upon canvas a face so instinct
with life, so full of that divine something which only genius can
impart.
“It is indeed beautiful, most beautiful,” thought Conrad Seinsheim. “And
yet,” after an inward pause, during which his eyes rested on a young
lady who was copying it—“and yet real flesh and blood, when cast in the
mould of beauty, infinitely surpass aught that was ever accomplished by
brush or chisel.”
It was only a profile view he had of her face—for the painting hung in a
corner, and she was in the corner too, with her left side next to the
wall—but this view sufficed to send a thrill through every fibre of his
body.
Conrad was no longer a very young man; his age was five-and-thirty, and
he had already seen a good deal of the world. His father, a wealthy
merchant of Cologne, had died, leaving him a handsome fortune, and with
his last breath almost had urged him to marry. And Conrad had travelled
and visited well-nigh every capital in Europe, enjoying to the utmost
the pleasures which choice society affords, but had not yet found the
woman whom he could really love. The fair women whom he had met had been
mere butterflies of fashion, idlers basking in the smiles of men as vain
and idle as themselves. But here, at last, was one who came up to his
high ideal of female loveliness, and who withal was not a drone. But it
was Walburga’s expression, rather than the exquisite classic outline of
her countenance, that made his heart throb as it did; it imaged a soul
nourished upon the visions of genius. The girl was evidently enjoying,
with delight too deep for words, this Carlo Dolce; and, guided by the
light of sympathy, its ethereal life, which other copyists might have
missed, she was catching and retaining, and you might almost have
fancied, from her mien of rapture, that she knew the spirit of the old
master was hovering over her and guiding her delicate white hand.
“The sunshine of her soul is inspiring, and fills me with gladness too,”
exclaimed Conrad inwardly. “She does not turn to look at me; she goes
right on, filled with the joy of her work. Oh! have I not found here the
being whom I have been so vainly seeking?”
After admiring the young artist a few minutes he continued his way along
the gallery. But his mind was too occupied with the living picture which
he had just seen to care a jot for anything else, and all the rest of
the day this vision of beauty haunted him.
At three o’clock the Pinakothek is closed; and at this hour Walburga
betook herself to her humble but cosey home in Fingergasse,[43] where,
summoning her friend, Moida Hofer, who lodged with her, and who kept an
old curiosity shop in the same street, the two sallied forth for a
stroll in the English Garden.[44] They were fast friends, these girls,
having been many years together, and never were they so happy as in each
other’s company. And now, while they wandered through this delightful
park, they talked about their school-days, and rejoiced that not yet a
day of parting had come.
“Well, as for me, I shall never marry, you know,” spoke Walburga.
“Oh! yes, you will,” the other smilingly answered. Yet in her heart
Moida believed that what Walburga said might be true. Her dearest friend
was born with an affliction, a weighty cross—one which likely enough
would prove a barrier to marriage. Moida, however, had no such cross,
and already she had a devoted lover, whose name was Ulrich, and who,
moreover, was the brother of Walburga.
Ulrich was uncommonly handsome and the last representative of the
ancient and noble family of Von Loewenstein. But he was poor, and far
off seemed the day when he should make Moida his bride. The latter,
however, was patient. She built for herself no castles in the air; she
was one of those practical souls, full of common sense, which is the
genius of everyday life, and nobody had ever heard her utter a sigh.
“Sometime or other our honeymoon will come,” she would tell her
betrothed; “therefore, much as I love you, my Ulrich, I’ll not die of
impatience.”
It would have been hard to find two young women more unlike in
temperament as well as looks than Moida and Walburga; and perhaps ’tis
why they dwelt in such harmony together. Miss Hofer, instead of being
tall like her friend, was short and plump, with a little sprightly nose
turning upward toward the sky, and she had a somewhat broad mouth. But
there was a pretty dimple in her chin—a very pretty dimple; just the
place for a kiss to hide itself—and she had lovely blue eyes, and such a
fund of mirth and humor that it was impossible ever to be sad in her
company. Of painting Moida knew absolutely nothing. But she was glad
that she was not an artist; “for if I were,” she would say, “how could I
find time to attend to my curiosity-shop and keep our little household
in order? Ulrich is an artist, and so are you, Walburga; and we must not
all three be making mountains and heads.”
“No, indeed. And I don’t know what I should do without you,” spoke
Walburga, as they sauntered along the gravelled path by the lake. “You
can’t tell how much I lean upon you. I really believe I am better since
I took your advice about the skull.”
Walburga, who was of a nature inclined to melancholy, had for more than
a year kept a skull in her bed-room, and before it she was wont to
meditate sometimes for hours, until the ugly thing stole away the bloom
from her cheek and drew a black mark under each of her eyes. Her
appetite, too, began to fail; and ’twere not easy to say what might have
happened if she had been living alone. But one morning, while she was
plunged in one of her reveries before this death’s head, Moida
approached, and, after kneeling beside her and saying a prayer—for Moida
was a good girl, and quite as pious as Walburga, only in a different
way—she reverently took the skull in her hands and said: “Now, dear
friend, I think ’tis time to put this aside. ’Tis making a ghost of you.
It has honeycombed you with scruples, and I am sure that your
father-confessor would approve of the reformation which I am going to
inaugurate. Therefore take one more good look at this eyeless, grinning
object ere it disappears from your sight for ever.”
These bold words so astonished Walburga that for about a minute she
could not reply, and she turned to Moida with an expression which might
have deterred anybody with less spirit and determination from proceeding
further. But Moida—who, let us here remark, was a descendant of Andreas
Hofer, the Tyrolese patriot—was not in the least frightened by the
other’s flashing eyes.
“I will use this skull with reverence,” she continued. “I promise you it
shall be laid in consecrated ground; if necessary, with my own hands
I’ll bury it in God’s-acre. But here in this room it shall be no more.”
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Walburga, presently bursting into a laugh,
“you are the dearest, sauciest girl I ever met.”
“Then say I may do it,” went on Moida. “For, although I am very
determined, yet I prefer not to be too great a despot and carry the
skull off absolutely against your will.”
“Well, let me bury it myself,” answered Walburga.
“Agreed! But I’ll accompany you to God’s-acre; for I know one of the
grave-diggers, and before another hour this poor old head shall be
resting in peace underground.”
So the skull was buried, after which Walburga’s cheeks recovered a good
deal of their bloom. And now, while she and her friend are enjoying
themselves in the open air this mild spring day, she looks more
sprightly than we have ever seen her before.
“Pray tell me, Moida,” said Walburga, after they had gone round the lake
and were on their way home, “what is Ulrich doing at present? You had a
letter from him this morning, had you not?”
“Oh! yes,” answered the other, her ever-bright countenance growing
brighter. “The dear fellow is in the Innthal,[45] where he means to make
a sketch of the home of his ancestors.”
“Dear, sweet spot!” murmured Walburga.
“Ay, and dear Tyrol!” added Moida. “And he tells me Loewenstein Castle
has been sold by the state to a rich gentleman from Cologne, who has
engaged Ulrich to restore its faded frescos, and he is beside himself
with delight. The least thing raises his spirits ever so high, and now
he imagines that this undertaking will be the beginning of his fortune.
I must caution the dear boy, in my answer, not to indulge in dreams.”
“Ah! true; he is given to dreaming, like myself,” said Walburga, shaking
her head. “But this is a hard world, as you have often told me, and
dreams will not feed us. I must sell my paintings—sell them—and not work
for pure love of the beautiful.”
“Yes, indeed. Murillo, Raphael, and all of them had to eat, and bread
costs money,” said Moida.
“Well, I hope this new-comer is a good man, and may he know how to keep
his castle. Alas! if our family had known how to manage things, instead
of letting everything go at loose ends. If there had been heads among us
like yours, Moida, I should not have been living to-day in narrow, dingy
Fingergasse, trying hard to make the two ends meet, and not always
succeeding.”
“But then I should never have known you; a grand lady dwelling in a
castle would not stoop to look at me.”
“Oh! true; and ’twas worth coming down in the world—down to a humble
abode—in order to know you.” Then, after a pause: “But what else does my
brother say about this gentleman?”
“Well, he says he is not a bit handsome, and that he looks stern. Ulrich
says, too, he is passionately fond of art, is a believer in the
aristocracy of nature, and declares he doesn’t know who his
great-grandfather was. The only thing that is really not good about him
is that he has no faith.”
“No faith!” sighed Walburga. “Well, at any rate, Moida, he’ll not suffer
for want of company; for it cannot be denied that very few of those
learned men are ever seen inside a church. Oh! how comes this?”
Moida shrugged her shoulders, but made no response. The truth is,
although a very good girl, she did not think deeply on religious
subjects. Walburga, on the contrary, was often much distressed by the
infidelity which she saw spreading around her, and trembled for her dear
brother, who had once declared that out of every hundred students who
frequented the university with him seventy lost their belief in a God
after being there six months; and nothing is so dead as a dead faith.
And now she was not certain that Ulrich himself went to church; for of
late he had been away from her a good deal. Walburga called to mind,
too, a grave conversation which she once had with him about religion,
when he told her something that had left a deep impression upon her.
“Believe me, sister,” said Ulrich, “a boy may be very good at home and
have the best religious instruction from his parents, yet their advice
and teaching will prove but a slender safeguard against the perils of
the university. This is the age of science; ’tis impossible to prevent
young men from studying chemistry and geology. They will flock to our
halls of learning and crowd round our great professors, who are
atheists, like moths about a lamp, heedless of the risk they run. Now,
sister, I verily believe one true Christian university would be worth a
thousand Sunday-schools. The great need of the day is to Christianize
science—ay, Christianize it; make it a beacon-light and not a consuming
fire.”
“Moida,” spoke Walburga, after dwelling a moment on these words of her
brother—“Moida, do you think Ulrich says his prayers and goes to church
as he used?”
“Oh! yes, I am quite sure he does,” replied her friend. “He declares
that for love of me he will always be good.”
“Well, although ’tis not the best reason he might have for keeping his
faith, yet some fish are held by a very slender line,” added the other,
smiling. “So, thank God! he loves you.”
Thus conversing about Ulrich and Tyrol, and listening to the merry songs
of the birds, the girls continued their walk. It was dusk when they got
home. And what a snug little home it is!
But before we enter let us call the reader’s attention to three letters,
“C M B,” chalked upon the door. They stand for Caspar, Melchior,
Balthasar, the names which tradition gives to the wise men who came with
gifts for the infant Saviour; and beneath the letters, and likewise
marked in chalk, are three crosses and the year of our Lord.[46]
But now open the door and see how clean and neat everything is within.
Yonder quaint-looking closet, standing between the two bed-rooms, albeit
a century old and more, shows no sign of age; not a particle of dust
rests upon it, not a spider’s web. The floor, too, is well scrubbed and
polished, and looks all the better for having no carpet. In one of the
windows are a couple of flower-pots, wherein are blooming two
magnificent roses; while in the other window is a cage containing a
nightingale. The bird at this moment begins to warble a sweet melody to
greet Walburga, who is its mistress; while Moida, who also has a pet,
finds it no easy matter to prevent Caro—a black, shaggy poodle—from
tearing her in pieces for joy.
“Poor, dear Caro!” she said, holding him at arm’s length, “the horrid
police would kill you, if they knew you were alive, and so I must keep
you shut up within doors. Poor, dear Caro!” And this was true. In Munich
aged dogs are not allowed to live; and Caro is toothless and nearly
blind. But his heart is as young as ever; and his tail—oh! how much
expression there is in a dog’s tail. How it wags to and fro! How it
whisks up and down! How it thumps on the floor! Moida sometimes, for
fun, would try to hold fast Caro’s tail while she spoke endearing words
to him. But in vain. No sooner would she open her lips than away it
went, ten times quicker than the pendulum of a clock, and as impossible
to clench as if ’twere a bit of machinery driven back and forth by
steam-power.
Nothing could better show the difference between Walburga and her friend
than a glance at the different books which each of them reads. In
Walburga’s sleeping-chamber, on a table close by her bed, lie two
well-fingered volumes: one is _Master Eckhart, the Father of German
Mystics_; the other is _Blessed Henry Suso’s Little Book of Eternal
Wisdom_. For a number of years these have been well-nigh her constant
companions, and she knows them almost by heart. More than once have they
inspired her to renewed effort when she felt disheartened, as well as
lightened the cross which afflicted her. “The swiftest steed to carry us
to perfection is suffering,” says Eckhart; and these words Walburga
often repeats to herself.
But in Moida’s apartment, instead of the mystics we find a song-book, an
arithmetic, and the Regensburg book of cookery.
While Caro was frisking about and yelping, the nightingale, as we have
already observed, was warbling a song for its mistress, who stood
listening with a pensive air.
“You shall never die in a cage,” she murmured presently. “’Tis a shame
to keep you even one day a prisoner.”
“How so?” exclaimed Moida, who had quick ears, and was a mortal foe to
anything like mere sentimentality. “Are not birds created for our
pleasure? And you take such care of yours! Why, I’m sure he is quite as
happy as if he were flying about in the groves, hunting here and there
for food, chased by other birds, and journeying hundreds of miles to
find a warm climate in winter; whereas you give your pet plenty to eat—I
sometimes think too much (Moida was economical)—and whenever it is cold
your room is turned into a hot-house to please him.”
“Ah! but, Moida dear,” answered Walburga, “he has no playmate, no other
little bird to love; and what is life without love?”
“Well, he loves you, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, and very much. But that is not the kind of love I mean. He has no
mate to sing to. I am sure, in the song he is giving us now, he is
sighing and pining for some other pretty bird whom he might kiss and
caress and woo.”
“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed Moida, bursting into a laugh. Then,
suddenly becoming grave: “But, no, no, I mustn’t laugh. I agree with
you: love _is_ everything, and Ulrich is my nightingale. Why, every
letter he writes to me is a sweet song of love.”
For several minutes after Moida uttered these words Walburga remained
silent. They had awakened in her breast longings which had better have
slept for ever. But we cannot escape from ourselves; and she was born
with a nature full of tenderness and sympathy. It made her yearn for
something which she might call all her own, something to serve and
cherish and suffer for. Home! home!—this was the secret craving of
Walburga’s soul. But, alas! she had barely the glimmer of a hope that
this happiness would ever be hers; and even good Eckhart’s words, which
she now repeated to herself, did not bring her the usual comfort.
The poor girl, too, was an orphan; her brother was away from her, and a
day would come when Moida would fly off into Ulrich’s arms. “And, oh!
then I’ll be lonely indeed,” she sighed.
While Walburga was thus musing on her fate Moida took up her zither,[47]
and, seating herself by the open window, sang in a rich contralto voice
one of the old Volkslied, beginning:
“Ach. wie ist’s möglich dann,
Das ich dich lassen kann!
Hab dich von Herzen lieb,
Das Glaube mir!”
which may be rendered:
“Ah! how can I from thee depart?
Believe me, my heart’s love thou art!”
When the song was finished Walburga, in whose eyes tears were
glistening, said: “Nobody can beat my nightingale singing except you.
Oh! who will sing for me when you are gone?”
“Gone! Why, I never mean to leave you, dear Walburga; no, never!” cried
Moida.
“Ah! Ulrich will carry you away; and then—”
“Yes, yes, so he will, the dear boy! and then I’ll take you in my arms,
and carry you away too, and thus we’ll all three fly off together,”
interrupted the sunny-hearted girl.
Then Moida sang another song, and another, and another, until one by one
all the stars came out of their hiding-places in the sky; and never did
they shine down upon two warmer friends than these.
* * * * *
In the fairest valley of Tyrol, and perched on a spur of the mountain, a
thousand feet above the swift-flowing river which gives the Innthal its
name, stands Loewenstein Castle. How admirably placed it is! From afar
the enemy might be espied approaching; and when he came near it needed
stout lungs as well as a bold heart to climb the steep ascent which led
to its walls, for ’tis like an eagle’s eyrie to get at. When the castle
was built many an eagle used to soar above its battlements, and the
dense pine forest which covered the land was the haunt of wolves and
bears.
Tyrol is wild enough to-day. What must it have been in the ninth
century? The Roman legions had once marched through the valley on their
way to conquer Germany. But Rome had fallen, and only here and there an
earthwork, or a paved road, or a sentinel-tower was left to tell how far
her soldiers had penetrated into the wilderness. Afterwards barbarians
and wild beasts had it all to themselves as before—had it all to
themselves, until by and by, in the course of time, afoot, or perchance
mounted on an ass which had carried him across the snowy Brenner—poor
ass! how it must have longed for sunny Italy again—came a monk. St.
Benedict bade him go forth and preach the Gospel; and lo! here he was,
quite at home amid these shaggy-looking men, very Esaus for hairiness,
and in manners a shade removed from cannibals. And this monk’s track had
been followed ere long by other monks, until finally what Roman power
could not do they did.
Round about the monastery the trees were felled and the land made to
bloom; no farmers better than those old monks. And they cultivated the
barbarians, too, as well as the soil.
Then, when times were ripe for him to appear, when there was something
to plunder, on the mountain-side the robber-knight built his fastness;
and Loewenstein did its share of plundering in those good old times.
But there was a chapel attached to the castle, and the baron’s lady was
devout, if he was not. Gently, little by little, she persuaded her
consort to take part in her devotions, and in the end made a pretty fair
Christian of him. But the Von Loewensteins loved dearly to fight; the
dust of the battle-field was sweeter than incense to their nostrils; and
so to the Holy Land they went, nor missed a single Crusade. The knight’s
bride with her own hands would buckle on his armor, then go take her
post on the topmost turret, waving adieu as long as her swimming eyes
could see the gleaming helmet that sometimes never gleamed again for
her.
Many a century has rolled by since those brave days of battle-axes and
healthy men; and now Loewenstein is only a ruin. But the monastery still
stands, the grayness of its old age hidden by the greenness of its ivy,
and St. Benedict would not find things much changed if he were to make
his brethren a visit.
It is sunset, and the new owner of Loewenstein has just returned from
Munich, whither he went to enjoy himself awhile in the Pinakothek.
“What a pleasure ’twill be,” Conrad Seinsheim is saying to himself, “to
restore this ancient castle! Happily, one tower is left, and in it I can
make shift to dwell until the rest of the edifice is completed.” Then,
speaking aloud: “And I will embellish my home with beautiful paintings
and statuary; and the first statue shall be a woman.” Here he turned his
deep-set, heavy-browed eyes upon a young man who was seated beside him
sketching the ruin. The latter looked up and smiled.
“And a living woman it is to be,” added Conrad.
“Have you found your dream, then, sir?” inquired Ulrich, tossing back
the long, unkempt hair which he persisted in wearing, albeit it troubled
him not a little, for ’twas constantly falling in his eyes.
“I believe I have,” replied Conrad. Whereupon he went on to tell of the
young lady whom he had seen copying Carlo Dolce’s picture of Innocence.
While he was speaking a faint tinge of red spread over Ulrich’s cheek;
for Moida had written that his sister was making a copy of this very
painting. Suddenly he laid his pencil aside and rose to his feet. Conrad
observed him in silence, but without any air of contempt; if he did not
pray himself, he respected none the less those who did, and the
monastery bell was ringing the _Angelus_. As Ulrich murmured the prayer
he could not help thinking that likely at this very moment Moida was
saying it also.
When the sound of the bell died away Conrad passed with him into the
tower, where they began examining its faded frescos.
“These must have a strange effect on you,” remarked the former.
“Doubtless yonder barely perceptible figure of a lady stretching forth
her hand and clasping another hand—her lover or husband, perhaps—was one
of your ancestresses!”
“Well, it is indeed sad for me to view such ruin and decay in the place
where myself and so many of my name were born,” answered Ulrich. “I feel
all the while as if I were moving about among ghosts. But then ’tis
many, many years since Loewenstein was anything better than what it is
to-day. The wind, I have heard my dear mother say, used to blow in
through the chinks in the wall and rock my cradle.” Here the poor fellow
gave a rueful smile. “You see,” he continued, “old families die hard. It
often takes them more than one generation to get down to the bottom of
the hill. Why, my parents were little better off than the owls when they
inhabited this ruin; and ’twas high time to quit it when they did. But
we are out at last on the broad world, and I can truly say I thank God
that a man like yourself has bought my ancestral home. Again let me
thank you, sir, thank you from the bottom of my heart, for your kindness
in giving me employment.”
These words, uttered in a frank, manly tone, pleased Conrad, who, when
he first met the young artist, had taken him for a silly fellow that was
clinging to the shadow of a great name while too proud to do any work.
Ulrich certainly had rather a haughty mien; but, thanks to the girl to
whom he was betrothed, he had acquired a good deal of common sense, and,
moreover, he had a warm heart. So that Conrad, who pitied his threadbare
appearance, soon grew to like him, and during the past week had made the
youth take up his quarters with him in the tower.
“Well, I deem it a great piece of good-fortune to have fallen in with
you,” said Conrad. “For, although I don’t believe in spirits coming back
to molest those who occupy their former abodes, yet, really, to have
passed a night here alone might have made my flesh creep. How old is
Loewenstein, do you know?”
Ulrich, who knew pretty well the whole history of his house, now
proceeded to relate it, briefly of course; yet he told enough to make
the other long to hear more. And when he had finished Conrad said:
“Although I am an ardent believer in the aristocracy of nature,
nevertheless I feel all the more drawn to you for being a Von
Loewenstein.” After a pause he added: “I wonder who my Dream will turn
out to be? Will she appreciate dwelling in a castle? Oh! yes, I am sure
she will.”
And Conrad went on to tell again of Walburga’s look of rapture as she
stood at her easel, and of her tall, graceful figure:
“I am sure, too, her hair is all her own; in fact, every part of her is
as classic as her face.”
While he thus gave utterance to his admiration for Ulrich’s sister
Ulrich’s heart was in a flutter, and he could not help thinking what
happiness ’twould be if Walburga were one day to become mistress of
Loewenstein. Yet at the same time he thought it not a little strange
that Conrad should express such unbounded admiration for one who did not
expect, any more than he did himself, that ever a man would wish her for
his bride.
“But tell me,” pursued Conrad, twitching his sleeve, “is there no dear
girl whom you have fallen in love with? Artists, of all men, you know,
are the most prone to the tender passion.”
“Oh! indeed there is,” answered Ulrich—“as sweet a girl as ever
breathed. Once a week she writes to me and I to her.”
“Well, who is she? Where does she live?”
“In Munich, sir. Her name is Moida Hofer; and, although of peasant
descent, I call her noble, for many of our mountaineers have owned their
rough acres for generations, and, moreover, Moida’s grandfather was
Hofer the Patriot.”
“Really! Oh! then, don’t let her slip; marry her by all means, for she
belongs to my nobility,” exclaimed Conrad with enthusiasm. “And of
course she is beautiful?”
“Every girl, sir, is beautiful when a man loves her; and I detest Greek
noses and Roman noses since I have known Moida, for she hasn’t one.”
Here the other burst into a loud laugh, which frightened away a couple
of bats that had been circling about their heads; for bats and swallows,
as well as owls and hawks, found their way into this ancient chamber,
which had not been occupied till now since Ulrich and his sister left it
as children.
“And you should hear Moida sing,” continued Ulrich; “and hear her talk,
too. Oh! she is so wise. She knows how to preach to me and tell me of my
faults without ever making me angry. I was living in Cloudland before I
met her. She said: ‘Ulrich, come down out of the clouds and earn your
bread’; and ’tis owing to her that I persevered in my art-studies and am
able to paint a little.”
“You certainly have talent,” said Conrad, “judging by the sketches in
your portfolio. But let me ask why you do not marry?”
At this question Ulrich heaved a sigh.
“Is it want of money?”
“Well, our honeymoon will come some day or other,” said the youth,
evading a response. “She is patient—more patient than I. She cheers me
up; knits stockings for me; makes me shirts; in fact, she does as much
for me almost as if she were my wife. Dear, dear, dear Moida!”
“May I inquire how Miss Hofer earns a livelihood?”
“She keeps a small store, an old-curiosity shop, where one may buy for a
mere trifle chairs and mirrors, and clocks and engravings, together with
many other articles that at some time or another adorned noble houses.
You may find there a number of things that used to belong to
Loewenstein.”
“Indeed! Then I’ll buy out her whole stock—upon my word I will—and back
to this spot shall come every chair and mirror and clock. O Ulrich,
Ulrich! why didn’t you tell me this before?”
After thus conversing awhile within the tower, and it being settled that
the young man was to begin on the morrow his labor of restoring the
frescos, they passed out by what must once have been a stately
passage-way, but was now so encumbered with fragments of stone and
mortar that Conrad and Ulrich were obliged to stoop very low, at one
place almost to creep, in order to emerge into the open air. As we have
already observed, the tower was the only portion of the castle not
entirely in ruin; the rest of the building was so shattered by time that
it was difficult even for imagination to picture it as it had been in
the days of its glory.
“Here,” said Ulrich, “used to be the chapel. On this spot the first Mass
was offered up in Loewenstein.”
“Well, I will rebuild this, too, unbeliever though I am,” said Conrad.
“And oh! would that my dead faith might be quickened as easily as these
crumbled stones can be put into shape again. But, happily, women are
still prayerful, and the young lady whom I hope to win shall have her
chapel to pray in. But, alas! what desolation has come to this hallowed
spot—what desolation! Everything gone except one tomb. I must not tread
upon it, for doubtless one of your race lies buried underneath.”
“Only a few words on the monument are legible,” said Ulrich, stooping
and brushing off the dust with his hands:
‘Hic jacet Walburga;
Requiescat in pace!’
The rest I cannot make out; but I remember hearing my father say that
this Walburga was a Hungarian princess, who married Hugo von Loewenstein
toward the close of the fourteenth century.”
“How sad is the fall of old families!” observed Conrad after a moment’s
silence, during which his eyes remained fixed on the blurred slab at his
feet. “But I sometimes believe there is a law which governs the strange
and solemn procession of generations: as the wheel of time goes round
and round, the king takes his turn at beggary, and the beggar shuffles
off his rags and mounts up to the throne.”
“Therefore at some future day, if your notion be correct, I, or one of
my descendants, will get this castle back again,” said Ulrich, smiling.
“Nowadays,” pursued Conrad, as if in soliloquy, “people affect to be
democratic; we win our spurs by speculating in cotton, or grain, or some
other stuff, instead of by brave deeds on the battle-field. Well, well,
I for one prefer the helmet and the battle-axe to the chinking of the
money-changers.” Then, turning to Ulrich: “It surprises you to hear me
say this, eh?”
To tell the truth, it did surprise him; but Ulrich did not show it.
“Well, a fortnight ago I would not have spoken thus,” he continued. “But
the truth is, the veriest democrat loves in his secret heart a pedigree;
and if he hasn’t one, he’ll pay somebody to make him a family-tree; and
then he’ll buy a ruin, as I have done, and get to feel as I feel,
perhaps. Why, Ulrich, I do believe somebody has thrown a spell over me;
ay, this fair lady sleeping under the old stone here has touched me with
her spirit wand. Why, I feel as if I were a Loewenstein—I do! I do!”
Here Conrad brandished his cane and repeated aloud the Loewenstein
motto: _Intaminatis fulget honoribus_.
“How it would please Walburga to hear him talking thus!” said Ulrich
inwardly. “Proud as she is, I think her heart might incline towards
him.”
It should perhaps be observed that hardship had wrought little effect
upon Walburga. It had scarcely bent her spirit at all; and not once
since she quitted the home of her forefathers had she returned to visit
the dearly-loved spot. “It would be too bitter a sight to see vulgar
people wandering amid its ruins,” she would tell her brother. “I’d
rather have Loewenstein disappear entirely, be covered up by the
mountain, than that some rich upstart should buy it, then pull down the
mite that is left of its glorious walls, and erect a modern villa in
their stead.”
Nor had she for several years entered Moida Hofer’s store, where so many
curious objects were exposed for sale; and once, when her friend had
disposed of a Loewenstein clock, one of the primitive kind, with
pendulum swinging in front—ay, and disposed of it, too, for a pretty
good price—Moida did not dare mention the fact. Indeed, the
old-curiosity shop was now a banished theme of conversation between
them.
By and by, after telling Ulrich for the twentieth time how finely the
castle was to be renovated, Conrad said: “Now let us go in and take some
repose; for to-morrow, you know, we are to be up early—you to do a good
day’s work, while I must be off by the first train to Munich, where I am
determined to have another look at my Dream.”
With this they went back into the tower, and after trying, but without
success, to drive the bats out of their dormitory, Conrad and Ulrich lay
down to rest. The former was soon fast asleep; but the youth, who had a
more vivid imagination, stayed awake a whole hour thinking of the many
who had occupied this chamber in days gone by. The moon shimmering in
through the iron-barred window over his head flung a weird halo round
about the lady painted on the wall; and he could not but think what a
very, very ghostly chamber it was.
A month had gone by since Ulrich had laid eyes on Moida Hofer—only a
month, yet it seemed as long as six months. So next morning, when Conrad
was making ready to descend the hill on his way to Munich, the youth
thrust his hand into his pocket, and, drawing forth some small pieces of
silver, counted them over carefully. With anxious heart he counted them,
and to his great delight found that there was just enough money to carry
him to his betrothed and back. The other, who had a quick eye, was not
slow to read what was passing in Ulrich’s mind, and said: “Is there any
message you wish delivered to Miss Hofer? Or perhaps you will accompany
me? Do; and we may visit her curiosity-shop together. To-morrow will be
time enough to begin work on the frescos.”
“Well, I own, sir,” replied Ulrich, “’twould give me great happiness to
see my lady-love; and I’ll labor all the harder for making her a visit.”
Accordingly they both set out for Munich, which was reached in four
hours—eight it seemed to the impatient travellers, who as soon as they
arrived went straight to Fingergasse.
Never was street better named, for it is little broader than a finger,
and consequently only at high noon does the sun cheer it with its rays.
But this morning Fingergasse looked anything but dismal to the young
artist, who knew that a pair of bright eyes were about to greet him, and
already were shooting floods of light into his heart.
“Why, Ulrich! Ulrich!” These were Moida’s first words as she flew
towards him. Perhaps in presence of a stranger she may have expected
only a warm shake of the hand in response or a pat on the cheek. But in
an instant the arms of her lover were twined about her neck. Then, when
the greeting was over, Conrad Seinsheim was introduced, and we need not
say that the girl surveyed him carefully. Moida found him not handsome
like her Ulrich; rather the opposite. But she admired his broad forehead
and the energy which flashed through his eyes; even his air of sternness
did not displease her, for she recognized in him a man with opinions of
his own, a man of power and decision.
And now, reader, blame her not for telling Conrad frankly and in her
most winning way that her store was the best place in town to find
old curiosities. “Why, sir,” said Moida, “I have even some
fourteenth-century chairs from Loewenstein Castle, of which
doubtless you have heard. ’Tis the oldest castle in Tyrol, and——”
“Moida,” interrupted Ulrich, “did I not write to you that——”
“Oh, hush! hush!” said Moida, blushing and putting her plump hand over
his mouth.
“Well, I am here,” observed Conrad, trying hard not to smile—“I am here
purposely to buy everything your store contains; for I am now owner of
Loewenstein, and mean to fit it up as far as possible in true mediæval
style.”
“Really!” exclaimed Moida. “Really!”
Whereupon Conrad did smile outright at her look of surprise and joy.
Then presently she turned towards Ulrich, and her lips moved as if she
were trying to speak. But he could only guess what she wanted to say.
Yes, Moida, if Conrad purchases all that your little store holds, then
indeed you may name your wedding-day. And if a radiant expression can
make a homely face beautiful, it would have been difficult to find a
more beautiful girl than Moida at this moment.
After speaking volumes to Ulrich through her blue eyes, she turned again
to Conrad and said in an earnest tone: “O, sir! how kind you are. I
cannot find words to express my thanks.”
The latter waved his hand, as if to say, “Pray do not thank me,” then
set about examining the curiosities. These consisted of nine chairs
ranged side by side along the wall, half a dozen breast-plates and
helmets, a stack of arquebuses and pikes, three crossbows, some silver
plates and goblets, a ewer, a couple of clocks which had not ticked in a
century, an earthenware stove quaintly embossed with scenes from Holy
Writ, and apparently a countless number of smaller objects, such as
seals, rings, miniatures, and coins.
Picking up one of the miniatures, Conrad exclaimed: “Why, I declare,
this is very like a young lady whom I saw lately in the Pinakothek, only
here is a full view of her face, whereas I saw but the profile of my
Dream.”
At this remark Moida stepped up and whispered: “’Tis the portrait of
Walburga, the spouse of Hugo von Loewenstein; and ’tis the only thing I
am not willing to part with.” The other turned towards her a moment with
an air of disappointment; then, perceiving that she was in earnest, he
let the subject drop.
A few minutes later Conrad was on his way to the picture-gallery, while
Ulrich remained to enjoy the company of his betrothed. The first thing
Moida did was to run out and fetch him a mug of beer. This may seem too
trivial a fact to relate; nevertheless, truth may as well be told. She
knew that in Tyrol he had had only water or wine to drink; and what can
equal Munich beer? As Ulrich quietly sipped the delicious beverage, her
quick eye ran over his buttons. She took them all in at a glance, and in
another moment Moida’s needle was busy mending a rent in his sleeve. But
while the girl sewed, she ever and anon peeped up at his face, and
thought to herself: “In the whole kingdom of Bavaria there is nobody can
compare with my Ulrich.” And, moreover, full of common sense as Moida
was, there was nothing she admired more than the two sword-cuts on her
dear boy’s cheek, in shape like a cross; and well did she remember the
day when he received them, now five years ago. For, like most German
students, Ulrich had belonged to a corps (his was the Teutonia), and
occasionally engaged in a duel. It was on that memorable day that he
addressed her the first tender word, after having had his wounds sewed
up; while Moida, as she listened with fluttering heart and drooping
eyes, thought to herself: “I am the third one to whom he has said this.
Oh! I wonder which of us will win?”
Then she pretended that she did not care a straw for him; whereupon
Ulrich presented her with a beautiful nosegay—four florins it cost
him—and the rest we need not narrate.
“By the way, how is Caro?” inquired Ulrich, after holding the glass to
her lips and making Moida take a sip of the beer.
“As frisky as if he were a puppy,” answered the latter, highly pleased
at the question. Ulrich knew it would please her.
“Well, wouldn’t it be nice to have the old dog settled at Loewenstein,
where he might get plenty of fresh air and be outdoors as much as he
chose?” added the youth.
“Ay; but what chance is there of that?—unless you were to take him; and
he’d be rather troublesome.”
“No pet of yours would ever trouble me,” rejoined Ulrich. “And let me
tell you, Moida, strange things happen in the world.”
With this he proceeded to reveal how much Conrad Seinsheim admired a
certain young lady whom he had seen in the Pinakothek.
“’Tis the very one you heard him say that miniature is so like; and I
know he is gone there now purposely to see her again. And it must be
Walburga, for isn’t she copying Carlo Dolce’s picture of Innocence?”
Leaving Ulrich and his betrothed to discuss the possibility of a union
between a Von Loewenstein and a Seinsheim, let us follow the footsteps
of Conrad.
He found the one of whom he was in quest seated at her easel, perhaps a
trifle nearer the wall than before, and with the same expression on her
face which had so ravished his heart the first time he lighted upon her.
She seemed not to notice his approach, and when at length Conrad
ventured to ask if the copy she was making were for sale, Walburga
replied, apparently with indifference, and without taking her eyes off
the canvas: “Yes, sir, it is.” Yet how his question set her heart
a-throbbing! For the sale of the picture would enable the girl to pay
several bills that were due, as well as take a trip to Nuremberg, which
for years she had been longing to visit; for Nuremberg was the
birthplace of Albert Dürer.
“How differently Miss Hofer would have answered me!” thought Conrad,
observing Walburga with close attention. “She would have looked me full
in the face and completed a bargain forthwith; ay, and persuaded me,
too, to offer a high price for the picture.” Then aloud, and addressing
Walburga in courtly German style: “Well, if the gracious lady will allow
me to possess her beautiful copy, I shall be delighted. For I have just
bought an old castle in the Tyrol, which I mean to restore, as far as
money may, to its former state of grandeur, and I promise you your
painting shall adorn the fairest chamber in it.”
“An old castle, indeed!” murmured Walburga, still without glancing at
him. She wondered whether it might be Loewenstein. Then presently,
unable to contain her eager desire to know if it was or not, she said:
“May I ask, sir, in what part of the Tyrol your castle is?”
“In the Innthal, not far from Innspruck; and it once belonged to the
noble house of Von Loewenstein.”
At these words a flush crimsoned the girl’s cheek for a moment, then
disappeared, leaving her paler than before; while her brush, always so
steady, now tremblingly touched the canvas. At length, after vainly
endeavoring to master her feelings, she let the brush drop and buried
her face in her hands.
Conrad’s curiosity was here raised to a high pitch; for although Ulrich
had not told him that he had a sister an artist, yet he was
quick-witted, and since he had seen the miniature in the old
curiosity-shop—and Moida, we remember, had informed him that it came
from Loewenstein—Conrad had been hoping that the young lady whom he
called his Dream might prove to be one of the Loewenstein family, a near
relative of Ulrich’s—his sister, perhaps.
“And why not?” he asked himself. “A likeness may be handed down through
many generations; it may vanish for a space, like a lost stream, then
reappear in the person of a far-off descendant. And verily, this
charming girl is the living image of Walburga, the bride of Hugo von
Loewenstein. And, oh! if I am right, what a treasure she will be. True,
I am not highborn, and she may not view me at first with favor. But I’ll
go through fire to win her!”
Presently Walburga uncovered her face, and for the first time stole a
furtive glance at the one who stood beside her. Then quick her eyes were
fastened on the canvas again; and while Conrad was wondering at her
shyness a tear rolled down her cheek. His curiosity to know who she was
now increased tenfold, and he said, in a voice the tenderness of which
he did not care to conceal:
“Gracious lady, pray be not offended if I ask whether you have ever been
to Loewenstein?”
“I was there once; I never wish to lay eyes on it again,” answered
Walburga, trying to conceal her emotion.
“Would it offend you if I were to inquire the reason why?” pursued
Conrad, now scarcely doubting who she was.
For more than a minute Walburga did not trust herself to speak. Finally
she said:
“What spot, sir, can be so sad as an abandoned home? Parting with our
birthplace to strangers does not tear up the deep roots whereby our
heart clings to it. We feel towards it as towards a dear friend whom we
have deserted. O sir! for many, many years—for centuries”—here Walburga
drew herself proudly up—“my race held the castle which now is yours; and
I love it so much that I cannot speak of it with calmness. A friend dies
and we hide him in the earth; a dead home remains, mournfully gazing on
us whenever we pass by. ’Tis why I will not go near dear, dear
Loewenstein: nothing so ghostlike as an abandoned home!”
By this time tears were glistening in the dark, cavernous eyes of her
listener; and when Walburga finished speaking Conrad said:
“Gracious lady, you cannot imagine how precious to me the old ruin has
become. I love it, too.”
Here for the second time Walburga looked at him, but, as before, only by
a swift side-glance. Then she said: “I must return you thanks, sir, for
your kindness to my brother. He wrote to a young lady, his betrothed,
all about it, and she told me; and I sincerely rejoice that Loewenstein
has fallen into the hands of a gentleman like yourself.”
“Then you are Ulrich’s sister?” exclaimed Conrad.
“His only sister, and he my only brother. You cannot tell how I miss
him.”
“Well, he accompanied me today, and is now with Miss Hofer.”
“Indeed! How delighted I am!”
“And I am much pleased with his lady-love,” added Conrad.
“Well you may be, sir. She is the salt of the earth. Ulrich needs a
shrewd, practical woman for his wife; for the dear fellow is somewhat of
a dreamer like myself. We both of us live in the past. But now do let me
know how you came to meet Moida Hofer.”
“It happened in this wise: Your brother told me there were in her
curiosity-shop many relics from Loewenstein, which I determined to
possess. And really, I was charmed with the few words she addressed to
me; her ways are so sprightly and winning. And I, for my part, am
curious to know how you fell in with the granddaughter of Hofer the
Patriot.”
“Well, I’ll tell you all about it,” answered Walburga, as she went on
finishing the golden hair of her picture. “You must know, sir, that
Ulrich and I were left orphans at an early age, and immediately after
the death of our parents the castle fell into the hands of the state;
for there were many taxes unpaid, as well as heavy debts owing here and
there. So away went Loewenstein. But, although quite penniless, God sent
us in our uttermost need a generous lady, who had no children of her
own, and who adopted us and gave us a home in Munich. This lady had a
small fortune, enough to live comfortably on and to educate us. Ah! what
should we have done without her? Well, ’twas during this happy period
that Ulrich made Moida’s acquaintance. She was then an orphan, too, and
clad in the picturesque costume of Tyrol; a real mountain daisy she was,
and brother fell in love with her. Shortly thereafter our adopted mother
died, bequeathing to us her fortune, and we little thought we should
ever suffer want. But, alas! the bank where our money was placed failed,
and all, or nearly all, was lost. Then poor Ulrich, who had already
become engaged to Moida, feared that he could not be married—at least
not so soon as he had hoped. ’Twas a bitter disappointment to them both.
But Moida said: ‘Let us be patient and hope. I will never give you up.’
Brother and I were now fortunately well advanced in our art
studies—Ulrich, moreover, had passed through the university—and we
resolved to try and earn our bread by painting.
“But ’tis easier to paint a picture than to sell one”—here Walburga’s
cheek reddened—“and so for Ulrich and I ’twas Lent all the year round;
and we grew very thin, for we did not even eat fish. Until one day dear
Moida discovered our miserable plight: we had done our best to conceal
it. Then she insisted on doing her utmost to help us. She made me share
her lodging; she even clothed me. And this was most noble in her, for
Moida knew that our high-born acquaintances had told Ulrich he would be
marrying infinitely beneath him if he married her. Yet not one of those
proud families extended to us a helping hand. About this time Moida had
set up a little store—the one she keeps to-day. But she would not let me
help her to dispose of anything; she treated me as if she knew I was not
born for such drudgery—sometimes archly saying I could not make a good
bargain, which perhaps was true.
“But when the furniture of dear Loewenstein was sold at auction, and
when Moida bought it all, oh! from that day I have not set foot in her
curiosity-shop; for I know every clock and cup and pike and helmet, and
’twould break my heart to see this man and that coming in and cheapening
those precious heirlooms. But Moida is not displeased with me for
holding aloof; she respects my feelings, although not at all a
sentimental girl herself. Unhappily during the past year business has
been very dull, and she sells but few things, while the rent of the
store keeps high; and only that my friend has great spirit she might
almost fall into despair. Yet even now, in what I may call her darkest
hour, she tells Ulrich to be cheerful, that their wedding-day will come
sooner or later.”
“Yes, yes; very soon,” murmured Conrad, who felt tempted to lay bare at
once his whole heart to Walburga. But a moment’s reflection deterred
him: it might appear too abrupt, for the young lady had never seen or
spoken to him before. So, while admiring her more and more, he resolved
to wait a little.
But Walburga’s voice sounded so sweetly to his ears that Conrad urged
her to go on and tell him something more about herself and Moida.
Whereupon Walburga smiled and hesitated; for although she had scarcely
paused an instant with her brush, yet his presence was felt to be a
distraction. If she interested him, it was no less certain that he
interested her. She could not feel towards Conrad as towards a stranger;
she knew that he had befriended Ulrich; that he was now the owner of the
place where she was born; and that the many precious things which debt
and the auction-sale had scattered to the winds he was bent on
recovering and taking back to Loewenstein. What wrought most potently
upon Walburga was the evident interest which he showed in herself.
Instead of buying her picture and then retiring, Conrad had dallied half
an hour by her side, and prevailed on her to talk about her affairs with
an openness at which she inwardly blushed.
Nor was he at all like the other sight-seers who were wont to visit the
gallery. The two shy glances she had given him had convinced her that
Conrad was no ordinary man; that whatever his origin—even if he did not
know who his great-grandfather was, as Ulrich had written to Moida—yet
his was not a grovelling, low-born soul.
Accordingly, after remaining silent well-nigh a minute, Walburga yielded
to his request and proceeded to tell him more about herself. “Moida and
I and two others, sir,” she resumed, “have a home together—which makes
four of us in one small lodging.”
“Four!” repeated Conrad, just a little disturbed and wondering who the
other two might be.
“Yes, four. There is myself, Moida, Caro, and a nightingale.”
“Oh! indeed—Caro and a nightingale,” ejaculated her admirer, with a
sense of relief he was hardly able to conceal.
“And never was a more peaceful home. Up under the roof it is; but that
gives us fresh air, and into our dormer windows the sunshine comes
sooner than into any other windows on the street.”
“And you have the sweetest of all birds to sing for you,” observed
Conrad.
“Yes, indeed. But I sometimes think of giving my pet his freedom. Moida
laughs at me for it. Moida is——”
“Not in the least sentimental,” interrupted the other, with a smile.
“Well, true, she is not. But my bird is now a prisoner, and I am sure he
must feel lonesome where he is.”
“Oh! believe me, he is far happier as your prisoner than if he were
enjoying the freedom of all the woods in Bavaria,” said Conrad, with a
faint tremor in his voice.
“Indeed!” exclaimed Walburga, answering his emotion by a crimson spot on
her cheek.
“Well, you may be right,” he added presently. “Your kind heart may tell
you that your nightingale sighs for some other little bird to love.”
At these words the sweet, pink blush spread itself with the quickness of
light over Walburga’s whole cheek, and she answered:
“I declare, ’tis just what I told Moida.”
“And what did she say?”
“Moida said—and no harm in repeating it—she said Ulrich was her
nightingale.”
“Her nightingale! Well, really, your friend _is_ sentimental; and I envy
your brother. It must be the greatest of earthly joys to be happily
wedded, as they soon will be.”
Here Walburga’s countenance grew suddenly pensive, and she murmured to
herself: “Ay, the greatest of earthly joys.”
Conrad noticed the change in her expression and wondered at it. Then he
thought to himself: “’Tis time for me to withdraw; I may be wearying
her.”
But ere he retired he said: “May I come again, gracious lady, tomorrow
or the day after? I sometimes have melancholy moods, but these lovely
pictures bring the sunshine back to my heart; and the loveliest picture
of all is in this part of the gallery.”
“You may, sir, if it pleases you,” was the answer he received. Then,
making an obeisance, Conrad went away, leaving Walburga hardly in a fit
state to continue her work; and she inwardly repeated the words which he
had uttered about her nightingale: “Far happier as your prisoner than
enjoying the freedom of all the woods in Bavaria.”
“What did he mean?” she asked herself. “What did he mean?”
A few minutes later the girl rose and went away too, still murmuring the
question: “What did he mean?”
TO BE CONTINUED.
Footnote 43:
The narrowest street in Munich; hence the name.
Footnote 44:
The name of the park in Munich.
Footnote 45:
Valley of the Inn.
Footnote 46:
These are made afresh every year on the feast of the Epiphany.
Footnote 47:
An instrument not unlike a guitar.
ROSARY STANZAS.
SORROWFUL MYSTERIES.
I.
_Luke_ xxii. 44.
No impious hand, no torture-instrument
The Son of Mary yet has touched. Alone
His prostrate form upon the ground is rent
With cruel agony of blood to atone
For thy too easy life. A heart of stone
Could but dissolve before the piteous sight.
All through the _Holy Hour_ he made his moan,
Beneath the olives, on the sacred height;
Wrongs of the ages saw in vision that dread night!
II.
JOHN xix. 1.
An act, a little word, of God made man
Bears in itself his own immensity;
To him the universe is but a span,
A world’s full ransom his one tear might be.
Not as we reckon outlay reckons he,
Until his boundless love has lavished all.
The knotted scourge precedes the fatal tree.
Couldst thou return him less, if he should call?
Or would the martyr’s palm thy coward soul appall?
III.
JOHN xix. 5.
A crown of thorns for him, a crown of bays
For such as I! A fool might surely deem
The servant greater than his Master. Praise
Might to the sinner merest irony seem,
The while the Sinless One is made a theme
Of ribaldry. Before his crown of thorn
Honor and earthly glory are a dream,
A phantom flimsier than of vapor born:
By that pierced brow the crown of all the worlds is worn.
IV.
MATT. xi. 30.
Simon to bear thy cross they would compel;
Yet for the deed, though done against his will,
On him and on his sons rich blessing fell,
As old traditions say. How richer still
The graces that the heart’s long thirst will fill
For him who runs that sacred load to meet,
And bear it upward to the holy hill!
To share His burden be my footstep fleet:
True love will make his yoke unfelt, his burden sweet.
V.
JOHN i. 29.
Behold, the Lamb of God is crucified!
His head is bowed, to impart the kiss of peace;
Stretched are his arms, to draw thee to his side;
Opened his heart, thy heart’s love to increase.
His all is spent to purchase thy release.
Canst thou, my soul, love great as this refuse?
Henceforth in thee let sin’s dominion cease,
And with the Mother of the martyrs choose,
Rather than him in death, a whole world’s wealth to lose.
PROHIBITORY LEGISLATION: ITS CAUSE AND EFFECTS.
It has been well said that “the best government is that which governs
least”; and it might with infinite propriety be added that the
legislative body stultifies itself when it passes laws that cannot
possibly be carried into effect. One such law on our statute-books, yet
constantly and notoriously violated, does more to destroy that political
morality with which our people are, to say the least, not
overburdened—of which certainly there is no surplus—than would ten wrong
practices against which no law exists. We learned, during the late war,
of how little avail legislation is when it undertakes to regulate and
declare the value of gold; and it is designed briefly to set forth in
this article that the proposed much-vaunted prohibitory legislation
touching alcoholic liquors is false in theory, must be unsuccessful in
practice; that remedial (not _repressive_) measures are what is
required; and to suggest means by which the end aimed at by such
enactments can be attained without invading the domain of the church,
the free-will of humanity, or placing the state in the odious light of
executor of a grinding tyranny exercised by a temporary majority over a
recalcitrant minority.
And here, in the outset, let it be understood that there is no
difference between ourselves and the most ardent favorers of the Maine
Law, or any similar enactment on this matter, concerning the detestable
nature of drunkenness, which we both admit to be a damning sin in the
sight of God and a crying scandal before man. That it is a loathsome
vice is a proposition requiring only to be stated, not argued. Even the
wretched being who is enthralled by it will admit this and lament his
deplorable condition. The days are past when Fox, Pitt, and Sheridan
went openly drunk to the House of Commons; when the usages of the
highest society were such that we still retain therefrom the saying,
“Drunk as a lord”; when the literature of the age informs us everywhere
that _gentlemen_ were not expected to be sober after dinner; when Burns
could write in Presbyterian Scotland, “I hae been fou wi’ godly
priests”; and when, in our own country, the first thing on entering and
the last on leaving a house was a visit to the sideboard. Drunkenness is
now deservedly considered by the entire community not only a vice but an
inherently vulgar one. Fashionable society will not tolerate it, and
there is no pretence of usage any longer set up that will even partially
condone it. In short, it is the one unpardonable sin against modern
society, and we are well pleased to see it ranked in this category. But
while detesting drunkenness, and deprecating, in the strongest manner,
the habitual use of intoxicating liquors, we dislike very much to
perceive a tendency on the part of the public to ignore the fact that
there are other sins besides the abuse of liquor, and that it is not by
legal provision that people are to be kept sober. As Almighty God has
been pleased to leave us our free-will, the reason is not evident why
frail man should seek to take it away; and we object utterly to that
queer manipulation by which the word “temperance” itself, the proper
meaning of which is “moderation in any use or practice,” should be
restricted to the moderate use of alcoholic drinks, much more that it
should falsely be twisted and perverted into implying a total abstinence
from them. Why should we be wise above what is written? Has Almighty God
failed his church? Are we prepared to admit that Christianity is a
miscarriage? This we tacitly do when we invoke to her aid the arm of the
civil law. It is not to be doubted but there are persons so
unfortunately constituted that they cannot use stimulants of any kind
without abusing them. “Madam,” said Dr. Johnson to a lady who asked him
to take a little wine—“madam, I cannot take a _little_, and therefore I
take none at all!” Such persons must plainly abstain entirely; whether
they shall do so of their own accord, by taking a simple pledge or by
joining a “temperance society,” is for themselves to answer. In any case
there is no safety for them save in total abstinence; but said
abstinence, to have any merit whatever, must be voluntary, not one of
legal enforcement.
While attention had, from time to time within the last century, been
called to the intemperate use of alcoholic liquors, it is only within
comparatively recent times that any organized efforts have been made to
grapple with this monstrous evil. The first association for the purpose
was made in Massachusetts in 1813. By its means facts and statistics
were gathered and published for the purpose of calling the attention of
the public to the magnitude of the evil, and suggestions made for its
abatement or suppression. Similar associations were soon formed in
adjoining States, and these again organized branches, until associations
of the kind existed in nearly all the Eastern and Middle States. About
1820 there was formed in Boston “The American Society for the Promotion
of Temperance,” which in 1829 had over one thousand auxiliary societies,
no State in the Union being without one or more. The influences relied
upon by this institution were the dissemination of tracts in which were
portrayed the evil effects of the use of alcohol, and the employment of
travelling lecturers to deliver addresses in favor of temperance. The
first society professing the principle of total abstinence from
intoxicating liquors was formed at Andover in 1826. These several
societies, under one form or other, soon spread largely not only in our
own country but in Canada, England, and Scotland, until they existed by
hundreds in each; and about this time the word _temperance_ began to
lose its normal signification, and to be used as a synonym for total
abstinence from the use of liquors. _Teetotalism_ became the popular
cry. The country was taken by storm; lecturers loomed up all over the
States, administered the “pledge” publicly to hundreds of thousands;
various minor denominations refitted their terms of communion in
accordance with the new war-cry. In Ireland the cause of total
abstinence was so successfully advocated by Very Rev. Father Mathew that
he is stated to have administered the pledge to more than a million
persons within three years from 1838; and since that time there has
been, in the popular mind, no such thing as temperance, except in the
sense of total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. All the former
associations which proposed to themselves any such secondary and
inefficient object as moderation in the use of liquors, or which
administered either a partial pledge or one merely for a specified time,
were disbanded or fell out of sight. Societies of Washingtonians, Sons
of Temperance, Good Templars, and Rechabites sprang up, most of them
secret and with signs, passwords, grips, tokens, etc., the members of
which were pledged neither to touch, taste, handle, buy, sell,
manufacture, nor use as a beverage the _accursed thing_. In 1851 the
Legislature of Maine passed the well-known “Maine Law,” by which it was
made penal to manufacture, have in possession, or sell intoxicating
drinks. The law was repealed in 1856, and it has since been lawful to
distil, keep, or sell spirits under certain restrictions, but
drinking-houses are prohibited. A similar law was enacted in
Massachusetts in 1867. In many of the States there is a law prohibiting
the sale of liquors on Sunday, and in a majority the _local-option_ law
(which leaves the question whether license to sell spirits shall be
granted or not to the decision, at the polls, of the people of each
city, town, township, or county) is now in full blast, with results that
we shall glance at hereafter. A political party has been formed in many
States, under the name of “prohibitionists,” which, though as yet but
rarely sufficiently numerous or powerful to elect a governor on that
single issue, yet numbers adherents enough frequently to hold the
balance of power between the two prominent parties, and thus extort from
candidates very important concessions in their own interests. They are
active, energetic, conscientious in the main, and they besiege the
various legislatures with petition upon petition against the
liquor-traffic, which, to their minds, is the sum of all iniquities. The
various religious sects come to their aid, loudly decrying all traffic
in, and use of, spirituous drink. Matters have been brought to such a
pass that a man’s reputation is imperilled by taking a glass of liquor;
and there is yet wanting but the one further step of making its use
illegal and its procurement impossible—a course strongly and
unhesitatingly urged by almost all the various supporters of what is
nowadays called _temperance_, and which seems quite likely to succeed,
should the upholders of these views increase in numbers for a few more
years as they have done within the last two decades.
It is a law of all fanatical movements, and one of their most peculiarly
dangerous features, that they readily enmesh large numbers of people,
and that their workings, tendencies, and developments fall of necessity,
in the long run, into the hands of the extremists, the _intransigentes_,
among themselves. Nor has this movement proved an exception, as is seen
in the attempt made by legal enactment to coerce people into the
practice of an enforced abstinence from stimulants—an abstinence _not_
shown to be physiologically desirable, _not_ commanded by the church,
and most assuredly _not_ inculcated in Scripture. But in secret
societies always, in sectarian combinations generally, and oftentimes in
political parties, the experience of all ages shows that people first
set up for themselves a master, and then obey him like so many slaves.
They do this, too, under the delusion, for the most part, that they are
carrying out their own convictions of right. It is much easier to join
one of these secret organizations in a flush of curiosity, enthusiasm,
or other temporary excitement than it afterwards proves to leave them in
calm blood. Ties of acquaintance and _quasi_ friendship have been formed
which most men strongly dislike to break. Good care is usually exercised
that “the rhetorician, from whom,” as Aristotle says, “it is an error to
expect demonstration,” shall be on hand to stimulate, exhort, inspirit,
and incite to still further and more vigorous exertion; the boundaries
between right and wrong fade away from the mental view; and few start in
on this false track who fail to accompany their misled companions as far
as the archbigot or archfanatic may choose to take them.
Within the Catholic Church a large number of total-abstinence societies
have been formed, of course with her sanction. Most of these are at the
same time _beneficial_ institutions, which in case of sickness give the
member, and in case of death to his nearest kin, a certain allotted sum.
But probably most priests on the mission will say that the great mass of
Catholics who feel the necessity _for them_ of such abstinence take the
pledge as individuals at the hands of the priest, either for a certain
term or for life, without joining any special society. An immense amount
of good has thus been accomplished, particularly among the poorer and
laboring population, a very large proportion of whom are Catholics, and,
from their circumstances and inevitable surroundings, most in danger of
falling into temptation in the matter of drink, as well as most certain
to suffer very severely from its effects. But it has at no time been,
nor is it now, any part of the teaching of the church that her children
shall not manufacture, buy, sell, and use (should they be so disposed)
vinous, malt, or spirituous drink. Condemning the abuse of them, and
reprobating drunkenness as a mortal sin, she yet allows to her children
the moderate use and enjoyment of that wine which our Blessed Lord
himself made for the use of the guests at the wedding at Cana, as well
as of the other forms of it, which no physician or chemist ever found to
be injurious _per se_ until it chimed in with a cry emanating from a
large, an influential, _possibly_ a well-meaning, but in our view
_certainly, if so_, a false-thinking, or it may be a deceived, portion
of the community.
And here it may be well to note the unpardonable arrogance of assumption
with which the intemperately temperate of all sorts take it for granted
that all intelligence and morality belong peculiarly to those who
inculcate or practise this one principle of abstinence from liquors. We
see it displayed most offensively, indeed, among the variously bedizened
and becollared gentry of the divers oath-bound secret societies, and
among such sectaries as practically make total abstinence a term of
communion; but truth compels us to go further, and to admit the
tendency, even among Catholics, on the part of those who have ardently
attached themselves to the societies got up with this view, to treat all
outsiders as though living on a lower plane of piety and morality than
themselves. “Stand thou off, for I am holier than thou” is too
frequently their language in effect, if not in words; and, indeed, that
is an almost inevitable effect of what the Scotch call “unco guidness.”
However, the teaching and tenets of the church remain what they have
always been, and the Catholic manufacturer or vender of wines and
spirits, the total abstainer and the moderate drinker, go to confession,
receive absolution and holy communion, together; nor do intelligent or
well-instructed Catholics imagine for a moment that the formal pledge of
abstinence from intoxicants, or membership in a total-abstinence
society, are anything more than _adminicula_ to the individual whom his
own weakness, the circumstances under which he earns a livelihood, or
other reasons place in peculiar danger with reference to this vice.
But there must be some strong reason why an all-pervading necessity has
been felt, in this century, for doing something in regard to
drunkenness, the need of which (if ever previously perceived) has
certainly never been acted upon by the most enlightened nations, whether
of antiquity or of modern times. Lot was made drunk; Noe was drunk;
Nabal and the Ephraimites were “drunken withal”; and all the evils and
phenomena of intoxication are fully described in various passages of the
Old Testament, always with reprobation, but there is not to be found in
the entire book the slightest disapproval of the use of the fruit of the
vine. On the contrary, oblations of wine to the Deity are enjoined upon
the children of Israel; and the most horrible judgments denounced by the
prophets of God upon the Jews consist in their being deprived of wine.
In New Testament times our Saviour was called by the Pharisees (the
prototypes of our ultra-abstainers) a wine-bibber; yet the same Jesus
does not deem it at all necessary to proclaim himself on the teetotal
side, or to leave us any precept against the use of wine. On the
contrary, he institutes in wine the sacrament of his love, thus
rendering the manufacture of wine necessary till the end of time. He
himself changes water into wine. His apostles nowhere discourage its
use, while they frequently speak of and upbraid professing Christians
with its abuse, and one of them actually advises another to drop water
and use a little wine for sanitary reasons. It would be sheer waste of
time to undertake to refute those very ignorant or very dishonest
persons who try to make it appear that wine, when mentioned in Scripture
with commendation, is merely the unfermented juice of the grape, and
that the _shechar_, _tirosh_, and _yayin_ were only intoxicating when
excess in their use was reprobated. Either these people know better, and
are wittingly making use of a dishonest argument, or their ignorance is
too dense to be penetrated by any proof, however cogent. The reader who
may wish to see this branch of the subject succinctly yet exhaustively
treated should refer to an article in the _Westminster Review_ for
January, 1875, entitled “The Bible and Strong Drink.”
The Greeks and Romans cultivated the vine very largely, made and used
wine habitually; but their whole literature, while teeming with
reference to the use, in no single instance commends the abuse, of wine.
That the Spartans were accustomed to make their slaves intoxicated, in
order by their example to deter young men from becoming addicted to the
vice, is as well attested as any fact in history; while even in the
worst periods of Roman story drunkenness is invariably referred to as
disgraceful in itself, never to be predicated of people entitled to
respect, and relegated, even at the _Saturnalia_, to the rabble and to
slaves.
In the _Stromata_ of St. Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the latter
part of the second century, we find allusion made to a few who at that
day attempted to disturb the harmony of the church by imitating the
example which they professed to consider set them in the narration by
the Prophet Jeremias of the story of the sons of Jonadab-ben-Rechab, and
we find those persons classed by him with those of whom the apostle
speaks, as “commanding to abstain from that which God hath ordained to
be received with thanksgiving.” Two centuries later St. Chrysostom and
St. Augustine both pointedly condemn, as acting “plainly and palpably
contrary to Scripture and to the doctrine of the Church,” some who,
fancying they had attained spiritual information not generally
accessible, tried to introduce among Christians the vow of the
Nazarites. From that time till the former half of the present century we
read, indeed, of drunkenness as existing; for that matter, we know of
its existence in the earliest ages, and in all times and countries
since, just as we do of incontinence, of theft, and of suicide by
poison. It was reserved for the nineteenth century to attempt to do away
with the possibility of the vice of drunkenness by rendering penal the
production of the means; which is as though the law should step in to
render men chaste by emasculation, theft impracticable by the abolition
of property; and not in the least more feasible than would be the
carrying out of an edict against the production of animal, mineral, or
vegetable poisons.
Now, we should not in the least object to any well-devised and practical
legislation that would do away with drunkenness entirely, if that were
possible, which it unfortunately is not; nor will it ever be the case so
long as the human race exists upon earth. The question, then, arises,
What would be _practical_ legislation in the matter? This, in turn,
involves an inquiry into the latent causes of the great commotion raised
within this generation on the subject. It will be fresh in the memory of
reading people in the United States that some two years ago one of our
ablest metropolitan journals employed an agent to purchase samples of
every possibly adulterable commodity from the most reputable venders in
that city, drugs of the same description from the most respectable
apothecaries—in short, specimens of everything on sale that was capable
of deterioration by admixture of foreign substances; and that, on
handing them over to a competent chemist for analysis, there was not a
single instance of an article so purchased and tested that was not found
adulterated to the last extent. All, without exception, whether articles
of food, drink, medicine, or products of the arts and manufactures, were
debased and corrupted—always, of course, with an inferior and cheaper,
frequently with an absolutely injurious, and in some instances with a
poisonous, admixture. The exposure occupied the columns of the paper
referred to for some two weeks, and was then discontinued; not, however,
without leaving food for reflection in the minds of the thoughtful. Now,
when we consider the still greater temptation, the patent feasibility,
and the larger gains resulting from adulteration of the various liquors,
owing to the many hands through which they must and do pass before
reaching their consumers, and the almost total impossibility, as things
are, of detection, we shall have strong reason _à priori_ to believe
that such adulteration takes place. But we have before us at this moment
a book of some two hundred pages, entitled the _Bar-keeper’s Manual_, in
which the facts are laid down, the method explained, the ingredients
unblushingly named, the manipulations described, and a clear reason thus
afforded why the use of liquors _nowadays_ is so ruinous to health, so
productive of hitherto comparatively unknown forms of disease, and has
become in this century especially such a crying abomination. In this
book (which forcibly recalls to our mind an advertisement for “a man in
a liquor store” that we once saw, and which wound up by stating that no
one need apply who did not understand “doctoring” liquors) recipes are
given for making from common whiskey any kind of gin, brandy, rum,
arrack, kirschwasser, absinthe, etc., as well as any other desired brand
of whiskey; together with full directions for mixing, diluting,
coloring, adding strength, bead, and fruitiness, as well as for
flavoring them each up to the required mark. When we find among the
ingredients recommended (and evidently used, as the result of experience
in this diabolical laboratory) nux vomica, cocculus indicus, strychnia,
henbane, poppy-seed, creosote, and logwood, to impart strength to the
false liquor, we need not inquire after the thousand other less
pernicious articles used to supply color, odor, or bead to the noxious
compounds. Now, from conversations held with persons who have been
engaged in the liquor business in its various forms, as well as from
reliable information long since spread before the public, but to quote
which _in extenso_ would occupy too much space, we may generalize these
facts, which we take to be not only undisputed but indisputable; viz.,
that _wines never_, and brandies, gins, etc., _rarely_, reach our shores
in their pure state; that the same assertion is true of every imported
liquor; that the subsequent adulteration is something fearful to
contemplate; and that the advocates of prohibitory laws are talking
within bounds when they call such preparations _poisons_. We may further
learn that rarely indeed do our home-manufactured liquors pass in a pure
state into the hands of the first purchaser; and that, after they have
passed through two or three subsequent hands, whatever they may have
become, they are anything in the world but pure liquors. By the time,
then, that they reach the small groceries, drinking-shops, doggeries,
and the lowest classes of saloons, all liquors will, on an average, have
passed through at least seven or eight hands, each man quite as eager as
the last to make all the gain he possibly can upon the article; and
adulteration (he has the _Manual_ before him) presenting the safest and
easiest plan, it follows that the laborer or artisan, those whose
poverty forces them to frequent the lowest and meanest places, will be
supplied with the most villanous article possible to be conceived under
the name of liquor. Mr. Greenwood, in his work, _The Seven Plagues of
London_, says:
“Where there is _no pure liquor_—and there is little such in London,
even for the wealthy—perhaps nothing used by man as a stimulant is
liable to greater and more injurious adulterations than _gin_; and I
assert that it is _not_ to-day _to be procured pure_ (I speak not of
merely _injurious_ but) of _absolutely poisonous_ drugs at a single
shop in London to which a poor man would go or where he would be
served.”
Mr. Nathaniel Curtis, the founder and first Worthy Chief of the Order of
Good Templars, has (though his deductions from the facts are entirely
different from ours) made it abundantly evident that the adulteration of
all liquors, fermented, vinous, and ardent, is carried on in a most
reckless manner and without regard to consequences in our own country.
His words are:
“From the tramp’s _glass_ of beer, through the sot’s _glass_ of rum,
_jorum_ of whiskey, or _pull_ of gin, up to the merchant’s madeira
or sherry and the millionaire’s _goblet_ of champagne, we have shown
them all to be, not what the drinker supposes—and that were bad
enough in all conscience—but _universally drugged_, most frequently
_poisoned_, and not in one case of ten thousand containing more than
a small percentage of the article the purchaser paid for.”
We might multiply authorities, chemical, medical, and purely statistic,
on this subject to an indefinite extent, but it would occupy too much
space; besides which, reading men are already sufficiently convinced of
the facts. Within the last few years such a mass of damning evidence has
been put before the public on this subject that the man must be wilfully
blind who does not admit adulteration of the most injurious sort to be
the rule in all the various branches and phases of the liquor-traffic.
One quotation, however, we must make from the pages of the _Dublin
Review_, July, 1870, article “Protestant London,” in which the writer
suggests something very like our own view, though he seems to have an
idea that the wholesale adulteration was, in England, confined to
fermented liquors, which is indeed a grave mistake, whether as regards
England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, or in fact any of the countries
peculiarly afflicted by this demon of drink. The writer says:
“Yet the effects of beer in England are confessedly far worse than
those of wine in France. We believe the real explanation of this to
be its adulteration. It is by drinking, at first in moderation,
adulterated beer that the habit of intoxication becomes a slavery,
by which men are afterwards led on to the abuse of gin. There are at
this moment thousands of habitual drunkards among us who would never
have been drunkards at all, had they not been betrayed into the
snare by drinking in moderation adulterated beer—that is, _if the
beer sold in public-houses were not universally adulterated_. This
evil, at least, law well administered might meet and uproot.
Government should _not_ allow men both to _cheat_ and _poison_ their
neighbors with impunity.”
It is, then, not at all surprising that _mania a potu, delirium
tremens_, and other disorders arising from the abuse of good or the use
of drugged liquor should have become so common in this country as to
furnish a good or, at any rate, a plausible reason why many
conscientious persons have attributed to the use of liquor effects due,
either solely or in great measure, to the stupefying and poisonous
decoctions vended under that name. But while this would have been, at
all times as it is now, an excellent and an all-sufficient reason for
trying to induce people to refrain, whether by pledge or otherwise, from
such infernal compounds, and for having analysts appointed by law to
examine and test the liquors sold in every tavern, we insist that it is
no argument at all for doing away by law with the use of liquor _in
toto_. We believe sincerely that no single measure (that can be carried
out) would do more to lessen the national curse of drunkenness than the
appointment of competent chemists to see to the purity of the liquors
vended. And, considering the advanced state of chemical science among
us, is it absurd to suppose, that if the government were determined that
so it should be, the selling of adulterated liquor might not easily be
made so dangerous a trade as to be very soon given over? It is
lamentable that people are so eager for gain that they will and do
adulterate everything capable of the process. Physicians tell us that it
is nearly impossible to get at the ordinary drug-stores any of the
higher-priced medicines in their pure state; that opium, quinine, etc.,
are nearly always impure, mixed with foreign ingredients; and that, for
this reason, their prescriptions often fail of the intended effect.
This, certainly, is no good reason for enacting a law to abolish
entirely the use of adulterable drugs; nor because tea, coffee, sugar,
tobacco, mace, mustard, and pepper are rarely found pure should we
therefore abandon their use altogether.
Here, of course, it will be contended that the cases are not parallel;
that whereas the abuse of liquor, or the use of the drugged article
going by that name, renders man like the brute, degrades and obliterates
the image of God in us, yet such is not the case with the adulterated
commodities of food or with the drugs referred to. True, the analogy
does not hold equally good throughout in each case, but the principle is
exactly the same in all. We will go further, admitting that liquor is in
very few cases an absolute necessity; but what a large number of mankind
regard it as of prime importance to their well-being, to their comfort,
or, finally, to their enjoyment! How few of the great mass of humanity,
on the other hand, are of that unfortunate constitution of mind, of
body, or of both that they cannot restrain themselves within the bounds
of moderation in the use of liquor vinous or fermented! Suppose even
that the passage of a prohibitory law by the majority were consonant
with church and Scriptural teachings, would it be fair or reasonable
that for the lamentable weakness of the very few the comfort and
enjoyment of the vast mass of humanity should be lightly set aside as an
unconsidered trifle? That Anglican bishop who said he “would rather see
England free than England sober” expressed a noble sentiment, and we
think, with him, that enforced sobriety (as would be that produced by
such a law) would be dearly purchased at the expense of virtual slavery.
Some one pithily condemns _that false system of morality that begins by
pledges of total abstinence_, but the falsity of such a scheme is
trifling compared with that which would invite us to come and admire a
nation sober, enforcedly sober, _de par la loi!_ As well ask us to
applaud the sobriety of the convicts in the penitentiary. We are not
placed in the world to be free from temptation, but to resist it. All
theologians assure us that this is a state of probation, nor is it the
business of the civil code either to abolish property lest many may
steal, or to suppress the manufacture of liquor lest some shame
themselves and sin against God by getting drunk. Again, if you begin
this business, where is it to end? Human beings are very full of kinks
and crotchets. Each half-century is sure to have its peculiar vagary.
What may not be that of the next one? King James considered tobacco as a
direct emanation from the devil; and John Wesley was no whit behind him
either in the belief or its expression. It is certainly quite as
unnecessary, quite as much an article _de pur luxe_, as beer, wine, or
spirits. Who is bail to me that, the principle once established of
suppressing human nature by act of Congress, future Good Templars,
prospective Rechabites, Sons of Temperance yet to come, nay, the whole
Methodistic fraternity, may not revivify the views of Wesley and thunder
anathemas against Yaras, Fine-cut, and Cavendish? Or there may arise an
expounder of Scripture who shall deduce thence a system of vegetarianism
(quite as unlikely doctrines and practices have been deduced from Holy
Writ) to his own satisfaction and that of crowds greater than wait on
the ministrations of our latest evangelists. Of course then, marshalled
to victory by the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,”
they will soon have a law enacted forbidding to us all beefsteak or
mutton-chop! There is, in short, no end to the antics and absurdities
that may, nay, that must, arise under the ægis of such a precedent as
this law would furnish. We, for our part, fully believe in rendering to
Cæsar what belongs to him; but it is the province of the church,
representing God upon earth—of religion, in other words—so to dispose
man as to enable him to withstand temptation to sin and crime; and the
business of the civil power to punish him _for offences committed_, not
to remove all temptation to wrongdoing. In short, the law is not held to
an impossibility, which this would plainly be, unless the world were
made a _tabula rasa_. The assumption, therefore, by the civil law, of
the divinely-conferred duty and prerogative of the church would, in any
case, be a usurpation, were it even practicable. We shall see that in
the case before us, at least, it would be purely impossible to carry out
the legal mandate by all the power of the government, were it multiplied
a hundred-fold.
The heavy tariff on foreign, and the large internal revenue tax on
domestic, liquors, necessitated by our civil war, have also been a great
inducement to the adulteration of spirits, as well as to the advance of
that already too wide-spread practice of cheating the government in
matter of revenue, now so common as hardly to be regarded in the light
of a moral wrong. Howsoever it may have come about, the fact is that the
tone of political morality with us is about as low as it has ever been
in any country that the sun shines on. From the Stocking & Leet trial,
through the troubles of Tammany’s magnates and the charges of complicity
with smugglers pending against some of our most prominent mercantile
firms, down to the “crooked whiskey” cases of to-day, as well as the
constantly-bandied and the sometimes thoroughly proven charges of
bribery against our most highly-placed public men, we see everywhere
either a desperate resolution to evade all law, or a serene belief that
deception and the withholding of tax and tariff legally due cease to be
cheating and swindling when the government is the party of the second
part. It is now clearly made out that, since the laying on of high
duties and revenue tax, it has cost our government an average of three
dollars to collect every two dollars received from that source in the
public treasury; while as to the amount of which the government is
annually defrauded, no calculation other than an approximate one can, of
course, be made, but those whose position gives them the best chance to
form an accurate judgment place the yearly sum at the minimum of
$80,000,000. Before our late war we had a federal treasury ever full.
Indeed, but a very short time before that dismal experience the general
government distributed a large surplus among the States; our treasury
notes were always above par, and our simple government bonds at high
premium. With the advent of war came the necessity for raising a large
and an immediate revenue. Taxation, direct and indirect, was resorted
to, the like of which has rarely (if ever) been known in civilized
countries. Paper money, redeemable at the pleasure of the government,
was issued. Gold and silver entirely disappeared. An army of internal
revenue officers had to be created, and a supplementary host of
detectives to ferret out infractions of the new-made laws. The tax on
common whiskey was placed at two dollars and fifty cents per gallon, and
corresponding sums on foreign liquors; Cognac, for example, being rated
at seven dollars per gallon. Our people were not accustomed to, and did
not like, taxation; and the government neither knew how to suggest, nor
its officials how to carry out honestly and skilfully, any well-devised
plans for the collection of revenue on such a gigantic scale. Here there
was a strong inducement at once both to the illicit manufacture and to
the increased adulteration of liquors, the latter of which (though
existing too largely before) took, from that time, large strides in
advance, and both have uninterruptedly continued their progress till the
present day, threatening (unless most stringent measures be taken for
their repression) to ruin our country, morally, and a large number of
her citizens temporally and eternally. It is true that the tax on
home-manufactured spirits was largely cut down in 1870, and that on
foreign wines and liquors heavily curtailed; but those at all acquainted
with the subject know how little this step, taken after eight years of
the reverse practice, was likely to interfere with clandestine
manufacture, and how immensely it tended to give a superadded impetus to
the practice of adulteration. Our internal revenue officers are now
legion, yet they do not collect one-half of the revenue that should be
collected; and of that one-half not more than two-fifths inures to the
benefit of the treasury. Our detectives swarm everywhere, yet illicit
distillation and poisonous adulteration of liquors are on a very rapid
increase. Now, a very large number of people, learned and lay, rich and
poor, of practical experience in the use of liquor, and deriving their
information from the experience of others, or from reading, are strongly
of the opinion that the best and most practicable mode of decreasing
actual drunkenness, and of mitigating or diminishing the acknowledged
evils of drink, would be the furnishing of pure liquors instead of the
noxious compounds now on sale. Certainly, to put the matter in the
mildest terms, there prevails a very extensive belief, founded, we
think, upon good reason, that if pure liquors alone were sold
drunkenness would not prevail as it now does. It is not contended that
intoxication would thereby be done away with, any more than that the
most skilful devices can ever entirely prevent theft, forgery, murder,
or other crime; but we insist that the tendency to drunkenness, now so
inseparable (as experience shows) from the use of the drugged article,
would not exist in a tithe of the instances nor to a hundredth part of
the extent that we daily see. Certain it is that in the last century,
and until adulteration began to prevail extensively in the present, the
terrific effects of liquor-drinking now known to us, under so many
different names and forms of disease, did not present themselves with
any frequency; and it is equally certain that just in proportion to the
universality of adulteration has been the commonness and virulence of
mania and delirium resulting from drink. We have said that stringent
measures should be taken to guard the interests of the comparatively
helpless consumers, so that they may have some reasonable ground for
believing that in taking a glass of ale or beer they have not imbibed a
dose of _cocculus indicus_, that a drink of whiskey does not of
necessity imply an undefined amount of _nux vomica_, or that the
symptoms resultant from a mixture of brandy and water at dinner are not
due to _strychnia_ or _creosote_. We found it much easier during the war
to raise prices on account of the enhanced value of gold than it has
since proved to diminish them in accordance with the approximation of
greenbacks to coin. So, too, in this matter of suppressing adulteration
of drink (which is the remedy we propose, and which will be just so far
valuable as it is thorough and uncompromising, while comparatively
useless unless rigidly and strenuously carried out), we have called into
play a practice, we have evoked a demon, which is not to be abolished or
banished by feeble instrumentality. We shall illustrate what may be done
here in our own country by what has been successfully accomplished in
Sweden (a country in which drunkenness and its attendant evils had
attained a magnitude beyond, perhaps, any other of Europe); nor can we
do it better than by the following account taken from Dr. Carnegie’s
late book, entitled _The License Laws of Sweden_:
“In the town of Gothenburg, however, these measures (_prohibitory
laws_), partly from local reasons, were not found sufficiently
restrictive; and a committee, appointed in 1865, readily traced a
concurrent progress between the increasing pauperism and the
increasing drink. The laws were evaded, the police set at naught,
and nothing remained but to inaugurate a radically new system. This
consisted of various measures, all subordinate to one great
principle—viz., that no individual, either as proprietor or manager,
under a public-house license, should derive any gain from the sale
of liquor. To carry out this principle in its integrity the whole
liquor-traffic of the town was gradually transferred to a company,
limited, consisting of the most highly respected gentlemen of the
town, who undertook, by their charter, to carry on the business in
the interests of temperance and morality, and neither to derive any
profit from it themselves nor to allow any person acting under them
to do so. The company now rent all the houses and licenses from the
town, paying a moderate interest on the capital invested, and making
over the entire profits of the trade to the town treasury. The
places for drink—the number of which was immediately curtailed—are
of two classes, public-houses and retail shops, both bound to
purchase their wine and spirits (analyzed and authoritatively
pronounced pure) from the company, to sell them without any profit,
to supply good food and hot meals on the premises, and not to sell
Swedish brandy except at meals. The public-houses are managed by
carefully-chosen men, who derive their profits from the sale of malt
liquors (also analyzed before being put on sale), coffee, tea, soda
and seltzer water, cigars, etc., and from the food and lodgings. The
retail shops are managed entirely by women, who have a fixed salary
but no share in the profits. This system began to work in October,
1865. Its effects have been at once perceptible. In 1864 the number
of fines paid in Gothenburg for drunkenness was 2,164; in 1870, with
a largely increased population, 1,416. Cases of _delirium tremens_
in 1864 were 118; in 1868 but 54. Nor are the financial effects less
encouraging. In 1872 the company realized in net profits no less
than £15,846, which, being paid over to the town, far more than
covers the entire poor-rate. Another pleasant fact is that this
large amount of trade is virtually carried on without any paid-up
capital, the whole outlay of the company having only amounted to
£454.”
It is interesting to learn from the same authority whence the above
extract is taken that whilst the consumption of liquor in Sweden is
still enormous, it has been reduced (mainly owing to the care exercised
in testing its purity, and partially, also, to well-regulated
restriction) from ten gallons per head throughout the kingdom in 1860 to
about two gallons in 1870, which is about the same proportion as in
Scotland at present; and that the universal testimony of the Swedish
philanthropists, far from favoring absolute prohibition, looks rather to
purity of liquor, conjoined with moderate restriction, and finds the
results eminently satisfactory. But while we point to their experience,
as well as to common sense, right reason, the practice both of the
ancient and modern world till the beginning of this agitation of a
factitious temperance; while we invoke the teachings of Scripture for
those who profess to be guided in matters of morals and doctrine by
that, and by that alone, and appeal to the constant practice and to the
authority of the church, which should, with Catholics, be paramount to
all other considerations, yet we are painfully aware that to produce
conviction in the minds of extremists is a task that no logic can
accomplish. It is, like the cure of the vice itself which gives occasion
for this article, only to be accomplished by the grace of God. The
English-speaking world—the most enterprising and energetic portion of
the human race—occupying, for the most part, regions which suggest
toiling and striving physically and mentally so as, in the opinion of
many of them, to necessitate an occasional resort to alcoholic
stimulants, have used these liquors largely, we will say too largely, if
you please. Other shrewd and unscrupulous Anglo-Saxons have stepped in
and poisoned, for gain, the cup which they thought one of refreshment.
Death and disease, drunkenness and dipsomania, have been so long and so
frequently the result that the attention of the public is imperatively
called to it. “Take the pledge,” says one; “that will settle the
matter”—forgetting that without the help of God no pledge is of any
account, and that with his grace no pledge is needed. “Join the order,”
bawls another; “here you find the sovereign panacea for drink”—oblivious
of the fact that these secret institutions are never permanent, rarely
at peace within themselves, constantly shifting in views and practice,
and that in joining them the neophyte simply takes as many masters as
there are members, exchanging the slavery to drink for one still more
galling and quite as sinful. “No license to sell less than a quart,”
says yet another. The quart is soon disposed of, and many another quart
and gallon go the same road. “Sell no liquor, open no drinking-house on
Sunday,” screams a full-throated chorus of religionists. This, too, is
tried, and the poor man, obliged to choose between entire dulness and
intoxication, prepares himself on Saturday night for a Sunday’s drinking
bout. “No license less than three hundred dollars,” suggest the cannie
property-holders; and, presto! higher adulteration; more poison in the
drink; a higher rate per glass, it may be, but not a tippling-shop less
in country or city. “No license at all,” is the next cry. It is tried;
adulteration becomes still more barefaced, but the same amount of
drinking is done, it can hardly be said clandestinely, for it is done in
the face of day, and everybody knows or may know of it. Macrae’s
_America_ tells us that when an investigation was instituted into the
workings of the prohibitory or no-license system in Boston, there were
found to be in that city over two thousand places where liquor was
vended by the glass, and that the average annual amount spent per head
(men, women, and children included) for liquor in the entire State was a
little over ten dollars. “_We’re all for the Maine Law here_,” said a
man to Mr. Macrae, “_but we’re agin its enforcement_.” It may here be
stated once for all, without possibility of successful contradiction,
that not one of these laws, whether for Sunday-closing, higher license,
no license, partial license, or entire prohibition, ever was carried
out, or ever had any other effect than possibly to add to the cost, and
certainly to enlarge illicit distillation and set an enhanced premium on
the adulteration of liquors.
Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi!
Maine was obliged, after a few years’ trial, to abrogate her prohibitory
law; and the most ardent favorers of _local option_, which has now had a
full and fair trial in many States, confess it a failure. Our own
experience of it is that drunkenness is nowhere so rife as in the midst
of those very regions where no license is granted and entirely
prohibitory laws are supposed to prevail; and there is surplusage of
testimony to the facts.
Strange, certainly, it seems to us, that among the various modes, some
plausible and some supremely silly, that have been proposed and acted
upon with a view of checking the ravages of intemperance, so few should
have suggested, and none should have acted upon the idea of trying, what
might be the possible effect of pure liquor. Common sense should have at
once suggested it, and a portion of the redundant and exuberant
philanthropy of the age might have been well, at least harmlessly,
employed in making an experiment which could in no case have worked
disastrously, as all those plans have done which familiarize the people
with systematized violation of law, to gratify the morbid craving for
those poisons the use of which, growing with every indulgence, soon
leaves the victim incapable of resisting the craving that never abandons
him but with life. Most people, however, once fairly inoculated with the
views of the temperance societies (we refer to the _secret_ institutions
under that name), see everything but from one point of view; the vision
becomes jaundiced, prejudice carries the day, argument is of no avail,
moderate measures are futile, liquor in any shape, alcohol in any
quantity, are the _accursed thing_, and those who deal in them, nay,
those who see no objection to their use, are _Amalekites_. What to them
are the vested interests of the eight hundred thousand persons engaged
in the manufacture and sale of liquor in the United States alone? What
the employment of hundreds of thousands engaged in its transportation?
What care they about the wives and families of either? It is of no sort
of consequence to them that over sixty million dollars accrue to the
federal treasury, even under the present extremely defective system of
collection, from the tax on domestic liquors; half as much more from the
tariff on foreign wines and spirits; and that the amounts paid for
municipal, county, State, and federal purposes, by license on
liquor-selling and drinking-houses, are simply incalculable. As well
plant and try to cultivate the sands from high-water mark to ebb-tide as
attempt to reason with such people! They are the _communists_ of our
country, the _impracticables_, the men of one idea, and that idea a
wrong one. We would much like to be able to reach them, to be able to
make them hear the words of genuine truth and soberness; but they are
“joined to their idols,” as Ephraim of old; the doctrines of the
“lodge,” the rulings of the _W. Patriarch, W. Chief Templar_ (or
whatever else may be the name of the presiding _Grand Mogul_), are of
more avail to them than all the philosophy and all the logic of ancient
and modern times. What are the Fathers of the church to the Rev.
Boanerges Blunderbuss, at Brimstone Corner, who explains to the
satisfaction of his hearers that wine, “which cheers the heart of God
and of man,” is but the unfermented juice of the grape, and that our
Saviour, at his last supper, squeezed out some three or four clusters of
grapes into the goblet whence he and his disciples drank? Talk to one of
these people about the desirableness of some regard for the habits and
customs of the multitudes in this wide world who use wine and spirits
without abusing them; he regards you with a withering contempt for your
ignorance, and informs you that _they are all drunkards_ and must be
_reformed_; that if five glasses of wine make a man drunk, one-half of a
glass must make him one-tenth part drunk; that liquor is never
necessary, even in disease as a remedy; that the Good Samaritan was
really poisoning the poor fellow to whom he gave the wine; and he leaves
on your mind the general impression that Solomon had yet a great deal to
learn from Sons of Temperance and prohibitory-law men when he
over-hastily recommended in his Proverbs to “give drink to the
sorrowful.” Just as impracticable, though in a different way and for a
different reason, is the man who has no sympathy for habits and needs
which he never knew; who never had a generous impulse in his life; whose
every act is based on cold reason and personal interest; who seldom or
never took, and who never longed for, a glass of wine since his
wedding-day; who has no sympathy for those differently situated in life
or of different physiological diathesis. He has neither genuine sympathy
for the unfortunate drunkard nor fellow-feeling for those who use
liquor. Mistaking oftentimes his own plentiful surroundings for honesty,
the want of temptation for temperance, and his own success in life for
virtue, we need expect from him no other cry than “do away with the
whole thing.”
Those poor degraded wretches at the other extreme of society who, from
congenital inclination, bad surroundings, evil training, folly, disease,
or the gnawing remorse engendered by failure in life, have fallen a prey
to the accursed poisons sold as drink, their intellect shattered and
their physical constitution prostrate, do not, we confess, deserve a
very ardent sympathy from a community for which they have done little
but harm. Still, that community was to blame that received money for
licensing the houses that sold them narcotics instead of beer, henbane
instead of wine, and liquid damnation for strong drink. It is, at least,
a duty which we owe in future to all who can control themselves that,
when they ask for bread, they shall not be furnished with a stone.
We are very anxious not to be misunderstood. This article is not
intended to be either a recommendation of, or an excuse for, tippling
habits, still less as an argument in favor of the drinking usages of the
last century or of any other period distinguished for copious drinking.
The personal habits and practice of the writer are opposed entirely to
the use of wine, beer, or spirits. His profession does not render them
necessary nor his taste crave them, and he would that in this one
respect the world “were altogether such as” he is; but he cannot ignore
the fact that all men are not so constituted physically, so situated in
a worldly point of view, or mentally disposed in the same way. What all
can clearly see is that a cry is being raised, an attempt being made, to
add in a clandestine and illegitimate way something that shall in effect
be tantamount to a precept, and that this something so foisted upon us
is opposed to the practice of the church, consequently to the
Scriptures. We see that this cry has become fashionable, a fear of being
reckoned with the “vulgar herd” (for drunkenness is a vice of the
vulgar) or a fear of giving offence causing many to be silent who should
“cry aloud and not spare,” lest haply the harm may be done and it be too
late for the remedy. Now, the whole clamor, save in so far as it
inveighs against drunkenness, “the disgrace of man and the mother of
misery,” proceeds on the false hypotheses, 1, that the Holy Scripture
discountenances the moderate use of liquor; 2, that the church opposes
it; 3, that the ancient philosophers condemned it; 4, that it is
injurious in health; 5, that it is valueless as a remedy in sickness;
and, 6, that prohibitory laws should be passed forthwith forbidding
under penalty the manufacture, purchase, sale, or importation of wine,
beer, or spirits. Not a single one of these assertions is true, or has
about it the semblance of verisimilitude to any but the average brain of
the secret-society _affilié_, or the fungus that stands in the place of
a heart for the bigoted sectary. Were they every one true, we should
still be opposed to the manner in which it is attempted to carry them
into effect; fully believing, as we do, that the whole matter of
personal reform lies within the domain of the church, upon which region
the civil power has no right to trench. Of course the state has a
perfect and undisputed right to tax wines, liquors, etc., like all other
articles of luxury, to any extent she may deem advisable, either for
revenue or repression of habits of expense among her citizens. But,
inseparably bound up with this right, and as a corollary from it, it is
the duty of the state to see that the article or articles for allowing
the sale of which she receives revenue shall not injure, much less ruin,
her citizens; and it is in the performance of this duty that we affirm
government to have been totally remiss and delinquent. Had it been
otherwise, and had the state been half as anxious to perform her duty as
she has been always eager to claim her right, there never would have
been the faintest plausibility in the cry raised; no agitation could
have resulted; with her performance of the duty the clamor must, of
necessity, cease, and with it those secret societies, so powerless for
good, so potential for evil, that have been evoked by it.
There is, however, no limit in our age to the power of clap-trap, of a
cry well started and persistently kept up. Back such a cry by the
unremitting efforts of a few secret organizations, which demagogues well
know how to use as a means of climbing into power, and superadd the
influence of some of the sects, it deepens to a howl, and a careless or
lethargic community is easily induced to believe that there must be some
reason for the clamor; that what so many people say must be true; that
where so much smoke exists there must have been a fire at some time;
and, finally, that the object on which so many persons seem to have set
their minds, to carry which so many are combined, must be a good one.
From this point to supporting it with vote and influence the step is an
easy one. Hence it is that, absurd as is the proposal of those who favor
Congressional prohibitory laws touching liquor, we feel no certainty
that its unreasonableness will prove a barrier to its being at some time
put into effect. We have indicated previously that there exists, even
among Catholics, who should know better, a lurking notion that in
joining the T. B. A. or any of its congeners, they take a step forward
in holiness, approach nearer to the imitation of the Saviour, and
outstrip in piety those who remain outside the institution using (and
able to enjoy without abusing) “the liberty wherewith Christ has made
them free.” Now, this is false, and consequently is not Catholic
doctrine or feeling. It is according to the doctrine of the church, with
which the practice of Catholics must agree, that should the experience
of any individual prove to him that total abstinence from drink is _in
his special case_ easier than moderation in its use, and that he ought,
consequently, not to use liquor at all; and if, in addition, he is
clearly of opinion that this, his proper course, is much facilitated by
joining a Catholic temperance association, he has a clear right, nay, it
is his duty, to attach himself to it. Further, should a Catholic have a
friend, whom he can largely influence, who is becoming over-fond of
drink, and whom he judges in conscience he can reclaim by taking with
him the pledge of total abstinence, or by accompanying him into any of
the Catholic associations got up and recommended for such purposes, the
Catholic so doing acts nobly and performs a meritorious work, greater
and more laudable just in proportion as he himself was further removed
from temptation or danger of fall in the matter of drink. But it is not
a bounden duty enjoined on every Catholic Christian to abstain entirely
from liquor, much less to join a temperance society; and, except where
it is done to save another, as in the case just presented, the Catholic
so joining it is no more laudable, certainly, than he who stands aloof,
using his God-given liberty in the matter.
While the church, like her divine Lord and Founder, has never forcibly
interfered with man’s free-will, yet her entire history proves that her
salutary influence has been exerted, and that, too, with the highest
success, against every shape in which the sin of luxury has appeared.
The Catholic countries of the world are not now, and they never have
been, the drunken countries. Drunkards are not found to-day among those
who frequent the tribunal of penance; and, with that consistency of
action and oneness of doctrine which is found in no other existent
institution, the church maintains that against the sin of drunkenness,
as against all other forms of sin, there is no thoroughly effectual
remedy but the frequentation of her sacraments. Pledges and
associations, while sanctioned by her, are regarded as mere
_adminicula_, tending to bring the sinner to the use of confession, the
performance of enjoined penance, and the worthy reception of the Blessed
Sacrament. Abstinence, whether for a time or for life, she looks upon as
a work of perfection, of remedy, or of penance for the individual. The
_pledge_, as administered by her, is neither oath nor vow, but either a
resolution taken by one’s self in the presence of another, or at the
utmost a solemn promise made to man. While more than fifteen hundred
years ago the church anathematized the heresy of the Manicheans, who
taught that spirituous liquors are not creatures of God, and that, as
they are intrinsically evil, he who uses them is thereby guilty of sin,
yet both before and after the rise of that detestable sect all the
writings of her fathers and doctors, all the decrees of her synods and
councils, all the decisions of her Supreme Pontiffs, and all the labor
of her priests have been persistently directed towards teaching her
members to “subdue the flesh with its affections and lusts.” How well
she succeeded let her conquest to Christianity of the conquering
northern barbarian hordes testify. Of these, whose temperament rendered
them peculiarly inclined to debauch, whose habits by no means belied
their inclinations, and whose besetting sin was drunkenness even after
their conversion to the faith, she made sober nations. Acts of
Parliament, municipal and other local measures, show us the huge strides
toward unbounded intemperance in drink taken by the English people from
the time when, in giving up the true church, they abandoned the
sacrament of penance; while the same acts, and what we have had of
so-called repressive law-tinkering on the same subject in our own
country, show us the utter futility of any and every attempt by the
civil law to render men moral by statute—to do God’s work without the
help of the Omnipotent. Were it even possible for the state to succeed
in carrying out the most stringent prohibitory or repressive laws that
it ever entered the brain of the wildest or most narrow-minded fanatic
to conceive, what would be the result? Simply that people would, like
inmates of the work-house or penitentiary, endure privation without
practising abstinence. The church of God takes no such ground; and the
state can no more succeed in carrying out such measures than did
Domitian with his sumptuary decree. Legislators forget what the church
always bears carefully in mind and has always inculcated—viz., that
_drunkenness is the sin not of the drink but of the drunkard_. The
assertion that alcohol in any form is an emanation of the evil spirit,
or the denial of the lawfulness of the use of liquor, is in itself just
as much a heresy today as it was in the days of the Egkratites. But,
that we may not overrun our limits in pursuing this branch of the
subject, we refer such readers as may be anxious to see it fully and
ably treated to the valuable little work entitled _The Discipline of
Drink_, by Rev. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R.
It is not, however, from Catholic sources that the proposal emanates to
cut off by legal enactment the supply of beer, wine, and spirits, which
many people—indeed, the vast majority of the civilized inhabitants of
the earth—deem necessary for their health, conducive to their comfort,
or desirable for their enjoyment. Such schemes come from the _Radicaux
enragés_; from those who addle their intellects by striving to decipher
the mystic number of the Apocalyptic beast; from the men of the George
Fox stripe, to whom a _steeple-house_ is the unclean thing; always from
men on whom the name of the Church of Rome operates as does the
flaunting of a red rag by the picador on the bull in the amphitheatre of
Seville; and, finally, from those who believe neither in this nor in
anything else that man should hold sacred, but who see and seek in the
secret societies, and in the agitation of this and similar questions, a
stepping-stone to power and a means of gaining influence.
Were one to judge by the pamphlets and tracts written on the side of the
prohibitionists, he would readily suppose that it is admitted on all
hands by physicians and chemists that alcohol is of no use as a remedial
or curative agent; that it is not food, is not life-sustaining; that no
possible good can come out of Nazareth; that the unclean thing is
altogether accursed, and should be relegated to the bottomless pit
whence it sprang. And, that we may not overburden this article, we shall
simply give the conclusion arrived at by a writer in the _Edinburgh
Review_ for July, 1875, entitled “The Physiological Influence of
Alcohol,” in which the writer (himself a physician, whose yearning to
find against us is evident throughout), after an able comparison and
summing up of the cases, experiments, and arguments of Doctors
Richardson, Thudichum, Dupré, Anstie, and other celebrated authorities,
thus perorates:
“The inference is plain. The nutritious capability of alcohol, when
used in appropriate circumstances and in reasonable quantity, is yet
a matter of controversy, and a question which has yet to be further
investigated and weighed by competent scientific authorities before
any absolute judgment regarding it can be pronounced that shall be
worthy of general acceptance.”
Those who feel any interest in this part of the subject would do well to
read the entire article referred to, and we feel convinced that nine out
of ten who do so will come to the conclusion, from the data given, that
the able writer’s patent bias is what caused the very non-committal
wording of his final dictum; while the same number will decide the large
preponderance of proof to be in favor of the nutritive qualities of
alcohol. We have failed to see in any of the “temperance” documents the
remotest hint that there was anything at all to be said in favor of
alcohol as an article of nutriment. Is this honest? These people must
calculate largely on the gullibility of the public; but they should
recollect, too, that the same public, when it once discovers their
prevarication, is very ready to apply the proverb, _Falsus in uno_, etc.
The great Swedish chancellor, Oxenstierna, said to his son: “You do not
yet know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.” We are
in this respect neither better nor worse off than other countries, with
perhaps this exception: that our best citizens, those of largest
experience and soundest judgment, are too self-respecting, too proud, to
descend into the dirty arena of politics, a vast majority of such never
having attended a primary meeting in their lives, and many, very many,
rarely casting a vote. True, when corruption has run its course, when
ring-rule becomes unendurable, this class will sometimes, as lately in
New York, arouse itself. Now, the men of one idea, the canters (honest
and dishonest), and the knaves are not so. They never miss an
opportunity of propagating their views, and it would seem almost as
though there were an intimate and necessary connection between the
falsity or illiberality of the view and the pertinacity of its upholders
in spreading it. Besides, they are not indifferent to, but they hate,
broad and liberal views on any subject; they must gauge all humanity by
their own instrument, which, while it suits the pint-pot, is but ill
adapted to the hogshead. “_Les idées générales sont toujours haïes par
les idées partielles_,” says a French writer to whom (while we by no
means agree with him in everything) ability must be conceded. Should
people ever have the power to do it—a contingency by no means unlikely
in this century, in which the secret societies seem to hold “high
carnival” (May a subsequent Lenten time purge the world of such foul
humors!)—they will infallibly enact a penal prohibitory law. This will
be accomplished by means of the already-organized associations, the
oath-bound classes, the pledged abstainers, some of the sects, largely
aided by the lethargy and carelessness of people who hold clearer and
more correct views. It will be worse than useless to pass such laws,
unless provision be made for stringently carrying into effect their
details. Suppose that the prohibitory law proposed has been enacted and
is vigorously enforced, and let us cursorily examine what is this Golden
Age, this antedated millennium promised us so confidently by our
over-temperate friends.
A blockade of coast will be necessary, to which the blockade of the
Confederate territory during the late war will be as nothing, either for
extent of coast to be guarded or for the numbers, ingenuity, and means
at the command of the blockade-runners. The Canadian and Mexican borders
will require cordons of sentries day and night, to furnish which one
hundred armies such as we possess would be ridiculously inadequate. A
government detective force of at least one-fourth our adult male
population will have to be employed, organized, and paid; and not less
than one-half of the remainder will soon be in prison for infraction or
evasion of the law. Meanwhile, the revenues will have diminished by
fully one-third, while the governmental expenses will have been tenfold
increased. The hundreds of thousands who now make a livelihood for
themselves and families by the manufacture, transport, and sale of beer,
wines, or spirits must find other employment or join the already too
numerous army of tramps; and in this case what becomes of the
unfortunate families? If the laboring man finds it difficult to procure
work now, what will it be then? Taxation must, of necessity, be
decoupled; and meantime a large proportion of the population will have
come to the conclusion that they are suffering under the most odious of
all tyrannies, and will be ripe for revolution. The pretext will not be
wanting in the details of carrying out the provisions of the law. This
state of things might last, at the utmost, a year, during which
insurrections would be of constant occurrence in every part of the
country; outbreaks in the cities would take place day after day; and,
finally, the minority, in revolution against what they considered an
unjust and tyrannical edict, would carry the day either peacefully at
the polls (by aggregating to themselves such of the majority as had
become convinced of the absurdity of the law) or, sword in hand and at
the mouth of the cannon, would revindicate to themselves the rights so
wantonly trampled upon. The results of such a victory may be better
imagined than described. History, fortunately, has but few examples of
such revolutions against the extravagance of over-zealous reform, but
those few are terrifically replete with warning.
We wish, then, to insist that _no law at all_ is better by far than a
law which, in its nature, _cannot be carried into effect_. That this is
such a law we think manifest on the above showing; and did we wish
further proof, it is readily found in the fact that all those
communities, great or small, towns, counties, or states, that have
tested this, or even much milder doses of similarly-intended laws, have
been obliged either to abandon them after a longer or shorter trial, or
to acknowledge their impotence to execute them, and to own that under
such _régime_ the evils deprecated become more virulent and drunkenness
more rampant. Contempt, too, for the law, in one instance, has the
inevitable tendency to sap the foundations of respect for all law, not
merely in the mind of the drunkard but in that of the moderate drinker,
as well as of those who abet them both in their violation of legal
enactment. Meanwhile, the sensible man, the practical but unpledged
total abstainer, cannot be expected to feel strongly interested in the
success of a law which his judgment tells him to be merely an arbitrary
_enforcement, by a majority, of their views of morality_ on a minority
entitled to their own ideas and practices in this matter alike by
natural reason, Scriptural teaching, and church commands. “A nation is
near destruction when regard for law has disappeared.”
Fully aware, as we are, that the arguments and deductions, the
statements and quotations, contained in this paper are far from being in
accord with the oral and printed teachings most in vogue and most
palatable to the reading public, and much as we might desire to be on
the popular side, still we are not prepared, for the attainment of this
end, to sacrifice our convictions of right, to ignore the experience of
the past, to turn a deaf ear to the teachings of the church, or to
superadd to her commands practices in morals that she knows not. We
cannot undertake to find in Scripture injunctions that do not exist;
still less are we willing to lie supine when erroneous views are
stealthily creeping in (even amongst ourselves), are sedulously
promulgated over the length and breadth of the non-Catholic world, and
when the attempt is making to enforce _even desirable_ practices in
morals and personal discipline by false arguments and means that will
not stand the test of right reason. Let us review the ground and gather
together the results.
The use of intoxicating liquor or strong drink has been known in all
countries and from the earliest times; drunkenness must have been and
was equally well known. In no system, even of heathenism, has
intoxication been recommended; and in none, save that of Mohammed, has
abstinence from liquor been enjoined. The Old and New Testaments, while
teeming with allusions to the use of _wine_ and _strong drink_, nowhere
lay down any precept forbidding their use, but frequently by the
clearest implication, and in a few instances by express injunction,
command the use of both; and the manufacture of wine _must_, by the
institution of our Blessed Saviour, be kept up so long as the world
shall exist. There is _no_ proof for the assertion, that alcohol is not
food, and _less_ for the averment that it has no efficacy as a remedial
agent. The taste for liquor is a natural one and inherent to all men,
but probably stronger and more necessary of gratification among
hard-working men, and in damp or cold climates, than in the case of
sedentary persons or in mild and hot countries. It is _not_ the province
of civil government to remove temptation to the infraction of the moral
law; its province is _to keep order_ and _to punish infractions_ of law.
To pass a series of totally prohibitory laws would be to attempt the
legal suppression of human nature; which being impossible, such
legislation must be absurd. There are great evils in the present
management of the liquor-traffic, chiefly arising from the wholesale
adulterations with poisonous drugs everywhere _largely_ practised, but
most ruinously in the northern countries of Europe, in Canada, and in
the United States. Were the traffic so taken in charge by governments or
carefully-appointed companies that _pure liquors only_ should be
furnished for consumption, all profits from the sale accruing to
government, the great mass of the evils (now justly complained of) in
connection with the liquor trade would disappear, while at the same time
an immense revenue would accrue to the federal or State treasury, as the
case might be. If these prohibitory laws were passed, and carried out in
their spirit, dreadful evils would be the result; and, finally, such
laws never can be carried out at all, and, by consequence, it is not
competent for government to enact them. The whole matter of intemperance
comes purely within the domain of morals; religion alone can deal with
it radically; and while the civil law should and must punish
drunkenness, with the crimes resulting therefrom, it is to Christianity
alone that we must look for the effectual reformation of the drunkard
and prevention of his sin.
These are the arguments that present themselves to us against the
enactment of what are called “prohibitory laws”; and we believe the
suggestions above given, regarding the evils of the present liquor trade
and the mode of ridding the world of those evils, to be in full
consonance both with the facts and with common sense.
“Si quid novisti rectius istis.
Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.”
FRENCH PROVERBIAL SAYINGS.[48]
There is, in the French language, one peculiarity amongst others which
only becomes perceptible to foreigners after a somewhat lengthened
residence in France—namely, the frequent use of proverbial expressions
of which the original meaning, as far as the speaker is concerned, is
utterly lost.
For instance, a person grandly dressed out is said to be _sur son trente
et un_; an old piece of furniture or of attire is _vieux comme Hérode_;
again, _il ne se foule pas la ratte_ means “he takes things easily”;
_prendre les jambes au cou_ is to go as fast as possible; and a person
who speaks French badly is said to _parler Français comme une vache
Espagnole_.
When the English-speaking races use expressions of this kind, there is
in them almost always some recognized allusion, quotation, or, it may
be, a quaint adaptation of the words of some well-known author, ancient
or modern, or they point to some fact or tradition or popular notion. In
French familiar conversation, however, there are numberless proverbial
and popular sayings still in common use the sense of which has been lost
for centuries. Comparatively few amongst those who use them know that
they are expressions borrowed, it may be, from certain customs or from
history or from literature; but usually the trace is lost, the
connection broken, and the reason of their existence forgotten.
These proverbial expressions have, for the most part, been recently
collected, and as far as possible accounted for, and their source and
history, where not discovered, at least suggested, in an ingenious
volume by M. Charles Rozan, in which he gives also certain popular words
usually qualified as vulgar, but “whose fundamental meaning it is all
the more acceptable to learn, from the fact of their not being yet
admitted into the official dictionaries; since,” he adds, “it is
intruders more especially whom we would question as to who they are,
whence they come, and what they have done.”
In the present notice we have chiefly selected examples having a local,
historical, or in some way characteristic interest, and, with one or two
exceptions, we have left aside those taken from the drama, besides the
numerous sayings, not by any means peculiar to France alone, which
relate to classical antiquity, and which any one possessing a very
moderate knowledge of ancient history and literature would at once
understand.
_Je m’en moque comme de l’an quarante_ is a saying which dates from the
beginning of the eleventh century. There was at that period an extensive
belief that the end of the world was at hand, and that the _thousand
years_ and more supposed to have been assigned by our Lord as the
duration of his church on earth, and of society in general, were to
expire in the year 40 of that century. Sinners were converted in crowds;
many talked of turning hermit; but, once this redoubtable epoch was
over, men changed their tone, and from that time to this the expression
used in speaking of a thing which need inspire no alarm is: “I care no
more for it than for the year forty!”
_La beauté du Diable_ we should naturally suppose meant an appalling
ugliness. It means nothing of the kind, but, on the contrary, that
exceeding prettiness frequently noticeable in young girls between the
ages of fourteen and nineteen, or thereabouts, which then passes away.
This, the freshness of youthful beauty, seems to derive its name from
the old proverb, _The devil was handsome when he was young_—namely,
while he was yet an unfallen angel.
Ladies somewhat advanced in the debatable ground of life’s pilgrimage,
when youth has made way for the nameless years of “a certain age,” are
said to _coiffer Sainte Catherine_.
It was formerly the custom in France, as it still is in Spain and some
parts of Italy, on particular festivals, to array in festal garments and
headgear the statues of the saints. St. Catherine being the patroness of
virgins, the care of her adornment was always entrusted to young girls.
This charge, however agreeable and honorable at sixteen, might,
nevertheless, not be desirable in perpetuity, and thus it came to be
said of any middle-aged maiden: “She stays to _coiffer_ St. Catherine.”
To speak French very badly, or with a bad accent, is called _parler
Français comme une vache Espagnole_. The people inhabiting the
Basque provinces obtain their name from the indigenous word
_vaso_—mountain—which, when taken adjectively, is augmented by the
final _co_, and thus becomes _vasoco_, and, by contraction,
_vasco_—mountaineer. The French, knowing little enough of Spanish,
said at first _vacco_, and then _vacce_. Thus, _parler comme un
vacce Espagnol_ meant at first to allude to the _inhabitants_ of the
Basque provinces of Spain, whose language still bears all the
characteristics of a primitive tongue, and who have great difficulty
in expressing themselves in French; but _vacce_, at a time when the
Latin had left its traces everywhere, was said for _vache_, the
peasants in many of the French provinces retaining it still. Thence
arose the confusion which produced the senseless comparison, “to
speak French like a Spanish cow.”
_Attendez-moi sous l’orme_ (wait for me under the elm) implies that “the
rendezvous you ask is disagreeable to me, and I will not keep it.” The
type of an unpleasant rendezvous is that which compels an appearance
before the judge, and it is to this that the expression here quoted
originally referred. Formerly the judges administered justice under a
tree planted in the open space before the church or the entrance of a
seignorial mansion; hence the phrase of _juges de dessous l’orme_, and
also that of _danser sous l’orme_. _Attendez-moi sous l’orme_ means,
Find me there if you can (ironically), and to name a rendezvous which
one has no intention of keeping.[49]
_Faire Charlemagne_ is to retire from the game after winning it, without
giving the adversary a chance of revenge. This expression evidently
alludes to the death of the great Charles, who, when he had become the
monarch of the West, quitted this life without having lost any of his
conquests.
To make unlawful profits by deceiving as to the price of any articles a
person has been charged to buy is called “shoeing the mule” (_Ferrer la
mule_). The expression dates from the time when the counsellors of the
Parliament repaired to the _Palais de Justice_ mounted on mules, and the
lackeys who remained outside during the sittings of the Assembly spent
their time in gambling, extorting from their masters the money they
wanted for their amusement by pretending that they had had to pay for
shoeing the mules. Others carry the origin of the saying back to the
time of Vespasian; the muleteer of that emperor, when on a journey,
having been bribed to do so, suddenly stopped the mules under pretext of
having them shod, so as to give time to a person whom they had met on
the way to speak to the emperor of his affairs.
_Faire danser l’anse du panier_ is said of a cook who fraudulently
obtains from her mistress more money for her purchases at market than
they have really cost. The idea is that of shaking the basket so as to
make its contents take up as much room as possible, and thus look worth
their alleged price.
_Connaître les êtres de la maison_ is to know the doors, staircases,
passages, rooms, outlets, etc.—in a word, the internal arrangements—of
the house. _Êtres_, which for a long time was written _aîtres_, has for
its origin the Latin _atria_, in the sense of dwelling.
_Je l’ai connu poirier_ is said of a _parvenu_ whose sudden rise from a
mean condition has not earned him much consideration. There was in a
village near Brussels an image of St. John, black and worm-eaten with
age, and held in great veneration by the people. M. le Curé, thinking it
time to replace it by a new one, sacrificed his best pear-tree for that
purpose. One of his parishioners, who had shown great veneration for the
ancient statue, took no notice whatever of the new one. “Have you lost
your devotion to St. John?” the curé one day asked him. “No, M. le Curé;
but the new St. John is not the real one—_I knew him when he was a
pear-tree_.”
The expression of _Cordon Bleu_ is a singular example of the degradation
of an aristocratic word, and we discover its ancestry with the same
feeling that we once received the answer of a poor mason’s apprentice,
who, on being asked his name, gave as his Christian and surname those of
two of the oldest and noblest families in the county of Devon.
To the Order of the Holy Ghost, instituted in 1578 by Henri III., not
every one could aspire. It consisted of only one hundred members, at the
head of whom, as grand master, was the king.[50] The Dauphin, the sons
and grandsons of the monarch, knights by right, were, as well as the
princes of the blood, received at the time of their First Communion.
Foreign princes were not admitted before the age of twenty-five; dukes
and other nobles of high rank not until thirty-five; and in all cases
none was allowed to enter who could not trace back at least three
generations of nobility on the father’s side. The cord to which the
symbol of the order was attached was blue, and the knights themselves
were commonly designated _Cordons Bleus_.
The distinction being reserved to only a small number of persons of the
highest rank, it gradually became customary to give the name of _cordon
bleu_ to persons of superior merit. The Order of the Holy Ghost was
abolished at the Revolution. All the dignities as well as all the ideas
which had grouped themselves around this noble order have disappeared
with it. Its name is no longer used in the figurative language of France
to recall great merit or a distinguished name; the last memory of the
order lingers in the kitchen, and the only _cordon bleu_ of the
nineteenth century is a good cook!
Those who have hard work and scant pay are wont to observe that they
might just as well _travailler pour le roi de Prusse_. The kingdom of
Prussia not having been a century and a half in existence, this
expression cannot have an earlier origin. M. Rozan asks, therefore,
which is it of the five Fredericks who thus puts in doubt the royal
generosity? Some persons say that it is Frederick William I., constantly
anxious to show himself economical of the property of his subjects,
unlike his father, who was, according to the expression of Frederick the
Great, “great in little things and little in great.” Either from what
the one did not spend at all, or from what the other spent amiss, a
conclusion might be drawn in the sense of the proverb. We incline,
however, rather to charge upon the Great Frederick himself all the
responsibility of the French reproach.
Frederick II. was fond of employing French workmen, but not quite so
fond of paying them; and as no people know better than the French that
_noblesse oblige_, it is no matter of surprise that he should have
furnished them with a proverb. We also find an example of his sparing
management in the conflict which arose between him and Voltaire (who was
very economical also) about lumps of sugar and candle-ends. In the
agreement he had made with the poet Frederick had promised him, besides
the key of chamberlain and the Cross of Merit, the ordinary appointments
of a minister of state—_i.e._, an apartment at the château, board,
firing, two candles a day, and so many pounds of tea, sugar, coffee, and
chocolate every month. These articles, though duly provided, were of
such bad quality that Voltaire complained to the king. Frederick
professed to be infinitely pained, and promised to give fresh orders.
Were the orders given? In any case the provisions were as bad as ever,
and Voltaire again remonstrated. The king got out of the affair with
equal economy and cunning. “It is frightful,” he exclaimed, “to think
how badly I am obeyed! I cannot hang those rascals for a lump of sugar
or an ounce of tea; they know it, and laugh at my orders. But what most
pains me is to see M. de Voltaire disturbed in his sublime ideas by
small miseries like these. Ah! let us not waste upon mere trifles the
moments that we can devote to friendship and the muses. Come, my dear
friend, you can do without these little provisions. They occasion you
cares unworthy of you; we will speak of them no more. I will command
that for the future they shall be stopped.”
On another occasion Frederick was having a new front put to a Lutheran
place of worship in Berlin. The ministers complained to the king that
they had not light enough to carry on the service. The building,
however, being too far advanced for his majesty to wish to incur the
cost of alteration, he sent back their address, after writing upon it:
“Blessed are they who see not, and yet believe.”
As a last proof of the just implication of the proverb, an English
traveller, who does full justice to the eminent qualities of the
monarch, says: “Never was there a fat soldier in any country; but the
King of Prussia has not even a fat sergeant. A profound knowledge of
financial economy is a point on which this sovereign excels. It is also
a reason why his troops should never be otherwise than lean.”
This observer might have added that Frederick made it a rule never to
allow his soldiers any pay on the 31st day of the month. There were thus
seven days in the year on which the whole Prussian army _travaillait
pour le roi de Prusse_.
_Manger de la vache enragée_ is to suffer great privations, to procure
with difficulty the merest necessaries of life, and so to be reduced, as
it were, to “eat the flesh of a mad cow.” The expression has also come
to mean the trials of every kind which, in the course of life, ought to
strengthen the body to endure hardness and the mind to a habit of
fortitude.
On entering upon a house or _appartement_ in Paris it is customary to
make a present of a few francs to the concierge, which present is called
_le dernier adieu_. The newcomer, if a foreigner, wonders why the first
dealings he has with the concierge of his new abode should be so
singularly misnamed as “the last farewell.” The words are a corruption
of the _Denier à Dieu_—God’s penny—the piece of money given to the
person with whom a bargain was concluded, with the intention of taking
God to witness that the engagement had been made, and of offering him a
pledge that it should be faithfully kept. The sums thus given were
bestowed by the receiver in alms to the poor, and were not appropriated,
like the _arrhes_, a part payment of what was due to the person with
whom an agreement had been made.
The lugubrious associations connected with the name of the melancholy
building at the back of Notre Dame de Paris encourage the idea that the
word _morgue_ must relate to corpses, or in any case to death. M. Rozan
disabuses us of the mistake.
There was formerly at the entrance of prisons a room where new arrivals
were detained for a few days after committal, in order that the keepers
might learn to know their faces and appearance sufficiently well to
preclude any chance of their escape. Later on the corpses found in the
Seine or elsewhere were exposed in this same room, the public being
admitted to see them through a small aperture made in the door.
Until 1804 the corpses were exposed in the lower jail dependent on the
prison of the Grand Châtelet, when they were transferred to the quay of
the _Marché Neuf_ in a small building which received the name of
_morgue_, an old French word for _face_ or _visage_, and used also to
express a fixed or scrutinizing look. It is doubtless in the latter
sense that we find the true meaning of the term.
Now that we have given a greatly abridged version of portions of M.
Rozan’s work, we refer the reader for the remaining curious fragments of
information scattered throughout its pages to the book itself. At the
same time we venture a suggestion that in future editions it might be
well if the author were, as far as practicable, to classify its contents
under certain heads—such, for instance, as are dramatic, historic,
local, or classic, etc., in their origin or allusion—so as to allow some
continuity of ideas in its perusal, and to gather its at present
scattered stones into a collection of mosaics.
Footnote 48:
_Petites Ignorances de la Conversation._ Par. Charles Rozan. Paris:
Hetzler. 1877.
Footnote 49:
We may here mention that the finest elm in France is probably that in
the court of the Deaf and Dumb Institution in the Rue St. Jacques in
Paris. It is 50 metres in height and 5 in circumference, the last
remaining of the 6,000 feet of trees planted under Henri IV. We
mention this merely for the sake of our European readers, not for
those accustomed to the sylvan giants of the Western world.
Footnote 50:
Henri III. instituted this order in memory of the three great events
of his life which had happened on the Feast of Pentecost—namely, his
birth, his election to the crown of Poland, and his accession to the
throne of France.
THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE.
_A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”_
CHAPTER IV.
THE ELECTION.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE CHAPEL AT MONAMULLIN,” “THE ROMANCE OF A
PORTMANTEAU,” ETC., ETC.
I was received at Clonacooney with an enthusiasm that sent the hot blood
surging through my veins in prideful throbs. At the entrance to the
village I was presented with an address by a splendid specimen of the
Irish race in the person of Myles Moriarty, a man who had been “out” in
forty-eight, who, on the part of the tenant-farmers of Clonacooney,
tendered me welcome and assurances of both moral and physical support.
“The dark hour is passin’ from the ould country, sir, and yours be the
hand to wipe the tear from the cheek of Erin,” were his concluding
words.
I must have spoken to the point, for I was cheered to the echo, and my
right hand almost wrung from the arm by repeated shakings.
In Father O’Dowd’s garden a small platform had been raised, composed of
the kitchen table, the safety of which Biddy Finnegan watched over with
tender regard.
Around the little grass-plat some hundred of the “boys” were gathered,
who bared their heads in respectful reverence when the good priest
ascended the dais.
It is chiefly in Ireland that one sees the visible link that binds
priests and people. The Irish peasant never forgets that he is in the
presence of the Lord’s anointed, and the respect for the clergyman upon
the hillside or wayside is the same as though he were clad in his
vestments and upon the altar.
Father O’Dowd introduced me in a speech that burned into the minds of
his auditory. It was full of fiery eloquence, full of patriotism, full
of Catholicity. In dealing with the question of Home Rule he said: “Over
a country agitated by dissension and weakened by mistrust we have raised
the banner of Home Rule. We raised it hesitatingly, unfurling it
tremblingly to the breeze; but the hearts of the people have been moved
by the two small words, and the soul of the nation has felt their power
and their spell. These words have passed from man to man along the
valley and along the hillside. Everywhere our despairing sons have
turned to that banner with confidence and hope. Thus far we have borne
it. Upon these young and stalwart shoulders,” placing his arm
affectionately around me, “we shall now place it, to be borne unto
victory. It is meet that the representative of a stainless race, of a
race that upheld their creed when its avowal led to the scaffold and
gibbet, should go forth from among us young in years, high in hope,
ardent in the cause of creed and country. We shall hand our banner into
his youthful hands, and with him this trust shall be considered sacred.
He will defend it, if necessary, with his life. The cause of the church
will be his; the cause of the country will be his.”
When it came to my turn to speak a mist seemed to gather before my eyes
and my head began to swim.
“Courage!” whispered Father O’Dowd. “_Nos hæc novimus esse nihil._”
I plunged in _medias res_, floundering on, stumbling, staggering,
repeating myself, till I felt all aflame, and as if my head were
red-hot. Suddenly the idea smote me that I had Wynwood Melton to beat,
and I became cool as ice. Yes, the transition was simply instantaneous,
and with it came a flow of words such as have never welled from me
since, save, perhaps, upon the day of the election.
I spoke for nearly an hour, and I subsequently recollected that I had
discussed the entire political situation of Ireland, as I had done some
years before in a debate at the Catholic University. Memory came
gallantly to the rescue, and when I concluded Father O’Dowd cried
enthusiastically:
“A born orator—_nascitur, non fit_. Now, boys,” addressing the
tumultuous assemblage, “haven’t we got the right man, and won’t we put
him in the right place?”
When I returned to Kilkenley I found that Mr. Melton had taken his
departure.
“He is alive to the importance of an active canvass,” said Mr.
Hawthorne, “and has repaired to the tents of his people. I am very sorry
that the warning should come from me—a warning that may be of singular
disservice to you.”
“I _feel_ that I shall win.”
“My dear young friend, I felt that I would win, and discredited the
returns that threw me overboard when I contested Fromsey. Do not let
your feelings mislead you. Work as if expecting defeat, and as if
endeavoring to reduce the majority against you. I’m an old campaigner
and know the ropes.”
My mother was all eagerness to know how I had progressed. When I told
her that I had made two speeches, one of them of an hour’s duration, her
delight was boundless.
“You were lost, dear child,” she cried. “Your talents are of a high
order, and you have at last found a field for them.”
Harry Welstone had attended a meeting at Ballynashaughragawn, and had
held forth in my behalf, like a regular brick that he was. All my
jealousy disappeared upon the mention of Melton, and Harry was again my
confidant in everything.
“I don’t think she cares much for that fellow, Fred.”
“I tell you that they understand each other.” And I writhed in the agony
of the thought.
“I think her governor is nibbling for Melton as a son-in-law, but there
is no ring of the true metal about the girl’s feelings—nothing that _I_
can detect; and I’m not utterly unobservant.”
I never felt that the gash in my heart was so deep until Miss Hawthorne
referred to their leaving.
“Our time is up. We have overstayed our limit.”
“Surely you will not desert us until after the election,” said my
mother. “You must celebrate his success, if success it is to be.”
“Oh! Miss Hawthorne is not interested in my success, mother,” I
interposed.
She turned her violet eyes full upon me.
“Much more so than you give me credit for.”
“My non-success, you mean.”
“I do _not_ mean it.”
“It is quite right that you should,” I said bitterly. “_I_ have no claim
upon your interest.”
“A very strong one, I assure you.”
“Melton’s the man,” assuming a savage gayety. “How jolly he will feel if
he wins! how delighted to bear the news to his lady-love!”
“Does it not strike you, Mr. Ormonde, that your last observation is upon
the borderland of—what shall I call it?”
“Truth,” I suggested.
She did not deign to reply to me, but, turning to my mother, expressed a
fear that she should leave Kilkenley upon the following day.
“I will not hear of it,” said my mother stoutly.
There was one chance left, and that lay in inducing Mr. Hawthorne to
stump the county with me. This scheme I confided to Harry, who highly
approved of it. After dinner, when the ladies had returned to the
drawing-room, Harry opened fire.
“Mr. Hawthorne, the people about here are exceedingly anxious to hear
you speak. They have heard a good deal of your eloquence in Parliament,
and have read some of your speeches.”
“I am not reported, sir. Those scoundrels in the press gallery ignore
_me_ because I defy _them_. Would you believe it, gentlemen, my speech
upon the removal of a custom-house officer upon a charge of disloyalty
to the throne and constitution, and which occupied two hours and a half
in its delivery—I went into the question of customs generally, into
those of foreign countries, into the national debt, into our relations
with Japan, into the contracts for constructing ironclads—in fact, I
grasped a series of subjects of the highest importance to the country;
and would you believe it, Mr. Speaker—I mean gentlemen—the _Times_,
although I saw that the reporter—yes, gentlemen, I watched him with an
eagle eye—was present and apparently engaged in reporting me—the
_Times_, I say, had the audacity to publish that the honorable member
for Doodleshire uttered some irrelevant observations which were
inaudible in the reporters’ gallery; and yet this unprincipled scoundrel
pockets his pay, and reports the flimsy orations of other honorable
members not one tithe of so much national importance as mine.” And
trembling with anger, Mr. Hawthorne gulped down three glasses of claret
in rapid succession.
“The Irish people,” continued Harry, “are the most rhetorical and
oratorical in the world, and prefer a good speech to any known amusement
except a wake. News of your presence here has gone far and wide, and I
may tell you fairly that it is incumbent upon you to let them hear you.”
“I—ahem!—would be very pleased to do so, did a suitable opportunity
present itself,” said the M.P. with a pleased smile.
“The opportunity luckily does present itself. On Thursday next our host
here must attend a meeting of his constituents at Bohernacallan, and, if
you were to accompany him and address the people, I assure you it will
be regarded as a very considerable favor by the hundreds who will be
assembled.”
“On Thursday next I shall be on my way to London.”
“Not a bit of it,” I chimed in.
“There is nothing to be done in London now, Mr. Hawthorne,” said Harry.
“My arrangements are all made, and nothing, sir, nothing could induce me
to break them. I am a man of iron, adamant in such matters.”
I looked blankly at Harry, but Master Harry was still hopeful, as
indicated by a dexterous half-wink while the M.P. was tossing off
another glass of claret.
“I may tell you as a matter of fact, Mr. Hawthorne, that you are
expected at this meeting.”
“It is very flattering, Mr. Welstone, but the meeting must stand
disappointed in so far as I am concerned. No, gentlemen; in the House or
outside of it, once I lay down a plan of operations, I never diverge
from it by the distance of a single hair.”
Again I looked blankly at Harry, and again I met with a half-wink.
“That’s very unfortunate, Mr. Hawthorne, but I suppose it cannot be
helped.”
“It cannot indeed, sir.”
“And reporters coming down from Dublin, too,” said Harry, addressing me.
“What is that you say, Mr. Welstone?” demanded the member of Doodleshire
with considerable earnestness.
“Oh! it’s not worth repeating.”
“I think I heard you mention something about reporters?”
“Oh! yes; the Dublin newspapers are sending down special reporters, and
the London _Times’_ correspondent is a reporter on the _Daily Express_.”
“Ahem!” And Mr. Hawthorne gravely produced a memorandum-book, which he
proceeded to scan with apparent interest.
Harry gave me the full wink now.
“Oh dear me—ahem!” exclaimed the M.P. “I find that I need not be in
London quite so soon, and if it obliges you, my dear Ormonde, I shall be
glad to strike a blow in your aid. Did you say the _Times’_
correspondent will be there? Not that it makes the _slightest_
difference to _me_; yet, belonging as I do to the great liberal party,
and belonging as this election does to the great liberal party, I deem
it a sacred duty to aid the great liberal party in so far as it lies in
my power. Mr. Ormonde, rely upon _me_, sir.”
When later on I spoke with Harry on the question of deceiving my guest,
especially as no reporters would be within fifty miles of us, “Don’t
bother your head about it, Fred. Leave it all to me. I’ll get Tom
Rafferty and the two O’Briens to come with big pencils and lots of
paper, and tell them to write for their lives the whole time old
Hawthorne is speaking. Everything is fair in love, war, and an
election.”
* * * * *
The excitement in the county was intense as soon as the fact of my being
in the field became known across its length and breadth. The De Ruthvens
were furious, the head of the family, Mr. Beresford de Ruthven, honoring
me with a personal visit, in order to ascertain whether I was in my
senses or out of them.
“Am I to understand, Mr. Ormonde, that you are a candidate for the
representation of this county?” he asked, after the usual ceremonial
questions had been pushed aside.
“You are, Mr. De Ruthven.”
“That you have consented to be nominated by a rabble—to be—”
“I have been nominated by no rabble, Mr. De Ruthven.”
“You are the nominee of the priests.”
“I am, sir; but have a care how you speak of a Catholic clergyman in
this house. You are not now at Ruthventown.” I was hot with anger.
“Do you want to break up the harmony that has existed for centuries in
the county, Mr. Ormonde?”
“I want to see a liberal represent the county, and I am willing to give
way to a better man.”
“Liberal! What liberality do you require? Do not the liberals have their
share in everything?”
I had him now.
“How many liberals are there on the grand panel, Mr. De Ruthven?”
“Oh! I grant you that there has been mismanagement,” he hastily replied,
“but we’ll see to that.”
“What liberality is it that leaves the roads approaching every Catholic
church in a condition that would shame a backwoods clearing, while those
near the meanest Protestant place of worship are cared for like the
avenues in your own domain?”
“That shall be looked to.”
“Where is the liberality at the union boards, in the magistracy, in the
county offices? Is there a single Catholic in any office whatever?”
“O Mr. Ormonde! I see you are primed and loaded, and must go off like a
fifth-of-November cracker. Now, all I can say to you is this: that if
you persist in this audacious attempt in breaking up the harmony of this
great county, on your own head be the penalty; and let me add, sir, that
when next you attend the assizes, do not be surprised if you are openly
insulted.”
“And do not be surprised, Mr. De Ruthven, if the man who dares insult me
is _openly_ horse-whipped.”
Mr. De Ruthven, very much disgusted at my papistical audacity, took his
leave, warning me, even when in his carriage, that I was certain of
defeat, and equally certain of being put in Coventry.
My attempt to wrest the seat from the conservative party was regarded
with the same interest as Mr. A. M. Sullivan’s daring effort to snatch
Louth from the Right Honorable Chichester Fortescue—an effort that was
crowned with such signal success. The cabinet minister and ex-Irish
secretary, who was regarded as Mr. Gladstone’s official representative
in Ireland, was deemed invulnerable in Louth, having sat for it for
twenty-seven years. The government laughed to scorn the idea of
disturbing him, but Mr. Sullivan polled two to one, and was carried in
by such a weighty majority as virtually to close the county for ever and
a day, as the children’s story-books say.
In my county the conservatives laughed my attempt to scorn, pooh-poohing
my pretensions and ridiculing my supporters. My opponent made
Ruthventown his headquarters, and from Ruthventown came forth his
address. From Ruthventown also was issued a manifesto, or imperial ukase
rather, commanding the tenants to vote for the De Ruthven candidate,
while from every conservative landlord appeared a notice couched in
similar dictatorial terms. To these counter-proclamations were scattered
broadcast by my various committees throughout the country, calling upon
Catholics to support a Catholic, upon Irishmen to support Home Rule.
Father O’Dowd was indefatigable, leaving Sir Boyle Roche’s bird simply
nowhere, as he would appear to be in half a dozen different places at
one and the same time. He lived upon his little outside-car, and the
dead hours of the night saw him dashing through lonely glens, winding up
steep mountain-sides, speeding through sleeping villages, all for the
purpose of bringing the old faith to the front, and of rescuing
representation from the clutches of the Orange clique, who had held it
so long, to the prejudice of Catholicity and the shame of Catholics.
“We’ll shake off the yoke now or never!” was his constant cry. “Down
with the De Ruthven ascendency! We’ll take their heels off our necks. We
have suffered and endured too long and too patiently. We have allowed a
little clique to govern a nation at their own sweet will. It is time for
the people to assert themselves, to come to the front, to share in their
own government. The hour is at hand, and the men.”
The county was ablaze. Meetings were held in every village, and my name
was handed from townland to townland as a talisman. The most despicable
coercive measures were adopted by the conservative landlords toward
their tenants with reference to their votes, threats of eviction, of
rent-raising, of persecution being openly resorted to.
“Make no promises, boys. Keep yourselves unpledged,” was the constant
cry of Father O’Dowd. “Recollect that you have consciences and a
country.”
At one meeting, whilst I was engaged in speaking—even now I feel
astonished at my eloquence of that time—I was interrupted by some of the
De Ruthven faction, who endeavored to hiss and hoot me down.
“Boys,” yelled a voice in the crowd, “there’s iligant bathing in Missis
Moriarty’s pond below; they say it’s Boyne wather.” And ere I could
interpose or take any step towards cooling the feverish excitement of my
supporters, the luckless Ruthvenites were ruthlessly swept towards the
dam in question, where in all human probability they would have been
half-drowned had not Father O’Dowd rushed to the rescue.
“Are you mad, boys? Don’t touch a hair of their heads.”
“We want for to larn them manners, yer riverince; shure there’s no great
harm in that.”
“If one of these vagabonds is ill-treated by you, they’ll unseat Mr.
Ormonde on petition. _You_ will not suffer, but Mr. Ormonde will. For
Heaven’s sake, boys, don’t lay a finger on them.”
The announcement caused a general gloom.
“Never mind, boys,” shouted one of the crowd. “Shure if we can’t bate
thim afore the election, we can knock sawdust out av thim whin it’s all
over, an’ that’s a comfort anyhow.”
From every side promises of support came pouring in. The priests and
people were working as one man, silently, swiftly, surely. The “hard
word” had gone forth, and every parish was preparing its contingent. The
hints and cajoleries of the other side were received in dignified
silence—a silence which the ascendency party construed into assent. It
was deemed utterly impossible that the tenantry could vote against the
nominee of their landlords; and although these “slave-owners” received
very significant warnings from their bailiffs, they could not and would
not give heed to them.
My address was drawn up in a solemn committee composed of Father O’Dowd,
Mr. Hawthorne, Mabel, my mother, and myself. I need not reproduce it
here. It was Catholic and national, and when it went forth to the county
it was received with universal enthusiasm. The opposite party
stigmatized it as an “audacious document,” a “firebrand.” “Yes,” said
the parish priest of Derrymaleena, “it is a firebrand, and one that
lights the funeral pyre of the Orange party.”
I found Miss Hawthorne rewriting a copy of my address.
“I will save you the trouble, Miss Hawthorne,” I said bitterly, and
Heaven knows my heart was at a dead ache, “and I will send a copy to Mr.
Melton.”
She flushed, the hot blood mounting over her little ears. “You do me a
cruel injustice, Mr. Ormonde,” she replied. “Read that!” contemptuously
flinging me an open letter across the table.
“I do not wish to pry into Mr. Melton’s secrets.”
“That letter is _not_ from Mr. Melton. I never received one from him in
my life, nor do I care to receive one; but since you will not read this
letter, you shall hear its contents.”
She read as follows in a pained voice:
MY DEAR MRS. ORMONDE:
As the coming man is so busy, and is probably at the other side of
the county, I write to you to ask you to send me a copy of his
address as soon as ever you can. We are all alive here, and Victory
is within our grasp. Always yours,
PETER HEFFERNAN.
“Now, Mr. Ormonde, may I ask you if it was generous of you to—”
“Forgive me, Miss Hawthorne,” I exclaimed. “I—I do not know what I am
doing, what I am saying. I am distracted—wretched.” I was silent. I
dared go no further. The vision of Wynwood Melton cried check to the
bounding thoughts that came surging from my heart.
“The evening of the 20th will find you in better form.”
I shook my head. The future was utterly dreary—one blank, sunless waste.
“You will win this election, Mr. Ormonde.”
I sighed deeply.
“A barren victory.”
“A barren victory!” she exclaimed with considerable animation. “Do you
consider it a barren victory to beat the Carlton Club, the great
conservative stronghold of England, whose every ukase is law—to beat the
De Ruthven faction, who have held your beautiful county in subjection
since the Pale?”
“A Dead-Sea apple. In winning this election I win your hatred.”
“_My_ hatred?” opening her lovely violet eyes in delicious wonder.
“Yes, Miss Hawthorne; if I am elected I shall have beaten the man you
love.”
She flushed again—a shower of rose-petals.
“There is not a more miserable being on the face of this earth than I am
this moment, Miss Hawthorne. Were I not pledged in honor to this
election, I would stand aside and let Mr. Melton win _this_ stake, as he
has won the higher stake—your heart.”
She was about to interrupt me, her lips tremulous, her hands in strong
action.
“Hear me for one moment,” I cried, carried away in a rush of tumultuous
feeling, every sense in a mad whirl. “I love you, Mabel—love you with a
love that is more than love. I tried to hate you. In that vain attempt I
resolved to bring sorrow to your heart, to glut my own desire for
vengeance. It was jealous despair that led me into this conflict. It is
possible I may not see you until the fight is over, perhaps never again;
but, Mabel Hawthorne, my first, my last love, it may be sweet to you to
know why this victory will be a barren one, why the hand that grasps the
laurel will seize but dead ashes.” And without trusting myself even to
glance at her, I rushed from the room, from the house, and was many
miles on the road to Derrymaclury ere thoroughly aware of the fact.
* * * * *
I did not return to Kilkenley. I dreaded the fearful fascination of
Mabel’s presence, and, now that I had declared my hopeless love, I did
not care to meet her. It would be mean and shabby to hang about her,
knowing she was never to be mine. It would be despicable, under the
peculiar circumstances of the case, were I again to refer to Melton or
the election. There was nothing for it but to remain at a distance. I
recall the agonies of those few days with a shiver. The powerful
excitement of the approaching contest was over-weighted by the dull
gnawing at my heart. I was as one walking in a painful dream. In vain I
plunged into the whirl of speech-making, canvassing, and all the
absorbing surroundings of the election—truly in vain, for the one idea
ever grimly tortured me, and the one hopeless thought ever perched
raven-like in my gloom-laden mind.
“Take heart of grace, man,” Father O’Dowd would say. “We’ll beat them
three to one.”
Could he minister to the disease that was eating away my very heart?
Harry Welstone came over.
“Why, there has been a sort of panic at Kilkenley on account of your
abrupt departure, Fred. The last person who saw you in the flesh was
Miss Hawthorne, and she is very reticent in the matter. I tried to pump
her, and got quietly sat upon for my pains. She has disappeared, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“She has been playing the invisible princess. Your opponent called
twice, and she refused to see him.”
“Is it Melton?” I cried, a wild joy surging around my heart.
“Yes; the great M.P. in embryo.”
“Wouldn’t see him?”
“Said she had a headache.”
“You jest, Harry.”
“Not a bit of it. Old Blunderbuss was as mad as a hatter, but missy
stuck fast to her colors.”
“I wish to heaven you hadn’t told me this, Harry.”
“Why?”
“I do not know.”
And I did _not_ know, but so it was. There lay a disturbing element in
this news that completely set me astray. Hope, that springs eternal in
the human breast; hope, that seemed shut out from mine for ever, was
timidly knocking at the portals demanding admittance; but I resolutely
barred the portals, raising the drawbridge, and dropping the portcullis.
And yet—
No. I would _not_ admit the impossible.
The nomination took place in the court-house at Ballyraken, the county
town, which was literally packed with the country people, who had come
in from the great harvest districts to hear the “speechifyin’.” The De
Ruthven faction mustered very strongly, all the Protestant gentry
arriving in their equipages, making “a brave and goodly show.” Mr.
Wynwood Melton—who appeared in a faultlessly-fitting black frock-coat,
with the last rose of summer in his button-hole, a hat that literally
shone like jet, and pale lavender gloves—was proposed by Sir Robert
Slugby de Ruthven, D.L., and seconded by Mr. Beresford de Ruthven, D.L.
Sir Robert, an aged, aristocratic-looking man, with a lordly voice and
royal mien, after dilating, amidst fearful interruption, upon the
misfortune that had fallen on the county in the ill-considered
enterprise of this rash young man—meaning me—in his hopeless endeavor to
disturb the harmony which had so long existed in the county, proceeded
to say:
“I have a gentleman to propose to your consideration—a gentleman of
birth, a gentleman of education, a gentleman of position, a gentleman of
means, a gentleman—”
Here a voice, which I immediately recognized as that of Peter O’Brien,
cried out in the crowd:
“Arrah, blur an’ ages, we’re tired av _gintlemin_; can’t ye stand
_yerself_?”
This sally, which was greeted with a roar of laughter, completely upset
the little speech which Sir Robert had prepared, and in a few mumbled
words he proposed Mr. Wynwood Melton as a fit and proper person to
represent the county in the Imperial Parliament.
Mr. Beresford de Ruthven was an able and popular speaker. He knew how,
when, and where to touch the heart of the Irish peasant. His tact was
admirable, while he possessed the rare qualification of being enabled to
keep his audience in his hands as a juggler his golden balls.
We feared his speech. It was a rock ahead, and every word that fell from
his lips was to be caught up and treasured, in order that our best men
should reply to him. We knew it was nearly impossible to catch him
tripping, and that he was one of those agile performers who spring
smilingly to their feet even after an ugly fall.
“I wish this was over,” whispered Father O’Dowd. “_Timeo Danaos et dona
ferentes._ He’ll butter the boys like parsnips, and promise them the
moon.”
Mr. De Ruthven commenced his speech in a breathless silence. Oratory is
always respected in Ireland, even in an opponent, although that opponent
be a Protestant and an Orangeman. The speaker labored under the
disadvantage of possessing but one hand, the other having been
accidentally shot off by the bursting of a fowling-piece while Mr. De
Ruthven was grouse-shooting in Scotland.
His speech was, unhappily for us, most felicitous. He seemed to suit
himself to the occasion, and to make the occasion suit him. A faint
murmur followed one or two of his well-directed points, which gradually
swelled into open applause, until, to our dismay, we found he was
carrying the audience with him.
Our party gazed significantly one at the other. We all perceived that
the danger we had already anticipated was upon us in real earnest. At
this moment I perceived Peter O’Brien elbowing himself to the front. A
dead silence had fallen, one of those unaccountable stillnesses that
occasionally come upon all assemblages, however large. Mr. De Ruthven
was about to recommence, when Peter, putting his hands to his mouth, and
in a voice that could be heard in the adjacent barony, shouted at the
top of his lungs:
“_Where’s the hand that sthruck the priest?_”
To describe the effect of this query would be impossible. It was simply
electrical. In one second the current, which had been flowing smoothly,
became dammed, and instantly turned into another channel. In vain did
Mr. De Ruthven endeavor to gain a hearing; in vain to disclaim the
odious charge that had been indirectly preferred against him. It was
useless. Every effort was met by a thousand cries of “Where’s the hand
that sthruck the priest?” And in these few words the sun of his
eloquence had set for ever. The high-sheriff almost burst a blood-vessel
in his endeavor to obtain silence, until, finding the task a hopeless
one, he advised Mr. De Ruthven to formally second the nomination and
retire, which was accordingly done, and in dumb show.
When Melton presented himself he was received with laughter and jeers.
The people had just warmed into that facetious good-humor that is so
dangerous to a candidate for their suffrages. Opposition makes a martyr.
Laughter causes a man to appear ridiculous.
“What’ll ye take for the posy?”
“Off wud yer gloves.”
“Will ye give us a pup out o’ that hat?”
“Is that coat ped for?”
“The raison it’s so new is that he wants to be able for to turn it,
boys.”
“Spake up.”
“Give us a little Irish.”
“Sing the ‘Wearin’ av the Green.’”
“We’ll return ye—to England.”
“Go home to yer mother.”
“Cud ye say boo to a goose?”
“Och! we’ll vote for ye all together like Brown’s cows, an’ he had only
wan.”
“Yer a fine man to send—out o’ the counthry.”
“Arrah, what brought ye here at all?”
“Ax for the price o’ the thrain for to take ye home, an’ mebbe ould
Beresford wud give it to ye.”
Such were the greetings that interrupted Mr. Wynwood Melton during the
delivery of a very brief speech, not one word of which even reached the
reporters’ table. He seemed, however, perfectly unruffled, and continued
bowing for a considerable time in response to the derisive cheering that
followed upon his silence.
Father O’Dowd was received with a whirlwind of cheers, yells, and other
manifestations of enthusiastic delight.
In proposing me he was very brief, alluding to the degrading position
held by Catholics in a county where the large majority of the people
were Catholics, and where everything that could be denied a Catholic was
denied him. He was good enough to refer to the intrepidity with which my
poor father had upheld the ancient faith, to his true-hearted
patriotism, and wound up by declaring that this was the hour for the
county to assert itself, both for conscience and country.
I read my speech in the _Weekly Courier_ on the following Saturday, and
I _suppose_ I must have uttered it, but I have not the remotest
conception of what I said. It read wonderfully well; and as Father
O’Dowd told me I surpassed myself, I felt more or less elated at my
success.
“If _she_ had been there to hear it!” was my sad, sickening thought.
_Læta dies aderat._ The eventful day arrived big with my fate and that
of the county. I felt that I was but the mere instrument, and, if
victory were to crown the effort, it would be due to the principle and
not the man. We knew that in some districts we would be badly beaten,
while in others the issue was somewhat doubtful; but as to the ultimate
outcome we entertained not a shadow of a doubt. The people were panting
for a chance, and they had got it now.
When I showed the voting-papers to Peter, telling him that a cross
marked in pencil should go opposite the name of the candidate for whom
the voter wished to vote, he anxiously demanded:
“An’ must the min that votes for the Englishman put in a crass, too?”
“Every man of them.”
“Och, thin, glory be to God! shure it’s a judgmint on thim Protestants
for to have to make the sign av the blessed an’ holy crass at all, at
all—curse of Crummle on thim!”
Fearing a disturbance, as party spirit ran so high and as my supporters
were so excited, a strong detachment of the Sixtieth Rifles was marched
into Ballyraken on the eve of the polling. The Protestant landlords had
secured free quarters in the town for such of their tenantry as chose to
inhabit them, while they themselves occupied the Club House and De
Ruthven Arms in a most imposing and demonstrative manner.
I was walking down the main street, all alone, thinking not of the
forthcoming ballot, but of Mabel, when I perceived my opponent lounging
on the steps of the Club House. I should be compelled to pass the Club
House or cross the street, and as I was a member of the club, although I
never frequented it, I now resolved upon boldly entering the enemy’s
camp.
I was passing Melton with a nod when he stepped forward and in a
singularly insolent tone demanded a word with me. He was very white.
“I was at Kilkenley yesterday.”
“Indeed!” I said. His tone was too uncertain to admit of my making any
comment upon his visit.
“I suppose Miss Hawthorne is acting under _your_ orders?” he hissed.
“I am at a loss to understand your meaning, sir,” I hotly replied.
“Not at home save to those whom you may be pleased to admit to your
palatial residence,” he sneered.
“My residence is a very humble one, Mr. Melton, and when _you_ honored
it with your person I hope you found it a hospitable one. Miss Hawthorne
is mistress of her own movements, but let me tell you, sir, that she is
my mother’s guest, and the guest of an Ormonde is sacred.”
“Very dramatic, but scarcely to the point.”
“I’ll come to any point you please.”
“When this election business is over I may have something to say to
you,” his tone fairly exasperating.
I could stand it no longer.
“You white-livered cub, whatever you have to say, say it now!” I
shouted, the blood rushing like molten lava through my veins.
“I don’t row in public.”
“Do you wish me to tell you what I think of you, in public, Mr. Melton?”
He smiled.
“Pah! you are not worth this stick, or I’d break it across your
shoulders.” And I marched into the club, my heart bumping against my
ribs from sheer excitement.
What could he mean? Miss Hawthorne refuse to see him at _my_ request? It
was too absurd. Some lover’s quarrel. Was this cad her lover? Had her
heart gone forth to such a man as this?
It was torture to think it.
Contrary to all expectations, the conduct of the people was orderly and
peaceable. The dread of a petition had been seared into their very souls
by Father O’Dowd and by the admirable organization that had charge of my
interests. They came up to the booths silent, almost sullen. The
landlords and bailiffs were all at their posts, uttering a last warning
word as the tenants filed into the booths, addressing them cheerily as
they emerged therefrom, in the hope of gleaning the much-coveted
information as to the direction of the vote; but the responsibility of
that day’s work appeared upon every face, and they entered the
voting-places as though stepping into a church. Telegrams came pouring
in all day from the outlying districts.
“Ballymaclish is all right—a majority of sixty; Derrymaclooney accounts
for every man,” cried Father O’Dowd. “Bravo, my dear old parish! I knew
I could trust my good, brave, pious children.”
Later on: “The De Ruthvens have carried Tubbercurry.”
“That’s because Father Nolan is on the broad of his back.”
“Ay, and because the Beresfords have stopped at nothing,” observed one
of my committee. “If we want a petition we can pick it up in
Tubbercurry. A telegram this morning says that there were money and
whiskey going all the week.”
“How about Dharnadhulagh?”
“No returns yet.”
“Or Derrycunnihy?”
“Derrycunnihy is doubtful.”
“Not a bit of it.”
“I say it is.”
“I say it isn’t. Sure, Father James O’Neil has it in hands.”
“Oh! that will do. Put us down at forty at the very least.”
This sort of thing went on all day; but as the day wore on and the
returns came in, we found at four o’clock that I had a majority, and at
five that I had beaten Melton like a hack.
A wild flash of joy quivered through me. Frederic Fitzgerald Ormonde,
M.P.! Visions of St. Stephen’s, of fierce debates over the crushing
wrongs of expectant Erin, of glorious oratory, of splendid, supreme
efforts, of magnificent rewards, honors—_Cui bono_?
_She_ would hate me for having beaten her lover in the race. But was he
her lover? Had not her tell-tale blushes told me all? And yet I had
given her no chance of reply. Perhaps—
As this idea smote me a nameless ecstasy vibrated through every fibre of
my being, and I longed to get to Kilkenley, I knew not why.
It was excruciating to be compelled to wait and receive the
congratulations of my friends and supporters. It was simply fearful to
have to sit out a dinner which had been prepared in my honor, and to
listen to the leaden speeches all harping upon the one theme.
Somehow or other the night passed onwards, and at about eleven o’clock I
found myself free. I rode over to Kilkenley; it was a mad race, and how
I contrived to avoid riding down some of my constituents is still a
matter of mystery to me. It relieved my feverish spirits to give the
reins to my horse, and we flew homewards, past villages, past
homesteads, past inebriated revellers on low-backed cars, past bonfires
which were lighted for miles along the route, past hedges,
ditches—everything; nor did I draw rein until I drew up at the lodge,
shouting the word “Gate!”
“Lord be merciful to us! but it’s the masther,” cried Mrs. O’Rourke, the
lodge-keeper, as she tremblingly threw open the gate. “May I make so
bould as to ax ye if ye bet the Englishman, sir?”
“Beat him to smithereens.”
“Glory be to God! I knew Father O’Dowd would settle it.”
There were lights all through the house. The great event had kept the
household out of their beds. My mother fell upon my neck in a paroxysm
of joy when I told her the news.
“Where is Mabel—I mean Miss Hawthorne, mother?” I stammered.
“She was here a moment ago. Is Mr. Hawthorne at Ballyraken?”
“Yes; I left him making a third speech.”
“You must be worn out, my child. I’ll make you some mulled port.”
Something told me that I should find Mabel in the adjoining room; and my
instincts had not deceived me. She stood in the centre of the apartment,
one hand resting upon a small table. When I found myself standing
opposite to her I felt utterly, totally dumbfounded. I could only stare
at her.
“I heard the news,” she said, casting down her violet eyes. Ah! that was
_all_ she had to say.
“Will you forgive me?” I cried.
“Mr. Ormonde,” her hands working nervously, her glorious eyes still bent
upon the table, her exquisitely-shaped head half averted, “I—I—that
is—you have been under a most extraordinary misconception with reference
to Mr. Melton. That gentleman is only a friend. As a matter of fact, I—I
was so—so distressed at your ideas about him in connection with
myself”—here she blushed red as a rose—“that I refused to see him when
he came to visit here yesterday.”
“Then you are not in love with him?”
She raised her violet eyes, and her glance met mine as she uttered the,
to me, ecstatic word, “No.”
“And not engaged to him?”
“No.”
I do not know what I said or what I did; but this I _do_ know: that when
my mother entered the room with a tumbler of mulled port, she dropped
the tumbler, uttering an exclamation of delight, and fell to kissing
Mabel, exclaiming: “This is the one thing wanted to make me perfectly
happy. My poor boy was breaking his heart about you.”
* * * * *
I was declared duly elected to serve the county in the United Parliament
of Great Britain and Ireland.
Mr. Hawthorne duly presented me to Mr. Speaker upon the occasion of my
taking the oaths and my seat. My first nap in the House was during a
speech from the member for Doodleshire, which was not treating the
ethereal thunder of his mind with becoming respect, especially as he had
just been good enough to give me his daughter in marriage. We were
married at the pro-cathedral at Kensington, by Father O’Dowd.
Melton I never met.
Harry Welstone and I are closer friends than ever, as he is in the
House, representing the borough of Bohernabury, and we are always “agin
the government.”
We reside at Kilkenley, and Peter O’Brien is teaching my eldest boy to
handle the ribbons.
“Musha, thin, whin I rowled out forninst ye in the dirt beyant at the
railway station, it’s little I ever thought I’d see ye misthress av the
ould anshint property, ma’am,” is his constant remark to the lady of the
manor, while he is perpetually urging upon me the crying necessity for
“takin’ a heat out av Drizzlyeye.”
“Bloody wars, Masther Fred, but you an’ ould Butt is too aisy wud him.
Give him plinty av impudince, an’ as shure’s me name’s Pether O’Brien
ye’ll have Home Rule while ye’d be axin’ the lind av a sack.”
THE END.
A SECTARIAN DIPLOMATIC SERVICE.
Our federal government, as a government, is absolutely forbidden by the
Constitution to have anything whatever to do with religion; but the
State Department has been for years and is now conducted as if it were
an agency for a religious sectarian propaganda. The gentlemen whom it
has sent to represent us at foreign courts have acted, in numberless
instances and with few exceptions, as if they were the emissaries of
Protestant or infidel missionary societies rather than as the
ambassadors, ministers, and _chargés d’affaires_ of a government which
professes no religion, but which nevertheless has among its citizens
eight millions of Roman Catholics, more or less, whose rights and
opinions it is bound at least to respect. Many of these gentlemen have
seemed to believe that one of their principal duties, especially if
accredited to a Catholic country, was to form intimate associations with
conspirators and agitators; to espouse their cause; and to fill their
despatches to Mr. Seward, Mr. Fish, and Mr. Evarts with absurd but
pernicious misrepresentations concerning the relations of the church
towards education, civil freedom, and material progress. It may be
admitted that many of these agents have erred rather through ignorance
than malice; not a few of them have received but a limited education; it
is only lately that a knowledge of the French language has been deemed
requisite for even an ambassador. Scores of our ministers and _chargés
d’affaires_ have been sent abroad, remained for a few years, and
returned, without acquiring more than a mere smattering of the language
of the country to which they were accredited. Too frequently these
misrepresentatives of ours fall into the hands of the agents of the
secret sects which are plotting all over the world for the destruction
of the church and the overthrow of Christian society, and receive from
these sources the erroneous and pernicious views of affairs which they
transmit to Washington. One of our diplomatists, returning from a long
residence in the capital of a Catholic country, had for a
fellow-traveller on the steamship an American Catholic.
“I envy you your residence in ——,” said this gentleman; “the
intellectual society there is agreeable. Were you not well acquainted
with Father —— and Mgr. ——?” naming two individuals of wide-spread
celebrity.
“Oh! no,” replied the astute statesman, “not at all; I never met them.
They are Papists, you know, and I never cared to waste my time with men
who pray to idols, and pretend to believe that a piece of bread is God.
Besides,” he added, with ingenuous simplicity, “my interpreter, a very
shrewd fellow, told me all the priests in —— were bitter foes of our
free republican institutions, and I thought it my duty to keep aloof
from them.”
A perusal of the Red Books for the last two years inclines one to
believe that many of our ministers to foreign countries derive their
opinions and their information chiefly from their “interpreters.” The
Hon. Mr. Scadder, rewarded for his eminent services to his party by
being torn from his sorrowing constituents at Watertoast, and sent to
represent us at the proud court of a papistical sovereign, may be at the
mercy of any wag who chooses to humbug him with fantastical lies, or of
any emissary from a Masonic sect who is instructed to fill his mind with
misrepresentations; but Mr. Fish and Mr. Evarts are men of culture, and
are supposed, at least, to be able to distinguish a hawk from a handsaw.
It is of them that we chiefly complain. If the exigencies of party have
made it impossible for them to select the best men for our diplomatic
service, and if they have been obliged to put up with Mr. Scadder and
his kind, it has at least been always in their power to cause our
foreign agents to understand that it is no part of their duty to write
despatches calumniating the Catholic Church, or to employ themselves in
promoting the missionary enterprises of Protestant sects in Catholic
countries. Had Mr. Fish and Mr. Evarts possessed a true idea of their
own official duties, they never could have permitted one of their agents
to write a second time such despatches as some of those contained in the
Red Books before us. They would have administered to their Scadders, and
Marshes, and Beales, and Partridges, and Bassetts a rebuke that would
have opened the eyes of these public servants and taught them a useful
lesson. Mr. Fish, we know, is a prominent and zealous member of the
Protestant Episcopal Church; Mr. Evarts, we believe, is an adherent of
the same sect. In their private capacity they have at least a legal
right to do what they can to advance the interests of their own
communion, and to expose and check the diabolical designs of the Man of
Sin. But as Secretary of State at Washington Mr. Fish had not, and Mr.
Evarts has not, any right to instruct, encourage, or even permit our
agents abroad to calumniate the Catholic Church, to encourage
conspiracies against her, or to spend their time, which belongs to the
country, and the money with which the country supplies them, in
promoting Anti-Catholic propagandism. Such a course is as bad a policy
as it is un-American. We trust that the present Secretary of State will
give this matter his immediate and careful attention; and the Senate and
the House of Representatives would do well to look into it. Let him, as
becomes his duty, inform the diplomatic agents of this republic that
they are sent and paid to attend to the material and political interests
of our country, and are expected to keep to themselves their religious
opinions, whatever those opinions may be, in their correspondence with
the Department of State. A proper sense of dignity on the part of the
American who holds the office of the Secretary of State, and a decent
respect for others, would not suffer that a diplomatic agent under his
control should use his political position to insult the religious
convictions of so large, important, and patriotic a portion of his
fellow-citizens. Catholic citizens ask no favors as Catholics, and the
time has gone by for them to accept silently from the hired agents of
our common country insults to their religious faith. No one deprecates
more than we do to see the tendency of the Catholic vote in this country
given almost exclusively to one of its political parties. The only way
in which to prevent this is by the opposite party putting an end to the
display of bigotry and fanaticism against the Catholic Church.
The Department of the Interior, in its Indian Bureau, has repeatedly
been guilty of gross violations of good faith and fair dealing towards
the Catholic Church; but this has been due, probably, to the direct
pressure put upon it by the various sects, whose cupidity was excited by
the hope of reaping where Catholic priests had sown. But the foreign
agents of the State Department often appear to have gone out of their
way, in mere wantonness, to insult, irritate, and injure Catholic
interests and feeling. Imagine the collector of the port of New York
writing official despatches to the Secretary of the Treasury, informing
him that, in the absence of anything better to do, he had been giving
his mind to an investigation of Catholicism in this metropolis, and that
he had arrived at the conclusion that much of the pauperism of the city
was due to the facts that the entire Catholic population were in the
habit of refusing to work on eight days of the year—days known in the
superstitious jargon of the Papists as “days of obligation”—and that
vast sums of money were exacted by the priests from their ignorant and
degraded dupes, and sent over to Rome to support in idle luxury the
pampered pope! It is probable that Secretary Sherman would administer to
the collector a severe reprimand, and that this particular letter would
not form part of the annual treasury report. But this is precisely the
sort of news with which our minister to Hayti—Mr. Ebenezer
Bassett—regales Mr. Evarts, so much to the apparent satisfaction of the
latter that Mr. Bassett again and again returns to the subject and
dwells upon it with unction. Or fancy Postmaster James sending a
despatch to Mr. Key to cheer him with the happy intelligence that an
unfrocked and disgraced Catholic priest had started a brand-new sect of
his own in New York, and predicting that in a short time a majority of
the Papists would desert their pastors and joyfully embrace the new
gospel. But this is in substance the intelligence that such a man as Mr.
Bancroft most delighted to send from Berlin. The collector of the port
and the postmaster would be as much out of the line of their duty in the
cases we have mentioned as Mr. Bassett and Mr. Bancroft have been. The
duty of our foreign representatives is to promote the commercial,
financial, and political interests of this republic at the courts to
which they are accredited, and not to make themselves channels for the
conveyance of idle, false, and scandalous gossip, much less to interfere
in the domestic affairs of the countries to which they are sent, or
allow themselves to be used as the tools of secret societies or of
Methodist or any other missionary boards.
We have at present thirteen envoys extraordinary and ministers
plenipotentiary—in Austria, Brazil, Chili, China, France, Germany, Great
Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Russia, and Spain; eight ministers
resident—in the Argentine Republic, Belgium, Central American States,
Hawaiian Islands, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, Turkey, and Venezuela;
and two ministers resident and consuls-general, in Hayti and Liberia.
There are also five _chargés d’affaires_—in Denmark, Greece, Portugal,
Switzerland, and Uruguay and Paraguay. We have no representative in
Bolivia, Ecuador, or the United States of Colombia. The great majority
of the inhabitants of nineteen of the above-named thirty-one countries
are Roman Catholics; yet not one of our foreign representatives is a
Catholic. We ask not is this fair, but is it good policy? The population
of these nineteen Roman Catholic nations is in round numbers, and
according to the latest enumerations, about 170,000,000 souls; but we
now are, and so far as we know almost always have been, represented at
their capitals by Protestants. Of this, in itself, we do not complain.
Wisdom—nay, even common sense—would indeed seem to dictate that the best
results would be attained, other things being equal, by sending
Catholics as envoys to Catholic countries. An American Catholic in a
Catholic country finds himself in sympathy with, and not in antagonism
to, the religious habits and modes of thought of the people; and his
path towards the accomplishment of any good and worthy object is greatly
smoothed by this fact. We believe that intelligent, clever, patriotic,
Catholic envoys at Vienna, Rio Janeiro, Santiago, Paris, Rome, Mexico,
Lima, Madrid, Buenos Ayres, Brussels, Guatemala, Caracas, Port au
Prince, Lisbon, Montevideo, Asuncion, Quito, Bogota, and La Paz would
have been more successful in accomplishing the best and highest duties
of diplomatic representatives of this republic than Messrs. Beale,
Partridge, Logan, Washburne, Marsh, Foster, Gibbs, Cushing, Osborne,
Merrill, Williamson, Russell, Bassett, Moran, and Caldwell have been. We
are certain that they would not have committed the sins against good
taste and propriety which must be laid at the door of nearly all these
gentlemen; they surely would not have committed the still graver
offences of which we shall have to give some instances. We wish to
except from this remark, however, Mr. Moran, long our faithful and
exemplary secretary of legation at London, and for the last two or three
years our chief representative at Lisbon. Although not a Catholic, Mr.
Moran is a gentleman of excellent culture, of correct opinions
concerning his official duties, and a very skilful diplomatist. One may
look in vain through his despatches for anything that should not be
there. We wish we could say half as much for some of his _confrères_.
Let us take, as an instance, our misrepresentative at Rome, Mr. George
P. Marsh, of Vermont. Mr. Marsh leaves us in no doubt whether or not
he is in full sympathy with the worst political elements in Italy, and
inspired by a lively hatred of the church. He deems it one of his most
pressing duties to assail and calumniate the Pope; he seems never so
happy as when he can give a false and malicious interpretation to the
acts of the Papal See; he appears never so miserable as when he finds
himself disappointed in his fond anticipation of seeing the Italian
government invade the Vatican, drive out the Pope, and finish up what
is left of the church in Italy. In what Mr. Marsh is pleased to call
his mind, the church in Italy is a ravening wolf, wounded, sick, and
in a trap, but still with life enough in her to make her dangerous,
and to render it necessary that she should be knocked on the head as
soon as possible. Whenever Mr. Marsh observes indications of a
willingness on the part of the government to let the wolf live a
little longer, or even to make terms with her, he scolds and laments
at a fearful rate. He writes as if he were a member of the Extreme
Left, and evidently draws his inspiration from the most advanced
radical sources. “I see no reason to expect,” says he, “any more
vigorous resistance to the encroachments of the church from this
administration”—the administration that was in power in November,
1876. What is it that Mr. Marsh would wish? What can be “the
encroachments of the church” in Italy—the “encroachments” of men
disarmed, despoiled, captive, and helpless as far as human agency is
concerned? The elections for members of the Chamber of Deputies in
November, 1876, were regarded by Mr. Marsh as evidence that the
electors were greatly dissatisfied with the government as it had been
administered. Doubtless they were. Mr. Marsh speaks of “the heavy
burdens of taxation imposed by it upon the people”; of its “financial
difficulties that prevent the execution of important works of public
improvement”; of its failure even to attempt “the abolition of the
macinto tax, or of any of the financial abuses which weigh so heavily
on the poor.” But his remedy for this is simply “a more vigorous
resistance to the encroachments of the church”—a little more
plundering, a little more confiscation; the seizure of the Vatican,
for instance, and the sale of its treasures at public auction, would
no doubt put a few million lire in the public treasury. That would
suit the amiable Mr. Marsh exactly. But the Italians hesitate, and Mr.
Marsh is disgusted with them. At times he informs Mr. Evarts of
terrible secrets—confidential information which could only have been
communicated to him under the pledge of solemn secrecy by one of those
practical jokers who lounge about the _cafés_ in Rome and exercise
their ingenuity in beguiling simple foreigners with incredible
_canards_. In a despatch dated April 23, 1877, Mr. Marsh gives an
account of a seditious outbreak that had occurred in Central and
Southern Italy, instigated by people who were well dressed and who had
plenty of money, but whose purpose, as explained by themselves, was
“not only the overthrow of the existing government, but the
destruction of all established civil, social, and religious
institutions, and the triumph of universal anarchy.” These, in fact,
were members of Mr. Marsh’s own party; but his secret informant in
Rome made him believe that they were in the pay of the Pope, and
probably Jesuits in disguise! “Long live Pius IX.! was shouted by the
Internationalists at Benevento in the same breath with their cries of
sedition,” writes Mr. Marsh; and he goes on to warn Mr. Evarts that
“the number of persons prepared to lend a ready ear to the promptings
of International emissaries”—_videlicet_ the Jesuits in disguise
aforesaid—“already large, is increasing; and that Italy may be the
theatre of convulsions, to resist which will demand the most strenuous
efforts of wise rulers and the most self-sacrificing patriotism on the
part of the governing classes,” but always in the direction of
resisting “the further encroachments of the church.” Mr. Marsh
indulged in glowing hopes when the so-called Clerical Abuses Bill
passed the Chamber of Deputies. He described the measure as “a bill
for repressing the license of the clergy in public attacks upon the
ecclesiastical policy of the government,” and looked for the happiest
results to follow its enforcement. Mr. Marsh is an American citizen;
he is the representative of a government which plumes itself upon the
almost unchecked freedom of its citizens; he is paid by a people whose
political shibboleth is “free speech.” If Mr. Marsh were running for
Congress in Vermont instead of exercising his powerful intellect as
minister at Rome, what would he say concerning an attempt by Congress
to enact that the penalty of fine and imprisonment should be inflicted
upon every clergyman or minister who should “attack the policy,” for
instance, of the government seizing all the Methodist and Baptist
meeting-houses throughout the country, and converting them into
barracks? The Italian bill was worse than this, for it inflicted these
penalties upon every priest who, even in the discharge of his duties
as a director, might “disturb the peace of families” by advising a
mother to teach her children that it was a sin to steal. But the
Italian senate was less brave than Mr. Marsh, and his heart was almost
broken by its final rejection of the bill. “This rejection,” he moans,
in his despatch of April 23, “will encourage the clergy to measures of
more active hostility against the state.” He feels so cut up about it
that he returns to the subject in his despatch of May 10, and is so
far carried away by his feelings as to write that
“The violence of the clergy and of their lay supporters in Italy and
France is almost beyond description, and any one living among them
has abundant opportunities of being convinced that they are prepared
to resort to arms in support of the pretensions of the Papacy and of
the principles of the Syllabus of 1864!”
A viler calumny, a more wicked falsehood against the French and Italian
clergy has seldom been written. We are amazed, not that Mr. Marsh should
have written it, but that Mr. Evarts should have allowed such balderdash
to be printed. But Mr. Marsh grows worse as he goes on. In his despatch
of May 26 he almost excels himself. He takes it as a personal grievance
that the Pope has compared Prince Bismarck to Attila; he is impatient
for the abrogation of the Law of Guarantees; he is certain that sooner
or later “a violent conflict between the government and the church is
inevitable,” and he wishes it to come rather sooner than later.
Apparently he is anxious to assist at the final sacrifice, and he is
tormented with the fear that the crafty Papists may cheat him out of
that gratification.
“The Roman Curia,” he writes, “is at all times shrouded in such mystery
that the purposes of those who administer it (_sic_) are very rarely
foreshadowed, and no positive predictions can ever be hazarded
concerning it beyond the general presumption that its future will be
like its past.” In all soberness and earnestness we ask Mr. Evarts
whether Mr. Marsh is kept in Rome for the purpose of writing nonsense
about the “mystery” of the “Roman Curia”? What has he to do with the
affairs of the Holy See? He is not accredited to the Vatican; he has no
more to do with the Pope than our minister at London has to do with the
Archbishop of Canterbury. True, the Pope is a far more important
personage than is Mr. Tait; but Mr. Marsh, as we understand it, was not
sent to Rome to occupy himself about the Pope. Instead of attending to
his own business he goes out of his way to insult the Holy Father, and
through him the entire Catholic population of the United States. If
everything were as it should be, we should have as our representative at
Rome, the capital of Christendom and the seat of the head of the
universal church, a Catholic statesman. We do not insist upon this; but
we do insist that our representative at Rome should be at least a
fair-minded, candid, well-educated, and discreet gentleman, and not an
ignorant, rude, prejudiced, and foolish dupe like Mr. Marsh. That we may
not be accused of doing him injustice, let us give here the exact text
of the essential portions of his despatch of May 26 last, to which we
have already referred:
“The excesses of the clericals,” he writes, “are producing their
natural and legitimate effect in a feeling of dissatisfaction with
the position in which Italy has placed herself toward the Papacy by
the Law of Guarantees. A recent allocution by the Pope, in which,
for acts of the German government, Count Bismarck is likened to
Attila, is much commented upon, and it is seriously asked whether
Italy can protect herself against all responsibility for tolerating
the use of such language in public discourses by the Pope, and its
circulation through the press, under the plea that, by the seventh
article of the law referred to, she has enacted that the Pope ‘is
free to perform all the functions of his spiritual ministry, and to
affix to the doors of the basilicas and churches of Rome all acts of
that ministry.’ Such questions are bringing more clearly into view
the incongruities and inconveniences of the anomalous position in
which the general sovereignty of the state and the still higher
virtual sovereignty of the Papacy, admitted by the terms of the Law
of Guarantees, are placed toward each other. The Syllabus of 1864,
having been promulgated before the enactment of that law, was notice
to all the world of the extent of the inalienable rights claimed by
the Papacy, and it is not a violent stretch of Vatican logic to
maintain that, in spite of its protests, the law in question is
legally a recognition of those claims. In fact, there are many
occasions of collision between the two jurisdictions, such, for
example, as the right of asylum implied in the extraterritoriality
of the Vatican, which can never be avoided or reconciled without
such an abandonment of the claims of one of the parties as will be
yielded only to superior force; and hence a violent conflict between
them is at any time probable, and at no distant day certainly
inevitable. Such occasions were expected by many to arise from the
pilgrimages to Rome on the fiftieth episcopal anniversary of the
present Pope. But the number of pilgrims thus far has not reached
the tithe of that predicted, probably not amounting in all to ten
thousand, while the garrison and municipal police have been quietly
strengthened to a force abundantly able to repress any disturbance.
The death of Pius IX. and the election of his successor, events
almost hourly expected, are looked to as probably fraught with
important changes in the attitude of the Papacy toward Italy, and in
the general policy of the church. For this expectation I see no
ground, though the Roman Curia is at all times shrouded in such
mystery that the purposes of those who administer it are very rarely
foreshadowed, and no positive predictions can ever be hazarded
concerning it beyond the general presumption that its future will be
like its past.”
Mr. Edward F. Beale, of Pennsylvania, was our representative at Vienna,
having been sent there to succeed that ardent anti-Catholic, Mr. John
Jay, and being now in his turn superseded by Mr. Kasson, of Iowa. Mr.
Beale’s career at the Austrian capital was brief but not brilliant. In
August, 1876, he undertook to instruct Mr. Fish concerning the drift of
public opinion, not only in Austria but in France and England, upon the
Eastern question. He had ascertained that the prevailing sentiment in
these countries was “religious fervor”; the people were so much in love
with Christianity and so full of hatred of Moslemism in that they
desired nothing more than to see Russia enter Constantinople, and to
drive the Turks out of Europe “bag and baggage.” “It is a question of
faith which will govern Europe,” writes the astute Mr. Beale, “and a
crusade is quite as possible now as when Peter the Hermit preached.” The
European congress which is about to assemble as we are writing will not
disturb itself about any “question of faith”; its members will concern
themselves only with questions of boundaries, fleets, and money. But not
content with forecasting the future, Mr. Beale reverts to the past, and
kindly undertakes to furnish the State Department with easy lessons in
European history. Thus, in a despatch dated September 27, 1876, and
_apropos des bottes_, he bids Mr. Fish to remember that
“It is interesting to recall that in Bosnia originated the first
Protestant movement of Western Europe, and that even before the
heresies (as the Catholic Church calls them) of John Huss in Bohemia
she had sent out her missionaries to preach the Gospel as she read
it, and to disseminate her religious views over the rest of the
world. When the persecutions of the Church of Rome were at their
worst she offered a generous asylum to her co-religionists, many of
whom found here what had been denied them at home—the right to
worship God after their own forms and belief.”
In point of fact, the heretics of Bosnia, at the time referred to by our
erudite minister at Vienna, were advocating principles utterly
subversive of order and tending directly to anarchy. They taught that a
subject was released from all allegiance to a ruler if that ruler were
in a state of mortal sin, and each subject was to judge for himself as
to the spiritual condition of his ruler. The Church of Rome had no
hesitation in setting the seal of her condemnation upon this vagary of
Protestantism, and even Mr. Beale would probably admit that she was
right in so doing. But he evidently was ignorant of the facts, and was
anxious only to air his newly-acquired learning and to have a fling at
the church. Is there among the secret instructions of our State
Department to its agents a rule to this effect: “When you have nothing
else to write about, pitch into the Pope”?
It is a far cry from Vienna to Port au Prince; but our misrepresentative
in Hayti next demands our attention. He, of all his brethren, is perhaps
the most vulgar, insolent, and ignorant; but he is one of the most
outspoken. The United States pay him $7,500 a year, and have done so
since 1869. How much the Protestant Episcopal Church pays him, if
anything, we do not know; but he seems to have given much of his time
and influence to the advancement of the interests of that body, and to
the abuse of the Roman Catholic clergy of the island. Several of Mr.
Bassett’s despatches contain eulogiums upon a “Rev. Dr. Holly,” who, he
says, was “at Grace Church, New York, in 1874, ordained bishop of
Hayti,” and whom Mr. Bassett appears to have taken under his special
protection and care. Now, there is no “bishop of Hayti”; there is an
archbishop of Port au Prince, the Most Rev. Alexius Guilloux; and he has
four suffragans, the bishops of Cap-Haitien, Les Cayes, Gonayves, and
Port Paix. “The Rev. Dr. Holly” has no more right to call himself bishop
of Hayti than he has to call himself the Pope of Rome; but Mr. Bassett
deems it very hard indeed that the archbishop, the bishops, and the
clergy of Hayti have taken the liberty of warning their people that “the
Rev. Dr. Holly” is not bishop, and that his teachings that marriage is
not a sacrament, and that the first duty of a Christian is to revolt
against the church, are not to be accepted. In May Mr. Bassett writes to
Mr. Evarts that “the Roman Catholic archbishop and his clergy have
assumed a pretension to supremacy over the civil code, _notably in the
matter of marriage_”; and in July he writes again a long letter upon
“the introduction and growth of Protestantism in Hayti and its influence
upon the government.” He admits that in 1804 “Romanism,” which was
“then, as now, the faith professed by a great majority of the Haytian
people,” “was declared to be the religion of the state and placed under
the state’s special protection and support,” and that “it still
continues to enjoy that protection and support.” But he complains that
“the Roman priesthood have made many strongly-directed and persistent
but truly uncommendable efforts to cause to be suppressed, or
effectively placed under ban, every other form of worship and belief
than their own.” Mr. Bassett is not the only Protestant who cannot or
will not understand the difference between the duty of Catholic prelates
in a country where heresy does not exist and where it is sought to be
introduced from outside, and their duty in countries like our own, where
theoretically all religions are placed on the same footing, and the
government is absolutely forbidden by its organic law to interfere in
any way for the propagation of religious truth or the suppression of
religious error. The first ruler of Hayti who endeavored to introduce
Protestantism into the island was, according to Mr. Bassett, “Henri
Christophe, the autocratic king of the north of Hayti,” who in 1815,
although “himself a Roman Catholic,” engaged a clergyman of the Church
of England to propagate heresy in his dominions. But King Henri, five
years afterwards, “died by his own hand,” and Protestantism made no
further progress “until, in 1861, the Protestant Episcopal Church of the
United States was pleased to establish a mission with the Rev. J. T.
Holly as its pastor.”
He hit upon the idea “of raising up a national clergy in Hayti—a
policy which seems never to have been thought of by any other
religious denomination in this country, and which opened a new road
and gave a new impetus to Protestantism here. The mission continued
to grow. It was encouraged and visited in 1863 by Bishop Lee, of
Delaware; in 1866 by Bishop Burgess, of Maine; and in 1872 by Bishop
Coxe, of Western New York; and finally the Rev. Dr. Holly was, at
Grace Church, New York City, in 1874, ordained bishop of Hayti. So
that since 1874 there has been established in Hayti an independent
Protestant Church, with the distinguishing feature that all its
clergy are citizens of the country, several of them educated in the
United States under the vigilance of Bishop Holly.”
There are ninety-three Catholic priests in Hayti, and of these nearly
all are educated and cultured French gentlemen, who are undoubtedly far
better able to discharge the duties of the priestly office than the
native apostates who have been “educated in the United States under the
vigilance of Bishop Holly.” But Mr. Bassett has the ignorant malice to
vilify them and to display his own foolishness in this happy style:
“The French Roman Catholic priest, in coming to Hayti, leaves behind
him all his social ties, in the hope of returning to them within
eight or ten years, the average period of his labors here. All that
he receives while in the country, over and above his scanty personal
wants, goes abroad to enrich France at the expense of the Haytian
people, and he even bends his energies to accumulate. In addition to
his salary from the government, which ranges from 20,000 francs to
the archbishop to 1,200 francs to the country curate, he is allowed
a tariff of prices for all public religious services performed by
him. Baptisms, marriages, funerals, dispensations, indulgences,
Masses for the dead—services for each of these yield him by law a
revenue ranging from 50 cents up to $50. Not only this, but he can
collect offerings from the faithful, and it is even affirmed that
many such offerings are made to him under the dread secrecy inspired
by the confessional.
“It is true that France lost open political control over this island
in 1804, but by means of the Roman Catholic clergy she has
maintained almost exclusive control over the religious affairs of
these people. Indeed, the domination which she once held over their
bodies was hardly more complete than that which she still holds over
their consciences and spiritual susceptibilities. The priests, in
their present controversy with the government, which is outlined in
my No. 501 already referred to, do not fail to rely upon the
spiritual subjugation of the Haytian to the papal system of Rome, in
connection with their own supposed power over him as citizens of a
country which once held him in physical bondage, and to whose
interests they themselves are devoted.
“In the light of these facts it is no cause for astonishment that
the Haytian government, aroused and inspired by the policy and
success of the Protestant Bishop Holly in raising up and
establishing a national clergy for the Protestant Episcopal
denomination, should seek to conserve its own integrity and the
resources of its people, as well as to avoid continual
misunderstandings with a class of foreigners resident here and
shielded by the dignity of sacerdotal robes, by stimulating and
encouraging the young men of the country to enter the ecclesiastical
vocation.
“Meanwhile, it ought not to be unknown to those who feel bound by
the holy injunction to have the Gospel preached to all the world
that in Hayti the door stands wide open for every kind of Christian
missionary work.”
And it is for writing such stuff as this that we pay Mr. Ebenezer
Bassett $7,500 a year—that is to say, as much as is received by thirty
of the “country curates” whom he reviles.
Our space is limited, and we have but skimmed through our two Red Books.
We should have been glad to have followed the erratic flight of Mr.
Partridge, our late minister to Brazil, who fills quires of paper with
ridiculous nonsense about “the exactions of Rome,” the wickedness of
“the ultramontane party,” and the awful danger that the Brazilian
ministry “will yield to the demands of the Roman Curia.” Nothing escapes
the birds-eye view of this Partridge; he unconsciously explains much
that would otherwise be mysterious by stating that the prime minister of
the cabinet is “a member of the Masonic fraternity”; but the scope of
his intellect is best shown by his remark that “the throwing of stones
at the bishop of Rio, as he ascended the pulpit to preach,” was “a trick
of the Jesuits.” It would have been pleasant to congratulate Mr. Orth,
who was our representative at Vienna in 1876, upon his sagacity in
advocating, with hysterical warmth, the law for the virtual confiscation
and destruction of the houses of the religious orders in Austria—a
measure denounced by Cardinal Schwarzenberg and thirty-one archbishops
and bishops as “a law which equally violates the equality and personal
freedom of the citizen, the dignity of religion, the honor of the
Catholic Church, and the members of religious orders,” but which, in Mr.
Orth’s opinion, was “sound and salutary, and demanded by the progressive
spirit of the age.” A page or two is deserved by Mr. Williamson, who
gives us a history of a presidential campaign in Chili, in which all the
virtues are attributed to the Masonic candidate, and all that is
devilish is ascribed to “the church party,” “the ultramontanes,” and
“the church.” Delightful would it be to tarry with Mr. Scruggs, our
talented and courteous minister at Bogota, who commences one of his
despatches thus: “In April last one Bermudez, a bishop of the Roman
Catholic Church, proclaimed against the public-school system of this
republic,” and who gives an account of the events which followed,
closing his glowing periods with the cheerful assurance that “the church
property will probably be appropriated to pay the war debt.” The letters
of our Mr. Rublee, at Berne, apropos of the Old-Catholic schism in
Switzerland; of our Mr. Nicholas Fish, who during a brief interregnum
represented us at Berlin; and of several of our other agents, furnish
equally tempting matter for comment. But we must pass by them with the
remark that none of them are quite so outrageous as those of Mr.
Bassett, Mr. Beale, and Mr. Marsh.
The present administration has made changes in six of our most important
embassies. Mr. Kasson has been appointed to Vienna, Mr. Stoughton to St.
Petersburg, Mr. Hilliard to Brazil, Mr. Lowell to Madrid, Mr. Welsh to
London, and Mr. Bayard Taylor to Berlin. It goes without saying that
none of these gentlemen have received any diplomatic training. Mr.
Kasson is a respectable provincial lawyer, who has sat in Congress, and
who rendered important services to his party by going to Florida and
taking care that the electoral vote of that State was properly counted.
What he knows about Austria, and how he may deport himself there,
remains to be seen. Without being extravagant, one may indulge the hope
that he may prove to be an improvement upon Mr. Beale. Mr. Welsh is an
old and worthy merchant of Philadelphia, a prominent member of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, and an extensive dealer in sugars: but we
have yet to learn what are his qualifications for the weighty duties of
minister to the court of St. James. Mr. Lowell is a poet, a man of
letters, and a scholar who has done honor to his country; but we should
be inclined to doubt his fitness for managing our commercial and
political affairs at the court of King Alfonso. Mr. Taylor is a good
journalist, in a certain way; he has been a traveller of some
experience, and he is an ardent admirer and a close student of Schiller
and of Goethe; but he has himself been swift to disclaim the idea that
these things made him fit for the post to which he has been appointed,
and he rather ridiculed the notion that he had been appointed minister
to Berlin in order that he might there finish his great work—a new
biography of Goethe. There is much to be said on both sides of the
question, “Is it worth while to keep up our diplomatic service at all?”
We should be inclined to take the affirmative; but we are not disposed
to enter into the discussion at present. One thing, however, is certain,
and that is the necessity of freeing the service from the weight of men
like Marsh, Beale, Partridge, Orth, Williamson, and Scruggs. There are
others as bad, but these will serve as types of the worst. In no sense
can they be said to rightly represent this great, free, and noble
people; in every sense they may be said to misrepresent the Catholic
population of the republic, whose interests, rights, and feelings can no
longer be, as they never ought to have been, safely trampled upon by any
administration or by any party. Whatever party does this betrays an
un-American spirit; its policy is a bad one both for the country and
itself, and unless it changes for the better its reign will be short.
THE ARCHIEPISCOPAL PALACE AT BENEVENTUM.[51]
Beneventum is a small town of about fifteen thousand inhabitants,
situated geographically in the kingdom of Naples. It formerly depended,
spiritually and temporally, on the Holy See, which also held
jurisdiction over part of the territory of the ancient duchy; the other
part being subject to the king of Naples as to temporal affairs, and to
the archbishop of Beneventum as to those of a spiritual nature.
The archiepiscopal palace, or the _episcopio_, to use the old term,
stands in its proper place, next the cathedral, flanking the apsis. One
of the wings faces the market square, where public gratitude has erected
a marble statue to Pope Benedict XIII., the immortal benefactor of the
city, of which he had been archbishop under the title of Cardinal
Orsini. The entrance is to the south. At the west, from the garden
terrace, or the windows of the _conventino_, is a superb view over a
fertile valley, the verdure of which extends up the very sides of the
mountains that fade away in bluish tints on the horizon. It is at once
in the city from the proximity of the inhabitants, and in the country as
to its pure air, calm solitude, and the enchanting aspect of a landscape
that always commands attention and admiration.
The building is not, strictly speaking, a palace.[52] It is large and
spacious, but not lofty or elegant. Nothing in its exterior bespeaks its
occupant. It might be taken for a theological seminary or a convent,
wrapped as it is in gloomy silence, and surrounded by thick walls. Its
general appearance is dismal and unattractive. Only an archæologist
would take any pleasure in examining the huge stones of which the walls
are built. These stones were hewn out in the time of the Romans, and
more than one have the characteristic _trou de louve_ by which they were
raised and put in place. They were probably taken from the amphitheatre,
for the misfortune that made the Coliseum at Rome an inexhaustible
quarry for the construction of so many palaces, like the Farnese,
Barberini, etc., also befell the theatre of Beneventum, of which but a
bare outline remains, though great blocks from it are to be found at
every step in the private dwellings and the walls that surround the
city. After the earthquakes of June 5, 1688, and March 4, 1702, the
exterior of the palace was greatly modified by Cardinal Orsini, but the
building, as a whole, is ancient, and many features of the walls, like
the belfry of the cathedral, carry us back to the middle ages. Let us
study it in detail, for in more than one respect it presents a model
worthy of imitation.[53]
The portal of the palace is monumental. It has a semi-circular arch,
which is more graceful than a square entrance, and more conformable to
ecclesiastical traditions. And the tympanum which fits into the arch or
ogive offers ample space to the sculptor or painter for decoration.
Against the lintel rest the folding doors. These are open all day,
however, for the house of a bishop is like that of a father who cannot
shut out his children. Above are the arms of Cardinal Orsini, carven in
stone. Two other scutcheons once hung beside them: one of Pius IX.,
destroyed when his temporal power was suppressed in the duchy of
Beneventum—that is, in 1860, when the kingdom of Naples was overrun by
the Garibaldian hordes; the other that of Cardinal Carafa, the actual
archbishop, who was driven into exile, and whose palace was devastated.
Two enormous lions, taken from the front of the Duomo, stand at the
sides of the entrance. They have come down from Roman times. They are
not of remarkable workmanship, but the outlines are good. There is life
in their partly stretched-out forms, and pride in the pose of their
heads. The paws are pressed resolutely together. One of them grasps a
head covered with a helmet, and the other the remains, probably, of one
of those nude children to be seen in the mouths of the crouching lions
watching at the doors of the churches at Rome, symbolic of helplessness
and innocence that need aid and protection from the strong. When the
lion is represented crushing a beast or holding a warrior’s head, it
signifies the vice to be overcome, the enemy to be annihilated.
Some look upon the lion as the emblem of justice. This queen of the
cardinal virtues is generally represented as a woman with various
attributes, such as the book of the law, the balance wherein actions are
weighed, the sword to smite the guilty, the eagle to show her imperial
nature, and the globe indicating the extent of her empire. On the public
square at Bari is to be seen a lion of the twelfth century, with the
brief but significant inscription, CVSTOS IVSTICIE, on its collar. The
lion, then, does not represent justice itself. That virtue is only
exercised in the temple, either by God or by his representative. But the
lion stands, like the guardian of Justice, watching at the door of the
Holy Place in which she has taken up her abode. Nothing, then, could be
more suitable for the door of a bishop, the unflinching enemy of vice as
well as the sure protector of virtue, than these two lions, type of the
power conferred by the church on her ministers. And they are specially
emblematic of the firmness and energy of Cardinal Orsini, who had them
placed here.
The wall through which the gateway is cut is bordered by a line of
merlons, the peculiar form of which reminds one of Cordova and the
Alhambra. They produce a picturesque effect, but are not of the
slightest utility. They are the relics of feudal authority and power,
the last vestige of which is the annual payment of the _cathédratique_,
identical with the nominal tribute some lords required of their vassals,
of no importance in itself, but typical of the honor due from the
inferior to the pre-eminence of his lawful chief—_in signum præeminentiæ
et honoris_, to quote the holy canons revived by Cardinal Orsini, and
maintained to our day, particularly in this point, by the collateral
descendant of Pope Paul IV., who for more than thirty years has occupied
the see of Beneventum.
From the top of the wall rises one of those small open belfries called
bell-gables. It is of the most primitive construction, being a mere
extension of a part of the wall through which an opening for a bell has
been made. It terminates in a gable like a mitre, on which are an iron
cross _fleurdelisée_ and a small vane to mark the direction of the wind.
The cross is always appropriate for a belfry, large or small, if not
obligatory, as Anastasius the Bibliothecarius insists in his works. The
vane is no less traditional at Rome, where it is generally in the shape
of a little banner (the origin of which is quite feudal), wherein the
armorial ensigns are so cut as to be emblazoned against the azure sky.
Here the vane is shaped like a flame. It once bore the arms of the
resident archbishop, but the rain has washed off the color, and the
surface is now corroded by rust.
The small bell is of the kind called _nola_. In ancient times it was
rung whenever the archbishop left his palace or re-entered it, as the
bells of St. Peter’s at Rome announce the visit and departure of the
pope. Later it only rang when he set out on a journey and at his coming
back. Now it is mute, and no longer announces his appearance in public
or his return to the palace.
Passing through the gateway, we come to the court. On the left are the
carriage and store houses, and, beyond, the saddle-room, which was quite
brilliant in former times when the cardinals went forth in gala array.
At the right is an arched passage leading to the interior of the palace,
and further on is the porter’s lodge, formerly the guard-house of the
_curia armata_.
Around the court are many ancient monuments and inscriptions, which
constitute a small museum, begun long since by the archbishops. There is
an Egyptian obelisk of red granite, broken in two, which once stood in
the cathedral court. It is covered from top to bottom with hieroglyphics
relating to the deeds of some old king. Domitian consecrated it to Isis.
On another side are three fragments of fine marble columns: one of
_cipollino_, so called on account of its greenish veins, which resemble
those of an onion, in Italian _cipolla_; the second, of what is called
_porta santa_, because the casing of the door in the Vatican basilica,
opened only at the Jubilee, is of this marble, which is of a pale violet
color, or a purple that has lost its freshness; and the third is of
_breccia corallina_, the white ground of which is relieved by reddish
veins.
The ancient inscriptions collected here, whether sepulchral, votive, or
commemorative, are not rare. But they are noteworthy for their clearness
and brevity. How expressive, for instance, are these four lines
consecrated to the _manes_ of Vibbius Optatus, who died in the flower of
youth:
D. M. A. Vibbio . Opta
To. Vix. An. XI. M. XI. D. XIX.
Parent. Infelicissimi
Fecer.
The unfortunate parents had no illustrious name to bequeath to
posterity. The discreet marble only echoes a profound grief.
Here is a landmark, rounded at the top, and hewn to a point at the
bottom, the better to insert it in the ground, that once stood on the
Appian Way, which passes triumphantly through the arch raised to the
glory of Trajan at one end of Beneventum.
Beneventum, which copied Rome, even in the device of its senate: S. P.
Q. B.—_Senatus populusque Beneventanus_—had a magistrature of ediles at
its head, who made generous provision for the embellishment of the city.
Here is a pedestal on which this municipal corps pompously proclaimed
itself:
Splendidissimus ordo Beneventanorum.
One cannot help exclaiming, in view of the present order of things:
“Comment en un plomb vil l’or pur s’est-il changé!”
How into vile dross hath the pure gold changed!
The Romans loved statuary, and were lavish of it in all their public as
well as private dwellings. Above all, their sculptors produced
divinities and illustrious men, but sometimes the principal members of a
household, if not the whole family, to adorn the _atrium_. Who does not
remember the Balbus family in the Museum at Naples, the father and son
on horseback, and the rest gathered around them? Here we find several
statues, both nude and draped. Nudity was chiefly confined to heroes and
the gods. It signified apotheosis—the ascension to a higher world. The
terrestrial garb was laid aside; only a glorified body remained. Pagan
art showed itself incapable of fully expressing a state indicated in the
middle ages by a radiance surrounding the transfigured body. We have an
admirable example of the immediate change to the glorified state in
Perugino’s immortal production in the Sala del Cambio at Perugia. There
the bankers and money-changers have constantly before their eyes a
symbol of the change wrought by divine power on a body in the state of
celestial beatitude. Paganism divested the body of its garments, but did
not render it luminous. It only invented a symbol which the church has
retained to designate the saints—the nimbus around the head, as the most
noble part of man because the seat of the intelligence. But it could go
no further. From Apollo, who alone had the nimbus in the beginning to
express in a measure the luminous atmosphere of the sun, personified in
him, it passed to other divinities, and finally even to those to whom
the senate accorded the title of divine, thus becoming the equivalent of
_divus_. It is really amusing to see, on the Arch of Constantine at
Rome, the Emperor Trajan so divinized that his bare head is surrounded
by a nimbus, though he is engaged in the chase. The nude among the
Romans was, therefore, a conventional way of expressing what was right
in substance, the immutation wrought by glory, and was not intended to
excite ignoble passion. In other cases their statues were modestly
draped, though sometimes a little too much of the form was revealed by
the clinging folds of the garments.
There are several sarcophagi in the court, with nothing extraordinary
about them, but even in the most unpretending affording proof of
artistic taste. They are adorned with scenic masques, vases of fruit,
the genii of the seasons, etc., which have their significance and are
not without poetry. Here is one with a medallion of its former occupant
in the centre—a portrait full of life and animation, as if he still were
under illusion as to his nothingness. It is supported by two genii,
winged and nude, as if bearing him to the celestial regions—winged,
because they are fulfilling a mission; nude, to indicate their celestial
origin. This emblem was common in ancient times. The middle ages did
nothing but Christianize it by substituting angels for genii, and
placing in their hands, not the body, but the soul, of the deceased,
about to receive the reward of his sanctity and good works. We see them
on the tomb of King Dagobert, in the abbatial church of St. Denis,
snatching the soul of the king from the demon who was endeavoring to
bear it away.
But we have lingered too long in the precincts. Let us enter the palace,
and first visit the prisons—for prisons there are, the archbishop of
Beneventum, as we have said, having formerly a twofold jurisdiction,
temporal as well as spiritual. His tribunal of justice imposed the
canonical penalties. Fines seem to have been specially employed, for
among the officials of the Curia there was one to receive and apply them
to some religious object. At the same time there was a register in which
they were faithfully recorded. There were, too, different degrees of
imprisonment. In the _carcere alla larga_ there was comparative liberty.
The _purgatorio_ indicates a temporary expiation. The _inferno_ was
perhaps the prison from which death alone could be looked forward to as
a release. The two latter correspond to the _carcere duro_ of the
Venetians. There are similar ones, but not so spacious, in the
governor’s castle overlooking Beneventum, which also bore the terrible
names of _purgatorio_ and _inferno_.[54] Cardinal Orsini, who, though
severe, was of a humane disposition, visited these prisons in 1704, at
which time there were only three prisoners, it appears, from the report
of his visit. After assuring himself that the vaults were in a good
condition, capable of resisting all efforts at escape, _confornicatæ et
proinde tutæ_, he saw the necessity of obviating the dampness of the
ground by a brick pavement, _ut humiditas arceatur_, and ordered the
_inferno_ to be closed for ever, because, as he said, it was a very damp
and atrocious place. A thoughtfulness so full of humanity is something
to dwell on. The very text should be cited: “Eminentissimus
archiepiscopus utpote humidissimam et immanissimam claudi demandavit et
quod sub pœna excommunicationis nemo ibi detendatur.” The prisoners must
have been delighted at a threat so much to their advantage.
The cardinal, preoccupied also with their spiritual condition, found
means of providing them with a chapel where they could attend Mass and
on festivals hear a sermon. Their cells were sprinkled with holy water
to drive away the malign spirit, and ornamented with pictures of
devotion. They were forbidden to play cards or read bad books, and were
to go to confession six times a year—at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday,
St. Peter’s day, Assumption, and All Saints. Every month the
vicar-general visited them to listen to their grievances, remove all
grounds of complaint, and assure himself that all orders had been
executed. And the cardinal, who always kept an eye on everything
himself, went to see them twice a year.
One item in the register of accounts is particularly touching. Cardinal
Orsini increased the ration of bread from time to time at his own
expense, and had a fire made in the winter, that the prisoners might not
suffer from the cold.
The three soldiers employed to make the necessary arrests were under the
command of a _baricello_, or corporal, all of whom, with the jailer,
were lodged in the _guardiola_ beside the arched passage which connects
the two interior courts.
The second court is bounded on one side by the sacristy of the
cathedral, and on the other by the stables and the jubilee hospice. The
stables, built by Mgr. Pacca (of the same family from which the cardinal
of that name descended), are large enough for about twenty horses—none
too many for the archbishop and his suite, for his visits could not
always be made in a carriage. Even in our day a cross-bearer precedes
his eminence on horseback, clothed in a violet cassock and _mantellone_,
and in former times the _cortége_ must have been much more imposing.
The hospice affords a proof of Cardinal Orsini’s inexhaustible charity.
He had before built a special asylum for pilgrims, not far from the
palace, under the title of St. Bartholomew, patron of the city. There is
nothing left now to remind one of it, except a narrow street still
called the _Via dei pellegrini_. But on extraordinary occasions, as at
the time of a jubilee, this asylum was insufficient, and the cardinal
accordingly set apart a whole wing of his palace to lodge those who came
to Beneventum or were on their way to Rome to gain the indulgence of the
Holy Year. This hospice had two entrances to admit the sexes separately:
one opening into the first court, the other into the second. The latter
has on its lintel this inscription, which gives the precise date and
object of the foundation:
Xenodochivm Archiepiscopale
Vrsinvm pro An. Ivbilæi MDCC.
Nor was the cardinal content to give them benches and tables in such
numbers as still to be spoken of. He had the bare walls relieved by
paintings of some religious subject. In the room where public prayers
were offered and the rosary sung, as it still is daily in the cathedral
to a peculiar air handed down by tradition, was painted Our Lady of the
Rosary, with St. Dominic and St. Catharine of Siena at her feet. In the
refectory was depicted a scene from the life of the Blessed Ambrogio
Sansedoni, a Dominican friar. He was in the habit of serving five
pilgrims in honor of the five wounds of our Lord. One day, while waiting
on his guests, his eyes being opened by the Holy Spirit, denoted by the
white dove on his shoulder, he saw with astonishment that they were five
angels sent by God to reward his charity. In the room where the
pilgrims’ feet were washed is to be seen the Blessed Andrea de Franchi,
also a Dominican, humbly prostrate before a pilgrim who afterwards
reveals himself to be the Saviour.
In the arched passage we find a staircase, leading on the one hand to
the hall of state, and on the other to the curia. Taking the latter
direction, we pass beneath a statue of St. Philip Neri, larger than
life, for which reason it is called St. Filippone. Before it burns a
votive lamp, a tribute of gratitude from Cardinal Orsini. Higher up are
two medallions of the fifteenth century: one of the Blessed Virgin
modestly veiled, her hands folded, borne to heaven by two angels; the
other represents St. Mark with his usual attribute, the winged lion. The
walls of the court-room are enlivened by a series of landscapes,
alternating with the Orsini arms, but the most appropriate decoration is
the sentence from the writings of St. Jerome:
Privsqvam avdias
Ne Ivdicaveris
Qvemqvam
D. Hieron:
De Sept: eccl.
Gradibvs.
To judge no one without first hearing him is one of those axioms it
seems useless to repeat, and yet how many precipitate judgments, how
many sentences that would not be rendered, were so obvious a duty
heeded!
The metropolitan archives are between the chancery and the office of the
vicar-general, which pour into it every week a mass of official
documents for preservation. On the ceiling are emblazoned the arms of
Cardinal Banditi, who fitted up the room with conveniences for the
registers and papers, distributing them, according to their contents,
among the large pigeon-holes which extend from the floor to the very
ceiling, and are literally crammed with documents. To find one’s way
through such an accumulation requires the sagacity and good memory of an
archivist like the present one, whose patience is only equalled by his
wish to oblige. Beneventum is full of such excellent priests, who are
ready to spend their leisure moments in aiding you in your researches.
It is here Cardinal Orsini may best be studied, and that we can learn to
what an extent he sacrificed himself for his flock, thereby meriting to
become, by the unanimous suffrage of the Sacred College, the successor
of Pope Innocent XIII. His incessant activity is shown by the _Diario_
of six volumes in folio in which, till his elevation to the Papacy, his
secretary, day by day, noted down the most minute details of his
official life. It begins December 1, 1685, the date of his preconization
as archbishop of Beneventum by Pope Innocent XI.
The contents refer chiefly to his pastoral visits, ordinations, both
regular and extraordinary; assisting at the offices of the cathedral,
preaching in pontificals with seven deacons around him; confirmation,
with examination of the children on the eve; general communions,
baptisms, visits to the dying, visits of devotion to churches;
consecration of bishops, churches, altars, and chalices; blessings of
all kinds, including vestments; religious professions; processions
wearing the red hat; attending lectures on the Holy Scriptures by a
theologian; exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, absolution of the
excommunicated, synods, provincial councils, consultations in cases of
conscience, instructions to the people after the Gospel, saying the
rosary with the faithful, teaching children the catechism, journeys,
etc., etc.
At the end of the year a summary was made of his principal labors. We
give that of the year 1694: Cardinal Orsini baptized 67 children and
confirmed 13,851; conferred orders on 841 clerks, 503 porters, 450
lectors, 449 exorcists, 435 acolytes, 436 subdeacons, 434 deacons, and
457 priests; consecrated 12 bishops, 100 churches, 100 stationary
altars, 500 portable altars, 176 patens, and 188 chalices; blessed 5
abbots and 4 abbesses; received the profession of 88 nuns; performed 6
marriages; administered extreme unction 8 times; placed 13
corner-stones, and blessed 14 cemeteries and 234 bells.
What a proof of his activity, combined with a very complicated
administration! But let us cite a few items from this unpretending
diary:
“In the evening I kept vigil before the relics exposed in the church
to be consecrated on the morrow.
“In the morning I solemnly consecrated the church of the Most Holy
Annunciation at Jelsi, preached to the congregation, and then said
Low Mass. This church is the CXXXV.
“I solemnly administered the sacrament of confirmation in the church
to 34 boys and 24 girls, in all 58.
“Assisted _in cappa_ at a sermon on the Blessed Sacrament by one of
the students of my seminary.
“Assisted _in cappa_ at the Mass of the feria, chanted (it was in
Lent), and at the sermon.
“At Fragnitello I was received with the usual ceremonies, but, what
was unusual (and this greatly affected me), all the men, women, and
children came out to meet me a mile distant, with olive branches in
their hands, showing by this manifestation the joy in their hearts.
God be for ever blessed!”
At the end of the year the cardinal signed the register to guarantee the
authenticity of the contents. He adopted this formula:
“Annus 1695, Deo propitio, hic terminatur.
“Ita est. Ego fr. Vin. Mar. card. archiepiscopus m(_anu_) p(_ropria_).”
The old palaces had a hall of state for exceptional occasions, when the
bishop had to appear in all his dignity. There is such an apartment
here, and it is of grand proportions. It is adorned with the portraits
and arms of the prelates who have occupied the see, with a concise
notice of each. Among them are fourteen saints and two _beati_: viz.,
SS. Photinus, Januarius, Dorus, Apollonius, Cassian, Januarius II.,
Emilius, John, Tamarus, Sophus, Marcian, Zeno, Barbato, and Milon. The
latter belongs to the eleventh century, St. Photinus to the first, and
the remainder range between the fourth and seventh. The Blessed Giacomo
Capocci and Blessed Monaldi lived in the fourteenth century. Let us
hope, as the cause has been introduced, we may soon add the Venerable
Orsini.
From St. Photinus to his Eminence Cardinal Carafa di Traeto there are
fifty-one bishops and seventy-one archbishops. The see was not made
archiepiscopal till the year 969, during the pontificate of Pope John
XIII. Of the twenty-three cardinal archbishops two became popes:
Alexander Farnese, under the name of Paul III.; and Cardinal Orsini,
under that of Benedict XIII. Three other popes were likewise from
Beneventum—St. Felix (526), Victor III. (1086), and Gregory VIII.
(1187).
As an example of the concise and elegant manner in which these prelates’
lives are noticed, we give that of St. Milon, a native of Auvergne:
“LIX. Archiep. VIII. S. Milo ex Arvernia
in Gallia oriundus, VIII. Beneventanus
archiepiscopus, ille idem qui
pietate et literis Stephanum Grandimontensis
familiæ fundatorem erudivit. Provincialem
synodum consummavit A.D.
MLXXV. Obiit die XXIII. Februarii
A.D. MLXXVI. cum sedisset paucis
supra annum mensibus.”
Above these records of the bishops is a long array of armorial ensigns,
in which, unfortunately, the arms and seal are often confounded, though
essentially different. The archbishops of Beneventum have used for ages
a seal of lead on their diplomas and licenses, similar to the bulla of
the popes. On one side, separated by a cross, are the heads of the
Blessed Virgin, titular of the cathedral, and of St. Bartholomew, the
patron of the city and diocese. On the other side are the name and title
of the actual archbishop. This seal, in spite of the principles of
archæology and heraldry, is given as a coat of arms to the bishops who
had none, beginning with St. Photinus, and continuing to the seventh
century. From the time of St. Barbato, who died in 682, another seal is
added in _parti_ to the bulla, representing a bishop on horseback
crossing a bridge and precipitating a dragon into the water. This is
doubtless St. Barbato himself, and perhaps refers to the golden viper
which he abolished the worship of at Beneventum, transforming it into a
chalice, on which, says tradition, was graven the Lord’s Supper.[55]
This counter-seal is maintained from the seventh to the eleventh
century, when the bulla is resumed under Amelius (1072).
The first arms really heraldic make their appearance under Cardinal
Roger, the sixteenth archbishop, who died in 1221. The red hat is found
on the escutcheons of the twelfth century, though not conceded to
cardinals till about a hundred years later (at the Council of Lyons),
and not to be seen on their arms before the fourteenth century. But this
may be on the same principle that St. Jerome is usually represented with
a cardinal’s hat at his side.
The bulla, seal, and arms, from the first, bear the tiara and crosier.
The latter adds nothing to the significance, and does not imply any
special privilege, being common to bishops and abbots. As to the tiara,
even with a single crown at the base, it is a manifest usurpation. The
archbishops of Beneventum, it is true, wore it in the middle ages, as is
shown by a document of the fourteenth century and the reliefs on the
bronze doors of the cathedral. But Paul II., and later St. Pius V., by a
_motu proprio_, the original of which is to be seen in the archives of
the chapter, condemned the practice in formal terms. If the tiara is no
longer admissible on ceremonial occasions, why retain it on the arms?
And this tiara is boldly surrounded by a nimbus when placed over the
arms of the canonized bishops, though none of them ever wore it, with
the exception, perhaps, of St. Milon. The nimbus is suitable for the
head, which represents the whole body, whereas the covering of the head,
however sonorous its name or rich its make, should not have an emblem
which denotes elevation on our altars and a claim to public veneration.
This would be a grave error, infringing on the liturgy as well as
iconography.
The archbishops of Beneventum had a mania for imitating the pope. Thus,
they wore the tiara, had the Blessed Sacrament borne before them in
their visits, styled themselves _Servus servorum Dei_, issued diplomas
in solemn form after the style of the Cancellaria, sealed them _sub
plumbo_, and imposed on the bishops of the province the annual visit _ad
limina B. Bartholomæi apostoli_. Of all these usurpations, only the
tiara remains on the arms, and the bulla on the licenses; but even these
are too much, for the tiara and bulla are essentially papal, and
rightfully belong to the Sovereign Pontiff alone.
On the walls of the apartment are painted _en camaïeu_ all the sainted
bishops of Beneventum in simulated niches, clothed pontifically, with
the tiara on their heads. One alone has a distinguishing attribute—St.
Barbato, who has in his hand the viper of gold. St. Photinus, according
to the Diptychon of Beneventum, was ordained and sent here by St. Peter
in the year 40. He is believed to be of Greek origin. From him to St.
Januarius, who was martyred in 305, is a long interval with no names,
though tradition tells us the see had eleven occupants in the time. This
loss of names is said to be owing to Diocletian, who ordered the
writings of Christians to be destroyed. There is a similar vacancy in
all the sees in France, but this is no argument against their apostolic
origin. The first founders might receive their mission from St. Peter or
his immediate successors, and the difficulties of the times might
prevent their being at once replaced. The churches had to exist as best
they could for a long period, and were perhaps governed by bishops with
no fixed residence or distinct territory.
To complete the parallel with Rome, Beneventum is said to have had a
woman for one of its bishops, as the papal see, according to its
enemies, was fraudulently occupied by Pope Joan. Cardinal Orsini
spiritedly replies to this calumny in the noble words inscribed next the
name of Bishop Enrico, who died in 1170: “_Ex errore in necrologio
monialium S. Petri orta fuit fabula de Sebastiana moniali pro
archiepiscopo habita ne fabula sua vacaret Beneventana Sedes in hac
Sebastiana ut Romana de sua Johanna_.” This calumny sprang from a false
interpretation of the record in the necrology of the abbey of San Pietro
for November 29: “_Obiit archiepiscopus et Sebastian. mon._” The
archbishop and the nun might certainly die on the same day, without
being, on that account, one and the same person.
On the east wall of the hall is painted the city of Beneventum,
surrounded by the principal towns of the diocese and the sees of the
suffragans. As their number is considerable, the frescos are continued
in the passage leading to the sacristy. They are not without interest,
though perhaps maps would be preferable, after the manner of those, so
striking and complete, which adorn the gallery of Gregory XIII. at the
Vatican.
As conferences and ecclesiastical assemblies, as well as the _Mandatum_
on Holy Thursday, were held in this hall, there is a permanent throne of
carved wood, but it stands between the windows on one side, instead of
being at the end _in capite aulæ_, the proper place, where the entrance
now is from the private apartments.
One of the doors in the hall opens into the Monte di Pietà, founded by
Cardinal Orsini to relieve the poor of his diocese, where money was lent
on articles pledged and without the least interest, conformably to the
bulls of Leo X. and Paul V., which definitely regulated such
institutions. He established, moreover, a _Mons Frumentarius_, or wheat
fund, to furnish grain to the poor in want of bread, or to sow, at the
mere recommendation of their curate, and inscribed over the door
appropriate texts from Holy Writ, showing him to be the comforter of the
poor:
_Mons frumentarius Beneventanus erectus anno Domini 1694._
_Factus es fortitudo pauperi, fortitudo egeno_[56] (Isaias xxv.)
_Eripiet de angustia[57] pauperem_ (Job xxxvi.)
Revolutions have naturally put an end to these charitable institutions,
without substituting anything more to the advantage of the people, but
they cannot efface the memory of the incomparable prelate who founded
them. Canonico Feuli has reason to say in his _Bulletino Ecclesiastico_
that “others may equal Orsini, but can never surpass him.”
At the top of the staircase is a kind of _marquise_, supported by
elegant columns, before the door leading to the private apartments.
Above are the Orsini arms of inlaid marbles, the colors conformed to the
rules of heraldry, and the inscription:
Fr. Vinc. Maria. Ord. Præd. Card. Ursino. Archiep. An. MDCCVIII.
which reminds us that Cardinal Orsini belonged to the Dominican Order.
Even when pope he continued to be a _frate_. From him emanated the
celebrated constitution which admonished bishops chosen from the regular
orders to remember, by the color of their costume, the solemn profession
they had once made.
The most striking thing in the antechamber is a double band of
emblematic medallions on the walls, with explanatory mottoes, such as
were popular in the sixteenth century. They all refer to the obligations
of a bishop, and evidently allude to Cardinal Orsini as the model of
one. They begin with the holy name of God in Greek, with the _Sanctus,
Sanctus, Sanctus_, the angels’ eternal song of praise. We will rapidly
review the other emblems here employed to raise the mind from the
visible to the invisible, the material to the spiritual.
The telescope, which enables the human eye to penetrate the profound
mysteries of the heavens. So the spiritual world is opened by prayer and
meditation. _Alta a longe cognoscit_ (Ps. cxxxvii. 6).
A dog, guarding the fold: emblem of pastoral vigilance. _Vt vitam
habeant_ (St. John x. 10).
The mitre, supported by a column: episcopal firmness. _Firmalitvr et non
flectetvr_ (Ecclus. xv. 3).
The wine-press overflowing with the juice of the grape: emblem of the
spiritual harvest. _Vt fructvm plvs afferat_ (St. John xv. 2).
A clock, which tells the hours and minutes: the value of time.
_Particvla non te prætereat_ (Ecclus. xiv. 14).
The crane, emblem of vigilance, because it was formerly believed to
sleep on one foot; the other holding a stone, which, when it fell, awoke
it. _Excvbat in custodiis_ (Num. xviii. 4).
The horse, held in check by a vigorous hand: self-government. _Ne
declines in ira_ (Ps. xxvi. 9).
The elephant, believed every morning to adore the sun at its rising:
humility before God. _Hvmiliat semetipsvm_ (Philipp. ii. 8).
The lamp which burns and gives light: figure of the bishop consuming
himself for others. _Vt ardeat et lvceat_ (St. John v. 35).[58]
The pelican, nourishing its young with the blood from its own breast: a
lively expression of extreme devotedness. _Reficiam vos_ (St. Matt. xi.
28).
The crosier is the shepherd’s crook. It terminates with a graceful hook
for the purpose of drawing the lambs more gently. It was once a saying:
“It is good to live under the crosier!” _Svm pastor bonvs_ (St. John x.
2).
The sun, shedding its rays on a balance: equity under the inflexible eye
of God. _Æqvitatem vidit vvltvs eivs_ (Ps. x. 8).
The honeycomb, in which the bee deposits its honey gathered from the
flowers: activity and sweetness. _Mansvetvm exaltant_ (Ps. cxlix. 4).
The stag, which, according to an old notion, attracted serpents by its
breath in order to exterminate them: the might of the Holy Spirit, of
which a bishop is the organ. _Flavit Spiritvs eivs_ (Ps. cxlvii. 18).
The trumpet, which, though sonorous, can give forth sweet notes. _In
spiritv lenitatis_ (Gal. vi. 1).
The mill, turned by the water, grinds wheat to feed the hungry. A
bishop, above all, should be the father of the poor and needy. _Frangit
esvrienti_ (Isai. lviii. 7).
A painting representing the sun: the divine attributes should be
reproduced in a bishop. _In eandem imaginem_ (2 Cor. iii. 18).
The fox, emblem of the transgressor, flies before the dog, symbol of
episcopal vigilance. _A facie tva fvgiam_ (Ps. cxxxviii. 7).
The dolphin, by the odor it exhales, draws to it the fish of the sea:
the influence of virtue. _In odorem cvrrimvs_ (Cant. i. 3).
An anvil, struck by two hammers at once, without being moved: strength
to resist exterior assaults. _Fortitvdinem meam cvstodiam_ (Ps. lviii.
10).
The phœnix, which springs to new life on the pile where it is consumed:
the power of multiplying time. _Mvltiplicabo dies_ (Prov. ix. 2).
The bear, taking its young in its paws, to teach them to stand and walk:
paternal direction of souls. _Donec formetvr_ (Gal. iv. 19).
The compass, turning its needle to the polar star. A bishop should not
be guided by human influences. _Hanc reqviram_ (Ps. xxvi. 4).
The rain, watering the garden: going about doing good. _Pertransiit
benefaciendo_ (Acts x. 38).
The pomegranate contains a great number of seeds: a bishop shelters the
multitude. _Coperit mvltitvdinem_ (St. James v. 20).
The mitre, surrounded by an aureola: the splendor sanctity adds to the
episcopal dignity. _Contvlit et splendorem_ (Judith x. 4).
The eagle, trying its eaglets by making them look at the sun: God alone
should be looked to in trial. _Cvm probatvs fverit_ (St. James i. 12).
A tree, the vigor of which is only increased by age: experience
increases one’s efficiency. _Fortior cvm senverit_ (Prov. xxii. 6).
At one end of the antechamber is the library, formerly containing a fine
collection of books, mostly belonging to Cardinal Orsini, but now
unfortunately scattered. He also established a printing-press in the
palace for the purpose of publishing his own edicts, licenses, and
pamphlets for the direction of his clergy. A small oratory opens into
the library with its marble altar turned towards the East and its walls
covered with paintings. One of these is a votive picture from Cardinal
Orsini after his miraculous preservation in the earthquake of 1688 by
the special intervention of St. Philip Neri, representing him buried
among the ruins of his palace, his head alone visible, resting on a
picture of the saint, who, in consequence of this memorable
circumstance, has ever since been regarded as one of the patrons of
Beneventum.
It is said that when Cardinal Orsini was leaving Beneventum for Rome, he
turned towards the weeping inhabitants, and, after praying silently for
an instant, promised them his protection henceforth against earthquakes,
and, in fact, not only has the city been spared when serious disasters
have occurred in the country around, but no citizen of Beneventum has
received any injury, even when exposed elsewhere to terrible danger.
Many families keep with veneration a bust of the holy cardinal in their
houses, or some object once belonging to him, and attribute to this
devotion a special protection.
There is nothing of interest in the private rooms once occupied by
Cardinal Orsini. One would like to see his unpretending furniture, his
pictures of devotion, the kneeling-stool where he so often prayed for
his flock, and the books he daily used, but they are all gone. There is
not even an authentic likeness of him,[59] though he resided here
thirty-eight years, and expended in the restoration and embellishment of
the palace 64,589 ducats of his personal fortune.
We have already alluded to the quarter of the palace called _il
conventino_, because it has the aspect of a monastery. It is divided by
a corridor, with cells on both sides that communicate with each other,
or can be made private at pleasure. Here, without any luxury or display,
Cardinal Orsini lodged the bishops convoked for the provincial councils,
and generously provided for every expense these assemblies involved. The
priests who accompanied them were lodged in the convent of San Modesto,
where nothing was wanting to their comfort. The register of accounts
gives some curious details as to the supplies. Macaroni necessarily
played an important _rôle_. Snow was furnished for refreshing drinks.
And as the wine called Lachryma would doubtless have been too heavy, it
was previously tempered by a strong addition of the ordinary red wine!
But the patience of the reader is already exhausted with these details.
As we have implied, the archiepiscopal palace of Beneventum is not
precisely artistic, and yet it is interesting and curious. If the
account has been unreasonably prolonged, the memory of Cardinal Orsini
is a sufficient justification. We cannot make too prominent the name and
labors of those who lived only for the church, and sacrificed themselves
for its development and glory. _Quam multa, quam opportuna, quam grandia
accepta referunt beneficia_, let us say, in conclusion, with the
inscription on the hospital at Beneventum, graven on marble to the
praise of Fra Vincenzo Maria, priest of the title of St. Sixtus,
Cardinal Orsini.
Footnote 51:
_Le Palais Archiépiscopal de Bénévent._ Par Mgr. X. Barbier de
Montault, prélat de la maison de Sa Sainteté. Arras: A. Planque et
Cie. 1875.
Footnote 52:
The word palace is, by us, reserved for exceptional edifices that are
vaster, loftier, and more highly ornamented than the dwelling of a
merely private individual. But the Italian, who loves sonorous
epithets, is more indiscriminate in its application. His word
_palazzo_ is susceptible of two meanings, one referring to the
edifice, and the other to the person who inhabits it. In the latter
sense it is applied to the residence of any high dignitary or person
of office, however little in accordance it may be with his station. It
is his rank which gives importance to his dwelling, and a name that
sets it apart and prevents it from being confounded with the houses of
people merely in easy circumstances.
Footnote 53:
In order to correspond fully to the wish expressed so _gracieusement_
by the Rev. Father Hecker, founder of the Paulists, to have the plan
of a building, with its ornamentation, in conformity with Roman
traditions, we have taken the principal features of the palace at
Beneventum as the model of that which the Catholics of America propose
offering the cardinal of New York. The development of this
architectonic and iconographic project will be the subject of a
special essay.—_Note of Mgr. Barbier de Montault._
Footnote 54:
In an official paper at Dijon, dated Sept. 26, 1511, mention is made
of an obscure dungeon under the name of _cachot d’enfer_.
Footnote 55:
St. Barbato’s triumphal entrance into Beneventum was by a gateway that
has preserved the name of Porta Gloriosa.
Footnote 56:
_In tribulatione sua_ (Isa. xxv. 4).
Footnote 57:
_De angustia sua_ (Job xxxvi. 15).
Footnote 58:
These quotations are often modified—the idea, rather than the exact
words, being aimed at.
Footnote 59:
There are three portraits of Cardinal Orsini in the cathedral, taken
at different periods of his life. The forehead is high and well
developed. The eye is pleasant and sympathetic, but keen and
penetrating. The nose has a bold outline, indicative of his energetic
will. The mouth is contracted at the corners, giving it an expression
of bitterness and dissatisfaction. The face is full, and tells of life
and vigor.
“JUXTA CRUCEM.”
“Dear Lord,” we say, “could we have stood
With thy sweet Mother and Saint John
Beside thy cross; or knelt and clung—
Heedless what ruffian eyes look’d on—
With Magdalen’s wild grief, and flung
Our arms about th’ ensanguined wood!...”
But have we not the Crucified
Among us, “even at the door”?
Whom else behold we, day by day,
In the sore-laden, patient poor?
And where disease makes want its prey,
Can we not stand _that_ cross beside?
O blest vocation, theirs who come,
At chosen duty’s high behest,
To soothe the squalid couch of pain
With pledges of a better rest
Than all earth’s wealth can give or gain,
And whispers of eternal home!
Never so near our Lord as then,
We touch _His_ Wounds—more heal’d than healing:
Never so close to Mary’s Heart,
Hear too for _us_ its throbs appealing:
And when for other scenes we part,
It is with John and Magdalen.
THE LITERARY EXTRAVAGANCE OF THE DAY.
La Bruyère sees in all extravagance of phrase some symptom of weakness.
“To say modestly of anything it is good or it is bad, and to give
reasons why it is so, needs good sense and expression. It is much
shorter to pronounce in a decisive tone either that it is execrable or
admirable.” He himself is a model of clearness and exactness of
expression. His English counterpart is Swift, of whom Thackeray said:
“He writes as if for the police.” Nothing in literature surpasses the
vraisemblance of _Gulliver’s Travels_, which reads like a book of
authentic adventure. Its artlessness is the perfection of art concealing
art. La Bruyère also says: “What art is needed to be natural (_rentrer
dans la nature_)! What time, what rules, what attention, what labor to
dance with the ease and grace with which we walk, to sing as easily as
we talk, _to speak and express one’s self as one’s self thinks_!” To
speak or to write as one thinks seems, in these days of tumid and
extravagant expression, to be one of the lost arts. We generally say
either more or less than we think, usually more. For this reason we
should turn to the older classical writers, because of the importance
they attribute to diction, and the sense of duty they attach to it.
The new rhetorical doctrine is, “Let the style take care of itself. Give
us thought.” Robert Browning, whose poetry nobody understands, probably
not even himself, declares in favor of “burrs of expression that will
stick in the attention.” Any one who has scrambled through the
labyrinths of some of his poems has had “burrs” enough to suffice him
for a lifetime. It is clear that this plea for thought to the neglect of
style is an excuse for slovenly composition. There is no reason why
thought should not have clear, precise, and beautiful expression. Unless
style be made a subject of deep attention, and be brought to the
severest test of rhetorical criticism, there is an end of literature. If
the barbaric “yawp” of Walt Whitman is to pass for poetry; if the
pictorial daubs of J. A. Froude are to be considered historical
portraitures; and if extravagant and exaggerated forms of speech are to
be ranked as striking beauties, the literary critics and the lovers of
literature in general must gird themselves for a tougher battle for
letters than they ever did for any attack that threatened them from
Philistia. What we call the Extravagant School of Literature numbers
eminent names, and is by no means confined to the more obvious and
pronounced sensationalism of the daily press. Contemporaneous history,
criticism, poetry, sectarian theology, and, wonderful to say, philosophy
and science deal largely in exaggerated expression and extravagant
theory.
It may be some consolation to the newspapers and to the gentler sex,
both charged by the critics with the use of exaggeration and hyperbole,
that they but follow the example set them by grave modern historians and
scientists. The reckless writing in the journals, like the fluent gossip
at Mrs. Grundy’s tea-parties, is ephemeral. But extravagance aspires to
immortality in the pages of the historian. The description of Mary
Stuart’s beheading in Froude lacks even the historical accuracy of a New
York _Herald_ reporter’s account of an “execution.” Macaulay’s fantastic
analysis of motives exceeds in boldness of conjecture a journalist’s
article on the future policy of the Vatican. In both sets of examples
there is the same fault—unlimited speculation and unjustifiable comment.
Darwin observes some particular facts in natural history, and, in
defiance of a familiar rule in syllogisms, leaps at once to a universal
conclusion. Matthew Arnold, fired by his name as a critic, indulges in
extravagant speculation upon the relations of literature and dogma.
Science loses its cool head, and philosophy its cautious pace, on the
presentation of hitherto unexplained phenomena. Protestant theology
hears aghast that the Greek of the Epistle to the Hebrews is more
classic than that in the other Pauline epistles, and telegraphs the
discovery to the Board on the Revision of the Scriptures. The dainty
trick of Tennyson’s metre is the despair and admiration of inglorious
Miltons, whose hands cannot strike the resounding lyre with like
skilfulness, and thereupon jangle it in woful measures. Bret Harte makes
a “hit” in the delineation of wild Western life, and he is hailed as a
new-born genius. John Hay and Joaquin Miller assume the bays. A crowd of
nonentities rush before the public on the lecture platform, and their
extravagant nonsense brings them fame and fortune. The two classes react
upon each other for the worse. The extravagant never corrects his
faults, and the public never perceive them, so used have they become to
this baneful influence of sensationalism. It permeates popular religion.
A Protestant _Life of Christ_ by a prominent preacher reads like a dime
novel.
We readily pardon the extravagance of fiction; and _catechresis_ in
poetry does not call forth the severest censure of the critic. Any one
familiar with the hard conditions of modern newspaper writing will not
be disposed to judge harshly if both editor and reporter combine to make
their journal “spicy.” It may be that the high-pressure system on which
newspapers are conducted has exercised a marked influence upon all
classes of readers and writers. The New York dailies have a rather
questionable _élan_, which provincial journals follow from afar off. The
stupendous enterprise of sending expeditions to South Africa and to the
North Pole, the insatiable quest for news, the undisguised love of the
sensational characteristic of foremost journalism, have, in our opinion,
a debilitating and disastrous effect upon the scholarship and the
intellectual life of America. The showy story, the painfully
epigrammatic drama, and the pyrotechnical poetry of the land are
newspapery to the last degree. Journalists do not even seem to know or
realize the influence which they exert. What is a pointed and brilliant
editorial compared to the honest endeavor of a journalist to inculcate
sound ethical and social views in the minds of his readers? Who cares
about Jones’ slashing attack upon Smith? Why, in the name of common
decency, are columns opened to the discussion of Robinson’s domestic
infelicities? We do not wish to make up our minds every morning upon the
state and prospects of the universe. We are firmly convinced that the
world will go on, without being daily buttonholed by talented editors to
acquaint us with the fact. The sensational newspaper has spoiled some of
the best traits in the American, and it has given abnormal development
to his worst tendency—his curiosity. A newspaper would have scattered
all the happiness of Rasselas’ valley. It is happy for Americans that
they have a weakness for print, and seem rather to enjoy a figure
therein. If the _Bungtown Bugle_ did not notice the arrival in town of
Mr. Porkpacker, let the editor tremble.
But the extravagance of journalism is mainly confined to words. It is
not altogether true that the guiding spirit of the newspaper is
sensation. This charge, which can readily be sustained against the
contemporary historian, does not hold of the journalist. He makes the
most of news, but he rarely invents. He is sensitive on this point.
Accuracy is a prime requisite in a reporter. His is the hyperbole of
words. This comes generally from a limited education and inexact habits
of thought. When we reflect that the first and last lesson of rhetoric
is simplicity, we should not expect too much from men who are trained to
think and believe that no idea is acceptable unless arrayed in gorgeous
imagery and blazing with tawdry rhetoric. A fire with loss of life is a
terribly startling thing, and the reporter imagines that he is really
describing its horror when, with apt alliteration’s artful aid, he heads
his account with “The Fire-fiend Furious—Flaunting Flames Frantically
Flashing—Fainting Firemen Fused by the Fierce Fire,” etc. Richard Grant
White has wearied his readers for a decade and more on the theme of
newspaper English and cognate subjects. The fact is, no man can be an
etymologist without a fair knowledge of the languages from which the
English is derived, and it is simply wasted labor to counsel the
attainment of a classic style from a mere acquaintance with one
language, and that the vernacular. The wonder is that so much really
good writing is done under such limitations.
It takes some self-denial in a newspaper man to say a thing simply. We
understand that Western newspapers have made a new departure in
announcing deaths, and that a rather coarse, if not ribald, humor is
tolerated. This is an evidence of a lower sensationalism. The West has
exercised a rough and energetic influence upon the laughable
dilettanteism of the Eastern press, but we must confess our inability to
relish its humor. Its humor is extravaganza, and thus would work out the
very reform and improvement which it is the design of this article to
advocate. The pompous descriptions ending in anti-climax, the open
burlesquing of the style of newspaper novelists, the riotous
characterization of oddities, and the hearty dislike of sham and cant
that one meets in Western journalism must have a good effect upon the
general literature of the country. But one tires of Mark Twain, mayhap
for the reason that one grows speedily weary of professedly funny
papers. The poor court-jesters of the middle ages got more frowns than
smiles. Mark Twain has little of that heartiness and _bonhomie_ that are
the characteristic of true humor. Real wit he has none, nor does he
pretend to it. His humor is extravagance, which, even in this humble but
oh! how genial faculty and expression of the human heart, is seen to be
out of place and power.
The more we read and write, the clearer becomes to us the wisdom of the
Horatian maxim to keep our lucubrations by us for years. Hasty writing
is not only hard reading but often dangerous utterance. An editor told
the writer that when the news of the late Pope’s death reached us he had
his biography already in type, but without editorial comment. It was
necessary to compose some sort of editorial upon an event which for a
time suspended the breath of Christendom, and our editor, with the
_nonchalance_ and conceit which unfortunately characterize so many of
the journalistic guild, sat down to dash off as fast as pen could travel
_his_ estimate of that great, long-suffering, and heroic man on whose
brow, where gathered the glory of Thabor and the gloom of Calvary,
rested the mystic diadem of the Supreme Pontificate. “Of course,” said
our editor, “I hadn’t time to get up anything very fine, but my
Protestant friends were delighted. I gave the good old man some pretty
severe raps—that thing, you know, about his being a Mason, and opposed
to progress—and—and—Antonelli, and that little love-affair, you know.
Ha! ha! ha!” No wonder Dickens impaled the editor of the New York
_Rowdy_. Now, if this man could have waited, and read and reflected, it
would have been morally impossible for him to have composed an obituary
which, if it had been written of any other man than the dead Vicar of
Jesus Christ, would have exposed its author to the pistol-shot of
outraged relatives or to the chastisement of public justice.
So long as ignorant and irresponsible men are suffered to guide and
control the expression of a journal, so long will the American newspaper
fail of any high mission. It is a good sign of the sturdy independence
of the American character that it has shaken off the journalistic yoke
and thinks for itself. Formerly the editorial pages were the first to be
scrutinized and the mysterious oracle consulted. But
“Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine.”
The garish light of day has been poured in upon the sanctum, and the
divinity has fled. The newspaper is not likely soon again to attain to
that high dignity and power which it held prior to the last Presidential
election, for reasons too obvious to the reader to need mention here.
Year by year the strongly-marked individuality of the chief editor, so
familiar of old, fades out of sight, either because the race of great
editors is run or the conditions of newspaper life have changed. We
speak of the newspaper only as it falls within the scope of this
article, which regards its literary and not its moral aspect. We do not
advert to it at all as a teaching or ethical power, for we look upon the
average journal with feelings akin to contempt at its blind or wilful
neglect of the highest possibilities of good. No men are better
acquainted than are newspaper men with the absurdity of Protestantism,
its failure both as a public institution and a private religious life,
its petty tyrannies, its squeamishness, its rhodomontade, and its
helplessness before any attack of sound and manly logic. They know, too,
or ought to know, the real good of the Catholic Church. Yet how rarely
one sees in a journal even a feeble recognition of the benefits of
Catholicity! Why, in many quarters we do not even get the show and
hearing graciously accorded to the Mormons. Who has not felt the covert
sneer, the poorly-concealed bigotry, and the ignorant prejudice so
thinly disguised? When Doyle, England’s best caricaturist, not even
excepting Cruikshank, was required by the proprietors of _Punch_ to draw
a caricature of the Pope, he threw his pencil in their faces and told
them “be ——,” a word which the recording angel certainly blotted out.
What are we to think of a journal that seizes the celebration of the
feast of a great national saint as a happy occasion for publishing a
series of “jocular” and blasphemous articles on the saint’s memory,
twice piercing the sensibilities of Irishmen, once through their faith
and next through their nationality? Is that honest, worthy, or dignified
journalism?
Enough has been said to place the general newspaper press upon a low
form in the school of extravagant expression. Not until editors feel a
profound moral responsibility, and enlarge their minds with at least a
cursory study of Catholic theology—two things which are least likely to
come to pass—will the American journal attain any lasting prestige or
power. As it is, its tone becomes less dignified and effective year by
year, and we should not be surprised to discover in the newspaper, in
time, the most stubborn and powerful opponent of Christianity, and even
of general morality. Heaven knows what incalculable harm it now does to
immortal souls by its constant vomiting forth of social impurities and
criminal details. There are certain papers of large circulation and
“respectability” which cannot be read by all without proximate danger of
mortal sin. But if a Catholic critic ventures to proclaim these manifest
truths, he is answered with a howl about the church’s opposition to
progress and enlightenment. The newspapers cannot bear criticism whilst
savagely attacking any person or institution to which they take a
dislike. This sensitiveness is a symptom of weakness.
We turn to the great masters of extravagant expression. At their head we
place Lord Macaulay, who has demonstrated the art of making history
romantic, and romance historical. Query: whether Sir Walter Scott was
not the founder of the contemporaneous historical school? At any rate
the cry is, “Let us have no more dryly accurate histories like Lingard’s
or Arnold’s. Relegate to an appendix state papers and statistics. Give
us delightful conversations between historical personages, somewhat in
the style of Landor’s _Imaginary Conversations_, only not so heavy.” It
is _so_ delightful to enter into the secret motives of men, to interpret
their hidden spirit, and clearly understand their whole mental and moral
being. This is the new school of historical writing, carried to
extravagant lengths by Macaulay, Froude, and Carlyle. The old-fashioned
idea of history was the simple and exact statement of events, the
_ascertained_ motives of historical personages, and the _actual_ results
of their deeds and decrees. This idea the trio before mentioned scout
with derisive laughter. Macaulay writes down “the dignity of history”;
Froude penetrates into the _arcana_ of royal bosoms; and Carlyle shrilly
hoots at the Dryasdusts for their historical investigations, and makes a
bonfire of archives and state papers. Of this precious triad Macaulay is
the least vehement, but none the less must we dub him an extravagant. He
never can say a thing naturally. He cannot rise above an epigram or an
antithesis. Nor was there ever any intellectual growth in him. In
Trevelyan’s _Life and Letters of Macaulay_ there is a characteristic
anecdote of his boyhood. His mother refused him a piece of cake for some
misdemeanor—for missing a lesson, we think. “Very well,” antithetically
answered the future reviewer (_ætat_. 9), “hereafter industry shall be
my bread and application my butter.” This might have been written in the
_Edinburgh_ forty years after. When the famous essay on Milton appeared,
sensationalism had not as yet invaded the prosy precincts of the
reviews. Jeffrey’s classic but dull reviews were models; nor did the
humor of the “joking parson of St. Paul’s” receive much countenance from
the Scotch, on whom the parson revenged himself when he said that a
surgical operation was necessary to get a joke into a Scotchman’s head.
Macaulay’s brilliancy took the town by storm. But what is there in the
review of Milton? of Johnson? of Bacon? He began the carnival of the
sensational. George Cornewall Lewis said of Macaulay: “The idea of a man
of forty writing such flowery and sentimental stuff! Macaulay will never
be anything but a rhetorician.” But the reading people had their
appetites whetted by Scott and Byron, and there has been little sobriety
in literature since. The extravagance of the praise with which Macaulay
bedaubed Milton struck the critics at the time; but when they answered,
he was famous. The Americans raved over him. It was perhaps as well that
his _History_ was never finished, for it is morally certain that his
infatuation for saying brilliant things would have led him to hurl
Washington and the American patriots of the Revolution from their
pedestals. He could not resist the temptation to bid men abate their
admiration of any esteemed character. To wind up with a brilliant period
was the height of his poor literary ambition. Of course he received his
reward; but no man now who values his reputation for scholarship would
think of citing him as an historical or, what may seem stranger, a
literary authority. That glowing tribute to the Catholic Church in the
review on Ranke has always seemed to us one of his rhetorical bursts.
There were in the subject light and color, imposing figures, an
atmosphere of art and beauty, and innumerable chances for introducing
epigrams and startling paradoxes. He wrote an article which flames like
one of Rubens’ pictures. The whole argument is false from beginning to
end, and its logic would shame the New Zealander himself. The conclusion
which any thoughtful man would draw from the powers and attributes
therein ascribed to the Catholic Church is that such an institution must
be divine—a conclusion furthest from the reviewer’s thought. He has made
the dull pages of English political history as interesting as a
fairy-tale, under which designation it no doubt will be tabulated by
future scholars; for there is not a _point d’appui_ in the entire
history, from his glorification of King William to his defamation of
Penn, that has not been shattered by some one. But who should seriously
attack romance?
James II. was a poltroon, and William III. was a brave man and a great
statesman. Macaulay did not attempt all the possibilities of
sensationalism. This was left for J. A. Froude, who now reigns in his
stead. Casting about for a striking character, Froude lights on Henry
VIII. And it is here that that delightful historico-romantic style soars
to hitherto unexplored heights of extravagance. The injured monarch is
introduced to the sound of mournful music. His tortured mind is apparent
in his anguish-riven face. Contemplate at leisure that Achillean form,
that massive brow, the melancholy grace of those royal legs. A pensive
smile irradiates a countenance on which all the graces play. He is
thinking of Katharine. His conscience is smitten. Enter to him Anne
Boleyn. What thoughts are hidden beneath that alabaster brow?—and so on
for volumes. The _forte_ of the historian of this school is his thorough
knowledge of the thoughts and designs of his personages. Nothing escapes
his eagle eye. This wondrous faculty, which has hitherto been considered
preternatural, enables him to detect deep meanings in the slightest act.
The king smiled significantly. Ah-hah! Sergeant Buzfuz’s interpretation
of Pickwick’s note about the warming-pan sinks into obscurity alongside
of the calm and connected analysis of motive that Mr. Froude can weave
out of King Henry’s stockings. It will amuse our readers to take up a
few pages of any of Froude’s historical works, and study out
illustrations of this criticism. They will soon discover that it is he
who does all the thinking, planning, and suffering for his historical
automata, that are moved by the chords of his sympathetic heart. No one
would call Froude a historian except in burlesque. He is a romancist.
But what shall we say of the Scotch Diogenes, Carlyle, who hurls books
instead of tubs, though the latter missile would do less mischief? He is
an extravagant. We have hesitated some time about classing him in the
school, but we think that we are justified, at least by the wildness,
unconnectedness, and rhapsodical fury of his speech. Besides, he
frantically hates and denounces America, which fact would set him down
at once as a man of unbalanced intellect and malignant humor. He used to
know how to write English, as his _Life of Schiller_ and _Life of John
Sterling_ abundantly prove. But in an evil hour he learned German, and
the next view of him we have discovers him tossing in a maelstrom of
German metaphysics. He certainly deserved a better fate. We very much
doubt if any sane man can long keep his wits and study German
philosophy, especially in the mad outcomes of Fichte’s Absolute Identity
and Schelling’s theories of the το εγο. The best minds of Germany, both
Catholic and Protestant, Möhler and Neander, have pronounced the
judgment of all sensible men upon these absurdities in one
word—_rubbish_. Carlyle patiently worked in this rubbish for years, and
his result is not half so good as his brave old words, spoken out of his
honest heart: “Do what you are able to do in this world and leave the
rest to God.” In the name of common sense, do rational men care anything
about the critic of Pure Reason, or the beer and tobacco speculations of
conceited egoists? It were well if men, like the parish priest in _Don
Quixote_, burnt all those foolish books of knight-errantry carried on in
a world as dreamy and fantastic as that fabled by the old writers on
chivalry. Carlyle’s command of language is marvellous, but his style is
hybrid, wearisome, and frequently unintelligible. He is sensational, in
a bad sense, too. There is not a hero that he has chosen who was not
chosen with an eye to effect: Mohammed, a prophet! Luther, the
hero-priest! Cromwell, the hero-king! The selection of these worthies
enabled him to say something startling. Then the idea of taking
Frederick II. of Prussia as a type of the heroic, kingly, religious,
literary, and general excellence of the eighteenth century was carrying
the extravagant a little too far. The old man now sits like a bear with
a sore head. We pardon him much, for we look upon him as an embittered
and disappointed man. He seems not to care what he says nor how rudely
he says it. His criticism on Swinburne, the erotic poet, whose success
is an indication of something rotten in English letters, is so harsh
that we hesitate to quote it, though it is richly deserved: “He is a man
up to his neck in a cess-pool, and adding to the filth.” We need
Diogenes to snub Alexander and to trample on the pride of Plato. Had
Carlyle escaped fantastic Germanism and its wretched philosophizing, he
would rank with the greatest masters of language in any tongue. The glow
and beauty of many of his descriptions are beyond praise, and no more
skilful hand has ever drawn the vast and gloomy _tableaux_ of the French
Revolution. His historical method has the same vice as Macaulay’s and
Froude’s. He is pictorial, imaginative, and given to unwarranted
speculation. His style has the worst faults of the sensational school,
though it may be alleged in his defence that his vast knowledge of
German has unconsciously and radically modified it. Affectation he has
none, which cannot be said of his imitators in word-coining.
Literary criticism, which certainly should have advanced somewhat since
the days of Dennis, is at present as “slashing” as that old cynic
himself could have desired. The great reviews, spoiled by Macaulay’s
example, have adopted a supercilious tone that but ill comports with the
dignity and functions of true criticism. We recall only one great
exception, John Wilson (Christopher North), in recent English literary
criticism, that is not open to the charge of querulous fault-finding.
The narrowness of the English reviews, and their fatal obtuseness to see
beyond the limits they have drawn for themselves, have deprived them of
the proper power of literary judgment or suggestive writing such as we
associate with a review. The latest of their number, the _Nineteenth
Century_, is not long enough before us to enable us to form a
satisfactory judgment. It lacks unity, but, perchance, this is a merit.
The reader knows beforehand the judgment of the _Edinburgh_, the
_London_ and _British Quarterlies_, and the _Westminster_ on any
subject. They are a bench of Lord Jeffreys passing sentence before any
evidence is presented to them.
There is no writer on whom sensationalism works such quick and fatal
destruction as the critic. We look to him to be above the passions of
the hour, the rage of the fashion, and the influence of literary and
political cliques. Even his admiration must be tempered. He must betray
no weaknesses. When we come across a _critique_ which runs over with
passion, weak sentiment, petty jealousies, unworthy bickerings, and a
subdued but potent sensationalism, we are shocked and disappointed. Most
contemporary reviews are pompous exhibitions of the writer’s own
learning, which may be in one sense encyclopædic, and which generally
throws the author under review quite in the shade. The older reviewers
gave some hearing to an author. They quoted him largely, and enabled the
reader to judge for himself. They proffered their opinions modestly, and
supported their objections with proof drawn from the book itself. But
nowadays, if a reviewer condescends to advert to the book which he is
supposed to be reviewing, it is in a high and mighty tone of censure or
of autocratic approval. This obtrusion of self and opinions smacks much
of the sensational. The reviewer wishes to be seen upon the tripod, and
he is convinced in his own heart, or at least allows his reader plainly
to understand, that he could write a much better book than that which he
has deigned to review. Slashing criticisms are in great favor. Oh! for
another Macaulay to blast another Montgomery. _We_ say, Oh! for another
Pope to place these gentlemen in another _Dunciad_. There is no merit in
cutting a book to pieces. An eye sharpened by malice and on the lookout
for faults will detect blunders in a title. Where merited chastisement
must be inflicted it should not be spared; but that is a poor idea of
literary criticism that views it as a medium of communicating only
stinging comment and bitter diatribe. Criticism is essentially calm and
judicial. It should sift a book as law does evidence. No stormy passions
should be suffered to disturb its equanimity. There is no other
department of letters that invites and exacts such rare scholarship and
genial wisdom.
The man who can quickly recognize and honestly praise a work of genius,
and, through wise commendation, introduce it to a wide circle of
readers, merits a crown more precious than the poet’s. In these days of
much bad writing and wide reading there is deep need of such exact
criticism, such careful watchfulness over literature, and such sure
guidance of the public taste. Keep sensationalism at least out of our
reviews and our book notices, for if the critic loses the reckoning we
are indeed at sea.
We hinted that sectarian theology has its sensational side. If we can
dignify with the name of theology that _congeries_ of books, sermons,
pamphlets, and tracts that is the literary outcome of Protestantism,
then theology, the queen of the sciences, is in the plight of Hecuba as
described in _Hamlet_:
“But who, oh! who had seen the mobled queen
Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames,” etc.
No attempt is made to conceal the sensationalism of the Protestant
pulpit. A dull preacher had best betake himself to another occupation;
say anything that will be listened to, sooner than behold the agonizing
sight of a sleeping congregation. Modern congregations do not enjoy the
traditional nap. They are kept awake by the attitudinizer in the pulpit.
They are not sure of what he is going to say next. Sir Roger de Coverley
made his chaplain preach one of Barrow’s sermons, and, thus being
assured of orthodoxy, he slept with a quiet conscience. The quality of
the majority of Protestant sermons is as spiced and sensational as the
average popular lecture. What motive but that of making a sensation can
induce Farrar and Stanley to preach against hell in Westminster Abbey?
Their sermons are as high colored as a story in the New York _Ledger_.
The new tack which the Protestant hulk is now painfully taking is the
harmonization of science and religion. We verily believe that Darwin,
Huxley, and Tyndall take a malicious pleasure in seeing the squirms of
Protestant theologians. Those men know themselves the inconclusiveness
of their arguments against revelation, but the fatal spell is on
science, too—it must be sensational or nothing. The old scientists
worked calmly away for years, and set forth the results of their
investigations with the modesty of true merit. But Huxley cannot
anatomize the leg of a spider without publishing the process in the
newspapers, with some reflections upon its bearing and probably fatal
effect upon the Mosaic records.
In summing up the conclusions suggested by our reflections upon the
extravagant, we must not forget that the ways and habits of modern
social life have almost necessitated this species of literature. It is
remarkable that the Latin writers under the later emperors have neither
the purity of thought nor of style of the old masters. Literature is the
reflex of passing life. Our century is the century of startling
discovery, of kaleidoscopic changes, of rapid social life and intense
intellectual energy. Its expression must be loud and boisterous. But it
is the duty of writers to keep the gross sensational elements of life
out of letters. Literature should soothe and compose the mind; should be
its refuge from turbulence and care; should be a ministry of peace and
refreshment to the wearied spirit. The enduring products of human genius
are marked by the calmness and serenity of the great souls that
conceived them, and they produce in us the like frame of mind. The
public should look coldly upon the class of productions we have been
examining, and bid
“The _extravagant_ and erring spirit hie
To its confine.”
THE BLUE-BIRD’S NOTE.
I.
Not Philomel, ’mid dark of night, unseen,
Pipes sweeter notes unto the listening heart
Than from the adventurous blue-bird start
That sings amid the cedars’ dusky green
When March doth fleck the sky with windy clouds,
When sodden grass is gray as naked boughs
Along whose length no touch of summer glows—
Folded the buds within their spicy shrouds,
Waiting the coming of their Easter morn,
When the up-risen sun their bonds shall break,
Earth’s alleluia in the forests wake,
Wherein no voice more glad than this is born
That fills the farewell hours of winter gloom
With skies of blue and fields knee-deep in bloom.
II.
Who hears the music of the blue-bird’s song,
And sees not straightway cloudy skies grow fair
With softened light pale April kindleth there?
Who heareth not the swollen, rippling throng
Of loosened streams that trip the roads beside,
That wear soft channels in the meadow grass,
And peaceful grow to uphold the crisp-leaved cress?
Who sees not o’er the marsh-pools, dark and wide,
Rise tasselled willow and the later glow
Of sturdy marigolds’ broad, golden bloom,
Dim light of violets; while fresh perfume
From every budding twig doth overflow?
Such world a song can build of shivering air—
Earth’s miracles unfolding everywhere.
III.
Singeth the dreamy nightingale of love,
Unsevered still the thrush from Paradise,
The lark’s swift aspiration to the skies
Is faith that sees in perfect light above;
And type doth seem spring’s blue-winged herald’s song
Of that calm faith Eternal Wisdom blessed,
Believing things unseen with quiet breast,
Not asking first to see the angels throng.
Faith meet for earth, filling the storm-rent skies
With cheerful song of trust and heavenly grace,
Softening with joys to come earth’s rugged face,
Tinting life’s gray with heaven’s rainbow dyes—
Thy note, O fearless blue-bird! stainless scroll
O’er writ with love and hope for earth and soul.
GERMAN GLOSSARIES, HOMILIES, AND COMMENTARIES ON SCRIPTURAL AND
LITURGICAL SUBJECTS.[60]
A diligent and impartial German bibliographer, Dr. John Geffcken,
Protestant pastor of St. Michael’s, Hamburg, in his learned work on
catechetical treatises of the fifteenth century, has pointed out the
almost complete forgetfulness of present scholars of a branch of
literature important in the theological and controversial history of
Germany before the Reformation. He says of his own researches in this
field:
“There was a lost, or at any rate a forgotten, literature to be
discovered step by step, and its spirit grasped in all the branches
thus brought together and compared. The following information will
show how little light the fragmentary notices of Langemack in his
_Historia Catechetica_ (vol. i.), or of Köcher, in his _Catechetical
History of the Papal Church_, threw upon the times to which I have
devoted my attention. The worst, however, was that even these scanty
notices were often false or misleading, and that, instead of
pointing out the right track, they not seldom led into error. They
consist mostly of lists of titles of books, without a hint of the
contents of such books, and not seldom an uncertain or fanciful
title is interpreted as denoting contents utterly different from the
reality. The spirit of controversial prejudice in which these works
were written impelled the authors, whenever they had to deal with
ante-Reformation times, to paint the historical background in the
darkest possible colors, in order to bring out in corresponding
relief the brightness of the new dawn of the sixteenth century.”
If this is true of such works as those to which Geffcken refers, it is
equally so of the German _Plenarii_, or glossaries, commentaries,
homilies, and various devotional manuals in the vulgar tongue published
in the last half of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the
sixteenth. The inquiry into the publication, contents, and diffusion of
these books is as interesting from an antiquarian as from a theological
point of view. They are little known even to cataloguists of
acknowledged merit. Brunet, in his _Manuel du Libraire_,[61] etc., under
the heading _Plenarium_, vol. iv., mentions only one, as the
_Plenarium_, or Book of the Gospels, printed at Basle by Peter von
Langendorff in 1514; while under the heading of _Gospels_ (vol. ii.) he
mentions in general terms several “Evangelia.” Hain, in his _Repertorium
Bibliographicum_ (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1826-1828), in which he claims
to have collected the names of all the books printed from the time of
the discovery of printing to the year 1500, is a little more explicit as
to the gospels and epistles under the heading of that name, but has
nothing to say of any Plenarium; although the name stands as a separate
heading, it is followed by no details or examples. Graesse, in his
_Trésor de livres rares et précieux, ou nouveau dictionnaire
bibliographique_ (Dresden, 1859-1869), mentions only five of these
works, giving the dates and presses but no hint of the contents of the
books. Earlier scholars, however, had not so wholly lost the tradition
of the existence of these manuals; for instance, Nicholas Weislinger, in
his _Armamentarium Catholicum Argent._, 1749 _fol. sub anno_ 1488 (pp.
412-415), and Panzer, in his _Annals of Ancient German Literature; or,
notices and descriptions of those books which, since the invention of
printing till the year 1520, were printed in the_ GERMAN _tongue_
(Nuremberg, 1788), mentions a fact which Dr. Alzog says he has not yet
found proved by other documents—the existence of similar manuals in
other countries than Germany. The French have _Les Postilles et
Expositions des Epistres et Evangiles Dominicales_, etc. (Troyes, 1480
and 1492, and Paris, 1497), and the Italians the same in 1483, press and
date not mentioned, and _Epistole e Evangeli per tutto l’anno, per
Annibale da Parma_ (Venice, 1487). No doubt research among the libraries
of ancient Italian cities, colleges, and monasteries would discover many
copies of such manuals, and the same may be said of French glossaries.
The fact that they have but recently come to light in Germany argues
equally in favor of their being at some future time discovered in other
countries, certainly not less enlightened at the time whence date the
German manuals.
It seems that hitherto no satisfactory etymology of the name of this
class of books has been found; the explanation of Du Cange[62] being
rather bald, that the books “wholly contain the four gospels and the
canonical epistles.” Whatever the origin of the title, the books
themselves multiplied rapidly from 1470 to 1522. They were invariably in
the vulgar tongue, often in dialect. They were meant as emphatically
popular hand-books, guides to the liturgy, and interpreters of the Latin
offices of the church, while they also supplied the place of sermons,
homilies, and meditations by their glossaries and explanations of the
gospels, lessons, and epistles. Some of these are much in the style of
the commentaries of the early Fathers on Scriptural subjects. The
translations from the Vulgate are generally original, and do not follow
strictly any of the authorized versions of the day. In some of the later
Plenarii the Collects and Prefaces are given, in others the Graduals and
Communions; in a few the whole liturgy is translated and the ceremonies
explained. None of these books was ever published in Latin, and, unlike
our modern missals, they very seldom, and then sparingly, included the
Latin text with that in the vulgar tongue. Hymns and sequences were also
often printed. Dr. Alzog was drawn to the study of this branch of church
literature by his researches for a hand-book of universal church
history, and by his opportunities in the University Library of Freiburg
in Breisgau, which alone contains six editions of Plenarii of 1473,
press unknown, five respectively of 1480 (Augsburg), of 1481 (Urach), of
1483 (Strassburg), of 1514 and 1522 (Basle), and several others without
authors’ or publishers’ names, as well as the kindred works of a famous
preacher of that time, Geiler von Keisersperg, printed at Strassburg.
The reproach sometimes made to the fifteenth century, of being destitute
of sufficient religious and moral instruction in printed form, is much
neutralized by the opposite reproach of a contemporary whose name is
famous in literature as that of the author of the _Ship of Fools_,
Sebastian Brant. This powerful satire, the work of a priest, begins with
these words in German rhyme:
“All the land is now full of holy writings
And of what touches the weal of souls,
Bibles, and the lore of holy fathers,
And many more such like,
In measure such that I much marvel
No one grows better on such cheer.”
Alzog names thirty-eight manuals, including five by Keisersperg, with
his sermons and expositions of doctrine, and seven in Low Saxon dialect,
interesting as showing the peculiarities of spelling in certain
districts at that time. The form of the title is almost unvaried in all:
“In the name of the Lord. Amen. Here follows a Plenarium according to
the order of the holy Christian Church, in which are to be found written
all epistles and gospels as they are sung and read in the ceremony of
the holy Mass, throughout the whole year, in order as they are written
in the following.” The two earliest mentioned by Alzog are of 1470-1473.
They are adorned with title-pages or frontispieces, Scriptural or
allegorical subjects. In the University Library of Freiburg is a small
folio with a wood-cut of our Lord, his right hand uplifted in the act of
blessing, and his left carrying an imperial globe, the ball surmounted
by a cross, such as may be seen in pictures of the old German emperors.
Round the four sides of the print runs the following curious
inscription, unfortunately clipped short in part by the binder: “This
portrait is made from the human Jesus Christ when he walked upon the
earth. And therefore he had hair and a beard, and a pleasant
countenance. Also a ... He was also a head taller than any other man on
the earth.” The first edition mentioned by Panzer and Hain as containing
a glossary on the Sunday gospels is of the year 1481, printed at
Augsburg, but the four editions between 1473 and 1483 all had uniform
glossaries.
The mention is worded thus: “A glossary will be found of each Sunday
gospel—that is, a good and useful teaching, and an exposition of each
gospel, very useful for every Christian believer (or believer in Christ)
to read.” In 1488 Weislinger and Panzer point to a book printed at Baden
by Thomas Ansselm, called _Gospels with Glossaries and Epistles in
German, for the whole year; also the beginning; the Psalm (the “Judica”
and Introit) and the Collect of each Mass according to the order of the
Christian Church_. Another book of 1516, printed at Dutenstein, has the
same title with this addition: “for the whole year, with nothing left
out.” A very elaborate manual, of which a copy (1514) is in the
University Library of Freiburg and is mentioned in Panzer’s catalogue,
is called
“The Plenarium, or gospel book. Summer and Winter parts, through the
whole year, for every Sunday, Feria, and Saints’ days. The order of
the Mass, with its beginning or Introit. _Gloria Patri_, _Kyrie
Eleyson_, _Gloria in Excelsis_, Collect or prayer, Epistle, Gradual
or penitential song, Alleluia or Tract, Sequence or Prose. Gospel
with a glossary never yet heard by us, and ended by fruitful and
beautiful examples.[63] The _Patrem_ or Creed, _Offertorium_,
_Secreta_, _Sanctus_, _Agnus Dei_, Communion, Compleno and _Ite
Missa est_ or _Benedicamus Domino_, etc. And for every separate
Sunday gospel a beautiful glossary or Postill, with its example,
diligently and orderly preached by a priest of a religious order, to
be seriously noticed and fruitfully applied for the greater use of
the believer, who in this quickly-passing life can read nothing more
useful....” At the end are these words: “To the praise and worth of
Almighty God, his highly-praised Mother Mary and all saints, and to
the use, bettering, and salvation of men.... Printed by the wise
Adam Peter von Langendorff, burgher of Basle. 1514. In folio.”
The book contains four large wood-cuts of some artistic merit, Christ
crucified, with a landscape in the background, and two groups, one of
four women on one side, the other of four men on the other, and the
following legend beneath, taken from Notker’s famous hymn _Mediâ Vitæ_,
which “wonderful anthem or sequence,” says an Anglican writer, is “so
often mistaken for a psalm or text”[64]: “In the midst of life we are in
death: whom shall we seek to help us, and to show us mercy, but thou
alone, O Lord, who by our sins art righteously enwrathed? Holy Lord God,
holy strong God, holy, merciful, and eternal God, suffer us not to taste
the bitterness of death.” The other wood-cuts, respectively indicating
Christmas day, Easter eve, and Whitsunday, represent the Adoration of
the Infant Jesus by Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds, with a landscape in
the background; the Resurrection; and the Descent of the Holy Ghost in
the form of fiery tongues. The book contains many smaller wood-cuts.
Another Plenarium (Strassburg, 1522) boasts of being “translated from
the Latin into better German,” and another, of the same year (Basle),
announces “several other Masses, never hitherto translated into German,”
as well as a register with blank leaves. Keisersperg’s sermons “in the
last four years of his life, taken down word for word from his own
mouth,” are printed at Strassburg in 1515, and are qualified in the
title-page as “useful and good, not only for the laity, and never
hitherto printed.” His _Postill_, or “Commentaries on the Four Gospels,”
is printed in four parts in Strassburg in 1522, also his Lenten sermons,
and some additional ones on a few saints’ days, “written down from his
own mouth by Henry Wessmer”; but the most curious work mentioned is a
folio volume of his sermons, without title, and containing other
treatises with fanciful titles and bearing on mysterious subjects. “The
Book of Ants, which also gives information concerning witches, ghostly
appearances, and devilish possession, very wonderful and useful to know,
and, further, what it is lawful to hold and believe touching them”;
also, “the little book, ‘Lord, whom I would gladly serve,’ in fifteen
parts of fine and useful doctrine; finally, the book of ‘Pomegranate,’
in Latin _Malogranatus_, containing much wholesome and sweet doctrine
and advice.” This dates from 1517 (Strassburg, John Greinninger). For
the sake of the language the manuals printed in Low Saxon, chiefly in
Lübeck, are among the most interesting specimens. The titles are much
the same as the German, but generally more concise. Panzer remarks of
one of them, printed by Stephen Arndes at Lübeck in 1496, and adorned
with several fine wood-cuts, that he has seen three other editions,
printed in 1488, 1493, and 1497. A few of the peculiarities of spelling,
and of the indifferent use of various forms of one word, will be seen in
the following examples: book, in the contemporary High-German, spelt
_buch_ or _buoch_, is here spelt _boek_, _boeck_, _bok_, and _boke_,
this last a form often found in Old English writers; holy, _heylig_,
_heilig_, or _hailig_, is here spelt in five different ways: _hilgen_,
_hylgen_, _hylligen_, _hilligen_, and _hyllyghen_; and birth, _geburt_,
is _bort_ and _borth_. _Das_ (the) becomes _dat_; _endigt_ (ends) is
turned to _ondighet_; and the _o_’s and _n_’s are in general used the
reverse way to that common in High-German.
The contents of the Plenarii show the peculiarities of the liturgy as
used at that time. The same epistle and gospel sung or read on Sunday
was repeated on Monday, Tuesday (which the oldest manuals call
After-Monday), and Thursday. Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year
had separate epistles and gospels, and Saturday is not mentioned, unless
it is indicated by the “third day,” which the later editions speak of as
“having a separate epistle and gospel throughout the year.” Each day of
Lent had a separate one. Some of the books of 1473 contained special
Masses—that of the Wisdom of God for Mondays, the Holy Ghost for
Tuesdays, the Holy Angels for Wednesdays, the Love of God for Thursdays,
the Holy Cross for Fridays, and the Blessed Virgin for Saturdays. There
followed Masses for rain, for health, for sinners, for fair weather, and
for “all believing souls.” The glosses on the gospels in the earlier
editions are interesting from their simplicity and directness. Even the
preface of the Basle Plenarium of 1514, though less simple, is a good
specimen. It is noteworthy that the Immaculate Conception is implied in
the text. The heading is from Luke xi. 28: “Blessed are they who hear
the word of God and keep it.” The preface runs thus:
“Jesus Christ is the Word of the Eternal Father; the Word is made
flesh (understand by that, man) in the womb of the immaculate, holy,
and pure Virgin Mary, that we too may be saved. From this Word, as
from Christ the Son of God, flows Holy Scripture, which is the
life-giving flow of the blessed paradise of the highest heaven,
penetrating and making fruitful on this earth the paradise of the
holy church to the use of all believers. And in order that man may
better know and acknowledge his Lord, he has at hand the help of
Holy Scripture, which is the source of all knowledge and wisdom, of
whom all knowledge is the servant and follower, and which teaches
and admonishes us, through the wonderful works of God, to worship
the Maker of all; for Christ the Son of God is the wisdom of the
Eternal Father, and in him and through him are all creatures made,
and, indeed, so wonderfully made and hidden that no human wisdom can
fully penetrate into these secret recesses. Such is the teaching of
Holy Writ.
“To confess God, to avoid sin, to do good, and to show ourselves
diligent in the love of God and our neighbor—this is a spiritual
pharmacy of all sweet-smelling and precious medicine. Although many
prophets and other saints have written Holy Scripture and divine
truth, each one according as it was given to him by the Holy Ghost,
yet are the strength and truth of the holy gospels above every other
Scripture, as says St. Augustine in his Concordance of the Gospels.
And Holy Scripture is so fruitful, wise, and unfathomable that we
can never fathom it till the end of this passing life on earth, and
till we come to the place whence Scripture itself floweth ... and
ourselves read in the great Bible—that is, the Book of Life.
“And because many men do not understand Latin, and yet can read
German, therefore this book of the gospels, with its belongings, has
been translated into German, to the glory of God and the use of such
as shall feed their souls on it. For man liveth not on material
bread alone, but on the spiritual bread which is the Word of God, as
Christ says by the mouth of the evangelist Matthew, in the fourth
chapter.”
Much more follows; for instance, an enumeration of the nine graces that
a diligent reader of Scripture receives, in which much good but rather
trite advice is given, and of the five kinds of men who read Holy Writ,
only two of whom do it to advantage. These conceits belonged to the age,
and, indeed, survived the age, as we find in the Presbyterian sermons of
two centuries later in Scotland and the Puritan sermons of New England.
Keisersperg was profuse of them, and some of the quaint and rather
strained combinations and coincidences which he imagined are a curious
illustration of the sort of pulpit eloquence popular in the fifteenth
century. The prominence given among saints to the four evangelists grew
naturally out of the reverence paid to the four gospels as the noblest
part of Scripture. The Plenarii often contained allegorical
representations of them under the conventional figures known to art, and
undertook to explain the reason of these figures being applied to them,
connecting them with the four living creatures of Ezechiel’s vision and
those of the Apocalypse. But, beyond the constantly-received
explanations, they sometimes contained details calculated to astonish
readers of a later day. Such is the idea of the fitness between St. Mark
and the symbolic lion, derived from the belief that lion whelps were
awakened the third day, by the roaring of their mother, from the sleep
or trance in which they had been born, which was interpreted to refer to
the fact that St. Mark chiefly dwells on the resurrection of the Lord on
the third day after his death. The Basle manual from which the foregoing
preface is quoted has special prayers in honor of the evangelists,
chiefly to the end that they would help the faithful to a better
understanding of, and acting up to, the principles of the Gospel. The
wood-cuts which distinguish these as well as the Latin missals took the
place of the illuminations of the older books in manuscript, and, though
wanting in the finish and delicacy of the latter, were designed on the
same models and in the same spirit. The Latin missals now in the
University Library of Freiburg, of 1485 and 1520, are rich in this kind
of ornamentation, the latter having as title-page the Crucifixion, with
a group of many figures, and around the illustration representations of
the seven sacraments, whose grace flows from the atonement of Christ.
The same idea is conveyed in the often-repeated allegorical
representation in mediæval pictures of two angels collecting in golden
cups the blood that flows from the outstretched hands of the Saviour on
the cross.
Freiburg has many treasures in the department of illuminated
manuscripts, the chief one being a _Codex_ of the tenth century, with
the _Sacramentarium Gregorianum_. It contains two hundred and ten pages
of parchment, and begins with a calendar of twelve pages on purple
ground with arabesque borders. The Ordinary of the Mass is written on a
similarly colored ground, and has three illuminated pictures—a portrait
of Pope Gregory the Great, an angel uplifting the Host, and an elaborate
Byzantine crucifix. Five thousand francs were offered for it by a French
archæological society, and refused by the university. Among the
peculiarities set forth by the German manuals is the order of Sundays
throughout the year, which, before the Council of Trent, were reckoned
from Trinity instead of Whitsunday, and, in the case of Easter falling
early, were supplemented by a “twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity,” as
the editions of 1473 to 1483 have it, “if another Sunday is needed.” The
later editions and the Latin missals simply call it, without comment,
“the twenty-fifth Sunday.” As time went on, the German Plenarii
contained more and more, sometimes additional votive Masses, and the
Passions and Prophecies of Holy Week, sometimes the whole of the
liturgy, including the minor parts, sometimes even more than the Latin
books themselves—as, for instance, the thirteenth to the fifteenth
chapters of St. John, inclusive, for the edification of their readers on
Maundy Thursday. The glossaries or homilies also grew longer and more
serious after 1514, and among explanations of undoubted moral worth and
pious intent—due, Alzog thinks, greatly to the influence of the Swiss
“Friends of God,” a brotherhood devoted to popular teaching and the
propagation of practical piety among the masses—we often come upon those
naïvely-propounded conceits which were common to earnest and ingenious
men of that day. For instance, the word alleluia, whose etymology was
probably wholly unknown to the author, is thus dissected and explained
in one of the Basle editions of the sixteenth century:
“The word has four syllables—that is, four meanings: the first,
_al_—that is, _altissimus_, or Most High and Almighty; the second,
_le_, _levatus in cruce_, or uplifted on the cross; the third, _lu_,
_lugentibus apostolis_, or the apostles have mourned and all
creation bemoaned him; the fourth, _ja_, or _jam surrexit_—that is,
he is now risen from the dead, wherefore we should rejoice with all
our strength and sing _alleluja_.”
On the other hand, some of the prayers and meditations of these now
obscure books of devotion were beautiful, dignified, and worthy of
imitation. The language often reminds one of the _Following of Christ_:
“Consider, O my soul! with thorough devotion, the gifts and benefits
of God wherewith he has so abundantly blessed thee. He has created
thee out of nothing and in his image. He has given thee wisdom and
understanding, that thou mayest distinguish good from evil. He has
also given thee reason beyond that of all other creatures, and made
them subject unto thee. He has put the sun and the moon in heaven to
give light to the world. He causes all green things to grow and
ripen on the earth to thy use, that thou mayest be fed and clothed
therewith. Consider also, O my soul! with great devotion, how
inestimable are the gifts of the holy sacraments, so sweetly
prepared for thee. How clean should be thy hands from all evil
works, how chaste thy lips, how holy thy body, how spotless thy
heart, to which the Lord Almighty, the God of purity, humbles
himself so lovingly! How great should be thy thankfulness to God thy
Creator, who gives himself to thee so freely, not for any good he
derives therefrom, but only that he may cleanse thee, in thy misery
and sickness, from sin, and give thee eternal life. Amen.”
The manuals also made typographical progress corresponding to that of
their contents, and, after 1483, began to have their pages both numbered
and headed, while the spelling became a little more uniform, but the odd
comparisons and arbitrary combinations in the text developed themselves
as freely as ever. Indeed, they had one merit—that of fixing a thing in
the minds of hearers less likely to be impressed by generalities; and,
unlike the sensational devices of the present day, they were not
resorted to as mechanical means by men to whom they were themselves
indifferent, but came from the “abundance of the heart” of authors fully
penetrated by their meaning and proud of having originated this
particular form of it. For instance, a panegyric on St. Martin, Bishop
of Tours, is résumed in the seven letters of the German word Bischof,
each standing for the initial of a word describing some quality of the
saint; and the same happens with the seven letters of the name of
Matthew, _Matheus_ (seven was, from obvious causes, a favorite number in
the mystical mind of those ages), which are thus interpreted:
_Magnificentia in relinquendo_ (magnanimity in relinquishing),
_Auscultatio in obediendo_ (hearing in obeying), _Tractabilitas in non
resistendo_ (tractability in not resisting), _Humilitas in sequendo_
(humility in following), _Evangelisatio in prædicando_ (evangelization
in preaching), _Virtuositas in operando_ (efficiency in working),
_Strenuitas in patiendo_ (fortitude in enduring).
The glossaries on the epistles and gospels contain many passages
remarkable as setting forth the reverence for Holy Writ of which those
times have been too hastily pronounced deficient. The four oldest
editions (from 1473 to 1483) have the same commentary for the first
Sunday in Advent, on which the gospel of Palm Sunday, pointing to
preparation for the coming of the Lord, was then read. The whole is
filled with texts and allusions to the prophets; the preparation is
asserted to consist in being “washed clean of evil thoughts,” in laying
aside the torn garments of sin, that bind us to the darkness where we
have hidden ourselves that we may not be seen, ... in hating the
garments of impurity and those of pride.... It is not seemly to stand in
the hall of the King clothed in mean garments, as we find in the Book of
Esther, cap. iii., and therefore no one should enter the holy time of
Advent while yet burdened with sin and so on through a host of
Scriptural quotations in which moral virtues only are inculcated, and of
ceremonial observances there is no mention. The edition of 1514 (Basle)
on the same occasion says that this gospel is read twice in the year, on
the anniversary of the day when our Lord entered Jerusalem, and on the
first Sunday in Advent, which commemorates his spiritual coming and his
assuming human nature. The various kinds of advents or comings are
represented by the gospels of the four Sundays, the last being the entry
into the heart of every sinner when he repents of his sin and is
converted. “As the Jews asked John the Baptist, ‘Who art thou?’ so
should every man ask himself, Who am I? If we examine honestly we must
needs acknowledge that we are but poor sinners. Of this advent St. John
speaks in the Apocalypse: ‘Behold I stand at the door of thy heart and
knock with my gifts; and whoever opens unto me, to him will I go in, and
give him bread from heaven, and a new stone in his hand, that is the new
joy of everlasting life.’“[65] Of this advent St. Augustine speaks:
“Lord, who shall give it to me that thou shouldst come into my
heart, sweet Jesus, and fill it, and that my soul should forget all
evil and all sin?... ‘This is everlasting life (John xvii. 3), that
men know thee, Father in heaven, and confess thee alone the living
and true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ This raises a
question—namely, Why did the Lord Jesus not come earlier? why delay
his coming so long? For this reason: that Adam transgressed God’s
command on the sixth day, and the coming of Christ was therefore
deferred till the sixth age of the world.... If you turn to the Lord
in truth, he will answer you through the prophet Ezechiel: ‘In
whatsoever hour the sinner repents of his sins and forsakes them,
and is turned from his unrighteousness, I will remember his sins no
more, saith the Lord.”
The commentary on the gospel of the first Mass on Christmas night in the
Basle edition of 1514 contains glimpses of legends which long kept their
hold on the popular and even the scholarly mind of that age. The story
of the Sibyllic prophecies is outlined:
“The Emperor Augustus, when he had conquered the whole world for the
Roman Empire, was about to be adored by the Romans as a god. But he
resisted and asked for a delay of three days, during which he sent
for the wise woman, the Sibyl of Tibur, and asked her advice. When
she shut herself up with the emperor and prayed to God to tell her
how to advise the emperor, she saw close by the sun a shining ring
of light, and within the ring a beautiful Virgin with a fair Child
upon her knees. Then the Sibyl showed the Virgin and Child to the
emperor, and said: “This Child upon the knees of a Virgin must thou
adore, for he is God and Lord of the whole world, and the Child that
is to be born of a Virgin shall be for the consolation and salvation
of mankind.’ So when the emperor saw this he refused to let himself
be adored....
“We read also that once the Romans built a fine temple, large and
grand, which they meant to call the Temple of Peace. While they were
building it they asked the Sibyl how long the temple should stand.
She answered and said: ‘Until a Virgin shall bear a Child.’ ‘Then,’
said the Romans, ‘as that can never happen, the temple will stand
for ever, and shall be called the Temple of Eternity.’ Then came the
night when our Lord Jesus Christ was born, and a great part of the
temple fell suddenly in ruins, and many who have been in Rome say
that every Christmas night a portion of this temple still crumbles
into ruin, as a sign that on this earth nothing is eternal.”
The three Maries at the sepulchre give the author occasion in the homily
on Easter Sunday to link the virtues we ought to practise with the names
of the three holy women. From Mary Magdalen, whom, according to the
tradition of the time, he identified with Mary the Sinner, he bids us
learn “the great diligence and great love with which she sought God the
Lord; ... so should we also anoint the feet of Christ with the ointment
of contrition and repentance. From Mary Jacobi (Mary the mother of
James, or Jacob) we should learn to overcome sin, because Jacob means a
fighter and striver.... From the third Mary we should learn to have a
true hope of obtaining grace, for Salome means a woman of grace
(probably he considered wisdom and grace identical), ... especially the
grace to battle against despair.” And this suggests a comparison of the
three Maries with the three virtues, faith, hope, and charity. Galilee,
again, which he interprets to mean in German Passover, is set as a sign
that we must part with sin and cross over to God, die to the world and
be detached from its allurements. The commentary on the gospel of
Whitsunday, in the older editions (1473-83), contains these words: “If
you love God, you will willingly hear his word and diligently say to
yourself, What I hear is a token from the great King.” Then follow
several Scriptural quotations strengthening and illustrating this truth.
The epistle of the day gives rise to an explanation of the appearance
“as it were of fiery tongues”: “The fire of the Holy Ghost consumed all
fear in their hearts, and so enkindled them that they feared neither
king nor emperor. So was fulfilled the saying of the Redeemer, ‘I am
come to bring a fire upon the earth,’ and what do I wish but that it
should be enkindled?” Then the tongues signify that the word is spread
by the tongue; God sent the Holy Ghost in fiery tongues, that they (the
apostles) might burn with love and overflow in words. What is the Holy
Ghost? He is the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, who confirms and
establishes all things, and who comes at all times to the heart of every
man who makes himself ready to receive him, as says St. Augustine: “It
is of no use for a teacher to preach to our outer ears, if the Holy
Ghost be not in our hearts and do not give us true understanding.” The
likeness of the Holy Spirit to a dove is then ingeniously drawn out in
comparisons such as St. Francis of Sales, two centuries later, might
have adopted in his _Introduction to a Devout Life_, and the prayer or
aspiration at the end is thus worded: “May the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost help us to hear the word of God and keep it, that our hearts
may be enlightened and enkindled by the fire of the Holy Ghost, that we
may live with simplicity and joy among the doves, and that the true
Dove, the Holy Ghost, may come to us and abide with us for ever.”
The later editions of the sixteenth century have a longer and more
complicated homily on the same subjects; they dwell, among other things,
on the peace and comfort brought by the Holy Ghost, and distinguish
three kinds of peace, that of the heart, that of time, and that of
eternity, the second of which alone was not given to the apostles,
because their Master also had it not, as is inferred from several texts
quoted at length. The suddenness, the force of the wind, and the
quickness of the appearance in the upper chamber in Jerusalem are all
turned to practical account by the commentator, who also reminds his
readers that the grace of God comes soonest to those who lead a life of
inner recollection and prayer. The love of God is shown under a sort of
parable, that of the scholars of an Athenian philosopher, who begged
their master to write them a treatise upon love, and received from him
in answer the picture of a lion with a legend round his neck: “Love
brings forth nothing which afterwards causes remorse to man.” Thus
Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, is spiritually this lion of love,
whose works were all for the salvation of man. For Trinity Sunday the
glossaries of both the older and the later editions are very short, the
mystery being confessedly unfathomable, and the ancient Fathers
themselves having but feebly succeeded in throwing any other light than
that of faith upon the subject. Both editions contain a warning not to
search curiously into the mystery, but believe with simplicity, and the
later ones cite the legend of St. Augustine and the child whom he met by
the sea-shore trying to bail the sea into a small trench in the sand. On
the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity the vision of God by purity of
heart, “and by the reading of Holy Scripture and practising its
precepts,” is descanted upon in the 1514 Basle edition, and the fate of
Lot’s wife is used as a simile for the turning back from God into sin,
while the love of our neighbor, as flowing from a true love of God, is
strenuously inculcated by Scripture texts and warnings.
The description of the contents of these manuals, however, would not be
complete, nor wholly convey the spirit of the age in which they were
published and read, without some mention of the miraculous stories
printed in them under the head of “useful examples.” Of these Frederick
Hurter, in his work on Pope Innocent III., vol. iv. pp. 547-8, says:
“All writers of this time (the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and
what applies to those applies to later centuries almost as far as
the seventeenth) are full of wonder-stories—a proof of how universal
and deeply ingrained in man was the belief in wonders. Many of these
are simply mythical, others had passed by tradition and literary
embellishments from the region of facts into that of myths, while
others again must be left uninterpreted by criticism, unless it is
disposed to dismiss them with a mere denial. Whatever decision one
may come to on this point, one truth certainly underlies this mass
of tales: that they cannot have been without influence on the mind
of thousands. Many may be looked upon as childish and crude, but
from beneath this coating still shines the true gold of a belief in
one almighty, ever-present Being, a father and protector of the
good, a leader and raiser-up of the fallen or the wavering, an
avenger against the evil and oppressing.”
Such stories have to later research appeared as interesting landmarks of
the progress of a nation’s mind, and links with all its former beliefs
and traditions. Again, they were striking illustrations, fitter to
remain in the popular mind as emblems of great truths than the learned
doctrinal disquisitions, which were always above the understanding of
the masses. They are rather emblems than facts; the condensation of a
truth than its actual outcome. We have only room for a single specimen.
Whether it was intended to be related as a vision in a dream, or partly
as a waking dream, does not appear clearly from the text:
“There was,” says the Basle Plenarium of 1514, on the occasion of
Good Friday, “a prior in a monastery, who sat in his cell after his
meal and fell asleep. While he slept, one of his brethren died and
came to the sleeping prior, and spoke to him: ‘Father prior, with
your permission, I am going.’ When the other asked him where, he
answered: ‘I am going to God in eternal blessedness, for in this
very moment I have died.’ Then said the prior: ‘Since many a perfect
man must after death pass through purgatory, and one seldom comes
back to earth from it, I ask you how can you go at once to God, and
how do you know you have deserved it?’ Then answered the monk: ‘I
always had the habit of praying thus at the feet of the crucifix:
“Lord Jesus Christ, for the sake of thy bitter sufferings which thou
hast endured on the holy cross for my salvation, and especially at
the moment when thy blessed soul left thy body, have mercy on my
soul when it leaves my body.“ And God mercifully heard my prayer.’
Then the prior asked again: ‘How was it with you when you died?’ and
the other answered: ‘_I thought at that moment that the whole world
was a stone, and that it lay upon my breast, so terrible did death
seem to me_.’”
The Plenarii were not the only manuals scattered among the
rapidly-increasing number of people who, in Germany, could read in their
native tongue. Besides the Scriptures, of which nine translations, some
partial, some entire, were _printed_ before Luther’s, from 1466 to 1518,
and three entire ones after his in the sixteenth century alone,[66]
there were previous to that period fourteen complete Bibles in
High-German and five in Low-German (the University of Freiburg possesses
copies of eight of the former), and many psalters and gospels, as well
as separate books of Scripture published singly. The psalter was
undoubtedly the best-known and most commonly used part of Holy Writ.
Panzer mentions the three oldest editions printed in Latin and German,
without date or press, in folio; another octavo at Leipsic; others in
German, Augsburg, 1492 and 1494; Basle, 1502 and 1503; Spires, 1504;
Strassburg, 1506 and 1507; Metz, 1513; and the Book of Job, Strassburg,
1498. Again in the same years, and from the same presses as well as
Mayence and Nuremberg, came the epistles and gospels, and the four
Passions, divided according to their use on Sundays, while the first
popular illustrated “Bibles of the Poor,” condensations and selections,
chiefly of the most stirring stories told in the Old and New Testaments,
followed each other rapidly after 1470. The wood-cuts were generally
very good, and the Latin and German texts printed side by side. “German
explanations of the office of the Mass” were also printed, and the
devotional writings, meditations, etc., of Tauler, Suso, Thomas à
Kempis, Geiler von Keisersperg, and Sebastian Brant. Lives of the saints
and martyrologies were also printed, arranged according to the calendar
in two parts, winter and summer; but though in the main edifying, these
were chiefly reflections of traditions rather than authentic biographies
taken from contemporary sources. That style of writing was not known
then, and the general example of a holy life was more the object of the
writers than the historic details of real life. But even in these
traditions some nucleus of undisputed fact might always be found beneath
the ivy tracery of legend. Panzer remarks that these editions differed
greatly from Jacob of Voragine’s _Legenda Aurea_, and often contradicted
it. Catechisms and manuals for confession and communion were also
familiar, and some of the litanies now reprinted in modern prayer-books
are of this date, while even the contents of the Breviary were
translated into German by a Capuchin, James Wyg, and printed in Venice
in 1518. “Little prayer-books” are mentioned by Panzer as printed at
Nuremberg, Lübeck (these in Low German), Basle, and Mayence from 1487 to
1518. Two were called the _Salus Animæ_ and the _Hortulus Animæ_. The
latter is as well known now in English as it was then in German; one
edition of 1508 has a little versified introduction, interesting as
showing how Sebastian Brant’s talents were often practically employed:
“The soul’s little garden am I called.
Known am I yet from my Latin name.
At Strassburg, his fatherland,
Did revise me Sebastian Brant,
And industriously me corrected,
And into German much translated,
That now is to be found in me
Which will give joy to every reader;
Now, who uses me aright,
And plants me well, reward shall have.”
The prayer _Anima Christi_ is found in some editions. A book called _The
Mirror of the Sinner_ went through five editions from 1480 to 1510,
which Pastor John Geffcken has most impartially and fully criticised in
his history of catechetical instruction in the fifteenth century. _The
Ten Commandments_ was the title of two books printed at Venice by an
Augsburg printer in 1483, and Strassburg in 1516, and a _Manual for
Preparation for Holy Communion_, several times reprinted at Basle, has
suggested this praise from Herzog, the biographer of John Œcolampadius:
“It breathes the purest and noblest devotion (_mystik_); we shall seldom
find a communion-book penetrated with such a glow of devotion”; if we
had any room left for quotation, this judgment would be found fully
deserved. Manuals for the sick and dying were also widely used; three of
1483, 1498, and 1518, and one without date, are given in Panzer’s
catalogue. The _Garden of the Soul_ also contains a long passage on the
fit preparation for death; and other books have special prayers for the
same circumstances. That we are apt to see but one side of any question,
and that false impressions unluckily in the popular mind chiefly avail
themselves of the axiom that “possession is nine points of the law,”
Jacob Grimm very appositely complains in the preface to his _Antiquities
of German Jurisprudence_. “What is the use,” he says, “of the poetry
being now discovered which presents the joyous vitality of life in that
time (the middle ages) in a hundred touching and serious
representations? The outcry about feudalism and the right of the
strongest is still uppermost, as if, forsooth, the present had no
injustice and no wretchedness to bear.”
Footnote 60:
_Die deutschen Plenarien (Handpostillen)_ 1470-1522. Dr. J. Alzog.
Herder. Freiburg in Breisgau. To this most interesting and valuable
_brochure_ of the distinguished German ecclesiastical historian the
writer is chiefly indebted for the substance of the present article.
Footnote 61:
_Dans lequel sont décrits les livres rares, précieux, singuliers, et
aussi les ouvrages les plus, estimés._ Ve édit. Paris, 1860-1865, en
vi. tomes.
Footnote 62:
_Glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis._
Footnote 63:
These “examples” constituted a literature apart, to which reference
will be made later, characteristic of the middle ages, of which
scholars like Grimm speak with more respect, because more knowledge,
than many more modern and less discriminating writers.
Footnote 64:
Bampton Lectures, 1876. _Witness of the Psalms to Christ and
Christianity._ Dr. William Alexander.
Footnote 65:
A paraphrase of Apocalypse ii. 17 and iii. 20.
Footnote 66:
The German translations of the Bible, in part or complete, of which
the library of the University of Freiburg possesses copies, are as
follows: 1. 1466, Strassburg, folio, in 2 vols., printed by Eggestein.
2. 1472-1474, Strassburg or Nuremberg, large folio, 1 vol., printer
not named, the chief source from which the following editions were
compiled. 3. 1474. Augsburg, Günther Zainer. 4. 1474, Augsburg, 1
vol., large folio, Antony Sorg. 5. 1483, Nuremberg, large folio, 2
vols., Antony Koburger. 6. 1485, Strassburg, small folio, 2 vols. 7.
1490, Augsburg, small folio, 2 vols., Hans Schösperger. 8. 1507,
Augsburg, folio, 1 vol., but very defective. 9. 1518, Augsburg, small
folio, 2 vols., the first missing, Sylvanus Otmar. 10. 1534, the Old
and New Testaments, Mayence, folio, 1 vol., Dietenberger (of which six
other editions were printed at Cologne between 154- and 1572). 11.
1534, The Old and New Testaments translated directly from the Hebrew
and the Greek texts, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Christian Egenolff. 12.
The Old and New Testaments, according to the text authorized by Holy
Church, 1558, Ingoldstadt, small folio, 1 vol., Dr. John Ecken.
DANTE’S PURGATORIO.
TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS.
CANTO SIXTEENTH.
‘Drizza (disse) ver me l’acute luci
Dello _Intelletto_, e fieti manifesto
L’error de’ ciechi, chi si fanno duci.’
—_Purg._ xviii. 16.
Turn thy sharp lights of intellect towards me
And many errors will be manifest,
In many a volume by the world possessed,
Of men called leaders, and who claim to be.
Blackness of hell, and of a night unblest
By any planet in a barren sky
Which dunnest clouds to utmost gloom congest,
Could not with veil so gross have barred mine eye
Nor so austere to sense as now oppressed
Us in that fog which we were folded by.
Its sharpness open eye might not abide,
Therefore my wise and faithful escort lent
His shoulder’s aid, close coming to my side,
And, thus companioned, close with him I went
(Like a blind man who goes behind his guide,
Lest he go wrong or strike him against aught
To kill him haply or his life impair)
On through that sharp and bitter air, in thought
My duke observing, who still said: ‘Beware
Lest thou be separate from me!’ Anon
Voices I heard, and each voice seemed in prayer
For peace and pity to the Holy One
Of God, the Lamb who taketh sins away;
Still from them all one word, one measure streamed,
Still _Agnus Dei_ prelude of their lay,
So that among them perfect concord seemed.
‘Those, then, are spirits, Master, that I hear?’
I asked. He answered: ‘Rightly hast thou deemed
They go untangling anger’s knot severe.’
‘Now who art thou discoursing at thy will
Of us? Who cleavest with thy shape our smoke
As time by calends thou wert measuring still?’
So said a voice, whereat my Master spoke:
‘Ask him if any mounteth hence, up there.’
And I: ‘O being, who dost make thee pure
Unto thy Maker to return as fair
As thou wert born! draw near me, and full sure
Thou shalt hear something to awake thy stare.’
‘Far will I follow as allowed,’ he said;
‘And if the smoke permit us not to see,
Our sense of hearing may avail instead
Of sight, and grant me to converse with thee.’
Then I began: ‘With that same fleshly frame
Which death dissolveth, I am bound above:
Here through the infernal embassy I came,
And if God so enfold me in his love
That his grace grants me to behold his court
In manner diverse from all modern wont,
Keep not from me the knowledge, but report
Who thou wast, living, and if up the mount
My course is right: thy word shall us escort.’
‘Lombard I was, and Mark the name I bore;
I knew the world, and loved that sort of worth
At which men bend their bows not any more.
Thy course is right: climb on directly forth.’
He answered, adding: ‘Pray for me when thou
Shalt be up there.’ I answered him: ‘I bind
Myself in good faith by a solemn vow
To grant thy wish; but with one doubt my mind
Will burst within unless I solve it now.
The simple doubt which I had formed before
From others’ words is doubled now by thine,
Which, joined with those words, make my doubt the more.
The world in sooth, as I may well divine
From what thou say’st, is wicked at the core
And clothed with evil; of all virtue bare:
Show me, I pray, that I may tell again
Others, the _cause_ of this; for some declare
That Heaven is cause of ill, and some say men.
A deep-drawn sigh which anguish made a groan
First giving vent, to ‘Brother’ spake he then:
‘The world is blind; sure thou of them art one.
Ye who are living every cause refer
Still to high Heaven, as though necessity
Moved all things through Heaven’s[67] motion. If this were,
Freedom of will impossible would be,
Nor were it just that Goodness should for her
Sure meed have joy, and Badness misery.
Heaven to your actions the first movement gives—
I say not all; but granted I say all,
For good or evil each his light receives,
And a free will which, if it do not fall,
But win Heaven’s first hard battle, then it lives,
And, if well trained, is never held in thrall.
‘To greater power and to a higher soul
Free, ye are subject; and that power in you
Creates the mind, which no stars can control:
Hence if the present world go wrong, ’tis due
To your own selves; and of this theme the whole
I will expound as an informer true.
Forth from His hand (before its birth who smiled
On his new offspring) into being goes
A little weeping, laughing, wanton child;
The simple infant soul that nothing knows,
Save that, by pleasure willingly beguiled,
She turns to joy as her glad Maker chose.
Taste of some trifling good it first perceives,
And, cheated so, runs for the shining flower,
Unless a rein or guide its love retrieves.
Hence there was need of Law’s restraining power;
A king there needed, that at least some one
Of God’s true city might discern the tower.
The laws exist, but who maintains them? none;
Because the Shepherd, Sovereign of the fold,
Though he may ruminate, no cleft hoof bears:
The people then, seeing their Guide so fond
Of what they crave, and with like greed as theirs,
Pasture with him, and seek no good beyond.
’Tis plain to see that what hath made mankind
So bad is evil guidance, not your own
Corrupted nature. Once of old there shined
The twofold splendors of a double sun
In Rome, which city brought the world to good;
One showed the way of earth to men, and one
Gave them to see the other way, of God.
One hath destroyed the other, and the sword
Is with the crosier joined, that neither fears
The other’s check; so joined they ill accord.
If thou dost doubt me, think what fruit appears
In the full blade, since every plant we know
For good or evil by the seed it bears.
Once in that goodly region by the Po
And Adige watered, valor used to dwell
And courtesy, ere Frederic’s trouble came:
Now one might journey through that country well
Secure from meeting (if it gave him shame
To speak with good men) any that excel.
Three old men yet dwell there in whom the old
Chides the new age, and time seems slow to run
To them till God replace them in his fold;
Currado da Palazzo, he is one,
Gherardo likewise, of the life unblamed,
And Guido da Castello, who perchance
Simply the Lombard might be better named,
After the fashion of their speech in France.
Say thou this day, then, that the Church of Rome,
Confounding human rule and sway divine,
Sinks with her charge beluted in the loam?’[68]
‘Thou reasonest well,’ I said, ‘O Marco mine,
And I perceive now why the sacred tome
The sons of Levi bars from heritage.
But who is that Gherardo who, thou say’st,
Remaineth in rebuke of this rough age
From those who formerly the realm possessed?’
‘Either thy tongue misleads me or thou show’st
A wish to try me,’ he to me replied,
‘That, using Tuscan speech, thou nothing know’st
Of good Gherardo. No surname beside
I know, unless unto that name he bore
One from his daughter Gaia be supplied:
Go thou with God! I follow thee no more.
See! raying yonder through the fog a gleamy
Splendor that whitens it; I must away
(It is the Angel there!) before he see me.’
Thus turned he, nor would hear me further say.
Footnote 67:
By _heaven_, throughout this discourse, Dante means, simply,
_planetary influence_. The lesson taught by Marco Lombardi is the same
as that which Shakspere puts into the mouth of Cassius:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Footnote 68:
It is well to note in connection with this passage that Dante was, up
to the time of his banishment by a political faction, a Guelph, the
Guelphs being then the patriotic party in Italy, and supporters of the
pope in his resolute opposition to the foreign invasion under Frederic
Barbarossa. During his exile Dante changed his politics and joined the
Ghibellines. Had he lived in our own days it is certain that he, whose
faith was so high and clear, would have shared the openly expressed
convictions of all responsible men and competent judges in this
matter, that the temporal authority of the Holy See is necessary, as
things now are, to the full liberty and full exercise of its spiritual
authority. Dante’s opinion, as above expressed, is that of a political
partisan in bygone times. Were he living to-day, instructed by the
lessons of the centuries which have passed since he wrote, there can
be no doubt that he would adhere to his earlier, truer, and more
patriotic political convictions and see no impossibility of the union
of “The twofold splendors of a double sun in Rome” in the person of
Rome’s lawful and historic pontiff and king.—ED. C. W.
RESPECTABLE POVERTY IN FRANCE.
Under the title of “Indigence in a Black Coat” an observant French
writer[69] draws a painful picture of the sufferings of a class of his
countrymen usually much less compassionated than the so-called
working-classes. That term, indeed, is a misnomer when applied to any
one especial class, as, with rare exceptions, every one in France is
hard at work, manually or intellectually. The class, however, with which
these few pages are concerned is one still more deserving of respectful
sympathy than even those who follow the honest, nay, noble, career of
skilled or unskilled labor.
Besides the mechanic and artisan, whose payment follows in a certain
measure the progressive price of provisions, there are other categories
of men, assuredly not less interesting, whose pecuniary level has never
risen or fallen even by a five-franc piece, and who at the present time
are compelled to live on the appointed salary which has been attached to
their place for an unlimited number of years.
Everywhere in the towns rents have doubled, and even trebled. The system
of railways has disseminated local production, which formerly had a
local and limited sale, over all parts of France, and even abroad,
without any proportionate incomings to compensate for the increase of
prices attendant on so great an increase of sale. The latter, it need
hardly be said, involves a like increase of production.
In a country like France, where the agricultural riches are immense and
the landed property infinitesimally parcelled out, the means of
transport, which have increased tenfold within the last thirty years,
have carried riches, or at least competency, into the villages and other
country parts. To such a degree is this true that there is not now a
peasant in France who cannot maintain himself by his strip of land.
Formerly he would have carried into the town, on market days, the
produce of his land and live stock. Now he rarely takes the trouble to
do this, and almost always strikes a bargain with buyers who purchase
_en masse_ and pay him a high price. Thus, with hardly any
expenditure,[70] he can live on his little property, his aim being to
save all he can and to sell as dearly as possible.
But in the cities and small towns how to live is a more difficult
problem. The clerks, secretaries, and small functionaries of every kind,
who could formerly support and educate their families in a respectable
way, have no longer the possibility of doing so on the meagre and
rigidly-fixed salaries dispensed to them by the state. The sea itself is
no longer a resource. The railway carries off the produce of the tides
to Paris and the other large towns, which purchase the whole and throw
away thousands of kilos of spoilt fish every week.
Again, these small official situations generally involve the necessity
of being respectably, or even well, dressed. A professor, for example,
or a magistrate, an employé of the registration or other government
offices, belongs, by education or by the functions he discharges, to a
class of persons who must make a good appearance, under pain of being
neglected, unnoticed, or even altogether tabooed.
At Paris, where there is an abundance of everything, and into which the
provinces pour the overflow of their riches, life, for certain persons,
is materially impossible. The _octroi_ absorbs all, and, under pretext
of making the capital a rich and beautiful city, peoples it with poor by
rendering their means wholly inadequate to meet the increasing
exigencies of expenditure.
Thus, while living is difficult to them in the provinces, because the
country sends all its produce to the great towns, in the towns they
cannot live at all. The imposts there are enormous; while the fact that
the necessaries of life are abundant is accompanied by no diminution of
price, but the contrary.
Still, nothing is done; and these meritorious persons, obliged to
conceal a very real poverty beneath an outward show that eats into their
slender resources, and who, unlike so many around them, are disenchanted
of the dream that the world is all their own, suffer uncomplainingly.
Perhaps they are weary of complaining; in any case they do not noisily
insist and threaten, but, at the utmost, plead, and certainly wait until
hope and energy wither in the blight of continued disappointment.
Hundreds of thousands of persons thus exist, and those who may be called
the intellectual essence of the nation: professors, magistrates, men
occupied in the various departments of art, and who prepare the
intellectual prosperity of a generation to come. These men, especially
such of them as have a family dependent upon them, drag on life year
after year so miserably remunerated that how they contrive to live, and
to strain the two ends to meet by any honorable means, is simply a
mystery. In vain may each capable member of the family put a shoulder to
the wheel and effect prodigies of economy. With every noble effort they
find their life growing harder, and the cost of life increasing in
proportions of which it is impossible to see the limit.
In the times through which France is passing even the wealthy, and those
who are regarded as the favored ones of fortune, reduce their expenses
under the influence of a certain feeling of apprehension which is not
easy to define, unless a reason for it may be found in the frequent
government changes and general instability of political affairs in this
country. They instinctively restrain their expenditure to what they
regard as the necessaries of life, and indulge in few of the luxuries of
patronage involving outlay. And thus the hardness of the times makes
itself so severely felt in all the liberal professions that in the study
of the professor or literary author, as in the _atelier_ of the artist,
the pressing cares of life not unfrequently absorb the mind so as to
eclipse and benumb the powers of imagination and invention. The father
and bread-winner anxiously asks himself how, even with marvels of
economy and self-denying privation, he is to provide for the present
needs and future career of his children.
The question we are considering is for the moment drowned amid the
tumult of political strife. It must, however, assert itself with
increasing urgency in proportion as misery, in the full acceptation of
the word, shows itself as the inevitable consequence of the progressive
increase of prices in things of absolute necessity, without such
compensation as corresponds with it or even approximates to it.
And yet France is far from being poor. Sober, industrious, and
economical, her treasury is rich in spite of the enormous war-tribute by
which it was partly diminished of late. That diminution was, by
comparison, insignificant. Surely, with all the sources of wealth which
France has at command, there must be amply sufficient to pay, at a rate
commensurate with their services and due requirements, men who have
never bargained for their trouble, but who now, under the continuance of
the actual condition of things, will find it impossible to live.
This is a question demanding prompt attention, unless the anomaly is to
be maintained that France is a country of great actual and possible
wealth, in which the _élite_ of the nation are more and more exposed to
the danger of dying of hunger.
The writer on whose words, verified by our own observations, we have
based our remarks says that from all quarters he receives letters of
which the following extract is a sample: “What you have stated is far
short of the truth. Could you lift the veil that conceals our misery,
you would see into what a gulf of distress we have been plunged by years
of indifference to our needs. From time to time we make earnest
representations of our case, but these, as well as the proofs we give of
the hard reality of our necessities and expenses, are year after year
treated with the same passive disregard; and there are very many amongst
us who, in spite of the most rigid economy, will never be able to
recover themselves.”
In case our remarks should seem to have too general a character, or to
be in any way exaggerated, we will give an example—namely, the parochial
clergy, the men who are unweariedly denounced by the radical-republicans
as “pillagers of the budget” and “robbers of the state.”
The ordinary income of one of the more opulent among the rural parish
priests (by far the larger proportion receive less—some much less) is as
follows:
Indemnity of the government for each quarter, paid 900 frs.
three weeks or more after time = 225 francs,
equalling per annum the sum of
Indemnity of the commune 100 frs.
Casual receipts 60 frs
(Say, 40) Low Masses 60 frs
——-
Forming a total of 1,120
frs
Then, as the sum of obligatory expenses, we have the following:
Wages of servant 240 frs.
Door and window tax 53 frs.
_Prestation_, or taking of oaths 5 frs.
Tax for dog 8 frs.
For the Fund for Infirm Priests, as the only means 10 frs.
of securing a morsel of bread if disabled
___
Total 316 frs.
There remains, therefore, for this parish priest to live upon an average
income of 804 francs—_i.e._, about $160. He is not even “passing rich”
on the traditionary “forty pounds a year.”
With these eight hundred and four francs he must meet all expenses, keep
open the hospitable door of the presbytery—the house so readily found,
so close by the church, and so accessible; the house which receives the
first visit of the poor, the outcast, and the wanderer, and whose
occupant, thus poor himself, has neither the wish nor the right to close
against any one the way to his fireside. Two francs and four _sous_ a
day, however, are the magnificent sum allowed for the inmates of this
presbytery and for all the needy, who, regarding it as their natural
home, go straight to the kitchen, not knowing what it is to be sent away
empty.
We are personally acquainted with several country _curés_ whose
governmental stipend is from four to six hundred francs a year, and it
is only the more important parishes of the _curés doyens_ or _curés de
canton_ to which is attached the ampler revenue of nine hundred francs,
or thirty-six pounds sterling. A large proportion of the _curés de
commune_ do not receive more from the state than four hundred francs
_per annum_. And this stipend is termed, as if in mockery, an
“indemnity.” It only deserves that title if we read the word by the
light of a wholesale spoliation of church property and revenues,
parochial, monastic, collegiate, and eleemosynary, effected by the
revolution, and later on ratified, or at least condoned, by the state.
If, indeed, as all history proves, the Catholic Church has been the
saviour and preserver of the state, the state has often shown itself the
Judas of the church, and this “indemnity” is its kiss of peace.
There are now in France more than twenty thousand priests who are the
recipients of this exorbitant civil list. They neither complain nor
recriminate, but patiently and bravely act for the best in the interest
of all. With a calmness derived from faith, they allow to sweep by them,
as if heeding it not, the flood of stupid and malignant calumnies with
which they and their sacred office are daily assailed. They go on
receiving the poor, visiting the sick, consoling the sorrowful,
sympathizing with all, assisting, even beyond their power, the
distressed out of their own pittance, and thus further lessening the
scanty means doled out to them for the sublime service of every
hour—services basely misrepresented as to their motive, their spirit,
and even their result.
It is not our present intention to dwell on the high social part filled
by the second order of the clergy in France, and almost invariably with
the most praiseworthy self-abnegation. But, at a time when honor,
justice, and moral sense are by so many in France completely forgotten,
or treated as an effervescence of obsolete and Quixotic sentimentalism;
when it is the order of the day for each to get as much as possible for
himself, and thrust himself into any office at hand, irrespective of
worth, fitness, or merit; and when legions of “enlightened” and
“advanced” “republicans” (especially those who elect to be married like
heathens and buried like dogs) are gnashing their teeth at the clergy of
France, so excellent, so devoted, and in the truest sense so liberal, it
would be well if these men who insult them without stint and against
reason were made aware that the more opulent among the men they revile
are receiving, for all personal and household requirements, and the
satisfaction of the hospitable instincts of their sacerdotal hearts, the
munificent revenue of forty-four _sous_ a day.
Footnote 69:
Under the _nom de plume_ of “Jean de Nivelle.” See _Le Soleil_ for
Jan. 4, 1878.
Footnote 70:
The diet of a French peasant is frugal in the extreme. His two meals
usually consist of cabbage-soup—in which on Sundays and other special
occasions a morsel of bacon is boiled—accompanied with rye bread. We
have known a very well-to-do couple make half a rabbit last them four
days in the way of meat. Many kinds of fungi are common articles of
diet with the French peasantry. They cook them with vinegar “to kill
the poison.”
THE CORONATION OF POPE LEO XIII.
(FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.)
ROME, March 20, 1878.
There is a passage in the circular of the cardinals addressed to the
diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See on the eve of the conclave
which deserves to be noted in connection with the issue of the conclave
and the secular policy of the new Pontiff. The circular, after renewing
all the protests and reservations of the deceased Pontiff, and declaring
the intention of the cardinals to hold the conclave in Rome, because the
first duty of the Sacred College is to provide the widowed church with a
pastor as quickly as possible, says: “And this resolution was taken with
the greater tranquillity, inasmuch as, pledging the future in no wise,
_it left the future Pontiff at liberty to adopt those measures_ which
the good of souls and the general interests of the church will suggest
to him in the difficult and painful condition of the Holy See at
present.” The future for the new Pontiff is a free and open field which
he can traverse in the manner he shall judge best for the weal of the
church. The protests and reservations of the deceased Pontiff touching
the temporalities of the Holy See constitute a realm of principle.
Surrounding this is a free border-land for the new Pope.
People here in Rome and elsewhere who speculate much on the present
condition of the Holy See, and especially on the so-called antagonism
existing between itself and the Italian government, hoped that Leo XIII.
would assume a less inflexible attitude before the people. Of the
liberals, the conservatives, who are the acknowledged exponents of the
sentiments of the crown, hoped for a formal conciliation. The Catholics
expected that the new Pope would at least appear occasionally in public
to bless them; while the curious tourists of all countries had visions
of the solemn and imposing ceremonies in St. Peter’s which were the
characteristic feature of Rome in other days. The expectations of all
have been falsified so far. Since the 3d of March, the day of Leo
XIII.’s coronation, the most sanguine liberals have desisted from their
conciliatory speculations, and the rest have settled down into quiet
resignation, yet hoping that a propitious occasion may again bring the
Pontiff in public before his people.
A more fitting occasion than the day of his coronation could not be
desired. Nay, the Pontiff himself had resolved to make his appearance,
and be crowned before the people, in the upper vestibule of St. Peter’s.
The Mass and other functions, prefatory of the coronation, were to have
been performed in the Sistine Chapel. In fact, on the 1st of March the
members of the Sacred College each received an intimation from the
acting Secretary of State that the ceremonies preceding the coronation
would be performed in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican Palace. In the
vicinity of the inner balcony of St. Peter’s temporary balconies were
erected for the diplomatic corps, the Roman nobles, and persons of
distinction, native and foreign. The confession of St. Peter and the
papal altar under the dome were surrounded with a strong railing to
prevent accidents, while the central balcony itself was enlarged by
extending it farther out into the basilica and back into the vestibule.
It had been the intention of His Holiness to be crowned here, and
afterwards to bestow the apostolic benediction upon the people below.
But on Friday afternoon, March 1, the workmen received orders not only
to discontinue but to undo the preparations. It is unnecessary to
speculate on the cause of this order in the presence of explanatory
facts. A demonstration of enthusiastic devotion on the part of the
multitude of Catholics who would be assembled there was naturally
expected, and in this there was nothing deterrent whatever. But the
information had eked abroad, and was duly reported to His Holiness, that
a party of _Conciliators_ had resolved to seize the occasion of the
solemn benediction, and create a demonstration in favor of a
conciliation with the existing order of things. Flags, Papal and
Italian, were to have been produced just at the moment of benediction,
and an interesting tableau of alliance to have succeeded. But this was
not all. A counter-demonstration of the radicals was also mooted. This
is no trivial hearsay, as the events of the same evening sufficiently
attest. I pass over the allusions to the explosion of Orsini shells in
the church. In the face of such expectations ordinary prudence would
have suggested to the Sovereign Pontiff the inexpediency of a public
ceremony. Yet if he were disposed to hesitate before giving credence to
what was related to him by reliable authority, the attitude suddenly
assumed by the government left no doubt in his mind as to what was
expedient in the matter. Crispi, the garrulous Minister of the Interior,
had given out that the government would not consider itself responsible
for the maintenance of order in St. Peter’s on the 3d of March. He had
previously addressed a circular to the prefects and syndics of the
realm, interdicting any participation of theirs in the public rejoicings
for the election of Pope Leo XIII., because, forsooth, he had not been
officially informed of the election! He seems to have overlooked the
inconsistency of this act with the efficient service rendered by the
troops in St. Peter’s during the funeral ceremonies of Pius IX., albeit
the government had not been officially informed of his demise. The
church, however, has long since learned that it is vain to look for
consistency in men who are strangers to truth and fair dealing.
Moreover, she has, within the past few years, had bitter experiences in
the doctrine of provocation, as inculcated by the Italian government.
Leo XIII. was crowned in his own chapel, in the presence only of the
cardinals, the prelates, and dignitaries, ecclesiastical, civil, and
military, of the Vatican, the diplomatic corps, the Roman nobility, and
a few guests.
At half-past nine o’clock on Sunday morning, the 3d of March, Pope Leo
XIII., preceded by the papal cross, and surrounded by the attendants of
his court, by the Swiss and Noble Guards, descended from his apartments
to the vestry hall. The two seniors of the cardinal deacons, the
penitentiaries of St. Peter’s, and the archbishops and bishops awaited
him there. When he had been vested in full pontificals, with golden
mitre, a procession was formed, moving towards the ducal hall. A Greek
deacon and subdeacon, in gorgeous robes, attended upon the deacon and
subdeacon of honor. The cardinals were assembled in the ducal hall,
where an altar was erected. His Holiness knelt for a moment in prayer,
and then mounted a throne which stood on the gospel side of the altar.
There he received what is termed the first obeisance of the cardinals,
who approached, one by one, and kissed his hand. The archbishops and
bishops kissed his foot. Having imparted the apostolic benediction, the
Pope intoned Tierce of the Little Hours. Another procession was formed,
preceded by the first cardinal, who bore the sacred ferule in his hand
and chanted the _Procedamus in pace_. The Pope was carried in the
gestatorial chair under a white canopy borne by eight clerics. The
Blessed Sacrament had previously been exposed in the Pauline Chapel.
Thither the procession moved. At the door of the chapel the Pope
descended from his chair, entered the chapel bare-headed, and knelt for
a time in silent prayer. It is to be supposed that in those moments he
prayed for humility of self, as well as peace and benediction upon his
reign. It is the fitting prelude to the significant ceremony which
followed. Just as the procession was about to move from the chapel-door
towards the Sistine Chapel a master of ceremonies, bearing in his hand a
gilded reed, to the end of which a lock of dry flax was attached,
approached the throne, and, going down upon one knee, gave fire to the
flax. As it burned quickly to nothing he said: _Pater Sancte, sic
transit gloria mundi_—“Holy Father, thus passeth away the glory of the
world.” He repeated the same ceremony at the entrance to the Sistine
Chapel, and again just as the Pope was approaching the altar—a sage
reminder, for the Sistine Chapel at that moment presented a spectacle of
glory and magnificence which has no parallel.
Sixty-two cardinals, in flowing robes of the richest scarlet, the
magnificence of which was enhanced beneath tunics of the finest lace,
and as many attendant train-bearers in purple cassocks and capes of
ermine; archbishops and bishops vested in white pontificals; clerics of
the apostolic palace in robes of violet; Roman princes, gentlemen of the
pontifical throne, in their gorgeous costumes; officers and guards in
splendid uniforms; diplomatic personages ablaze with decorations;
Knights of the Order of Jerusalem in their historic vesture; ladies in
black habits and veils, gracefully arranged, and gentlemen in the full
dress of the present day. Despite all this splendor, the most trivial
worldling could not but be impressed with the sacred solemnity, the
awful genius of the occasion. A Pope was to be crowned—“the Great
Priest, Supreme Pontiff; Prince of Bishops, heir of the apostles; in
primacy, Abel; in government, Noe; in patriarchate, Abraham; in order,
Melchisedech; in dignity, Aaron; in authority, Moses; in judicature,
Samuel; in power, Peter; in unction, Christ.”[71]
The Mass has begun. The choir has sung the _Kyrie Eleison_ in the
inimitable style of the Sistine Chapel. The Pope has said the
_Confiteor_. He returns to the gestatorial chair. The three senior
cardinals of the order of bishops, mitred, come forward, and each in
turn extends his hands over the Pontiff and recites the prayer of the
ritual, _Super electum Pontificem_. Cardinal Mertel, first of the
officiating deacons, places the pallium upon his shoulders, saying at
the same time: _Accipe pallium, scilicet plenitudinis Pontificalis
officii, ad honorem Omnipotentis Dei, et gloriosissimæ Virginis Mariæ,
Matris ejus, et Beatorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli et Sanctæ Romanæ
Ecclesiæ._ Leaving the gestatorial chair, and ascending the throne on
the gospel side of the altar, the Pope again receives the obeisance of
the cardinals, of the archbishops and bishops. The Mass proper for the
occasion is then celebrated by the Pontiff, and the Litany of the Saints
recited.
The solemn moment has arrived. The Pope again ascends the throne, while
the choir sings the antiphon, _Corona aurea super caput ejus_. The
subdean of the Sacred College, Cardinal di Pietro, intones the _Pater
noster_, and afterwards reads the prayer, _Omnipotens sempiterne Deus,
dignitas Sacerdotii_, etc. The second deacon removes the mitre from the
head of the Pontiff, and Cardinal Mertel approaches, bearing the tiara.
Placing it on the head of the Pope, he says: _Accipe thiaram tribus
coronis ornatam, et scias te esse Patrem Principum et Regum, Rectorem
Orbis, in terra Vicarium Salvatoris Nostri Jesu Christi, cui est honor
et gloria in sæcula sæculorum._
The Pope then arose and imparted the trinal benediction. This was
followed by the publication of the indulgences proper to the occasion.
From the Sistine Chapel the Pope, with the tiara still glittering on his
brow, was borne in procession back to the vestry hall, whither the
cardinals had preceded him. When he had been unrobed and seated anew in
the middle of the hall, Cardinal di Pietro approached and read the
following discourse: “After our votes, inspired by God, fixed upon the
person of your Holiness the choice for the supreme dignity of Sovereign
Pontiff of the Catholic Church, we passed from deep affliction to lively
hope. To the tears which we shed over the tomb of Pius IX.—a Pontiff so
venerated throughout the world, so beloved by us—succeeded the consoling
thought, like a new aurora, of well-founded hopes for the church of
Jesus Christ.
“Yes, Most Holy Father, you gave us sufficient proofs, while ruling the
diocese entrusted to you by divine Providence, or taking part in the
important affairs of the Holy See, of your piety, your apostolic zeal,
your many virtues, of your great intelligence, of your prudence, and of
the lively interest which you also took in the glory and honor of our
cardinalitial college; so that we could easily persuade ourselves that,
being elected Supreme Pastor, you would act as the apostle wrote of
himself to the Thessalonians: ‘Not in word only, but in power also, and
in the Holy Ghost, and in much fulness.’ Nor was the divine will slow in
manifesting itself, for by our means it repeated to you the words
already addressed to David when it designated him King of Israel: ‘Thou
shalt feed my people, and thou shalt be prince over Israel.’
“With which divine disposition we are happy to see the general sentiment
immediately corresponding; and as all hasten to venerate your sacred
person in the same manner as all the tribes of Israel prostrated
themselves in Hebron before the new pastor given them by God, so we too
hasten, on this solemn day of your coronation, like the seniors of the
chosen people, to repeat to you as a pledge of affection and obedience
the words recorded in the sacred pages: ‘Behold, we shall be thy bone
and thy flesh.’
“May heaven grant that, as the holy Book of Kings adds that David
reigned forty years, so ecclesiastical history may narrate for posterity
the length of the pontificate of Leo XIII. These are the sentiments and
the sincere wishes which, in the name of the Sacred College, I now lay
at your sacred feet. Deign to accept them benignantly, imparting to us
your apostolic benediction.”
His Holiness replied: “The noble and affectionate words which you, most
reverend eminence, in the name of the whole Sacred College, have just
addressed to us touch to the quick our heart, already greatly moved by
the unlooked-for event of our exaltation to the supreme pontificate,
which came to pass contrary to any merit of ours.
“The burden of the sovereign keys, formidable in itself, which has been
placed upon our shoulders, becomes still more difficult, considering our
insufficiency, which is quite overcome by it. The very rite which has
just been performed with so much solemnity has made us comprehend still
more the majesty and dignity of the see to which we have been raised,
and has increased in our soul the idea of the grandeur of this sublime
throne of the earth. And since you, lord cardinal, have named David,
spontaneously the words of the same holy king occur to us: ‘Who am I,
Lord God, that thou hast brought me hither?’
“Still, in the midst of so many just reasons for confusion and
discomfort, it is consoling to us to see the Catholics all, unanimous
and in harmony, pressing around this Holy See, and giving to it public
attestations of obedience and of love. The concord and affection of all
the members of the Sacred College, most dear to us, console us, and the
assurance of their efficient co-operation in the discharge of the
difficult ministry to which they have called us by their suffrage.
“Above all, we are comforted by confidence in the most loving God, who
has willed to raise us to such an eminence, whose assistance we shall
never cease to implore with all the fervor of our heart, desiring that
it be implored by all, mindful of what the apostle says: ‘All our
sufficiency is from God.’ Persuaded, moreover, that it is he who
‘chooses the weak things of the earth to confound the strong,’ we live
in the certainty that he will sustain our weakness, and will raise up
our humility to show his own power and cause his strength to shine
forth.
“We heartily thank your eminence for the courteous sentiments and the
sincere wishes which you have now addressed to us in the name of the
Sacred College, and we accept them with all our heart. We conclude,
imparting with all the effusion of our soul the apostolic benediction.
_Benedictio Dei_, etc.”
His Holiness then retired to his apartments, and the solemn assembly
dispersed.
Meanwhile, the vast basilica of St. Peter had been crowded with people
since ten o’clock in the morning, who hoped on, despite the contrary
appearances, that His Holiness would come out at the last moment to
bless them. Deeming such an event not unlikely, the Duke of Aosta, now
military commander in Rome, had ordered several battalions of soldiers
into the square, with orders to render sovereign honors to the Pontiff
if he appeared on the outer balcony. This measure inculpated still more
the Minister of the Interior, inasmuch as the unofficial information
which was acted upon by the Minister of War should have been sufficient
for the Interior Department. Save and except the salaried organs of the
ministry, the journals of every color in Rome concurred in censuring the
action of Signor Crispi, adding, at the same time, that it was the duty
of the government to show every consideration for a Pontiff whose
election has given such universal satisfaction. The breach between the
church and state, they concluded, was only widened and the antagonism
intensified.
Though the ceremonies of the coronation terminated at half-past ten
o’clock, and the equipages of the cardinals and dignitaries had
disappeared from the neighborhood of the Vatican, still the expectant
and anxious people lingered in the basilica until the afternoon was far
advanced. Then only did they turn homewards, supremely dissatisfied, not
with the Pope but with the civil authorities. The demonstration of the
_canaille_ in the evening against the Pope and the clerical party only
confirmed the report of an intended tumult in St. Peter’s, to be
provoked by the radicals. The palaces of the nobles had been illuminated
about an hour on the Corso, when the mob assembled at the usual
rendezvous, Piazza Colonna. With a movement which betokened a previous
arrangement they rushed down the Corso to cries of “Death to the Pope!”
“Down with the clericals!” “Down with the Law of the Papal Guarantees!”
etc. They halted before the palace of the Marquis Theodoli, and assailed
the windows with a prolonged volley of stones, which they had gathered
elsewhere, as no missives could be had on the Corso, unless the pavement
were torn up. A full hour elapsed before the troops appeared on the
scene and the bugles sounded the order to disperse. Only a few were
arrested.
That same afternoon the Mausoleum of Augustus was the witness of a more
systematic and dangerous demonstration against the Law of the
Guarantees. The speakers, several of whom are members of the Parliament,
indulged in the most villanous tirades against the Papacy, coupled with
no measured votes of censure upon the government. A strong memorial was
drawn up and addressed to Parliament, demanding the abrogation of the
Law of Papal Guarantees.
Two days after his coronation Pope Leo XIII. appointed to the office of
Secretary of State his Eminence Cardinal Alessandro Franchi, formerly
prefect of the Propaganda. Whether it be that the moderate liberals
still harbor visions of a formal conciliation, or that their esteem for
Leo XIII. is superior to every party question, or both the one and the
other motive actuate them, is not yet established; but the fact is,
every act of the new Pontiff has been more warmly commended, as an
additional instance of his unquestionable capabilities and profound
sagacity, by the liberal than by the Catholic press. I am far from
wishing to intimate that the latter displays no enthusiastic admiration
for the inaugurative acts of Pope Leo’s pontificate. But the liberal
press is particularly demonstrative in its admiration. The nomination of
Cardinal Franchi to the Secretaryship of State has been hailed with
jubilation by organs which hitherto have devoted every energy to
bringing the late incumbents of that office, living and dead, into
disrepute. “Cardinal Franchi,” say they, “is the man for this epoch.
Accomplished, polished, bland of manner, skilled in diplomacy, and of
accommodating disposition, he will be a worthy companion and counsellor
to Leo XIII. in the new era for the church just inaugurated.” It is to
be regretted, however, that their admiration for the Sovereign Pontiff
and his secretary has not been able to keep their usual powers of
invention from running riot in their regard. Cardinal Franchi is already
credited with addressing a circular to the nuncios abroad, asking how a
change of the Vatican policy _in a less aggressive sense_ would be
regarded by the powers of Europe. He is also said to have made the first
step towards an understanding with Prussia, while the Pope himself is
asserted as having addressed an autograph letter to the Czar of Russia,
in which he expresses the hope that the difficulty between the Holy See
and the imperial government, touching the condition of the church in
Poland, will soon be removed.
It is needless to observe that the nomination of Cardinal Franchi as
Secretary of State is pleasing to the Catholics. His career has been
throughout one of eminent service to the Church. He was born of
distinguished parents in Rome, on the 25th of June, 1819. At the age of
eight years he entered the Roman Seminary, where he graduated with
distinction, and was ordained priest. Soon after he was appointed to the
chair of history in both his Alma Mater and the University of the
Sapienza. Later on he became professor of sacred and civil diplomacy in
the _Accademia Ecclesiastica_. Some of his pupils are now members of the
Sacred College. In 1853 he was sent as _chargé d’affaires_ to Spain,
where he remained, with honor to the Holy See and to himself, until
1856. Recalled from Spain, Pope Pius IX. himself consecrated him
Archbishop of Thessalonica _in partibus_, and appointed him nuncio to
the then existing courts of Florence and Modena. He remained in that
capacity until the annexation to Piedmont of both duchies in 1859.
Returning to Rome, he was nominated in 1860 secretary of the
Congregation of Ecclesiastical Affairs. In 1868 he was sent back to
Spain as apostolic nuncio. The Spanish Revolution of 1869 brought his
useful labors in that country to a close, and he again sought his native
city, but only to be sent to Constantinople in 1871, on the delicate
mission of arranging the serious difficulty then existing between the
Holy See and the sultan touching the Armenian Catholics in the Turkish
capital. His sound judgment, coupled with his proverbial urbanity,
enabled him to bring his mission to a successful conclusion in a short
time, and he returned to Rome laden with presents from the sultan to the
Holy Father. He was created cardinal in the consistory of December 22,
1873, and in the March of the following year was appointed prefect of
the Propaganda. His qualifications for the present office need not be
enlarged upon after a consideration of his antecedents. With the office
of Secretary of State is joined that of prefect of the Apostolic Palace,
and administrator of the revenues and possessions of the Holy See. In
the latter capacity he will be assisted by their Eminences Cardinals
Borromeo and Nina, recently nominated at his request by the Sovereign
Pontiff.
Pope Leo XIII. has inaugurated an era of reform in the administrative
department of the Vatican. He is fast retrenching unnecessary expenses.
He has brought into the Vatican his old frugal habits which
distinguished him as the bishop of Perugia. He still uses the midnight
lamp of study, and is at the moment of the present writing busily
engaged in drawing up the allocution which he will pronounce in the
coming consistory.
In that document Leo XIII. will stand revealed in his attitude before
the Powers, friendly and hostile, of the world.
Footnote 71:
St. Bernard.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
A LIFE OF POPE PIUS IX. By John R. G. Hassard. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society Co. 1878.
“It is ... with the story of the private virtues of Pius IX., the
outlines of his public life, and the most important works of his
pontificate that the present biography will be chiefly concerned,” says
the author of this really excellent life of the late Pope. Mr. Hassard
has closely kept to the programme which he thus clearly set down for
himself in the beginning, and the result is one of the most
comprehensive biographies of Pius IX. that we have yet seen. The book is
by no means a bulky one, yet the story of the wonderful pontificate is
all there; the events that mark it grouped with the skill of a
thoroughly practised and efficient pen: the secret forces that impelled
those events brought to light; and the lights and shadows of the
ever-shifting scene pictured with a rapid yet bold and true hand. Mr.
Hassard has the happy gift of collecting his facts, setting them
together in the briefest and most intelligible form, and leaving the
reader to make his own comment on them. The comment is sure to be such
as the author himself would make, so clear and logical is his
arrangement of the premises. Another happy feature marks this biography:
there is an absence of gush. The author writes tenderly and with an open
admiration of his subject; but the tenderness never sinks into
sentimentality, and the admiration is always manly and reasonable. The
anecdotes are well chosen and happy, and most, if not all, of them will
be new to the general reader. The author’s study of the workings of the
secret societies, which play so prominent a part in the history of the
last pontificate, has been close and searching. His acquaintance with
European politics generally, so necessary in a biographer of Pius IX.,
is equally thorough. These necessary qualifications give a special value
to the present _Life_, while the whole story is told with a genial glow
of personal regard and admiration for its subject, none the less
charming that its tone is rationally subdued. Mr. Hassard is to be
congratulated on having produced a biography that will be cherished by
Catholic readers as we cherish and keep by us, and look at again and
again, a faithful miniature of one very dear to our hearts.
LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS TO FANNY BRAWNE. From the original
manuscripts, with introduction and notes by Harry Buxton Forman. New
York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1878.
Were these the letters of John Brown instead of John Keats the world
would wonder, with reason, what possible motive could have induced their
publication. Well might poor Keats, were he alive, say on seeing them in
print and exposed to the public gaze, “Save me from my friends!” Their
publication is, perhaps, the greatest injury that the unfortunate poet,
or his memory, ever had to sustain. As letters, even as love-letters,
they are remarkably dull and insipid. How Miss Fanny Brawne received
them of course we do not know. Love is reputed to be blind. It is
certainly color-blind. Othello could never have looked black—at least
not very black—to Desdemona. Had he worn his native sable that poor lady
would undoubtedly have been reserved for a better fate. So it is
presumably with love-letters. They may contain wells of wit and wisdom
and eloquence and fire to the party to whom they are addressed, and who
is bewitched by love’s potion, though to all the rest of the world they
are the very embodiment of absurdity and nonsense. Titania, over whom
the spell has been wrought, sees an Adonis where everybody else only
sees honest Nick Bottom, the weaver, fittingly capped by an ass’s head.
It is an evil day for Bottom when the love potion has lost its virtue
and the scales drop from the eyes of Titania. Such an event does happen
at times to all the Bottoms and Titanias, and probably it happened to
Miss Fanny Brawne, who never became Mrs. Keats, but Mrs. Somebody Else.
If ever she had cause for a grudge against Keats she has more than
revenged it by allowing some prying busybody access to these very silly
letters which are now given to the public for the first time.
They show nothing but weakness, mental and moral, in their author. It
should be remembered, however, that they are the letters of a man marked
for death. They exhibit not a trace of the wit and humor which Keats
really had, and to which he sometimes gave expression. They are utterly
without his classic grace and profound, if pagan, sympathy with nature.
They are the expressions of morbid feeling, and of nothing else. They
can serve no purpose but to lower Keats in the estimation of all who
read them. He was never a robust character; but these exhibit him as a
weakling of weaklings, and it was simply cruel to publish them. The
whole thing is a piece of the worst kind of bookmaking we have seen. The
introduction, which is worth nothing save to perplex, occupies
sixty-seven pages; the letters, which are of about equal value, occupy
one hundred and seven pages; an appendix of nine pages sets forth “the
locality of Wentworth Place”; to all of which there are no less than six
pages of an index with such headings as these: “Arrears of Versifying to
be Cleared”; “Books lent to Miss Brawne not to be sent home”; “Brawne,
Fanny”; “Brawne, Margaret”; “Brawne, Mrs.”; “Brawne, Samuel, Jr.”;
“Brawne, Samuel, Sr.” (why not “The Brawne Family” at once?); “Café,
Keats will not sing in a”; “Flirting with Brawne”; “Front parlor,
Watching in”; “Getting Stouter”; “Laughter of Friends”; “Sore throat,
Confinement to the house with”; and so on. We do not know who Mr.
“Harry” Buxton Forman may be, but if ever it came to pass that we were
threatened with fame at the cost of a future Harry Buxton Forman to hunt
up our love-letters or butchers’ and bakers’ bills, or every scrap that
we might write in an incautious moment, we should certainly prefer to
all time our present happy obscurity.
LIFE OF HENRI PLANCHAT, Priest of the Congregation of the Brothers
of St. Vincent de Paul. By Maurice Maignen. Translated from the
French, with an introductory preface. By Rev. W. H. Anderdon, S.J.
London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society
Co.)
This Life is a beautiful one. In reading it we are constantly reminded
of the just and faithful man—the privileged servant of God—who, amidst
the turmoil of the world, possesses his soul in peace. Henri Planchat
was born of good parents at Bourbon-Vendée on November 22, 1823. After a
holy youth he was called to the sanctuary and studied under the
venerable Sulpitians at Paris. Being ordained priest on December 22,
1850, he offered his first Mass the next day, and the day after that
“attained,” says his biographer, “the climax of his wishes by becoming a
member of the little community of Brothers of St. Vincent of Paul, in
order to live and die in the service of the working classes and of the
poor in general.” Interior recollection, humility, and the perfect
performance of the duties of his ministry raised him to a martyr’s
throne. A dreadful storm, the fury of the Commune, suddenly burst upon
this life of singular simplicity and charity, devoted to the needy and
the ignorant for upwards of twenty years, and he was basely massacred,
out of hatred to religion, in the Rue Haxo, on the 27th of May, 1871,
among that very class of people for whom he had labored so earnestly and
so long. “We are the good odor of Christ,” says the apostle, and in the
untimely yet happy death of Henri Planchat we perceive the aptness of
Bacon’s saying about adversity, that “virtue is like precious odors,
most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.”
The Rev. Father Anderdon, S.J., has written an introductory preface to
this English translation which is short and to the point; but a scholar
like Father Anderdon should not have mistaken (preface) Poitou for
_Picardy_, which was an altogether different province of the territorial
divisions of France before the Revolution.
ONE OF GOD’S HEROINES: A Biographical Sketch of Mother Mary Teresa
Kelly, Foundress of the Convent of Mercy, Wexford. By Kathleen
O’Meara. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1878.
Nothing that the very gifted author of the _Life of Frederic Ozanam_
writes can fail to attract attention or excite admiration. Miss O’Meara
seems equally happy in biography as in fiction. Her stories, such as
_Are You My Wife?_ _Alba’s Dream_, etc., etc., need no recommendation to
readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. In the touching little biography which
calls for the present notice Miss O’Meara has evidently performed a
labor of love. The title exactly describes the subject of the sketch.
Mother Kelly was indeed “one of God’s heroines,” called up at a time
when such heroines are peculiarly needed—in our own days. She was born
in 1813; she died on Christmas day, 1866. Her religious life was a
sustained series of heroic actions—actions none the less heroic that
they were done in a practical, unostentatious, matter-of-fact manner.
Her good works live after her, and it was a kindly and just thought to
commemorate them as they have been commemorated in the bright pages of
this tender and graceful little memoir by so skilful a hand and
appreciative a heart. No one can read _One of God’s Heroines_ without
feeling that after all the world is a brighter place than so many
writers are wont to picture it. It will always be bright and worth
living in while it can boast of such pious and charitable souls as
Mother Mary Kelly. The only fault to be found with the present sketch of
that life is its brevity.
TO THE SUN? From the French of Jules Verne. By Edward Roth.
Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger. 1878.
That very clever Frenchman, Jules Verne, has again given us a most
interesting and wonderful tale, which has been very successfully
translated by Mr. Roth. It is to be wished that all translations were
equally well done. Captain Hector Servadac and his servant, Ben Zoof, a
typical Frenchman, are hurled into space upon a piece of the earth’s
surface, and proceed with alarming velocity toward the sun. Of course
they are not the only ones removed from this sphere. There are some
Englishmen and Spaniards, and a Dutch Jew. We must not forget a Russian
count and his companions, who all play an important part in this
wondrous story. Verne’s object is to interest boys in the exact
sciences, as Mayne Reid’s was to awaken a corresponding interest in
natural history. At the present day, when stories for boys are becoming
so intensely vulgar, and contain so much slang which passes for wit and
playful badinage, it is a relief to find a story that is told in good
English, and that contains, moreover, in a marked degree the highest
sentiments of manly honor. There is in it an undercurrent of the
strongest feeling against the Germans, which is vented upon a Holland
Jew. The book would have been better without this. Some English officers
come in for a few hits at their national characteristics, but, on the
other hand, our young captain himself is frequently reproved by his
Mentor, the Russian count, who, of course, is nearly faultless.
The chief beauty of the book is the large amount of interesting
scientific knowledge which can be gleaned from it, if carefully perused,
and although not as amusing as _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea_
or _A Journey to the Centre of the Earth_, it can be cheerfully
recommended to our boyish friends as full of absorbing interest and
healthy in its moral tone. It is to be followed by a sequel.
THIRTY-NINE SERMONS PREACHED IN THE ALBANY COUNTY PENITENTIARY, FROM
MAY, 1874, TO MARCH, 1877. By the Rev. Theodore Noethen, Catholic
Chaplain. Albany: Van Benthuysen Printing House. 1877.
These discourses are published in aid of a fund for increasing the
Catholic library of the prison. The author’s preface tells us that the
library contains about one hundred bound volumes and a number of
pamphlets. “An incalculable amount of good has already been effected” by
it; but the number of Catholic prisoners—nearly four hundred—makes many
more books necessary. “If,” he says, “there could be some concerted
action among the Catholic publishers of the United States, each
contributing a few books, an excellent library would soon be formed; and
it is but right that this suggestion should be acted on, for the reason
that prisoners are sent to the Albany penitentiary from all parts of the
Union.” He praises the example of a few of our leading Catholic
publishing houses, “whose generous contributions of English and German
books, together with rosaries and medals, have earned for them the
gratitude” of their unfortunate fellow-Catholics.
These sermons are short and simple, and will be found very useful to
pastors whose time is crowded with work, and particularly to those in
the country who have more than one “mission” to attend. They will also
prove excellent reading for the Catholic inmates of other penitentiary
institutions.
THE FOUR SEASONS. By Rev. J. W. Vahey. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society Co. 1878.
This is a useful book of instruction, written in a pleasing and popular
style. The “four seasons” represent the various stages of human life
from early youth to ripe old age. The lesson inculcated is the old one,
that as a man sows so shall he reap. The author has happily contrived to
weave much practical observation and really sound knowledge into his
allegory—for such the little work may be styled. The chief object aimed
at is to arouse Catholic parents to the necessity of religiously
guarding the education of their children, and thus keeping them all
their lives within the church into which they are baptized. Father
Vahey’s volume has the warm approval of his archbishop, the Most Rev.
John M. Henni.
THE YOUNG GIRL’S MONTH OF MAY. By the Author of _Golden Sands_. New
York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1878.
_Golden Sands_, which was noticed in this magazine, has become, as it
deserved to become, a very popular book of devotion. In the present
small volume the same author has given us a work admirably adapted for
May devotions. There is a special motive, aspiration, and brief
meditation set apart for each day of the month of Mary, breathing a
happy piety and tender grace throughout. The devotions need not at all
be restricted to “young girls.” The same skilful hand that rendered
_Golden Sands_ into English has with equal happiness set this _Month of
May_ before English readers.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXVII., No. 159.—JUNE, 1878.
THOREAU AND NEW ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM.[72]
There is a story told of an illiterate cobbler who was wont to attend
the theological discussions in an Italian university, and who, despite
his ignorance of Latin and the points discussed, always discovered the
disputant that was worsted. To a friend who expressed surprise at his
acuteness he explained that he had noticed that the arguer who first
lost his temper was the one who also lost the victory.
The cobbler’s test admits of wide application. The consciousness of
truth begets serenity. What chronic ill-temper was there amongst the
first Protestant Reformers! And even to-day a Protestant controversial
author writes as though he were aflame with rage. The doughty Luther,
warmed, possibly, as much with the wine whose praises he so lustily sang
as with polemical zeal, hurls such names as sot, devil, and ass at his
opponents. He has declined and conjugated the word “devil” in all cases,
moods, tenses, numbers, and persons. We can imagine his broad face
purple with rage, and his bovine neck throbbing apoplectically, as he
pours out the vials of his wrath upon that “besatanized, insatanized,
and supersatanized royal ass,” Henry VIII., whose accredited book won
for the monarchs of England that most glorious, though now, alas!
inappropriate, title, “defender of the Faith.” The meek Melanchthon had
the tongue of a termagant; and Bucer must have suggested to Shakspere
some of the characteristics of Sir John Falstaff, so far as a command of
billingsgate goes; for the wordy combats of that Reformer (Bucer, we
mean) recall the conversational victories of the knight of sack.
Morbid irritability and unwholesome sensitiveness were the
characteristics of the movement known, rather vaguely, as “New England
Transcendentalism,” which, forty years ago, promised America a new life
in religion, literature, and art. This ill-temper was a forecast of
defeat. It brought the movement under the suspicion of weakness and
error. It was a voice crying in the wilderness; it had not, however, the
trumpet-tones of strength and conviction, but was rather the puny wail
of complaint and despair. We were just ceasing to be provincial and were
opening to world-wide influences. Our national boastfulness was hugely
developed, and we flattered ourselves that no pent-up Utica contracted
our powers. De Tocqueville says of us that we are a nation without
neighbors; and this, of course, means that we are without standards or
comparisons of excellence, and so, like the Buddhist devotee, we aim
after perfection by self-contemplation. New England was filled with
schoolmasters who had read Carlyle and translations of the
Encyclopædists, and who in consequence began to have doubts about what
not even Pyrrho would have considered a doubt, so far as it had any
existence in _their_ minds—religion. The stern-eyed old Calvinism which
watched them like a detective became inexpressibly odious to them, and
they hated “Romanism,” too, with all that contradictoriness that baffles
explanation. It was soon discovered that Scotch Puritanism was unfitted
for the latitude of New England, though it must be said that the
mechanical virtues and the staid habits of the people owed much to that
strange fanaticism which, whether happily or unhappily for them, has
passed away for ever.
How to throttle Puritanism, and yet preserve its corpse from
putrefaction as a convenient effigy to appeal to, became a problem for
which no solution presented itself. The American masses even to this day
venerate the Pilgrim Fathers, and no amount of historical evidence will
shake their veneration for those fierce and ignorant fanatics, whose
memory should long ago have been buried in charitable oblivion. It is
only the Catholic historian and philosopher that can to-day respect the
inkling of truth which they held, and which St. Augustine says is to be
found in every heresy and doctrinal vagary. They attempted to make the
Bible a practical working code of laws—an idea which to-day would be
greeted with laughter by their children, who have long since unlearned
veneration for the Scriptures. There is something quite noble, though
irresistibly ridiculous, in the old Puritan notions about the Bible. One
wonders that they did not revive the rite of circumcision. Protestants
are beginning to acknowledge the wisdom of the church in not making the
Scriptures as common as the almanac or the newspaper. The whole
atmosphere of New England became Judaic. Biblical names of towns
abounded. Scriptural names were given to children, with a disregard for
length and pronunciation that in after-years provoked the ire of the
bearers. The Mosaic law was ludicrously incorporated with the legal
enactments of the civil law. The old Levitical ordinances were carried
out as far as practicable, and the minister of the town just barely
refrained from donning the garments of the high-priest and decorating
himself with the _Urim_ and _Thummim_. This anomalous society survived
even the great social changes which were wrought by the Revolution.
Puritanism repressed all individual eccentricities of religious opinion.
The boasted independence of Protestantism scarcely ever _did_ exist,
except in name. Let a man to-day dissent from the opinions of the sect
in which he has been brought up, and he may as well become a Catholic,
though that is the crowning evidence of being given over to a reprobate
sense. What liberty did Luther give the Sacramentarians? What divergence
of opinion did Calvin allow in Geneva? He punished heresy with death.
What toleration was there in the Church of England for Dissenters? And
there is a quiet but effective persecution kept up in the English church
to-day against all “Romanistic tendencies.” There is not a greater
delusion prevalent than the lauded Protestant freedom of investigation
and liberty of conscience. The Catholic Church, even as judged by her
enemies, was never so intolerant as that obscurest of Protestant sects,
the Puritans of New England. The harshest charges that have been falsely
made against a merely local tribunal, the Spanish Inquisition, are
historically proved against the full ecclesiastico-civil tribunals of
Massachusetts in the punishment, not of turbulent and contumacious
heretics, but of wretched and harmless old women accused of witchcraft.
Every Protestant church is a _complexus_ of social and business
influences, all of which are cruelly and unfairly brought to bear
against any member who uses the Protestant right of private judgment. If
he will disjoin himself from church communion, though his interpretation
of the Scriptures may assure him that the Father is worshipped in
spirit, he is looked upon as an infidel and blasphemer. The petty
persecution of the Protestant church is a subject admissive of infinite
illustration.
Cramped and crippled by a fierce Scotch Covenantism, what were the
aspiring minds of New England to do? A natural idea struck them. Some of
the fathers of the Revolution were infidels. That great and glorious
light of American history, Benjamin Franklin, who was held up as a model
to every New England boy, was a sort of deist. The influence of that
man’s example and writings has been one of the most baleful in our
country’s history. The fathomless depths of his pride, the cool
assurance of his “virtue,” the intensely worldly spirit of his maxims,
and his Pharisaical reward of wealth and honors in this world have been
imitated by thousands of American youth. That nauseating schedule of
“virtues” which he drew up; such hideous maxims as “Rarely use venery”
and “Imitate Jesus and Socrates,” which seem to us infinitely more
shocking in their cold calculation than a wild debauch or a hot-headed
oath; his constant prating about integrity as the high-road to health
and wealth; and, in short, the whole wretched man, body and soul,
furnished the worst yet widest-copied example of American virtue and
success. Add to such influences the schoolboy beliefs in liberty and
independence, the solemn Fourth-of-July glorification of individual
freedom, the vision of the Presidency open to the humblest youth in the
district school, and the gradual weakening of faith in the Bible,
brought about by the rapid multiplication of the poor, deistical
histories and scientific miscellanies of fifty years ago, and the end of
Puritanism was soon predicted. The heavy hand of the clergy was shaken
off. The curiosity deeply planted in the Yankee nature looked around for
a new religion. At once all the vagaries of undisciplined thought, so
long held in silence by Protestantism, burst out in Babel speech. Chaos
was come again. If Puritanism had dared, it would have sent the
“Apostles of the Newness,” as they were called, to the scaffold or the
pillory, or, at the very least, it would have pierced their tongues and
branded them with symbolic letters.
And what a revelation! We laugh at the wild rhapsodies of George Fox,
and Mr. Lecky, in his late book, _England in the Eighteenth Century_,
has rather cruelly, we think, dragged up Wesley’s and Whitefield’s
eccentricities for the laughter of a world which should rather be in
tears over the vanishing of such earnestness as both those deluded men
had; but the laughter which New England Transcendentalism evokes is
hearty and sincere, from whatever side we view it.
In the first place, there is no meaning in the name. The logician knows
what transcendental ideas are—the _ens_, _verum_, _bonum_, etc.; and
what philosophy calls the transcendental is really the most familiar, as
connected with universal ideas. But Transcendentalism in New England was
understood to mean a high, dreamy, supersensuous, and altogether
unintelligible and unexplainable state, condition, life, or religion
that escaped in the very attempt to define it. Dr. Brownson complains
that he had much difficulty in convincing a philosopher that nothing is
nothing; and we feel much in the same mental condition as that
philosopher, for we cannot see how Transcendentalism (a polysyllable
with a capital T) is nothing. It is infinitely suggestive. It is any
number of things, all beginning with capitals. It is Soul, Universe, the
Force, the Eternities, the Infinities, the βία καὶ κράτος. It is Any
Number of Greek and Latin Nouns. It is, in fact, a Great Humbug (in the
largest kind of _caps_). Mr. Barnum’s “What-is-it?” is nothing to the
Protean forms of Transcendentalism. A fair definition might be,
Puritanism run mad. There was a certain method in it, and it would be
false to say that the absurdity ever went so far in America as Fichtism
or even Hegelism in Germany. The old Puritan leaven was too strong for
that; and the Yankee common sense, which not even the wildest flights of
Transcendentalism could wholly carry from earth, instinctively rejected
the German theories. Not even Comte’s Positivism, which has quite a
following in England and an influential organ in the _Westminster
Review_, ever gained ground amongst us. We do not believe in Cosmic
Emotion or Aggregate Immortality, ponderous and unmeaning words, to
which, listening, a Yankee asks, _Heow?_
The surprising fact is how, in the name of all the philosophers and the
muse that presides over them, did New England fall a victim to the
“Apostles of the Newness”? It was worse than the Protestant Reformation,
which is said to have developed more crazy and eccentric enthusiasts
than any other physical or social convulsion recorded in history. The
shrewd Yankee genius was supposed to be insured against spiritual
lightnings. The cold and common-sense temperament of the people seemed
farthest removed from the action of “celestial ardors.” But the fierce
old Puritanism was taking only a new form. The spirit that sent Charles
I. to the scaffold was nurtured amid the gloomy woods. Only that the
sweet providence of God, mysteriously permitting and clearly punishing
evil, is gradually withdrawing even the physical presence of that
spiritually and intellectually unbalanced race, what chance would there
be for the action of his all-holy will as wrought out by the church? New
England is largely Catholic to-day, yet New Hampshire will have no
popery in her councils. “This spirit is not cast out without prayer and
fasting.” Milton, who lacks spiritual insight, fails to identify the
spirit of pride with the spirit of impurity. New England, alas! has been
filled with the spirit of pride, and of hatred against the City of God,
and lo! now she is slain by the spirit of impurity, and the stranger
within her gates has taken her place and will wear her crown. And that
stranger is the despised and hated “Romanist,” who now enjoys the
blessing foretold in that mystic Psalm whose counsels New England
despised—the blessing of progeny. It is a prophecy and a history (Ps.
cxxvi.): “Unless the Lord buildeth the house, they labor in vain that
build it. Unless the Lord keepeth the city, he watches in vain that
keepeth it. It is in vain for you to rise before the Light. Rise after
ye have sat down, and eaten the bread of sorrow. Behold, children are an
inheritance from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As
arrows in the hand of the mighty, so are the children of them that were
rejected.”
This is the divine “survival of the fittest.” Would to Heaven that the
solemn significance of this great Psalm could sink into the heart of New
England and cast out the foul demons that have so long lurked within it;
that, having partaken of “the bread of sorrow,” she might rise to the
contemplation of the true Light!
No sooner was the restraining power of Puritanism cast off than
Transcendentalism, like the _genie_ in the _Arabian Nights_, rose like
an exhalation, and afterward defied the command of the invokers to
return to its former limited quarters. The men who assisted at this
liberation of a powerful and anarchic spirit soon discovered, to their
fear and disgust, that they could not control it. It was worse than
Frankenstein, for it appeared to have symmetry, and the land was quickly
enamored with its beauty. Every theorist felt that the millennium had
dawned. A truce to common sense was called. The leaders of the movement
were put in the painful but logical predicament of inability to object
to the consequences of their teachings. The over-soul was reduced to
such limitations as the necessity and obligation of using bran-bread in
preference to all other forms of food. Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_
happening to appear at a time when the inspiration was fullest,
Sartorial heresies became the rage. Bloomer costumes asserted their
rights. The old sect of Adamites revived, and nothing but tar and
feathers, which hard-headed Calvinists bestowed with unsparing vigor and
abundance, prevented many from rushing into a state of nudity. There
arose prophets of vegetarianism, and, says Lowell, every form of
dyspepsia had its apostle. Money, the root of all evil, was condemned by
impecunious disciples, who drew largely upon treasures which they
imagined they had laid up in heaven. Furious assaults were made upon the
Bible, which was stigmatized as a worn-out and effete system. A crew of
anti-tobacconists, who regretted that they could not find a condemnation
of the weed in Scripture, were joined by a set of teetotalers, who did
not hesitate to condemn our Blessed Lord’s use of wine, and, as they
were unable to see the high, mystic significance of the Eucharist, they
vented their foolish wrath upon such of the Protestant sects as retained
wine in the Lord’s Supper, and this with such effect that it became
quite common in New England to administer bread and _milk_ instead of
wine in the communion, thus destroying even the semblance to the blood
which we are commanded to drink in remembrance of That which was shed
for our redemption, and which, in the divine Sacrifice celebrated by
Christ on Holy Thursday, was _then_ really and truly poured forth, in
the chalice, unto the remission of sin.
The revulsion from the unspeakable harshness of the Puritanic
interpretation of the Scriptures was so complete that men cast about for
an entirely new theological terminology. The transcendental pedants were
ready for the want. What was grander than the old Scandinavian
mythology? What is Jehovah to Thor? What is the Trinity to the sublimity
of the Buddhistic teachings? The cardinal doctrine of the New Testament
is the golden rule, which was familiar to the Greeks, and expressed in
our own terms by Confucius. Satan’s master-stroke was thus levelled at
the Bible, which was the word of life to the New-Englander. Take the
written word away from the Protestant, and the gates of hell have
prevailed against him. The inscriptions upon the Temple of Delphi
preserved Greek mythology for centuries. Infantine belief in the poor,
adulterated word of the Scriptures, which, after all, were never
subjected to the full action of the Protestant theory, kept alive some
remnants of Christian faith and hope. But to cast away the Bible for the
Vedas, the Krishnas, the Mahabarattas, the skalds, and the devil knows
what other vague and windy compilations of Scandinavian and Brahminical
superstitions was to inaugurate a chaotic era, the like of which history
does not record. There is no sympathy between the American mind and the
Buddhism of the East, much less between the minds of the Yankee
Transcendentalists and the wild beliefs of Danish sea-kings, who would
have knocked their brains out, as puling and scholarly creatures unfit
to wield a club or harpoon a seal, and consequently objects of the just
wrath and derision of Odin and Thor. Yet these strange mythologies,
intermixed with fatalism, Schellingism, and nature-worship, formed the
_olla-podrida_ to which New England for at least ten years sat down,
after the unsavory dish of Puritanism had been thrown out of doors.
The spiritual squalor and intellectual poverty of most
Transcendentalists were studiously kept out of sight, and the school—for
it would be blasphemy to call it a religion—pushed forward into notice
its exponents, who, under the stricter requirements of writing,
considerably toned down their sentiments, and sought to give
intelligible and literary form to their extravagances. A magazine,
called the _Dial_, was published in Boston, in 1840 and a few following
years, and notwithstanding the petulant genius of Emerson, its editor,
who only now and then yielded to the spirit of newness, the strangest
gibberish began to mumble in its columns. The following, from the
“Orphic Sayings” of Bronson Alcott, who was considered to be one
“overflowed with spiritual intimations,” is an illustration of the
jargon. It might be proposed by a weekly paper as a puzzle to the
readers:
“The popular genesis is historical. It is written to sense, not to
soul. Two principles, diverse and alien, intercharge the Godhead and
sway the world by turns. God is dual. Spirit is derivative. Identity
halts in diversity. Unity is actual merely. The poles of things are
not integrated. Creation is globed and orbed.”
The leaders of the movement cared nothing about letting their infidelity
be known; but the mass following were loath to break completely with
their religious traditions. They did not know what _Kultur_ meant, and
had neither knowledge of, nor sympathy with, Wilhelm Meister or Werther.
The _Atlantic Monthly_, which may be regarded as having taken the place
of the _Dial_, became the repository of Transcendental thought, though,
with Yankee shrewdness and _savoir faire_, the editors managed to give
it an unsectarian and, in time, even a national character.
The _Atlantic_ never committed itself to Christianity, or, if it did so,
it was to that spurious horror which in rhyme, idea, and general
relativeness joins Jesus with Crœsus. A peculiar school of literature,
marked with the patient study of German idealism, grew up around the
_Atlantic_, which, with characteristic New England assertion, claimed to
be the critic and model of American letters. The _orphic_ style was
sternly kept down in the _Atlantic_, but it _would_ assert itself. Any
one who cares about illustrating this idea has but to turn over the
older _Atlantics_ to see the painful efforts made to paraphrase the name
of God, which, whenever boldly printed, has some title of limitation. We
have any quantity of Valhallas and mythologies, and poems about the
Christ that’s born in lilies, etc.; but it is tacitly understood that
_Kultur_ is the presiding genius. It must be admitted that New England
Transcendentalism developed, or at least engaged, considerable literary
and poetic talent. Not to speak of its High-Priest, Avatar,
Inspirationalist, Seer, or Writer (with a big W), or Whatsoever you call
him—Emerson, who has retreated from its altar and seems to be swinging
his Thor-hammer wildly in every direction, there appeared a number of
writers, all under the mystic spell. They aimed at a certain vague and
beautiful language, and were given to pluralizing nouns which are one
and singular in meaning. A certain kind of poetry, after the manner of
Shelley, but not after his genius, sprang up and monthly bedecked the
_Atlantic_ with flowers. The literary men of New England were made to
feel that inspiration sprang from Transcendentalism alone.
Nathaniel Hawthorne became its novelist, and Thoreau, whom we have been
keeping at the door so long, suggested to him the idea of Donatello in
_The Marble Faun_—a finely-organized animal, acted upon by human and
otherwise spiritual influences. Hawthorne’s morbid genius, for which we
confess we have little admiration, was unnaturally stimulated by the
Transcendental seers. He is for ever diving into the depths of inner
consciousness, and always appearing with a devil-fish instead of a
pearl. His _Note-Books_ show him to have been a spiritually diseased
man, for whom the stench and ugliness of moral fungus growths had more
charms than had the flowers. He has the besetting weakness of false
reformers, chronic irritation, quite as vehement against the pettiest
crosses and vexations of life as against its awful tragedies and crimes.
This is the evolution of Transcendentalism. It began with enthusiasm and
ended in worse than Reformation anger at everything and everybody, not
excepting itself; but it was not an anger that sins not.
Theodore Parker was its theologian by excellence, and as the one god he
believed in was himself, we suppose he may be allowed the title.
Margaret Fuller Ossoli was co-editor with Emerson of the _Dial_, and was
a strong-minded woman, whom her admirers insisted upon calling Anne
Hutchinson come again—so strong, after all, were their New England
traditions. Dwight wrote their music, if music can be limited in
expression. William Ellery Channing was the poet of Transcendentalism,
and Henry D. Thoreau was its hermit.
Thoreau was born at Concord in 1817, and he died in 1862. He was the
only man among the Transcendentalists that allowed their theories the
fullest play in him, and the incompleteness and failure of his life
cannot be concealed by all the verbiage and praise of his biographers.
Emerson’s high-flown monologues ruined him. A trick of naturalizing and
botanizing which he had, and which never reached the dignity or
usefulness of science, was exaggerated by a false praise that acted more
powerfully than any other influence in sending him into the woods as a
hermit, and among mountains as a poet-naturalist. He appears to have
cherished some crude notions about the glory and bountifulness of Nature
and her soothing and uplifting ministry, but these notions are, in the
ultimate analysis, admissive of much limitation and qualification, if
they be not altogether _ægræ somnia mentis_. The Transcendentalists
worshipped Nature and built airy altars to the Beautiful, but they did
not venture into the woods on a rainy day without thick shoes and good
umbrellas. Thoreau gave up his life to this delusory study and adoration
of Nature, and got for his worship a bronchial affection which struck
him down in the full vigor of manhood. We have no patience with an ideal
that takes us away from the comforting and companionship of our
fellow-men. What divine lessons has Nature to teach us comparable with
her manifestations in human nature? Why should we run off into solitude,
and busy ourselves with the habits of raccoons and chipmunks that are
sublimely indifferent to us? How much better is old Dr. Johnson’s
theory: “This is a world in which we have good to do, and not much time
in which to do it,” and who, on being asked by Boswell to take a walk in
the fields, answered: “Sir, one green field is like another green field.
I like to look at men.”
Life in the woods is very good for a mood or a vacation, but man escapes
from them into the city. The old proverb about solitude runs, _Aut deus,
aut lupus_—no one but a divinity or a wolf can stand solitude. One of
the weaknesses of Transcendentalism was an affectation of seclusion. It
was too good for human nature’s daily food. Man is such a bore! “O for a
lodge in some vast wilderness!” Now, all this is sinful and
unreasonable. Why should we shrink from the bad and evil and
objectionable in mankind to herd with the wild beasts of the forest? The
only thing that sanctifies solitude is the Catholic faith; and, even
when the monastic idea sought to realize complete isolation from the
world, the superiors were loath to grant permission. They felt that it
is not good for man to be alone, and St. Benedict, in his Rule, has a
reflection that there were monks lost in solitude who would have been
saved in community. The true idea is that we can be solitary in spirit
in the midst of crowds. There is no necessity of betaking ourselves to
the woods.
Very likely the high praise of isolation, as nutritive of genius, acting
upon a naturally retiring disposition, first led Thoreau to his sylvan
life. The common idea that he was a hermit or a misanthropist is fully
disproved by his biographers. In our opinion he is just the reverse, and
if we were disposed to bring in evidence we could show that he was wild
for notoriety. His private letters are more affected than Pope’s, who
wrote with an eye to publication. All Thoreau’s books are full of his
private experiences, thoughts, and emotions. He never suffers you to
escape from his overpowering personality. He never sinks the _ego_. He
reminds one of the diary of the private gentleman in Addison’s
_Spectator_: “To-day the beef was underdone. Took a walk. Dreamt about
the Grand Turk.” Thoreau is for ever telling us about his personal
feelings, his method of baking bread, and his dreams about tortoises,
etc. There is something funny in his writing six volumes for men on whom
he fancied he looked with Transcendental contempt. The fact is, he was a
fine, naturally talented, and poetic man, who was bewitched by the
theories which we have sketched; and the contest within his spirit has
led his biographers and critics into pardonable misapprehensions of his
life and aims. Left to himself and his aspirations, he would have
developed into a fair poet or a good naturalist—perchance an Agassiz or
an Audubon. He had no theological or philosophical ability, but a deep
sense of truthfulness, which made him experimentalize upon the theories
which he heard. He found it much easier than would most men to live in
the woods, to take long walks, to navigate rivers, and to collect
specimens of natural history. His studies in nature have no value to the
scientist. He was a good surveyor and liked animals. He wrote some
indifferent poetry. He described some gorgeous sunsets. He delivered an
oration on John Brown, and he managed to let the world know that he
built and lived in a hut at Walden. _Voilà tout_. He flippantly
criticised our Lord Jesus Christ, ridiculed all Christian beliefs,
preferred the company of a mouse to that of a man, of an Indian to a
white man, and died without a single throb of supernatural faith, hope,
or charity. This was a man, too, who had Catholic blood in his veins,
but who could not bear to hear the chime of church-bells without some
contemptuous remarks, and who professed himself a Buddhist without the
Indic veneration, and a worshipper of Pan without knowing or believing
that the great Pan had died for his salvation.
Two biographies are before us, one by William Ellery Channing, who was
Thoreau’s friend and companion, the other by H. A. Page, who appears to
be a biographer-in-general or by profession. Channing’s, as might be
expected, is a sort of prose _In Memoriam_; and Page’s is made
ridiculous by an attempted comparison between Thoreau and St. Francis of
Assisi, based on the saint’s love of, and miraculous power over,
animals, and the Concord man’s ability to bring a mouse out of its hole
or tickle a trout. Strange as it sounds, this comparison is carried on
through one-third of the volume. Page must be a member of a Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for Thoreau’s kindness to brutes
he evidently regards as his finest trait. Such stuff as “the animals are
brethren of ours and undeveloped men,” and the slops of evolution in
general, are poured out in vast quantity, and the impression forced upon
the reader is that Mr. Page, who speaks of himself as an Englishman, has
no conception of Thoreau’s character, nor, indeed, of any adventurous or
sport-loving nature such as freely develops on our wide plains and high
mountains.
Thoreau graduated at Harvard, but without distinction. He and his
brother taught school for a while at Concord, where the sage lives who
gave such cheering voice to Carlyle. There was a wildness in him which
nothing could subdue, yet it took no cruel or brutal form. He appears to
have had that passionate love of external nature which is so sublime as
a reality, so detestable as an affectation. He was made of the stuff of
pioneers and Indian scouts, but with rarer feeling and poetic
temperament. A water-lily was more than a water-lily to him. He had no
social theory to advocate—a delusion about him into which Page falls—but
he took to the woods as an Indian to a trail. There is nothing
Transcendental about his life, and yet he is the chief and crown of
Transcendentalists. He had a brave, high life in him, which is perfectly
intelligible and realizable, quite as much in the parlor as in the
swamp. Heroism need not leave New York for the steppes of Russia. A
naturally timid priest who anoints a small-poxed patient is as brave in
his way as Alexander or Charles XII. of Sweden. A thousand hermits have
lived before Thoreau, and made no palaver over their social discomforts,
which are, indeed, inseparable from their way of life. There is an
unpleasant _soupçon_ of Yankeeism when, in _Walden_, Thoreau lectures us
on economy. The Transcendental aurora vanishes before the prosaic
hearth-fire.
We remember having read _A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers_ and
_The Maine Woods_ during a summer vacation which we spent between Mount
Desert and Nantucket, and the sweet naturalness of those two beautiful
books sank into our heart, touched, perhaps, by the glorious yet sombre
scenery in which we moved. The jar and discord of Thoreau’s theological
opinions melted away in the harmony of the great music which he made us
hear among the hills and scenes which he loved so well, and of which he
seemed a part. Hawthorne’s keen eye, sharpened, we will not say
purified, by high æsthetic cultivation, detected in Thoreau the latent
qualities of the _Faun_ whose existence, by an anomaly, he has thrown
into modern Italy, and even intimates as wrought on by the church. We
love to think of Thoreau, not as idealized by Emerson, Channing, or
Page, nor shallowly criticised as by Lowell, but as bright and winsome,
afar from the sensuous creation of Hawthorne, and full of that boyish
love of flood and field which has made us all at one time Robinson
Crusoes. This is a most undignified descent from that ideal type of
character which Thoreau is supposed to represent; but we submit to any
reader of his books, if he did not skip his foolish theories about
religion, friendship, society, ethics, and other such themes on which
Emerson expatiates, and about which dear old Thoreau never knew anything
at all practical, and leap with him into the stream, follow the trails
he knew so well, learn the mysteries of angling and hunting, and tramp
with him through the forests, read with him his dearly-loved Homer, and,
in spite of our half-concealed laughter, listen to his wonderful
explanations of the _Beghavat-Gheeva_.
It is encouraging to notice how bravely he shakes off half the nonsense
of Transcendentalism, though bound by the wiles of Merlin, who lived
only two miles from Walden. Transcendentalism gave no religion. It was
even hollower than Rousseau’s _Contrat Social_ and _Émile_, in which
writings the wicked old Voltaire said that Jean Jacques was so earnest
in converting us back to nature that he almost persuaded us to go upon
all fours. Even Emerson confesses to the failure of Thoreau’s life.
“Pounding beans,” says that wise old man, with the air of a Persian
sage—a character which he frequently adopts, especially when he
recommends some thousand-dollar Persian book to us as infinitely
superior to the New Testament,—“Pounding beans,” says he, referring to
poor Thoreau’s attempt to carry out his Transcendentalism, “_may_ lead
to pounding thrones; but what if a man spends all his life pounding
beans?”
And so, in the style of the tellers of fairy stories, we say that poor
Thoreau continued all his life pounding beans, but without caring very
much for the bearing of beans upon the eternities, splendors, and
thrones, and that he lived a cheerful and wholesome, natural life,
though rather an uncomfortable one, in his woods and among his beasts
and flowers; that he was kind and gentle to beasts, but not to God or to
man, of whom he seemed to be afraid, which was a mistake; and after he
was dead he was made out to be a great philosopher, a golden poet, a
great social theorist, and a Transcendental saint, which is another
mistake.
With Thoreau died the Transcendental hermit, and, so far as human nature
and a happy combination of character and circumstance could permit, the
only truly ideal man that Transcendentalism has produced. Yet how far he
falls below the most commonplace monk in spiritual range and power and
aim! No great spiritual fire burns in his bosom; nor will any
Montalembert be attracted to his memory. There was not the light of
Christian faith or love upon his life, which is distinguished from the
savage’s only by its superior mental civilization and its relation to
that civilization which he so humorously yet contradictorily despised.
With Emerson, who has now convinced himself of the absurdity of
immortality, its greatest writer will die. The _Kulturkampf_ of Germany,
which New England introduced into America, cannot survive the literary
changes which take place every half-century. Emerson will fade into
oblivion, and even now he is no longer listened to. But there is that in
Thoreau’s books which gives vitality to old Walton’s _Angler_, and the
traveller on the Concord and through Maine will recall the memory of
Thoreau, no longer, we hope, to be associated with the eclipse of his
false philosophy, but seen bright and vivid in that sunshine and beauty
he loved so well.
Footnote 72:
_Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist._ By W. E. Channing. Boston: Roberts
Brothers. 1873.
_Thoreau: his Life and Aims._ A Study. By H. A. Page. Boston: J. R.
Osgood & Co. 1877.
THE FOUNTAIN’S SONG.
Into the narrow basin
Falleth the ceaseless rain,
Echo of sweet-voiced river
Singing through mountain glen,
Breaking amid the footfalls
Filling the city square,
Mingling with childhood’s clamor
Piercing the heavy air:
Shrill-sounding, childish voices
Gathered from dust-grimed street,
Pale little wondering faces,
Swift little shoeless feet;
Coral-stained cheeks of olive,
Lips where all roses melt,
Eyes like the heavens’ zenith—
Latin, Teuton, and Celt
Crowding with eager glances
Where the wide bowl lies spread,
Watching the gold-fish glimmer,
Giving the turtles bread:
Eyes that of mountain streamlet
Never the light have known,
Ears that of mountain music
Know not a single tone,
Feet that have never clambered
Clinging to mossy stone,
Hands that the palest harebell
Never have called their own.
Glittering in the sunshine
Droppeth the fountain’s rain;
Glistening in the moonlight,
Singing its mountain strain.
Twittering round the basins
Sparrows sit in a line,
Dip in the ruffled water,
Scatter its jewels fine.
Rests in the earth-bound basin
Depth of the starlit sky,
Shadows of noon and twilight
Soft on the waters lie.
Fresh on the clover circle
Falleth the wind-driven spray,
Keeping an April greenness
All through the August day.
Meet that St. Mary’s gable,
Bearing the cross, should crown
This little glimpse of freshness
Set in the sun-parched town;
Meet that St. Mary’s altar
Rise with its Sacrifice
Here where the city’s poor ones
Seek pure breath from the skies.
E’er in the dropping water
Filling the pool below
Voices I hear that never
Pure mountain-stream can know:
Singeth the city fountain
Songs that are all its own,
Though for its needs it borrow
Music the hills have known:
Sings it of sin forgiven,
Sorrow-tossed heart at rest,
Wearisome load soft lifted,
Soul of all bliss possessed.
Chanteth the silver murmur
Notes of the vesper hymn;
Gleams in the moonlit showers
Twinkle of taper dim
Burning before God’s altar
Faithful through day and night,
In its unbroken service
Token of holier light.
Bells rung at Benediction
Mingle their sacred chime
Clear in the solemn rhythm
Wherewith the fountain keeps time.
Gifts of our Blessed Mother,
Lady of God’s dear Grace,
Fall with the falling waters—
Heavenly dew of peace.
Wind-swept spray of the fountain
Keeping the clover green,
Telleth the grace of sorrow
Clothing a soul serene;
Bubbles breaking in sunshine—
Heaven-reflecting spheres—
Shine like joy-freighted eyelids:
Heart finding speech in tears.
Quarrelsome little sparrows
Wear the white wings of dove,
Brooding o’er mystical waters,
Fusing the waves with love.
So doth the fountain whisper
Thoughts of all sorrow and joy,
Sparkle like blessèd water
Cleansing from sin’s alloy:
Voices of mountain and altar
Blend in its ceaseless rain,
Holding my soul that listens
Bound in a subtle chain.
HERMITAGES IN THE PYRÉNÉES ORIENTALES.
I.
“Let man return to God the same way in which he turned from him; and as
the love of created beauty made him lose sight of the Creator, so let
the beauty of the creature lead him back to the beauty of the
Creator.”—_St. Isidore of Seville._
Let others who visit the magnificent range of the Pyrenees tell of the
grandeur of the scenery and the beneficence of the mineral waters; let
them recount the days of border warfare, when Christian and Saracen
fought in the narrow passes, and Charlemagne, and Roland, and all the
mighty peers awoke the echoes of the mountains; we will seek out the
traces of those unlaurelled and, for the most part, nameless heroes who
overcame the world and ended their days in the lonely caves and cells
that are to be found all along the chain from the Mediterranean Sea to
the Bay of Biscay. Many towns and villages of southwestern France owe
their origin to some such cell. The hermit at first only built one large
enough for himself, in which he set up a cross and rude statue of the
Virgin. Other souls, longing for solitude, came to knock at his door.
The cell was enlarged. An oratory was erected. People came to pray
therein and bring their offerings. The oratory grew into a chapel. The
hermitage became a monastery, around which families gradually took
shelter, and the hamlet thus formed sometimes grew into a town. Lombez,
St. Papoul, St. Sever, and many other places owe their origin to some
poor hermit. The names of a few of these holy anchorites are still
glorious in these mountains, like those of St. Orens, St. Savin, and St.
Aventin, but most of them are hidden as their lives were, and as they
desired them to be. Many of the chapels connected with their cells have
acquired a local celebrity and are frequented by the people of the
neighboring villages. This is a natural tribute to the memory of the
saintly men to whom their fathers used to come when in need of prayer or
spiritual counsel. The influence of such men on the rural population
around was incalculable, with their lessons of the lowly virtues
enforced by constant example. Sometimes not only the peasant but the
neighboring lord would come with his _Dic mihi verbum_, and go away with
new views of life and its great aims. King Perceforest, in his lessons
to his knights, said: “I have graven on my memory what a hermit a long
time ago said to me by way of admonition—that should I possess as much
of the earth as Alexander, as much wisdom as Solomon, and as much valor
as the brave Hector of Troy, pride alone, if it reigned in my bosom,
would outweigh all these advantages.”
Many of these hermitages and oratories are
“Umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess”
that have been consecrated to religious purposes from the first
introduction of Christianity. In the valley of the Neste is one of these
grottoes, to which you ascend by steps hewn in the cliff. The opening is
to the west, and the altar, cut out of the live rock, is turned duly to
the east, where the perpetual Oblation was first offered. The sacred
stone of sacrifice has been carefully preserved. There is a similar cave
near Argelés also with its altar to the east.
Whether cave or cell, these hermitages are nearly all remarkable not
only for their solitude but for the beauty of their situation. Sometimes
they are in a fertile valley amid whispering leaves and wild flowers
that give out sweet thoughts with their odors; sometimes ’mid the deep
umbrage of the green hillside, vocal with birds, perchance the
nightingale that
“Shuns the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy”;
or on the border of a mountain stream with no noise there
“But that of falling water, friend to thought”;
or some secluded tarn whose tideless waters, like the soul stilled to
all human passions, give back an undisturbed image of the sky; but
oftener on some lofty crag, gray and melancholy, with scarce a spray for
bird to light on, where amid heat of summer and winter frosts the hermit
grew “content in heavenward musings,” like him, sung by Dante, on that
stony ridge of Catria
“Sacred to the lonely Eremite,
For worship set apart and holy things.”
Every one in his hours of deepest feeling, whether of love, or grief, or
devotion, has longed for some such retreat where he might nurse it in
solitude. To every soul of any sensibility that has lived and
suffered—and is it not all one?—it appeals with a force proportioned to
the deep solitude he has already passed through, and his sense of that
solitude he knows must one day be encountered. There is something
healing and sustaining in this contact with nature, but it is only
experienced by him who has that “inward eye which,” says Cowley, “is the
bliss of solitude.”
“The common air, the earth, the skies,
To him are opening Paradise.”
“But solitude, when created by God,” says Lacordaire, “has a companion
from whom it is never separated: it is Poverty. To be solitary and poor
is the secret of the heroic in soul. To live on a little, and with few
associates; to maintain the integrity of the conscience by limiting the
wants of the body, and giving unlimited satisfaction to the soul, is the
means of developing every manly virtue, and that which in pagan
antiquity was a rare and noble exception has become under the law of
Christ an example given by multitudes.”
The cells of these mountain hermits are therefore invariably of extreme
simplicity. “Prayer all their business, all their pleasure praise,” the
mere necessities of the body only were yielded to.
“The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well.”
There were once more than a thousand hermitages on both sides of the
Pyrenees, most of which have been swept away in the different
revolutions. Several of them, however, have been restored, and a great
number of the chapels connected with them have become popular places of
devotion. This is especially the case in the Pyrénées Orientales. M.
Just, who was our guide to so many of them, and on whom we draw freely
in our narration, gives nearly forty of ancient origin that still exist
in Roussillon, the chapels of which are open to the public and greatly
frequented, at least on certain festivals of the year. The people love
the altars where erst their fathers prayed, and have restored most of
those which fell into ruin at the Revolution. One feels, in going from
one of these holy places to another, as if in the true garden of the
Lord filled with flowers of aromatic sweetness. The “balm-breathing
Orient” has nothing to surpass them. Let us pass several of them in
review, and catch, if possible, the secrets of their spicy nests.
There is the hermitage of Notre Dame de Peña—Our Lady of the Peak—on a
barren mountain, bristling with needles, not far from the source of the
Aude. Nothing grows on these rocky cliffs, except here and there, in the
crevices and hollows, tufts of fragrant lavender, thyme, and rosemary,
and the box, the odor of which, as Holmes says, suggests eternity. A
rough ascent, cut in the rock, leads up to the hermitage, with a little
oratory here and there by the wayside, and a saint in the niche,
reminding the visitor to prepare his heart to draw near the altar of the
Mother of God. There is a narrow terrace before the chapel, from which
you look down on the wild Agly rushing along at the foot of the mountain
over its rough bed of schist. On the farther shore is the little village
of Cases-de-Peña, surrounded by hills that in spite of the aridness of
the soil are covered with vines, almond-trees, and the olive. In the
distance is Cape Leucate, where the low range of the Corbières shoots
forward into the very sea. The hermitage is in a most picturesque spot,
and there is a stern severity about the bare gray cliffs not without its
charm. An unbroken silence reigns here, except on certain festivals of
the Virgin. Directly behind, a sharp needle springs up, called the Salt
de la Donzella, with ruins on the summit, of which no history
remains.[73] These cliffs can be seen far out at sea, and the mariner,
when he comes into the basin of St. Laurent, looks up to invoke Our Lady
of the Peak:
“Beloved is the Virgin of us. Every day we pray to her at the sound of
the Angelus bell. Her image is the sail that impels our bark toward the
flowery shore. O the Virgin! the Virgin! We need her now; we need her
everywhere, and at all times!”[74]
Notre Dame de Peña is one of those Madonnas, so numerous in the
Pyrenees, that were hidden in the time of the Moors or Huguenots, and,
being forgotten, were brought to light in some marvellous manner. In
this pastoral region it was almost always by means of the flocks or
herds, whereas in Spain such images were generally found surrounded by
light, music, and odors. In this case the lowing of cattle around a
cliff of perilous height led to the discovery of the statue in a cave.
When this took place, or when the chapel was built to receive the holy
image, is not known. But the date on the cistern hollowed in the rock
shows that it was already here at the beginning of the fifteenth
century: “In the year 1414 this cistern was made by Bn. Angles, a mason
of Perpignan, by the alms of charitable people.” The chapel formerly had
no doors; consequently, any one could enter, day or night. The peasants
used to say of the Madonna: “_No quiere estar cerrada esta imagen_”—This
image is not willing to be shut up. But later, in order to keep animals
out, a wall was built around it, with a gate that any one could
unfasten. In old times there were many _ex-votos_ in the chapel, and
silver reliquaries, one of which contained a fragment of the tomb at
which Christ wept, and another of the pillar to which he was bound. And
the Virgin had thirteen veils broidered with silk and garnished with
silver, and a still greater number of robes, it being the custom here,
as in Spain, to clothe the sacred statues out of respect. The chapel and
hermit’s cell fell to decay at the Revolution, and the Madonna was
carried to a neighboring parish church. But the people continued to come
here to pray amid the ruins. When better days arrived it was restored
through the zeal of M. Ferrer-Maurell, of the neighboring village of
Espira-de-l’Agly. The statues of St. Vincent and St. Catharine in the
chapel are said to be the likenesses of his children of these names, who
both entered the order of La Trappe and died in the odor of sanctity.
They are generally known, their lives having been published, as Père
Marie Ephrem and his sister.
The Madonna now in the chapel is commonly called the _Mara de Deü
Espagnola_. The place was once owned by the Knights Templars, but now
belongs to the chapter of Notre Dame de la Réal at Perpignan, and on
certain festivals the youngest canon comes here with other priests to
hear confessions and say votive Masses. At such times a great crowd
ascends the mountain. The pavement of the chapel—of the solid rock—is
worn smooth by the pilgrims of so many ages. At the foot of the mountain
is a road leading to the Valley of the Aude.
The hermitage of Notre Dame de Força Réal is on a mountain of that name,
so called from the royal hold that once stood on the summit, fifteen
hundred feet above the level of the sea. When the clouds gather around
it the people in the plain below pray to the Madonna veiled in the mist
to be protected from hail, so often disastrous to the crops in this
region. As the chapel is on the culminating point of the mountain, it is
visible for miles around, and seems to the sailor afar off on the
treacherous waves like a true pharos of hope. M. Méchain, the noted
astronomer, established himself here when measuring the arc of the
meridian between Dunkirk and Barcelona. All the villages around have
stated days in the year to come here in procession. The people of
Corneille come on Trinity Sunday; Millas, on Whitmonday, and so on. It
is very picturesque to see them winding up the mountain-side with their
crosses and gay banners, singing as they go. On the way they stop to
pray at the little oratory of Notre Dame de Naudi, or Snow. Mass is sung
in the chapel of Força Réal, and they all receive the Holy Eucharist.
The chapel is dedicated to Notre Dame de Pitié, and over the altar is
that group, always so affecting, of _Marie éplorée_ at the foot of the
cross receiving the body of her crucified Son. Two doors behind
facilitate the approach of pilgrims to kiss the holy image. To see these
pious mountaineers gathered around the dead Christ and his mourning
Mother, singing the wild _Goigs_, so expressive of grief, in the native
idiom, is very pathetic. Before the chapel is a large portico that also
leads to the hermitage, and beyond is a small patch of land for
cultivation. From the terrace before the chapel is a fine view over the
sun-bathed plains of Riversal, and in the distance is the blue sea which
washes the shores of that Eastern land where the angelic greeting was
first uttered, but is now echoed for ever among these mountains
consecrated to Mary. Not far off is an isolated peak, on which are the
ruins of an old military post that had its origin in the time of the
Romans. Roussillon, it must be remembered, has been successively
occupied by the Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Spaniards, and French.
Separated from France by the Corbières, and from Spain by the Pyrenees,
it was a border-land of perpetual warfare for centuries, and this post
was noted in the contests, particularly in the war between Don Pedro of
Aragon and King Jaime of Majorca, and was the last place to hold out
against Don Pedro. Louis IX. had resigned all claim on Roussillon to Don
Jaime el Conquistador, who, on his part, withdrew his pretensions to a
portion of Languedoc. After the death of Don Jaime the province fell
under the rule of the kings of Majorca, till the bloody wars of the
fourteenth century gave Don Pedro possession of it. He made it the
apanage of the crown prince of Aragon. Louis XIII. took Perpignan, and
the treaty of the Pyrenees confirmed France in the possession of the
whole province.
The hermitage of Notre Dame de Juegas is pleasantly situated in the
plain of Salanca beside the river Agly, whence it derives its name—a
corruption of _Juxta aquas_, near the water. Here once stood a temple to
the false gods. It is a quiet peaceful spot, a little from the highway
to St. Laurent, the centre of the maritime business on this coast, and
the traveller often turns aside to say a prayer in the ever-open chapel.
The sailors themselves come here, and there is a constant succession of
votive Masses all the year for safe voyages and happy ventures. It is
especially frequented in the summer. The neighboring parish of
Torreilles comes here in procession four times a year, one of which is
on the festival of St. Eloi to perpetuate a thanksgiving service at his
altar for the cessation of a pestilence that raged ages ago in this
vicinity. How few of us, who perhaps consider ourselves certain degrees
higher in the intellectual scale than these good peasants, ever return
to give thanks for our own mercies, much less for those of our
forefathers! On Good Friday a great number come here from the
surrounding parishes to make the Way of the Cross and pray at the altar
of the Christ. There is a large garden walled in around the hermitage,
and adjoining is a field belonging to it. Before the cell is a wide
porch and a court shaded by trees, where the birds keep up their sweet
responses from one leafy cell to another. Here the pilgrims assemble to
eat the lunch they bring with them. The chapel is known to have existed
in the thirteenth century by a document of 1245, by which Delmau de
Castelnou transferred all his possessions in the territory of Sancta
Maria de Juseguis to Don Jaime, the Infante of Majorca. It contains a
statue of Our Lady between St. Ferréol and St. Lucy. Not far from the
chapel is the mound where tradition says the Madonna was found. Out of
respect it has never been cultivated.
About a mile from the little village of Corneilla-del-Vercol is the
hermitage of Notre Dame du Paradis—in Latin, _Regina Cœli_. A fifteen
minutes’ walk across the sunny plain brings you to it. It is in a
retired spot well calculated to diffuse peace in the soul, and you pass
out of the air tremulous with heat into the cool, solitary chapel with a
delightful feeling of repose. The hermit, varying his duties by
cultivating the land adjoining, may well find a calm happiness at the
feet of Our Lady of Paradise. The very name brings joy to the gloomiest
soul. The word Paradise, as the Père Bouhours says, “implies the
cessation of every ill, and the fruition of all good.” Fra Egidio, one
of the early Franciscans, used to fall into ecstasy at the very name of
Paradise; for such holy souls kindle into a glow at the least spark,
above all at the thought of the eternal bliss that awaits the end of
their penitential life.
This chapel has recently been restored by the villagers and very
prettily ornamented. One of the side chapels is dedicated to St.
Acisclo, whom, with Santa Victoria, we found honored on Montserrat in
Spain. Prudentius has consecrated a hymn to these two martyrs, who
suffered at Cordova in the reign of Diocletian. The chapel is very
ancient. In an old will of 1215 Dame Ermessende Raffarda bequeathed it
half an _aymine_ of barley, and not long after one Pons Martin, of
Perpignan, wishing to be buried here, left it a whole load. High Mass is
celebrated here on the Assumption, and there are frequent votive Masses
throughout the year.
On the way from Caudies to Fénouillet is the hermitage of Notre Dame de
la Vall, on a peak surrounded by a great number of old graves that are
shaded by sad cypresses and olives. Mention is made of it in a privilege
accorded by Pope Sergius IV. in 1011 to the monastery of St. Pierre de
Fénouillet. Near the mount is the Ruisseau des Morts—the Stream of the
Dead—to which the priest in his sable stole used to come down to receive
those brought here for burial. About a mile from Caudies you come to the
oratory of St. Ann, recently restored, with an inscription in the
Catalan tongue stating that it was erected in 1483—that is, when the
country was under the rule of Aragon. It then belonged to the domains of
the counts of Fénouillet. Just beyond this oratory is a large cross at
the foot of a long ramp leading up to the hermitage. The Madonna in the
chapel is held in great veneration, as shown by the number of _ex-votos_
on every side. She stands in a curious retablo of terra-cotta. In one of
the compartments the demon is represented beneath the bier of the
Virgin, seemingly half crushed by the weight, perhaps significant of her
power over the Prince of Darkness. There is a kind of belvedere, to
which you ascend by a flight of seventy-three steps, where you have a
fine view over the valley of Caudies and the stern, barren mountains
that surround it. On one of these rocky heights are to be seen the ruins
of Castel Sizel, and on another those of the old château of Fénouillet,
which take quite a poetic tinge up in that sunlit air. A great festival
is held at Notre Dame de la Vall at the Assumption, when the mountain is
clothed with joy and its summit crowned with light. At other times it
wears a solemn aspect. To see it at night, especially, with its chapel
on the top among lone graves and funereal cypresses, with the Stream of
the Dead winding along at the foot, is something gloomy to behold. The
monotonous flow of the sullen stream, the black shadows, the sighing of
the night winds, as of suffering souls, strike a kind of terror into the
heart.
The hermitage of St. Catharine nestles in the bottom of a charming
valley about a mile and a half from Baixas, among almond-trees and
luxuriant vines, the more pleasant from the contrast with the barren
cliffs that enclose it. Here the titular saint has been venerated from
time immemorial, as well as SS. Abdon and Sennen, who are in special
honor in this country. They all have statues in the sanctuary, and above
them stands supreme Notre Dame de la _Salud_, which is the Catalan for
health—_Salus Infirmorum_. On St. Catharine’s day, as well as the feast
of Our Lady of Snow, the whole valley is swarming with pilgrims and
resonant with their _Goigs_, as the hymns in the native tongue are
called.
The valley of the Agly leads to the hermitage of St. Antoine de Galamus
by a pleasant road along the left bank of the river, shaded by trees and
shrubs that never lose their verdure. On the other side rise bold cliffs
with astonishing abruptness. At length you come to an iron gate that
opens into the Bois de St. Antoine, where, along the path bordered with
odorous plants, are the stations of the _Via Crucis_, and beyond is a
cave dedicated to St. Magdalen, with her statue over a rude altar. Soon
after you come to the hermitage at the end of the valley, surrounded by
a wall, with a small belfry rising above it. Here you are welcomed with
cordial simplicity by a hermit of saintly mien. A grotto, seventy feet
deep and twenty wide, serves as a chapel. Eight steps lead to the marble
altar, on which is a statue of the patron saint with the mysterious
_Tau_ on his mantle, and beside him the animal symbolic of all
uncleanness. Every one who has seen the picture of the Temptation of St.
Anthony by Teniers—and who has not?—remembers under how many aspects the
great adversary was allowed to tempt the saint, and how, according to
the significant legend, the victorious St. Anthony forced the malign
spirit to remain beside him under the most suitable of forms.
This chapel has always enjoyed great celebrity since the cessation of an
epidemic in 1782, in consequence of a solemn procession here by the
neighboring people. Several rooms are built into the side of the cliff
to accommodate those who wish to spend some days in meditating on the
_contemptu mundi_. In one room is a shelf in the rock that used to serve
as a bed for the hermit—certainly one that would not tempt him to remain
too long inert. Near by is a small cave where the statue of St. Anthony
was found. Here is a little fountain fed by water that comes trickling
down the side of the cave with a pleasant murmur.
The place reminds one of Sir Lancelot, who, “after riding all night,
became ware of a hermitage and a chappel that stood between two cliffs,
and then he herd a lytel bell rynge to Masse, and thyder he rode, and
alyghted and tyed hys hors to the gate.” But he that said Mass in our
case was not “the byshop of Caunterburye,” but a poor friar of the Order
of St. Francis. In 1482 this hermitage was taken possession of by the
Observantine fathers, who occupied it for more than a century. They were
succeeded by lay hermits. For several years past members of different
religious orders have succeeded each other here, and by their austere
lives recalled the ancient solitaries of the desert. You seem to see St.
Pachomius in the wilderness among the clefts of the rocks. In 1843 Père
Marie, of saintly memory, was the hermit here, and might have been daily
seen hollowing out his tomb in the rock. Beside the yawning mouth lay a
death’s head with the scroll: “Soon you will be what I am, all of you
who behold me. Pray for the dead, and work out your own salvation.”
Sometimes the hermit would stop in his lugubrious employment to prolong
the moral as with the voice of one risen from the dead. He was succeeded
by others who were desirous of pausing in the midst of their apostolic
career and refreshing their weary souls by spending a season in
retirement and prayer among the caves of this lonely mountain. One of
these caves is in the side of a steep cliff difficult of access. On the
wall is rudely graven: “The voice of him who crieth in the wilderness.”
The very stones here, indeed, seem to cry out. The cave recalls the Earl
of Warwick who became a hermit and scooped out his own cell in a cliff,
as he is made to say:
“With my hands I hewed a house
Out of the craggy rock of stone,
And lived like a palmer poore
Within that cave myself alone.”
The hermitage of St. Antoine is certainly a charming solitude. The
cliffs are bare and stern, but the eye looks down on the verdure of
trees and a meadow enamelled with flowers. The songs of the birds come
up from their leafy nests, as if in response to the hermit’s psalm, and
the sunny air is full of insects chirping in the bliss of their peaceful
existence, only rivalled by his own.
Near the village of Pézilla de la Rivière is the ancient hermitage of
St. Saturnin in a graveyard full of trees, and flowers, and crosses,
showing the piety of the people towards their dead. Before burial their
remains are taken into the chapel, where the _Miserere_ is sung and
absolution pronounced. Here are the statues of St. Saturnin, St. Blaise,
St. Roch, and St. Sebastian, all popular saints in this region. On the
wall is a tablet to the memory of a noble Béarnaise who became a
canoness, and always used to attend High Mass here on St. Saturnin’s
day. A legend tells how on one occasion, being overtaken by a hard rain,
she was not wet in the least, while the servant who reluctantly
accompanied her was drenched to the skin.
On the left bank of the Agly, about a mile and a half west of Claira, is
the modest hermitage of St. Pierre del Vilar, surrounded by pale,
trembling poplars, and tall reeds that rustle drearily in the wind, and
orchards of olives—saddest, if most sacred, of trees. It wears an aspect
of utter solitude. The chapel is so old that its origin is unknown. But
there is a tombstone from a neighboring priory (now gone) to which the
chapel gave its name, to the memory of Prior Berengarius, who died in
1193. There is an old statue of St. Peter here, carved out of wood,
dressed in an alb, stole, and cope. This chapel was in such veneration
that after the Revolution the people restored it, added a belfry, and on
St. Peter’s day, as well as several other festivals, they come here in
procession, and Mass is solemnly sung. At their departure they used to
gather around the graves of the old hermits to chant the Requiem, but
these graves are now covered by the cells built here in 1851 by some
pious cenobites of the Order of St. Francis—refugees from Spain, who
sought in prayer and solitude consolation for their exile.
The hermitage of St. Martin stands on one of the highest peaks around
Camelas. It dates from a remote epoch, as appears by a bequest dated the
twelfth of the Kalends of May, 1259. The seigneurie of Camelas belonged
to the barony of Castelnou, and when Lady Anne de Fénouillet, the widow
of one of the barons, took the veil “of her own free will,” as the
account says, “_de sa propria y mera voluntad_, and not by force, or
persuasion, or reward,” she gave all her rights over the domain of
Camelas, including the hermitage of St. Martin, to the hospital of Ille,
to which she had retired in order to serve the poor of Christ.
In the seventeenth century this venerable sanctuary, having fallen to
partial ruin, was restored by the exertions of M. Curio, a priest of
Camelas, who has left many details of its history in a manuscript of
touching interest. He tells us how, when a mere _escolanet dels
rectors_—a pupil of the curé—he used to walk in the processions of
Rogation week, carrying the cross or the holy water; and when they came
to St. Martin’s, and he saw its ruined condition, his young heart was
deeply moved. The altar was poor. The old statues of St. George and St.
Martin were defaced. The walls were crumbling to pieces, and there were
holes in the vaulted roof; and the open doors allowed the goats and
other animals to take shelter there. “_Estas cosas_,” says he, “_eran
pera mi de gran afflictio_”—These things were to me a great
affliction—and he longed to be able to repair the chapel. He finally
became a priest and held a small benefice at Thuir, but he never lost
sight of the chapel of St. Martin—a saint to whom he had special
devotion—and he would have become a hermit here had it not been for the
opposition of his superiors. On the 12th of January, 1637, during a
visit at his brother’s in Camelas, while saying the rosary in the
evening, he felt suddenly inspired to take immediate measures for the
restoration of the chapel. But there were many obstacles. He was himself
very poor, as he tells us, and the people around were equally so. He
knew he should incur the reproaches of his brother as well as of the
neighbors. And it would be expensive to transport brick, sand, and water
to the mountain for the repairs. By a few sous from one, and a few
francs from another, he was enabled to begin the work, but had to
continue it at his own expense. Six years after the work was not
completed. He now removed to Camelas to devote himself to it, bringing
with him a pious old laborer to aid in the task, and a hermit to whom
the bishop had given a license to collect alms within the circuit of two
miles—a limitation made at the special request of the prudent M. Curio
himself, lest, as he said, the hermit might have an excuse for
“vagabondizing.” The zealous priest gave all his own income. He even
made himself the organist of a church to add to his means. At length he
had the happiness of seeing it completed, and, going to Perpignan, a
painting of St. Martin was given him for the altar of his patron, and a
retablo of sculptured wood for that of Notre Dame des Anges. The chapel
was reopened September 25, 1644, and M. Curio figured as chief musician
at the High Mass. His own inclination for the solitary life made him
long to retire here himself, but he was again refused permission. At
length, in the time of some pestilence, he made a vow to retire here for
the space of a year, should he and his parish escape. He entered upon
the fulfilment of his vow April 2, 1653.
The church consists of two aisles, each with its altar: one of St.
Martin, with the old painting above it presented to M. Curio; and the
other of Our Lady of the Angels with its ancient statue of coarse
workmanship found in a neighboring cave still known as the _Cova de la
Mare de Deü_.
In former times, after High Mass on St. Martin’s day, a small loaf, a
cup of wine, and a morsel of cheese were given to all the people
present; and the custom is still kept up, at least as to the bread.
Footnote 73:
Perhaps this peak, encircled by other peaks, is so styled from the
curious dance of this region, called _Lo Salt_, performed by four men
and four women. At a certain part the former pass their hands under
the arms of the women, and raise them in the air in the form of a
pyramid, of which their white caps form the summit.
Footnote 74:
Jasmin.
CONRAD AND WALBURGA.
CHAPTER II.
On the way home Walburga stepped into the cathedral, the grand old
Frauen Kirche, and remained a short while on her knees before the high
altar. There Conrad and all that he had spoken passed out of her mind;
she felt as if she were in another world, so changed was everything
round about her, so solemn and still. Before her hung the ever-burning
lamp, symbol of the Eternal Presence; and as Walburga’s eyes rested upon
the sacred flame, she wondered at herself for bearing with so little
resignation the troubles of this life.
“What I seek, what I yearn for,” she sighed, “is not to be found here
below. Everything sooner or later passes away; the happiest home we may
found on earth must in the end know tears and desolation. O eternity,
eternity!”
Yet, strange to relate—and yet, no, not strange, but quite naturally
enough—the moment Walburga emerged from this peaceful sanctuary and
found herself once more in the noisy, airy, life-throbbing street, with
the azure sky overhead and gladsome faces flitting to and fro, she felt
very human again, ay, very human; and her craving for something human to
love and be loved by grew none the less intense when presently she saw
happy Ulrich and happy Moida advancing towards her arm-in-arm. It was
not necessary for them to speak to tell that their hearts were throbbing
in sweet harmony together, and that for them at least this world was all
a paradise.
When Conrad and Ulrich found themselves back at Loewenstein again they
talked of little else than their pleasant trip to Munich.
“The only harm ’twill do me,” said the artist, smiling, “is that I’ll
lie awake a good while to-night thinking of Moida. The more I see of my
betrothed, the more virtues do I discover in her. She is so full of
common sense; she keeps store and keeps house too; nobody can make a
better bargain when she goes to market, and it is a fortunate thing that
Walburga has such a friend.”
“Miss Hofer is indeed a rare girl,” said Conrad, who was seated beside
him watching the moon rise over the mountain; “and you have proved your
own good sense in choosing her for your future spouse.” Then, assuming a
graver tone: “But now let me tell you something which is of great
concern to me. You remember that I spoke to you about a young lady whom
I met with in the Pinakothek, and that it was in order to see her again
that I went to-day to Munich. Well, she turns out to be your sister.”
“My sister! Walburga! Really!” exclaimed Ulrich, feigning surprise at
this piece of news.
“And, Ulrich”—here Conrad took his hand in his—“I mean to try my best to
win her heart.”
“And most sincerely do I hope you may succeed,” rejoined the youth.
“Well, is she quite free? Is any gentleman courting her?”
“Nobody, sir, is courting her.”
“It must be because she is poor,” said Conrad inwardly, “and perhaps,
too, a little proud. Well, a Loewenstein has a right to be proud.”
They remained thus conversing together until a late hour, until all the
lights in the valley were out, until the moon was sailing high in the
heavens, and every sound was hushed except the voice of the waterfall in
the ravine back of the castle.
And when at length they withdrew to rest, Ulrich, instead of lying
awake, as he had feared he might, soon fell asleep, and till cockcrow
next morning did nothing but dream of his beloved Moida. He dreamt—O
naughty dreamer!—that he was tearing off his buttons purposely, that he
might see her plump, ready hand sew them on again; and when he opened
his eyes and heard the monastery bell ringing the _Angelus_, Ulrich fell
at once on his knees and prayed with fervor, because he knew that at
that same hour in Fingergasse Moida was saying the _Angelus_ too.
The day which now opened was to be a busy one at Loewenstein. Ulrich
betimes set himself to work renovating the half-destroyed frescos; and,
to his great delight, several beautiful and interesting pictures came to
view as he carefully scraped the whitewash off the walls. They appeared
in patches: here an eye would peep out upon him; there a hand, a foot, a
tress of hair; until by and by a lovely damsel or a knight in armor
would stand full-length before his admiring gaze. This whitewash had
been daubed over nearly the whole interior of the tower by a
simple-minded cobbler, who had intended to make the place his home after
Ulrich and Walburga went away, but who only passed one night in it; then
was scared off by ghosts.
And when Conrad, who was superintending a band of laborers outside, came
in and saw the art treasures which had been brought to light, he clapped
his hands for joy. But more even than with the fair lady and mailed
warrior was he charmed with a wild, shaggy figure, underneath which in
quaint Gothic letters was written the word “Attila.”
“And now, as I behold anew this fresco,” remarked Ulrich, “my childhood
comes vividly back to me, and I remember once hearing my father tell my
mother that the great-grandsires of those who laid the foundations of
Loewenstein might have known the king of the Huns.”
In short, these unlooked-for discoveries so excited Conrad that he could
hardly go back to the open air, where the stones and earth which covered
the site of three other towers were being cleared away; and ever and
anon he would run in again to show Ulrich an old coin or other curious
object which the workmen had found amid the rubbish. Whereupon the youth
would point to still another long-concealed wall-picture gradually
coming to view, till finally Conrad exclaimed: “God bless the stupid
cobbler! I’ll not rail at him any more. But for his vile whitewash I
should not have enjoyed all these surprises.”
Yes, it was a busy, happy day for them both. When the sun dipped behind
the mountain in the west Conrad called to Ulrich to cease his labors and
come out and watch the path leading down into the valley. “For I am
expecting,” said he, “all the things I purchased of your betrothed to
arrive this evening, and Miss Hofer is coming with them. I kept it
secret, lest you might be too distracted if you knew it.”
“Really! is Moida coming?” cried Ulrich.
Scarcely had the words escaped his lips when they heard the bark of a
dog—not a sharp, quick yelp, but the thick, husky bark of a dog that is
aged—and in another moment who should be seen emerging from a clump of
hazel bushes through which the pathway led but Caro and his mistress.
Down at a break-neck pace flew Ulrich, and, ere the girl had ascended a
dozen steps further, she found herself clasped in his arms.
“My knight always takes me by storm,” said Moida, laughing merrily as
soon as she recovered her breath.
“Nay, ’tis you who were taking us by storm at the pace you were
mounting,” answered Ulrich; then, catching her hand, he assisted her up
the rest of the way.
“Everything is coming, sir, everything,” were Moida’s first words to
Conrad, who greeted her warmly when she reached the spot where he stood.
“But the donkeys have a heavy load—a very heavy load—and so I determined
to run ahead and tell you they were coming.”
“Bravo!” cried Conrad. Then, patting Caro’s woolly head: “And is this
the good old poodle that I have heard so much of?”
“Yes, sir. And as my pet would be killed by the horrid police if they
knew he was alive, I concluded to carry him away from Munich. I hope you
are not displeased at my bringing him here?”
“Displeased? Why, nobody likes dogs more than I; and this one shall find
a snug home in my castle. But why didn’t you bring the other pet, too?”
“What! the nightingale?” exclaimed Moida, with an air of surprise. “Oh!
Walburga would not part with him for anything.”
“Well, the young lady only yesterday spoke of giving him his freedom.”
“Did she? Well, I trust, sir, you persuaded her not to do so,” answered
Moida, smiling inwardly; for Walburga had related to her the whole
conversation which had passed betwixt herself and Conrad at the
Pinakothek, and ever since she had been full of hope that great good
would result from her friend’s acquaintance with the new owner of
Loewenstein. “And not only will Walburga not let her bird out,” she
thought to herself, “but it may end by its joining Caro in this peaceful
retreat.”
“But now, Moida, do come and see what I have been about since morning,”
spoke Ulrich, drawing her gently along. With this all three passed into
the tower, where verily a great change had been wrought in a few hours.
Not only were many frescos long invisible brought again to view, but it
was now manifest that each figure and group of figures, from the
barbarian Attila down to the most modern one of all, which was scarce a
century old, were linked together and presented a tolerably good
pictorial history of the house of Loewenstein; and Conrad observed to
Moida with a roguish smile: “Your betrothed, miss, has for his remote
ancestor a Hun.”
They were still examining these wall-paintings when the donkeys made
their appearance, and, although the hour was rather late, Moida clapped
her hands and said: “Let us put everything to rights at once. Do!”
Accordingly, inspirited by her blithe voice, Conrad and Ulrich, without
summoning others to help them, unpacked the loads, and so zealously did
they work that in a very short while everything was in its proper place
except the huge earthenware stove.
Then Conrad donned a suit of armor (rusty and dented, but all the better
for being so), and, clutching firmly a heavy two-handed sword, laid
about him right and left like mad for above a minute, to Moida’s great
delight, and until he was fain to pause for breath.
“I have a friend in Cologne,” said he, “a republican like myself in his
opinions; but I mean to write and warn him never to buy a castle—never;
otherwise he’ll become a changed man. Oh! there’s nothing like buying a
castle to make one an aristocrat.”
After joining in the hearty laugh with which he ended this speech, Moida
said to him in a whisper, and as though she felt there was something
touching in what she was about to communicate: “My friend Walburga
entered the curiosity-shop to-day, sir, for the first time since I have
had anything in it belonging to Loewenstein; and ere I packed up the
various objects, she placed her hand on each one and stroked it, and
even kissed yonder clock, for she said: ‘It stood in my mother’s
chamber, it called many a happy hour, and now ’tis going back to the old
home again.’”
“Well, now let me tell you a secret,” said Conrad, likewise in an
undertone, but with a bright gleam in his eye: “I hope one of these days
to see the young lady here herself.”
“Oh! wouldn’t that be charming! Wouldn’t that be glorious!” replied
Moida, who understood what he meant. “Why, in the whole of Bavaria there
is not her equal, and I am sure you will make her an excellent husband.”
“I hope so, Miss Hofer, even though I am no longer a believer in
Christianity.”
“’Twill give Walburga the great happiness of making you a Christian
again,” she added, with an arch smile. But Conrad’s expression did not
respond to hers, and for a minute or two he was silent. When again he
opened his lips the tone of his voice was changed, and, in order to
shake off the gloom which he felt creeping upon him, he asked her to
sing him a song.
“Yes, yes, do!” exclaimed Ulrich, turning away from the grated window
through which he had been gazing while the others were whispering to
each other. “Sing that wild ballad called the ‘Scream of the Eagle.’”
Moida sang. Never before had Conrad Seinsheim heard anything half so
thrilling, and the words were accompanied by such graceful motions as
proved the girl to be no mean actress.
“Yes, it is a grand song,” she said when it was finished; “and I like to
be in the country, where I may give it with my whole heart. In Munich
our lodging is too small and the air out-doors too heavy with beer for
such rousing, inspiring words.”
“Your grandfather composed it, did he not?” said Ulrich.
“Oh! no. But he and his riflemen used to chant it when they went into
battle. ’Tis as old as the hills; perhaps it rang in the ears of the
Roman legions.”
“Well, truly, you are a rare bird,” thought Conrad Seinsheim as he
looked at Moida’s bright-blue eyes and cheeks glowing with health; “and
if I had not already found my ideal I’d wish to marry you.”
Then, praying her to sit down in one of the old family chairs: “Now
please,” he said, “tell me a little of your history; for”—here Conrad
dropped his voice—“I hope ere long that you and Ulrich, and Walburga and
myself, as well as Caro and the nightingale, will all form one happy
family together. Therefore I am curious to know more about you.”
This was spoken in such a kindly way that Moida could not refuse.
Accordingly, she began and told him how she was descended from a race of
mountaineers who had never been serfs, like the peasants in other parts
of Europe.
“We did not dwell in castles,” said Moida, darting a sportive glance at
Ulrich, who was patting her hand. “Still, for all that we were nobles.”
“Yes, yes, you were indeed,” cried the youth.
“But after grandfather was put to death our family quitted their native
place in South Tyrol—’twas too full of painful memories—and came north
to Innspruck; and finally we drifted to Munich, where I now live. My
parents are dead, but Walburga is like a sister to me; and as for this
boy—”
“He is a poor, dreamy fellow, but, thanks to you, is turning over a new
leaf at last,” interrupted Ulrich. “And I mean soon to have a studio in
Munich, where I’ll paint fine pictures, and my darling sha’n’t keep shop
any longer.”
“Ay, you must be weary of that sort of life,” observed Conrad.
“Well, if people would only buy something when they pause to look at my
curiosities, ’twould not be so trying to my feelings, sir. But you can’t
imagine how it excites me when I see a gentleman eyeing the things in
the window, even pressing his nose against the glass to obtain a better
view. Sometimes he actually enters and scrutinizes every article in the
store; asks the price of this and that; smiles approvingly; in fact,
looks as if he were about to draw forth his purse; then he coolly turns
and walks out. O sir! I have more than once cried for disappointment.”
“Well, except that I might never have met you,” said Ulrich, “I’d rather
you had stayed hidden among your native hills than lead such a life.”
“Ay, nothing is so mean and slavish as trade,” remarked Conrad, “and I
am very glad that I have given it up.”
“Ha! but if you or your father, sir, had not turned over a good many
banknotes and thalers, you might never have become owner of
Loewenstein,” said the wise Moida. “And then dear Caro wouldn’t have had
a home here, and all these pikes and helmets and other venerable relics
would have been for ever scattered to the winds. Whereas now, thanks to
your wealth, there will soon be no castle in all Tyrol like this one.”
“Well, tell me, Miss Hofer, what would you have me do now that I am out
of business?” asked Conrad. “A man ought not to be idle.”
“Do? Why, I’d hunt chamois, and fish in the Inn, and climb the glaciers,
and I’d find happiness in making others happy, for there are many poor
people in the Innthal.”
“But would that suffice? Oh! you do not know what a restless mortal I
am. I have always been sighing for something, but no sooner do I attain
my heart’s desire—and thus far I have been very fortunate—than
straightway I begin to yearn for something else. Suppose now I devote
myself to science, say to astronomy, and build a telescope, a gigantic
one, bigger than the biggest, and sweep the heavens millions of miles
beyond the farthest star now seen?”
“Well, I’d rather busy myself with the things near me,” returned Moida.
“However, if you like to look through a telescope, why I’d build one.
But, telescope or no telescope, I’d do nothing but laugh from sunrise
till sundown if this castle belonged to me.”
And this was true enough. Hers was a happy nature; nothing ever
disturbed her serenity. Although poor, she did not envy the rich.
Although a very good girl, she was never troubled by religious scruples;
the most fiery sermon on eternal punishment could not keep Moida’s head
from nodding after the preacher had been preaching more than twenty
minutes, and Walburga used to envy her from the bottom of her heart. And
now Ulrich’s betrothed felt inclined to smile at Conrad, who was so rich
and free from care, but whose visage had assumed a grave look, and she
thought to herself: “’Tis a pity he has moody spells, for dear Walburga
is prone to them, too; she should have a laughing, jovial husband.”
Then, to cheer her host, Moida sang another song, which presently drove
away the cloud from his face. But the girl paused not with one; the
music continued to flow in an unbroken stream from her lips, until the
oil in the lamp burned low and warned them that it was time to seek
repose.
“And now good-night,” said Conrad, after showing his fair guest to a
little room near the top of the tower. “I hope the moonbeams shining in
through the chinks in the wall will not keep you awake. Good-night.”
“Nothing ever keeps me awake; I’ll soon shut out the moon. Good-night,
sir,” she answered. And in a very short while Moida was fast asleep,
with her rosary in her hand—for she always closed her eyes before she
had half finished, and let her guardian angel say the rest of the
prayer.
* * * * *
“Why, what an early bird you are!” exclaimed Walburga the following
morning, as she was preparing to set off for the Pinakothek. “Back
already?”
“Yes,” answered Moida. “I took the first train. Not that I didn’t wish
to stay longer, but—”
“Ah! true, you have to look after the dinner—my breakfast was miserable
without you—and keep store, and one night was quite as long as you could
be spared,” added the other, smiling; and good-natured Moida smiled too;
then with an arch glance said: “By the way, he came with me.”
“He! Whom do you mean?” asked Walburga, pretending not to understand.
“Why, Conrad Seinsheim. And really, I advise you to accept him if he
proposes. The short time I passed in his company has convinced me that
he is a good man, and I doubt not but you will bring him back to the
faith. Yes, love and prayer will make a Christian of him again sooner
than anything else.”
“But what makes you think he has any notion of courting me?”
“Oh! I can tell by the way he talks, and by what you yourself told me
about him the other day. So you’ll surely see him this forenoon; he may
be already at the gallery awaiting you.”
“Well, true, Mr. Seinsheim did ask my leave to come and renew our
conversation. Therefore I presume he will be there.”
“Yet a moment since you feigned not to know that he cared for you,”
continued Moida, twitching her sleeve.
“Oh! he merely wishes to converse on art. Besides, some men enjoy being
near a woman, without having any thought of matrimony. There are full as
many flirts in one sex as in the other; however, if Mr. Seinsheim
imagines he can throw dust in my eyes, he’ll be mistaken. It shall be
all art between us—nothing but art; not a single silly syllable.”
“Well, he doesn’t look like one to pay foolish compliments; you have
owned as much yourself,” said Moida. “Now, remember his words when you
spoke of uncaging your nightingale; and if I can read character, Mr.
Seinsheim is just the man to ask a girl to be his wife at the second or
third interview. So, dear friend, you may return at noon engaged.”
“How can you dream of such a thing!” said Walburga, half reproachfully.
“Oh! now don’t be vexed. But let me calmly inquire why I should not
dream of it; for where could he find a better helpmate?”
“Because all men are alike. Even the holy patriarchs were guided by
outward appearances in choosing their wives. Scripture tells us that
Laban had two daughters, Leah and Rachel: ‘Leah was tender-eyed; but
Rachel was beautiful, and Jacob loved Rachel.’”
This was more than Moida could gainsay; therefore she let the subject
drop and asked about the bird.
“I have given him his liberty,” said Walburga.
“Have you truly? Well, I declare!”
This was all that Moida could utter. Then, putting on her hat and shawl,
Walburga quitted the room, leaving her friend repeating to herself:
“What a sentimental girl she is! What a sentimental girl she is!”
We may be sure that while on her way to the picture gallery Walburga
thought only of the one whom she expected to meet there, and she quite
agreed with Moida that Conrad did not seem like a man to play at
courtship. Yet, admitting that he was in earnest, would he not prove to
be in the end like the great majority of his sex—a blind follower only
of what his eyes revealed to him? Would he dive below the surface and
judge her by her inner self?
“I will try not to indulge any hope,” thought Walburga. Yet, at this
very moment, down in her heart’s depths the flower of hope was already
beginning to bud, and no doubt that was why her step this morning was
lighter than usual. As for Conrad having lost his faith, however much
she regretted it, and pious girl though she was, this did not lead her
to believe that he was a bad man. Walburga had sense enough to discern
the difficulties which lie in the way of belief in the revelation to
those who have wandered from, or never known, the truth; she knew, too,
that the universities were full of learned professors who spoke of God
as a myth. “And even some saints,” she said, “have been racked by doubt,
and overcame this, the greatest of all the temptations of the
arch-fiend, only by severe self-tortures. Therefore I will continue to
pray for Conrad Seinsheim.” (Walburga had remembered him in her prayers
ever since she had heard that he was an unbeliever). “And I will pray
also for dear Ulrich, who is young and confiding, and is much in
Conrad’s power.”
A quarter of an hour later and the girl was busy at her easel, and
working swiftly too. “For I must accomplish all I can before he
arrives,” she murmured to herself.
But Conrad did not allow her time to do much. Presently his voice was
heard bidding her good-morning. Whereupon she returned his greeting in a
cheery tone, but without looking round.
“Gracious lady,” he began, “doubtless Miss Hofer has already told you of
her pleasant visit to Loewenstein. The weather was delightful, the old
place looked charming, and I should not have let her return so soon, nor
come myself either, only that I longed to see you again.”
“Dear Moida enjoyed it very much, but she knows that ’tis impossible for
me to get along without her,” answered Walburga, revealing only by a
faint flush the emotion excited by Conrad’s words. Her hand, however,
was steadier than it had been the first time he paid her a compliment.
Then the other, after observing her a moment in silence, went on:
“How rapidly you paint, Miss Von Loewenstein! And what life you throw
into your picture!”
“Well, yes, sir, I am a quick worker. I hope my brother is not
disappointing you and dawdling over his task.”
“No, indeed! And I consider myself very fortunate in having found such
an artist. There he was, seated amid the ruins of the old castle, when I
arrived, apparently waiting for me to appear; and if you saw the tower
now you would hardly recognize it. Why, some of the frescos, since
Ulrich has restored them, are as fine as anything in this gallery.”
“Really!” exclaimed Walburga.
“Yes, really. And he declares his skill and energy are all due to Moida.
Ulrich says she spurs him on, and I believe it. Oh! nothing like a woman
to put fire into a man.”
“Well, some gentlemen, sir, manage to live and prosper without any such
spurring,” rejoined Walburga, with a smile lurking on her lips.
“I am exceedingly hard to please; that is why _I_ am still a bachelor,”
said her admirer, wincing a little at this remark.
“Well, believe me, sir, ’tis foolish to be so fastidious. Why, in any
town of ten, nay, of even five thousand inhabitants a good man may find
a good woman to be his wife.”
“Do you think so?”
“’Tis my conviction. This hunting up and down the world for an ideal
woman is nonsense.” Then, with a slight gesture of impatience: “O these
lips!” exclaimed Walburga—“these lips! when shall I get them right?”
“Well, you see, Miss Von Loewenstein, what a severe critic you are of
your exquisite copy of Carlo Dolce; whereas to me it seems already
perfect.”
“Oh! but this is a picture, not a living being. Here the eye is our only
guide. In the other case—”
“Then a blind man might do as well as one who had sight in choosing a
wife?” interrupted Conrad, laughing.
Walburga laughed, too, then answered:
“Verily, sir, there is more truth in that than you imagine. He knows
little of a woman who knows only what his eyes tell him of her.”
“Well, you may be right,” he added musingly; “you may be right. Yet I
trust a good deal to mine.”
“If women did the same, might there not be fewer weddings?” said
Walburga. “Besides, I know I am right. Why, the happiest lady in
Munich—I know her intimately—is wedded to a little squab of a man, who
squints so badly that his two eyes seem blended into one.”
Here a pause ensued, during which Conrad made up his mind that Ulrich’s
sister was no ordinary character. She had ideas of her own, and was not
afraid to express them. Then, unable to resist the temptation to speak
something else that was flattering, he said:
“I wonder how a person so gifted as yourself should be content to remain
a mere copyist.”
“’Tis all one can be in our age,” replied Walburga. “The days of
originality are gone by. We need another deluge to blot out whatever
mankind has wrought in literature and art; then, after the flood should
have subsided, artists and writers might begin anew.”
“Oh! but surely there are original things painted and written nowadays?”
said Conrad.
“It may appear so, sir. But ’tis only because the ignorant public does
not know where lies hidden the musty parchment or worm-eaten canvas
whence the so-called genius has stolen his prize. No, no; originality,
in this age of the world, is the art of knowing how to pilfer. True
originality is stark dead.” And the girl ended these words with a sigh,
which proved that she, at least, believed what she said to be true.
“Well, if all copyists did their duty as faithfully as yourself,”
pursued Conrad, “we might readily forego any more originals.” Then,
while the bright color which this speech brought to her cheek was still
glowing upon it, he added: “And now, gracious lady, let me remind you
that I once asked if your picture was for sale, and you told me ‘yes.’
But we came to no bargain.”
“Well, what will you give me for it?” said Walburga, little dreaming
what a weighty response her question would draw forth.
“A castle and my own poor self with it,” answered Conrad.
For full a minute the girl stayed silent; her brush fell to her lap,
and, without giving him a glance, she bowed her head. Then presently,
resuming her work: “Come back, sir,” she said, “in three days and you
shall have my decision.”
“Oh! but why not to-day? now? at this moment? Nobody is near to hear
what you say,” pleaded Conrad, and so fervent was his tone that
Walburga’s resolution was half shaken. Then, while her right hand hung
quivering upon the canvas, he seized it and pressed it to his lips.
The effect of this kiss was magical; it thrilled like lightning through
every vein in her body, and from that instant Walburga’s heart was won.
But presently, to Conrad’s amazement, the glow faded from her cheek and
she heaved a sigh; then came a tear.
“What can it mean?” he asked himself, strongly tempted to sweep the
bright jewel away with another kiss. “What can it mean?” And again he
implored her to end his suspense, to let him know his fate at once.
“Please do not urge me; I would rather not,” said Walburga, in a voice
little above a whisper. “I believe, sir, you love me; therefore wait and
be patient.”
These last words lent fire to Conrad’s hopes, and scarcely doubting that
her response, when it came, would be favorable, he allowed her hand to
go free.
But any more work was out of the question for the fair artist; while the
other, albeit longing to linger in her company, judged it would be best
to withdraw. And so Conrad went away, full of gladness, leaving Walburga
cherishing, too, the fond belief that here was a man who was not like
other men—a man who would take her for her inner worth, who would give
her that home, that celestial harmony of loving hearts, which had been
for years the craving of her soul.
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
HELL AND SCIENCE.
The editor of _Popular Science Monthly_ gave us in one of his late
issues an article concerning the belief in hell. The article begins by
referring to the lively discussion which has recently been carried on in
the pulpit and the press as to whether there is a state of eternal
torments. According to Prof. Youmans, this discussion shows that “there
has been, thanks to the influence of science, a pretty rapid
liberalizing of theological opinion during the past generation, and is
an instructive indication of the advance that has been made.” After this
expression of satisfaction he very naturally remarks that the question
of the existence of a veritable hell is a theological one, which he
cheerfully leaves “to those interested,” as if men of science,
especially those of a certain school, were not interested in the
question of knowing what is kept in store for those who sin against
truth and against God. But “the topic,” he adds, “has also a scientific
side. The rise and course of the _idea_, or what may be called the
natural history of the belief in hell, is a subject quite within the
sphere of scientific inquiry. It is legitimate to ask as to how the
notion originated, as to its antiquity, the extent to which it has been
entertained, the forms it has assumed, and the changes it has undergone;
and from this point of view it of course involves the principle of
evolution.” Whence he concludes that a few suggestions concerning this
view of the subject may not be inappropriate.
This preamble, though the least objectionable portion of Prof. Youmans’
article, is full of questionable assertions. First, the discussion about
the existence of eternal punishment does not show any “rapid
liberalizing” of theological opinion. For, on the one hand, the doctrine
of hell is not a theological opinion but a revealed dogma; and, on the
other, the foolish attempt of discrediting it among the ignorant did not
proceed from theologians, but from such men as have been, and are, the
worst enemies of theology. Theology is essentially based on authority;
hence theology has no existence in the Protestant sects, whose very
reason of being is a contemptuous disregard of authority and the assumed
right of private interpretation. Now, all those who ventured to argue
against the existence of eternal punishment belonged to Protestant
sects. And, therefore, their “liberal” view of the subject does not
constitute “theological opinion.” Protestants may, indeed, assume the
title of “divines”; but the title is not the thing. There is no real
theology outside of the Catholic Church. When Catholic divines shall
discuss the existence of hell as a free theological opinion—which, of
course, will never happen—then only Prof. Youmans will be welcome to say
that there has been “a liberalizing of theological opinion.”
But, secondly, the very idea of “liberalizing” Protestant thought is
supremely ludicrous. For who has been the forerunner, the inventor, the
father, and the fosterer of liberalism but Protestant thought? Whence
did religious scepticism spring but from Protestant inconsistency?
Liberalism is nothing but Protestantism applied to philosophical,
political, and social questions. It is Protestant thought, therefore,
that has liberalized a portion of modern society, not modern thought
that has liberalized Protestant opinion. To liberalize Protestant
thought is like carrying coal to Newcastle.
Thirdly, it is not true that the recent discussion of the doctrine of
hell shows “the influence of science.” It simply shows the ignorance of
some Protestant divines and the wickedness of perverted human hearts.
Science, as now understood, is exclusively concerned with things that
fall under observation and experiment, or that can be logically inferred
or mathematically deduced from experiment and observation. Now, surely,
the torments of hell are not a matter of observation and experiment
during the present life, as even Prof. Youmans will concede. And
therefore it is evident that the doctrine of hell cannot be made the
subject of scientific reasoning. On the other hand, how can science
influence the opinion of men as to believing or not believing in a
future state of eternal punishment? Our advanced thinkers assume that
science knows everything, and that what is unknown to science has no
existence. It is on this ground that they ignore revelation, creation,
immortality, and a number of other important truths. But the absurdity
of such an assumption is so evident that there can be no mistake about
it. Science knows, or pretends to know, matter and force; but it knows
nothing about right and wrong, nothing about virtue and vice, nothing
about religion and moral law, nothing about the origin and the finality
of things, and it is so ignorant (we speak of _advanced_ science) that
it even fails to see the absolute necessity of a Creator. Is it not
ridiculous, then, to assume that there may be no hell because modern
science professes to know nothing about its existence?
But “the topic,” continues Prof. Youmans, “has also a scientific side.
The rise and course of the _idea_, or what may be called the natural
history of the belief in hell, is a subject quite within the sphere of
scientific inquiry. It is legitimate to ask as to how the notion
originated, as to its antiquity, the extent to which it has been
entertained, the forms it has assumed, and the changes it has undergone,
and from this point of view it of course involves the principle of
evolution.” This reasoning, on which the professor endeavors to ground a
scientific claim to meddle with a revealed doctrine, is altogether
preposterous. For, although it be legitimate to ask how the notion of
hell originated, and how ancient it is, and how ignorance and vulgar
prejudices may have distorted it, nevertheless it is not from natural
science that an answer to such questions can be expected. The
theologian, the historian, and the moral philosopher are the only
competent authorities on the subject. The scientist, as such, is not
qualified to speak of the origin of revealed doctrines; for science,
especially advanced science, has no knowledge of revelation. Hence, when
our scientists venture to pass a judgment upon matters connected with
revelation, they deserve to be reminded of the good old precept: Let the
cobbler stick to his last.
The reader will have remarked that Prof. Youmans proposes to deal with
the “forms” which the doctrine of eternal punishment has assumed, and
with the “changes” it has undergone. This, of course, has no bearing on
the question of the existence of hell; for the existence of things does
not depend on the changeable views entertained as to their mode of
existing. But the professor, who is wise in his generation, perceived
that by insisting on the changes undergone by the doctrine two
advantages could be gained. On the one hand, a precious opportunity
would be offered of confounding our revealed doctrine with the fabulous
conceptions of the pagan world; on the other hand, the professor would
be enabled to treat our revealed doctrine as a mere development of old
fables, according to certain principles of evolution which modern
science has invented though never established. But we would remark that,
since the professor meant to show, as we see from the conclusion of his
article, that our Christian doctrine of hell “should be eliminated from
the popular creed,” the argument drawn from the discordant views of
heathen and barbarous nations should have been considered preposterous.
For what does it matter if the pagan fables took different forms and
underwent any number of changes? It is quite enough for us that our own
doctrine has been invariably the same. It is a blunder, therefore, to
condemn the latter for the variations of the former.
Prof. Youmans begins to develop his subject in the following manner: “In
the first place, it is necessary to rise above that narrowness of view
which regards the doctrine of hell as especially a Christian doctrine or
as the monopoly of any particular religion. On the contrary, it is as
ancient and universal as the systems of religious faith that have
overspread the world.” In our opinion, this pretended necessity of
rising “above the narrowness of view” which regards the doctrine of hell
as especially Christian doctrine is only a futile pretext for putting on
the same level the Christian dogma and the pagan inventions. In the
recent discussion of the doctrine by the Protestant sects there had been
no question about the existence of the imaginary hell of the pagans; the
whole question regarded the Scriptural hell. Hence a reference to pagan
ideas could not be necessary. Nor is it true that the view which regards
the doctrine of hell as a specially Christian doctrine is “narrow.” We
see that different sects have kept or borrowed some points of doctrine
from the Catholic Church, and that they have perverted them more or
less, as was the case with the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, of
the Eucharist, of justification, and of other supernatural truths; and
yet no one will say that it is a “narrow view” to regard these doctrines
as essentially and exclusively Catholic. For to whom were they
originally revealed but to the Catholic Church? and where are they to be
found in their primitive entirety but in the Catholic Church? The
vagaries of sectarian thought are surely not to be considered as a
development of doctrine; they are only a travesty and an adulteration of
truth, just in the same manner as the evolution of species is no part of
natural science, being only a mass of absurdities, as we have abundantly
shown in some of our past numbers. To mix together doctrinal truth and
doctrinal error is not to avoid narrowness but to produce confusion.
Were we to collect all the errors of modern scientists about force or
about the constitution of matter, we could easily prove, by Prof.
Youmans’ method, that science is a mere imposition and a disgrace to the
age. But our logic differs from that of the professor; hence we do not
consider it “narrowness” to distinguish science from the errors of
scientists, that truth and error may not be involved indiscriminately in
the same condemnation. But let us proceed:
“The oldest religions of which we have any knowledge—Hindoo,
Egyptian, and the various Oriental systems of worship—all affirm the
doctrine of a future life with accompanying hells for the torture of
condemned souls. We certainly cannot assume that all these systems
are true and of divine origin; but, if not, then the question forces
itself upon us how they came to this belief. The old historic
religious systems involved advanced and complicated creeds and
rituals, and if they were not real divine revelations in this
elaborate shape, we are compelled to regard them as having had a
natural development out of lower and cruder forms of superstition.
To explain these religions we must go behind them. There is a
prehistoric, rudimentary theology of the primitive man, the quality
of which has to be deduced from his low, infantine condition of
mind, interpreted by what we observe among the inferior types of
mankind in the present time.”
This passage contains the main argument of Prof. Youmans’ article, by
which he intends to show that the doctrine of hell has no ground in
divine revelation, but simply originated in human ignorance.
Unfortunately, Professor Youmans’ interpretation of history cannot be
depended upon. The fact that Hindoos, Egyptians, and all other nations
admitted in some shape the doctrine of hell is a very good evidence that
the doctrine of the existence of hell was co-extensive with humanity,
and therefore had its origin in a primitive tradition of the race, and
not in the imagination of isolated individuals or families. This
primitive tradition, as well as the primitive religion, must be traced
to Noe and his family. It is Noe’s religion, not the Hindoo or the
Egyptian or any other Oriental religion, that has been “the oldest
religion of which we have any knowledge”; and this oldest religion had
its secure foundation in the knowledge of the true God and of his
supreme, omnipotent, provident will. Hence, when Prof. Youmans,
forsaking all mention of this primitive religion derived from direct
divine revelation, resorts to other systems of worship more or less
corrupt, and declares that “we cannot assume that all these systems are
true and of divine origin,” he shows either a perverse desire of
deceiving his readers, or at least a strange ignorance of ancient
history.
The consequence he draws from the preceding assertions is even more
unreasonable. If the religious systems of the ancient heathens were not
divine revelations, “we are compelled,” he says, “to regard them as
having a natural development out of lower and cruder forms of
superstition.” This conclusion is so contrary to all we know of mankind
that it required the inventive genius of an advanced scientist to
formulate it. The known truth is that the objectionable systems of
worship invented among different nations were not a progress of humanity
from a lower form of superstition, but a departure from the form of
worship originally practised according to God’s prescription, a fall
from the region of light into the darkness of error. Noe’s religion was
no superstition; and it is from Noe’s religion that the pagan nations
apostatized by a gradual corruption of revealed truth.
Our advanced scientist invents also “a prehistoric rudimentary theology
of the primitive man.” The invention is quite new and deserves to be
patented. And the primitive man was still “in a low, infantine condition
of mind”; which is another great discovery. The pity is that it has no
ground. The Darwinian theory of evolution cannot be appealed to; for it
is philosophically, historically, and even scientifically exploded, so
that only “the inferior types of mankind”—that is, “the low and
infantine minds”—can hear of it without shaking their heads. The
primitive man knew his noble origin, conversed with his Creator,
received his orders, and learned from him his own destiny. Adam was a
great deal sharper, wittier, and more instructed in all important things
than his modern scientific descendants; and Noe, the second father of
our race, the second propagator and witness of divine revelation, was as
eminent a man at least as any of our contemporaries; for he it was who
transmitted to his descendants that knowledge of astronomy,
architecture, philosophy, history, agriculture, and other arts and
sciences by which the post-diluvian world, as soon as sufficiently
repeopled, displayed in the wonderful magnificence of Babylonian and
Egyptian civilization the intellectual treasures inherited from the
antediluvian culture. Such was the man who handed down to us the
fundamental truths of primitive religion. If such a man is said to have
been “in a low and infantine condition of mind,” could we not say as
much of the average scientist of the time?
The professor remarks that the early men, _in profound ignorance_ of the
surrounding world and of their own nature, must have grossly
misinterpreted outward appearances and their internal experiences, and
this, he says, “is certain.” Indeed? How did the professor ascertain
this? Men whose lives were measured by centuries could not have
sufficient experience of things to save them from gross mistakes! They
made no sufficient observations to enable them to interpret exterior and
interior phenomena! They did not even know their own natures! Their
ignorance was profound! Adam had the advantage of nine hundred and
thirty years of experience, and yet “it is certain” that he remained in
profound ignorance of the surrounding world! His descendants soon
invented different useful arts, as metallurgy, architecture, and music
both vocal and instrumental; they built cities, and reached that high
degree of civilization and refinement without which the subsequent
universal corruption would have been impossible; and yet, if we believe
our professor, they did not know their natures nor what they were doing!
Then we are told that the analysis of the conditions of early men “has
abundantly shown how these primitive misunderstandings led inevitably to
manifold superstitions.” It is plain, however, that the conditions of
early men have never been analyzed by those who reject the Mosaic
history, for the first requisite for proceeding to such an analysis is a
knowledge of the conditions themselves which are to be analyzed; and
these conditions are found nowhere but in the book of Genesis. And as to
“primitive misunderstandings” and the “inevitable superstitions” to
which they have led, can Prof. Youmans give us more detailed
information? Did Adam, in his “profound ignorance of the surrounding
world,” imagine that the sun was a god? or the moon a goddess? Or was it
possible for him to fall into “inevitable superstition,” seeing that he
had been in frequent direct communication with his true Creator and God?
It is altogether ridiculous to pretend that Herbert Spencer “has
carefully traced out this working of the primitive mind, and explained
how the early men, by their crude misconceptions of natural things, were
gradually led to the belief in a ghost-realm of beings appended to the
existing order.” Herbert Spencer did nothing of the kind. He analyzed
fictions, not facts, and his conclusions are worthless.
But, says Mr. Youmans, “the idea of a life after death, so universally
entertained among races of the lowest grades of intelligence, is
accounted for, and is only to be accounted for, in this way. Through
experiences of sleep, dreams, and loss and return of consciousness at
irregular times, ... there grew up the idea of a double nature—of a part
that goes away leaving the body lifeless, and returns again to revivify
it; and thus originated the theory of immaterial ghosts or spirits.”
This is just what we could expect from an admirer of Herbert Spencer’s
philosophical method. Prof. Youmans does not know, apparently, that the
idea of a life after death is a simple corollary of a manifest
truth—viz., that the reasoning principle which is in man is neither
matter, nor an affection or modification of matter, but a distinct
substance, and one which possesses powers and properties of a much
higher order than the powers and properties of matter. This truth,
against which materialists can allege nothing which has not been refuted
a hundred times, combined with another obvious truth which even advanced
science admits—viz., that no substance is or can be naturally
annihilated—leads directly to the consequence that our reasoning
principle, our soul, will naturally survive the death of our body. This
mere hint concerning the substantiality, spirituality, and natural
immortality of the human soul may here suffice. It shows that men had no
need of resorting to the experiences of dreams, swoons, catalepsy,
trance, and other forms of insensibility to be enabled to infer that the
human soul is a spiritual substance. Every act of our intellectual
faculties proclaims that our soul is a self-moving and self-possessing
being. Dreams and swoons and catalepsy, being common to the lower
animals, have never been considered a proof of the spirituality and
immortality of the human soul. It is childish, therefore, to derive the
idea of spirituality and immortality from the experience of such
phenomena.
Mr. Youmans tells us also that when the conception of a separate and
future life arose in men’s minds, such a life could not have been
supposed to differ much from that of the present order of things. This
he takes for granted, owing to the profound ignorance which, according
to advanced science, characterized the primitive men; and he illustrates
this view by some examples of savages, who bury food, weapons,
implements, etc., with the bodies of their dead friends. But, “as
knowledge accumulated, the conception grew incongruous, and underwent
important modifications, so that similarity gradually passed into
contrast. The intimacy of the intercourse supposed to be carried on
between the two worlds decreased; the future world was conceived of as
more remote, and as having other occupations and gratifications more
consonant with developing ideas of the present life.” Such is the
professor’s theory. We need hardly say that, as a scientific theory, it
has no value. Science is based on facts; but here we have nothing but
dreams exploded by history as well as by philosophy. The origin of the
belief in hell is not to be traced to the profound ignorance of the
primitive man. This profound ignorance is not a fact but a fiction. The
assumption that man’s intellect was originally in an undeveloped
condition, and that it has gone on improving all along till it became
able to discover the incongruousness of its previous notions and to give
them up, is another fiction. That the “accumulation of knowledge,” such
as obtained among infidel nations, could enlighten them on a question as
to which nothing can be definitely known on merely natural grounds, is a
third fiction; whilst the truth is that the pretended knowledge of the
heathens, like the pretended science of our modern sceptics, has been
rather a source of innumerable absurdities, by which the primitive holy
and healthy traditions of the race have been obscured, corrupted, and
disfigured.
But the professor has more to say in support of his “scientific” view.
“Rude conceptions regarding good and evil could not fail to be early
involved with considerations of man’s futurity. Good and evil are
inextricably mixed up in this world, which seems always to have been
regarded as a faulty arrangement, and, as there was little hope of
rectifying it here, the future life came to be regarded as compensatory
to the present.... This idea of using the next world to redress the
imperfections and wrongs of this grew up early and survives still, and
it has exerted a prodigious influence in human affairs.” It is evident
that the consideration of man’s futurity, to be rational, must involve
the consideration of man’s moral nature; for the futurity of a moral
being is necessarily connected with the moral order. It would be folly
to deny that virtue deserves reward, or that vice deserves punishment;
and even the most stupid understand that the future of a scoundrel must
differ from the future of a saint. This universal belief “survives
still,” as Mr. Youmans himself testifies, and is not “growing obsolete,”
as he pretends, but is still universal in our civilized society. Of
course a dozen or two of advanced thinkers may be found who reject this
universal belief; for, as they suppress God and worship _Nature_, they
would be embarrassed to explain how the good can be rewarded and the
wicked punished by their blind goddess that has no knowledge of the
moral law. But this shows only the “profound ignorance” of such advanced
thinkers regarding things supersensible, and proves to demonstration
that, in spite of all their pretensions, they do not belong to the
civilized world. The early men, whose conceptions our professor
denounces as “rude,” were better and deeper philosophers than he is.
They recognized a personal God, the eternal source of morality, the
judge of his creatures, the rewarder of justice, and the punisher of
crime. They knew, therefore, that the problem of good and evil was to be
solved “not by the absorption and disappearance of evil,” but by
separating the good from the bad, “the good being all collected in a
good place, and the bad ones all turned into a bad place.” Mr. Youmans
does not like this solution. He seems to insinuate that the true
solution implies the absorption and disappearance of evil. He seems to
say: Let virtue be rewarded, but let not wickedness be punished. He may
have his reasons for preferring this solution, but we have none for
accepting it. Reason as well as revelation declare it to be
unacceptable.
What follows is a vulgar tirade against priesthood. All priests
indiscriminately are denounced by our liberal professor for having
taught the existence of heaven and hell. He says:
“As the grosser superstitions were gradually developed into
systematic religions, a priestly class arose, and religious beliefs
were embodied in definite creeds. Fundamental among these was the
belief in heaven as a place of happiness, and of hell as a place of
torment for the wicked. To one or other of these places, it was
held, all men are bound to go after death; but to which depended—and
here the office of the priesthood assumed a terrible importance, for
they knew all about it and had the keys. It is impossible to
conceive any other idea of such tremendous power for dominating
mankind as this! It raised the priesthood and the ecclesiastical
institutions into despotic ascendency, brought it into unholy
alliance with civil despotism, and became the mighty means of
plundering the people, crushing out their liberties, darkening their
hopes, and cursing their lives.”
This bit of declamation might safely be left without answer. But to
clear up the confusion made by the scientific writer, we will ask him to
explain what he understands by the word “priesthood.” Does he mean the
ministers of all religions without exception, or the ministers of false
religions only? Does he involve in the same sentence the priest of God
and of Christ with the priest of Baal and of Moloch? or does he admit
that a distinction should be made? Perhaps he will smile at our
simplicity in asking a question about which his habitual readers can
entertain no doubt, it being evident that a man who worships nothing but
matter and force is a natural enemy of Christ and of his ministers.
Nevertheless, as no one must be allowed to snarl and bite without
motive, we insist on an explanation. If the Christian priesthood is not
involved in his denunciations, then Mr. Youmans’ eloquence is all thrown
away; for it is by the Christian priesthood that the doctrine of hell
has been most efficiently taught and inculcated all the world over. If,
on the contrary, as it is logical to assume, the Christian priesthood is
involved in his denunciations, then Mr. Youmans’ brain is surely not in
a sound condition. A man in full possession of his reasoning power would
never have thought of connecting the Christian priesthood with
despotism, or of charging them with plundering the people, crushing
their liberties, darkening their hopes, or cursing their lives. No; the
professor is not in full possession of his faculties in this matter.
Were it otherwise, he would be guilty of the most odious slander. In
some of his articles, which we have analyzed not long ago, we had
already found what might be taken as unmistakable signs of scientific
aberration. The reader may still remember how the professor countenanced
the conception of the unthinkable, how he advocated continuous evolution
without any actual link of continuity, and how he made life spring from
dead, inert matter. But now it is the Christian priesthood that makes an
unholy alliance with civil despotism and crushes the liberties of the
people! This assertion cannot be excused by the plea of bad logic; for
it regards a matter of fact, not of speculation, and logic, whether good
or bad, has nothing to do with it. Only a natural or preternatural
derangement in a man’s brain can account for the oddity of such a
charge. We say _natural_ or _preternatural_, because it sometimes
happens, even in this age of advanced civilization, that a man who makes
profession of militant infidelity is taken possession of, either
consciously or unconsciously, by “the father of lies,” who makes a fool
of him in this world the better to secure his everlasting ruin in the
other. We repeat that a man of sound mind, and free from satanic
influence, would never make such a silly and unhistorical denunciation
of the priesthood as Prof. Youmans has ventured to make. He would rather
say that the Christian priesthood has been the most earnest champion of
popular liberties in all times and in all countries, as all
ecclesiastical and secular history testifies. He would say that their
ascendency, far from being despotic, was kind and paternal, and
calculated to win, as it did, the love of the people without ceasing to
command their respect. He would say that this ascendency was not derived
from their threats of the torments of hell, but was the reward of their
virtuous life, ardent charity, singular prudence, and superior
education; and was used, not to plunder the people, but to protect them
against baronial, royal, and imperial plunderers.
Plundering is a masonic virtue; witness the great French Revolution in
the last century, and the policy of Italy, Germany, and Switzerland in
the present. And who are the men that plunder the American people but
the infidel politicians who do not believe in hell? Mr. Youmans may
depend upon it, no judicial, legislative, or executive power will ever
put a stop to such a wholesale plundering until they humbly kneel before
the priest, and conjure him to take in hand the education of our
citizens and to revive in them a salutary fear of hell. It is not the
fear of hell that “curses the lives” or “darkens the hopes” of men. All
the world knows, on the contrary, that there has never been on the face
of the earth a thriftier and happier people than the Christian has been.
Of course criminals are troubled by the remembrance of hell, their lives
are galled, and their hopes are darkened; but we presume that Mr.
Youmans does not mean to patronize them. After all it is not the priests
that have created hell; they merely warn the sinner of its existence,
that he may mend his ways and be saved. Indeed, it is sin, not hell,
that darkens the hopes and curses the life of man.
From the bitter tone of the passage we have been refuting it would
appear that Mr. Youmans is extremely jealous of the authority and
ascendency of the priesthood. The jealousy is very natural. The priest,
who teaches the Gospel backed by the authority of the universal church,
is a very serious obstacle to the propagation of false scientific or
unscientific belief. Therefore it is that Mr. Youmans cannot bear to see
the Christian priesthood revered and esteemed by the people, and does
his best to destroy their reputation and authority. At this we are not
astonished; for modern unbelief is so destitute of intrinsic grounds and
so incapable of defending itself that it is constrained to go out of its
lines and try a diversion. Accordingly, it takes the offensive. But when
the offensive is carried on with no other weapons than those recommended
by Voltaire, “_Mentez, mentez toujours; il faut mentir comme des
diables_,” then _tranquillus judicat orbis terrarum_, the world, though
wicked, will be heard to pronounce its sentence against the offender.
The professor adds:
“So productive an agency of unscrupulous ambition could not fail to
be assiduously cultivated, and the conception of hell, the most
potent element in the case by its appeal to fear, was elaborated
with the utmost ingenuity. Language was exhausted in depicting the
terrors of the infernal regions and the agonies of the damned. We by
no means say that these ideas were mere priestly inventions, but
only that they grew up under the powerful guidance of a class
consecrated to their exposition and incited by the most powerful
worldly motives to strengthen their influence. In order to enforce
belief, to compel obedience to ecclesiastical requirements, to
coerce civil submission, and to extort money, people were threatened
with the horrors of hell, which were pictured with all the vividness
of rhetorical and poetic fanaticism. As the hierarchical spirit grew
in strength and became a tyrannical rule, obedience to its minutest
rites was enforced by the most appalling intimidations.”
We did not know, before we read this passage, that preaching the
Christian doctrine of hell was productive of “unscrupulous ambition”; we
rather thought that it was productive of deep and sincere humility. The
preacher of the Gospel believes in the Gospel, and knows that hell is
awaiting the bad and “unscrupulous” priest no less than the bad and
unscrupulous layman. Hence, if the priest assiduously cultivated the
thought and elaborated the doctrine of hell, it would appear that the
priest could not be “unscrupulous”—at least, not so unscrupulous as
those professors who get rid of hell by the final “absorption of evil.”
Nor do we understand why a wise man should complain that the priests
assiduously cultivated and elaborated the doctrine of hell, and that
“language was exhausted in depicting the terrors of the infernal
regions.” This fact should be a matter of congratulation, not of blame;
for the terrors of hell “exert a prodigious influence,” as the professor
acknowledges, in human affairs; they discourage crime, fortify virtue,
and contribute to the maintenance of those conditions without which
human society would be transformed into a lair of ferocious beasts. A
professor who pretends to a high place among the friends of civilization
should have seen this.
As to the motives which induced the priesthood to dilate so assiduously
on the torments of hell, we admit that they were “powerful”; but that
they were “worldly” we do not admit, for had they been worldly they
would have lost all their power. In like manner we admit that the
hierarchical spirit may have grown in strength; but that it became a
“tyrannical rule,” enforcing the minutest rites “by appalling
intimidations,” we most confidently deny. These malicious assertions
cannot be substantiated. And again, we understand how the fear of the
eternal torments may have helped to secure obedience to the lawful
authorities, whether civil or ecclesiastical; but we do not see how this
fear could be used “to extort money” from the people. The thing is
absurd, as it involves the assumption that the most virtuous, venerable,
and self-sacrificing friends of the people, the Christian priesthood,
were a set of knaves.
The professor’s remark that “the terrors of hell were not mere priestly
inventions, but grew up under their powerful guidance,” will receive
more light from the passage which follows:
“We must not forget that the future life, being beyond experience
and inaccessible to reason, offers an attractive playground for the
unbridled imagination. It opens an infinite realm for sensuous
imagery and creative invention, stirs the deepest feelings, and
concerns itself with the mystery of human destiny. It accordingly
offers a favorite topic for poetic treatment, and this is more
especially true of the darker aspect of the future world, poets
having taken with avidity to delineations of hell.... Homer, Virgil,
Dante, and Milton, working through poems of immortal genius that
have fascinated mankind, some of them through thousands of years and
others through centuries, have thus combined to familiarize
countless millions of people with the conception, and to stamp it
deep in the literature of all countries.”
There is some truth in this; for it is true that all our pictures of
hell are drawn more or less from our imagination. However, we do not
mistake our pictures for the reality. No effort to depict what we have
never seen can be a success. But what of that? The belief in the
existence of hell is not derived from, or subordinated to, our mode of
representing its torments, just as the belief in the existence of heaven
is not derived from our wild theories of celestial spaces or from our
poor notions of happiness. The future life is indeed “beyond
experience,” as Mr. Youmans says, but its existence is not “inaccessible
to reason,” as he sophistically assumes; for it is by reasoning that
both the ancient and the modern philosophers established the truth of
the conception. On the other hand, our pictures of hell are not drawn
exclusively from our imagination. The lake of fire and brimstone, the
undying worm, the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the sempiternal horror,
the company of devils, etc., are mentioned in the Bible. Hence, when we
use such words as these for describing the state of eternal damnation,
we use images authorized by Him who knows what he has prepared for the
unrepentant transgressor of his commandments.
From these remarks it clearly follows that if the poet can find in the
notion of hell “an attractive playground for the unbridled imagination,”
such is not the case with the priest. The imagination of the priest is
not “unbridled”; it is ruled by the Scriptural language. The preacher
who would countenance Dante’s _Inferno_ from the pulpit would be
accounted a traitor or a fool. The hell of the poets may be highly
amusing in spite of its terrors, but it makes no conversions, whilst the
hell of the Bible has converted millions upon millions of sinful souls.
Prof. Youmans strives to confound the hell of the Christians with the
hell of the poets. It is lost labor. Fecundity and sterility demand
different subjects. It is truth that fructifies. Fiction is barren.
And again, to say that the poetic inventions of Homer, Virgil, Dante,
and Milton “combined to familiarize countless millions of people” with
the conception of hell, is to utter a paradox which has no foundation.
Prof. Youmans mistakes the effect for the cause. There has been no need
of poesy to familiarize the countless millions with the conception. The
millions were familiar with it before they ever read the poets; nay,
more, it is from the popular conception that the poets collected the
first materials for their descriptions of hell. The multitude, the
millions, do not read poets. On the other hand, before the invention of
typography—that is, for long centuries—books were extremely rare, and
the “countless millions” did not even know how to read. Hence Mr.
Youmans’ attempt to trace the general belief in hell to poetical
inventions is a manifest fallacy.
The professor now comes to our time, and with an air of great
satisfaction makes the following assertions:
“Yet the doctrine of hell is now growing obsolete. Originating in
ages of savagery and low barbarism, and developed in periods of
fierce intolerance, sanguinary persecutions, cruel civil codes, and
vindictive punishments, it harmonized with the severities and
violence of society, and undoubtedly had use as a means of the harsh
discipline of men, when they were moved only by the lowest motives.
But with the advance of knowledge, and the cultivation of humaner
sentiments, the doctrine has become anomalous and out of harmony
with the advance of human nature. Hence, though still a cardinal
tenet of orthodoxy, it is now generally entertained in a vague and
loose way, and with reservations and protests that virtually destroy
it. Only revival preachers of the Moody stamp still affirm the
literal lake of fire and brimstone, and it is certain that the
doctrine in any shape recurs much less prominently in current
preaching than it did a generation or two ago. Sober-minded
clergymen have got in the way of neglecting it, except now and then
when rehearsing the creed, or, as at present, under the spur of
controversy, or when rallied about the decay of the old theology.”
Here Mr. Youmans surpasses himself; for, though he has given us already
other proofs of his recklessness, yet here he displays his power of
misrepresentation with an effrontery that beggars description. “The
doctrine of hell is now growing obsolete”! Is this a fact? No. It is
only a desire and a delusion of the anti-Christian sects. Were it a
fact, the church, too, would be growing obsolete; for the doctrine of
hell is one of the “cardinal” tenets of the church, as Mr. Youmans
himself testifies. But we see, on the contrary, that the church is
everywhere gaining new ground and extending her conquests. We are not
ignorant that a spirit of apostasy has pervaded a portion of the ruling
classes, and that Freemasonry makes daily some converts to Satan; but,
while we are sorry to see this ruin of souls, we are far from regarding
it as a loss to the militant church. The church cannot but thrive better
when cowardice and hypocrisy cease to conceal themselves under her
glorious banner. Can the apostasy of her unworthy sons cause her faith
to grow obsolete? No. The third part of the angels, according to a
received view, refused obedience to God and became his enemies; yet
obedience to God did not grow obsolete. At the time of the Lutheran
Reformation the authority of the popes was fiercely denounced, vilified,
and rejected throughout all Germany, Switzerland, and other countries;
yet the pope’s authority did not grow obsolete. What does it matter,
then, if a set of fools who have no God but the “unthinkable” agree to
reject the doctrine of hell? So long as two hundred millions of
Catholics believe the doctrine as a “cardinal tenet” of the church, and
so long as the rest of the world, Protestants, Jews, and pagans, believe
either the same or an analogous doctrine, it is absurd to call it
obsolete. Opinions may grow obsolete, dogmatic truths never; for the
church and her doctrine, whether respected or disregarded by our modern
wiseacres, will last to the end of time.
The doctrine of hell “originated in ages of savagery and barbarism”! The
sapient writer who makes this assertion should be asked to point out a
definite age in which the doctrine originated, and to give some proof of
the savagery and barbarism of such an age. Will Mr. Youmans give us any
evidence on these two points? No; he cannot. He will merely appeal to
prehistoric time—that is, to the unknown and unknowable. This is now the
style of many scientific jugglers; they draw their conclusions from
unknown premises! We have already shown, by reference to the Bible, how
the doctrine of hell originated. Let Mr. Youmans examine our statement
of facts, and we do not doubt but that, in a lucid interval, he will see
the absurdity of his assertion, and the futility of his struggle against
historical truth.
The doctrine of hell “was developed in periods of fierce intolerance,
sanguinary persecutions, cruel codes, and vindictive punishments”! Much
might be said about this bold untruth. Perhaps we might reverse the
whole phrase, and say that it is the hostility to the doctrine of hell
that was developed in a period of fierce intolerance, sanguinary
persecution, cruel codes, and vindictive punishments. Unbelief had a
period of triumph in the great French Revolution. Its intolerance was so
fierce that it brought about “the Reign of Terror”; its persecution was
decidedly sanguinary; its code the will of a drunken mob or the caprice
of a profligate dictator. That period is past, but another, and not a
better one, is approaching. Freemasonry is maturing new diabolic plans,
and, if allowed to conquer, when the time comes will not stop midway in
their execution. Meanwhile these enemies of “fierce intolerance” are
satisfied with a Bismarckian humanity, and these denouncers of
“sanguinary persecutions” wash their innocent hands in the blood of
Colombian and Ecuadorian citizens, priests, and bishops who have had
manhood enough to oppose the tyranny of the sect. We might add much
more, of course, to unmask these virtuous Pharisees, who are so
scandalized at the intolerance of Christianity; but we must return to
our subject.
The assertion that the doctrine of hell “was developed in periods of
fierce intolerance,” etc., is really nonsensical. For the truth is that
this doctrine was never _developed_. The doctrine, as now held in the
universal church, does not contain anything besides what it contained at
the time of the apostles. Hence the development of the doctrine of hell
is a “scientific” invention of Mr. Youmans’ brain. Nor can he exculpate
himself by pretending that his phrase refers to the barbarous
inhabitants of the primitive world. For civil codes had then no
existence, and nothing allows the assumption that the early men passed
through periods of fierce intolerance and sanguinary persecution. These
words are meant to stigmatize Christianity and the middle ages as
contrasted with the scepticism of the present age. If our professor had
a correct idea of what the middle ages really were, we fancy that,
though a man of progress, he would admire their culture, wisdom, and
humanity.
The doctrine of hell was used as “a means of harsh discipline when men
were moved only by the lowest motives”! Be humble, Mr. Youmans; you are
not a competent judge in matters of this sort. First, you know not the
facts. Secondly, you know not the nature and value of supernatural
motives. Thirdly, you know not that a “harsh discipline” is as much
needed to-day to curb the unruly passions as it was a thousand years
ago. Fourthly, you do not know that the lowest motives do not exclude
the highest. Fifthly, you do not know that no motive is low which is
suggested and inculcated by God. Sixthly, you do not know that your
words are a crushing condemnation of modern liberalism, whose god is the
almighty Dollar, and whose best motives are infinitely lower than those
which animated the chivalric and high-spirited Christians of the
mediæval time.
“With the advance of knowledge and the cultivation of humaner sentiments
the doctrine of hell has become anomalous”! What does this mean? Did the
advance of geography, physics, mechanics, cosmogony, chemistry, or other
branches of science alter the conception or diminish the certainty of
the doctrine of hell? Common sense says no. And yet these are the only
branches of knowledge that claim to have advanced. But we must notice
that “knowledge,” according to Prof. Youmans’ phraseology, comprises all
the wild hypotheses of our modern speculators, and that among these
there is a theory which has charmed our professor, and to which he
certainly alludes when he reminds us of the advance of knowledge. This
is Darwin’s theory of the descent of man. If man is a modified ape, it
is quite plain that the doctrine of hell becomes “anomalous”; for apes
do not go to hell. But, if such be the case, then “the advance of human
nature” is retrogressive, and we cannot boast of “humaner sentiments”
without inconsistency. The truth is that we have advanced a little in
the knowledge of matter; but our moral advance has been, and still is,
badly cramped by false ideas of civilization. The very effort of
advanced thinkers to suppress hell reveals the hollowness of their
humane sentiments, and proves that their philanthropy is a sham.
The doctrine of hell “is now generally entertained with reservations and
protests that virtually destroy it.” By whom?—perhaps by the professor’s
friends. And the doctrine is entertained “in a vague and loose manner.”
Again by whom?—by sceptics, we suppose. But scepticism is ignorance; it
deserves pity, not approval. Yet “only revival preachers of the Moody
stamp still affirm the literal lake of fire and brimstone”! Perhaps
Prof. Youmans will be glad to be informed that the literal lake of fire
and brimstone is preached even now all over the earth, and in the very
centres of civilization, by men of a far higher stamp of intellect than
Moody and Sankey. The “sober-mindedness” of the Protestant clergymen who
“have got in the way of neglecting” the Scriptural hell is nothing but
scepticism, or, worse still, cowardice. But the silence of these men
proves nothing. They have no mission to teach. They are not “the salt of
the earth”; and their defection does no harm to the dogmas of
Christianity.
Mr. Youmans concludes thus:
“In the recent pulpit utterance there is a perfect chaos of
discordant speculation, open repudiation, tacit disavowal, and
ingenious refining away, but no stern and sturdy defence of it, in
the old form and spirit, from any source that commands respect. The
doctrine of hell is still conserved in popular creeds, but, if not
eliminated, it will be pretty certain to carry the creeds with it
into the limbo of abandoned superstitions.”
This conclusion would be unanswerable, if the Protestant pulpit were the
standard of religious doctrine. But why did not Mr. Youmans reflect that
his clergymen are only leaders of sects whose Christianity is nearly
extinct, and whose words have no authority? Is it not plain that, if the
blind lead the blind, both will fall into a ditch?
But we must conclude without entering into further developments. The
Christian doctrine of hell is incontrovertible. It is universal, it is
reasonable, and it is revealed in unequivocal terms. Advanced scientists
may not like it; yet, instead of sowing malicious doubts about it, they
should bear in mind that they themselves are of all men the most likely
to fall into the lake of fire in which they disbelieve. To Prof. Youmans
we offer a text from St. John’s Apocalypse, chapter fourteen:
“And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice: If any
man shall adore the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his
forehead or in his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the
wrath of God, which is mingled with pure wine in the cup of his
wrath, and _he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the
sight of the holy angels, and in the sight of the Lamb; and the
smoke of their torments shall ascend up for ever and ever_.”
Professor Youmans need not be informed that this great beast with its
adorers and followers is a symbolic representation of anti-Christianism.
Its soul is the spirit of apostasy; its heads and horns are governments
and kings; its body is an organic confederation of all secret societies,
comprising diplomatists, statesmen, politicians, godless newspaper
editors, authors of infamous books, writers of “scientific” articles
against revelation, and the whole army of the enemies of Christ. The
beast will have great power, God so permitting; but its reign will be
short. Jesus Christ will defeat it, and its followers will find no
mercy. Their portion shall be “in the lake of fire and brimstone,” and
their punishment shall last “for ever and ever.” We think that no
sensible man can deceive himself so as to undervalue this solemn
prophecy. The great beast, which is now walking upon the earth, has been
minutely described by the evangelist and by Daniel; and it would be odd
to pretend that they could, without a revelation from God, foresee,
thousands of years ago, what was to happen in this time of ours. But if
their words have come from God, then the lake of fire and brimstone and
the eternity of the torments deserve the most serious consideration,
especially on the part of our professors of anti-Christianity.
Materialism will not help them in the day of wrath. Friends will not
save them. Faith, repentance, and a timely satisfaction for past
delinquencies are the sole chance of salvation.
We earnestly entreat Prof. Youmans to ponder over this momentous truth.
It may be unattractive, but it has the merit of being absolutely
certain.
SORROW.
Sorrow and I so long have lived together
How would it seem now if we had to part?
So many storms we two have had to weather,
Such thunders heard! following the lightning’s dart!
Come, Sorrow, now what say you to a truce?
Wilt lift the cloudy curtain so long hung
Around our fates, those heavy rings unloose,
Let fly the fetters that have made us one?
And yet it might be—_I should miss thee, Sorrow!_
Thy constancy to me has been so great,
Thy shadow banished from my life to-morrow,
What earthly lover on me thus would wait?
For thou art sent from heaven, a sacred guest.
And though, sweet Sorrow, I’ll not bid thee stay,
Yet to those sins I bear one more confest
Were this: that I turned Heaven’s guest away.
A. T. L.
KITTY DARCY.
“You have overdone it, Bertram.”
“Not a bit of it, father.”
“You must get away.”
“Can’t afford expensive luxuries.”
“Do you consider health a luxury?”
“A necessity.”
“And yet, for the sake of piling up a few hundred dollars, you fling,
yes, actually _fling_, it from you as though you were tired of it.”
“I love my profession too much not to make some little concession to
_it_.”
“Come, now, Bertram, this won’t do. You have overworked yourself, and
off you must go. This is the right time to start.”
“Whither?”
“To Paris.”
“Paris! Why not say Timbuctoo?”
“I say Paris.”
“You are surely jesting.”
“I do not jest on so serious a subject as your health, my boy.”
“It can’t be done, father.”
“It _must_ be done, Bertram. Your Uncle Kirwan starts on Wednesday, and
with him you shall go. He hopes to be in time for the opening of the
Exhibition.”
“My Uncle Kirwan goes on business.”
“His nephew shall go on pleasure. Why, what’s the matter with you? Half
the young fellows in New York would be half-mad with delight to be in
your place.” Doctor Bertram Martin laughs. The idea is ridiculous,
absurd. He cannot, he _dare_ not leave his patients. That delightful
case of tetanus, that splendid fracture of the hip, that exquisite tumor
yielding to a new treatment, that interesting consumption, that curious
cardiac dropsy, that superb typhus!
Bertram Martin, although but twenty-four years of age, is regarded by
the profession as the coming man. His work on aneurism is considered the
ablest essay yet written upon the subject, and his reputation with the
“knife” is second to none. He is highly cultured, earnest, a calm
intelligence, with the fires of enthusiasm well banked up; but he is
full of latent purpose, an energy that is ever on the spring, and of
lava that eventually cools into solid success. He has a great future
before him, and he _feels_ it.
His father, in whose Turkey-rugged, book-lined office he reclines in a
low chair—one of those delightful chairs that fondle and caress the
weary occupant—is also a physician, and who, having amassed a
considerable fortune, now that he has safely launched the good ship that
bears his name, is about to enjoy a well-earned _otium cum dignitate_.
Bertram’s mother has noted the increasing pallor in the young
physician’s face, the drag under the eye, the hard, dark lines, and the
weariness of tone, that denote an active brain heated to a white heat,
and has determined, _coûte que coûte_, that her eldest-born shall “drop
both spade and plough for a revel amongst the daisies.”
“Exhibitions are played out, father,” exclaims Bertram. “The last and
best was at Philadelphia, and no show on the earth could beat that.”
He is intensely American, regarding Europe as effete, old-world, used
up.
“Paris is not played out.”
“I should much prefer seeing Paris at any other time.”
“That’s what everybody will say who can’t go. I may as well tell you,
Bertram, that there’s a little conspiracy got up against you, and at the
head of it is your mother.”
“Yes, Bertie,” exclaims Mrs. Martin, who enters, “we have undermined
you. Your Uncle Kirwan starts on Wednesday by the _Scythia_, and here’s
the ticket for your state-rooms,” handing him the article in question.
“Why, mother—”
“My darling child, you look dreadfully ill, and it is fretting my heart
out. I spoke to Doctor Lynch, and he _orders_ change of air and total
cessation from work. You never opposed me in your young life; you are
not going to commence _now_.”
“But—”
“But me no buts, Bertie.”
“This trip would take two months.”
“Three.”
“I should be out of the race in three months.”
“You’ll return fresh and vigorous, and to win.”
“This is sheer folly. I never felt better in my life.”
“Next Wednesday, Bertie.”
“I could not, even if I listened to this absurd proposal, be ready
before two weeks.”
“Next Wednesday, Bertie.”
In vain does the young doctor expostulate, contesting the ground inch by
inch. In vain does he plead for time. His pickets are driven in, the
enemy is upon him in force, and, ere he can well realize the exact
posture of affairs, his mother has obtained his solemn promise that he
will leave for Europe by the _Scythia_ upon the following Wednesday in
company with his uncle, Walter Kirwan.
A bright and joyous group was assembled at the Cunard wharf to see him
off, and to bid him Godspeed across the waste of waters. Mr. Kirwan, a
fine, handsome man of five-and-thirty, over six feet high, with a
winning eye and a wooing voice, stood “one bumper at parting” in his
state-room, which was decorated with a profusion of glorious flowers,
the offerings of very near and very dear friends. One bouquet, composed
exclusively of forget-me-nots and mignonette, caused any number of “Oh!
my’s,” “How beautiful!” “Isn’t it lovely!” from pouting female lips.
“Who sent it to you, Bertram?” asked Mrs. Martin.
“It may not be for me, mother.”
“Oh! yes, it is; here is the card with your name upon it.”
“I have no idea.”
“No idea?”
“None in the world.”
A tall, lithe, graceful girl stands a little aside, trifling with the
fringe of her parasol, as these questions are being put, her embarrassed
looks and blushing cheeks denoting fierce and scarce controlled
agitation.
“Did you send me this bouquet, Miss Reed?” asks Bertram in a low tone.
“I—I—that is—I hope you will—that they will—look pretty,” is the
murmured response.
“Did Carrie Reed send those flowers to Bertram?” asks Mrs. Martin of her
sister, Mrs. Kirwan, in freezing tones.
“Yes; I heard her admit it just now.”
“What a forward minx! I’ve a great mind to tell her so.”
How severe these mothers are when “my son” is approached by youth and
beauty! The idea of marriage is a horror.
* * * * *
“And this is Liverpool!” exclaims Bertie, as the good ship steams up the
Mersey. “I’m awfully sorry to have been asleep when we were at
Queenstown; why didn’t you shake me up, uncle?”
“Because you want all the sleep you can get. You were nearly in for a
dose of _insomnia_, and that would have pretty soon squared _your_
account, my boy.”
“Pshaw! you all made me out worse than I really was.”
“Not a bit of it. You allowed a nice lot of sand to run out of your
glass. But isn’t _that_ a sight, Bertie? There are masts—a forest. There
are docks—_the_ docks of the world.”
“What docks we’ll have in twenty years at New York!”
“You don’t believe in anything outside of the stars and stripes.”
“Not much,” with a laugh; adding, “Shall we make any stay in Liverpool?”
Mr. Kirwan consults his watch.
“We shall only just catch that train due in London at 6.40. The Dover
express starts at 7.35. This will decant us in Paris to-morrow morning
at six. We shall have nice time for a big wash, a big breakfast, and
then for the opening of the Exhibition.”
“This is close shaving.”
“That’s my principle. Narrow margins. They pay best all round.”
Mr. Kirwan’s calculations, based Upon professional experience, proved
correct. A vague soup and an ill-dressed cutlet at Charing Cross, a
thick omelette and a thin wine at Amiens, did duty for refreshment. In
the sheen of dazzling early sunlight Bertram Martin first saw Paris, the
bright, the joyous, the glittering, the beautiful. A dream of his life
was about to be realized.
Mr. Kirwan having telegraphed for apartments, he with our hero was
“skied” at the Hôtel du Louvre, and after a breakfast which would have
done honor to a navvy had been disposed of by Bertie, who in New York
would flirt with a slice of toast and coquette with a fresh egg, cigars
were lighted and the two gentlemen set forth in the direction of the
Champ de Mars.
“This is the best sight I have ever seen,” cried the young physician, as
they strolled along the Rue de Rivoli. “Why, it’s nearly as bright as
Broadway.”
“What a thorough Yank you are, Bertie! Come here, now; just take a look
around you, and confess that you are fairly dumbfounded.”
They stood at the Place de la Concorde. The fountains were throwing
feathery sprays high in air; the flowers were blooming in a myriad hues.
Thousands of vehicles were flashing past, tens of thousands of
pedestrians. The great tide of human life had set in towards the
Trocadero. Regiments in gorgeous uniforms, headed by bands playing
superbly, marched onwards, quaint costumes of every nationality under
the sun flitted by—bizarre groups chatting and laughing and
gesticulating!
Behind them the blackened walls of the Tuileries, in front the Champs
Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe, on the left the Chamber of Deputies, on
the right the glorious Madeleine.
“It _is_ magnificent,” exclaimed Bertie at length, in a subdued tone of
emotion.
“Nearly as bright as Broadway,” laughed Kirwan.
“Wait! Twenty years, and our up-town will be as gorgeous as this. We
have the taste, we have the money, all we want is the time; _that_ we
have not.”
“And never will have. We rush too much. But come along; we must be at
the Exhibition building early or our chances of getting in will be a
little thin. We shall have, as we say in New York, to take a back seat,
doctor.”
“I should prefer to stop here. What a sight this is! What contrasts; how
vivid! Look at that grim sergent-de-ville, and beside him that
_piquante_ girl in the Normandy cap as high as his cocked hat, and
earrings as long as his sword. See that _ouvrier_ in the blouse; how
cheerfully he smokes his cigar, carrying his two children! I do believe
he would carry his wife into the bargain. How coquettishly she is
attired, and how cheaply! See the artistic manner that two-dollar shawl
is draped over her shoulder, and how that five-cent ribbon hangs. I’ll
wager that these fellows coming along as if walking on air are of the
Quartier Latin, the students’ quarter. They, poor fellows! have come to
see the crowd. I suppose their united wealth at this moment will
scarcely do more than omelette and beer them. What flashing equipages!
How beautifully finished! We _do_ want these liveries in Central Park.
Imagine those yellows, and purples, and blues, and saffrons, and whites
glancing amongst our green trees or up Fifth Avenue. What cavalry! How
superbly those dragoons sit their horses—Centaurs every man of them. It
must have been by sheer force of numbers that they bit the dust in the
late war. What fountains! what flowers! what trees—four rows of them up
to that magnificent arch—and what residences!” gushed Bertram Martin.
“These gilded pagodas, and Swiss chalets, and marble palaces, and fairy
bowers are for open-air concerts. Wait till you see them lighted up, and
I tell you what it is, Bertie, you’ll go into raptures. Why, no tale in
the _Arabian Nights_ equals them for glitter. And the music, my boy,
sparkles like champagne,” cried Kirwan enthusiastically.
Arrived at the Champ de Mars, the crowd gradually filtered into the
Exhibition building. At the turnstile Bertie was separated from his
uncle, who made a rush for another entrance. Immediately in front of him
was a young girl, lissome and lithe of figure, attired in a raiment of
soft, filmy, cloudy, floating white. He could detect a delicate little
ear, and a white neck from which the hair was scrupulously lifted and
arranged—she had removed her hat—dark and lustrous, tight and trim, in a
fashion exceedingly becoming to the beautiful, but trying to the more
ordinary of womankind.
Have we not all at some time or another felt that something strange was
going to happen to us? that steps were coming nearer and nearer? that a
voice was calling to us at a great way off that would presently become
more distinct?
A something urged Bertram Martin to see this girl’s face. Was it mere
curiosity? No. The impulse was indefinable as a subtle perfume,
indefinable as a sweet sound in music. A shapely head, and lustrous
hair, and a lissome form—this was a very ordinary scaffolding whereon to
build a romance, and, although the young doctor would have laughed
anybody to scorn who would have taxed him with being romantic, there was
no boy of half his age and quarter his experience more likely to make a
fool of himself about a woman than Bertie Martin.
He had led his life amongst his books, his profession his mistress. Too
much absorbed in the engrossing duties attendant upon the alleviation of
the ills the flesh is heir to, he was in the world and yet not of it,
beholding it as through a polished sheet of plate-glass. His mother, a
woman of the highest culture, refinement, taste, and ability, had vainly
urged upon him the necessity of taking part in the gayeties of a very
extended and highly fashionable circle—vainly, indeed; for having on a
few occasions attended “swell” receptions and upper-crust
entertainments, he squarely pilloried himself in a _cui bono_? and from
that hour the butterfly world knew him no more.
He is tall, lightly built, graceful. His eyes are dark gray, full of
earnestness, and blazing with intelligence. His mouth is absolutely
faultless, having at command a smile, a veritable ray of sunshine. His
light-brown moustache and beard have never known the razor. He dresses
well, and is a dandy in gloves and boots.
He must see that girl’s face, and he plunged forward despite the
_sacr-r-ré_ of an infuriated Frenchman and the full-flavored exclamation
of a London cockney, into whose ribs he had plunged his right elbow. At
this moment she turned her head a little to address a portly gentleman
behind, who, with a flushed face and a general appearance of acute
physical and mental suffering, through heat, crush, and excitement, had
been urging her to push onwards.
Her profile was simply lovely: one inch of forehead; a nose a trifle out
of the regular line of beauty; eyelashes that swept her cheeks; a short
upper lip with a tremulous curl in it, a rich red under one, and a chin
worthy the chisel of Phidias. And yet, despite its classical _contour_,
her face was Irish—yea, that delicious _ensemble_ which Erin bestows
upon her daughters, placing them above all in beauty, in archness, and
in purity of expression.
“She is lovely,” murmured Bertie, gazing at her with all his eyes.
A rush came, a great pressure from behind, and the wave flung him beyond
the turnstile.
“Well done, old fellow!” cried Kirwan, clapping him on the back.
“Where is she?” demanded the young physician, gazing round him on every
side, as though his head were rotary.
“Just gone up this way with her son.”
“Who? What son?”
“Why, the Duchess of Lachaunay. That’s what caused the rush; her toilet
is by Worth, and cost twenty thousand francs.”
“Hang the duchess!” groaned Bertie. “I have lost sight of the loveliest
girl I ever laid eyes on.”
“Where was she?”
“There, right in front of me.”
“Never mind. Take heart of grace. We’ll pick her up by and by. Let’s get
our seats or we’ll forfeit them.”
“You go, uncle. I’ll do as I am, I think I’ll walk about.”
Kirwan looked at his nephew with a merry glance.
“So badly hit as that, Bertie?”
“Pshaw!” cried the doctor, turning on his heel.
And they did not find her. Not a bit of it. Bertram walked, and stalked,
and darted hither and thither, until Kirwan fairly let him have his own
way, giving him a rendezvous at the hotel for seven o’clock.
What cared Bertram Martin for the gorgeous array of foreign princes,
ambassadors, commissioners, presidents, ministers, deputations,
senators, or deputies? What cared he for the address to Marshal
MacMahon, or the one-hundred-and-one gun salute, or the military music,
or the hoisting of flags, or the playing of fountains? What cared he for
the procession, with all its glittering magnificence, or for all the
treasures of the earth dug up by man and nurtured by art? He sought the
four-leaved shamrock in the bright young girl whose beauty had flashed
upon him as a revelation, and although he posted himself at the chief
exit until he came to be regarded with suspicion by a grim
sergent-de-ville, in the hope of obtaining another glimpse of her, he
was doomed to disappointment, and he returned to the hotel, and to a
_petit dîner_ ordered for the occasion by his uncle, in the worst
possible spirits.
“Did you find her, Bertie?”
“No.”
“If she’s French she won’t go to the Exhibition again for some time. She
has done the opening, and will take it now, as the Crushed Tragedian
says, ‘in sections.’ But come, Bertie, love or no love, try this _Soupe
à la Bonne Femme_; it will ring up the curtain to a _menu_ that even
Delmonico never dreamt of in his wildest imaginings.”
* * * * *
For the two weeks that Bertie remained in Paris he sought the fair
unknown—sought her in the Exposition, in the galleries of the Louvre, at
Versailles, amongst the ruins of the palace of St. Cloud, in churches,
on the boulevards, in _cafés_—everywhere. Once he thought he caught a
glimpse of her passing along the Rue de Rome, and, plunging from the top
of the omnibus at the imminent risk of breaking his neck, came up with a
very pretty young girl who turned into the residence of the ex-Queen of
Spain.
“It is a perfect infatuation,” wrote home Kirwan. “Bertie is crazed
about some girl he saw on the opening day of the Exhibition. I can get
no good of him. I scarcely ever see him, and when he is with me he is
continually darting from me in pursuit of this will-o’-the-wisp, or
craning his neck in search of her. And only to think of grave Doctor
Bertram Martin being in this horrid state!”
It had been announced that the tour was to include London, the English
lakes, Scotland, and Ireland. Bertie voted London a bore, the lakes a
nuisance, the land of cakes nowhere, and declared in favor of a few days
in Ireland. With a sigh, as though tearing up his heart by the roots, he
took his departure from Paris.
“I shall never, _never_ see her again,” he groaned, and was silent the
whole way to Calais.
Kirwan fondly imagined that London would shake off this glamour, and did
his uttermost to bring all the attractions of the modern Babylon into
bold relief; but four days seemed so thoroughly to weary his nephew that
it was resolved to start for Ireland without any further delay.
A glorious evening found them pacing the deck of the mail steamer
_Connaught_, _en route_ from Holyhead to Kingstown. Before them lay the
Dublin mountains, bathed in glorious greens, yellows, and purples. Away
to the left stretched the Wicklow hills, guarded by the twin
sugar-loaves and backed by lordly Djouce. To the right the Hill of
Howth, the famous battlefield of Clontarf, and in the smoky distance the
city of Dublin. Kingstown, its white terraces sloping to the sea;
Dalkey, its villas peeping timidly forth from the fairest verdure-clad
groves; Killiney, lying in the lap of a heather-caressed mountain; Bray,
like a string of pearls on the ocean’s edge; the dark-blue waters of the
bay, dotted here and there with snowy yachts, or with the russet brown
of the Skerries fishing-smacks—what a _coup-d’œil_!
“It is glorious,” murmured Bertie, as, leaning on the railing of the
bridge, he drained this cup of loveliness to the very dregs.
Arrived at Dublin, they put up at the Shelborne Hotel, in Stephen’s
Green, whither they were borne from the dingy station at Westland Row on
an outside car that jingled, rattled, creaked, and groaned at every
revolution of its rickety wheels.
“What’s this fur?” demanded the tatterdemalion driver, got up in a
cast-off suit of Con the Shaughraun, as he glanced from half a crown
lying upon the palm of his horny hand to Kirwan and Bertie.
“What’s this fur at all, at all?”
“It’s your fare, my man,” said Kirwan.
“Me fare? An yez come from Amerikey?”
“Yes.”
“The cunthry that me sisther, and me aunt, an’ me cousin Tim, an’ me
cousin Phil is always braggin about? Wisha, wisha, but it’s lies they’re
tellin’ me, sorra a haporth else. The people over there must be regular
naygurs afther all,” reluctantly preparing to pocket the coin.
“It will never do to let the American flag go by the board,” whispered
Bertie. “Here, my man, here is half a crown for the stars, and here’s
half a crown for the stripes.”
“An’ won’t yer honor stand somethin’ for the flagstaff?” with a grin of
such unspeakable drollery that both the Americans burst into a fit of
laughter.
Mr. Kirwan had been provided with a letter of introduction to a family
residing in Merrion Square.
“Shall we look up the Darcys, Bertie?” he asked one morning shortly
after their arrival.
“_Cui bono?_”
“The Joyces were so anxious about it. It would never do to go back to
New York without calling, at all events.”
“At it, then. Let’s get it over, and on to Killarney.”
The Darcy mansion in Merrion Square was muffled in its summer wraps. The
shutters were closed, the windows barricaded with newspapers, the
knocker removed, while a profound air of dust and melancholy hung over
it like a pall—this though the scarlet and white hawthorn, the lilac and
laburnum, were shedding their delicious odors from the enclosure of the
square opposite.
“The famly is out av town,” responded a very dilapidated-looking old
woman to Kirwan’s query.
“Indeed! I shall leave a card.”
“Av ye plaze; but shure where’s the use? They’ll not get it this three
months.”
“Where are they travelling?”
“In furrin parts.”
“I shall write a line.”
“Step in, sir, and welkim.”
This elderly damsel ushered them into an apartment from which the carpet
had been removed, the curtains taken down, the gasalier and pictures
muffled, and the furniture piled up and partly concealed by matting.
Kirwan took out his letter of introduction, and, opening it, proceeded
to write a line of regret upon missing Mr. Darcy. The young doctor moved
about the room, amusing himself by listlessly gazing out through the
half-opened shutter. Presently he approached a massive book-case, and
endeavored to peer through the interstices afforded by the gaping of the
brown paper that concealed the books.
Little did he imagine what an influence this simple action was destined
to bear upon his near future! His wandering gaze suddenly merged into
earnestness, then it became fascinated, then fixed.
“Come here!” he said to the attendant, his voice hoarse from suppressed
emotion.
The woman came to his side.
“Do you see that _carte de visite_?”
“Cart o’ what?”
“That photograph there, lying on its side,” the words coming in hot
gasps.
“Yes, sir.”
“Whose is it?”
“Misther Darcy’s, I suppose.”
“Whose likeness is it?” clutching her by the wrist.
“I dunno, sir.”
“You _don’t know_! Is it one of the family?”
“I dunno, sir.”
“Is—is there a Miss Darcy? Has Mr. Darcy a daughter?” his impatience
wrestling with a desire to throttle the caretaker.
“I heerd that he has wan.”
“Heard! Don’t you know it?”
“I do not, sir. I’m a sthranger. I come from Stoneybatther, beyant the
wather, but I heerd that Misther Darcy has a daughter, and that she is
married—”
“Married!” reeling as if he had been struck a heavy blow.
“What’s all this, Bertie?” asked Kirwan uneasily.
“That photo there.”
“Yes, I see it.”
“It’s the photo of the girl I saw at the opening of the Paris
Exhibition.”
“And a pretty girl she is!” exclaimed Kirwan, indulging in a prolonged
whistle as he gazed at it sideways like a bird.
“I must have it,” said Bertram, a dogged resolution in his tone.
“How is that to be done? You can’t steal it, Bertie.”
“It shall be done fairly and squarely if possible; if not, I shall smash
the glass.”
“Tut! tut! man, you’re not thinking.”
The wound had been nearly healed, the memory of that girlish face was
fast becoming a sweet treasure of a by-gone time, to be lingered over at
fitful intervals, and always with rapture, when this unlooked-for freak
of destiny caused the wound to bleed afresh, and memory to burst into
rich and fragrant blossom.
During each of the three days that he remained in Dublin Bertram Martin
visited the deserted mansion in Merrion Square, to gaze at that
photograph, all so near and yet so far. Could he have but obtained a
solitary clue to the whereabouts of the Darcys no earthly power would
have prevented his following them; but clue there was none.
* * * * *
The train clanked into the station at Killarney in a mist as thick as a
ladies’ _tulle-illusion_ veil.
“If this sort of thing is going to last we sha’n’t see much of Kate
Kearney,” laughed Kirwan.
“I wish I had never left New York,” said Bertie. “I did my very
uttermost not to come, but you set your trap, all of you, and I go
back—what?”
“You can run over again.”
“Never! Once back, my profession shall have all my energy, all my
hope—my life.”
They put up at the Railway Hotel, and after dinner strolled out as far
as Ross Castle. The mist had cleared away, and the view of Innisfallen
sleeping in the moonlight, of the cluster of dreamy islands, the soft
outlines of the Mangerton, the purple mountain and the Toomies bathed in
liquid pearl, the twinkling lights along the shore, the mirrored waters
of the lake shimmering in silver glory, sent a wave of delicious reverie
over the hearts of the two men, as, seated in silence on a ruined wall
of the ivy-covered keep, they gazed in solemn rapture upon a scene
exquisite, soothing, sublime.
“I wish to heaven your aunt was here to see this,” said Kirwan, lighting
a fresh cigar.
“I wish—” but Bertie did not utter another word.
The following morning was one in ten thousand—fresh, sunny, breezy,
inspiriting, laden with the languor of summer, rippling with the
coquetry of spring; a primrose light, a violet shade. Our two friends
joined a party bound for the Gap of Dunloe. The ponies were sent on, and
a boat ordered to meet them at the upper lake with luncheon. Bertie was
unusually depressed, and, despite the vigorous efforts of his uncle to
pull him together, he clung, as it were, to himself, avoiding all
intercourse with his fellow-man, and especially his fellow-woman, a
buxom, blithe, hearty English lady, who laughed with anybody and at
everything, and whose whole trouble lay in a morbid terror lest any
accident should happen to the bitter beer. After a two hours’ drive
through lovely and matchless scenery the carriage arrived at the
entrance to the Gap, and here the party dismounted.
“Where do we meet the ponies?” asked Kirwan.
“A little bit up the Gap, sir.”
“Any bitter beer up there?” laughed the English lady.
“Troth, thin, there’s not, but Kate Kearney’ll give ye a dhrop o’ the
mountain dew, me lady,” replied the driver.
Bertie strode on before. There was a something exhilarating in speeding
up the craggy pass, in bounding from rock to rock like a mountain deer,
in plunging through the purple heather, and in leaping saucy brooklets
flashing their glittering waters in the glorious sunlight. In vain did
Kate Kearney assail him with blarney, blandishments, and bog oak, with
“a dhrop o’ the craythur” under the thin disguise of goat’s milk. In
vain did arbutus-wood venders, and mendicants, and wild-flower girls
trudge by his side and cling to his heels. He distanced them all,
leaving them standing at different places in the middle of the road,
baffled and worsted in the encounter. Up against the sky line stood the
ponies. Up against a sheer wall of dull gray rock covered with ferns,
and mosses, and lichens leant a wooden shanty, and for this shanty
Bertram Martin made.
A party had ascended before him; they were from the Victoria Hotel—two
gentlemen and two ladies. One gentleman was seated on a granite boulder
as Bertie reached this coigne of vantage.
“Glorious day, sir,” exclaimed the tweed-covered excursionist.
“Superb,” replied Bertie, flinging himself on the purple heather to
await the arrival of Kirwan.
“You’re from the other side of the pond. Have a cigar,” flinging over
his case in a right royal manner.
Bertie selected a weed.
“Have a light,” shying a silver fusee-box which the doctor dexterously
caught.
“From New York?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know any people of the name of Joyce?”
“Daniel Blake Joyce, of Gramercy Park?” asked Bertie.
“Yes.”
“I know him and his family intimately.”
The tweed-arrayed stranger jumped to his feet.
“I call this jolly. My name is O’Hara.”
“Not Tim O’Hara?”
“Yes, Tim.”
“Why, my dear sir,” cried Bertie, “I’ve heard the Joyces speak of you
fifty times.”
“This is first-class. Have a card. You’ll come and stop with me a week,
a month—six. I live in the County Wicklow.”
“I most seriously wish I could,” said the physician, exchanging cards,
“but I leave by the _Asia_ on Friday.”
“Not a bit of it. Hi, Dick! Dick! I say,” calling to a fat,
jovial-faced, red-nosed elderly gentleman who had just emerged from the
shanty. “Here’s a friend of Dan Joyce’s, of New York, who says he’s
going to leave by the _Asia_ on Friday. Will that fit?”
“I should say not,” said the other, approaching.
Where had Bertram Martin seen that face?
“Any friend of Dan Joyce’s is our friend, and shame be upon us if we let
you leave Ireland without at least giving us the opportunity of having a
gossip and a bottle over Dan.”
Where had Bertram Martin seen that face?
In a few words, even while this perplexing thought was whirling through
his brain, Bertie informed the new-comer—for O’Hara had disappeared into
the shanty in search of the ladies with his news—of his doings since he
landed at Liverpool.
“At what time were you in Paris?” asked the stranger.
“On the opening day of the Exhibition,” replied the doctor with a deep
sigh, as his thoughts flew back to the lovely girl he was destined
never, oh! never, to behold again.
“I was in Paris on that day,” said the stranger.
Bertie seized him by the wrist.
“You were? I have it all now. _Now_ I know where I saw you,” speaking
with fearful rapidity. “It was at the entrance C——. There was a fearful
crush. You were not alone. You were with a young lady. Who is that girl?
Where is she?” And he stopped, a world of excited earnestness in his
eyes.
“That young lady is my daughter.”
“Where is she?”
“She is here.”
“_Here_?” a mad throb at his heart.
At this moment O’Hara emerged from the shanty, accompanied by two
ladies, one of them, young and fresh and lovely, hanging fondly on his
arm.
Bertie saw it all now. One wild glance told him that she was as far from
him as the fleecy cloud sailing above his head—that she was the wife of
Tim O’Hara.
“I don’t think, Dick, that I introduced you to my young friend, Dr.
Martin. Doctor, this is Dick Darcy, one of the gayest fellows in all
Ireland. Get your legs under his mahogany in Merrion Square and——”
“I have been in your house in Merrion Square. I have a letter of
introduction to you from Mr. Joyce,” burst in Bertie.
“And you shall be again, my young friend,” wringing his hand warmly.
“Mary,” to the elder lady, “this is Dr. Martin, a friend of Dan Joyce’s.
Doctor, this is my wife. And this,” turning to the girl, “is my
daughter.”
Bertie took her courteously-proffered hand, and held it for one instant
in his. He looked down, down into those Irish gray eyes, where truth and
innocence and purity lay like gems beneath crystal waters; he gazed with
a wild rapture upon the beauteous face that had haunted him day and
night in its rosy radiance, and then with a muttered exclamation was
about to turn away when O’Hara exclaimed:
“Miss Darcy looks as if she had seen you before.”
“_Miss_ Darcy?” cried Bertie.
“Yes; you wouldn’t have her Mrs. Darcy, would you?”
Oh! the weight lifted off his heart. Oh! how gloriously shone out the
sun, how blue was the sky, how radiant the flowers, how sweet the song
of the mountain thrush, how delightful everything. The great black
shadow which had hung over him like a pall had passed away before the
dayshine of her presence, and, borne on that sunlight, came the message
to his heart that Kitty Darcy was to be wooed, and—possibly to be won.
Kirwan’s pleasure knew no bounds as he clasped the hand of Dick Darcy.
“What a sorry opinion you would have had of the old country if you had
only known its hospitality through the medium of a hotel, Mr. Kirwan!”
laughed Darcy as the party mounted their shaggy mountain ponies.
Of course Bertie rode beside Miss Darcy, and descanted not as eloquently
as he could have wished upon the glorious bits of scenery that revealed
themselves at every turn in the Gap. He spoke glowingly of home, of the
lordly Hudson, the dreamy Catskills, the White Mountains, and the
Yosemite.
“Oh! isn’t that gloriously gloomy,” cried Miss Darcy, as they emerged
from the granite-walled Gap to the ridge overlooking the Black Valley to
the right, stretching away in gray sadness, locked in the embraces of
mountains standing in ebon relief against the blue yet lustreless sky.
“Not unlike my own reflections for the last six weeks,” laughed the
doctor; “they were gloriously gloomy.”
“See the sunshine over the upper lake.”
“I accept the omen.”
“And the Eagle’s Nest, how superbly it towers over the water! What
greens!—from white to russet. How charmingly the foliage of the arbutus
seems to suit this lovely scenery!”
And what a scene in its brilliance, its repose, its poetry! Verdure-clad
mountains dreaming in the haze of summer, lifting themselves to the blue
vault of heaven, the tender green mixing with the cerulean, as a spring
leaf with the forget-me-not; mirror-like lakes reflecting every crag,
every tree, every bud with that fidelity only known to nature’s mirrors;
the path winding tortuously down to the lake, now disappearing in a
patch of wood, now meandering through a waving meadow as yet uninvaded
by the ruthless scythe. Away stretched the lakes, away the old Weir
Bridge—away in shimmering loveliness all too lovely to describe, all too
lovely save to gaze and gaze upon, until heart and soul absorbed it in a
thirsty greed.
Three days spent in Kitty Darcy’s society—three days in wandering
through the ruins of Muckross Abbey, that home of silent prayer, that
“congealed _Pater Noster_,” by the low, dulcet murmur of O’Sullivan’s
Cascade, amid the leafy dells of “Sweet Innisfallen,” up the steep
ascent of Mangerton, on the fern-caressed road to the police barracks,
stopping at the exquisite little chapel perched like an eerie up in its
wooded nest and uttering an _Ave_, always by Kitty’s side, always
inhaling the subtle perfume of her presence—three centuries compressed
into three days.
The Darcys were _en route_ to a fishing-lodge at Valentia, out where the
cable flashes into the wide Atlantic, and the day arrived when
farewell—a word that must be, and hath been, a sound that makes us
linger—must be said.
“Are you going by the _Asia_ on Friday, uncle?” asked Bertie.
“Why, of course.”
“I am not.”
“No!”
“I go on to Carrick-na-cushla with the Darcys.”
“I thought as much, Bertie. What shall I tell them in New York?”
“That I shall bring home a young, lovely, pure, and charming wife, if I
can. I have two letters for you, one for my mother and one for my
father. If things turn out—all right, I’ll return; if—” here he paused
with a writhe—“all wrong, you won’t hear of me for some time.”
* * * * *
Dr. Bertram Martin’s three months’ vacation is not yet over. It
threatens to lengthen into six, possibly into nine months; and when he
returns he will not return alone. His uncle Kirwan has had a sad time of
it ever since; and Dr. Martin’s fair patients are inconsolable.
ROSARY STANZAS.
PROLOGUE.
Mulier amicta sole, et luna sub pedibus ejus, et in capite ejus corona
stellarum duodecim.—APOC. xii. 1.
Cloudless her early dawn, more pure, more bright
Than the blue sapphire of the eastern sky
Above her head. To the prophetic eye
All the long future lay in folds of light.
Her noontide sun thick darkness veiled from sight,
Prelude of rushing storms that moan and sigh
Among the forest-leaves, then fiercely fly
In wrath and ruin, burying all in night—
To die in silence. See! the light returns,
A gathering splendor in its peaceful ray,
And all the western heaven at sunset burns
And kindles to a golden after-glow,
Bidding the tender hearts that love her know
The fuller glory of her perfect day.
JOYFUL MYSTERIES.
I.
LUKE i. 38.
And does the crownèd one ever look back
On her long sojourn in the vale of tears?
Whate’er of earth her simple home might lack,
Her blissful _Fiat_ filled those far-off years,
Doubling their joys and calming all their fears.
Her faithfulness to grace divine how great!
In the early time as when the goal she nears,
As the Lord’s handmaid, or in queenly state,
Content on his command expectantly to wait.
II.
LUKE i. 43.
Bride of the Holy One! of all his grace,
At the beginning, full! God’s Mother blest!
Hope of the world, the glory of her race!
When _Be it done_ was said, awhile to rest
Within her quiet home were it not best?
She her aged kinswoman a kindness owes;
Nor daunted by the desolate mountain-crest,
To sanctify the unborn infant goes:
Better to love and serve than holiest repose.
III.
LUKE ii. 16.
Long ago full of grace, what is she now?
Her time has come, her God upon her knee—
Reward how rich for her all-perfect vow!
Fountain of grace unlimited to be;
Every heart-pulse an act of worship free
To Him who visited his world forlorn.
Mother of his divinest infancy,
Bid our dull souls be as the Newly-Born,
Living henceforth his life who came that Christmas morn.
IV.
HEBR. x. 7.
With lowly willingness and simple awe
The sinless Mother and her sinless Child
Offered themselves at bidding of the law:
She to be purified, the Undefiled!
While he on his redemption-offering smiled.
Obedience! never did thy secret power
Brood calmer o’er a world of passions wild
Than to God’s temple, in that silent hour,
When Son and Mother came, wearing thy lowly flower.
V.
LUKE ii. 48.
Three days and nights the Mother for her Son
In sorrow sought and self-upbraidings meek;
The joy of finding him her patience won:
She sought, and he was found. But for the weak,
The wandering, his patient love must seek
’Mong thorny by-ways of the world to find.
Deign to the King for them a word to speak,
Pray something for them of thy constant mind,
For ever to his Heart all wayward souls to bind.
RELATIONS OF JUDAISM TO CHRISTIANITY.
I.
The Catholic Church, founded by Christ to be the depositary, the
guardian, and the interpreter of his word, was from all eternity in the
mind of God, not in the same manner as the other things that were made
by him, and which constitute the visible universe, but as a creation
apart, far superior to the world that we see, the completion of the
designs of love which he entertained for men, and the reason of the
existence of everything else inferior to it. It is the sublime theology
of St. Paul: “All things are yours,” he writes to the Corinthians—“the
world, life, death, things present and things to come. And you are
Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” From this it is easy to see the rank
which the church holds in the divine plan. Christ stands first in the
scale; he is the link, the Supreme Pontiff by whom all creatures are
united with God; the church, his spouse, is for him and forms one with
him, and has been ordained for the good of the elect and the
sanctification of souls; she is the mother of the living. As Christ is
first in the intention of God, the church, which is so intimately
connected with him, is conceived along with him in the Divine mind, and
has in it the precedence over all other things. Thus she can apply to
herself the words of the inspired writer: “The Lord possessed me at the
beginning of his ways. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the
earth was made. When he established the sky above, and poised the
fountains of waters; when he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set
a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits, I was with
him forming all things.”
Such being the case, it is not astonishing to see the whole drama of
human history turned towards a central figure, Christ and his church,
which are the grand objects contemplated by God in the universe. Nations
rise and fall, empires are founded which are succeeded by other empires,
each having a special mission, that of preparing the way for the kingdom
of God; and when that mission is accomplished they disappear from the
scene. The barriers set up to divide nationalities are forcibly broken
down; conquest, commerce, the sciences and arts form a link between
them; languages are modified, ideas are interchanged, intellectual
systems are brought in contact; efforts are made sometimes in the right,
sometimes in the wrong, direction; men grope in the dark, but some ray
of light, however faint it may have been, is still there to urge them in
their researches after truth; views are conflicting, but their very
conflict paves the way to a broader spirit and more universal
conceptions. When we glance at the state of the human mind before the
coming of Christ, it seems that all is confusion and a perfect chaos
from which there is no possible issue; but an attentive observer will
easily discern, even when obscurity is most intense, the Spirit of God,
as of old, brooding over the vast abyss and ordering all things so as to
make light finally shine out of darkness.
The providential action of God manifested in the gradual preparation of
the world for the acceptance of Christianity has always been considered
one of the most striking proofs of its supernatural character, and
modern rationalism has completely failed in its attempt to destroy it.
To confine ourselves to the theories invented for that purpose, and
bearing on the subject which we have undertaken to treat in the present
article, the relation of Judaism to Christianity, they may be briefly
summed up as follows: they peremptorily deny all supernatural agency in
the march of events recorded in the sacred writings; they equally deny
the divine mission of Jesus Christ; the apostles were, it is affirmed,
men of their age, and did not escape the influence of popular opinions,
which they knew how to use for their own ends; as to Christian dogmas,
they followed in their formation the law of progressive development and
growth; Christianity is nothing else but an evolution of Judaism or its
various sects by a natural process and under the pressure of
circumstances and prevailing ideas. Now, every page of the Jewish
history contains a refutation of these doctrines. There we see a people
especially chosen by God, among all others, to be the authentic and
accredited witness of the truth among the nations; to keep alive in the
world the belief in one true God and the hope of a future Redeemer
already promised to our first parents after the fall; to be the
depositary of that promise and the organ of its promulgation. Judaism,
therefore, is related to Christianity, not as the seed to the plant, but
as the well-prepared soil to the harvest; as the figure to the reality,
as the prophecy to its accomplishment; as the harbinger to the King
whose coming he announces to the populations that are to receive him. It
is, as Isaias expresses it, “the voice of one crying in the desert:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness the
paths of our God” (Isaias xl. 3).
From the early dawn of their history the destiny of the Hebrews is
clearly defined. They are a nation set apart to be a living protest
against the prevailing idolatry of the times. From the vocation of
Abraham to the promulgation of the law on Mount Sinai, and throughout
the succeeding periods of their existence, the fundamental dogma of
their religion is monotheism: “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not
have strange gods in my sight. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven
thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the
earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the
earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them.” Another article of
their creed equally pre-eminent as their belief in one God is their
expectation of One who was to be sent for the restoration of mankind. To
Abraham, the progenitor of that race, it was revealed that “his
posterity should be as the stars for multitude, and that from them a
blessing should go forth to all other nations.” Later God had said to
Isaac: “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and I will give
to thy posterity all these countries (that is, the land of Chanaan), and
in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” Jacob had
heard a voice from heaven, saying: “I am the most mighty God of thy
father: fear not, go down into Egypt, for I will make a great nation of
thee there. I will go down with thee thither, and will bring thee back
again from thence”; and when the aged patriarch is on the point of
death, God bids him fix his eyes upon the lion of Juda, and shows him
all the nations blessed in a prince who is to come out from his lineage.
Moses, raised by the Almighty to deliver the numerous posterity of Jacob
from the bondage of Egypt, had led to the threshold of the promised land
that nation which God had chosen to give birth to the Redeemer, and to
maintain upon earth faithful worshippers of his name. He also was
divinely apprised that a prophet would rise from his nation and from
among his brethren whose voice all should hear. Hence it is that the Old
Testament religion was prophetic in its whole nature. “The guides of the
Hebrew people,” says Dr. Fisher,[75] “were ever pointing to the future.
There, and not in the past, lay the golden age. The Jew might revert
with pride to the victories of David and the splendor of Solomon, but
these vanished glories only served to remind him of the lofty destiny in
store for his nation, and to inspire his imagination to picture the day
when the ideal of the kingdom should be realized and the whole earth be
submissive to the monarch of Sion. The hopes of all patriotic Jews
centred upon a personage who was to appear upon the earth and take in
his hands universal dominion.” It is a most interesting study to follow
the Hebrew prophets in delineating so many centuries in advance the
history of the Messias, and the principal features of that kingdom which
is to embrace the earth under its sway. The time and place of his birth,
the circumstances by which it is accompanied, his character, life,
sufferings, and humiliations, his death and final triumph—all is
described with astonishing precision. They openly speak of the object of
the kingdom he is to establish, which is the regeneration of man, of his
mind as well as of his heart, the destruction of idol worship, the
adoration of the true God, and the reign of holiness; and this at a time
when all was God except God himself, when Greece deified nature and
Egypt changed gods into beasts, whilst Babylon, more corrupt, fabricated
impure monsters which they adored, and Gaul, more ignorant, saw the
Deity on the summits of mountains and in the depths of forests. It was
in this age of darkness that Isaias sang the glory of the new Jerusalem,
the church like to a mountain on which will be broken the chain of
iniquity that bound all nations and the web that had been woven around
them. The universal diffusion of the Messianic kingdom is also foretold
by the prophets. There is nothing more clearly expressed in the
prophecies and so much insisted upon as this: that the new alliance is
not to be local and limited to one nation, but that it will be extended
to all nations. We have already alluded to the prophecy of Abraham and
to that of Jacob. Later David proclaims all nations of the earth to be
the inheritance of Christ. Isaias contemplates from afar a new sign, the
standard of the cross raised before the eyes of all nations; he sees
them bringing their children in their arms—that is, those barbarian
tribes that come to prostrate themselves at the foot of the cross and
present their sons to the baptism of the church; he announces the
conversion of the kings of the earth and their submission to the spouse
of Christ; he follows the apostles carrying the good tidings to the
farthest ends of the world. “Who are those,” he exclaims, “who fly like
clouds? The far distant islands are in expectation, and ships are
waiting to carry them. I shall choose from among my people men whom I
shall send to the Gentiles that are beyond the seas, in Africa, in
Lydia, in Italy, in Greece, to the islands afar off, to them that have
not heard of me and have not seen my glory.” Again, the reign of the
Messias is everywhere represented as having no end; it is to endure for
ever. We shall only mention the prediction of the Messianic kingdom
contained in the book of Daniel, which was familiar to the Jews, and one
in which they trusted. After a description of the four kingdoms, the
last of which the Roman, as iron, breaketh in pieces and subdueth all
things, the writer says that in the days of these kings shall the God of
heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.
These doctrines were not to remain the exclusive appanage of the
Hebrews. Divine Providence willed that they should be diffused among the
nations, and moulded the destinies of the chosen people for the
furtherance of this design. It is a remark of Ritter that the Supreme
Wisdom has allotted to nations their place on the globe in view of their
destination. It was by such a providential disposition that Palestine
was singled out as the habitation of God’s chosen people. Assyria,
Babylonia, and Persia on the east and north; Egypt and Ethiopia on the
south; Greece and Rome on the west—all the great empires of antiquity
will successively come in contact with it. It is there, at the
confluence of human affairs, in the centre of ancient civilization, that
the sacerdotal race is placed, called to spread everywhere the true
religion, the knowledge of God and of Christ the Redeemer. From that
central point it will be easy to send messengers of the eternal truth to
the most flourishing cities, establish prosperous colonies in the
important states by which it is surrounded, and thus accomplish its
mission to be “a light for the Gentiles.”
The prodigies which, under Josue, Heaven had wrought in favor of the
children of Jacob, had already fixed the attention of the other nations
upon Israel, and had predisposed them to adore the God whom that people
worshipped. Bossuet, speaking of those miracles, which were occasionally
renewed, and of the effect they produced among the heathens, says that
they undoubtedly brought about numerous conversions; so that the number
of individuals who worshipped the true God among the Gentiles is perhaps
much greater than is generally supposed. In the times of the Judges the
frequent incursions of the neighboring tribes, their partial occupation
of Judea, their repeated strifes with the Hebrews on the one hand, and
on the other intervals of peace, commercial relations, the advantages
offered to those who were willing to embrace the Jewish religion,
contributed to propagate with that religion the expectation of a
Messias. Under the Kings, the wars of Saul, the conquests of David
reaching as far as the Euphrates, his domination over the country of the
Moabites, of the Ammonites, the Philistines, spread among those nations
the knowledge and fear of the true God. From the prosperous reign of
Solomon to the glorious days of the Machabees, the alliances contracted
with Egypt, Phœnicia, and the neighboring kingdoms, the great number of
workmen whom those states placed at the disposal of Israel for the
cultivation of the soil, the construction of its cities and
fortresses—all contributes to the propagation of the sacred truth. The
Israelites who repair to other countries for the sake of commerce speak
of their traditions and leave after them the notion of their worship.
Whilst the ships of Israel go and deposit on far distant shores its
consoling hopes, travellers, attracted by the beauty of the country, the
richness of its vegetation, the mildness of its climate come to visit
the hospitable people by whom it is inhabited, and return initiated in
the true faith. They recount to other nations the magnificence of the
monarchs of Juda, the justice of their laws, the splendor of the
solemnities of Jerusalem. Kings, legislators, philosophers come to the
holy city from all parts; and Solomon, in the census he took of foreign
proselytes, found that their number amounted to more than a hundred and
fifty thousand.
But it is not enough that the name of the Lord should be known by the
nations in the vicinity of Judea; the most distant tribes must be
brought to adore him. To this effect Assyria, whose domination extends
to the remotest regions of Asia, successively subjugates the kingdoms of
Israel and of Juda, and disperses their inhabitants over the whole of
its vast provinces. It is expressly forbidden to the captives of Israel
to concentrate themselves on one point; for Providence intends that they
should spread all over the East the light of truth and the earnest of
salvation. Hala, Habor, Rages in Media, Ara on the river Gozan, are made
the residence of the Jews of the ten tribes. They advance beyond the
Tigris and the Euphrates, through Armenia as far as Colchis and Georgia,
where they continue to dwell after the captivity, unwilling to abandon
their new home. Numerous families fix their abode in Khaboul, in the
most important cities of Chorasan and in Herat. Others established at
first at the sources of the Indus, descending that river, reach India,
and give rise to the tribe of the Afghans. Some even will cross the
mountains of Central Asia, and will found establishments in Tartary, and
chiefly in China, where later their descendants, raised to the first
dignities of the empire, will teach the Chinese the Jewish religion.
Some fragments of the books of Genesis and of Kings, passages of the
prophets, written in the characters of that remote epoch, sufficiently
indicate that those exiles transmitted to their children and propagated
the revealed truth in that country. Confucius, the legislator of China,
in his travels towards the west, derived from one of those colonies his
ideas on the Supreme Being, whom he designates by the Hebrew name of
Jehovah, scarcely altered, as Abel Rémusat tells us. At a later period
the Persian reformer Zoroaster derived from the same source those
flashes of truth which shine in the Zend-Avesta by the side of glimpses
of primitive revelation. The Jews of the kingdom of Juda, grouped, on
the contrary, in the centre of Chaldea, establish colonies at Sova, at
Nahar, and in other places as far as the confines of the desert; and
likewise at Teredon, at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates;
at Machusa, Annebar, Nisibis, and on the spot where later Bagdad shall
rise. All these colonies, and many others, which after the restoration
will still remain in those countries, will open schools to become
centres of light to the heathens. That permanent contact with the
Chaldeans shall allow the latter to recover a portion of the treasure of
primitive truths which they had lost. Also do all agree in considering
the Chaldeans as the men of antiquity the most conversant with
theological science. Whilst the Jews of Israel are carrying their faith
to the extremities of the vast empire, those of Juda, assisted by the
translation of their sacred books into Chaldaic, diffuse it abundantly
in the thickly-populated provinces of the centre. Assyria had fallen
before the superior valor and military skill of the Persians. It was the
time of the deliverance of the Jews. The most zealous among them availed
themselves of the edict of Cyrus to return to Palestine and to rebuild
the sacred places. But their destiny was not altered; they still went on
fulfilling their sacred mission among the Gentiles. Under the Persian
domination Hebrew princes tell the monarchs of Persia of the future
divine Liberator, and these have sacrifices and prayers offered in the
Temple at Jerusalem for the prosperity of their reign. Providence makes
use of the high functions they exercise at the imperial court to lead
those princes of Juda to Ecbatana, to Persepolis and Suza, that they
might initiate the nobility of those important cities in the knowledge
of the true God, to speak to them of the Messias whom the Magi shall
from that time expect. Distinguished Jews are entrusted with the
archives of Ecbatana. A great number of priests continue after the
restoration to live among the Persians, and are disseminated all over
the empire. They spread their traditions and their dogmas among the
heathen populations. That sojourn of Jewish priests in the land of
exile, after liberty had been restored to them, and when honors awaited
them in their own country, evidently shows that it is the effect of a
merciful design on the part of God, who devises means for those
populations to receive the light of truth. Ochus, one of the last
Persian monarchs, irritated against the children of Israel, sends a
certain number of them in exile into Hyrcania and on to the shores of
the Caspian Sea, and by this he unwittingly helps in spreading among
those abandoned tribes the consoling promises of salvation; for those
violent measures, as Hecatæus remarks in Josephus _Against Apion_, far
from discouraging the Jews, serve to revive their patriotism, their
attachment to the faith of their fathers, and their religious zeal.
If Asia, the land of great empires, was favored in a special manner,
Africa was not forgotten. The Hebrews had long before initiated Egypt in
the knowledge of the one true God and of a Redeemer whose birth in
future ages had been revealed to it by Jacob in his last moments. This
first initiation had produced its fruits; we know by the testimony of
Holy Writ that when the Hebrews went out of Egypt a considerable number
of Egyptians followed them in the desert. In the reign of Solomon a
small Jewish colony followed the Queen of Saba to Abyssinia. According
to Bruce, in his travels, not only do the kings of that country claim to
descend from Solomon, but, furthermore, the annals of Abyssinia are full
of details about the voyage which the Queen of Saba made to Judea.
Ethiopia thus received the sacred books and the religion of the
Israelites—a religion which they kept afterwards, as the Jewish
Ethiopian treasurer of the Queen of Candace, whom St. Philip found
reading Isaias and whom he converted to Christianity, seems to prove. At
the time of the Assyrian wars and of the great captivity a number of
Jews took refuge in Egypt. Some went to Abyssinia and other parts of
Ethiopia, where they established powerful colonies by the side of those
which already existed. At a later period Ptolemæus I. brought two
hundred thousand Jews into Egypt, where they established in all
directions colonies which soon became prosperous under the protection of
his successors. Numerous schools for the propagation of sound doctrine;
houses of prayer in cities; a Sanhedrim at Alexandria, the residence of
learned Greeks; a temple near Bubaste, in which the ordinary sacrifices
prescribed by the Mosaic law were offered—all contributed to make of
Egypt a second native land for the Jews. The name of the Lord was
publicly revered and the worship of the true God practised everywhere.
The infidels had consequently full opportunity afforded them of knowing
him and serving him; and Isaias affirms that, in fact, a great number
embraced the true religion.
As the times approach for the coming of the Messias, the nation chosen
to announce him to the world and to prepare his way multiplies its
colonies and its schools. During the whole period of the Greek
domination the Hebrews avail themselves of the protection accorded them
by Alexander and his successors to extend in the east and west their
beneficial influence, and spread their salutary doctrines, which shall
predispose the Grecian mind to receive the light of the Gospel. We find
them in Seleucia, at Ctesiphon, and at Chalcis, where St. Jerome
subsequently repaired to take lessons in the Hebrew language; at Berea,
where he met with Jews converted to Christianity. We find them at
Antioch, where they shall soon suffer martyrdom for their faith; at
Damascus, a city in which they are in continual intercourse with the
Greeks who flock around the celebrated teachers of its schools; at
Emesus, Nisibis, and Edessa. In the principal cities of Asia Minor:
Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea possess Jewish
colonies. Delos, Miletus, Halicarnassus, Iconium have their synagogues.
At Philippi, in Macedonia, there are houses of prayer for the
Israelites. Athens, Corinth, Salamis, Paphos count such a considerable
number of Jews mixed with their populations that, as it is stated in the
Acts of the Apostles, synagogues are to be found in those places. Now,
synagogues were not only used for prayer but also for the interpretation
of the sacred books, and consequently as public chairs from which the
revelation and hope of a divine Redeemer were announced to the
inhabitants. The prophet Abdias tells us that after the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Chaldeans Jews had sought refuge in Sparta; and Arius,
King of the Spartans, writes to the pontiff Onias that “it was found in
writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they are brethren, and
that they are of the stock of Abraham.”
During the period of the Roman domination Judea had colonies in all
countries—in Parthia, among the Medes and Elamites, in Mesopotamia,
Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Arabia, in the
island of Crete, and at Rome. It is an opinion which found credit with
several learned men that some Hebrews, at the time of the Assyrian
invasions, came to Rome in the reign of Numa and suggested to him what
is best in his laws; and, in fact, several of them seem to be modelled
upon the Hebrew legislation. But it is certain that one hundred and
forty years before Christ the Jews had erected public altars in Rome,
and that a decree banished them from Italy; which is an indication that
they must have been there in great numbers for a long time previous. In
the days of the Machabees, when the Jewish nation, to use the expression
of the Scriptures and of Cicero, was the friend of the Romans, the
senate, at the solicitation of Jewish ambassadors, wrote letters in
favor of the Jews of Lampsacus, Sparta, Delos, Myndos, Sicyonia; of
those who inhabited Gortyna, Cnidis, Caria, Pamphylia, Lycia, Samos,
Cos, Sidon, Rhodes, Avadon, the island of Cyprus, and Cyrene. No nation
escaped the action of their zeal; and the Acts of the Apostles,
enumerating the Hebrews assembled at Jerusalem on the occasion of the
solemnity of Pentecost, tell us that “there were Jews, devout men, out
of every nation under heaven.”
Such, then, was the mission of the Jews; they constitute the true church
before Christ for the preaching of God’s future kingdom that shall have
no end. We see them dispersed throughout the world; we meet them on all
the highroads of humanity, confessing the only Lord of heaven and earth,
and holding in their hands their sacred writings, showing to all that a
peaceful Ruler would rise from the land of Juda and would restore all
things. And when the times were accomplished, and the earth was to
behold its Saviour, all nations were held in expectation of the mighty
event.
We have here endeavored to give a brief sketch of the Jewish history. No
one can deny that the very _raison d’être_ of the Hebrew nation was the
hope of a Messias who was to restore all things and establish upon earth
the kingdom of God. The prophets speak of him and of his glorious reign;
they predict his universal dominion; it will have no end in time, and
its boundaries will be those of the universe. The destiny of the Jews is
unique. After a comparatively short period of splendor which the
conquests of David and Solomon shed upon Palestine, they lose their
political independence, and henceforth they shall be forced to mingle
with the Gentiles, whose social habits they will adopt, but at the same
time unflinchingly adhering to their own religious tenets. The result is
also an historical fact: a Liberator of the human race is expected by
all nations, _et erit expectatio gentium_. Is it possible for an
unprejudiced mind, for one who does not read history in the light of
preconceived systems, not to see in that well-connected whole a design
of Providence which ordains means to the obtaining of a clearly-defined
end? Historical atheism refuses to recognize any such design, as
atheism, in the conception of nature, refuses to recognize an
intelligent Creator. It gives us, instead of life, dry bones and ashes,
barren and unmeaning facts in history, and in nature phenomena with no
intelligible cause for their production, and tending to no assignable
end. In every sphere of knowledge atheism does nothing else but spread
darkness and desolation all around. But as one who is not wilfully
blinded will always discern by a kind of rational instinct the action of
an infinitely wise and omnipotent Being in the order displayed in the
world, so will he admit the action of God in the direction of human
events in which a divine intelligence is no less clearly manifested. The
ever popular argument of St. Paul with its consequence, against those
men that detain the truth of God in injustice, holds good in both cases:
“That which is known of God is manifest in them; for God hath manifested
it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the
world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made:
his eternal power also and divinity: so that they are inexcusable” (Rom.
i. 18-20).
Footnote 75:
_Beginnings of Christianity._
THE LESSONS OF THE CAXTON CELEBRATION OF 1877.[76]
England’s first printer was a Catholic. He lived and died in communion
with the Holy See. He established his press in England beneath the
shadow and on the grounds of the Abbey of Westminster, protected and
encouraged by its monks. He translated and printed books of Catholic
piety, and seems especially given to devotions for a happy death. He
made bequests to the church, and the Requiem was said at his death.
Among all incunabula Caxton’s issues rank among the scarcest. Why? The
Reformation made war upon them, so that many have perished utterly; six
are known only by some scanty fragment preserved by being used to form
part of a book-cover; of thirty-two more only a single copy has been
preserved to our day. How many have perished and left no trace whatever,
no man can tell.
“Be it therefore enacted by the king, our sovereign lord, the lords
spiritual and temporal, and the commons in this present parliament
assembled, that all books called antiphoners, missals, grailes
(graduals), processionals, manuals, legends, piès, portuasses
(breviaries), primers in Latin and English,[77] couchers, journals
(diurnals), ordinals, or other books or writings whatsoever,
heretofore used for service of the church, written or printed, in
the English or Latin tongue, other than such as shall be set forth
by the king’s majesty, shall be by authority of his present act
clearly and utterly abolished, extinguished and forbidden for ever
to be used or kept in this realm, or elsewhere within any of the
king’s dominions.
“And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that if any
person or persons, of what estate, degree, or condition soever he,
she, or they be, bodies politic or corporate, that now have, or
hereafter shall have, in his, her, or their custody any the books or
writings of the sorts aforesaid, or any images of stone, timber,
alabaster, or earth, graven, carved, or painted, which heretofore
have been taken out of any church or chapel, or yet stand in any
church or chapel, and do not, before the last day of June next
ensuing, deface and destroy or cause to be defaced and destroyed,
the same images and every of them, and deliver or cause to be
delivered all and every the same books to the mayor, bailiff,
constable, or church wardens of the town where such books then shall
be, to be by them delivered over openly, within three months next
following after the said delivery, to the archbishop, bishop,
chancellor, or commissary of the same diocese (to the intent the
said archbishop, bishop, chancellor, or commissary, and every of
them, cause them, immediately after, either to be openly burnt or
otherwise defaced and destroyed), shall for every such book or books
willingly retained ... forfeit for the first offence ten shillings,
and for the second offence shall forfeit and lose four pounds, and
for the third offence shall suffer imprisonment at the king’s will”
(Statute 3 and 4 Edward VI. c. x.)
Neglect on the part of the archbishops and the others named to burn the
books involved a penalty of forty pounds.
Thus Protestantism destroyed Caxtons. “A glance at the titles of the
uniques will show that the books most liable to destruction, probably
owing in part to their being much used, and in part to the
destructiveness of religious sectarianism,”[78] says Blades, “are those
directly or indirectly of an ecclesiastical character—such as ‘Horæ,’
‘Psalters,’ ‘Meditacions,’ etc.”
Last year, 1877, being, it was believed, the fourth centenary of the
first book printed by Caxton at Westminster, a Caxton celebration,
proposed by Mr. Hodson, was carried out in London with no little pomp
and display. Caxton imprints were brought together from many choice
collections, with incunabula of all countries, and especially editions
of the Bible, from Gutenberg’s to one printed for the occasion at
Oxford.
The celebration was curious in the utter exclusion of any Catholic
element, and in the machinery brought to bear to make the whole affair a
glorification of the Reformation and of the stale prejudices against
Catholicity. In the face of the books brought together and the lessons
they told, this use of the first English printer, a Catholic, whose
Catholic books the gentlemen of the Reformation had under severe
penalties consigned to the flames, required in the managers no little
assurance, or perhaps a well-founded knowledge of the voluntary
blindness of the masses. They seem to have felt some sense of
difficulty, or English exclusiveness never would have called in the
Yankee adroitness of one of our countrymen rather inclined to play the
buffoon in bibliography.
The English Catholic body seems to have felt some compassion for their
Protestant fellow-countrymen in the strange attempt on which the latter
were engaged. They did not seek to force themselves into the affair, nor
greet them with merited ridicule. We do not know whether they acted
under a sense of pity or were merely apathetic. Yet we wish they had
celebrated the anniversary of Caxton’s death or deposition, or some day
selected, by a solemn Mass of Requiem in the ancient church of St.
Etheldreda, now happily restored to Catholic worship. The Holy See would
perhaps have sanctioned _pro hac vice_ the use on that occasion of the
Mass for the Dead in the ancient Sarum Missal, such as was used at the
obsequies of the good printer, whose translation of the _Lives of the
Fathers of the Desert_ was completed on the day of his death.[79] We do
not know but that we should have applied to Parliament for permission to
celebrate a Mass of Requiem for Caxton in Westminster Abbey church, such
as was said at his death. The proposition would probably have struck
some dumb from sheer amazement; but Parliament would either have granted
it, and permitted the funeral service of 1491 to be repeated just as it
was said after his death, or they would have refused the request of the
Catholic body, and made their bigotry one of the memorabilia of the
Caxton celebration.
No such step was taken; and the managers of the Caxton anniversary were
left at full liberty to give all the false color they could, to combine,
suppress, distort as they chose, in order to give the public an
impression that printing was one of the boons conferred on mankind by
the Reformation. This was actually done directly and indirectly; and as
Kaulbach, the painter, in his great canvas of the heroes of the
Reformation, introduces Gutenberg and Christopher Columbus, so these
gentlemen in England used the good, pious Catholic Caxton as the central
figure in their tableau of the apotheosis of Protestantism.
Caxton left no dubious evidence of his practical faith as a Catholic.
His _Four Last Things_, in French, ends with an exhortation to good
works, “by which we attain to eternal life.”[80] _The English Cordyale_,
or _The Four Last Things_, ends: “Which Werke present I began the morn
after the saide Purificacion of our blissid Lady, Whiche was the daye of
Seint Blase, Bisshop and Martir. And fiinisshed on the even of
thannunciacion of our said bilissid Lady fallyng on the wednesday the
xxiiij daye of Marche. In the xix yeer of Kyng Edwarde the fourthe.”
_The Festial_ opens: “The helpe and grace of almyghty god thrugh the
beseechynge of his blessed moder saynt mary.” It ends thus: “By the
helpe of his blessid moder mary and his holy spowsesse saynt brygytte
and all sayntes. Amen. Caxton me fieri fecit.” Then there is “the lyf of
the holy and blessed vyrgyn saynt Wenefryde ... reduced in to Englysshe
by me, William Caxton.” “A short treatyce of the hyhest and most worthy
sacramente of crystes blessid body and the merueylles therof” certainly
sounds orthodox. And the picture of the Crucifixion, inscribed: “To them
that before this ymage of pyte deuoutly saye v Pr nr v Aues & a Credo
pyteuously beholdyng these ar of Xps passio ar granted xxxij M. vii. C.
& lv yeres of pardon,” shows a belief in the power of the church to
grant indulgences.
We know that the attempt has been made to persuade those eager to be
deceived that Caxton must have had Lollard sympathies. Thus, the editor
of the reprint of the _Fifteen Os_ says: “This collection is noticed by
Dr. Thomas Fuller as being the first book of prayers tending to promote
the Reformation.” And again: “It is more than probable that this is the
first book of prayers in English issued by the followers of Wickliffe,
and cannot but be interesting as having prepared the way for the great
moral and spiritual changes that ended in the Reformation.” Now, the
volume closes thus: “Thiese prayers tofore wreton ben enprited bi the
comaūdementes of the moste hye & vertuous pryncesse our liege ladi
Elizabeth, by the grace of god Quene of Englonde and of Fraūce & also of
the right hye & most noble pryncesse Margarete, moder unto our soverayn
lorde the kyng, &c. By their most humble subget and seruaūt, William
Caxton.”
There is certainly no suspicion of Lollardism attaching to these ladies.
Now let us examine the prayers. The title _Fifteen Os_ will not suggest
to Catholics now any familiar devotion; but when we state that they are
nothing more nor less than St. Bridget’s Prayers or Meditations on the
Passion of our Lord, which have retained their place in our Catholic
prayer-books to this day, they will utter at least fifteen “ohs” and be
certainly hyely amused at the idea of their savoring of Wickliffe.
CAXTON.
“O Jhesu, endless swetnes of louyng soules. O Jhesu, gostly ioye
passing & excedyng all gladnes and desires. O Jhesu, helth and
tendre louer of al repentaūt sinners that likest to dwelle, as thou
saydest thy selfe, with the children of men. For that was the cause
why thou were incarnate and made man in the ende of the worlde. Haue
mynde, blessed Jhesu, of all the sorrowes that thou sufferedest in
thy māhode, drawing nyhe to thy blessed passion.”
GARDEN OF THE SOUL.
“O most sweet Lord Jesus Christ, eternal sweetness of those who love
thee, joy above all desire, firm hope of the hopeless, solace of the
sorrowful, and most merciful lover of all penitent sinners, who hast
said thy delight is to be with the children of men, for the love of
whom thou didst assume human nature in the fulness of time.
Remember, most sweet Jesus, all those sharp sorrows which then
pierced thy sacred soul from the first instant of thy incarnation
until the time of thy solitary passion,” etc.
Among the prayers following those of St. Bridget is this:
“O blessid lady, moder of Jhesu and virgyne immaculate, that art wel
of comforte and moder of mercy, singuler helpe to all that trust to
the, be now, gracyous lady, medyatryce and meane unto thy blessid
sone our sauyour Jhesu for me, that by thy intercessions I may
opteyne my desires, ever to be your seruaunt in all humylite. And by
the helpe and socour of al holy sayntes herafter in perpetuell ioye
euer to liue with the. Amen.”
Evidently Caxton would have had no difficulty in submitting to Pope Pius
IX.’s definition of the Immaculate Conception.
The next prayer is one “To the propre angell”—guardian angel, as we now
say. Further on we find a prayer to which indulgences for the souls in
purgatory are attached. These prayers certainly show no trace of
Wickliffe’s doctrines. The little book is one that any Catholic would
use now, and which no Protestant would or could use.
Protestantism can lay no claim to the worthy, upright, laborious, and
learned Catholic merchant who introduced printing into England, and
chose the precincts of her finest abbey for his labors. His surviving
friends shared his faith, as witness this note in a very old hand on a
copy of the _Fructus Temporum_:
“Of your charitee pray for the soul of Mayster Wyllyam Caxton, that
in hys time was a man of moche ornate and moche renommed wysdome and
connyng, and decessed ful crystenly the yere of our Lord
MCCCCLXXXXJ.
“Moder of Merci, shyld him fro thorribul fynd,
And bryng hym to lyff eternall that neuyr hath ynd.”[81]
On the 17th of February, 1877, a meeting was held in the Jerusalem
Chamber of the old Catholic abbey, not far from the presumed
printing-office occupied by Caxton in the Almonry. Dean Stanley
presided, and preparations were made for the exhibition. The Stationers’
Company offered their hall, but it was deemed too small, and a request
was made for the Western Galleries at South Kensington. These were
granted, and every facility given to arrange and display properly the
works collected. One great object was to bring together and exhibit to
the public as many copies as possible of works from Caxton’s press as
could be obtained for the brief period from the public and private
libraries, with such other books, especially of early date, as would
tend to show the progress of printing from its discovery. The appeal was
generously answered. No less than one hundred and ninety copies of books
printed by the good Catholic William Caxton were contributed to the
exhibition—a greater number, probably, than have ever been seen together
since the Reformers made war on them, and greater than are at all likely
to be again collected. They represented one hundred and four distinct
works.
Lord Spencer sent fifty-seven Caxtons, early Block Books, a Gutenberg
Bible, a Mentz Psalter; the Duke of Devonshire eighteen Caxtons; the
Earl of Jersey and the Bodleian Library each seven; Sion College six,
and the University of Göttingen six; Queen Victoria sent four and a
Mentz Psalter.
The books were arranged in classes: (_a_) William Caxton and the
Development of the Art of Printing in England and Scotland. (_b_) The
Development of the Art of Printing in other Countries. (_c_) The
Comparative Development of the Art in England and Foreign Countries,
illustrated by specimens of the Holy Scripture and Liturgies. (_d_)
Specimens noticeable for Rarity or for Beauty and Excellence of
Typography. (_e_) Specimens of Printing. (_f_) Printed Music. (_g_) Book
Illustrations. (_h_) Portraits and Autographs of Distinguished Authors,
etc. (_i_) Books relating to Printing. (_k_) Curiosities and
Miscellanies. (_l_) Type and Printing Materials. (_m_) Stereotyping and
Electrotyping. (_n_) Copper-plate Printing, Lithography, etc. (_o_)
Paper and Paper-making.
The great effort of the exhibition seems to have been directed to Class
C. Noble collectors and commoners, universities and libraries, the
British and Foreign Bible Society, archbishops and bishops, all
contributed, and it was this department above the others that was to
invest Protestantism with a peculiar halo. Yet the case presented
difficulties of no ordinary character. Men like Stevens rant about
“priestly dross and gloss” and similar claptrap expressions to keep
alive old myths, but it required enormous assurance to advance these
myths in the face of the collection gathered at London in 1877. They may
talk of monkish legends and fables, but Protestantism rests on legends
and fables which men who know better still continue to circulate in
defiance of bibliography and common sense.
In the present case they desired to present to the public a glowing
picture. There is a foreground in every picture, and there is a
background also; there are clear lights which bring out the chief
figures into bold relief, and there are shadows where figures lie almost
unnoticed. The artists here knew well what to throw into the background
and the shade.
Fable the first was that the Catholic Church had ever been the enemy of
the Bible, opposed to its circulation. How is it, then, that when
printing was invented the first book printed was the Bible? The church
must have made the Bible known, or the early printers, who were not
priests or monks, would have known nothing of such a book, would not
have known where to get copies to print from, would not have known that
anybody would know enough about the work to buy it if they printed it.
But the fact is that people knew about the Bible, manuscripts were
easily obtained, and many wanted them who could not afford to buy them.
The fact that the Bible was selected to print shows that there was no
impediment to its circulation, that there existed a well-known demand
for it, and a call for cheaper copies.
Stevens reluctantly gives us aid to demolish this fable of Catholic
darkness as to the Bible: “The Bible was the first book printed.”
“Biblical bibliography proves that during the first forty years, at
least, the Bible exceeded in amount of printing all other books put
together; nor were its quality, style, and variety a whit behind its
quantity.” And be it remembered that these forty years do not cover the
whole period from the invention of printing to the commencement of the
Reformation.
Bibles preceded all the Latin and Greek classic authors and all
vernacular works, not in one place but in almost every place where a
printing-press was set up.
“In a word,” says Stevens, “up to the discovery of America in 1492
Columbus might have counted upon his fingers all the old classic
authors (including Ptolemy and Strabo in their unbecoming Latin
dress) who could throw any geographical light on the questions which
the great discoverer was discussing with the theologians of Spain;
while, covering the same period, the editions of the Bible alone,
and the parts thereof, in many languages and countries, will sum up
not far less than one thousand, and the most of these of the largest
and costliest kind.”
This, it must be remembered, is no rash assertion, but the truth wrung
from this writer by the fact that the collection exhibited before his
eyes at least three hundred out of the thousand to which he refers; and
this thousand—not thousand copies of the Bible, but thousand editions of
the Bible, or parts such as New Testament, Psalms, etc.—includes only to
1492, thirty years before Luther issued his Bible. Yet the monstrous
figment is kept up to this day that in those dark and benighted ages the
people were kept in ignorance of the Bible, that the Catholic Church
suppressed it and kept it hid away, and that it was only the “glorious
Reformation” which brought it from its obscurity. Stevens, with all his
assurance, must have blushed as he wrote the words: “The church managed
to have small call for the Scriptures in the vulgar tongues which the
people could read and comprehend.” He does not cite, and knew that he
could not cite, any authority to show that the church did anything that
could be construed into any such management. The Bible had come down in
her keeping; she preserved it, diffused it, and handed it down from
generation to generation, jealous of its purity and its traditional
interpretation.
Next to the fable of the hostility of the church to the Bible, and
connected with it, is the myth of Luther’s discovering an old copy of
the Bible when he was a priest and a monk, that he thereupon set to work
to translate it, and that he first gave the Scriptures to the people in
the vernacular. It was a very pretty story, told down to our day by
authors like D’Aubigné. The Caxton celebration, though it did not
contain specimens of all the editions of the Scriptures printed before
the Reformation, had enough to show how shamefully the Protestant public
had been deceived and imposed upon by this fable.
Mr. Stevens’ list begins with the Gutenberg Bible, printed at Mentz
between 1450 and 1455—for a copy of that magnificent work was there,
lent by Earl Spencer, perfect, entire, with its six hundred and
forty-one leaves, double column, “the earliest book known printed with
movable metal type.” Then follows the Psalms, printed by Fust and
Schöffer at Mentz in 1457, Queen Victoria lending a copy. Next comes the
1459 Psalter, the second, third, and fourth Latin Bibles, another
Psalter, and then a complete Bible in German, printed, Mr. Stevens
assumes, at Strassburg, by Mendelin, in 1466. Queen Victoria’s
magnificent copy, richly illuminated in gold and colors, was there for
all to admire, and beside it Earl Spencer’s, nearly as beautiful. Either
by accident or design Caxton’s Psalter was not obtained, and this first
known separate book of Holy Scripture issued in England between 1480 and
1483 was represented only by a fac-simile of a page of the copy in the
British Museum. The various Books of Hours printed by Caxton were
similarly unrepresented.[82] Then with other Latin editions came the
second German Bible, also in 1466; the third, Augsburg, 1470; and so on
through the list, fourth, fifth, sixth, to the twelfth German,[83]
printed at Augspurg in 1490 by Henry Schonsperger; and two editions in
Low German, Cologne, 1480, Lubec, 1491. There was also a German Psalter
printed in 1492, described by Stevens as “a fine specimen of an early
pocket edition of the Psalms in the language of the people.”
Thus the Caxton collection presented no less than sixteen Catholic
Bibles and Psalters in German printed before Luther’s time; and as
translations were not made on the spur of the moment, there must have
been in existence many translations in manuscript, some of which never
found their way into print at all. These sixteen volumes, publicly
exhibited at once and together in London, are as many refutations of the
Protestant fables and legends.
“Prior to the discovery of America,” says Stevens, “no less than
twelve grand patriarchal editions of the entire Bible, being of
several different translations, appeared from time to time in the
German language; to which add the two editions by the Otmars of
Augsburg, of 1507 and 1518, and we have the total number of no less
than fourteen distinct large folio pre-Reformation or ante-Lutheran
Bibles. No other language except the Latin can boast of anything
like this number.”
The collection shows, too, that Bibles in the vernacular were not
confined to Germany. It could show some in other languages:
628, Bible, Italian, 316, 331 folios. Venice, N. Jenson. 1471.
649, Bible, Italian. Venice, Bolognese, 1477.
652, New Testament, French. Lyons, Buyer, 1477.
653-4, Old Testament, Dutch. Delf, Zoen, 1477.
669, Psalms, Dutch, Delf. 1480.
688, Bible, Italian. Venice, 1487.
690, Bible, Bohemian. 1488.
706, Psalms, French (Polyglot). Paris, 1509.
725, Bible, French. Paris, Petit, 1520.
The language of Sir Thomas More leads us to believe that some one of the
Catholic versions of the New Testament at least was printed; but if so,
the copies were suppressed so completely that none has reached our
times. The mere fact that no copy is now known does not prove that none
ever existed, when we consider the wholesale destruction by law of all
Catholic books of devotion.
These are not all the vernacular Bibles issued in that period, but, as
they stood there in the South Kensington Loan Collection, they furnished
an irrefragable proof that printing originated in Catholic times; that
the church was the first to use and encourage it; that she multiplied
editions of the Bible in Latin, the habitual language of the church,
then the language of learning and science, as well as in German,
Italian, Dutch, French, and Bohemian; she printed, too, as a copy here
showed, the Bible, Pentateuch, and Psalms in Hebrew, the Bible and
Psalter in Greek and Chaldee, and an Arabic Psalter. (See 682, 691, 706,
711, 718, 720, 721.) Catholic writers have frequently referred to these
early-printed Bibles and portions of Scripture in the vernacular; but to
cite Panzer or some other bibliographer is far different from referring
to a copy of the book. Here in the Caxton collection the very volumes
stood to speak for themselves, and the catalogue attests the fact that
they were there, tells us who owns each copy, its condition and state.
What as a Catholic argument seemed vague and hazy thus took solid form,
and became too substantial to doubt.
Now, how does Mr. Stevens endeavor to elude the force of this array of
solid proofs? It is absolutely comical to see to what straits he is put.
The following platitude, false statement, and false deduction is about
as curious as the Caxton celebration itself:
“As the discovery of America was the greatest of all discoveries, so
the invention of the art of printing may be called the greatest of
all inventions. But no sooner had Columbus reported his grand
discovery through the press than the pope assumed the whole property
in the unknown parts of the earth, and divided it (_sic_) all at
once between the two little powers in the Peninsula, wholly
disregarding the rights and titles of the other nations of Europe.
The same little game of assumption has been tried, from time to
time, with regard to this great invention, but the press has a
protective power within itself which the church can smother only
with ignorance and mental darkness.”
The figures are somewhat confused, and we cannot exactly picture to our
minds the church, with the two pillows of ignorance and mental darkness
which Mr. Stevens can doubtless supply from his well-furnished store,
trying to smother a protective power. The smothering of the children in
the Tower was nothing compared to it. As for the “little game of
assumption,” we think the gentlemen of the Reformation have played it
long and successfully. But we admit that we do not see what right and
title the nations of Europe had in the unknown parts of the earth, or
whence they derived any right and title. So far as we have read, no
right or title was claimed except when based on discovery, and then it
was in the known and not in the unknown. Spain and Portugal carried
their rival claims to the Holy See as a recognized tribunal, and the
line of demarkation in their attempts at exploration was a wise and
peace-establishing provision. It did not operate, and was not intended,
to exclude the subjects of the pope, France, Germany, Denmark, or
England from exploring.
The whole question is foreign to the subject of printing—so foreign that
none of the Columbus letters, or the bull of Alexander VI., was thought
worth obtaining for the Caxton exhibition. We have looked carefully
through the catalogue, and, if they are there, they have certainly
escaped us.
The array of books presented here shows that Luther could not have
received the education he really did in his monastery, making him
conversant with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, without being aware of the
existence in print of many of the more than a thousand editions in all
languages that had already issued from the press. It is not pretended
that Luther obtained his knowledge of languages by a miraculous gift; he
acquired them in the monastic schools, and his attainments are a proof
of the extent of their curriculum.
One of the great objects of the exhibition was to show the earliest
English Protestant editions. Tyndale’s New Testament, supposed to have
been printed at Worms by Peter Schöffer in 1526, was represented by the
very imperfect copy owned by the dean and chapter of St. Paul’s
Cathedral, and by the Antwerp edition of 1534; by the London edition of
1536, which had also at the end the “Epystles taken out of the Olde
Testament what are red in the church after the use of Salsburye upon
certen dayes of the year.”
But the great pride of the exhibition was a series of Coverdale’s Bibles
and Testaments, over which Mr. Stevens indulges in most rhapsodical
eulogy. “Let no Englishman or American,” he exclaims, “view this (765)
and the six following Bibles without first lifting his hat, for they are
seven extraordinary copies of the Coverdale Bible, containing, with one
important exception (the Marquis of Northampton’s copy), all the
variations known of the most precious volume in our language.” We cannot
altogether share his raptures over this Bible, “faithfully and truly
translated out of Douche and Latyn into English.” Stevens sneers at the
Rhemish Testament as “a secondary translation from the Vulgate,” but
Coverdale’s, translated out of “Douche and Latyn” into English, elicits
no such sneer. According to his theory, set forth at great length, this
edition is due to “Jacob van Meteren, of Antwerp, printer and
proprietor, and probably the translator, by whom Coverdale was employed
to edit and see the work through the press,” and he gives Antwerp as the
place of publication. The edition was bought by James Nicolson, of
Southwark. Though Mr. Stevens elsewhere represents the English people at
this time as hungering and famished for an English Bible, he admits
“that the English printer and publisher seems to have had as much
trouble in working off his books as Simmons had in selling Milton’s
_Paradise Lost_, if we may judge by the number of new titles and
preliminary leaves found in different copies.” It contains a long and
fulsome dedication to Henry VIII. and his dearest just-wife, in some
copies “Anne” (Boleyn), in others “Jane” (Seymour). The Bible bearing
the name of Thomas Mathew as translator (London: Grafton & Whitchurch,
1537) he ascribes to the famous John Rogers, and maintains that it too
was printed by Van Meteren at Antwerp.
The Latin-English Testament bearing Coverdale’s name (London 1538),
which he repudiated on account of its errors, or perhaps the correction
of some of his errors, and that really issued by him at Paris in the
same year, were both in the exhibition, as well as that issued also in
1538 at London bearing the name of Johan Hollybushe as translator. These
are very curious as being, we think, the only Latin-English Testaments
ever issued, giving the Vulgate and a translation based upon it. No
other has, to our knowledge, ever appeared in the lapse of more than
three centuries since that year, 1538. As Caxton’s Psalter was perhaps
the first book of the Vulgate printed in England, these Testaments of
Nicolson were the last portion of the Vulgate printed there for more
than two hundred and fifty years, when the edition printed for the
exiled clergy of France made its appearance. Unfortunately we do not
find a copy of that edition in the list of those included in the
exhibition.[84]
The first Testament professing to be translated directly from the Greek
is that numbered in the catalogue 864, issued by Gaultier, 1550; and the
first Bible from the Hebrew and Greek is that printed at Geneva by
Rowland Hall in 1560. This shows how the people in England clung to the
Vulgate. On the Continent Luther had abandoned it for such Hebrew and
Greek texts as he could find, and so led the way to the host of errors
that prevail to this day; but in England the versions were all based on
the Vulgate, occasionally represented as compared with the Greek. It was
not, indeed, till 1611 that the Church of England, by the translation
then issued, formally abandoned the Vulgate, as the Calvinists had
previously done. Mr. Stevens’ sneer at the Rhemish Testament of 1583, as
being a secondary translation, applies with equal force to nearly all
the English Protestant editions then in the hands of the people. Now
that the Greek and Hebrew texts have by the aid of the best manuscripts
been restored to some degree of purity and accuracy, Protestant scholars
are revising the translation of 1611, and the one remarkable fact
appears constantly that every change made to bring them to correspond to
correct texts brings them back to the early translations from the
Vulgate.[85]
This fact of English adherence to the Vulgate shown in the collection of
Bibles at the Caxton celebration goes far towards exploding another
Protestant myth and legend; and that is that England welcomed the
Reformation with open arms, that the whole nation went over to the new
ideas, and that Catholicity was generally abandoned. This is inculcated
in a thousand ways in all the histories and popular literature of the
day, if not squarely asserted. The Caxton collection shows that for
nearly a century the people of England clung to the old Latin Vulgate as
a standard, and that translations from it alone were read officially in
the churches. And to this day the Book of Common Prayer is based on the
Vulgate. Although Henry VIII. broke off from Rome, he knew the temper of
the people. The English nation was in a manner bereft of its wonted
leaders. The civil wars of the Roses had swept away most of the old
nobility, and had brought to the surface the worst, most unscrupulous
and grasping adventurers. What this class was who clustered around the
spendthrift Henry VIII. we can easily see by a study of our times, after
our experience of civil war. They were men to whom nothing was sacred;
men determined to grasp and hold rank and wealth at any cost to the
state or conscience. The people, bereft of their old leaders, of the
time-honored noble families, could not effectively resist the set of new
men. To these the church offered a splendid field for plunder. The
ill-concerted insurrections against them were put down with merciless
severity. Yet the attachment of the people to the old faith remained.
Every step of Henry VIII. was gradual. In his reign the Mass and other
offices of the church were maintained. Even in the reign of his boy son
the unscrupulous men who coined a new faith and worship did not venture
to go too far from the old forms. Like the Chinese emperor, they sought
to destroy all trace of Catholic worship by committing to the flame
every book in England that could keep it alive. What havoc they made we
can learn and imagine from a view of the Caxton collection. Mary’s reign
was too short to undo the mischief, and Elizabeth threw her whole
influence into the scale against the church, and, against her own
convictions, upheld the Anglican establishment as organized in her
brother’s name, and finally gave it form and power; but even she did not
dare to bring it to the standard of the French, Swiss, Dutch, and Scotch
Protestants. The Church of England, in obedience to the old Catholic
instincts of even those who submitted to force, retained much of the old
form, and non-jurors, Puseyites, Tractarians, Ritualists are simply
natural products of this old element.
Yet, with all the power of Henry, Somerset, Elizabeth, the mass of the
English people had not become Protestant or ceased to be Catholic. One
of Harper’s Half-Hour Series is not likely to over-state the Catholic
side; yet Dr. Guernsey, in his _Spanish Armada_, says:
“At the middle of the reign of Elizabeth the population of England
numbered something less than five millions. Of these, according to
the estimate of Rushton, one-third were Protestants and two-thirds
Catholics. Lingard, with less probability, thinks that about
one-half were Catholic. The Italian Cardinal Bentivoglio reckoned
the zealous Catholics at only one-thirtieth part of the nation,
while those who would without the least scruple have become
Catholics, if the Catholic religion should be established by law,
were at least four-fifths of the whole; and Macaulay thinks this
statement very near the truth. We think a more accurate
apportionment would be that one-fourth of the population were
decided Protestants, another fourth decided Catholics, while the
remaining half—the majority of them with a leaning to the old
faith—were quite content with whatever form of religion should be
ordained by the civil authorities for the time being.”
If this was the state of England in the middle of Elizabeth’s reign,
after all connection with Rome had been broken off for two generations,
all Catholic books committed to the flames, the Mass and the priesthood
outlawed, how impossible to believe that the English people went as a
body into the Reformation! If only one-fourth were then decided
Protestants, how many were Protestants when Coverdale’s Bible was
issued?
If England became Protestant, it was simply because the English people
were dragooned into it by penal laws steadily and persistently applied.
The decided Protestants from choice were few and their descendants are
comparatively few. The mass of English Protestants are the descendants
of cowards who yielded up their faith and their convictions to save
property, liberty, or life. The poorest Irish Catholic has a noble
ancestry of men who suffered confiscation, imprisonment, hunting like
wild beasts, death itself, rather than abandon the faith they sincerely
believed, and it is certainly not for the sons of poltroons to despise
them.
The Caxton collection thus, by showing the adherence to the Vulgate till
a Presbyterian king came to the throne, shows how reluctantly England
accepted Protestantism, and dispels many of the fine theories with which
Mr. Stevens mystifies the subject.
The collection had some editions of special interest to us Catholics,
yet it lacked many which we would expect to find in so pretentious a
series of books. The Gutenberg Bible, that glory of the church, we have
already noted. Few of our readers were or could well be present at the
London exhibition, but when the Lenox Library opens in New York they
will be able to see a fine copy of this first of printed books—proof
that in Catholic times, when the church was undisputed mistress of
Europe, the first work deemed entitled to the honor of being reproduced
by the new invention was the Bible. A Catholic can point to it, and say:
“That is the first book ever printed; it is our Catholic Bible, printed
by the Catholic men who invented the art of printing.”
The Caxton collection contained also the first edition issued in the
city of Rome in 1471, as well as the wonderful Polyglot of the great
Cardinal Ximenes, and the Polyglot Psalter of Bishop Giustiniani with
the first sketch of the life of Columbus. The Bible issued as a standard
by Pope Sixtus V. in 1590 is represented by Mr. Stevens, most strangely,
as “the first complete Latin edition published by papal authority.” He
does not tell us in what respect the previous Latin Bibles were
incomplete, or explain how none of them had any papal authority. This
Sistine edition was contributed by Earl Spencer, as well as a copy of
the edition issued under Pope Clement VIII., 1592, and the edition of
the Septuagint from the Codex Vaticanus, issued at Rome in 1586. The
Rhemish New Testament, 1582, and the Old Testament printed at Douay in
1609-10, were also there, but Mr. Stevens is clearly in error in saying:
“It is a remarkable circumstance that, though these volumes bear the
dates of 1609 and 1610 they had not reached the hands of the translators
of the 1611 version when their long preface was written. There is
distinct allusion to this work, as if to disclaim any knowledge of it.”
Yet there is intrinsic evidence that they availed themselves of it
before they put their own to press. Readings both in the Old and New
Testament which had been preserved through the series of Protestant
translations were abandoned in the King James Bible, and Douay
renderings substantially, if not literally, adopted.
The King James Bible, of course, figures in the collection. But the
question as to which is the _editio princeps_, the standard for those
who bow down to that version, is a knotty one. There is a “Great He
Bible” and a “Great She Bible”—two issues of the same year 1611 distinct
through every leaf. Catholics will wonder at this distinction of sex in
Bibles, and it may be well to state that in the endeavor to determine
which of the two was the one originally issued by the translators,
scholars found a discrepancy in Ruth iii. 15, one reading: “He measured
six measures of barley, and laid it on her, and He went into the city,”
while the other reads, “She went into the city”; and as each of these,
although varying from each other in many places, was taken as a standard
for subsequent editions, these Protestant Bibles are all He and She
Bibles to those who wish to know from which of the two 1611 editions
they sprang. Mr. Stevens decides that the He Bible, evidently incorrect
in its rendering, was the original one.
He sets at rest another point in regard to this King James Bible, and
that is the myth or fable of calling it “The Authorized Version.” He
says: “We do not find any authority for calling it the _Authorized
Version_, the words ‘appointed to be read in churches’ meaning not
authorized, but, as explained in the preliminary matter, simply how the
Scriptures were pointed out or ‘appointed’ for public reading.” In other
words, to make the Bible go down with the people of England, who still
clung to many old Catholic ideas, the epistles and gospels for the
Sundays and many of the holidays of the year, as read from time
immemorial in the Mass, were indicated or appointed in this Bible. This
makes the King James Bible, whether a “Great He Bible” or a “Great She
Bible,” a document to prove how slow the English people were to go over
to the Reformers, and how they clung to what little they could grasp of
their old Catholic faith and devotion. Mr. Stevens does not like it for
this very reason, and wants the title _purified_ by leaving out
“appointed to be read in churches”; but leaving it out now will not
destroy the force of the phrase as it stands on both the He and She
Bible of 1611. He claims the King James as the Bible of all English
Protestant churches. It has become so; but it was not so originally. He
is historically wrong when he says: “It never was any more the Bible of
the Church (_i.e._, of England) than of the Puritans.” It certainly was.
Unfortunately there was no copy in this Caxton celebration of “The
Souldier’s Pocket Bible: Printed at London by G. B. and R. W. for G. C.,
1643,” or we could refer him to that constant companion of Cromwell’s
soldiers to show that the Puritans stuck to the Geneva Bible as late as
the time of the Commonwealth, and left the King James and the Bishop’s
Bibles to the malignants. He knows the early writings of his own New
England divines too well not to be aware that their sermons and tracts
quote the Geneva and not the King James. The incorrect editions of the
Geneva, and the appointment of king’s printers in the reign of Charles
II. with the exclusive right of printing Bibles, stopped the issue of
any but the King James, and it thus superseded the Geneva, and people
took it as a matter of necessity, not of choice or preference. It is
simply absurd to make it appear that the King James version was at once
accepted and adopted generally.
The collection did very little in showing the various modifications of
the Douay Bible. After the edition of 1635 there was scarcely anything
in the Caxton exhibition—no copy of Nary’s New Testament, which is
certainly remarkable enough. The first edition of the Protestant Bible
printed in Ireland dates only from 1714, and certainly a Catholic
Testament printed, in spite of penal laws and persecution, in 1719, only
five years later, ought to have found a place there. There was no copy
of Witham’s New Testament or of Challoner’s first Testament, or of the
first edition of his Bible. Nor does Geddes appear. America is not at
all represented. Not a copy of Eliot’s Indian Bible, or of Sauer’s
German Bible, or the Congress Bible, or the first Catholic Bible of
1790; the Bay Psalm Book stands almost alone.
The Bibles sought for on account of curious renderings or strange
blunders were pretty well represented, such as Matthews’ Bug Bible:
“Thou shalt not nede to be afraid for any bugges by nyghte,” Ps. xci. 5.
The second Genevan, 1562: “Blessed are the place-makers,” Matt. v. 9.
Bishop’s Bible, 1568: “Is there no tryacle in Gilead?” Jerem. viii. 22.
The Wicked Bible, London, 1631: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Cambridge
Bible, 1638: “Whom _ye_ may appoint,” Acts vi. 3, for _we_. The Vinegar
Bible, 1717: “The Parable of the Vinegar.” Oxford Bible, 1807: “Purge
your conscience from _good_ works,” instead of “_dead_,” Heb. ix. 14.
Oxford Bible, 1810: “Hate not ... his own _wife_,” for life, Luke xiv.
26. Still these are of no value except as cautions against typographical
blunders. But among the curious Bibles and Testaments we were surprised
to see no copy of the now rare negro English Testament, published in
London in 1829, _Da Njoe Testament va wi Masra en Helpiman Jesus
Christus_. The Rev. Sydney Smith immortalized it, and _Notes and
Queries_ in 1864 devoted some space to it. Renderings like these from a
copy before us: St. Matthew, vi. 7, “En effi oeni beggi, oene no meki
soso takkitakki, leki dem Heiden, bikasi dem membre, effi dem meki
foeloe takkitakki, Gado so harki dem,” or vi. 11, “Gi wi tideh da jamjam
va wi,”[86] are certainly as curious as anything exhibited.
An ingenious gentleman like Mr. Stevens might perhaps have deduced from
it a proof that Caxton was a follower of Wickliffe, or that the Catholic
Church showed no respect for the Word of God.
A catalogue of books such as we have taken up seems to afford little
scope for any but dry bibliographical notes, but the Caxton celebration
has its lessons that can be gleaned even from a catalogue, and if our
readers have followed us we think that they will admit that the attempt
to make Caxton other than a pious Catholic was a delusion; and the
exclusion of the Catholic element, and the attempt to make Caxton a
fulcrum for the exaltation of Protestantism, a failure.[87] As Catholics
we may be grateful for the unintentional evidence the collection
afforded of the fact that the Catholic Church protected and preserved
the Bible, made men esteem and desire it, gave it to the newly-invented
art of printing as the first work to issue, fostered the publication of
the original texts, the authentic Vulgate, and of translations in the
vernacular; as well as incidentally of proof that the Luther romance was
a figment, and proof that the Reformation was forced on the English
people, that they clung to the Bible, liturgy, and dogmas of the
Catholic Church with the utmost tenacity, and that they lacked only the
courage of Ireland and Poland to have maintained their country Catholic.
Footnote 76:
_Caxton Celebration_, 1877. Catalogue of the Loan Collection of
Antiquities, Curiosities, and Appliances connected with the art of
Printing, South Kensington. Edited by George Bullen, Esq., F.S.A.,
Keeper of the Printed Books, British Museum. London, Trübner; xix.-472
pp.
_The Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition. MDCCCLXXVII._; or, A
Bibliographical Description of nearly one thousand representative
Bibles in various languages chronologically from the first Bible
printed by Gutenberg in 1450-1456 to the last Bible printed at the
Oxford University Press the 30th June, 1877.... By Henry Stevens
G.M.B., F.S.A., M.A., etc. London: H. Stevens. 1877. 8vo, pp. 151.
Footnote 77:
Office of the Blessed Virgin, with other prayers.
Footnote 78:
The clown appears early in “What you Will.” It has become the fashion
to call our Catholic institutions, schools, etc., _sectarian_, because
apparently the _sects_ are bitterly opposed to them; and institutions
in which the Protestant sects have complete control and enforce their
views are called _non-sectarian_. No one would imagine that “religious
sectarianism” here is a euphemism for “Protestant intolerance.”
Footnote 79:
We have always indulged the hope that the use of the Sarum Missal on
some patronal feast will be permitted in the primatial church of
England, as the Ambrosian and Mozarabic are in Italy and Spain, to
show conclusively that we are the identical body who used that liturgy
before the Reformation.
Footnote 80:
While writing we read the following from Blades’ _Life of Caxton_ to a
Catholic girl in her teens: “No. 57. Death-Bed Prayers. A Folio
Broadside:
“From the language of these prayers it is evident that they were
intended for use by the death-bed. They were probably printed in this
portable form for priests and others to carry about with them.
Although short, their interest is great, and the reader may not be
displeased to read them in the following more modern dress than that
of the original:
“‘O glorious Jesu! O meekest Jesu! O most sweetest Jesu! I pray thee
that I may have true confession, contrition, and satisfaction ere I
die; and that I may see and receive thy holy body, God and man,
Saviour of all mankind. Christ Jesu without sin; and that thou wilt,
my Lord God, forgive me all my sins, for thy glorious wounds and
Passion; and that I may end my life in the true faith of all holy
church.’”
“What a stupid man!” exclaimed my young hearer. “That is not any
prayer for a priest to say by a dying person; it’s a prayer for a
happy death, and is it not a beautiful one?’” She was certainly right,
and a Catholic child could teach many of these people.
Footnote 81:
To the same purport is this colophon on Bartholomæus’ _De
Proprietatibus Rerum_, issued by Wynken de Worde about 1495:
“And also of your charyte call to remembraunce
The soule of William Caxton, first prynter of this boke,
In laten tongue at Coleyn, hymself to auance
That every wel disposyd man may theron loke.”
Footnote 82:
Stevens admits that there was no necessity for actually doing the
printing of Bibles in England. “The educated of England, however, were
not ignorant of the Scriptures, for Coburger, of Nuremberg, and
probably other Continental printers, had established warehouses in
London for the sale of Latin Bibles as early as 1480, and perhaps
earlier.”
Footnote 83:
The Paulist Library in New York might have sent a fine copy of the
ninth edition, printed in 1482, the very year Luther was born.
Footnote 84:
We have never seen the Latin Bible printed by Norton at London, in
1680, but think that the text of the Vulgate was not followed.
Footnote 85:
The natural history and topography of the 1611 Bible are ludicrously
incorrect, because they abandoned the Vulgate and translated at
random. Yet the Vulgate was translated from the Septuagint, and
revised in the Holy Land by St. Jerome with the aid of Jewish scholars
who knew the geography and natural history of the country. The
Septuagint was made in Egypt, while Hebrew was still the language of
the nation, by men thoroughly acquainted with their native country.
Was it not sheer madness for gentlemen in England in the seventeenth
century, with a mere smattering of Hebrew, to think that they could
render geographical and zoölogical terms more accurately? Is not their
presumption the real matter to be sneered at?
Footnote 86:
Written according to Dutch rather than English. This is very odd.
_Beggi_ is _pray_; _takkitakki_ is much _talkee_ (say); _jamjam_ is
_yam_ (bread). “Give we to-day the yams for we!”
Footnote 87:
Like Caxton, a Catholic, the writer has, like Caxton, written,
translated, edited, printed, and published, and has had for years
behind his chair in his dining-room an engraving of Caxton examining
his first proof-sheet. His interest in Caxton is, therefore, almost
personal.
MALCOLM, KING OF SCOTLAND, TO HIS WIFE, ST. MARGARET.
I.
God speed thee, sweet, in all thy tasks of love,
The daily round of thy heart’s majesty—
Thy dear lips opened unto clemency—
My Margaret, my pearl all price above;
My little kingdom, where as king I reign
O’er lands so fair I might with gladness give
All earthly state in these alone to live
Where nothing base doth holy ground profane.
My queen, my Atheling, true noble one,
That wearest on thy Saxon brow a grace
Wherein all loyal hearts can true love trace
To this north land the misty hills do crown.
My rose-lipped daisy, lighting Scotland’s sod
With happy faces lifted up to God.
II.
God speed thee, sweet; my heart so singeth e’er,
As grows more dear among our poor thy fame
With every day. O Lady, true of name,
Giver of bread to all beneath thy care,
My royal-hearted queen and flawless pearl,
How shall my sin-stained prayers for thee avail,
That dost least fault with innocent tears bewail?
Meek daisy, whose white petals do unfurl
From soul wherein all golden visions shine!
So near to God thou seem’st, and pray’st so well,
The book I kiss whereon thy pure eyes dwell,
So grows my prayer the words that have been thine,
So surely grows it sweeter in His ear,
Tuned to the music of thy singing clear.
III.
May that brave saint, sweet wife, whose name is thine,
Whose virgin feet unharmed on dragons fell,
Keep thee in grace with Him thou lov’st so well
Till that far day when shall thy beauty shine
With that light glorified her features wear.
Blessed light! fair even now encircling thee
When, bowed thy soul in fond humility,
Thou kneelest, of thy God possessed, at prayer.
Ah! love, with Christ, our Lord, forget not me
Who tread this tangled pathway here below
With eyes more dim than thine and feet more slow;
So, when in life eternal we are met,
I still may wear my pearl, my Margaret!
HAVE WE A NOVELIST?
Scarcely fifty years have elapsed since Sydney Smith contemptuously
asked: “Who reads an American book?” John Bull was delighted at this
sneering query of the witty Dean of St. Paul’s. It was so agreeable an
_exposé_ of the literary poverty of a formidable rival. It was so very
consoling to find a weak point in the young giant who had twice beaten
him in war. Could Sydney Smith rise to-day from his grave in Kensal
Green he would witness a marvellous change. The time has passed when he
might triumphantly ask: “Who reads an American book?” The time has
passed when John Bull might gloat over the poverty of American
literature. We have a literature—a noble literature—of which any nation
might be proud. We may confidently reverse the celebrated query of the
wittiest of English divines, and ask: “Who does _not_ read an American
book?” Who does not read the histories of Prescott? Who does not read
the charming writings of Irving? Who does not read the wonderful tales
of Hawthorne, the poems of Longfellow, of Bryant, of Poe?
Our literary temple, like Aladdin’s palace, is glorious; but, like
Aladdin’s palace, it is also incomplete. While our literature is full
and splendid in poetry, in history, and in science, it has been
strangely wanting in what Prescott calls “ornamental literature”: the
romance. The deficiency is more particularly remarkable when we consider
the magnificent field which this country offers to the novelist. Our
government, our institutions, our society, our national manners, the
vice and extravagance of our great cities, our political corruption, the
enterprising spirit of our people, the rapid change of fortune in our
commercial cities, where the born beggar often dies a millionaire, life
at our watering-places—all present interesting and inexhaustible
subjects for the romance-writer. No country in the world affords such
strong and striking contrasts of character as the United States. Here we
have the gay and mercurial Frenchman, the practical and plodding German,
the generous and improvident Irishman, the reserved Englishman, the
proud Spaniard, and last, but by no means least, the eager, calculating
American, with his brain of fire and his heart of ice.
Certainly there is no lack of materials; the workers alone are wanting;
the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. We want a Thackeray
to expose the heartless extravagance of our best society; a Dickens to
turn our hearts in generous sympathy towards the poor and suffering; a
Bulwer to polish the manners of our people, and illustrate the noble
truth that knowledge is power, money only its handmaiden. Within a dozen
years this trio of novelists has passed away, and they have left no
successors. Except a few chapters in Thackeray’s _Virginians_, and some
absurdly nonsensical scenes in Dickens’ _Martin Chuzzlewit_, the works
of the great English novelists are entirely foreign: the characters,
manners, scenes—all foreign to us. But they are read here with as much
pleasure as in England. The Americans are a nation of readers—men,
women, and children, all read. The majority of our men read newspapers
almost exclusively. Seven-eighths of the novel-reading of this country
is done by women. The statistics of any popular library will show that
three novels a week form the average of these fair readers.
With so great and constant a demand for novels, why have we no novelist
among us?—a great novelist, a national novelist, an essentially American
novelist, as Bulwer and Thackeray are essentially English. As there can
be no effect without a cause, there must be a cause for this deficiency
in our literature. There are two: _American publishers_ and _American
readers_. While an English magazine scarcely ever publishes an article
by an American writer, there is not a great English novelist of the last
quarter of a century who has not written for one or other of the
American magazines. Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Charles
Reade, George Eliot, Trollope, Miss Muloch, etc., etc., have written
more or less for our periodicals. Literature, like love, must be
encouraged or it languishes and dies. In addition to the want of
encouragement given to American novelists by our publishers is the fact
that American novel-readers affect to despise American novelists. The
novel-reading ladies who frequent circulating libraries, demanding with
one voice “something new,” who prefer Miss Braddon to George Eliot, and
Mrs. Henry Wood to Thackeray, say they “cannot read American novels.”
And yet three of the most popular novels of the last three years have
been American, viz.: _Infelice_, _One Summer_, and _A Question of
Honor_. We have seen an American lady take up _The American_, by Mr.
Henry James, Jr., and throw it down, saying, “The name is enough.” We
have seen ladies decline one of the charming stories of Mr. Aldrich or
Mr. Howells, and carry off in triumph the last production of Mary Cecil
Hay or the voluptuous “Ouida”! If Americans refuse to read American
novels, who will read them?
The indiscriminate and almost universal novel-reading now practised is a
striking and alarming feature of American life, when we consider the
tone and character of so many of the modern novels. Judged by them,
divorces, elopements, intrigues, and other crimes against society are
the normal attendants of modern civilization. They play a conspicuous
part in most of the “popular novels” of the day. Yet such books are
eagerly devoured by young girls, whose minds are keenly susceptible to
their dangerous influence. An insidious poison is thus infused which
often fatally corrupts the youthful imagination. Bad books are the
devil’s own instruments for the ruin of souls. As it is impossible to
deny the fact that novels form the staple reading of a majority of the
world, it is important that they should be not only pure but above
suspicion.
The Catholic press cannot too strongly condemn the scope and influence
of the novel of to-day. While Scott and Miss Edgeworth are neglected,
the vile trash of Rhoda Broughton and Mrs. Forrester is eagerly sought.
The good old habit of reading history, travels, biography, essays, etc.,
is almost entirely abandoned. “We want something new and exciting,” is
the general cry; “history and biography are too deep.” And so they go on
from week to week, from month to month, and from year to year, reading
nothing but novels, and filling their minds with nonsense, if nothing
worse. While we condemn indiscriminate novel-reading, we do not condemn
novels indiscriminately. There are a few that can be read without
detriment either to morals or religion, and these, we are sorry to say,
are the novels that modern readers pronounce “flat.”
During the century of our national existence we have had three genuine
American novelists: Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, and
William Gilmore Simms. The first of this trio possessed great natural
gifts and enjoyed a liberal education. The singular advantages which
nature so lavishly bestowed upon Brockden Brown prevented him from being
a popular novelist. He was a pure idealist. He lived in a world of his
own. His beautiful and fertile imagination created beings which never
could exist in this world, and these he made the heroes and heroines of
his strange stories. They may please the intellectual few, but they
possess no interest for the uncultivated many. If Brown’s talents had
been properly directed, if he could have kept his soaring imagination
fixed on the earth, and been satisfied with describing men and things as
they really exist, his would have been a lasting fame. But, as it is, he
is not now read by one in ten thousand, nay, in ten times ten thousand.
Cooper is second to Brown in point of time and superior to him in point
of popularity. He threw a charm, a grace, and an interest around the
life and character of the American Indians which appear inconsistent in
the light of recent experience. In his sea-stories he succeeds where the
greatest novelist signally failed. Cooper enjoyed a high reputation
during life, but his novels now rank with the writings of Mayne Reid,
and are almost exclusively read by boys. Simms’ stories of the
Revolution and the border life in the South that succeeded the struggle
for independence are excellent in their way. His Revolutionary romances
afford glimpses of generous devotion to patriotism and an ardent zeal in
the cause of liberty which Americans might read with profit at the
present day.
But those novelists belong to the past—the dead and buried past. We want
the present time described—the living, breathing, busy present. There
never was an age, there never was a country, that afforded such scope
for the novelist as this age and country. Our cities are swarming with
an eager, reckless, enterprising population, presenting an infinite
variety of characters, each occupied with his own particular pursuits of
ambition, pleasure, or wealth. Take New York as the representative city
of America. There are to be found the best and the worst features of our
civilization; the most unbounded wealth and the most squalid poverty;
the most exquisite culture and refinement and the most degraded and
abandoned of the human race. Is not our society as vain, frivolous,
false as that English society which Thackeray satirized so unmercifully?
Have we no Vanity Fair, no heartless Becky Sharps, no selfish George
Osbornes, no wicked old Steynes, no disreputable Rawdon Crawleys?
Our country is the last of nations in point of time, but the first in
all material prosperity. Like Minerva, it sprang into existence fully
equipped for a career unparalleled in the annals of the world. Other
nations have taken a thousand years to reach the position which the
United States took at one bound. We have more than realized the dream of
Plato. But let us not imitate the philosopher of Greece, and banish
poetry and pure fiction from _our_ republic. Let us not hang the sword
of Damocles over the imagination, but let it be purified. Let us not
employ the scissors of Atropos to cut the threads of fictitious
narrative, but let it be purged of its present loose and dangerous
tendency. Sir Walter Scott declared novels to be “a luxury contrived for
the amusement of polished life, and the gratification of that half-love
of literature which pervades all ranks in an advanced stage of society,
and are read much more for amusement than with the least hope of
deriving instruction from them”; yet _Ivanhoe_ throws more light upon
the personal character of Richard Cœur de Lion, _Kenilworth_ informs us
more particularly about the court of Elizabeth, the _Fortunes of Nigel_
gives us a better insight into the private life of King James, than we
derive from Hume. By his poems and novels Scott threw a perpetual charm
over the bleak hills of Scotland; he made its ruined abbeys as
interesting as the ruined castles of Germany; he made its lakes the
favorite resort of thousands of summer tourists. Author of the most
celebrated novels that were ever written, Scott was unjust to the
children of his mind when he spoke slightingly of novels. It should be
remembered that he also spoke unfavorably of the literary profession—a
profession by which he made a million dollars and an immortal name.
When the author of _Waverley_ spoke disparagingly of novels that kind of
literary composition was almost in its infancy, certainly in its
childhood. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith were the only
great names in that department of English literature. It was almost an
uncultivated field, but the reaper was at hand, whose harvest should be
abundant, whose reward great. The lordly halls of Abbotsford still
stand, the magnificent result of novel-writing. For every novel written
during the time of Scott there are at least one hundred written now. The
novels published during the last fifty years are far more numerous than
all the novels that had previously existed in the world. A hundred years
since pamphlets were written to promote the success of a political
measure, to show that “taxation” was “no tyranny,” to overthrow a
minister, etc. Now, when Disraeli wants to convince the country of his
political sagacity, he writes a novel; when Dickens wanted to show up a
crying injustice to the poor he wrote a novel; when Thackeray wanted to
expose the shams of English society he wrote a novel. The age of
pamphlets is gone, the age of novels has succeeded. Statesmen write
novels, soldiers write novels, clergymen, lawyers, doctors—all
professions, all classes and both sexes, write novels, and still the
novel-reading Olivers “ask for more.” Any person who visits a
fashionable circulating library upon a Saturday afternoon will see how
great is the demand for _new_ novels.
Books which were, in the last century, read in mixed assemblages of
young ladies and gentlemen could not now be read by old ladies in the
privacy of their closets. Apropos of which is a story out of Lockhart’s
_Scott_: “A grand-aunt of mine,” said Sir Walter, “was very fond of
reading, and enjoyed it to the last of her long life. One day she asked
me, when we happened to be alone together, whether I had ever seen Mrs.
Behn’s novels. I confessed the charge. Whether I could get her a sight
of them? I said, with some hesitation, I believed I could; but that I
did not think she would like either the manners or the language, which
approached too near that of Charles II.’s time to be quite proper
reading. ‘Nevertheless,’ said the good old lady, ‘I remember them being
so much admired, and being so much interested in them myself, that I
wish to look at them again.’ To hear was to obey. So I sent Mrs. Aphra
Behn, curiously sealed up, with ‘private and confidential’ on the
packet, to my gay old grand-aunt. The next time I saw her afterwards she
gave me back Aphra, properly wrapped up, with nearly these words: ‘Take
back your bonny Mrs. Behn; and, if you will take my advice, put her in
the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel.
But is it not,’ said she, ‘a very odd thing that I, an old woman of
eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book
which, sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the amusement of
large circles, consisting of the first and most creditable society of
London?’”
Although a vast improvement has taken place in the tone of novels
generally, yet there are many still written which should not be read,
and many are read which should not be written. It is a striking and
lamentable fact that the worst novels of the day are written and read by
women. The miss scarcely in her teens reads books which her grandmother
would be ashamed to read. As the pampered palate of the epicure can only
enjoy food highly seasoned, so the vitiated minds of modern readers can
only enjoy highly seasoned novels; mysterious murders, mad marriages,
runaway matches, terrible secrets, awful mysteries, hidden perils, etc.,
are required to stimulate their jaded taste. As a person who feeds only
on dainties will soon have the dyspepsia, so a person who reads only
highly-seasoned novels will have a sort of mental dyspepsia. Scenes are
described, circumstances are mentioned, conversations retailed, vices
introduced into modern novels which would cause any man to be banished
from decent society who should so far forget himself as to allude to
them. Yet such things are read without blushing by young ladies, such
books are discussed by ladies and gentlemen without shame. If our young
ladies are to read nothing but novels, in the name of modesty let not
their literary food be corrupt and corrupting; let not their virgin
minds be filled with foul images; let not their Christian souls be
soiled with even a thought of vice.
Queen Anne could not enjoy her breakfast unless the _Spectator_ was by
her plate. Were Addison alive now and writing the _Spectator_, we doubt
whether Queen Victoria would have it with her morning meal. Times
change, and kings as well as commons must keep pace with their age.
Gibbon’s vanity was gratified that his history was in every lady’s
boudoir and discussed in every fashionable drawing-room in London. Were
Gibbon writing in this present year of grace, we do not think the
_Decline and Fall_ would deprive the last novel of its “pride of place”
in my lady’s boudoir. About twenty-two years ago Macaulay received that
famous £20,000 check from the Messrs. Longman for a volume of his
_History of England_, of which more than twenty-six thousand five
hundred copies were sold in ten weeks. Macaulay’s History was even more
popular than Gibbon’s. He said: “I shall not be satisfied unless I
produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last
fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.” “For a few days”
Macaulay’s history did “supersede the last fashionable novel,” but we
think we are safe in saying that it will have fewer readers this year
than a new novel by “Christian Reid” or Mrs. Alexander. Take the average
girl of the period, question her about her reading, and what is the
result? She averages six novels a week—three hundred a year. Certainly
much in point of quantity, but how about the quality? Has she read the
_Spectator_, the _Vicar of Wakefield_, Macaulay’s _Essays_? No. They
would be as tiresome to her as the compliments of an old beau—as
old-fashioned as last year’s bonnet.
Mme. Roland when a girl slept with a volume of Plutarch’s _Lives_ under
her pillow. Our girls, who are more interested in contemporary society
than in the lives of illustrious Greeks and Romans, put the last novel
under their pillow, that they may continue the first thing in the
morning the entrancing story of _Theo_, which “tired nature” compelled
them to relinquish at midnight. We trust they may never be called upon
to display the lofty heroism of Mme. Roland—that their only tears may be
those shed over the woes of imaginary heroines, their only sorrows as
fictitious as those in the novels they love so well.
Being an unquestionable fact that the reading millions of this last
quarter of the nineteenth century devote themselves to novels more than
to any other class of literature, novels may be made the means of great
and universal good. We all know how rapturously the third tier applauds
lofty moral sentiments; how enthusiastically the “gods” of the gallery
sympathize with virtue in distress; how the protector of innocence is
cheered and the villain hooted. Let this natural feeling of the human
heart be turned to account in novels. We have all laughed over that
inimitable scene in _The Rivals_ between Lydia Languish and Lucy, her
maid, who has been sent to the circulating library for some _late
novels_. Do not some of Lydia’s favorites suggest the names of popular
novels that are in daily request at _our_ fashionable circulating
libraries?—the _Reward of Constancy_, the _Fatal Connection_, the
_Mysteries of a Heart_, the _Delicate Distress_, the _Tears of
Sensibility_. Have we not the _Fatal Marriage_, the _Empty Heart_, a
_Woman’s Heart_, the _Curse of Gold_, the _Mysterious Engagement_, a
_Clandestine Marriage_, etc.? Judging from the books they read, our
girls must believe with Mrs. Malaprop that “thought does not become a
young woman.”
A popular modern novel, one which nine out of every ten readers
pronounce “so nice,” “so interesting,” “perfectly lovely,” is “made up”
something after this manner: A young girl, one half of whose character
entirely contradicts the other half, engages herself to some worthy but
commonplace young man, who is more familiar with figures in his ledger
than with figures of rhetoric, who is more apt at writing business
letters than love letters, who is better acquainted with market
quotations than poetical quotations, who knows more about the Corn
Exchange than about _Lucille_—in short, a man who takes a practical,
common-sense view of life. The love of this romantic girl and this
practical young man is not very ardent. In the meantime there appears
upon the scene a dark, mysterious, gloomy, _blasé_ man of the world,
believing in nothing, hoping for nothing, and who looks upon existence
as a curse. He is as handsome as an angel, cynical as a fiend, sceptical
as a modern philosopher. His “noble” brow is often disfigured by a
scowl, his “chiselled” mouth is often marred by a sneer. In a word, he
is a sort of fashionable Lara. This scowling, sneering, cynical
gentleman has had an interesting history: he was the hero of an
unfortunate love-affair. His heart is a burnt-out volcano. In his early
youth he had loved—madly, wildly loved—a woman who was married to a
brute. He tells this woman his love. She listens to his story, laments
that she is not free, and bursts into tears. He takes her in his arms,
swearing that she is the one idolized love of his heart. At length she
says they must part, but bids him await her summons. He leaves her, goes
abroad, and tries to forget his sorrows in the sparkling Lethe of
dissipation. In vain. The sad form of his loved one is the skeleton at
every feast, and changes every ball into a funeral. At last his
long-expected summons comes: the being he loves more than ten thousand
lives writes him to come to her at once; that her husband has struck
her, she is sick, perhaps dying. He flies to revenge her wrongs. He
finds her _dead_. Thus was his love lost, his hopes crushed, his life
wrecked. Lara tells his story to our romantic girl one lovely June
evening. They are seated on a moonlit piazza. The perfume of many
flowers fills the air. The sound of a distant river is heard. It is a
night and a scene meet for love. In tones, tender, sad, but sweet, he
tells her his heart has long been ashes; that he never thought the fires
of love could again be kindled there, but she has taught him that there
is peace, happiness, love for even him. Will she raise this dead heart
to life? She murmurs, softly but passionately, “I love you, Arthur.”
This is a rather mild and innocent specimen of the food that modern
novel-readers feed on. The object of fiction should be to represent life
as it is—to “hold the mirror up to nature.”
Just one hundred years since all London went wild over a new novel by a
nameless writer. The new novel was _Evelina_, the nameless writer was
Miss Burney. The characters in the book were commonplace, the scenes
uninteresting, the story unexciting, but it showed, what no other novel
of the time showed, that a book could be lively without being
licentious, readable without being immoral. Nothing more clearly proves
the poverty of the fictitious literature of the last quarter of the
eighteenth century than that such a statesman as Burke should sit up all
night to read such a book as _Evelina_. Nothing better proves how
prejudice can sway a strong mind than that Dr. Johnson should pronounce
Miss Burney superior to Fielding. But it was extraordinary for a young
lady to write a book one hundred years ago. It was still more
extraordinary for a young lady to write a novel that could be read with
pleasure. Hence the _furore_ that it created and the interest that its
author excited. Miss Burney did not (as too many of our lady writers
do), upon the strength of one successful book, rush a half-dozen
inferior novels upon the world. She waited more than four years before
she published her next work, _Cecilia_. For _Evelina_ she received £20,
for _Cecilia_ £2,000. We have mentioned Miss Burney, because we consider
her as an excellent example for the imitation of modern novelists. She
was willing to wait four years after publishing an unprecedentedly
successful book before giving another to the world. But, when that other
work did appear, it was placed by general consent among the few
classical novels in the English language. Nowadays it is the fashion for
a popular writer to deluge circulating libraries with rubbish which, in
a few weeks, finds its way to the junk-shop. Those who write for
posterity write slowly, correct carefully, and publish seldom.
When we remember that this is peculiarly the age of the novel, that more
novels are now published in New York in one year than existed in the
whole world one hundred years ago, that the demand is still greater than
the supply, that we have long since broken the apron-strings that bound
us to our literary mother, England, in every other department of
letters, we feel convinced that, at no distant day, our novelist will
come. But he must be true to his mission, and give a faithful
representation of American life and manners, not a “counterfeit
presentment.” He must not sacrifice virtue and honor to present
popularity, he must not pander to the vicious tastes of a demoralized
society, but, like Addison, he must purify the public taste by elevating
it to his own high ideal. Such a writer would not violate the sanctities
of domestic love or forget the obligations of social duty. He might be
witty, but he would never be wanton; he might be lively, but he would
never be licentious. Such a writer would be a benefactor to his country
and to the world.
ANGLICAN DEVELOPMENT.
Development implies a germ. It is the growth of such qualities or
characteristics as were inherent in the original principle. If the
principle was bad the development will be bad—if, indeed, there be
development at all. Perhaps it will be truer to say that bad principles
do not develop; they rather generate fresh stages of decay. Corruption
is the law of bad principles, as development is the law of good
principles. The “survival of the fittest” is certainly true in the moral
law, even if it be not certainly true in the material. Six thousand
years of human history have proved that divine principles “survive”; and
their survival has been their development, in respect to the sphere of
their empire. The principles themselves do not grow, but the world
grows, and with it divine government. Dr. Newman, in his work on
developments, has drawn this distinction very luminously. The church
grows, and its influence extends, and its machinery is in constant
operation; yet its developments are not developments of its principles
so much as of its qualities and capacities. They are also developments
of its power. What the church was on the day of Pentecost she is to-day;
it is her body which is grown, not her spirit. Divine principles are
immutable; but because the world always changes the church must change
too—not in her principles but in her action.
The converse of the development of Catholicism is seen in the
development of Anglicanism. Whereas the church is more powerful in the
proportion of antagonism, Anglicanism grows weaker and weaker. Whereas
the church opposes dogma to heresy, Anglicanism suggests wider religious
liberty. Whereas the church cuts off every withered branch, Anglicanism
grafts the sticks on to its trunk. Thus the development of Anglicanism
is in the direction of corruption; of the gravitation of new errors
towards the parent one; of the union in one society of every element of
dissolution, with a view to spasmodic vitality. The older Anglicanism
grows the more decay it engrafts, trying hard to look vigorous with life
by the process of galvanizing death. This is its general principle. But,
particularly, the modes of its experiment are as instructive and as
lamentable as is its principle. Let us take a late example. Nearly five
thousand Anglicans have just petitioned their queen against the
permitting confession in the Church of England. Their motives may be
left to their own consciences, though they do allege, by way of seeming
to be in earnest, that “confession is subversive of the principles of
morality, social order, and of civil and religious liberty.” Among the
petitioners are more than three thousand clergymen; but there are also a
vast number of signatories who are set down as “Anglicans not
classified.” Now, in what way are we to regard this grave petition as a
development of the principles of Anglicanism? Be it remembered that
confession, as practised by the Ritualists, was in itself a development
of Tractarianism; that Tractarianism was a development of the reaction
which followed on the decay of Evangelicalism; that Evangelicalism was a
development of the reaction which followed on the decay of
Dry-Churchism; and that Dry-Churchism was the development of that
Erastianism which the house of Hanover firmly rooted in the state
church. So that the huge gulf between confession and Georgeism has to be
bridged over by successive revolutions, each perfectly natural in its
reaction, yet each naturally leading to fresh change. Here we see the
distinction between the development of church vitality and the
development of heretical restlessness. As we have said, church
principles cannot change; it is the action only of the church which
becomes enlarged, Catholic principles not admitting of development save
in the sense of extension of empire. But Anglican principles can be
turned upside down, or can be turned inside out, a score of times. There
is no more affinity between ritualism and Dry-Churchism than there was
between Evangelicalism and Erastianism. There is no more concord between
Dr. Pusey and Canon Ryle than there was between Bishop Butler and John
Wesley. Not more opposite was Mr. Simeon to Canon Liddon than was
Archbishop Whately to Lady Huntingdon. These Anglicans represent
different churches. And yet they all belong to the same church. What,
then, is the development of Anglican principles?
Obviously there is not development at all. The word cannot be used in a
Christian sense. There is reaction, revolution, novel apostolate; there
is not true Christian development. We may say of the great French
Revolution that it was a development of (some of) the principles of
Voltaire; or that D’Alembert and Diderot, with the Encyclopædists
generally, planted seeds which sprang up into the guillotine. Yet the
very point of such development was that it sprang not from principle but
from the assertion that principle was not divine. And so in Anglicanism:
though the assertion was quite distinct, there was no little affinity in
the results. The theory of Anglicanism was that the Catholic Church was
not divine, but that Church-of-Englandism had pretensions to be so; or
rather, that the divine principles of the Catholic Church were purified
to perfection in Church-of-Englandism. But a corollary of this theory
was that the (divine) Catholic Church had no more authority than had
“Reformers”—an assumption which was fatal, in argument and in fact, to
the immutability of principles. Accordingly we find that mutability has
been the law of the whole system of Anglican developments; in other
words, that those developments have been as utterly contradictory as
they have been numerous beyond computation. Is this a Christian or a
Catholic development, or a development of even a philosophic kind? It
is, on the contrary, proof positive that Anglican principles are not
divine, for if they were divine they could not change. It is not
discipline which has changed, nor external observance, nor the relations
of the church to the state; such changes would be comparatively
unimportant; it is Christian doctrine, Christian sacraments, priestly
powers, and all that constitutes the idea of a church. It is not that
new doctrines have been added to old doctrines; it is that old doctrines
have been excised. A perfectly brand-new theology has supplanted a
defunct system; and this not only once but fifty times. So that we have
to deny most positively that there has been “Catholic” development in
that institution which Queen Elizabeth founded; and we have to affirm
that reaction and revolution have proved that institution to be human.
It has been argued—and it is still argued in ritualistic organs—that
ritualism must be a Catholic development; for its spirit is in the
direction of Catholic truth, and its labor is to restore Catholic
practice. The answer is that such reaction is not Catholic; it is the
aspiration of heresy towards the church. We do not touch the delicate
question—which belongs rather to spiritual science—the operation of
divine grace outside the church; this question does not enter into our
argument; we are speaking only of the distinctions between the
development of true theories, and reaction and revolution from false.
Development in the Catholic Church has meant expansion of empire, of
inherent capacities of adaptation, of definition in proportion of need,
and of anathema in proportion of desert; it has never meant the least
change of principle. Development in Anglicanism—if we must still use the
word—has meant new religions shooting up out of old, with a chaos of old
and new together, and with no means of arguing from precedent to
sequence what Anglicanism may become this day twenty years. This is
certainly not Christian development. It may imply human energy, with
restlessness of will and a constant eagerness to keep moving for life’s
sake; but as to calling it supernatural development, the very suggestion
appears profane. Those three thousand clergymen, with “Anglicans not
classified,” who have just petitioned their queen against confession,
have asserted three things, each of which is absolutely fatal to the
assumption of Christian development. They have said that their sole head
is the state; and this is pure paganism and impiety. They have said that
they abhor a divine sacrament; and this is anti-Catholic,
anti-Christian. But they have said, too, that, in the Church of England,
there is to be both liberty of opinion and the forbidding of a Christian
practice to the laity; and in saying this they have both cut short
development and cut short its root and its principle. Development can
only mean one of two things: either the extension of the empire of one
principle, or the extension of the rights of religious liberty. That it
does not mean the first in the Church of England we think that we have
sufficiently shown; and that it does not mean the second these
memorialists against liberty have taken their best pains to demonstrate.
What development, then, is left to the Church of England? Obviously
there can be none, save the increase of wrangling and the natural effort
to crush one another’s liberty.
Yet there is one new development—to use the word conventionally, and not
in its scientific meaning—which has proved perhaps more shocking and
more thoroughly unchristian than any which has ever gone before. That
development is modern Broad-Churchism. It is distinct from its
antecedent in the Georgian era, being necessitated by totally different
issues. It is a compound of three things, all kindred in kind and all
mutually assisting one another: repugnance to sacerdotal pretension;
indifference about dogmatic truth; and a fondness for scientific
infidelity. This last is the worst of the three, but it is in most men
the parent of the other two. It is an element of Broad-Churchism which
had positively no existence until after the full development of
Tractarianism. Curiously enough, the return to the supernatural, and the
rejection of whatever is not natural, have been almost twin movements in
the Church of England. Ritualism having failed to hold the intellects of
shrewd men, there were only two courses left open: the one was to,
logically, become Catholics, the other to deny the supernatural. The
birth of a new school of so-called scientists, which school has sought
to question revelation, took place at the very crisis when Anglicans
were hesitating whether they ought to become Catholics or not. It
furnished the exact pretext desired. If there was doubt about the
evidence for revelation, it was useless to adopt all its consequences.
Yet it was felt that it would not do to throw overboard Christianity, as
at least the most admirable of ethic systems; so the moral part of
Christianity was retained, while the dogmatic part was put on one side.
Hence a Broad-Churchism which, while being really quite sceptical,
covered itself with the mantle of Christian morals. “I deeply regret,”
said an ecclesiastic of this school, when he came to the last hours of
his life, “that I ever preached anything but morals.” This was paganism,
virtuous paganism, but it passed current for respectable
Broad-Churchism. What it meant, and what Broad-Churchism now means in
almost every one of its adherents, was scepticism in regard to the
Incarnation, but a natural admiration for natural virtues. Dean Stanley
is one of the doctors of this school, and preaches rationalism in
Westminster Abbey. “Christian rationalism” is that last new abortion
which has been born of the failure of previous systems. It had no
existence in England until twenty years ago; that is, it was not
formulated into a system. In these days it is openly taught. In the
magazines there constantly appear brilliant articles which are directed
against the Christian revelation, while yet advocating the beauty of
Christian sentiments, of Christian ethics and philosophy. It is pure
rationalism, under the cloak of respectability. “We would not shock your
pious prejudices,” these novel theorists seem to say, “by telling you
that Christianity is false; on the contrary, we believe that there was a
Christ, but he was not the Son of God, he did not rise from the dead, he
was only a most admirable doctor. Therefore hold fast to his philosophy,
which was amiable in the extreme, and exquisitely adapted to social
wants; and, if you like, remain an Anglican or a Dissenter, or even
please your fancies with ritualism. You cannot do better than remain a
Christian. The Christian system is full of beauty. It is not divine; it
was not revealed; it has not one shred of the supernatural; but so
useful a system has never before been developed; indeed, it includes the
best philosophies. Therefore we advise you to stick to your
Christianity, as you would stick to your domestic canons of harmony.”
This kind of counsel has been given in the _Fortnightly_ and in answer
to recent Catholic publications. Its authors are obviously proud of
their discovery. “Christian rationalism” will just suit a leisure age,
which is too intellectual yet too indifferent to be Christian.
A recent writer has called modern Broad-Churchism “a fortuitous
concourse of indifferentisms.” So it is in its acceptance by the
majority. But there is a very large section which goes far beyond
indifference, and which aggressively attacks Christianity. Whately has
the credit of having started the principle that intellectual inquiry is
above faith. The first duty of man is to be intellectual; and he must
never stand still in his inquiries. When convinced that he has found out
the truth, he must proceed to inquire still more earnestly; always
despising the very issues of those inquiries which he places below
inquiries themselves. Euclid, when it says Q. E. D., ought to have made
Q. E. D. an hypothesis. Reasoning is not intended to conduct to truth,
but should be pursued as in itself the chief good. Argument is above
demonstration, and search is far superior to discovery. This is the
theory of many modernists. But it has only lately raised its votaries
into a school. Mr. Kingsley, when he said, “I am nothing if not a
priest,” had no notion of eliminating Christianity. Even the Oxford
essayists and reviewers shrank from this. Dr. Arnold, who wished to
remove the Athanasian Creed, did not wish to remove Christianity. Bishop
Butler, whom some call the founder of Broad-Churchism, certainly never
dreamed of rank scepticism. The theory of Frederic Dennison Maurice,
that revelation may be given differently to different centuries, did not
exclude revelation. There was always, until quite lately, a clinging
fast to the fond truth that Christianity was a divine dispensation. The
last generation were quite sure of this. But their grandchildren, if
they happen to live in England, may be brought up to adopt the new
religion. They may proclaim frankly that Christianity is a myth, or that
pagan virtue is the best Christianity. To such a depth has Anglican
“development” now sunk. Fathers fear not to talk cold-blooded scepticism
before their little ones gathered round their knees, and to poison their
young natures with that most dreadful of inclinations—the doubting the
pure instincts of their own souls. Sons of clergymen teach their sons
that Christianity may be true, just as a particular political theory may
be so; but that to ally Christian faith with the honor of God is a sign
of feeble intellect or enthusiasm. Many thousands of English children,
sons of educated “Anglicans,” now prattle their scepticism over their
toys.
One hideous consequence of this growth of English rationalism—and
Broad-Churchism is practically rationalism—is that it has lowered the
standard of personal aspiration by removing the certainties of objects.
Protestantism had much of the sentiment of Catholicity, though it had
little of its dogma or discipline; but Broad-Churchism is absolutely
without sentiment, save such as is common to pagans. What the children
of Cicero may have been the children of Broad-Churchmen may be. The
divine instinct of faith is reasoned down. Indeed, Cicero or Terence,
Plato or Sophocles, had a much higher object than the Broad-Churchman;
for they professed that to know would be the chief good, whereas
Broad-Churchmen pronounce knowing the chief evil. It matters not by what
name we call these men, whether free-thinkers, rationalists, sceptics,
their aspiration is to be content with not knowing, instead of regarding
knowing as the chief good. “I think,” said an English gentleman a few
weeks ago, who had graduated at Oxford, and who has six children, and
whose father was a distinguished ecclesiastic, “that the best way is to
try to live honorably, and not occupy one’s mind with inquiry.” Thus he
and his six children have gone back two thousand years in
intellectual—that is, eternal—aspiration, _minus_ this advantage which
the ancients had over them: that the ancients wished to know what was
true. Now, it is manifest that the death of aspiration is the death of
the finest qualities of the human mind; and this is specially seen in
the rising generation of English young men and young women. Where doubt
takes the place of conviction, and cold content of an animating faith;
where natural longings are the sole governing principles, and all that
is beyond the grave is dark cloud; where the illumination of the
intellect by the full knowledge of God—which is alone possible within
the Catholic Church—is deferred to the petty quibblings of speculation,
it must follow that a lower type of men and women must succeed to our
profound Catholic ancestors. There is no need to refer here to Christian
morals; they are the exercise of obedience to particular laws. Nor is
there any need to speak of mere worldliness, which is often incidental,
circumstantial. Nor, again, need we allude to the immense varieties of
natural temperament which bias people’s lives, people’s loves. Let all
questions of perfection or imperfection be set aside; they are not the
immediate points we are considering. Human nature is human nature in
every one, be he a Catholic or a free-thinker; and the extent to which
human nature may be brought under control is a distinct question from
“Anglican development.” The sole point which we are now arguing is the
intellectual consequences of the theory and practice of pure
Anglicanism, and the conclusion we arrive at is that, intellectually
speaking, Anglicanism degrades the human mind. The development of
Anglicanism is deterioration. This is its intellectual development. But
when we speak of the intellect we are not speaking of talent, of any
natural gift, or of industry. We are speaking of intellectual
aspiration; for the true dignity of intellect is its object. To separate
the intellect from its object, the dignity of the end from the means, is
impossible for any really earnest mind, as, indeed, it is rationally
impossible. If, then, the object of an intellect be to _not_ believe, to
eliminate the supernatural out of the world, or to narrow the compass of
aspirations, it follows that the greater is the ignorance, the greater
is the dignity, of the human mind. This theory has been advocated by Mr.
Spencer. “Our highest wisdom and our highest duty,” says this scientist,
“is to regard that through which all things exist as the unknowable.” So
that not only to know nothing, but to wish to know nothing, of the will
of our Creator in regard to us is the highest aspiration of the trained
intellect, whether professedly Christian or pagan. Now, (popular)
Broad-Churchism does not go so far as this, for it would not be
“Christian” to do so. Broad-Churchism affects to be Christian, though it
includes within its pale many sceptics. Yet practically the assertion
that opposite truths are the same truths, or that no truth is a truth
save to its votary, is the assertion that there has not been a
revelation, or that if there has been it cannot be understood. Regard it
as we will, there is no escaping from the conclusion that
Broad-Churchism is inimical to Christianity. It is inimical to divine
faith, to divine love; to the interior exercise of Christian virtues; to
the perfecting those graces of character which are formed on the pattern
of a divine Lord. In short, it is fatal to sanctity. Instability of
Christian faith and stability of Christian life are mutually opposed to
one another. The Broad-Churchman may be an excellent man, but he cannot
be supernaturally a Christian. Christianity is the divine life of man,
and it presupposes many postulates and axioms. And since divine faith in
the whole range of divine truth is the first requisite of the
intellectual Christian, it follows that a Christian who is
intellectually not Christian cannot spiritually advance to perfection.
Thus intellectually and spiritually the Broad-Churchman is at fault in
regard to the Christian life. And this deterioration is the prevalent
“development” of the later stages of Anglican change. Broad-Churchism is
the profession of most Anglicans. And in one degree or another it is the
ruin of aspiration, and therefore of the intellectual Anglican. But
young people, whose intellects are undeveloped, are of necessity chiefly
nourished by their affections; and unhappily the enfeebling of their
faith is the enfeebling the objects of those affections. Thus parents
ruin children by enfeebling the objects, and with them the affections
which need objects. Intellectually and spiritually, sensitively and
instinctively, Broad-Churchism is the ruin of children. And that huge
waste of object, of affection, of sentiment, which the disease of
Broad-Churchism necessitates, stints the growth, both religious and
natural, of the majority of the rising generation. This is the last
Anglican development. And it threatens to breed a race of pagans. There
is the profession, of course, of some sort of Christian life—for
ethically every Englishman must be Christian—but the Christianity is a
natural sentiment, it is not a supernatural life. And must we not call
this the intellectual degradation of the heirs of two thousand years of
truth? The spasmodic attempts of the Ritualist sect to revive certain
fragments of Catholic truth, or the earnest aspirations of warm-hearted
puritans to love all that they know how to believe, are both admirable
efforts, though not true successes; and they are the efforts of a
comparatively small number. Nationally England is Broad-Church, and the
majority of Broad-Churchmen are sceptical. What stage of development can
come next? If in Westminster Abbey “Christian rationalism” is
triumphant, what will become triumphant in country parishes? And if the
feeble reasonings of Dean Stanley, his serene platitudes or pretty
sentiments, are pabulum sufficient for the well educated, what descent
into weakness, into indifference or impiety, may we not look for among
the poorer classes? Scepticism among the poor means simple grossness,
unrelieved by the scholarliness of the rich, and uncomforted by even the
ease of this life. Yet there is an immense spread of scepticism among
the poor. There is even blatant hostility to all religion.
Broad-Churchism is the parent of this evil. The final harvest has not
yet been reaped. Yet it seems certain that in the next quarter of a
century we must either see the English multitude become Catholics, or we
shall see them go down into a state of irreligion which will be simply
paganism _minus_ its gods.
SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI.
A SKETCH FROM THE PARADISO OF DANTE.
Between Tupino’s wave and that which sends
Its flood from blest Ubaldo’s chosen seat,
A fertile mount an airy coast extends,
Wherefrom Perugia feels both cold and heat
Through Porta Sole, and behind it weep
Gualdo and Nòcera their grievous yoke.
There, on that side of it where most the steep
In its declivity is sharply broke,
Unto the world another Sun was born,
Like this, our daily planet, whose glad face
Beams forth from Ganges, bringing Europe’s morn.
Therefore let no man speaking of that place
Ascèsi say—too briefly by that name
Describing it; but let him say the East!
If he would properly enforce its claim.[88]
Not much his light had from its dawn increased,
When he began throughout his land to inspire
Some comfort from a purity so great;
Since yet a youth he fought with his own sire
For sake of her against whom Pleasure’s gate
Men bar, of _her_ face as of death afraid:
And so before his Father, and the Court
Spiritual, with her a marriage made,
And grew in love the more they did consort.
She, slighted widow! reft of her first spouse,
More than eleven hundred years remained
Despised, obscure—no lover paid his vows
To her till this one her affection gained;
It naught availed (to move men in their choice)
To read how Cæsar found her undismayed
With poor Amyclas, hearing his dread voice;
Nor aught availed the courage she displayed,
And the fierce constancy which so sufficed,
That while below heart-broken Mary prayed
Her lofty spirit climbed the cross with Christ.
But, lest my sense I too obscurely screen,
Take for these lovers of my large discourse
Francis and Poverty, for them I mean.
Their concord and glad looks, the gentle force
Of love and wonder, their demeanor sweet,
Were cause that holy thoughts did much increase;
Bernard first bared his venerable feet
To run behind him, after so great peace,
And in his running felt himself too slow:
O unknown riches! O thou good most true!
After the spouse whose bride enchanteth so
Egidius bares his feet, Silvester too.
Footnote 88:
Dante does not overestimate the importance of this little town of
middle Italy to a religious mind. Every Christian must be piously
impressed by the subjoined inscription over the gate of Assisi which
greets a traveller coming from Rome.
These words are believed to have been the dying benediction of St.
Francis as he looked out from his pallet over the roofs of the
mountain city which has become through him a place of pilgrimage:
Benedicta tu civitas a Domino:
Quia in te multi servi Altissimi habitabunt:
Et a te multi animi salvabuntur:
Et de te multi eligentur in regna æterna.
Blessed be thou, O city! by the Lord!
For in thee many servants there shall dwell
Of the Most High; and many souls, restored
Through thee to grace, shall be redeemed from hell;
And many shall be called to their reward,
In everlasting kingdoms, ... from a cell.
THE SOCIALIST IDEA.[89]
A moderate degree of attention bestowed on the signs of the times
apparent in society, and a consideration of the social convulsions which
among ourselves seem only to end that they may begin again, will make it
impossible not to perceive, within the bosom of this society, some
permanent, chronic evil, seated at its very core, and ready to bring to
the surface the seething elements from below by a series of eruptions
recurring at shorter and shorter intervals. This social evil, which for
nearly a century has subjected us to periodical revolutions, as certain
diseases subject a patient to periodical fits or crises; this evil,
whose many roots reach back to causes more or less remote and more or
less appreciable; this evil, which marches through the world of to-day
like the hurricane that sweeps over cities and plains, and which we see
uprooting principles in its passage, corrupting morals, and undermining
society—for society is directly and particularly threatened by its
stormy progress; this social evil—I give it the name it gives itself—is
socialism: socialism—that is, a body of doctrines, passions, and plots
that attack and would fain uproot the actual social system, or, if you
prefer this definition, armed, passionate, and doctrinal aggression
against society; socialism, which forty years ago the mass of earnest
thinkers scarcely thought it worth while to take into account, so hidden
was it then in the depths of mere theorizing, and so dimly perceived by
a few thoughtful men, who saw it half covered by the veil of utopianism;
socialism, which practical men of that time, in their Olympic repose,
deemed too self-condemned by its obvious extravagance to be capable of
doing harm; socialism, which even now still finds a few self-styled
conservatives so blinded as to join hands and conspire politically with
it for the furtherance of their own plans; socialism, which, emancipated
from the region of dreams and speculations, and realized for a moment on
the burning stage of contemporary history, has shown us its hideous form
by the light of incendiary fires, and still points out to us, by the
light of a threatening present, the possibility of a frightful future.
Let us begin at the beginning, and ask ourselves the question, What is
Socialism? I hasten, at the outset of a subject which touches on such
delicate ground, to state that I intend taking my stand above politics
or party spirit. I fight only under two flags, that of society and that
of Christianity. Even in the harshest strictures I may make I shall
attack things, not men—things which we are bound to oppose, not men,
whom we are bound to love.
To come to a full understanding of contemporary socialism it is
necessary to look at it under a triple aspect—as an idea, as a passion,
and as an action; as an idea which gains ground, a passion which kindles
itself, an action which organizes itself more and more under our eyes;
as an idea which gains ground by every channel controlled by the
contemporary press; as a passion which is enkindled by every phase of
contemporary realities; as an action which organizes itself and
conspires by every lever known to contemporary revolutionism—that is, in
three words, the socialist _idea_, the socialist _passion_, the
socialist _action_. It is these that we must fathom and examine, if we
would understand what socialism is and means. I shall be satisfied if I
succeed in developing this time what is socialism as an idea, and what
is the scope of this idea; in what does the socialist idea consist, and
what are its immediate consequences.
It is necessary to grasp the nature of the parent idea which nursed
socialism in its bosom, and has brought it forth as it appears to-day.
Such a movement in the world of reality would be inexplicable without a
corresponding, anterior movement in the world of thought. Ideas, in the
social system, are as germs in the animal and vegetable systems, and
germs in a very practical sense, for they are the seed of things that
come to light later on, and grow according to the kind of soil and the
degree of heat with which they come in contact. Socialism, as a whole,
though intelligible as the result of causes not belonging to the world
of ideas, is, however, the product of an idea which has grown and
thriven long before it came to the surface. I do not mean by this the
body of ideas which has helped to create it, but its own parent idea,
that which, if I may say so, constitutes the socialist _credo_. It is
true that, if we consider socialism in what appears its only living and
real aspect, we are brought face to face with something quite alien to
the world of ideas. What we see is not unlike a lion or a tiger obeying
its instincts and roaring in the desert for its prey. We have no longer
to face a doctrinal socialism with pretensions to a plausible theory,
but a brutal socialism claiming no right save that of might; not a
dreamy socialism such as forty years ago still carried away generous
enthusiasts, but an aggressive socialism hurrying by force to the
fulfilment of its programme; not a contemplative socialism parading
through the world of ideas a Platonic love for humankind, but a
destructive socialism eager to carry through the ruins of the world of
realities the bloody banner of its brotherhood. What we see before us
might be more fitly called the socialism of torch and dagger than the
socialism of ideas and doctrines.
Still, it cannot be denied that socialism heralded itself above all as
an idea which was to make the mightiest revolution in the midst of
humanity that the world had ever seen. What was this idea, and what, in
this era of social revolution, were its starting-point, its path, and
its goal? I have long attentively followed the course of this new
planet, and marked in the changing sky of our social world its chief
appearances. I saw it rise as in the dawn of a bright morning, then grow
amid the clouds of a thousand systems more or less important or obscure,
then at last reach its zenith, and throw over our modern society the
baneful light in which we see it arrayed at present.
At first the socialist idea gave itself out as the idea of social
_reform_; later on in its progressive movement it became the idea of
social _transformation_; and now that it has fully developed itself, it
stands forth as the idea of social _destruction_. If we follow up the
stream of theories which distinguished the beginning of this century and
the end of the last, we shall find that the parent idea of socialism
first embodied the longing for _social reform_, and tended to restore
_universal harmony_ to the new world. To listen to our pretended
prophets and Messiahs, one would be led to believe that the great law of
universal harmony in the social world had been lost amid conflicting
human interests, and needed to be restored or re-enacted; while the
systems of philosophy of that period insisted that within the near
future a regeneration of human nature and a social reform would take
place such as the world had never seen or history chronicled—a greater
reform, indeed, than that accomplished by the divine Reformer in behalf
of poor humanity. These philosophical systems, full of a dreamy poetry,
were nothing but humanitarian idyls, delightful pastorals, pointing in
the future, through a tinted medium, to a rose-colored humanity smiling
under blue skies and an unclouded sun—a humanity free from all the
contradictions and antagonisms of the past, and, like the planets, or
better even than they, revolving round its centre in the undisturbed and
beatific equilibrium of _universal harmony_. Harmony was everywhere in
these fair dreams and easy utopias: there was the harmony of all minds
in truth, the harmony of all hearts in love, the harmony of will in
liberty, the harmony of passions in pleasure, the harmony of interests
in community, the harmony of labor in organization, the harmony of men
in brotherhood, the harmony of families in the state, and, finally, the
harmony of all peoples and nations in the unity of a government that
should rule all alike. The _omniarch_, or universal monarch, of this
universal society appeared in the distance, in the centre of the human
world, as the moderator and ruler of this gigantic harmony of brotherly
nations. In a word, there was nothing but harmony, everywhere and in all
things, harmony easy and spontaneous, springing up from, and flourishing
naturally in, the regular play of all human forces, replaced as they
would be, so said this new language, in their normal motion around their
harmonious centre. This alluring theory, sung by all the bards of the
social philosophy, or rather poetry, of that time, marched triumphantly
along its flower-strewn path, escorted by all the errors and negations
of which it was the result and the essence, and proclaiming to the
gaping world: “I am the revelation of the new world. I am Social
Reform.”
It is worth noticing that while the working of so many unhealthy
doctrines gave birth, as to its natural product, to this growing
socialist idea, so the new world of men seemed to grow towards it by
every breath it emitted, to call for it and drink it in by the diseased
organs of its own unhealthy body. The idea of reform is always and will
always be captivating to humanity, because there is in humanity always
something to be reformed; but at that time the state of the popular
mind, by enhancing its _prestige_, was preparing for this notion a
greater influence over the rising and future generations than it had
ever won in foregoing ages.
Humanity was then bleeding from the pitiless wounds made by the
doctrines of the eighteenth century. Men’s souls, especially in the
lower strata of society, cruelly felt the void created by the Voltairian
creed of individualism. These generations, cut adrift from Christianity,
felt themselves smothered by the monster of human selfishness. Humanity,
literally disinherited of the love of God, was dying of the selfishness
of Voltaire. From the heart of this diseased society came a despairing
cry for love, brotherhood, association. Then started up innovators on
all sides to turn this great need of the human soul to their own
account. They proclaimed _universal association through universal love_;
and as Newton had reconciled by the discovery of gravitation the forces
of earth and air, so they pretended to build on the attraction of love a
permanent harmony between human nature and society. Such was the first
appearance on our stage of this comparatively new element,
socialism—_i.e._, the general and yet undetermined formula of social
_reform_. Its claims, thus put forward in public, with a popularity they
had never reached before, startled many men, even those thinkers who had
scarcely suspected the existence of such ideas. It was, however, no new
notion, and had lain undeveloped in society certainly as far back as the
beginning of this century. It glimmered forth among the fogs of
socialist metaphysics wherein Fourier and Saint-Simon groped after their
ideal of universal reform; it grew under the pens of writers in reviews
and newspapers celebrated in their day—rash innovators who carelessly
questioned every basis of human society, and propounded theories whose
fulfilment involved nothing less than a radical change of the organic
conditions of society, in the magical name and under the shield of
social reform.
The world of ideas had never witnessed such a confusion of mind, such an
upsetting of fixed landmarks, such a perversion of language. An
intellectual orgy gravely took its seat in the social world under the
name and disguise of science; absurdities dubbed themselves
philosophies, folly called itself _reform_; indeed, the passage of these
eccentric theories and these grotesque utopias was one of the great
surprises that attended my curious and truth-seeking youth. They were a
source of pure stupefaction to me. The socialist idea hitherto had been
almost confined to the exclusive domain of philosophical abstractions
and social ideology. After long wandering through the twilight of
various conflicting systems, it emerged from these doubtful regions,
where only a few innovators perceived its presence, and came down to the
level of the people, stirred as the latter were by new aspirations and
hopes. From henceforward the socialist idea, the idea of social
_reform_, was not only a theory broached by philanthropists, discussed
by scientists and philosophers, and taught by intellectual apostles from
tribune and printing-office, but it became a living, acting reality, a
watchword of the laboring classes, a personal question among workmen.
Once there, ripening as ideas do quickly in the fervid soul of the
people, and pushing on towards its development, it strode forward apace,
its evolution only waiting an opportunity to perfect itself abundantly.
The people, little used to the hair-splitting of socialist
metaphysicians, soon saw either that all this talk meant nothing or that
it meant a fundamental transformation of actual social life, and
consequently the road to, or, as it was grandiloquently called, the new
birth of, a state of comfort and power hitherto unknown. Each one made
the dazzling formula, “Society must be reformed,” cover his own special
grievances or aspirations, his pet theories, his individual hopes and
dreams. It soon became patent to all that even the apostles of the new
idea meant not only that the new world should be a _reformed_ one, in
the common acceptation of the word, but a radically reformed—that is, a
_transformed_—world. The fathers of the socialist idea had already
become aware that the present organization of society presented
insurmountable obstacles to the realization of their favorite law of
harmony as applied to their theory of a future society; they felt that
the organic conditions of society as it is were invincibly opposed to
their idea, which, in order to triumph in the end, must become not only
a _reform_, nay, not only a _transformation_, but such a transformation
as should change from the very roots all existing vital conditions of
society. To _reform_ was not enough; they determined to _transform_. One
idea had thus quickly displaced or succeeded the other. Stripped of the
wordy disguises in which it still affected to wrap itself, it was simply
a theoretical denial of society, such as society has been since men have
lived together; a radical change of the social mechanism adopted in
principle and in practice by all nations and acknowledged in all ages; a
triumphal progress of revolution—indeed, social revolution itself.
Up to that period men who worked on the passions of the masses to
compass their own ambitious ends had contented themselves with handling
political problems, stirring up political revolutions. The game played
by leaders of riots or leaders of parties consisted in changing a
monarchy for a republic, a republic for an empire, an empire for a
monarchy, and one species of monarchy for another; but this was child’s
play to the growing power and genius of socialism. Social revolution, as
set forth by the socialist idea, had far other ends in view; it did not
care to stir the surface only of things, but to undermine, or, as we say
now, _revolutionize_, their foundations. This is the difference between
socialism, or social revolution, and political revolutionism, properly
so-called; the former seeks to disembowel society itself. Common—that
is, purely political—revolutionism only affects the surface of society;
it strides over the ruins of governments shattered by the popular arm;
it overturns a throne, then another; drives out one dynasty, then a
second; creates a republic, then another; improvises a constitution;
plays, if I may use the expression, among the dust of institutions,
whether demolished thrones, torn constitutions, broken governments or
legislatures; it grows excited and drunk with enthusiasm and ambition in
the midst of these shifting scenes of the political world, on whose
stage actors, now hissed, now applauded, by no rule but the arbitrary
passion of the multitude, play ever-varying parts—parts barren and
ephemeral, and the common result of which is to wear out those who play
them, to sicken them of men and things, to make them drop from the stage
stripped of their _prestige_, and too often covered with popular
derision, as despairing actors are wont to fly from the theatre where
they have hopelessly “broken down.” It was thus that between the tides
of opinion and action political revolution pursued its course, leaving
ruin and bloodshed in its track.
But after the flood of these monarchies and republics, these
constitutions and governments, these kings and emperors, these
presidents and dictators, these ministers and lawgivers; after all these
sledgehammer blows of force, these _coups d’état_, or these sensational
changes on a stage where revolution had long since decreed that no
government, no constitution, no statesman should ever remain
permanently; behind what we may call _the political phenomenon_, one
thing remained firm—namely, _society_. It was always fundamentally the
same, and stood on a substantial, unalterable basis, above which, but
not reaching it nor attempting to injure it, flowed the tide of
political revolution; it had mechanisms more or less different in
appearance in each century, but the same vital permanent conditions; it
kept its necessary balance between authority and liberty, between
progress and stability; it guarded its three treasures, which to destroy
is to kill society—_i.e._, the family, religion, and property.
This is the secret that explains why, after so many ruins heaped up and
so many battles won, the genius of revolution could not rest content. It
soon perceived that in spite of its gigantic efforts, and even after the
immensity of its triumphs, it had only achieved a surface work. Its
dreams of governments more or less constitutional and representative,
more or less monarchical or republican, had collapsed with the ruins of
these governments, thrown down by its own hand; it felt the emptiness
and disappointment of these political revolutions, whose commonest
result was an increase of wretchedness and a decrease of peace. Then it
said to itself: I will go further; I will dig below the very foundations
of this society, which I find everlastingly the same, with its old
vices, its incurable abuses, and its obstinately recurring tyrannies. I
will reach its heart, the very source of its life, the very core of its
being. There I shall discover the true vital principle of human society,
and, whether it will or no, I will force it to take part in outer
actions, and take its place among the realities of history. I will not
only _reform_ but _transform_ this rotten and disorganized society.
Thus the idea of transformation quickly superseded that of _reform_; but
even a _transformation_ of the conditions of social life, in the
ordinary acceptation of the term, would not have contented the
thoroughgoingness of the socialist idea. No doubt it was better than
reform, for it was a fuller development of the socialist principle, but
it did not constitute a perfect development, it was not the ultimatum of
the idea. Transformation was not enough in the eyes of radical
socialism, or, if you like the term better, socialist radicalism;
_destruction_ was better, and, to speak plainly, its conception of the
former was equivalent to the latter. Socialism had dissected the body of
society, examined and analyzed it in all directions, and then pronounced
its verdict in these words, brimful of supreme contempt: “_Rottenness_!
Let the corpse perish, and the true social body, moulded by our hands,
spring from its remains.” Socialism had examined and probed the still
standing building of our past and present social polity, and had said:
“It is evident to all that the building is bad; better rebuild it, from
cellar to attic. The human abode is not stable; to buttress it is
useless; let us destroy it. This is no longer the time to reform, or
even transform; nothing short of destruction is of any avail. Let the
old social Babylon crumble and decay, and from her fruitful ruins, if
needful even watered with blood, let the new Jerusalem of society come
forth. Social reform was the dream of our fathers; social transformation
is but another dream, a generous fallacy, but still a fallacy,
attempting impossibilities and ending in nothingness. A ruin cannot be
reformed nor a crumbling shed transformed; we see only a building to
pull down and a building to put up. What I will do is this: I will use
the popular arm to _destroy_, and on the ruins of the past I will erect
the edifice of the future.”
The socialist idea, in its logical march irresistible as fate, had
reached its inevitable goal. It began by deciding to _reform_, then it
said, “I will _transform_,” and finally it announced boldly, “I will
destroy, shatter, and demolish.” The beginning was reform with its
alluring utopias of social unity and harmony; the middle stage was
_transformation_, with specious promises of improvement and hopes of a
renewed social youth; the ending is destruction, with open threats of
anarchy and social annihilation. It is impossible to cherish illusions
any longer on this subject: the reformers glided into transformers and
the transformers coolly turned destroyers, not in haste and passion, but
in cold blood, theoretically, we might almost say dogmatically; for
radical destruction, or the uprooting of the existing social order, is
the foremost doctrine of the _syllabus_ of the socialist idea, which is
itself the most perfect outcome of the revolutionary idea.
Living socialism—that is, socialism personified in its real
representatives—no longer makes any mystery as to this, and cannot
pretend to feel itself injured or calumniated if we reproduce and lay
bare its own formulas. It is its own voice that cries aloud over the
world: “Society as it is must perish, and from its ruins a new social
system shall and must spring forth.” The first prophets and teachers of
the socialist idea had hoped that the idea in itself, and for its own
sake, would be accepted at once, and that humanity would spontaneously
open its heart to it, as it does its eyes to the rays of the sun. The
disciples have far outrun the programme of their masters; they no longer
mention the ideal revolution, and if the ideal alone, preached by word
of mouth, should not be strong enough to fulfil the programme at any
given time, they mean to back it with the strong hand, and force it by
violence to become a fact and hasten towards its definitive triumph.
Social destruction is at present the latest phase of the socialist idea,
which boldly comes forward, programme in hand, and bids us accept it and
help to build up its rule as an inevitable necessity. It summons living
society publicly and contemptuously to its bar, and bids it be ready to
be demolished and afterwards re-established according to the fancy of
this evil spirit, powerful indeed to destroy, but helpless to create.
Thus it is that this doctrine—if it can be called a doctrine—so
philanthropic at the outset, so peaceful, so brotherly; this doctrine,
which announced itself as a new gospel of peace, freedom, and
brotherhood, has come to speak sternly of war, of massacre, of
destruction; has sworn that no matter what opposition it raises and what
blood it costs, the socialist idea _shall_ triumph, and has decided that
if it be necessary to reach the throne at which it aims over ruins and
over corpses, it will stride over ruins and over corpses! Let the human
sacrifices seal, if need be, the bloody covenant of the new social
order.
It will scarcely be believed that this work of social destruction has
been compared to the work of Christ, the reformer and transformer of
society. It is so, however; and this new era which is before us has
actually been likened to the social transformation, or rather
restoration, achieved by Christianity—as if anything could be more
flagrantly antagonistic to the great transformation worked by the
Christian idea than this pretended transformation dreamed of and sung by
the prophets of the socialist idea; as if a revolution brought about by
force and violence could ever be compared to a restoration accomplished
through love and self-sacrifice!
You reformers and innovators, do you forget that Jesus Christ attacked
nothing by force and destroyed nothing by violence; that in his divine
wisdom he was content to sow truth in men’s souls and love in their
hearts as the husbandman casts seed into the furrow; and that truth and
love have done their work among humankind as germs in the earth, as the
blood in our veins, as electricity throughout nature—that is, in
mysterious silence, with a strength full of gentleness and patience, yet
with unerring certainty? You forget that if Christ cursed the unjust
rich man—that is, wealth abusing its privileges, wealth without love,
compassion, or sympathy for others—yet he never dreamt of leading the
poor against the rich, but simply placed between the two the powerful
but sweet link of charity. You forget that if he delivered captives from
their bonds and slaves from their chains, he never incited master or
slave to wage fratricidal war on each other, and that it was only as his
teaching sank into the heart of the master that the fetters of the slave
set free through love dropped of themselves, as ripe fruit drops from
the tree in its good time and season. You forget that if the divine
Reformer came to found a new society, it was by a new creation, and not
through destruction; that he came to rehabilitate even bodily society
while he created the true kingdom of souls; and that, far from breathing
into it the spirit of social hatred and jealousy, he came to restore, or
rather found within it, the rule of love and social self-denial. The
very goal which the socialist idea has reached by identifying itself
with the idea of social destruction is itself the best proof of the
irreconcilable antagonism between socialism and Christianity.
I do not say that each individual in the ranks of contemporary socialism
defines and adopts this programme of destruction so clearly and so
resolutely as I have stated. Under all standards there are many men who
neither see nor understand where the chiefs whose orders they obey are
leading them—honest, upright men, duped by villains; passionate lovers
of good, while strayed and lost in the great army of evil. I fully admit
these exceptions, possible, nay, probable, everywhere; and, indeed, why
deny their existence? Nevertheless, the mainspring of socialist action
in our day lies in the idea of destruction, and the problem which
contemporary socialism no longer seeks to veil is simply this: “_What
are the speediest means for completely demolishing the old structure of
society, which is already bursting asunder in all its parts; and when
down, what is to be done to rebuild from its ruins the edifice of the
new social order?_” Yes, such is the problem whose solution socialism
boasts of finding, even though it be through rivers of blood and
mountains of corpses; and yet this social body, rotten as it is said to
be, still rests on strong foundations as old as humanity itself.
Property is its material foundation, the family its human foundation,
and religion its divine foundation; and therefore the logical march of
the socialist idea drives it, like fate, to clamor not only for the
reform and transformation but for the ruin and destruction of these
three things on which rests the whole of society, religion, family, and
property. I do not hesitate to declare it, in spite of the vehement
denials of men still unaccountably blinded to facts: the real scope of
the socialist idea when pursued to its logical conclusion is the radical
transformation or the utter uprooting of these stable and ancient
institutions, as old as human society itself—_property_, _family_, and
_religion_—and thereby the fall of our whole social system, as of a
building on its shattered foundations and its broken supports. There are
many theoretical socialists who do not dare to exhibit their theory in
terms whose brutality seems to exceed even the grotesqueness of the idea
they embody, and many who still cling to a few illusions and have a
regard for decency. Such as these protest against what they call our
calumnies and exaggerations. Destroy? they exclaim; we do not wish to
destroy, we only long to transform. There was a time when, with mistaken
faith in the honesty of purpose I loved to find or imagine everywhere,
I, and you perchance, were deceived by this specious excuse, these
alluring formulas; but to-day it is impossible to mistake the sense of
this former mystery; it has too disastrously been revealed to us.
The socialist idea directly attacks the principle of _property_—that is,
individual possession of one’s fields, house, capital, or patrimony, so
happily called the _domain_; property—that is, in the common order of
things, the fruit of individual labor or of the labor and self-denial of
one’s forefathers; property—that is, the pledge of man’s independence,
and the sign of his kingship in his own home, small as it may be;
property, which in all nations and ages has been sheltered under the
triple shield of nature, justice, and religion; property, the material
basis of society—indeed, its necessary condition and the link by which
the family is bound to its native soil as the tree by its roots;
property, always and everywhere looked upon as sacred and inviolable
among nations who have claimed the honors of civilization; property,
which all societies have acknowledged even while appearing to deny its
rights, violating them by force; property, in a word, which is a thing
so familiar to us that the least infraction of its laws would cause us a
remorse only to be allayed by reparation. Such is the nature of
property; and shall we believe the teaching of this new jurisprudence,
the propagators of these new laws, who maintain that there is no
question of destroying but only of reforming, or at most transforming,
the nature of property?
In what does this miraculous, proposed transformation consist? The
expedient is very simple—namely, to strip the mass of owners in order to
constitute one sole and supreme owner; for it is obvious, after all,
that some one must still possess the earth. This legal spoliation, no
doubt, will be a work of time, but it will be sure. And who is the new
owner to be, in whom the right of universal property shall be vested,
and on whose shoulders will be flung the burden of universal wealth? The
state, forsooth; the god-state, the “state” which may be an honest man
to-day, but to-morrow may be a rogue; the god-state, whom infatuated
philosophers are constantly working to aggrandize, to make all-powerful,
and for which they strive night and day to win more worshippers. This is
to be the one owner and possessor of all; the state shall have all,
organize and work all, distribute and apportion all, be the centre, the
fountain head, and the goal of all; while in this universal domain where
the state controls all, this huge arsenal where the state produces,
executes, or orders all, society shall become a human hive, vast as the
earth itself, but in which every individual shall be reduced, as a terse
writer has put it, to the size and functions of a bee. This is the
masterpiece elaborated by the socialist idea—the dream of universal
property, which is likewise a dream of universal levelling, universal
stuntedness. Individual responsibility or initiative is swept away;
human kingship and free-will disappear; domestic society is left without
a material basis, and even public society without a foundation; the
right of all is practically the right of none, and the result is
universal slavery to universal despotism. Such is the miracle of this
transformation of property, so glibly promised by the socialist theory
to future generations; and though all who fight under the banner of
legal spoliation do not carry thus far their social ideal, and do not
look forward to such absolute communism, all are on the road to it by
the very fact of vesting in their god-state the right of increasing and
decreasing, making or unmaking, individual property under the name of
taxes on the rich and rates for the poor. What astonishes me above all
in this respect is to see in certain men, the most interested personally
in the upholding of the conservative principle of property, a certain
pandering to, or half-support of, this eminently anti-social idea.
The same socialism which attacks the immemorial constitution of property
attacks likewise the immemorial constitution of the family. The
socialist idea attacks specially in the family, together with the
principle of property, the three things which are its pride, its
strength, and its stability—namely, _unity_, _indissolubility_, and
_inheritance_, which, it is needless to say, uphold its permanence and
perpetuity. First of all, it attacks unity, and unity in trinity: one
man, one woman, and one whole family springing from both; one life
produced by two sources fused into one—a unity which, in the family as
everywhere else, is the essential condition of harmony, order, beauty,
and happiness. This unity does not please the socialist. An advocate of
free morals and free love, he prefers polygamy, as allowed by the Koran
and practised by Moslems, to the conjugal unity enjoined by the Gospel
and sanctioned by the teaching and practice of Christendom. Socialism
attacks the indissolubility—that is, the permanence—of the marriage tie.
Such an indissolubility before God and before the state is in its eyes
only the civil and religious endorsement of slavery, the legal and
theological confiscation of liberty. The apostles of free love are
unable to understand the principle which binds two human beings to each
other for ever and under no matter what circumstances. What revolution
allows to society socialism would fain make accessible to the
family—that is, perpetual change and unlimited option concerning divorce
and separation. Socialism claims unblushingly, in the name of nature and
progress, the revolutionary right of a husband to send away his wife,
and a wife to leave her husband, as easily as a nation disposes of its
sovereigns and its governments—a right equivalent to a permanent
revolution in the family and the state, and bearing as its fruit the
abolition of inheritance. Inheritance means the tradition of a
_patrimony_; it is the pledge of the stability and perpetuity of
domestic or home society; bereft of it, the family, without moorings in
the past or hopes in the future, becomes, like the individual, an
ephemeral phenomenon, gone in a breath and holding to nothing but the
present hour. This right of inheritance has its place in God’s plan and
man’s laws; it represents to coming generations the labors, the
benefits, the sacrifices of their forefathers; it extends the influence
of the latter over their descendants. But socialism does not shrink from
questioning it in theory and attacking it in practice. How, it asks,
should the will of a dying man be able to transmit beyond his grave a
domain to his posterity? Down with a privilege which gives man, when he
is a corpse, a posthumous omnipotence in contradiction with the very
condition of the dead, and injurious to the freedom of action of the
living! Socialism thus saps every conservative family principle, and the
spirit it instils into the human mind is destructive to the foundations
of home society, in order that it may prepare a clearer path to the
eventual destruction of public society.
It is scarcely necessary to follow the socialist idea throughout its
destructive march in order to realize the havoc it makes of domestic
society; a glance at its practice is enough. Look at the homes and
hearths where this idea has seated itself and taken practical
possession. What homes, great God! and what morals; they might astonish
even a heathen. The acknowledged reign of license and disorder,
sanctioned by a so-called doctrine, and careless of any outward badge of
respectability, whether civil or religious; a boasting display of a
foulness for which the very faculty of blushing is lost, for the
socialist idea, breathing its poison over these hearths, has
extinguished the lamp of domestic virtue, and tossed into the mire not
only the ideal of Christian perfection but that of moral blamelessness.
No wonder that men preaching such doctrine and practising such morals
should be eager to transform the family; they do it, indeed, in a
strange and appalling manner by turning the sanctuary of honor and
virtue into a sink of corruption and vice.
Furthermore, I maintain that they would turn the home, the school of
faith and religion, into a school of unbelief and impiety; for
socialism, which detests the family and property, hates religion still
worse, because it is the chief bulwark of property and the family. It
hates religion as such—not only this or that religion, but the very
principle of communication between God and man, and the main object of
the socialist idea is to transform—that is, _destroy_—this element in
mankind. The _fiat_ has gone forth, the watchword is given, “No more
religion in humanity”; and the ideal of progress, as pointed out to the
world by the socialist, is simply the suppression of all religion, which
he dubs with the unpopular names of fanaticism, superstition,
clericalism. The cry is not only no more property, no more family, no
more homestead, no more hearth; but the frantic cry takes up other
matters and echoes to the ends of the world a more sweeping
denunciation: No more religion, no more altars, no more priests, no more
churches, no more ritual, no more oblation, no more ceremonies, no more
religious festivals. The like has never before been seen in history; it
could not have been even conceived. This public attempt to drive out all
religion from humanity in the name of progress is an absolutely
unparalleled phenomenon, not only within but beyond Christianity. It is
a monster in human history, the deformity of the nineteenth century. Our
age will appear before history with this shameful inscription on its
forehead, which will sufficiently brand it in the opinion of after ages:
“I, the nineteenth century, have proclaimed by the voice of a million of
atheists, as the law and condition of all progress, the abolition of all
religion.”
And yet you will find religion attending the birth of every new society;
you will meet it at the source of every growing society, and will
perceive it shining and triumphing when that society has reached its
utmost greatness and perfection, for a great heathen writer has truly
called it the motive force of all things: _Omnia religione moventur_.
Religion is to the world of men what sap is to the plant, blood to the
animal, electricity to the system of nature—an indispensable condition
of life, of motion, of fruitfulness. Who would dare undertake to drive
from the earth and uproot from the soul of man this divine link between
God and human nature, this boundary of human life, this vivifying force
which permeates all, fertilizes all, directs and controls all?
Why, I ask these frantic demolishers, why not pluck electricity from
nature, sap from the plant, and blood from our veins? For it is true
that it were easier for the tree to live without sap, the plant without
root, the body without blood, than it is for the human soul to exist
without religion—religion, that need of something divine, that longing
after something durable, that step towards the infinite; religion, that
natural breath of the soul, as the air is of the body, that attraction
heavenwards which corresponds to the physical attraction earthwards of
our body! A mysterious but very sensible force draws us towards our
physical centre of gravity, but a force still more mysterious, more
sensible, and, above all, more powerful draws us towards our heavenly,
our spiritual centre; and while we are physically bound by a chain as
strong as life to the stage of our earthly existence, yet spiritually we
soar by as irresistible an impulse towards the place of spirits, the
eternal and the infinite.
The flagrant antagonism between the socialist idea and the religious
idea is easily explained. Socialism knows by instinct that in religion,
and especially in Christianity, _the_ religion above all others, exists
the divine foundation of the world; that as long as this foundation is
not shaken the social polity can never be thoroughly destroyed; that
religion, even stripped of direct and, as it were, official influence in
the political and social order, is still the last bulwark that
interposes between socialism and its avowed object; in a word, that
_there_ rests the supreme force, the insurmountable obstacle to the new
ideas, there the truth that repudiates the new errors, there the
holiness that repudiates the new corruption, there the authority that
repudiates the new anarchy, there the divine Might which says to the
idea of devastation what God the Creator says to the ocean: “So far
shalt thou go, and no further”—“_huc usque venies_.”
To sum up, there is a disastrous idea prowling through the modern
world—the _socialist idea_. This idea, which at first was only that of
social _reform_, and later became that of social _transformation_, has
developed at present into that of social destruction.
And whereas every social structure rests on three foundations, property,
the family, and religion, so the socialist idea more or less directly
attacks these three foundations. The socialist idea, or socialism looked
upon as a theory, pushes its anti-social aggression up to this climax;
it stands there in radical and fearful opposition, threatening all that
is most vital and most fundamental in society.
Therefore we are bound to resist it face to face, everywhere and always,
and do battle against the socialist idea—that is, the idea of
destruction, disaster, and ruin. I impress upon you the necessity of,
and claim your help in, a doctrinal resistance to this idea, a defence
of all it attacks, an assertion of all it denies; a sturdy repetition of
the _credo_ of universal affirmation, and not only a repetition, but a
publication, a triumphant challenge, to the socialist idea which
embodies in itself a universal negation.
Footnote 89:
From the French of Père Félix, published as an article in the _Revue
Catholique des Institutions et du Droit_ (April number, 1878). The
article is a reproduction of one lecture out of a series, on the
subject of socialism, given at Grenoble, and shortly to be published
entire by Jouby-Roger, Rue des Grands Augustins, Paris.
A ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE.
A fairer light than ever since has shone
Fell on that garden where Queen Eve’s sweet bower
Was hid in roses and the jasmine flower,
Curtained with eglantine, and overrun
With morning-glories glowing in the sun
Late into noon, unheeding of the hour
When now they close: these were our mother’s dower;
She lived and loved amid all flowers, save one.
There was no red rose in the garden wide
Of all her world, until its mistress went
From out its gates with roses in her hand,
Spoil of past joys; then, like a new-made bride,
She blushed in shame, and that first blush has lent
The rose its color over all our land.
HELEN LEE.
A ROMANCE OF OLD MARYLAND.
“I maintain it is a glory for the Catholics of Maryland that, in this
age of religious strife, our colony has been made a home for the
persecuted, and that we are the first to proclaim the equal rights of
all who profess to be Christians.”
These words were spoken by a young man named William Berkeley, who
formed one of a group of five persons seated under the shade of an
oak-tree one summer afternoon in the year 1636. His companions were Sir
Charles Evelyn, who was of about his own age; an old gentleman, Sir
Henry Lee; his daughter, a maiden of three-and-twenty; and, lastly, a
way-worn traveller, whose sad, wan face and unkempt locks told that he
had suffered much and been long in reaching a place of safety and
repose.
“Yea, Mr. Berkeley, this colony hath set a glorious example,” answered
the last-mentioned individual. “And I wish my worthy friend Roger
Williams had accompanied me hither, instead of halting where he did on
Narraganset Bay; for he hath a rigorous climate to contend with. Oh! how
cold it was last winter, how bitter cold, as we journeyed through the
wilderness. And, moreover, the Puritans of Massachusetts, not content
with having exiled him once for his religious opinions, may claim
jurisdiction over the haven where he is now resting, and drive him still
further away.”
“Well, ours is indeed a charming country,” spoke Helen Lee. “It is now
two years since we landed from the _Ark_ and the _Dove_, and we have all
enjoyed uninterrupted good health, while our numbers, which at first
were only two hundred, are now much increased. Oh! St. Mary’s is a
blessed spot.”
“And we shall very soon have our church finished,” observed the young
baronet, who sat between Helen and her father. “The big wigwam which the
Indians kindly gave us wherein to celebrate holy Mass is become a great
deal too small and many are obliged to kneel outside.”
After a little further conversation, and after again praising the
climate and people of Maryland, Roger Williams’ friend arose; then,
having thanked Sir Henry for his hospitality—the latter had entertained
him at dinner—he silently waved his hand to the others and bent his
steps towards the town.
“I am glad that stranger has found his way here,” said Berkeley almost
as soon as his back was turned; “and to-morrow I will try to get him
employment.”
“I entertained the fellow at my table; I could not have done less,”
growled Sir Henry, knitting his brow. “But I hope I have seen the last
of him.”
At this remark Helen turned towards Berkeley, making him a sign with her
finger, which unfortunately he did not perceive. She knew her parent’s
hasty temper, his bitter feelings against Dissenters, and feared lest
they might engage in a dispute over the question of religious
toleration.
“The true glory of our charter,” went on Berkeley, “consists in—”
“’Tis precisely its weak point,” interrupted Sir Henry, who knew well
what he was about to say. “Ay, this religious freedom which you so much
admire will one day prove our ruin. Only let enough Puritans and fellows
like him who has just quitted us settle here, and then you and I and
Lord Baltimore, in fact every Catholic and Anglican, will be hurried out
of the colony.”
“I do not believe it,” said Berkeley.
“But I do; and it shows what little sense you have,” continued Sir
Henry, now quite red in the face.
We need not give the rest of the discussion between them, which waxed
louder and hotter, until finally, at something the old gentleman said,
Berkeley got up, made a silent bow to Helen, and walked away. In a
moment Evelyn followed him.
“What! go back and make peace with Sir Henry?” exclaimed Berkeley, as
the other took his arm—“after calling me low-born, and saying that was
the reason I sympathized with common folk and Puritans? No, no, I
cannot.”
To any one of a less generous nature than Evelyn this might have been a
welcome announcement, for both he and Berkeley were suitors for Helen’s
hand. But Evelyn did not let this fact for a moment lessen his desire to
restore harmony between his rival and Helen’s father. “Look,” he said,
“how pained his daughter is! She is weeping. Do return and be friends
for her sake.”
“You are a noble fellow to speak thus,” answered Berkeley. “But I
cannot; for, besides calling me what he did, he bade me henceforth hold
aloof from him, and I will obey. As for Helen, she is too good, too
meek, too patient; she is a martyr.”
After they had walked together a short distance, Evelyn, finding that
his efforts to persuade Berkeley to retrace his steps were vain, let him
go his way, and during the rest of the afternoon he had Helen all to
himself.
These two had been friends from childhood, and their natures were much
alike. Both were dreamers. Well-nigh as far back as their memories went
they had built castles in the air; and after they had been strolling
hand-in-hand, as they oftentimes used to do, amid the pleasant groves of
Evelinton Park, Yorkshire, the boy would always bid his gentle comrade
good-by with a kiss; then little Helen would betake herself to her
father’s mansion, which was next to that of Sir Charles Evelyn’s, and
pass the time until she was put to bed thinking about the pretty boy,
who had made so many vows to be with her all through her life; and she
closed her eyes with his words ringing in her ears: “If a giant comes to
attack you, Helen, or a dragon, I will defend you; I will kill the
horrid beast or wicked man.” And often in sleep she witnessed a
desperate fight, wherein her knight, after many wounds received in her
defence, always came off victorious.
Happy indeed were those days of childhood. And when in the course of
time Helen grew to be a woman and Charles a man, it was wonderful how
little they had changed, how like children still they were. Indeed, the
only new thing which Helen observed in him was that he did not kiss her
any more as he used; while the youth occasionally saw a flush steal over
her cheek as she listened to some innocent speech of his—innocent yet
full of rapture—wherein he said there might be maidens in heaven who
were like herself, but only in heaven. And so they continued to be much
in each other’s company; and when at length Helen’s father fell into
debt—for old blood is spendthrift blood—and determined to cross the sea
with the hope of retrieving his credit and decayed fortune in the New
World, Evelyn would not stay behind.
Sir Henry Lee, let us here remark, was a cavalier of the truest stamp;
chivalrous, devoted heart and soul to his king, utterly careless of
money. “And never was there a queen like Queen Henrietta Maria,”[90] he
would say. Her being a Catholic mattered not a jot; for, although he
himself belonged to the Church of England, he had married a Catholic
wife and allowed his daughter to be brought up a Catholic. The only
people he hated were Presbyterians, and his beau ideal of the devil was
John Knox.
As soon as Sir Henry had resolved to join the company of Lord Baltimore
he sent for a surveyor to make a map of his encumbered estate, which he
could no longer afford to hold; and the surveyor’s name was William
Berkeley. While the latter was engaged on this work Lady Lee would often
go and talk with him; and among the last words which this excellent
woman spoke to her daughter before she died were these: “Helen, you are
now of an age to marry. Yonder is a man who would be of great help in
mending our shattered fortune. William Berkeley is a Catholic, and he
tells me that he too intends to go with Lord Baltimore. As for his
having no title, think none the less of him for that; he hath a
pedigree—’tis even said he comes down from Robin Hood. Child, you might
do worse than wed that honest, able yeoman.” And the girl treasured up
these words; and now this summer evening, while Evelyn is alone with her
in Sir Henry Lee’s new home in Maryland, trying to console her for the
harsh language which the old gentleman had used towards Berkeley, her
mother’s advice came back upon Helen’s memory with very great force, and
she asked herself: “What should we do if Mr. Berkeley were henceforth to
hold aloof from us?” For he was a worker, not a dreamer. He gave Sir
Henry good counsel which might in time be listened to; and if a day of
urgent need ever came, he would be a useful friend. Whereas since they
had been at St. Mary’s what had the gentle Evelyn done to better his
condition? And his father, like her own, was overwhelmed with debt: old
blood is spendthrift blood. True, his morals were correct; he was the
very soul of honor, well educated, and of distinguished mien and
manners. But as time wore on Helen felt more and more convinced that
there was something wanting in Evelyn’s character, and, were she to give
him her hand, was it not only too probable that they would grow poorer
and poorer? “For, alas!” she would sigh, “I am too much of a dreamer
myself, and we cannot live on dreams.”
Moreover, Helen believed that Evelyn’s love for her partook too much of
a religious devotion; what he had told her years before he kept telling
her still—she was his angel; and Helen shrank from taking a step which
might undeceive him: “For I fear if I became his wife I should cease to
be his angel.”
The room, where they now sat conversing together was the one known as
the queen’s room; for, besides the portraits of the family, it contained
a picture of Queen Henrietta Maria by Van Dyck. Nothing in the world did
Sir Henry treasure more than this work of art by the great master,
unless, perhaps, his own daughter. Yet even this priceless gem he might
ere long be obliged to part with, as he had already parted with his old
wine, in order to pay off fresh debts.
“In a day or two,” spoke Evelyn, “I will make another effort to
reconcile your father to Berkeley. I do hope I shall succeed.”
“I pray that you may,” answered Helen.
Then, as he toyed with one of her rich chestnut curls, “Helen,” he
added, “I am going to paint a grand picture—St. George delivering St.
Margaret from the Dragon—and I want you to sit for my model of St.
Margaret. Will you?”
“I fear I am not worthy of such an honor,” replied Helen. “Poor me! What
am I?”
“You are the inspiration of my life,” pursued Evelyn. “Yes, the little I
have accomplished is all owing to you. But for you I should never have
touched a brush.”
“Well, well, I’ll be St. Margaret; but who is to be St. George?”
“Myself. And now, when may I begin?”
“To-morrow, if you like.”
“To-morrow? Good!”
With this Evelyn withdrew, leaving Helen meditating on his words: “You
are the inspiration of my life”; and she said to herself: “Alas! would
that I had known how to inspire you better, good, kind Evelyn, my
earliest friend. But all I have taught you to do is to play artist; and
you would starve on the proceeds of your brush.”
Then presently her thoughts turned to her other lover, the strong,
active, practical Berkeley, who never fell into rhapsodies over her
eyes—her eyes, deep as the sea, blue as the sky, bright as the stars—as
Evelyn did, nor said that his prayers were little worth unless she were
kneeling near him.
Berkeley showed his feelings in a plain, healthy way by a hearty squeeze
of the hand, and by now and again begging her to mend his buckskin
gloves. “Because no girl in St. Mary’s can sew like you, Helen.” And, as
might be expected, the young surveyor was bettering his condition every
year, and had always something to give away to those who were not so
well off as himself. Helen knew, too, how he had bestirred himself to
find a purchaser for her father’s wine, and it was through him she had
disposed of several jewels—precious heirlooms from her mother. In fact,
Berkeley seemed able to do everything; and few people in St. Mary’s
began anything important without first consulting him. Then Helen
recalled one of the old fairy tales which Evelyn had told her when they
were children, and wished that she were a fairy. “For then,” she said,
“I would quickly wave my magic wand over Evelyn’s head and change him
into Berkeley, and so make everything smooth, and my poor heart would be
at peace.”
She was beginning, moreover, to agree with Berkeley that it was not wise
to undertake to build a castle; a simple log-house would be much better.
Already her father was involved in fresh trouble on account of this
folly. Yet, even after selling his wine, and she her jewels, there was
still money owing; and only one tower was finished.
Evelyn, on the contrary, had praised the undertaking, and told Sir Henry
that as soon as the edifice was completed he would make a fine painting
of it. Thus from musing over days gone by—the happy days in England,
when her dear, prudent mother was living, who always had urged
economy—and the sad present, tears came to Helen’s eyes, while the
chamber grew darker and darker, until she could no longer distinguish
Queen Henrietta Maria’s face looking down upon her from the wall. By and
by she groped her way to her harpsichord, and began to play a mournful
tune which was in harmony with the shadows and her own thoughts.
“Well, really, child!” exclaimed Sir Henry, entering presently with a
light, “as if this abode were not cheerless enough with only you and me
to inhabit it, you must needs give me melancholy music.”
Quick Helen changed the air and struck up something full of life and
gladness, “A Carol to the Sun” ’twas called; and when he asked where she
had got this delightful music—for it was new to him—and she answered,
“From Evelyn,” her father seemed much pleased. “But, child,” he said,
“why do you hesitate so long about accepting Sir Charles? Is it because
Berkeley is courting you too? Why, one has a title and is of gentle
blood; the other is a plebeian, and I hope will make his visits less
frequent in future. I spoke sharply to Berkeley to-day—did I not?—and if
he comes again I’ll speak more sharply still.”
Seeing that Helen made no response, Sir Henry continued: “Why, the
fellow actually had the impudence to advise me not to go on with this
castle, which I intend to make the finest structure in the colony. But
Evelyn has better taste; blood tells in everything, and he agrees with
me that Lord Baltimore will be highly gratified when it is finished, and
will write to the king about it.”
“Well, there is indeed a magnificent view from the top of the tower,”
observed Helen timidly. Then, plucking up a little courage, “But,
father,” she added, “think of the money it will cost; think of the
future.”
“A view! A magnificent view!” cried Sir Henry. “God-a-Mercy! is that all
you have to say in praise of this tower? A magnificent view! Would you
have the portrait of our gracious queen hanging in a log-cabin? And that
suit of armor which your ancestor wore at Agincourt, which bears upon it
the dents of a battle-axe—would you wish to see it in a log-cabin?
Child, you are not worthy of your name.” Then, after a pause, during
which he strode excitedly back and forth, Sir Henry continued: “As for
money, I never trouble my head about money. But when you bid me think of
the future—well, I have indeed bitter thoughts when I allow my mind to
dwell on the future.”
This was true enough. Helen’s father was no longer young. Helen had not
yet chosen a husband; would he live to see a male descendant of his
house? “Oh! it wrings my heart,” he murmured half aloud—and his daughter
heard the lament—“it wrings my heart to think of the old stock dying
out.” After giving vent to his sorrow even by tears, the old gentleman
bade Helen commence the usual evening reading. And let us here observe
that the only book he cared for was _Don Quixote_, which Helen read to
him in the original; for he had been in Spain and had taught her
Spanish. Accordingly, she opened the volume—’twas the third time she had
gone through it—and began to read in a loud, clear voice, while Sir
Henry sat with his back towards her and his eyes resting on the ancient
suit of armor, whence they never strayed, except for a moment to glance
at the portrait of the queen.
Helen had found _Don Quixote_ quite entertaining the first time she had
perused it; but now the interest was all gone, and only the dread of
offending her father kept her from often pausing and nodding her head.
But this she durst not do; and so on and on she read through five
chapters, without so much as lifting her eyes off the page, after which
Sir Henry told her to put the volume aside, then withdrew in what for
him was a very genial humor.
The night which closed this summer day was a restless one for Helen Lee.
She lay awake several hours listening to a whip-poor-will perched on a
tree by her window. She got thinking about her father, whom, despite his
acerbity of temper, she dearly loved; she thought of the rash way he was
squandering his means, and said to herself: “Dear mother was right: in
order to save ourselves from utter ruin we should live as economically
as possible. But, alas! he will not do it, and we may be forced ere long
to sell our new home here, as we did our old home in England.” And when
at length she fell asleep, these mournful thoughts followed her in a
dream.
The next morning Helen repaired to Evelyn’s abode, which stood on the
outskirts of the town, and found him all ready to begin the painting of
which he had spoken the day before.
“You look a little pale, Helen,” he said as she entered his studio. “You
are always as blooming as a rose. Are you not well?”
The girl did not answer, and presently her countenance brightened, for
by nature she was of a cheery disposition, ever hoping for the best,
even when the sky looked darkest; and, besides, it was never difficult
for the companion of her earliest years to interest her.
“Look,” continued Evelyn, “look at that oriole singing on the elm-tree
yonder; his mate is hidden in the deep pear-shaped nest, with a tiny
door on the side, which you see dangling from the end of the limb. Well,
I have given that beautiful bird a new name; I have christened it the
Baltimore bird, because we find in its golden plumage, mixed with deep
black, the colors of Lord Baltimore’s arms. And his lordship was highly
pleased yesterday when he heard the new name.”
“What a fanciful boy you are!” answered Helen, smiling.
“And, Helen,” he went on, “I am composing a new song for your
harpsichord. You see you have inspired me to become a poet as well as an
artist.”
“I sometimes fear that I have caused you to dwell too much in
Cloud-land,” said Helen. Then, a little abruptly, “Evelyn,” she added,
“did you ever cut down a tree?”
Ere the young baronet could make reply Berkeley, with an axe strapped
across his shoulders, galloped up to the open window of the studio.
“Good morning! good-morning!” cried the surveyor. “Why, Helen, I am
lucky to catch you here; I was going as nigh the tower as I durst
venture, in order to bid you good-by.”
“Good-by! What mean you?” exclaimed Helen, betraying in her voice and
looks the anxiety she felt.
“I am going forty miles up the Potomac, in order to lay out a new
settlement,” answered Berkeley; “for our colony is growing, you know,
and I am kept pretty busy.” Then, bending down from the saddle and
taking her hand, “Helen,” he added, “please tell Sir Henry how sorry I
am that I showed so much temper yesterday. I ought to have held my
tongue, or not spoken out so openly, for I might have known that we
should not agree. Tell him I ask his pardon.”
Helen gazed up in Berkeley’s face a moment, then her eyes dropped and
she murmured: “Yes, I will tell him.”
“But of course,” pursued her lover, “I do not change my opinion. I still
firmly believe that the example of religious toleration which Maryland
has set will in time be followed by the other colonies; and who knows
what a century may bring forth? Why, I believe the day is coming when
all North America will be occupied by English-speaking commonwealths,
where there will be no religious wars as in Europe; Catholics and
Protestants will dwell in harmony together, and then it will be said:
‘Maryland began it. God bless Maryland!’”
“You have quite won me over to your way of thinking,” interposed Evelyn.
“A man may be tolerant of the views of others without being himself
indifferent.”
“Why, Roger Williams’ friend, whom we saw yesterday,” spoke Helen, “was
drawn hither by our very toleration. Yes, we have outstripped the
Puritans in common sense, and who knows but this poor exile may end by
embracing the true faith?”
“But now, to change the subject,” went on Berkeley, who saw a fresh
canvas spread out and a crayon in his friendly rival’s hand, “are you
about to begin a new picture?”
“Yes,” said Evelyn; “a picture of St. George rescuing St. Margaret from
the Dragon, and Helen is to sit for St. Margaret.”
“Indeed!” Here Berkeley meditated a moment in silence. The fact is, he
feared lest he might be absent from St. Mary’s three or four
months—perhaps longer: would it not, therefore, be wise, if he wished to
secure Helen for his bride, to ask her forthwith to plight him her
troth? Had he not already deferred it long enough? He could now afford
to marry; and if he still put off the weighty question, might not Evelyn
during his absence become the chosen one? “Why wait,” he asked himself,
“until I have made friends with Sir Henry? He never would look with a
favoring eye on our union, for I have no title; I am plain William
Berkeley. Yet Helen is of age, she is not a slave, I love her dearly;
and if she loves me enough to accept me, why, in God’s name, let us be
married.”
Then aloud he said: “Evelyn, before I go I must pass a few minutes in
your studio, just to see you commence the picture.”
“Yes, do; and let me call a servant to take your horse to the stable,”
said Evelyn.
“Thanks. I’ll take him there myself,” answered Berkeley, who was now
determined not to set out for the wilderness without knowing his fate.
“How well he rides!” observed the artist. “What a soldierly bearing he
has!”
Then, gazing earnestly in Helen’s face, he added:
“Berkeley would make a capital St. George. Would he not? Shall I put him
in the painting instead of myself?”
At this question Helen’s cheek crimsoned, and without making any
response she awaited Berkeley’s return; while Evelyn murmured to
himself: “Alas! alas! I see I should do well enough for a picture; but
he would be her real St. George.”
In a few minutes Berkeley reappeared, and as he entered the room he
seemed to read Helen’s thoughts at a glance; for the first words he
uttered were:
“Evelyn, may I enquire who is to sit for St. George?”
Here Evelyn turned to Helen, upon whom Berkeley’s eyes were fastened,
saying: “Dear Helen, please answer for me.”
This was a cruel moment for the girl—most cruel! What a throng of
memories rushed upon her!—memories of far-off, sunny days, when she and
the pretty boy used to saunter and dream hand-in-hand together along the
shady paths that lay between her native home and his. And now all these
memories became so many voices pleading powerfully in Evelyn’s behalf;
he had loved her from the beginning, and she had only met Berkeley when
she was grown up to womanhood.
But when she thought of the latter, she remembered her dead mother and
what she had said of him—of his inner worth, his talents, his energy.
Then, too, since Helen had been in Maryland, Berkeley had shown in many
ways that he was attached to her; and, moreover, he was a man in the
truest sense of the word—a man on whom she and her heedless father might
lean and find support. His every waking hour was devoted to some useful
employment. Far and wide he was known as an able, active, daring man;
and at this very moment he stood before her all equipped to plunge into
the trackless forest to pioneer the way for another settlement. His
views, too, of the future had won Helen’s heart; she believed, as he
did, that in America the church was destined to spread and to glean a
more golden harvest than in old, worn-out Europe. And so, after a
painful inward struggle, which revealed itself not faintly in her
countenance, Helen’s response came, and, turning with tearful eyes to
Berkeley, she said:
“William, do you be my St. George.”
“For life, Helen?”
“Yes, for life.”
At these words of doom poor Evelyn, who had felt what was coming,
averted his face and stared on the vacant wall. Then, presently, bidding
them remain a short while in his studio, that he would not be gone long,
the heart-broken man hurriedly quitted the house.
The church whither he went was close by; and there at the foot of the
altar he flung himself, bowed down his head, and tried hard to breathe a
prayer. But he had never suffered before as he was suffering now, and it
was not easy for him to be resigned, to have a Christian spirit, to say,
“God’s will be done.” For a moment even a rebellious, devil-sent word
quivered on his lips; and thus did he kneel dumbstricken before the
altar, until by and by—brought to him, perhaps, by his guardian
angel—came a sweet, holy calm; the storm passed away, and, spreading
forth his arms, he gazed upon the ever-burning lamp which told of the
Blessed Presence of his Saviour truly near him. And as he gazed upon it
Evelyn took a high resolve; the words of the Psalmist came to him: “When
my heart was in anguish, thou hast exalted me on a rock. Thou hast
conducted me; for thou hast been my hope.... In thy tabernacle I shall
dwell for ever.”[91]
Then straightway followed a flood of joy; like a bright, sunshiny wave
it flowed over his soul. In his rapture he sang aloud the _Gloria_, the
_Magnificat_, the _Te Deum Laudamus_. After which, rising up off his
knees, he went back to his friends, who were wonder-stricken at the
change that had come over him in the brief space since he had left them.
Evelyn’s whole countenance beamed with a fire that was in striking
contrast with his former listless self; and in a voice wherein was no
tone of sadness he addressed Berkeley, saying: “Now to work! Let me
quick begin St. George; I will draw rapidly, and in a couple of hours
you shall be free to depart.”
Accordingly the picture was commenced, nor had the artist’s crayon ever
touched the canvas so deftly before; indeed, so swiftly did he work that
by the time the Angelus bell told them it was noon the rough sketch was
finished.
Nor did the parting betwixt Berkeley and Evelyn bear the least trace of
coldness; they seemed like two brothers, and Helen like an affectionate
sister between them.
“And now,” spoke Evelyn, when the other was gone, and as he and Helen
turned towards the tower—“now I’ll go see your father, and try my best
to appease his anger against your betrothed.”
“Oh! how kind, how good you are,” answered Helen, who would fain have
said more; but how could she? What language could express her gratitude
to Evelyn for being so forgiving? And she inwardly owned that, whatever
his weak points were, he was a rare, high-minded man—a man the like of
whom this world had few indeed.
“Sister,” pursued Evelyn, in the tender accents she knew so well, “I am
only too happy to serve you; and you know it is now more important than
ever to soften Sir Henry’s heart towards Berkeley.”
“Yes,” said Helen, “otherwise I foresee great trouble in store for me.”
“But if I do not succeed, why, then you must speak to him yourself,”
added Evelyn.
A half-hour later the young baronet and Helen’s father were closeted in
the queen’s room, engaged in earnest talk.
“Well, I have known many good Papists in the course of my life,” spoke
the old gentleman, “but upon my word you are the best one of all. Why,
you ought rather to rejoice to have Berkeley hold aloof; yet here you
are pleading his cause.”
“Berkeley is a most honorable, excellent fellow,” rejoined Evelyn,
“and—”
“Oh! there you go again,” interrupted Sir Henry. “Your charity gets the
better of your common sense. Why, what is he if you strip him of all
disguises—what is he but the son of a forester, who, having turned
surveyor, is no doubt earning money? But does that make him a
gentleman—a fit one to be your rival for my daughter’s hand?” Then,
after pausing and wiping his brow, Helen’s father continued: “No,
indeed! And I would be really thankful, Sir Charles, if you would
prevent him from ever coming again within a mile of my castle.”
“How might I accomplish that?” inquired Evelyn, inwardly smiling.
“How? Why, by asking Helen’s hand. From her cradle she has known you,
and you her; she cannot help but love you if she has any heart at
all—and she has a heart; oh! yes, a warm, loving heart.”
“Sir Henry,” replied Evelyn, with a faint tremor in his voice, “Helen
can never be more than a dear friend, a sister, to me; I intend to
become a priest.”
“What! a priest?” cried Sir Henry, utterly amazed. “A priest! O Evelyn!
Evelyn!” Then, dropping his forehead in his hands, he began to sigh and
wail. “I counted upon you,” he said in accents of unfeigned grief. “I
counted upon you. But now, alas! all my bright hopes are vanished—all!
all!” Then presently, clenching the hilt of his rapier—the old cavalier
always carried a rapier—“But Berkeley shall not have her,” he thundered,
working himself up to a violent passion. “No! by heaven, he sha’n’t!
Never! never! I swear by—”
Leaving Sir Henry storming and invoking anything but blessings on poor
Berkeley’s head, Evelyn withdrew to seek Helen, whom he found waiting
outside the door. The girl trembled when she learnt the result of his
interview with her father, and scarcely had courage to enter the
latter’s presence. Urged, however, by Evelyn, she overcame her timidity
and passed into the room; then, in as firm a voice as she could command,
she told Sir Henry that Berkeley had requested her to beg his pardon for
having angered him. Helen told him, too, that the surveyor was gone off
forty or fifty miles from St. Mary’s; and concluded by reminding her
father of the high opinion which her mother had entertained of the young
man, of his industry, honor, manly courage.
“And dear mother was not given to praising people unless they were
really good and worthy of praise. So, father, I implore you, do not
harbor any ill-feeling against William Berkeley. Indeed, I am quite sure
my mother would have agreed with him.”
Here Helen paused to hear her father’s answer; if he relented—and she
hoped that he might, for, despite the rage he was in, he had listened
without interrupting—if he relented, she intended immediately to reveal
her engagement. But if he did not relent—what then? With heart violently
beating she watched him; his hand was still upon his sword, and after
waiting a good minute, as if to see whether she had aught else to say,
Sir Henry replied:
“You tell me Berkeley has quitted St. Mary’s for a while; well, I hope
he will remain away. As for what Lady Lee may have thought of him—alas!
your mother held certain very unseemly opinions, which more befitted Wat
Tyler’s wench than a nobleman’s spouse. Why, she once even denied to my
face the divine right of kings; and she was obstinate—most obstinate.
But, nevertheless, I little doubt that the Almighty hath already granted
her forgiveness. O child! although I am not a Papist, I own there is
much consolation in your doctrine of purgatory; it is a most consoling
doctrine.”
Knowing that to stay and argue with her father in his present mood would
only make the matter worse, Helen was about to withdraw when she was
startled by a loud groan which escaped him:
“Evelyn a priest! a priest! a priest!” ejaculated the old knight.
“What! is he going to become a priest?” exclaimed Helen, turning back
from the door. “Oh! then he has chosen wisely. Father, do not deplore
it. Let us say rather, ‘God be praised!’”
“Then you did not know this? It is news to you?” inquired Sir Henry,
eyeing her closely.
“Upon my honor I knew it not,” replied Helen, trembling, for she feared
lest he might follow up his question by another, which she would dread
to answer.
“Well, now leave me,” continued her father, waving her off. “Leave me
alone a space. Go! I am heart-sick.”
For well-nigh a week Sir Henry remained inconsolable; even Don Quixote’s
adventures failed to entertain him, nor his daughter’s cheeriest music
and blithest songs move him to mirth. The workmen, too, whom he was fond
of superintending and thus whiling away some hours each day, did not
come any more to labor at the castle walls; for Sir Henry’s funds were
running low and he had not wherewithal to pay their wages.
His favorite haunt was a small island christened the Island of Tranquil
Delight. It was named after a pretty isle in a lovely stream which
flowed hard by Sir Henry’s old home in England. But in several respects
the two islands differed greatly: one was shaded by the wide-spreading
branches of an oak—an oak planted in the days of William the
Conqueror—and at the foot of this venerable tree lay the ruins of what
once had been a hermit’s cell. The other island had a persimmon-tree
growing in the middle of it, and every time Sir Henry approached this
retired corner of his domain he espied an opossum waddling off; and the
name of both tree and animal sounded exceedingly vulgar to his ears.
But, as we have remarked, this was his favorite spot. Here he loved to
come and listen to the murmuring brook, to see the trout jump up, and
watch some beautiful lilies, the bulbs of which he had brought over from
his native land.
One day Helen determined to go down to the Island of Tranquil Delight
and make another attempt to soften her father’s heart towards her future
husband. “And then,” she said to herself, “I’ll tell him that I am
William’s betrothed; and oh! what a weight will be lifted off my heart.”
Accordingly, she repaired thither. But Sir Henry quickly checked her,
saying: “Why, child, one might think from the interest you take in
Berkeley that you were fast in love with him. Good God! child, I hope
not. I—”
What else he might have spoken we cannot tell, for just at this critical
moment who should be seen advancing towards them but one of Sir Henry’s
oldest and best friends, a boon companion of his youth, who had just
arrived from England; and in the hearty greeting and long talk that
followed all thought of Berkeley was happily driven out of the old
gentleman’s mind.
We may imagine what a Godsend this proved to be for Helen. And,
moreover, her father’s friend was invited to make the castle his home as
long as he remained at St. Mary’s, so that his visit afforded the girl
not a little spare time; for Sir Henry did not oblige her to read to him
a couple of hours daily nor sing and play for him on the harpsichord.
Indeed, he took his watchful eye off her movements entirely; neither
asked whither she was going when she went out, nor where she had been
when she returned home; and language can but faintly express the
blessings which Helen breathed on her father’s guest for thus
unwittingly procuring her so much liberty.
Every day she spent some time in Evelyn’s company, whose newborn energy
gave her as much wonder as delight. Nothing he had ever painted before
was so instinct with life, showed such marks of genius, as the painting
he was now engaged upon. And seeing her there so often, and hearing them
converse together so familiarly, caused more than one gossip to say:
“There will be a wedding ere long at the Tower.”
But Sir Charles did something else besides ply his crayon and brush: he
was up every morning as early as the oriole whose nest hung close by his
window, studying and otherwise preparing himself for his new life; and
the stars were long twinkling in the heavens when he retired to rest at
night. And if sometimes in the still hours a vision of what might have
been passed before him—a vision of home, of a hearthstone of his own, of
wife and children gathered around him—the sweet vision vanished, nor
left a pang behind, as soon as he opened his eyes and murmured a prayer.
Thus passed away August, September, October, and Sir Henry began to hope
that Evelyn had got over his folly—for such he called the notion of
becoming a priest; and this hope, together with the companionship of his
friend (who Helen prayed might never go away, and who had brought over
from London a pipe of Canary, which he insisted on sharing with his
host), caused Sir Henry’s spirits to revive greatly; and one morning he
kissed Helen, and said in what for him was a very mild voice: “Child,
when will you bring me the glad tidings I am yearning to hear?”
Whereupon she smiled, rubbed her cheek against his grizzly beard, and
without answering thought to herself: “The fantastic plan which came
last night in a dream will succeed; I feel sure it will. And though I
shall have to brave your wrath once more, in the end, father, you will
forgive me.”
And now was ushered in the loveliest season of the year—Indian Summer.
Of an early morning on one of these lovely days Helen mounted a pillion
behind Evelyn, and, accompanied by her waiting-woman, set out for St.
Joseph’s, which was the name Berkeley had given to the new settlement,
and where report said he was become the chief man. Her father made no
objection to her taking this trip, for he knew there was a widow lady,
with whom Helen had been once exceedingly intimate, who was now living
at St. Joseph’s, and it was quite natural that the girl should wish to
visit her.
Moreover, good Father McElroy—formerly Helen’s confessor—was living
there too; so that the old gentleman, as guileless as he was proud, did
not suspect the real object of this journey, for he had not heard Helen
breathe Berkeley’s name in several months.
As for Helen daring to wed him, nay, even to plight Berkeley her
troth—this Sir Henry could have sworn that his meek, obedient child
never would do.
Accordingly, as we have said, Helen departed for St. Joseph’s, her
father wishing her “God speed! and come back soon,” and she waving her
hand to him until the forest hid him from view. Then Sir Henry turned to
his old comrade, saying: “’Tis well I have you with me, Dick, otherwise
this castle would be horribly dull now”; on which the other answered:
“Depend upon it, Harry, there’s a match brewing ’tween Miss Helen and
Sir Charles. Ay, I can tell by the sparkle of a lassie’s eye when she’s
in love; nor is there any thought of priesthood in Evelyn. And at the
wedding feast we’ll drain dry my cask of Canary and set the whole town
in a roar.”
“May the Lord hasten that day!” returned Sir Henry. “Oh! I long with a
longing words cannot express to see a grandchild ere I die.”
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
Footnote 90:
Queen of Charles I., and in whose honor the colony was called
Maryland.
Footnote 91:
Ps. lx. 3-5.
THE FUTURE OF FAITH.
“Looking, then, at the Church of Rome from a strictly logical
stand-point, it is hard to see how, if we believe in free will and
morality in the face of these modern discoveries, which, as far as
they go, show us all life as nothing but a vast machine—it is hard
to see how we can consider the Church of Rome as logically in any
way wounded, or crippled, or in a condition, should occasion offer,
to be less active than she was in the days of her most undisputed
ascendency. I conceive of her as a ship that seems now unable to go
upon any voyage, or to carry men anywhere, but that this is not
because, as was said not long since, that her ‘hull was riddled by
logic,’ or that she is dismasted or has lost her sails, but merely
because she has no wind to fill them. In other words, with regard to
supernatural religion, and Catholicism as its one form that still
survives unshattered, I conceive that the imagination of the world
has been to a great measure paralyzed; but that it may be seen
eventually that it never was in any way convinced; and that nothing
is wanting to revive the Roman Church into stronger life than ever
but a craving amongst men for the certainty, the guidance, and the
consolation that she alone offers them.
“The only question is whether such an outburst of feeling is in any
way probable. It is possible that the world may be outgrowing such a
craving as that I speak of; or that it may find some new way of
appeasing it.”
Such is the conclusion of an article on “The Future of Faith,” by W. H.
Mallock, in the London _Contemporary Review_, March, 1878. It goes
without saying that the writer is not a Catholic; his very phraseology
sufficiently shows this. His testimony, therefore, to the truth, the
strength, and the stability of the Catholic Church is the more important
as being that of an outsider. He is a man, judging by such of his
writings as we have seen, who in a time of intellectual doubt and
questioning, almost of despair, is searching honestly and earnestly for
some truth on which to rest, if truth there be. He examines all things,
shirks nothing, shrinks from nothing. He is not terrified by phrases; he
is not to be put off with jargon, scientific or otherwise. If a man
descants to him on “the great Unknown and Unknowable,” he listens with
calm politeness, and then asks quietly, What _is_ the great Unknown or
the great Unknowable? And so with any other term and real or alleged
fact. He sifts and sifts until he gets at the bottom. If the bottom is
emptiness he says so; if he finds something there he says so. He
acknowledges established facts, whether or not those facts go against
his natural inclinations, or his preconceived theories, or the
prejudices that in the course of a lifetime grow up around even the
broadest and most honest minds; for pure intelligence is a rare quality
indeed in man. The testimony, then, of a man like Mr. Mallock, a man who
in every line he writes shows a keen intelligence, a mind formed by
careful study and stored with knowledge, a rare culture, and a thorough
honesty of purpose—the testimony, we say, of such a man is of real value
on any subject of which he treats, and worthy of all respect.
The article which we purpose examining, and presenting in great part to
our readers, seems to us to be almost the closing link in a long chain
of reasoning. It is closely connected with other writings by the same
author, and, though complete and independent in itself, thanks to the
writer’s skill and logical strength, it ought really to be read with
them in order to grasp its full force and significance as intended by
the author himself. It should be read in connection with _The New
Republic; or, Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country
House_ (Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1878); “Is Life Worth Living?” (the
_Nineteenth Century_, September, 1877, and January, 1878); to which may
be added “Positivism on an Island” (the _Contemporary Review_, April,
1878). All of these bear one upon another. In them the most brilliant
and refined satire alternates with, may be said rather to lighten,
illustrate, and render fascinating, the most eager and earnest and
searching inquiry into the very foundations of all that constitutes
human society, especially in its modern and unchristian form. Mr.
Mallock does not laugh simply for the laugh’s sake. Indeed, there is a
deep mournfulness in his satire, notwithstanding its brilliancy—an
undertone of sadness that causes one to doubt sometimes whether it is a
laugh or a wail that we hear. It seems to us that the highest satire
should always leave this doubt on the mind—the satire that is only
bitter with the healthy bitterness of truth cleverly presented. However,
we will not discuss that matter now; and with the mere mention of Mr.
Mallock’s other writings, and the recommendation of them as affording
reading that is at once very pleasant while it is healthy and strong, we
turn to the more immediate subject of our article.
The future of faith is of course a question that deeply concerns all the
world, more especially in these days, perhaps, when faith in its honest
old meaning is dying according to some, dead according to others, an
effete and pitiable superstition according to very many more. Delightful
and quaint and chivalrous old Kenelm Digby would seem half inclined to
restrict the _Ages of Faith_ to days when Christian knights went forth
to battle for the Holy Sepulchre, when there was in all Christendom but
one Christian faith held by all, and when Europe was forming and
emerging out of paganism and barbarism under the beneficent hand of the
Catholic Church. Those old days have passed away, and with them,
according to many modern and enlightened thinkers, has passed the old
faith. Christendom itself has passed away, too. Those were the days of
the infancy of Christian nations, and an infantine belief akin to, where
it was not wholly, superstition befitted them, according to what claims
to be modern enlightenment. One religion was very natural then, and did
much good, perhaps, in softening and checking barbarism and saving the
very life of Europe. But as the infants grew into youth, and the youth
developed into manhood, it was only natural that they should cut aloose
from their leading-strings, tire of the mother who had watched so
tenderly over their birth and growth and development, and discover that
she was a shrewish old termagant, who wanted to keep them in
leading-strings all their lives. So they cut their leading-strings and
emancipated themselves, and believed as they liked and did as they
liked, and left their mother to live or die as she might. Mother-like
she refused to die; she lived for them. Though grown to man’s estate,
they were still her children. Though they would disown her, she was
still their mother. And her eyes went out wistfully after them; her
heart yearned always for their return; her prayers went up unceasingly
to heaven for them. Will the “Ages of Faith” ever come back, the old
unity, the old simplicity? Is such a thing as the old faith ever dreamed
of in this faithless age? Is there a desire anywhere among men for
Christian unity, or is the tendency not rather the other way, towards
still greater disintegration, until the very name of faith be banished
from the world, and all mankind shall have attained to the supreme
scientific beatitude of placid disbelief in a God whom they cannot see
with their earthly eyes, touch with their earthly hands, set under their
microscopes, examine and analyze and measure and weigh? This is really
the question to which Mr. Mallock applies himself.
To those who note the signs of the times there is observable a strong
centripetal as well as an equally strong, and perhaps more pronounced,
centrifugal moral force working among men to-day. The centre from which
the one party seeks to fly, and to which the other party seeks to turn,
is Rome, the centre of Catholic unity. Take the Anglican Church as an
instance. More than once in its history of three centuries has there
been an attempt among some of its members to turn backwards to Rome.
Never was that attempt more open and avowed than it is to-day, and, on
the other hand, never was that attempt more bitterly resented by an
opposing and more numerous party in the same church than it is to-day.
There were at one time, under Alexander I., strong hopes of Russia
becoming reconciled to the mother church. The sudden death of the
emperor effectually quenched those hopes for the time being. The very
large and ever-increasing number of conversions to the Catholic faith
within the last half-century, of men of every form of belief or of no
belief, very many of whom have been conspicuous for their learning and
ability, some of them for their genius, is another indication of the
real existence and strength of what we have termed this centripetal
moral force. We only note these facts now, without stopping to inquire
into their cause. But whether we be right or wrong in our belief that
there is a strong and growing tendency towards reunion in Christendom,
there is no denying that outside of the Catholic Church there never did
exist so open and pronounced a feeling of religious unrest and
disquietude as exists to-day among all bodies of professed Christians.
What they have of religion, and what their fathers professed, no longer
satisfies them. What were once held to be indisputable articles of faith
are so no longer. Deep mistrust of the old ways, disbelief in the old
tenets, have set in, and men who wish to be Christians find themselves
without any fixed ground of faith. Thus infidelity is reaping a rich
harvest, for the reason that Christianity in the minds of non-Catholics
was identified with Protestantism in its various forms. But
Protestantism now is found insufficient and wanting. It has fallen to
pieces under the attacks of its own children, who to-day find themselves
without a faith, and without any positive moral guide save such
fragments of the truth as are still left to them, and to which the best
of them adhere as a matter of necessity without exactly knowing why.
They feel that Christianity is right, is the best; but they have not
quite made up their minds as to what Christianity is or where it is. In
fact, they shrink from the painful inquiry, and naturally enough; for
the very fact of such an inquiry is an admission that there is something
_very_ wrong in their system, and that the wrong is an old growth.
This general feeling of unrest and disquietude shows itself in a
thousand ways, and in no way more conspicuously than in the literature
of the day, even in its lighter forms. What newspaper is without its
“theologian”? We keep a theologian, say the newspapers, as the lady of
the _nouveaux riches_ said: “We keep a poet.” In days when religion is
by many advanced minds supposed to be altogether out of date we find no
subject of more general and entrancing interest than religion. The first
question asked when a respectable rascal is exposed is, To what church
did he belong? And so seemingly advantageous is religion, at least in a
social point of view, that it generally turns out, especially, we are
sorry to confess, in our own country, that the rascal was “a leading
member of the church” and “in good standing.” We know to our cost what
the school of “Christian statesmen” means. Even these degrading and
disgraceful spectacles show that Christianity cannot be so very dead
when its profession is found to be so very profitable a moral investment
and so strong a guarantee of good character and sound morals. The
evidence is that, whatever may be said, people still cling to it as
something sacred and above suspicion, and their sense is undoubtedly
right, however often and however sadly they may find themselves
mistaken. It is not yet a reproach to a man that he is a professed
Christian. On the contrary, it is the greatest stigma, as it ought to
be, on his character when he falls. If he avowedly believed in nothing,
in no moral law, men could easily understand why he should refuse to be
bound by any moral law. But when he professes to be a follower of Christ
and betrays his trust, even the infidel is shocked and turns with
special loathing from the hypocrite.
Emerson, who is avowedly no Christian, in these his late days—and, let
us hope, his best—can find no subjects so interesting as morals,
religion, ethics; and his tendency, allowing for his early training, his
acquired habit of mind and expression, is unquestionably in the right
direction. Some of Carlyle’s latest and noblest utterances are Christian
in spite of himself. At least he can find nothing in the world, which he
long ago consigned, to the devil, of such real worth as Christian faith.
Bulwer Lytton’s last and, to our thinking, his best story presents a
noble Catholic youth as the very _beau ideal_ of excellence, and
excellent because of his Catholicity. Thackeray sighed long ago for what
to him seemed a hopeless reunion with Rome. George Eliot’s stories are a
perpetual wail of despair for lack of fixed belief and a moral right
which she cannot see. Others, the scientific minds more especially, are
fiercer and bitterly attack anything that recognizes the supernatural.
James Anthony Froude, while confessing that Protestantism as a whole has
gone to the devil and allowed Protestants to go wholesale the same way,
is startled at a “revival of Romanism.” We are only taking these few and
varied instances as characteristic of the multitude of non-Catholics
to-day who would fain believe in something and take refuge from the
awful blank of infidelity. The magazines are full of them and of many
like them. Mr. Disraeli moves England with a religious novel; and his
political rival, Mr. Gladstone, has only lately deserted Rome to take up
the Turk. Indeed, he seems to take even a more passionate interest in
his theological than in his political discussions; and, _facilis
descensus_, our own Secretary of the Navy shows his supreme fitness for
his position by writing a remarkably bad and stupid book—remarkably bad
and stupid even for him—against Rome.
We have not lost sight of our subject nor parted company with Mr.
Mallock. All that has been said has only been intended to show how
general is the interest to-day among all classes of minds in religious
discussion. This of itself is an assurance that there is something to
discuss; that there are disputed questions abroad which interest all men
alike; and that these questions are not settled. And that is the point
to which we wish to call special attention. Outside of the Catholic
Church there is no body to-day claiming to be Christian which is fixed
and steadfast in its belief; and this is only another way of saying that
there is no belief which wholly commends itself to its professed
followers, save the Catholic. Mr. Mallock does not write for Catholics.
They are, as he acknowledges, and as all acknowledge, at least firm and
steadfast. There is no shaking them. They may be wrong, utterly wrong,
but at least men can see exactly what they believe and why they believe.
Are they right in their belief, or are others right? Is there any such
thing as faith in this world to-day, and is there any reasonable hope of
its holding its ground and approving itself to the intelligence of
mankind? These are the questions which Mr. Mallock puts in the calmest
of tempers and with the thorough honesty of purpose we have already
noticed.
In discussing “the future of faith” Mr. Mallock naturally turns his
attention to those who profess to have and to hold Christian faith. The
prospects of faith in the present order of the world he does not find
very encouraging. What is called modern thought is against it; modern
tone is against it—“a tone of confident and supercilious animosity that
is gradually dying into triumph.” “It is true,” says Mr. Mallock, “that
this leaven in its full bitterness is to be found only in a narrow
circle; but flavors of it, more or less diluted, meet us far and wide.
Indeed, it is difficult to find any place where they are not traceable.”
This is undoubtedly true; it is equally true that “there is doubtless
much definite religion left around us, and many firm believers. But the
modern tone has its influence even on these. Religion must be changed in
some ways by the neighborhood of irreligion.” This he explains by
showing the amicable social relations that exist between religious and
irreligious people in these days.
“They are united by habits, by blood, and by friendship; and they
are each accustomed to ignore or to excuse what they hold to be the
errors of the other. In a state of things like this it is plain that
the convictions of believers can neither have the fierce intensity
found in a minority under persecution, nor the placid confidence
that belongs to an overwhelming majority. They can neither hate the
unbelievers, for they daily live in amity with them; nor despise
altogether their judgment, for the most eminent thinkers of the day
belong to them. The believers are forced into a sort of compromise,
which is a new feature in their history. They see that the age is
against them; and they are obliged to make excuses for their enemy.”
Mr. Mallock, it will be seen, does not here characterize his
“believers.” We are not prepared to agree altogether with what he says
in this. At the very least the influence resulting from a social truce
between believers and unbelievers need not tell entirely on the side of
unbelief. There is no reason why believers should not be as steadfast in
a drawing-room as in a church or on a battle-field, and politeness to an
opponent does not of necessity imply a concession of weakness. Religious
fervor is by no means incompatible with civility; but doubtless Mr.
Mallock has in view more particularly Protestant believers, though he
would not seem to restrict himself to them, judging from the following
passage:
“If the modern tone has thus affected even those who ye most opposed
to it, what must not its effect be upon those who have, in part of
their own free will, adopted it? And these form to-day a great mass
of our educated public. A large number of these still call
themselves Protestants; and were the matter to be treated lightly,
they might afford countless studies for the humorist. The state to
which they have reduced their religion is indeed a curious one. With
a facile eclecticism that is based on no principle, and that changes
from year to year, or more probably from mood to mood, they pick and
choose their doctrines, saying: ‘I keep this and I reject this,’ in
some such manner as the following: ‘Of course the Apostles’ Creed is
true, and of course the Athanasian Creed is false. And then, after
all, suppose neither is true, the meaning of the thing is the real
heart of the matter.’ Such is the Protestant language of to-day. Nor
is it the language of foolish or of ignorant people; it is the
language of countless clever men who have much to do, and of
countless clever women who have nothing to do.”
The author proceeds to test the actual value on a person’s life of such
a faith as this—a faith that has nothing really fixed in it, and that
varies with the mood of the holder. There come the great trials of life,
when those who sorrow or those who suffer or are sorely tempted require
all their fortitude, must trample on themselves and on their own
feelings and natural instincts, or yield to despair and give way to
wrong.
“A great sorrow comes, or a great temptation comes. At once the tone
of to-day grows more pronounced, and a new set of arguments suggest
themselves with singular readiness: ‘God is not good, or he would
never have robbed me of so good a husband’; or, ‘God is not good, or
he would never have let me marry such a bad one’; and then follows,
as a corollary to these propositions, ‘God is nothing if not good,
and therefore there is no God at all.’ Or the syllogism, especially
in the feminine mind, takes not uncommonly some such form as this:
‘If there was a God he would put me into hell for being in love with
so-and-so; but I am certain in my own mind that I do not deserve
hell; therefore I am certain in my own mind that there can be no God
to put me there.’”
The aptness and force with which Mr. Mallock brings the application of
these vague speculations about religion and these loose principles of
belief home to daily life is characteristic of the man. He is not
content with wandering in the clouds. He brings everything down to solid
earth, and tests and weighs it there. He does not ask, How will this
appear to the philosopher? but How will this affect the lives of men and
women? Religion is not for the philosophers only, but for every man born
into this world. A recent trial in Brooklyn gives peculiar point to his
remarks on this head. “In former times,” says Mr. Mallock, “when such
thoughts occurred to men, the whole weight of the world’s opinion always
was ready to condemn them as vain and wicked. But now the case is just
reversed. However foolish may be the actual conduct of such reasoning,
the opinion of the enlightened world is ready to corroborate the
conclusion.”
He goes on to take another circle, “a probably far larger one.” This is
made up of men who are in suspense altogether. “They see much to revere
and to regret in Christianity, but they make no pretence of believing in
its details. They do not even think them worth arguing against.” And,
lastly, “there are the extreme destroyers, who would break altogether
with the past; and who, though probably wishing to retain some of the
emotions that were once directed to God and to heaven, would give them
an entirely different object in the shape of humanity, and would never
suffer them to wander from the earth’s surface.”
“Such are the various parties that the world of thought now shows to
us,” says Mr. Mallock—a small body who cling heart and soul to the past;
a small body that would utterly break with the past; and between them “a
vast and varied crowd, tinged in various proportions with the colors of
each extreme. And amongst them all there is a continual arguing, and
anxiety, and perplexity.”
There is no denying the truth of this picture. Such is Christendom
to-day, and what is to be the outcome of it all? The keen and truthful
observer whom we are quoting thinks “it cannot be doubted that the
modern tone is spreading,” and the tendency is therefore against faith.
“To all except a small minority faith, in the old sense of the word, is
growing a cold and shadowy thing.”
“The dogmas, the services, the ministers of the church are coming
all of them to have a belated look for us. They seem out of place in
the busy world around us. Ever and again we hear of a new Catholic
miracle and the fame of some new pilgrimage. And the strange effect
that these things have on us shows us how far our minds have
travelled.
Do such things still exist? we ask in surprise and irritation, and
we set them down as ‘the grimacings of a dead superstition’
galvanized into a ghastly imitation of life. And then from the
modern miracles the mind goes back to the older ones, once held so
sacred and so certain. And they, too, have undergone a change for
us. Not only are Lourdes and Paray-le-Monial contemptible, but
Calvary is disenchanted. There may have been a death there, but
there was never a Sacrifice. Scales have fallen from our eyes. We
see it all clearly. The creed we were brought up in is an earthly
myth, not a heavenly revelation. We know exactly whence it came, and
we see pretty certainly whither it is going. The signs of it still
survive; but they signify nothing. They will soon be swept away, and
will make place, we hope earnestly, for something better.”
Such is the modern tone, wonderfully well presented. Is it so universal
as Mr. Mallock seems to think, or so deeply rooted in the minds and
hearts of men? He himself is in doubt on this point, and proceeds to
inquire with characteristic honesty and persistence. He takes up and
classifies the various objections against Christianity that are popular
to-day: the objections _à priori_, which are opposed to all religion,
natural as well as revealed; and the objections _à posteriori_, which
are opposed to revealed religion only. We must refer the reader to Mr.
Mallock’s article for these objections, as space does not allow us to
present them, nor is their presentation necessary to our immediate
purpose. The conclusion at which he arrives is briefly this: “If
Christianity relies for support on the external evidence of its truth,
it can never again hope to convince men. These supports are seen to be
utterly inadequate to the weight that is put upon them. They might
possibly serve as props, but they crash and crumble instantly if they
are used as pillars.”
We are not so much arguing with Mr. Mallock as allowing him free
utterance, therefore we make no formal exception to what he here says.
But, he goes on, “it is as pillars that the whole Protestant community
uses them,” the “props” above mentioned, and he takes up Protestantism
as the religion of the Bible.
“There,” it says, “is the word of God; there is my infallible guide.
I listen to none but that. It is my first axiom that the Bible is
infallible; and granting that, history teaches me that all other
churches are fallible. On the Bible, and the Bible only, I rest
myself. Out of its mouth shall you judge me. And for a long time
this language had much force in it, for the Protestant axiom was
received by all parties. It is true that it might be hard to decide
what God’s word meant; but still every one admitted that God’s word
was there, and it at any rate meant something. But now all this is
changed. The great axiom is received no longer. Many, indeed,
consider it not an axiom but an absurdity; at best it appears but as
a very doubtful fact; and if external proof is to be what guides us,
we shall need more proofs to convince us that the Bible is the word
of God than that Protestantism is the religion of the Bible.”
We agree with Mr. Mallock that if this be Christianity, Christianity has
lost its use and its place in this world. Reasonable men cannot be
brought to understand how so stupendous and vast an edifice as
Christianity can by any possibility rest on so very narrow and shaky a
foundation as that presented by Protestantism. The whole thing is either
a gigantic sham, which has enslaved and overshadowed men’s minds too
long already and wrought infinite mischief in the world, or else we must
seek some deeper and broader foundation for it than this. “In this
country” (England), says Mr. Mallock, “nearly all the ablest attacks
upon supernatural religion have been directed against it as embodied in
the Protestant form; and they have widely, and not unnaturally, been
regarded as quite victorious.” There is left then only one of two
alternatives: either Christianity is false, or Protestantism is not
Christianity.
Protestantism has fallen, as we said, under the hands of its own
children. They have demolished it, and left only scattered fragments of
what was a body with something like life in it. In destroying it have
they destroyed what they identified with it—supernatural religion, or
Christianity?
“It seems to escape the assailants,” observes Mr. Mallock, “that
though they may have burnt the outworks, there is still a citadel
inside, which, though it seems to them almost too contemptible to
take account of, may yet not prove combustible, and, when the
conflagration outside has subsided, may still remain to annoy them.
They forget altogether, I mean, the Church of Rome; nor do they seem
to consider that, though for other causes she may perhaps be dying,
yet many of their logical darts can do nothing to hasten her end.”
Having found Protestantism so complete a failure, Mr. Mallock turns to
the Catholic Church and examines it. He finds that “Catholics have one
characteristic which fundamentally separates them from the Protestants”
with respect to the chief points at which modern thought and science
have assailed revealed religion. Protestantism, he says, offers itself
to the world as a strange servant might—bringing with its number of
written testimonials to character. It expressly begs us not to trust to
its own word. The world examines the testimonials carefully; “it at last
sees that they look suspicious, that they may very possibly be
forgeries; it asks the Protestant Church to prove them genuine, and the
Protestant Church cannot.”
Catholicism comes in an exactly opposite way. It brings the very same
testimonials, but sets itself above them. It speaks with its own
authority. It speaks as Christ spoke, Who said openly and boldly:
“Believe in _me_; _I_ am the way, the truth, and the life; the Father
and _I_ are _one_.” He used the Scriptures also, but only as adjuncts to
his own teaching. His credentials were exclusively his own. The
Scriptures were his; he was not the Scriptures’. And so the church which
he founded surely ought to speak—the church which is his living body,
higher and greater than any Scriptures. “It” (the Catholic Church), says
Mr. Mallock, “asks us to make some acquaintance with _it_; to look into
its living eyes, to hear the words of its mouth, to watch its ways and
works, and to feel its inner spirit; and then it says to the world, ‘Can
you trust me? If so, you must trust me all in all, for the first thing I
declare to you is that I have never lied. Can you trust me thus far?
Then listen, and I will tell you my story. You have heard it told one
way, I know; and that way often goes against me. I admit myself that it
has many suspicious circumstances. But none of them positively condemn
me. All are capable of a guiltless interpretation; and now you know me
as I am, you will give me the benefit of every doubt.’ It is in this
spirit that Catholicism offers us the Bible. ‘Believe the Bible for my
sake,’ it says, ‘not me for the Bible’s.’ And the book, as thus offered
us, changes its whole character.”
We have no fault to find with this presentation of the Catholic claims
so far. Mr. Mallock has here fully grasped an essential difference
between Catholics and Protestants which few non-Catholics are able to
grasp. How clearly and well he elucidates this important point will be
seen by those who care to read his article, of which we can only present
the substance. His conclusion with regard to Catholicity and the Bible
is: “As Catholicism stands at the present moment, it seems hard to say
that, were we for any other reasons inclined to trust it, it makes any
claim for the Bible that would absolutely prevent our doing so.” That
being the case, it follows as a matter of course that all the “logical
darts” aimed at the Bible fall harmless from the invincible armor of the
Catholic Church.
He then goes on to consider the various doctrines of the Catholic
Church, and herein he shows the same capability of appreciating the
Catholic stand-point, an appreciation of which stand-point is, of
course, necessary to any one who would honestly inquire into what
Catholicity really is, and what Catholics actually do believe. These
doctrines, he says, “though it is claimed that they are all implied in
the Bible, are confessedly not expressed in it, and were confessedly not
consciously assented to by the church till long after the sacred canon
was closed.” We would here remark that this is true only of some
Catholic doctrines. Well, says Mr. Mallock, “let us here grant the
extreme position of the church’s most hostile critics. Let us grant that
all the doctrines in question can be traced to external and often to
non-Christian sources. And what is the result on Romanism? Does this go
any way whatever towards logically discrediting its claims?” We will let
him answer his own question in his own way:
“If we do but consider the matter fairly, we shall see that it does
not even tend to do so. Here, as in the case of the Bible, the Roman
doctrine of infallibility meets all objections. For the real
question here is not in what store-house of opinions the church
found its doctrines; but why it selected those it did, and why it
rejected and condemned the rest. History cannot answer this. History
can show us only who made the separate bricks; it cannot show us who
made and designed the building.... And the doctrines of the church
are but as the stones in a building, the letters of an alphabet, or
the words of a language. Many are offered and few chosen. _The
supernatural action is to be detected in the choice._ The whole
history of the church, in fact, as she herself tells it, is a
history of supernatural selection. It is quite possible that she may
claim it to be more than that; but could she vindicate for herself
but this one faculty of an infallible choice, she would vindicate to
the full her claim to be under a superhuman guidance. The church may
be conceived of as a living organism, for ever and on all sides
putting forth feelers and tentacles, that seize, try, and seem to
dally with all kinds of nutriment. A part of this she at length
takes into herself. A large part she at length puts down again. Much
that is thus rejected she seems for a long time on the point of
choosing. But however slow may be the final decision in coming,
however reluctant or hesitating it may seem to be, when it is once
made it is claimed for it that it is infallible. And this claim,
when we once understand its nature, will be seen, I think, to be one
that neither our knowledge of ecclesiastical history nor of
comparative mythology can invalidate now or even promise ever to do
so.”
It will be seen that we are a long way from Protestantism already, and
that we have here a very different kind of church, which, be it right or
wrong, rests on a very deep and firm foundation. At least this must be
said of it by all: Granting its truth, there is no stronger foundation
conceivable. Granting it to be false even, it is hard to conceive a
stronger foundation, or one that could commend itself with more force
and assurance of safety to reasonable men. If there be a God living and
moving in this world, this looks very like God’s handiwork.
Mr. Mallock concedes that “the Catholic Church can still claim, in the
face of all the new lights thrown on her history, to be sprung from a
supernatural root.” But it may be that she “will be found to be betrayed
by her fruits” when these are inspected in detail. Her primary dogmas
and her general sacred character may be conceded; but “numberless
deductions from them and indirect consequences” may “revolt our common
sense and our moral sense, though we have no exact means of disproving
them.” Such difficulties, he finds, do exist; “but if we examine them
carefully, many, at least, will be found to rest upon misconceptions.”
The difficulties in question are that Catholicity “makes salvation
depend on our assenting to a number of obscure propositions”; that to
many Catholic ritual seems to be an integral part of the church’s
mystical body, and that thus salvation is made to hang “not only on an
assent to occult propositions of philosophy, but upon altar-candles and
the colored clothes of priests”; again, “the temper and intellectual
tone which she seems to develop in her members” makes the church “a rock
of offence to many”; there are “a number of miraculous legends and
quaint beliefs which are or have been prevalent amongst Catholics.” Of
all these difficulties Mr. Mallock himself very lucidly and effectively
disposes, and shows that they “will be seen to be not really
formidable.” There are other difficulties, however, which he finds
“worse than these.” They consist of “certain moral objections to the
Catholic Church’s scheme altogether, and objections of science and
common sense to other necessary parts of it.”
“The moral objections consist principally of these: the
exclusiveness of the church, which leaves the rest of mankind
uncared for; the church’s doctrine of rewards and punishments, which
are barbarous or ridiculous in their details, and which, besides
that, make all virtue venal; and the doctrine of a vicarious
satisfaction for sin, which to many minds carries its own
condemnation on the face of it. Lastly, besides these, there is the
entire question of miracles.”
Into all these matters Mr. Mallock goes with the same patient purpose
and honest mind that distinguish him everywhere. His conclusion, as a
whole, is given at the head of this article. Space forbids us to follow
him any farther, but we cannot resist the temptation to quote for the
benefit of our non-Catholic readers what he says on infallibility and on
the “exclusiveness” of the Catholic Church:
“The doctrine of the church’s infallibility,” he says, “has a side
that is just the opposite of that which is commonly thought to be
its only one. It is supposed to have simply gendered bondage, not to
have gendered liberty. But as a matter of fact it has done both; and
if we view the matter fairly we shall see that it has done the
latter at least as completely as the former. The doctrine of
infallibility is undoubtedly a rope that tethers those that hold it
to certain real or supposed facts of the past; but it is a rope that
is capable of indefinite lengthening. It is not a fetter only; it is
a support also, and those who cling to it can venture fearlessly, as
explorers, into currents of speculation that would sweep away
altogether men who did but trust to their own powers of swimming.
Nor does, as is often supposed, the centralizing of this
infallibility in the person of one man present any difficulty from
the Catholic point of view. It is said that the pope might any day
make a dogma of any absurdity that might happen to occur to him; and
that the Catholic would be bound to accept these, however strongly
his reason might repudiate them. And it is quite true that the pope
_might_ do this any day, in the sense that there is no external
power to prevent him. But he who has assented to the central
doctrine of Catholicism knows that he never _will_. And it is
precisely the obvious absence of any restraint from without that
brings home to the Catholic his faith in the guiding power from
within.”
Of the “exclusiveness” of the Catholic Church, or, as it is more
commonly put, of the doctrine that “out of the Catholic Church there is
no salvation,” Mr. Mallock thus writes:
“As to the exclusiveness of the Catholic Church, it must be of
course confessed that much perplexity is caused by any view of the
world which obliges us to think of the most saving truths, and the
most precious helps to a right life, being confined to a minority of
the human race. But, supposing we attach to a knowledge of the truth
any real importance, let us hold the supreme truths of life to be
what we may, until the whole human race are unanimous about them we
shall have to regard a part, probably through no fault of their own,
as condemned to disastrous error. But of all creeds Catholicism is
the one that does most to alleviate this perplexity. Of all
religious bodies the Roman Church has the largest hope and charity
for those outside her own pale. She condemns men, not for not
accepting her teaching, but only for rejecting it; and they cannot
reject it until they know it, what it is—know its inner spirit as
well as its outward forms and formulas. Such a knowledge, in the
opinion of many Catholics, it may be a very hard thing to convey to
some men. Prejudices for which they themselves are not responsible
may have blinded their eyes; and if they have been blind they will
not have had sin. They will be able to plead invincible ignorance;
and the judgments the church pronounces are not against those who
have not known, but against those only who have known and hated. Nor
is it too much to say that a zealous Catholic can afford to harbor
more hope for an infidel than a zealous Protestant can afford to
harbor for a Catholic.”
And now comes the final question, What is to be the future of faith? As
we regard the matter, the answer to that, humanly speaking, rests mainly
with those who have the faith. Faith is a sacred deposit, to be used,
spread, and propagated over the world; to lead men to a right manner of
living, to the true knowledge of God, and up to God. Thus the future of
faith is in the hands of the faithful. Faith has two antagonists: the
devil and, in a sense, man’s free-will. Of course modern thought
scornfully dismisses the first antagonist as a myth. We cannot follow
modern thought in this; we have a very profound belief in the existence
of an ever-active and intelligent spirit of evil, who can and does tempt
man into revolt against God, and who finds his readiest instrument,
where he ought to find his chief resistance, in that highest prerogative
of freedom which God confers on man. We take, then, first the devil,
and, in a secondary sense, man’s free-will as the two great antagonists
to faith. That is to say, if man _will_ rebel, if he _will_ not accept
the faith, there is no power to hinder his rebellion.
And here we leave the devil aside and turn only to man. The future of
faith is for him to say. What will he do with it? Why does he not accept
it? Why should his free-will reject it, if it is good and approves
itself so strongly to human intelligence, and if, moreover, God and all
heaven are for ever standing on its side? There was at one time a united
faith in Christendom; why was it ever broken?
Of course we can lay a great deal on the back of the devil and on the
perversity of the human will. But it may be as well to remember also
that those who have the faith may prove false to their trust. St. James
tells us that even the devils believe and tremble. And so a man may
possess the letter of the faith in full with very little of its spirit.
A man may know St. Thomas from cover to cover, and assent to all his
propositions, yet lead a bad life. Faith without works is dead.
Christians must show forth in their lives whose disciples they are. If
their lives are good; if the lives of a large body of believers are
good; if they are chaste, charitable, honest in word and deed, and if
such be the normal condition of their lives, men will not have far to go
to look for faith. Virtue is the great preacher and converter. Even
natural virtue—courage, sobriety, manliness, self-restraint—wins
universal admiration. Supernatural virtue proclaims its godhead.
If the world is to be converted to faith, it will only be converted by
the good lives and works of the faithful. The human intellect may carp
at intellectual difficulties, but the human heart is overcome by
goodness, by charity, by chastity. Faith is now what it always was; men
are as they always were. But from a faithless and corrupt generation the
inheritance is taken away. Thus the Jews lost it, thus Christian nations
lose it. Had there been no corruption among the faithful there would
have been no Protestant Reformation. Had there been no corruption in
France, had the leaders of the people been true to the faith that was in
them, infidelity would never have made such fearful havoc in a land of
saints. And so with Germany, England, Scotland, Austria, Italy, and the
other nations; when we examine closely we shall find that the revolt had
its origin less in pride of intellect than in the concupiscence of the
flesh and the pride of life. Intellectual assent to God’s teaching is
not enough to lead a man to heaven. There must be a corresponding moral
assent in his life. Why did Ireland, the weakest of the nations, not
lose the faith? She was decimated, starved, made ignorant, brutalized as
far as inhuman legislation can go to brutalize man, but she never lost
the faith. Why? Because her sons and her daughters, whatever they may
have known or not known of theology, of science, of philosophy, of
literature, _lived the faith_, kept it stored up in their hearts, died
for it, bequeathed it as a sacred legacy—their only legacy—to their
children. Ah! it is on this that the future of faith hangs more than on
intellectual discussion, articles in magazines, or theological writings.
Shall we to-day doubt or hesitate about the future of faith—we the
members of a church that numbers its millions by the hundred thousand?
Are not we the children of Peter, of Paul, of Christ himself? Have not
we the deposit that he confided to the twelve? Did they hesitate to face
a world from which faith was almost blotted out, a world steeped in
iniquity? They went out—twelve men; they preached Jesus, and him
crucified; they lived what they preached, they suffered for what they
preached, and, when nothing more was left for them to do, they died for
it. We are not called upon to die for it to-day. The church is
established. Its temples cover the world. Its children are in every
land. From the rising of the sun to the going down thereof the living
Sacrifice of Christ’s redeeming body and blood is daily offered up to
God from the world and for the world. Can we tremble for the future of
faith?
Of course sin and schism and infidelity will exist in the world till the
end; but great multitudes may be saved and brought back if only the
faithful are true. One great opposing element to the advance of faith is
dissolving before our eyes—Protestantism. Shall all the children of
Protestants perish and be given over to infidelity? Are there no earnest
and well-inclined minds among them, no good people? There are multitudes
of such, who are wavering and in doubt and sore perplexity because such
support even as they had is slipping from under them, and beneath they
see nothing but a blank and awful abyss. We do not anticipate that they
will come back to us in multitudes. We scarcely look for that general
“craving amongst men for the certainty, the guidance, and the
consolation that the Catholic Church alone offers them,” as Mr. Mallock
puts it. We do not rely upon “such an outburst of feeling”; and yet even
that might come. _Sensim sine sensu_ will the wanderers come back. What
we Catholics have to consider is our duty in the matter. We can indeed
hasten that coming. If we would do so effectually we must be brothers to
them in charity, examples to them in our lives, above them in
intelligence as in that faith which is the highest intelligence.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
ELEMENTS OF ECCLESIASTICAL LAW. By Rev. S. B. Smith, D.D. Second
edition, revised and enlarged. Benziger Bros., New York.
We are glad to see that the Rev. Dr. Smith has been obliged to issue a
second edition of his _Elements of Ecclesiastical Law_ so soon after his
first edition. This is an evidence that his book was a desideratum in
our country. Though considered as a missionary country and under the
direction of the Propaganda, yet, owing to the progress which the church
has made here during the last twenty-five years, we have almost all the
qualifications for being put on the same regular footing as the oldest
churches of Europe. At all events it cannot be denied that we are
steadily and swiftly approaching that stage. Very soon the church in
this country will assume the regular canonical status of the churches on
the Continent of Europe. The necessity, therefore, is apparent of
studying the common legislation of the church universal, in order to
assimilate ourselves to the spirit and, as far as possible, to the
letter of that legislation, and to apply its general principles to the
particular conditions, wants, and requirements of our country. This has
been Dr. Smith’s aim in the _Elements_ he has published. He gives, in
the first place, an idea of law and _jus_ in general, and in particular
of canon law with its divisions. Next he inquires into the sources of
canon law—which are the Scriptures, tradition, apostolic enactments,
decrees of the Roman pontiffs and of the councils, œcumenical, national,
provincial, and diocesan, the Roman congregations and customs—along with
a history of canon law in the Latin church, and especially a history of
canon law in our country. This occupies the whole of the first part. In
the second part our author treats of jurisdiction in general as vested
in ecclesiastical persons, of the different kinds of jurisdiction, of
the manner of acquiring it in general and in particular, of the manner
of resigning and losing jurisdiction, and of the right and duties of
such as are vested with ecclesiastical jurisdiction; hence in the third
part he speaks in particular of the Sovereign Pontiff, his election,
primacy, and other prerogatives, of cardinals and of the Roman
congregations, of legates, nuncios, of patriarchs, primates,
metropolitan bishops, auxiliary bishops, coadjutor-bishops,
vicars-general, deans and pastors, etc., of the rights, privileges, and
duties of all these respective dignitaries.
It might be said against this book that all these things are treated in
every elementary treatise on canon law. Of course the author of the book
before us does not claim to discuss any matter which has not found its
place already in the canonical legislation of the church. But that does
not make Dr. Smith’s book less valuable nor its author less worthy of
praise for having rendered a great service to the church in this
country. In the first place, he has put together in a comparatively
small volume and at great labor what would only be found scattered in
many books. In the second place, he has given us his _Elements_ in the
English language, so that every one, even those who are not familiar
with the Latin tongue, can acquire a fair knowledge of the church’s
legislation.
Thirdly, and above all, he has taken great pains to give us the
particular legislation of our country as derived from the first and
second Plenary Councils of Baltimore, of both of which he has fairly
interpreted the spirit and the aim. At the first glance, and upon a
superficial perusal of their enactments, it would seem that the whole
tendency of these two councils was a centralization of power as vested
in the hierarchy—as, for instance, the power of governing without
consulting the chapter or the advisers of the bishop; the power of
having seminaries regulated altogether by the bishop without the three
canonical committees of the clergy, one to look after the spiritual
welfare, the other two after the temporal interests, of seminaries; the
power of appointing priests to parishes without the _concursus_, or
competitive examination; the power of moving priests from parishes, and
many other instances, would seem to indicate a tendency of centralizing
all power in the hierarchy. Yet the spirit of the two Plenary Councils
of Baltimore was far from intending any such thing, as is evident by
other enactments, and by the desire which the fathers of the council
frequently express of conforming themselves as far as possible to the
general legislation of the church, and by the regret which they manifest
that, owing to the particular circumstances of our country, they are
unable to adopt the general canon law of the church in many things. Dr.
Smith’s book clearly puts forward this spirit of our two plenary
councils, and the enactments which the fathers made in order to put a
just and fair limit to their power, as in the question of removing
pastors; in which case the last Plenary Council of Baltimore enacted
that no bishop should remove a pastor without a proper cause.
In questions which these two councils left undecided our author, with
all proper respect, gives a decision more consonant with the general
canon law of the church and with the dictates of natural _jus_, thus
conforming himself to the spirit of the two councils.
How far it would be desirable to adopt the common canonical law in this
country, or whether the time has fully arrived for doing so, the author
very properly leaves for the decision of the hierarchy and the Holy See.
We do not deem it inconsistent with the respect we owe to our American
prelates in coinciding with the desire expressed by the Council of
Baltimore that some few things pertaining to the common canonical law of
the church might be carried out; for instance, the exacting of a
_concursus_ for parishes. Our bishops could require a _concursus_ at
least for the larger parishes, and abstain from appointing any one to
such parishes except one of those who have received a sufficient number
of points required for approbation. This would secure always for the
larger parishes at least an occupant sufficiently instructed in moral as
well as parenetic theology. It would also be a great inducement for the
younger clergy to cultivate these sciences, and not to abandon them as
soon as they are out of the seminary. Our bishops would attain these
great beneficial results without losing their perfect right and freedom
of appointment, as they would not be bound to give the parish to the
best in learning, but to the best all things considered, learning as
well as probity, prudence, and ability in looking after the temporal
welfare of the church; as, indeed, they would not be bound to give it to
the best at all, but only to one of the approved.
With reference to other things our opinion would be to let things remain
as they are; because the common canonical law as it stands only obtains
in a very few parts of Europe, and we may say that the church
legislation, owing to the circumstances of the times, is in a transition
state. When the Vatican Council opens again—and we hope our Holy Father
Pope Leo XIII. may soon see fit to reopen it—many changes may take place
in the legislation of the church. It will be time enough then for the
American Church to adopt such legislation as will be conformable with
the common law of the church.
Dr. Smith deserves high praise for his work, and our seminarians and
clergy would do well to study his book as eminently useful and
important, giving us quite an accurate idea of the common canonical law
and of the particular legislation of the American Church.
THE BOOK OF PSALMS. Translated from the Latin Vulgate, etc. London:
Burns & Oates. 1878. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society
Co.)
This small and neat edition of the Psalms is most welcome. With all
respect we apply to it the words of an old English Catholic poet,
Crashaw:
“Lo! here a little volume, but large book,
Much larger in itself than in its look.”
Cardinal Manning has written the preface, and the Psalms are enriched
throughout with explanatory notes as the church requires for the
Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.
The Psalter of David was among all classes of Christians, from the
beginning, the favorite expression both of private and public devotions.
The apostles themselves (Ephes. v. 19, Coloss. iii. 16) instructed the
faithful in the use of these inspired canticles, and we learn from
various passages in the writings of Tertullian, Augustine, Jerome, and
Ven. Bede particularly, how familiar the early Christians must have been
with them until the eighth century, when public or liturgical psalmody
was left to the clergy exclusively. We hope that a taste for the reading
of the Sacred Scriptures, and the devotional use of the Psalms
especially, will increase—we had almost said will _revive_—among the
laity.
BOOKS FOR SUMMER READING.
The Catholic Publication Society Company has just published quite a
batch of very seasonable and interesting books. For those looking for
summer reading nothing better could possibly be recommended than the
graphic sketches of Italian life and manners, of scenery and monuments
of faith and history, embodied in the charming _Six Sunny Months_, which
ran as a serial in this magazine. Its gifted author, the writer of the
_House of Yorke_, _Grapes and Thorns_, etc., needs no introduction to
our readers. A companion volume to this is the _Letters of a Young
Irishwoman to her Sister_, which excited so much interest and no little
controversy while appearing in these pages. The pictures of French
home-life and scenery, of French and Irish character, of thrilling
contemporary events, given in these letters are to our thinking
unsurpassed in unaffected grace and naïve simplicity, while the growing
sadness of the end lifts what was intended to be the unpublished
narrative of unassuming everyday existence to the heights of tragic
pathos. _Sir Thomas More_ carries us back into other days and weaves
history into a powerful romance. _The Trowel and the Cross_, from the
strong pen of Conrad von Bolanden, gives us the German social and
political life of the day with a force and a truth and a deep
philosophical insight that very few pens can command. Bolanden has
Disraeli’s art of throwing the living problems of the day in social and
political matters into interesting stories, with the saving gift, that
Disraeli has not, of truth and right. Of lighter calibre, yet thoroughly
charming and well adapted to while away the lazy summer hours, are
_Assunta Howard and Other Stories_, _Alba’s Dream_ (by the author of
_Are You My Wife?_) _and Other Stories_, _Stray Leaves from a Passing
Life and Other Stories_. Nothing better, in the way of light literature,
than any or all of these books issues from the press, and nothing better
can be done by Catholics who read at all than to read their own
literature and support the efforts of those who devote their gifts
exclusively to the Catholic cause.
Pious books especially adapted for this season are the _Hand-book of
Instructions and Devotions for the Children of Mary_ (translated from
the French by Rev. J. P. O’Connell, D.D.), _The Love of Jesus to
Penitents_ (by Cardinal Manning), and _The Young Girl’s Month of June_
(a companion to the _Month of May_, noticed last month, and translated
by Miss MacMahon).
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXVII., No. 160.—JULY, 1878.
GERMAN SOCIALISM.
During the last two months our daily journals have contained reports of
the doings and the threatenings of numerous mysterious associations in
our Western cities. From these reports it is clear that attempts were
being made to organize and arm the disaffected against the present
constitution of society, and that the purpose of these proposed assaults
was utterly destructive, and not at all constructive; everything as it
exists was to be swept away, but there was no agreement as to what
should take the place of the destroyed system. To the tail of the
serpent there seemed to be no head. Each of the leaders in the
agitation, when personally questioned by the agents of the daily press,
spoke for himself, with more or less obscurity of meaning, but with no
recognition or mention of a general organization or a directing head. In
St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco, and a score of
other cities companies of men are meeting secretly night after night,
and are drilling to accustom themselves to the use of arms; when they
are not drilling they are listening to speeches in which most
inflammatory language is used: in this place a certain list of “demands”
is formulated; in another these so-called reforms are scouted as merely
palliative in their nature and as unworthy of consideration. But amid
this confusion it was seen clearly that the inspiration of the agitation
came from German sources, and that the men engaged in fanning the flame
of the inchoate conflagration were chiefly of German birth. Here we
resist a temptation to diverge into an examination of the causes of the
origin and growth of this revolutionary agitation in the United States—a
most fecund and interesting theme. But just at this time the life of the
Emperor of Germany is attempted by one of his own subjects; and it is
made to appear that the would-be assassin made the criminal attempt in
the interest of the socialistic agitation in Germany. Each branch of the
German socialists, of course, condemns and disowns him; he appears to
have been initiated into the secrets of the councils of many of these
associations; he certainly was thoroughly impregnated with the theories
of the German socialistic philosophers of the most advanced schools.
These theories are destructive and not constructive; the man Hoedel had
probably convinced himself that it was time to begin this work of
destruction, and that it would be well to commence at the root of the
tree. So he struck at the emperor—happily with a bad aim.
Here, then, we have a striking illustration of the fruition of German
socialism at the very time when we see its initial workings in our own
country. This flower of the tree—the man Hoedel—may, however, be said to
be a premature and unnatural product of the plant. The educated classes
in Germany, we believe, will not think so. If they are blind to the
natural tendency of the socialistic theories of their own philosophers,
it is not for lack of plain warnings and demonstrations from authorities
whom they are accustomed to respect. The anxiety of the government
regarding the spread of revolutionary and subversive opinions has long
been well known. It is only a short time ago that a thorough review of
German socialism was published in the _Deutsche Rundschau_—the “German
Contemporary Review”—a monthly magazine of high standing, printed at
Berlin. This review extended through two numbers of the magazine, and at
once attracted attention by the thoroughness and acumen with which the
subject was treated. Its author is Dr. Ludwig Bamberger, a gentleman
whose own history is curious. Born in Mayence, in 1822, he studied for
the law at Giesen, Heidelberg, and Göttingen, and in 1848-49 he edited
the _Mainzer Zeitung_. Carried away by the revolutionary excitement of
that period, he took part in the insurrection in the Rheinphalz, and was
elected to the Frankfort Parliament. Instead of taking his seat, he
wisely went into Switzerland and thence to London, where he devoted
himself to the study and practice of banking. In 1851 he founded a
banking-house in Rotterdam, and two years afterwards found himself at
the head of a large financial institution in Paris, which he conducted
with great success for thirteen years. He has written several works of
importance; his last production, a volume published in German and in
French at Paris, in 1869, on _Count Bismarck_, was not the least notable
of his books. This is the author whose dissertation upon German
socialism has appeared so opportunely. It is worthy of the most serious
attention, and we give the substance of it in the following pages. Dr.
Bamberger is not a Catholic. He is decidedly anti-Catholic, as will be
seen, and as we allow him to appear; he discusses his subject without
the slightest aid from the light which true reason, aided by religion,
would throw upon it. But we shall take him on his own ground, and,
without attempting to translate him fully, follow with fidelity his line
of thought.
I.
The people of Germany, he says, are to-day waging as wordy a war as did
the nobility of France a century ago. The men who best know this are
those who for a generation have devoted themselves to fomenting the war
of those who have nothing against those who possess everything, and who
are to-day the leaders of the proletariat. The contrast between the
theories and the practice of these men is ludicrous. A small number of
gifted, learned, diligent men, they dwell in peace and luxury; they
enjoy life like connoisseurs; from these secure and pleasant ports they
sail forth to attack the economy by which the machinery of society is
kept in motion. In this amusement there seems to be a species of
demoniacal pleasure. If they were sincere, the contrast between their
habits and their professed aims would be ludicrous. The equalization
they call for can only be realized by placing an equal proportion of the
means necessary for gaining a livelihood within the reach of all. Every
ownership exceeding this minimum would be divided to increase the
necessary quota.
Is it objected that this is looking at the question from the darkest
side? It is true that great movements should not be measured by those
nearest to them. But events can never be separated from those who bring
them about. Moreover, we are not now concerned with history but with
to-day. In the demonstration of philosophical principles it may be asked
whether the teacher is a philosopher in his own life; this curiosity is
still less indiscreet when the issue is one of life and death.
The originators of German socialism—Lassalle and his eulogist,
Herwegh—were luxurious men of the world, for whose desires the
voluptuous apparatus of modern cities alone sufficed. Their successors
are like unto them. To meet them is to scoff at the idea that these men
should have described, as participants, the grim battle for existence
fought by the common people. An ingenious psychological explanation is
offered for them. The conjunction of bodily comfort with intellectual
distinction which they enjoy causes them to shudder at the thought of a
life hard, painful, and colorless. Their sympathy to this extent may be
genuine; but so much the greater is the hypocrisy of their battle-cry
for a universal economy whose cardinal principle shall be the equal
abnegation of all.
These men are not Catilinical but Herostratic. We can have some sympathy
with the man who, thrown out of his path, angry with the whole world on
account of his evil fortune, seeks for a new order of things. But these
leaders, from Marx to Bakumin, from the caustic diatribe of the poisoned
pen to the torch steeped in petroleum, exclaim: “For the world as it is
we care not! If we can proclaim our contempt for it by destroying it,
let it perish!” This is the cry that has been growing louder for thirty
years—from the date of the appearance of the first socialistic articles
in the _Cologne Zeitung_ to the present moment.
The public of to-day know the high-priests of socialism only from the
thick books in which their solemn declarations are spread out, and from
the interpretations of these given at working-men’s congresses. The
personal motives from which the whole movement sprang are forgotten.
Carl Marx, when he gazes over from his London cottage upon the new
German Empire, can exclaim with pride that after thirty years his seed
has brought forth abundantly. Whoever wishes to see this sower more
closely and in his true character need only read Carl Vogt’s pamphlet,
_Life of Fugitives in London_. Here are the revelations not of an
opponent but an adherent of the cause and an admirer of Marx, but a
disillusionized admirer. He sees that the meanest of tricks were
practised by Marx and his _entourage_ in the meanest manner; and that
the desire for power is as strong among these levellers as it is in the
court of a king. Here, for instance, are extracts from Carl Vogt’s
pamphlet:
“In the end it is all the same whether this contemptible Europe
falls—an event that must presently occur without the revolution.
They (Carl Marx and his Janissaries) care nothing for the German
common people. They desire only to remain eternally in the
opposition, without which the revolution would go to sleep.... We
drank first porter, then claret, then red Bordeaux, then champagne.
After the red wine Marx was quite drunk. This was very desirable,
for he became more open-hearted. I heard much that otherwise would
have been concealed. But he kept up the conversation to the end; he
impressed me as a man of singular mental superiority and of
remarkable personality. Had he as much heart as mind, as much love
as hatred, I would go through the fire for him. I am sorry for our
cause that he does not possess a noble heart. His ambition has eaten
up all the good qualities in him. He laughs over the fools who
repeat his proletariat catechism, as well as over communists à la
Willich or the _bourgeoisie_. He cares only for the aristocrats,
purely and consciously so. To drive them from power he employs a
force that he finds only in the proletariat, and for that reason has
adapted his system to it.”
So much for Marx. The true portraiture of Lassalle would be as amusing.
But the contrast between the living and the preaching, between the
private mode of thought and the public utterances of the German upper
and middle classes generally, is equally observable. And in this respect
they remind one of the marquises and viscounts of the eighteenth
century. They do not dance on the volcano, but gather the fuel for the
pile on which they themselves are to be consumed; and the cry _Sancta
simplicitas!_ resounds, not sympathetically from the mouth of the
victim, but mockingly from the throat of the executioner. The fact that
the internationalists, far away from German shores, send mandates from
beneath the shelter of their English homes for the destruction of our
civil comity, would give us little cause for alarm, if men unwillingly
united, and doubly important by their positions and their number, were
not seeking to accomplish this work within our own walls. The fruits of
their activity are observable everywhere.
Many will answer: In these symptoms appears the development of a healthy
process, similar to the unconscious self-dissolution of the French
aristocracy which brought about the revolution and thus conferred the
greatest benefit upon posterity. So it is now the duty of the
people—“the third class”—to make room for its legitimate successor, “the
fourth class.” Whether it was fortunate for the world that the French
Revolution was accomplished we shall not say. There is, however, not a
single analogous characteristic between the epoch of that revolution and
the present time.
One of the most absurd weaknesses of our time is that it hurries on with
formulas of a dialectic development, and transforms them into the
business of life before they are properly digested. What is more
ludicrous than the introduction of parliamentary systems into countries
semi-barbarous? The attempt to cure Russia, Turkey, Roumania, and Egypt
with parliamentary constitutions reminds us of the peasant who, when the
doctor has prescribed a medicine for him, employs the same for his wife
and child in every disease. He falls into the same error who fancies
that the German people have arrived at that stage of their development
when, like the French nobility of the eighteenth century, they should
betake themselves with a good grace out of the world. The very contrary
is the case. Never have extremes met more closely than in the common
attack of reaction and socialism against the German people. While the
temperate socialistic ideal has for its end the revival of the state of
society during the middle ages, the internationalists aim at the
dissolution of all that has been gained since our ancestors were
barbarians. There is a lower depth yet, for a school exists which, going
only a step farther, calls itself “anarchist.”[92]
The support given the socialists by the agrarians and the ultramontanes
is more than an ordinary political coalition. Their sympathy reposes on
inward concurrence; and for Germany it is especially dangerous, because
their attacks are directed against a people neither matured nor secured.
_Germany is almost wholly wanting in everything needful for the
formation of a united, intelligent, and independent body politic._ The
strong material groundwork is yet wanting. The complaints made against
our industrial products are not groundless. Nor can they be ascribed to
the passing influence of commercial folly which characterized the period
immediately following the war. We have to do with evils as old as the
century. Improvement of workmanship, increase of general prosperity, and
elevation of political prestige bear the closest relationship to each
other. The intoxication of victory led to a foolish application of the
booty extorted from France. Those who undertook the solution of this
stupendous financial problem approached it with too small a measure of
its importance. But everywhere we meet with the same technical
inadequacy in Germany. Earnest work alone in domestic as well as public
economy can lead us to the firm establishment of a healthy, civilized
state. Only fools can propose to dispense with the forms requisite for
the collection of strength which has made possible the stage of culture
we now are in, and only sophists can attempt to establish this power
without capital, and capital without property. But instead of allowing
the German people to attain its development, the inimical elements are
now all pouncing upon it, and telling it that it has outlived itself and
is ready for dissolution.
In England, France, and Italy there is an aristocracy with strong
self-respect and conservative principles—an erudite community, filled
with the quiet consciousness of its intellectual superiority. But these
classes do not separate the task of their self-preservation from that of
the preservation of the people. There he who seeks to bring forward
particular ideas endeavors to carry them into the great community of the
people.
There are eccentric persons everywhere; but only in Germany exist entire
groups of aristocratic, learned, and religious men who make war upon the
people their business. Aristocrats who take the field against capital,
professors who teach that the road to wealth leads to prison, bishops
who conspire with demagogues, are to be found only in Germany. First one
and then another of these groups wish to make _experimentum in anima
vili_ with the people. Its pains give them no care—nay, in some cases
secret joy; all are deluded by the idea that they can abuse it without
imperilling their own safety.... The nation, as a whole, does not feel
responsible for its own support. It still believes that the supreme
power, reposing upon itself, would take care to preserve order. For this
reason it does not permit any interference with attacks against
itself,[93] and sometimes takes pleasure in joining in the sport.
The ruling class is scarcely wiser. Its nerves are somewhat more
susceptible; but as for a true insight into the state of affairs it is
as much in the dark as the governed. It suspects, in small degree, the
extreme danger that threatens, but it is at sea concerning the origin
and nature of the danger. If alarmed by a fresh incident, it thinks that
more stringent laws are all that is needed,[94] or the revival of a
buried belief.
It is an error to measure Germany by English or French ideas. Here
immature conditions have penetrated over-ripe ideals. The lesson of the
war of classes has, with us, fallen on a soil which for pernicious
growth is better adapted than that of any country in the world, Russia
excepted. The conjunction of our strongly-developed intellectual life
with our crude and immature political and social systems has generated
an atmosphere in which the poisoned germs of these seeds yielded fruit
with unparalleled rapidity and plenty.
Germany has become the special field of this war of classes, because she
is a country divided into many classes. Here every individual holds to
his own claims or promulgates new ones; and no one feels himself united
with the whole. No group hesitates to assail the foundations of society,
if anything dissatisfies them. Our class strifes are kindled and
fomented from all sides—from above as well as from below. No class knows
for whom it is really working. Only the professional agitators know it;
these are careful not to divulge the secret, and strive to make it
appear that they do not suspect the connection between their conscious
conspiracy and the unconscious conspiracies of all the other parties.
They know that their principal strength lies in this quiet coalition.
In this unconscious raving against ourselves lies our chief danger. This
assertion applies not only to the _bourgeoisie_ but to all classes up to
the highest. All seem to be living in blessed ignorance of the real
drift of affairs. Their efforts are always futile; they always take hold
of their subject at the wrong end. Let us relate a parliamentary
incident. The question of the best method of opposing the socialistic
movement was recently debated in the Reichstag.[95] A decree forbidding
attacks in the press upon the family, property, and religion was
introduced. The government attached the greatest importance to the
passage of this decree. It was to be the bulwark of existing
institutions. The Prussian Minister of the Interior, Count von
Eulenburg, made his first appearance in the Reichstag to advocate this
measure. The minister betrayed his fear that the Parliament would not
consent to increase the restrictions upon the press by reason of the
ignorance of members concerning the intrigues and dogmas of the social
democrats. His lively and exhaustive delineation of these dangers bore
the stamp of a work ordered for the purpose by the department to which
he belonged, which had supplied him with the necessary data for the
instruction of the blind or unsuspecting parliamentarians. So far all
was well. But when members arose, and, without contesting the reality of
the danger, reminded the minister that the enemy in his own camp was the
most dangerous; that the pet decree would find no favor with these
arch-conspirators; that it would merely divert the danger from its least
perilous direction; in short, that socialism had penetrated and found a
home in conservative and governmental circles—then it became evident
that “the world was nailed up before the eyes of the government.” They
had no suspicion of what was really going on around them; the minister
had no real knowledge of what he wished to explain. He felt harshly
assailed, and disappeared; on the Right of the chamber there was
confusion; as a closing scene Monfang and Bebel swore with touching
unanimity that they did not know each other. Is anyone surprised to find
the most select audience in Germany so unprepared, so ignorant of the
real state of affairs? It is always a mistake to presuppose too much
wisdom. A little keener scent of the secret forces that serve the
socialistic propaganda has been gained by Prince Bismarck; but this is
due to the fact that the intrigues directed against his person did not
hesitate to employ socialistic partisans and catch-words. In this way
the existence of this unnatural combination was forced upon his notice.
Under other circumstances it was not to be expected of him that he
should trouble himself about socialism. His method is to employ every
element of power to his advantage according to circumstances, and to
spare every one that does not thrust itself with hostile intent across
his path.
“It is fortunate for us that a few social democrats have taken service
in the camp of the ultramontanes and junkers, and thereby called
attention to the consanguinity of their beautiful souls.”[96]
II.
Germany is the only great country in which exists a social-democratic
party—using the word party in the sense of a compact political union
which promulgates as its official platform the determination to secure
by whatever means domination over the state and society. Even in the
much-agitated kingdom of Denmark socialism has not yet attained
parliamentary recognition. In England the mass of laborers organized for
common purposes is disproportionately larger than in Germany, and all
politicians there discuss the problems proposed by the workmen. The
programme of a state reposing on a communistic groundwork, built upon
the ruins of the present system, there is advocated but by few. With us
this is the only solution sought by the entire social democracy; of late
it has become the official profession of faith of the whole body.
In England the dissension is confined to the employer and the employed.
The one tries to secure the best terms from the other. Political objects
confine themselves within limits which, compared with the professed aims
of the German social democrats, are very narrow. Extension of the
suffrage, limitation of the labor of women and children, free
education—these are demands which do not imperil the foundations of
society.
In France the reaction from the _Commune_ has swept away all tangible
remains of the social-democratic party. France has fought against
communism in the streets. No peaceful overtures have been made to
socialism, as in Germany. With us it is recognized as a political
organization representing a particular line of thought. This constitutes
its great strength, and all that strengthens it weakens us. In Germany
almost all the reactionary parties strive to obtain the support of the
social democrats. The Protestant hypocrite, the Catholic clergy, the
combination of protectionists and agrarians, offer their hands to the
social democrats in solemn pledges of brotherhood.[97] Thiers, in his
political will, bequeathed the _Commune_ to us. France, he said, has
overcome this misery; in her place Germany must carry the cross. The old
man knew what he was talking about. When with Bismarck at Versailles he
said his greatest fear was of the _coquins_ of Paris. After him came
Jules Favre, who opposed the disarming of the national guard, and
sublimely exclaimed: “There is no mob in Paris!” We have our Favres, who
pretend to be in love with all the world. _Woe unto us if we should be
placed on trial!_ The elevation of the social democracy to a recognized
power dates from the creation of the German Empire. The causes were
many; the decisive one was universal suffrage. This is made the
scape-goat of many sins—most unjustly. The harm it carries in its train
does not lie in the fact that it permits the expression of the opinions
of all classes. On the contrary, this is a gain. It has only worked
badly because it appeared as a new, powerful incentive to greater
activity to those into whose heads confused notions are sought to be
instilled. While the new elective law brought to its support a part of
the population which had until then not possessed the right of suffrage,
it compelled those desirous of gain to devote themselves mainly to this
fresh ground.
To beget dissatisfaction, vague desires, and unlimited hopes was very
easy here. Those who expected to gain the advantage of leadership from
it determined quickly to take possession of this inviting land.
The regular organization of the socialistic party dates only from 1867.
A careful dissemination of ideas had first been accomplished. The new
constituencies had been imbued with the notions of the propaganda, and
the way to obtain their votes was to advocate these notions. “If you
wish to be elected to the Reichstag, apply yourself with all energy to
the new voters,” was the _mot d’ordre_. The sentiment of hatred against
property-owners, and hunger for the distribution of estates, now became
merchantable commodities. Thus the election of a new German Reichstag
offered a premium for the propagation of socialistic ideas. The leaders
of the combination took immediate advantage of this. The necessary
freedom accompanying the election cleared the road of a mass of police
and legal obstacles. The rostrum of the Reichstag is of immense use.
Those elected attain greater respect both in and outside their party. We
should never have heard of the most renowned socialists—of Bebel or
Liebknecht, of Most or Hasselmann—if a nomination to the Reichstag had
not put them in a position of importance. Besides, the leaders learn
much in Parliament, and take advantage of the opportunities given them.
There is, for instance, no doubt that the introduction of free passage
by railroads for the benefit of members of the Reichstag will be
successfully employed for the dissemination of socialistic teachings,
and perhaps gain new members of like tendencies. _Per diems_
(Tagegelder) would of course prove even more valuable. The socialistic
organization at present pays each of its representatives nine marks per
day during his stay in Berlin. If they were paid by the state the saving
to the socialistic treasury would be thirty thousand marks; and this
increase of the sinews of war would result, at the next election, in new
accessions of strength.
There are only a dozen socialists in the Reichstag, but they rely upon
the support given by the divisions of the other parties; and this is a
peculiarity which runs through our whole national character. Every
person pursues his own private and local ends, and there is no united
feeling. It is for this reason that the socialists and ultramontanes
make such rapid headway. Through the narrow-minded system of electing
men to the Reichstag as a reward for local services, men of great talent
are often neglected. The Reichstag has three hundred and ninety-seven
members, among them twelve socialists. Deducting the latter, there are
altogether only seven districts which are represented by deputies who
are not natives of the places from which they were returned.
But how is this picture changed as soon as we look upon the social
democrats! Here national unity is the rule. Of the twelve elected, eight
are without any local relation to their districts. Even with the other
four birth, representation, and residence do not go hand-in-hand. Bebel,
though residing in Saxony, is a native of Rhenish Prussia; Fritzsche is
a native of Saxony, but lives in Berlin; Motteler lives in Saxony, but
is a native of the Palatinate. (These three were elected in Saxony.) The
only one who falls within the general rule is Rittinghausen, who
represents Solingen.
The kingdom of Saxony, the hot-bed of particularism, is the rendezvous
of the whole German social democracy. Auer, Kapell, Bracke, Liebknecht,
Most, and Demmler were returned from that kingdom. The same is true of
Schleswig-Holstein; and if it were an independent duchy instead of a
Prussian province, it would probably have sent three social democrats
into the Reichstag.
The German people have not attained a degree of development sufficient
to permit of their coping successfully with the political and social
problems spread before them. Meanwhile socialism is widening its sway.
Whither it tends we shall proceed to show.
III.
In ten years the German social-democratic party has sprung into
importance. In the American Congress no representative of the social
democracy is yet seated. In the French Assembly no member would
subscribe to the confession of faith of the German socialists. In the
English House of Commons there are two working-class members—Burt and
Macdonald—but neither have ever thought of the abolition of private
industry, the organization of the proletariat with state capital, or the
destruction of private property. In Denmark no socialist has yet gained
an entrance into Parliament. The German nation alone is represented by
men who have declared war against our whole political and social
economy. There are twelve of them. Ever since a German Reichstag has
existed they have increased. In 1867 two of them entered the constituent
Reichstag; in 1868 five entered the North German Reichstag; in 1871 two
entered the first German Reichstag; in 1874 nine entered the second
German Reichstag; in 1877 twelve entered the present Parliament. To
understand these figures it must be noticed that South Germany was
without influence in this regular increase, for the districts beyond the
line of the Main have not as yet returned one social democrat; the
increase occurred wholly on the old ground. The figures speak still more
convincingly when we go from the elected to the electors. In the year
1874 only 350,000 votes were cast in favor of the social democracy; in
the year 1877 they received 485,000—an increase of well-nigh forty per
cent. The whole number of electors who cast valid votes in 1877 was
5,535,000. Of this total 3,600,000 votes were cast for the successful
candidates. The last number divided by 397 (the number of members) gives
us the average of the number of voters which go to a representative,
9,000. The same process applied to the twelve social-democratic
representatives, and the 111,000 votes which are united upon them, makes
the proportion remain the same: each one elected represents 9,200 votes.
A different picture is presented if we regard the votes lost by
scattering. The 3,600,000 successful voters are in the ratio of 67 per
cent. of the total number of voters. This repeats itself if we apply the
investigation to the several parties. The total of votes for the
national-liberal party was 1,594,000. The number of votes represented in
the Reichstag of this persuasion is 1,082,000—that is, a little more
than 67 per cent. of those 1,594,000. By comparing with this the
corresponding proportion between the number of social-democratic votes
and the number which obtained representation, we find that this party
has not attained to an equal degree of concentration in its elective
elements. Against 485,000 votes cast we find here only 111,000 at the
back of successful deputies—_i.e._, only 23 per cent. of the voters have
effected representation. If the general proportion had gained expression
here, the number of social-democratic deputies would be thirty-two, or
almost as many as the members of the German liberal party. Only for this
reason, that 77 per cent. of these votes were scattered, whereas by the
general rule only 33 per cent. are scattered, have we escaped the fate
of giving the world, in tangible figures, an idea of the intensity of
the disease which is threatening our nation. But if for the present we
remain safe from such a humiliation, it is none the less true that our
political thinking and feeling are already as strongly affected as these
figures attest. There may not as yet be any immediate danger from the
action of the Reichstag. But in the very fact which is as yet paralyzing
the effectiveness of the socialistic elective power lies the greatest
danger. For this scattering of votes is an omen of a distribution of
advance posts throughout the whole empire, which, if particular
circumstances favor it, will suddenly gain in strength, and, joining
hands, can obtain control of the country. Had we introduced a method of
minority representation into the elective law, the socialistic faction
would already be on an equal footing with the other parties. If we had
the French method, by which several deputies in large districts are
elected on one list, we would, perhaps, already number two dozen
social-democratic members in the Reichstag.
The socialistic party may justly boast that it is stronger than it
appears to be by its representation in the Reichstag, and that it may
reasonably hope for a speedy development of its parliamentary power. But
even to-day it is strong. The twelve socialistic members may possibly
hold the balance of power. A closer inspection of the election returns
shows that nearly one-half of the voters in 1877 were hostile to the
development of the German Empire on its present basis. Poles, Welfs,
Swabian democrats, protesters from Alsace, social democrats, added to
the ultramontanes who serve them as a firm nucleus, bring the sum of the
combination up to 2,395,000 voters out of 5,535,000. An increase of but
three or four hundred thousand votes would deliver the empire into the
hands of its foes. Besides, circumstances favor the socialists. In large
cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Breslau, Eberfeld, Bremen, and Lübeck a
strong working-class element is easily concentrated. Seven of the twelve
socialist members of the Reichstag were elected in Saxony. But wherever
the local mind has had a definite and fixed idea socialism has made no
progress. It is thus in the Catholic portions of Bavaria and in
Alsace-Lorraine. In other quarters, where opinions are more divided, the
Catholics form coalitions with the socialists. In France a large class
of property-owners incline to Catholicism, because they believe that
through it they can save the state and society. In Germany Catholicism
throws itself into the arms of inimical elements, in order to strengthen
itself.
The official reports of the annual congress of the socialists are highly
instructive. The _Protocols of the Socialistic Congresses_ are issued at
Hamburg, “printed and published by the brotherhood’s book-printing
establishment.” For twenty-five cents as much instruction may be gleaned
from them as in the whole mass of socialistic literature. Until recently
the socialists were divided into two factions, each represented by a
journal which attacked the other violently. But in 1875 they settled
their differences, and united in issuing a paper called _Forwaerts_, or
“Progress.” This is the official organ; but besides it there are
forty-one socialistic journals in Germany, one of them an illustrated
paper, _The New World_; and fourteen industrial journals, more or less
imbued with the spirit of socialism. Of these forty-one organs of the
social democracy thirteen appear daily, thirteen tri-weekly, three
bi-weekly, and eleven weekly. Twenty-five of them are printed in offices
belonging to the brotherhood. Eighteen of these journals have had their
birth within the last year. “The rapid augmentation of our press,” says
the report of the last congress, “is enormous, not only in the number of
journals but in the number of subscribers.”
Germany is the breeding-house for the representation and distribution of
socialistic teachings in the rest of the world; it is the apostolic seat
of the new faith, whence missionaries are sent to all lands, preaching
in all tongues. _Wherever in Europe or America a communistic congress or
insurrection is to be noted, Germans are at its head, or exercise
control._ At the congresses of the International, held since 1866 in
Geneva, the Hague, and Brussels, Germans have always taken the front
seats. The English communists were represented in Geneva in 1873 by the
tailor Eccarius, a German Swiss, with whom, in truth, the congress of
English workmen which met at Sheffield in 1874 wished to have nothing to
do.[98] Next to Eccarius, the Germans Johann, Philip, Becker, and
Amandus were especially prominent at Geneva. At the Congress of the
International at the Hague in 1872 Carl Marx presided in person. This
German ascendency is seen also in America.
Here Dr. Bamberger enters into a long description of our railway strike
last summer, tracing its origin to German influences. The beginning of
all socialistic combinations in America, he says, can be traced to
German origin. The “International Working Confederation” of 1867 was
founded by German emissaries from Marx’s mother-lodge, and Chicago was
its headquarters. The point is made that at the meeting in New York on
the 25th of July last Germans were prominent; at a similar meeting in
St. Louis, suppressed by the police, among the arrested leaders were
Germans, one of whom on the 26th of July, when the mob for a moment
seemed victorious, had sent this despatch to Leipzig: “St. Louis, a city
of three hundred thousand souls, is in our power.”
In Switzerland, Dr. Bamberger goes on to say, the international element
is strongest where the German influence is greatest—in Zurich. The
intellectual head of the whole international propaganda is the German
Carl Marx, whose first lieutenant is the German Friedrich Engels. Marx
framed the foundation of the International. The congress of the sect at
the Hague in 1872 was his work. Among the sixty-five members of that
body twenty-five were Germans; New York and Zurich were there
represented by Germans.
The French socialism which ruled the field from 1830 to 1850 has been
laid aside and forgotten. But the German socialism of to-day has the
French system for its foundation. To St. Simon and Fourier, to Cabet and
Considérant, however, reference is no longer made.
Louis Blanc’s “organization of labor” has been scientifically, and even
piously, absorbed into “systematic production.” Proudhon has long been
branded as a “miserable _bourgeois_” while the most devout of German
Protestants, Pastor Todt, does not hesitate to exclaim in his latest
organ: “The war of competition (Concurrenzkampf) today is nothing but a
system of expropriations, shrouded in illusions with regard to property”
(Eigenthumsillusionen). _“La propriété c’est le vol._” The pastor says
the same thing, only in other words.
The sum total of the theories in all their gradations, from the
formulating of the brutal war of classes to the most honey-toned appeal
to the duties of men and Christians, to-day bears the predominating
stamp of German invention. No country in the world can point to so
extensive an existence of learned and unlearned literature in this
province. Especially in the province of learned socialistic theories
France and England stand far behind us. Socialism in Italy is confined
to a small number of younger _savants_, who understand German, and
acknowledge themselves pupils of our masters. The most prominent trait
of the national character of German socialism is the trace of scientific
coloring which is retained in the rudest revolutionary circles.
Scientific epicures like Marx and Lassalle have written the gospels of
the new brotherhood of working-men; professors and philosophically
learned men like Schaeffle and Adolph Wagner, Rodbertus, Duehring, and
Lange, have assorted them canonically; and even with the smell of powder
and petroleum emitted by the congresses of socialists, composed mainly
of working-men, is mingled something of the delicate perfume of
quintessent abstraction. Herr Liebknecht, a man of learning, is the real
_spiritus rector_ of the whole brotherhood, and it was his energy which
finally triumphed over the different sects of the party and consummated
the difficult work of consolidation.
Perhaps there is no man in or out of Germany better versed in the
literature and history of socialism than this vaunter of the praises of
the Commune. Has not this something attractive besides so much that is
repulsive? Is it not touching to hear that the same Herr Liebknecht who
in the tribune of the Reichstag agitates the nerves of his colleagues to
excess by his strongly-spiced speeches, honors their library continually
by collections of interesting works from the province of his “science”?
and that, according to competent evidence, the social-democratic
deputies are not only the most industrious readers of this library, but
distinguish themselves by a prompt return and respectful treatment of
the books? We could even find a touching symptom in the comical
appearance of the deputy and former book-binder, Most, who is vieing
with Prof. Mommsen for the palm in the investigation of Roman history.
As if there was nothing more important to do than to allow one’s self to
be touched! In fact, this hobnobbing with science is resorted to for the
purpose of misleading the noblest tendencies of the German character.
Something further is to be noted here: nothing less than the organic
connection between the best and the worst which is in us. Not for
nothing has Marx furnished with a highly-learned scaffolding his
international platform which appeals to “the proletarians of all lands.”
Lassalle is prouder of nothing than that, after the appearance of his
books on _Herakleitos_ and _The System of Acquired Rights_, Humboldt and
Boeckh should have counted him as their equal.
The militant social democracy well understand how to keep up this
delusion. At their last congress it was proposed to issue in Berlin,
bi-monthly, “a scientific review in an appropriate form.” The scientific
contributors to the _Forwaerts_, the central organ of the sect, had
overburdened it; if these had a journal to themselves the _Forwaerts_
could devote more space to its work of agitation. One of the delegates,
Herr Geib, said that by this step an alienation between science and the
workmen would not be caused, as some feared; and to anticipate the
review he recommended a half-monthly scientific supplement to the
_Forwaerts_ gratis. Another delegate said that “the more political life
stepped into the foreground, the farther did the scientific side of life
recede, unless official efforts were made to promote it. It was
necessary that this should be cared for, in order to prevent the
levelling of the party.” The proposition was adopted, and the scientific
review, _The Future_, has appeared regularly since October last in the
“appropriate form” of a red-covered magazine.
The commanders of the socialistic army are wise in thus enlisting
scientific officers on their general staff. They gain by this, in
literary circles, the position of “the best-favored nation.” In the vast
number of publications lately issued on “the social question” we seldom
meet one which, even if inspired with the utmost disfavor for the new
dogma, does not approach it with respectful and ludicrous timidity. The
social democracy has for its first article of faith open hostility to
all other parties; their extinction is its aim. But almost all
confutations, on the other hand, strike the key-note of a defender who
is only pleading for milder conditions. By aid of the “scientific”
coloring the social democracy has moved into a position to which every
assailant makes an obeisance before firing. Through the anti-socialistic
literature runs a tone of humble apology that seems to say: “Excuse us
that we belong to the contemptible class of the _bourgeoisie_, and
believe our promise of future reform.” As with the cause, so do we
approach the individuals with uncovered head. All presentations of the
life and teaching of Lassalle accept the Titan’s diploma which he has
given himself. If unbelievers and half-believers do this, how natural
that the social democracy has decreed him Godlike honors after his
demise! If we, however, look with impartial eye into the biographic
material which is available to us, we are struck by the characteristic
trait of grotesque mockery overshadowing all. Were it not sinful to
recount the names of Germany’s great men—those who still live as well as
those who have left us—in one breath with the name of this talented
agitator, we might be tempted to draw a parallel between the letters
which we possess of the former and those which the Lassalle literature
has brought to light. An instructive antithesis, forsooth: the simple,
human self-sacrifice, thought, and feeling of truly great souls, and the
hollow pretensions of a proletariat rescuer, who lifts his martyrdoms
into the skies, in order to step down from them into perfumed boudoirs!
This man writes to young women that he was born to wage a contest with
the world, and in the same text explains to them that never had a woman
resisted him, but he had never yet done homage; for him it was only to
accept, not to give. How modest, in comparison with this, does the
address sound with which Saint-Simon had himself awakened every morning:
“_Levez-vous, Monsieur le Comte, vous avez de grandes choses à faire._”
IV.
Fallacious as it might be to judge of the effective socialistic strength
in time of war from the number of votes it controls in time of peace, it
remains true that the growth of these numbers points to a change in the
sentiments of the voters. There is something more at the disposal of the
leaders than a mass accidentally thrown into their hands. We must guard
against too trivial an appraisement of human appearances, especially in
Germany, where thought enlarges its sway more than in any other land.
Ideals, real or false, cannot become powerful with us without going
through the earnest-thinking process of the nation. The socialistic
leaders have fully recognized and acted on the principle that he who
wishes to have an interest in. the future must first do his share for
science. The German mind being thus constituted, we must, to explain the
spread of socialism, find the fountains of its source. This is easy. The
professors of political economy in our high-schools at the beginning of
this century turned their attention to the socialistic problem. The
university professors, even, have lately declared that they accept the
socialistic stand-point _sans phrase_. The word expressing the nature of
the whole movement would not have gained an introduction into the
language had not the characteristic symptoms demanded an expression. The
phrase “platform socialism” is not permitted to be left out of any
German dictionary. The German _Socialistes de la chaire_ are as familiar
to French writers as the _Socialisti della Cattedra_ are to the
Italians. All manner of shades of opinion have been developed from this
academic socialism. But a series of stereotyped formulas have come into
existence with which every one, in the press and on the platform, plays;
as, for instance, that the inequality of property is greater now than
formerly; that the masses are more unhappy; that wealth remains confined
to the few and flows only to them; that capital rules supreme over labor
and prescribes its laws. From these premises, which are all false, the
conclusion is drawn that the present social system must be rejected and
replaced by another; that it was the government’s business to do this;
and that “science” should furnish a plan for a righteous economy, and a
guardian to regulate the same for all time to come. “Science” did not
wait for a second invitation. Young souls devoted themselves to the
projection of plans for the salvation of society; systems were invented
for the organization of working-men into historical and organic groups,
in order to enable them to withstand capital; others discovered methods
of taxation by which the inequalities of ownership could be neutralized.
He who had too much, in the opinion of “science,” was to be deprived of
it, and it was to be given to him who had too little; persons were to be
prevented from getting rich by ingenious plans for equalizing prices.
“Permissible luxury” was divided from prohibited enjoyments; “science”
undertook to prescribe the limits of individual action.
Former times offered stronger contrasts, perhaps, of luxury and misery.
But the complaint now is that some persons have by certain manipulations
become rapidly rich, and have made a “loud” use of their wealth. But are
the hereditary ownerships of nobles or of extensive mercantile houses
more sacred than the newly-won riches of stock speculators? Does the
ancient castle with its solemn walls fit better into the new system than
the luxurious villa of the parvenu? Is one’s desire for equality less
offended by the velvet train which a page bears behind a duchess than by
the satin skirt which the wife of a contractor draws behind her in the
dust of the promenade? The _bourgeoise_ spirit has nothing in common
with the principles of socialism, nor with the sentiments of the
proletariat. But the fountain of civil dissatisfaction has fed the
torrent of socialistic agitation. Many a man, ruined by gambling,
becomes a convert to the idea of a more just division of property; many,
from grief over unlucky stock speculations, have written essays on the
immorality of the acquisition of capital.
Why has German science, justly renowned for its exactness, and often
accused because of its heaviness, hurled itself into this whirlpool, in
order to rise again, dripping with foul water, and with its hands full
of prospectuses for the eternal freeing of the world from evil? Well,
one can have too much of a good thing. The scientific spirit can be
driven to excess. Science has done so much for us that it was easy to
believe that it could accomplish everything. Science and its disciples
suddenly proposed to solve all the problems of life; and every one with
a project was compelled to give out his method for science to decide
upon. Your German, as, a rule, has more adaptability for theoretical
learning than for practical action. Into his head everything penetrates,
and in his head he accomplishes everything. Other people do much with
their five senses and ten fingers without their minds giving much
attention to it. We have more learning than action; more criticism than
taste; we do better when we work with circumspection than when we
attempt to improvise. When, therefore, in the space of a few years, we
had conquered two powerful states in war and in diplomacy, and the world
asked whence we had taken the means, we reflected upon the secret of our
success, and believed that we had found the correct answer in this: “The
school-teacher has won the battle of Sadowa!” In all probability it was
a school teacher who invented this saying, for _fecit cui prodest_.
Already has Lasker warned us of the folly of this dictum. Nothing can be
less acquired in school than genius, and the decisive turn toward
greatness which Germany has accomplished was given by the genius of the
great men who in the right moment took its destiny into their hands.
Statesmanship and war are two arts, not two sciences. To trace the
secret of the power of the commander is not vouchsafed us; but as
regards the political side of the question, it is certain that no German
was ever less of a pedagogue than the imperial chancellor.
We might almost ask how a man who is so exactly the opposite of a
school-teacher could be born in Germany. Germany has at length broken
through the chain which so long held it prostrate, just because it found
a statesman who was so entirely differently constituted from all the
rest. For those who desire to make nature and destiny democratic by
teaching that no one is irreplaceable this fact is unwelcome; but
nothing is more aristocratic than nature and destiny.
But as the schoolmaster carried off and appropriated the laurels of
1866, these of 1870 were awarded to him without question; and when, in
the German Empire which he was supposed to have founded, a breach showed
itself here and there, who should be called upon to fill it but he? The
question was seriously proposed whether society should not be
reconstructed from the core. And the schoolmaster undertook to reply.
The turn which public life has thereby taken is of a very dangerous
character. If we do not soon turn away from this overrating of the
school we shall destroy the whole of German life. By imposing upon
science tasks that do not belong to her we would destroy life through
science, and science through life, and that which was Germany’s pride
and safeguard, her learning and knowledge, would become a burden and a
curse.
Science and life have constantly to learn from each other. In an
exchange of their riches is to be found their salvation, not in the
domination of the one over the other. The much-praised student-life
itself does its part in imbuing the student with the inclination for an
isolated existence. Many remain students all their lives, and a love for
the practical tasks of life is not thereby fostered. The consciousness
of high scientific attainments gives a degree of self-confidence which
is easily carried too far when applied to worldly affairs. To this
temptation more than one succumbed when he was told that it was his task
to reconstruct the social structure. The cry was that the whole existing
order of things had become “bankrupt.” By what rules, then, was the new
order to be established? These were sought and ranged, as the expression
went, in a scientific way. The first of these rules is: “The weak person
must be protected against the strong.” How much can be brought under
this formula! We can pledge ourselves with its aid to work out every
communistic programme to the smallest details. If we only once lose the
sense of discrimination between theoretical knowledge and practice, no
limit can be placed upon self-confidence. Science applied to dogs and
frogs is one thing, but it would not do to apply the same rules to men.
For the communists to assume for their method of regulating society by
scientific means the title of a historical school is indeed a piece of
communism!
How was it possible that a number of scholars, to whom no one can deny
ability and purity of intentions, could permit themselves to be led on
to such extravagances? The overrated conception of the avocation of the
teacher is not sufficient to explain this. Another exaggeration had to
combine with this: the exaggerated conception of the avocation of the
state. Teaching was to prescribe all, the state to execute all.
In regard to the state we have fallen from one extreme to the other.
After it had sunk to the level of a caricature during our political
degeneracy, the recognition of its high vocation overcame us, and we
made an omniscient and omnipotent deity of it. When we say “state”
philosophy takes a hand in the matter, and immediately the conception of
absoluteness and divinity is apparent—the “state” becomes a god in whom
we can place unlimited confidence and from whom we can expect
everything. The truth that after all the “state” is only a term for a
body of individual ministers or legislators has been forgotten. We make
a secret idol of the state. To look behind the curtain is forbidden. But
the less the state benefits one, just so much the more does he expect
and demand from it. He beats his idol in order to compel it to work
miracles. As Herbert Spencer says, it is the fashion to scold the
government in one breath for its awkwardness in the most trifling
matters, and in the next to demand from it the solution of the most
difficult problems. Statecraft, at its best, is only the work of
individuals; it must lose in fineness in proportion to the number of
those who participate in it. There is a thousand times more wisdom in
hero-worship than in the adoration of the intangible collective being to
which, under the name of the state, we do divine honors only because we
cannot see it. A parliament can be observed at its work; even ministers
appear in flesh and blood as parliaments do. But of a sudden parliaments
and ministers end their work; the curtain falls; second act: the state!
It is divine!
Curiously enough this adhesion to the collective system coincides with
the time of the disappointment over this system. For the financial grief
of the last few years is nothing but sorrow for the losses to which
stock-companies have led. If the anonymous corporation could puzzle so
many heads, it is due to the fatal charm which the apparatus of the
collective system exercises. Whenever a man withdraws from the eyes of
men; where in place of the individual a corporation acts, under whose
name the individual is lost to view, there a curtain is drawn which
excites the fancy of those without. Even those who partake of the labor
inside the curtain are enshrouded by the clouds of anonymousness, and
believe more in themselves as a part of the abstract whole than they
would believe in themselves as individuals.
Nothing is more calculated to make intelligible the mixture of deceiving
elements which lie latent in abstract authorities than the famous sixth
great power, the press. How much better were it for that other
abstraction, “public opinion,” if it kept in mind that it is only a man
(and often what a man!) that stands behind the thought! It has been
attempted to remove this cloud, and to force men to see, by compelling
every one to sign his articles with his own name. But this was of no
avail. The law never was enforced in its true sense. Public opinion as
an abstraction feels the need of intercourse with something of a kindred
nature far too deeply to be willing to miss an abstraction representing
that opinion in the form of an anonymous press. It is the same with
anonymous business corporations as with the press. All efforts have
failed to effect a reform in the laws relative to stock-gambling by
means of which the personal responsibility of the board of control of an
anonymous corporation could be brought home to individuals. A piece of
fiction will and must always remain here. If the lawmaker were to take
upon himself the task of changing this fiction into reality the result
would be the same as with the press. Those associations are the best
which are most tyrannically administered, and in which the director has
the least respect for his executive committee. _Tant vaut l’homme tant
vaut la chose!_ There will be no relief until the stockholder knows that
in entering a company he sacrifices a part of his motive for
self-sustentation.[99]
V.
Science is not all in all. To the department of the “highest powers”
reason also belongs. Reason must decide where the domain of science
begins and ends. When science, because it has studied history, feels
called upon to make history; when, because it observes developments, it
believes itself bound to work out plans of development for the future;
when it sends out its champions into political assemblies—why, then it
is out of its own sphere.
In a country which, more than all others, lives on “the milk of the
mind,” the pest of socialistic nonsense could not have spread so widely
if the unwholesome ingredients of this lacteal fluid had not impregnated
the country. For him who studies men and things in proximity it is
curious to observe that when ministers come into Parliament to thunder
against socialism, the offices under their control are filled with
younger officials who have imbibed socialism with the mother’s milk of
the high-schools, and who esteem it their duty, as far as their position
admits, to aid in the inauguration of small socialistic experiments. At
times the jargon of social democracy even finds its way into their
official reports. Still more noticeable is this in journalism. The
official organs which the congress at Gotha mentioned as being in its
service are really only a weak auxiliary corps to the great power which
works in the civilian press for the social democracy. The same reader
who would grow pale were he to discover on the last page of his
newspaper the news of a sudden fall in stocks, is delighted to peruse,
on its first page, a leading article presaging the speedy coming of the
day of vengeance for the proletariat. Such readers count upon the
protection of the army in the event of this theoretical revolution
becoming practical. But this does not hinder them from assailing
“militaryism.” That the strong and strictly-disciplined armed power
would still remain indispensable for internal war, even were the danger
of outward war removed, is a natural thought. But this consolation, if
it be one, is not of so trustworthy a character as is commonly supposed.
So long as the quiet course of history follows its accustomed path
Germany need not fear the dissolution of her army organization by
socialistic agitation. But who can say what a systematically-conducted
dissemination of ideas may not in the end accomplish?
In Würtemberg, Saxony, Hesse, and Holstein the social democrats have
entered the municipal governments. The number of socialistic students is
large; in Schleswig-Holstein and Saxony the rural population has allowed
itself to be drawn into the net of the propaganda. Of course all this
can go much farther without changing the outward aspect of life, and the
suggestion that life is threatened with a radical alteration will only
arouse incredulous laughter, as being an outgrowth of terror or the “red
ghost.” But we should take into consideration the possibility of a great
catastrophe, and remember how, in the breaking-out of a storm, all the
elements of evil augment themselves, unite, and fall upon everything
with destructive force. Thus would Christian socialists,
social-political-socialists, tax-reformers, and local-economic-reformers
unite; and among the leaders themselves one would be dragged on by
ambition, the other by a sense of his responsibility. The motto of Carl
Marx, “The liberation of labor must be the work of the working-class, to
which all other classes are only a reactionary mass,” has now become the
_mot d’ordre_ of all the socialistic organizations in Germany. The
“Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers,” which last year formed the
nucleus of the terrible railway insurrection in America, began in 1863
in an association for mutual aid in cases of sickness, and for
temperance in the taking of spirituous liquors. This insurrection is in
its way better adapted than the Paris Commune for the study of those who
are anxious to ascertain how much longer the fire can smoulder, and how
suddenly and with what irresistible force it may break forth. Faithful
to their tender predilections in favor of socialism, many German papers
have found in the destruction and incendiarism at Chicago, Cincinnati,
Reading, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Baltimore, and Martinsburg only material
for throwing light upon the American speculative mania; and the terrible
devastations which shadowed with gloom a third of the Union were mostly
presented as though they were only to be ascribed to transgressions in
the financial economy. The truth that for years the propaganda had won
the mass of the working-class, and had reared a conspiracy extending
over the whole country, remained in the background. The season in which
the West sends its many products to Eastern ports, and receives in
return the means for carrying on its business, was selected as the
moment for interrupting traffic. At a certain hour all trains were to
stop, and not again move until all the workmen had achieved their
object, whose principle was that industry was bound, even in times when
it does not produce much, to pay just as high wages to working-men as in
seasons of the utmost prosperity—a principle which is announced in the
writings of the Christian socialists of both confessions. After the
population had recovered it asked how it had been possible for it to be
beset by such a monster, whose existence it had not before dreamt of?
And yet three years before, on Christmas day of 1874, a similar attempt,
though on a smaller scale, had been made. On that day at the stroke of
twelve the engineers of all locomotives which transported trains between
the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri stepped
down, left the cars and passengers where they were, and refused to serve
any farther until their demands had been complied with. But in that
widely-agitated country this note of warning was soon forgotten.
Must nations experience everything for themselves? Does man learn
nothing from the misfortunes of others? Forsooth, he seems to learn
nothing from his own. Not insensibility to the wants of the weak
dictates the principle that no legislation on the part of the state can
prevent poverty, inequality, and suffering. Insight into the nature of
man shows us this truth. This insight teaches us that growths in
freedom, in acquirement, in diligence, and in possessions bear
inseparable relations to each other and lead to the good of all. It is
not true that the proportion of the poor and unhappy is larger than
formerly; not true that the contrast between rich and poor is harsher;
not true that the weak is more at the mercy of the strong. It is only
true that the greater approximation between all classes compels us to
become more sensitive to diversities of conditions and to regard them as
intolerable. The idea of a mechanical levelling of the fortunes of all
is the _non plus ultra_ of folly, which in the course of realization
will result in nothing but the destruction of all liberty, for which
reason all reactionary instincts feel themselves attracted to socialism.
Socialism, it is true, has not been productive wholly of evil, because
there are no absolute truths (_sic_), and every anomaly, in its way,
performs a service. It has led, and will in the future lead, the
community and individuals to understand the connection between true
interest and true humanity. More important than to set in motion the
motive of self-interest is it to direct attention to real abuses. For,
say what we may, never has a time possessed more sensitiveness for every
ill and more craving after justice than ours.
Footnote 92:
The man Hoedel, who sought to kill the emperor, stated that he
belonged to this school; he had swung around the circle, and had ended
as an “anarchist.”
Footnote 93:
But this interference is now to be insisted upon, for Prince Bismarck
has instructed the Parliament to pass laws for the suppression of the
publication and spread of socialistic and revolutionary doctrines.
Footnote 94:
Just as the emperor and the chancellor are now urging upon Parliament
the passage of laws to restrict the right of public meeting and of
free speech on the platform and in the press.
Footnote 95:
It is now being debated there under the direct orders of the emperor
and the chancellor.
Footnote 96:
We give this passage literally, in order to furnish an indisputable
evidence of the animus of Dr. Bamberger when he writes of the church
or of Catholics. We shall see, as we go along, how this spirit colors
his reasoning.
Footnote 97:
Dr. Bamberger utterly misrepresents the attitude of the Roman
Catholics in Germany towards the socialists. In the debate of May
23-24 in the Reichstag, on the proposed restrictive measures against
the socialists, the Catholic members aided in defeating the
government’s bill: on the very rational ground that the laws already
in existence were sufficiently strong to accomplish all that the
government required, if only they were properly applied. In any case
it is to be hoped that a man may defend freedom of speech and public
assembly without necessarily being ranked among the socialists. Men
may defend right principles without at all defending a wrong
application of them. The Protestants and National Liberals who, in
this instance, joined with the Catholics in condemning what was
essentially a tyrannous measure, were not “hypocrites.” All condemned
alike the wicked attempt on the life of the German emperor. But even
that attempt did not justify what practically amounted to a wholesale
gagging of the German people.—ED. C. W.
Footnote 98:
As a matter of fact, Mr. Eccarius could not have gone to this congress
at all had not the London correspondent of one of our New York
journals furnished him with the necessary funds for his journey,
taking his letters as payment. Mr. Eccarius, who is an able writer and
personally an estimable man, made excellent use of his visit, as the
London _Times_ took his letters from the congress and paid him at the
rate of £2 a column for them.
Footnote 99:
Here Dr. Bamberger portrays at great length and in a bantering manner
the demands of those who believe that the state can remedy all evils,
and describes with humor the various programmes for state
administration of domestic life, public amusements, education, and
what not. He quotes the Italian proverb that “a fool in his own house
is smarter than a wise man in another’s mansion,” and says that the
state falls into folly when it penetrates the houses of its subjects
and regulates for them their domestic economy.
HELEN LEE.
A ROMANCE OF OLD MARYLAND.
CONCLUSION.
It were difficult to describe how intensely Helen enjoyed her ride
through the wilderness. A good part of the way they followed an Indian
trail which skirted the bank of the Potomac; but occasionally they were
guided in the right direction by blazed trees. “The work of my dear
William’s axe,” thought Helen. In the most beautiful parks in England
she had never beheld any scenery like this; an ancient Greek might have
told her that the wood-nymphs and fauns had come forth from their sylvan
retreats to deck her progress through their dominion. It looked, indeed,
like a festive march; the gentian flowers were a-bloom in every open
spot; the American ivy flung out her gorgeous banners of orange and
yellow; the cedars were draped in scarlet woodbine; the maple, the gum,
the pepperidge-tree, and the sassafras, each one wearing a color of its
own, added glory to the landscape; while from amid clusters of berries
and chestnuts the yellow-hammer and blue-jay called out to Helen in
shrill, gladsome notes.
“I agree with you at last,” said Evelyn—“I agree with you: the Old World
has no season which can compare in loveliness with the American Indian
Summer.”
“And whatever father may say,” observed Helen, reaching out her hand as
they jogged past a persimmon-tree, “I do love ripe persimmons. Nor have
I any objection to a fat ’possum. Look! look! there goes one.” And sure
enough Evelyn caught a glimpse of one of those “low, plebeian brutes,”
as Sir Henry Lee called them, making off through the bushes.
It was late in the evening when they reached St. Joseph’s. The Angelus
bell had long rung; but there was a full moon shining, the air was
balmy, and Helen, tired though she was, was not willing to forego the
pleasure of a stroll with the surprised and enraptured Berkeley at this
witching hour. And as they sauntered along she gave him an account of
her life since they had parted; after which he gave her an account of
his, then ended by making a fervent appeal to her not to return to St.
Mary’s except as his wife.
“Does this startle you?” he asked, as Helen stopped short and half
withdrew her arm from his, murmuring:
“My father! my father!”
“Oh! I entreat you, do not let Sir Henry stand in the way of your
plighted troth. Think—think of me! Loving you with my whole heart, yet
condemned to live separated from you—Helen, it is cruel. No, no! Let the
holy sacrament of matrimony make us one; then, if circumstances still
force us asunder, it will be most consoling to know that the separation
is only for a brief space. I am sure God will soften your father’s heart
towards me, and that ere long he will call me son. O Helen! answer. Do
not refuse my petition.”
While her lover was speaking Helen remembered the dream she had had, and
the ingenious method which had occurred to her in that dream for
overcoming her parent’s aversion to the young man. At the same time her
heart whispered a thousand tender things, such as only a heart deeply in
love can ever whisper; and now when Berkeley ended his supplication all
fear of her father had vanished from her mind, and, looking up at him,
she said:
“Dear William, I consent; let it be as you wish.”
“My own dear girl!” cried Berkeley. “And now, my darling, you have only
to name the happy day. When shall it be?”
“Well, let us be wedded to-morrow. I will tell Father McElroy our whole
story; when he hears it I am certain he will marry us.”
And Helen was right. The wise, kind-hearted priest, after lending an
attentive ear to what she narrated to him early the next day, agreed to
perform the ceremony forthwith. Indeed, there was nothing Father McElroy
liked better than to see young folks united in wedlock, and whenever a
young couple announced to him that they were betrothed he always clapped
his hands and cried: “Good! good! My children, you could not bring me
better news.”
The wedding was as private as possible. Then Helen abode a fortnight at
St. Joseph’s—a blissful fortnight—after which she went back to her
father, who, when he saw her coming towards him, exclaimed:
“The jaunt has done the child a world of good! She needed a change of
air.”
Whereupon Sir Henry’s friend answered:
“Ay, Harry, her cheeks are rosier, and she is every way prettier, than
when she left us.”
The winter that followed this glorious Indian Summer was a very happy
winter indeed. Almost every evening Evelyn visited the tower and passed
an hour in the queen’s room, where Helen played merry airs and sang
joyous songs; and so pleased was Sir Henry at the way she behaved
towards the baronet that he laid aside his gruff manner entirely, and
addressed her always in the kindest voice; for which, we may be sure,
Helen felt extremely grateful to generous Evelyn, who was playing his
part to perfection. And once when the old gentleman kissed her and asked
when the happy day was to be—“For, child, I am growing old; don’t put it
off much longer”—Helen answered: “I promise, father, that I will yet
make you the happiest man in the colony.”
At which he gave her another kiss, then, walking up to the ancient suit
of armor, he began talking to it in an undertone, to the no small
amusement of his friend Dick, who had heard him say that this armor was
haunted by the ghost of one of his forefathers.
But nothing contributed so much to Helen’s peace of mind as a certain
resolution which her father came to towards Christmastide. Sir Henry had
resolved to make a visit to his native land in the company of his friend
Dick, who would be obliged to return in spring. _The Ark_, the same
vessel that had brought him to Maryland, would sail for England early in
March, and the temptation to see his birth-place once more ere he died
was too strong to be resisted. Sir Henry announced his intention to
Helen with a tear in his eye. “But I’ll not be long gone, child. I’ll be
back again before autumn.” Which when Helen heard, instead of looking
pensive, as her father thought she would, she sat down to her
harpsichord and played the most gleeful air he had ever heard in his
life—an air which Helen herself had composed during her honeymoon at St.
Joseph’s. Many times that winter did she repeat this happy air, and more
than once, too, when she finished playing it, she burst into a merry
laugh; and whenever Sir Henry begged to be told what pleasant thought
was amusing her, she only laughed on, then ended by twining her arms
about his neck and saying:
“Dear, dear father! don’t be longer away than the last day of summer.”
As for Evelyn, during those months he was happy too. Yes, he truly was,
and often said to himself: “Thank God! I am awakened from the listless
and supine life I was leading.” And he inwardly confessed that Helen’s
refusal of him had kindled him into a man. Father McElroy, to whom he
made known his resolve to enter the priesthood, was delighted, and lent
him several books which it was needful that he should read; and having
already taken his degree at Oxford, Sir Charles was not ill prepared for
his glorious vocation.
Yes, those days were days of peace and sunshine for the young wife, and
when by and by March arrived and her father bade her adieu, she did not
feel lonesome for being left all alone in the tower. _The Ark_, she
knew, was a stanch craft, and would carry Sir Henry safe across the
ocean, helped by her prayers; then back in a few months he would come,
to meet a joyful surprise.
Of Helen’s life during this spring and summer naught need be said. Time
flew swiftly by; every opportunity brought a letter from her dear
William; and now we find ourselves verging towards September, and Helen
is gazing anxiously from the highest window of her home to catch sight
of _The Ark_, which may any hour be expected. At length, on the very
last day of August, _The Ark_ appeared; and was ever ship so beautiful
in Helen’s eyes?
Happy indeed was the meeting between father and daughter.
“But you look a little pale, child—a little pale,” spoke Sir Henry, as
he clasped her in his arms. “Worrying, no doubt, about me. Well, we had
a tempestuous voyage last spring, and coming back the sea was not much
smoother; I once thought we might never reach land. But, nevertheless,
here I am safe and sound, and now your cheeks must bloom again.”
Then, after the fond greeting was over, Sir Henry set out, accompanied
by Evelyn, to inspect his domain.
“Let us first go see how your lilies are thriving,” suggested the
latter—“the lilies which you planted by the Island of Tranquil Delight.”
“Yes, yes, we will visit them first of all,” answered Sir Henry.
Accordingly, off they went, briskly too, for the old gentleman was
delighted to find himself on solid earth again, and from a distance he
caught sight of the lilies, and of something else besides which was not
a lily, but lovely, wonderful, bewitching, half hidden in a small birch
canoe that floated in the midst of the beautiful flowers.
“Well, I do declare, here is a baby—a winsome blue-eyed baby!” cried Sir
Henry, beside himself with astonishment, as he bent his rheumatic back
over the little mortal, who seemed to know him, for the prettiest of
blue peepers began straightway to wink and make love to him; and as soon
as he lifted it out of the canoe, deep into his grizzly beard its tiny
fingers dove and wove themselves.
“Well! well! This is truly amazing!” he continued. “Some villanous
Indian must have stolen it from its mother. But I will rescue it.”
“So it would seem,” remarked Evelyn, with difficulty repressing a smile,
“for here are a bow and arrows and deerskin blanket.”
“The wretch! the vile kidnapper!” went on Sir Henry. Then, wrapping the
infant in his coat, “Come, come,” he added; “although ’tis a warm day,
yet this poor wee creature might take its death of cold. Come, I must
hurry home; and do you make all speed to the town and fetch a nurse.”
“Helen! Helen! Where are you?” cried Sir Henry the moment he reached the
tower. “Quick, Helen! and look what I have found. Helen! Helen!”
But his daughter did not appear for half an hour, by which time a nurse
had been procured and was already bestowing all needful attention on the
little stranger.
“Why, father!” exclaimed Helen, with radiant countenance, as the old
gentleman led her into the baby’s presence, “why, what a treasure this
is! It will no doubt bring you good luck.”
“I verily believe it will; perhaps money enough to finish my castle,”
said Sir Henry. “Although”—here he looked yearningly at his
daughter—“although this is not the babe I am longing to greet.”
“Well, well, we will do our best to make the pretty waif at home among
us,” pursued Helen. “I am sure we shall get to like it. Why, see! see!
’tis reaching out its hands towards you, father.”
“Just what it did when I first discovered it among the lilies,” said Sir
Henry. “But now let us retire and leave it awhile with the nurse; for
the little darling must need sleep.”
Accordingly they withdrew; and through all the rest of that memorable
day Sir Henry could do nothing except talk about his wonderful discovery
by the Island of Tranquil Delight.
During the week which followed Sir Henry paid frequent visits to the
nursery, and his fondness for the infant grew with the hours. Like many
a stern, imperious nature, he completely unbent; he became woman-like in
his devotion to it. Closely and with fluttering heart did Helen watch
him as he fondled the babe, who never whimpered when he approached, but,
on the contrary, always smiled and made funny signs with its fingers,
which Sir Henry declared that he understood. Then her father would take
it in his arms and speak to it; and once he carried it into the queen’s
room, where he showed it the rusty armor and portrait of the queen.
It was during one of these pleasant promenades that he turned to Helen
and said, “My daughter, ought we not to have the little one baptized?”
Helen breathed a short prayer ere she answered, then spoke: “Father, the
baby is already baptized; his name is Harry Lee.”
“Harry Lee! What mean you?” exclaimed Sir Henry, giving a start; and he
might have let his precious charge drop, had not its mother sprung
forward and caught it. Then, while she pressed it to her bosom, the
truth like lightning flashed upon him.
“And I am now Helen Berkeley,” went on Helen. “But we have christened
our darling Harry Lee.”
“Good heavens!” cried Sir Henry, utterly aghast. “Good heavens! How you
have deceived me!” As he spoke his brow grew dark as a thunder-cloud and
the mother trembled.
Presently, clasping her infant still closer to her bosom, “O father!
father!” she sobbed, “forgive me! forgive me!” And while Helen sobbed
and implored, and while the old knight was trying to calm himself
sufficiently to go on and vent his indignation in measured terms, the
baby, for the first time since he had found it among the lilies, turned
away from him and began to cry. This was more than Sir Henry could
stand. Its wailing accents pierced deep into his heart. There was a
moment’s struggle within him; then, going up to it, he let fall a tear
on its bare head, saying: “Harry, Harry, don’t cry. For love of you I
will forgive all.”
Berkeley, who had been for the past three days at St. Mary’s, was not
long in answering his wife’s summons to speed to the tower, and with him
came Father McElroy, who offered to take the whole blame on himself. But
all was blue sky now; the baby had triumphed, and as Sir Henry grasped
the hand of his son-in-law he said:
“I thank you, ay, from the bottom of my heart I thank you, for
christening the child Harry Lee. I hope it is his whole name, no
addition?”
“Harry Lee and nothing else,” replied the happy Berkeley; whereupon Sir
Henry, in the fulness of his joy, took the child away from Helen, and,
kneeling down at Father McElroy’s feet, said, Anglican though he was:
“Reverend father, may I ask your blessing on me and my grandson?” Then,
when the blessing had been pronounced, he rose up off his knees, and
exclaimed with a voice and mien which those who were present never
forgot: “O God be thanked! I shall not be the last of the Lees.”
* * * * *
One autumn day in the year 1660 a young pale-face might have been seen
entering an Indian village which stood on the western slope of one of
the Alleghany mountains and not far from the source of the Monongahela.
He was a tall, handsome youth, with long, chestnut hair resting on his
shoulders; yet withal he had a somewhat girlish countenance which sorted
ill with the deep scar across his left cheek, that looked very like a
sabre-cut. Presently he reined in his steed in front of a big cabin
forming the centre of the village, and on top of which was a cross, and
said to himself, “This must be the church”; then inquired for Father
Evelyn.
A few minutes later the young man entered a wigwam close by, and found
himself face to face with his god-father; but neither recognized the
other. “Are you truly Harry Lee?” exclaimed the priest, with visible
emotion. “Why, Harry, I have not laid eyes on you since you were a
child. Is this indeed you?”
We may be sure that Harry was warmly welcomed to the missionary’s humble
abode, where for a score of years he had dwelt with his savage flock
around him; but no, not savages any longer. Virtue reigned in the midst
of this happy tribe, and no prisoner had been put to the torture by them
for well-nigh a hundred moons.
“You tell me Sir Henry is dead,” said Father Evelyn, after the first
words of greeting were over. “Well, well, God rest his soul!”
“Dear grandfather!” said Harry. “Not many like him left in this world.
He was so loyal; he was steel itself. Why, he took to his bed the very
day the news reached him of the battle of Naseby, and never left it
again—no, never—and died within twenty-four hours after hearing of the
king’s execution. ‘Damn the Roundheads!’ he cried, as he rose up on his
pillow—‘damn the Roundheads! No, no; God—God forgive them—God save the
king!’ Oh! I shall never forget his expression as he uttered these his
very last words.” Here Harry brushed away a tear and was silent a
moment.
“Before dying,” went on the youth presently, “he gave me this book”—as
he spoke he drew from his pocket a well-fingered copy of _Don
Quixote_—“and mother has taught me Spanish, and I carry this book about
with me wherever I go.”
“Your mother,” said Father Evelyn, “your mother—tell me how she is.”
“Thank God! mother is in excellent health,” answered Harry. “But it was
long before she recovered from the shock of my father’s death. We have a
comfortable home at Jamestown, Virginia; we want for nothing.” (Berkeley
would have died a much richer man, except for his father-in-law’s debts,
which he paid.) “But mother cannot get over her love for Maryland, and
last year we made a visit to St. Mary’s. But we did not stay long; ’twas
too sad. There the tower stands, half hidden by wild vines and creepers,
and surrounded by persimmon-trees. Once a rude churl dared to call it
‘Lee’s folly’; but I made him rue the day—rue the day.”
As Harry spoke he sprang to his feet; his face, a moment before as mild
and tranquil as a woman’s—his very mother’s face, which Father Evelyn
remembered so well—changed in an instant; and while the lightning darted
out of his eyes, the priest beheld the face of old Sir Henry. Ay, and
farther back, too, it went through the generations—back, back: it was
the self-same look which Harry’s ancestor wore who fell at Agincourt.
“Well, is the old home deserted?” asked Father Evelyn, after calming him
and persuading him to resume his seat.
“No; it is used for a look-out tower, and from its summit you can see
ships a long distance down the river.”
Presently Harry noticed a painting hanging on the wall above a rude
book-case, and, after eyeing it a moment, said the two faces in the
picture reminded him of his father and mother. To this the priest made
no response, except to observe that he intended to bequeath him this
painting when he died. “My good Indians will keep it safe for you,
Harry. Do not forget to come for it.”
Then after a pause, during which he ruthlessly crushed many a golden
memory, Father Evelyn added: “The scene represented is not strictly
historical, for St. George lived some time later than St. Margaret. But
in one of the old miracle plays of the middle ages the knight is made to
rescue St. Margaret from the dragon.”
Harry Lee tarried a week under his god-father’s roof, and a pleasant
week it was; after which he returned to his far-off home in Virginia.
But before departing Father Evelyn took his hand in his, and, pressing
it, said: “Harry, who knows when we may meet again? So listen well to
what I am about to say. Your dear father I knew most intimately. In the
colony of Maryland there was no better man than William Berkeley; none
more active; none to whom, after Lord Baltimore himself, the people have
been more indebted for their prosperity and happiness. Therefore tread
in his footsteps. You tell me that you are a surveyor. Well, labor hard
and honestly at your profession. Learn betimes to measure life; stay
true to the faith; and above all things don’t dream—don’t dream.”
HERMITAGES IN THE PYRÉNÉES ORIENTALES.
“Let man return to God the same way in which he turned from him; and
as the love of created beauty made him lose sight of the Creator, so
let the beauty of the creature lead him back to the beauty of the
Creator.”—_St. Isidore of Seville._
II.
Three miles from the village of Passa is the hermitage of St. Luc on an
elevated plateau, surrounded by thorny furze and the cistus, and a few
old mulberry-trees. It overlooks a vast plain dotted with villages, and
in the distance is the Mediterranean—no melancholy main, but a golden
sea of light beneath a burning sun. This is a place of strategical
importance, and in time of war has been alternately occupied by French
and Spanish troops. The chapel has been restored, and a hermit lives in
the adjoining cell. Near by is a fountain shaded by plane-trees to slake
his thirst. On great festivals the peasants come to sing the _Goigs_
relating to the chapel, and votive Masses are frequently offered up for
the cure of various maladies.
About two miles from the little walled town of Ille in the valley of the
Tet, on the side of the mountains that separate it from the valley of
the Tet, is the hermitage of St. Maurice shaded by walnut-trees (what we
call the English walnut). It is a lonely spot, but there is an agreeable
view over the broad valley. The chapel is dear to the people, and they
come here with holy songs on the feast of St. Maurice, who is invoked
for fevers, common in this region. Over the altar is his statue as a
Roman soldier, and near him are two sainted virgins who overcame the
fiery dragon—St. Martha and St. Marguerite. In the pavement is
inserted—a rare thing to find in these chapels—the tombstone of an old
hermit who died here in 1758, with its
_Pregau per ell_.
Further up, on the right bank of the Tet, you came to Prades, a village
north of the Canigou, in a valley teeming with wheat, vines, delicious
peaches noted in the market of Toulouse, and fruit of all kinds. The
very hills are terraced for cultivation. A few miles distant is the
hermitage of St. Etienne on a spur of the Canigou inaccessible to
carriages—a wild, desolate place where rocks are piled on rocks, out of
which gush clear, sparkling rills that keep alive the few plants and
shrubs that grow wherever soil can collect. It once belonged to the
counts of the Cerdagne. The chapel often serves as a refuge to the
shepherds of the mountain in storms. Here is a picture of St. Stephen
with a stone on his head, as he is painted by Carpaccio. Just beyond the
chapel rises the _Roc del Moro_, a high peak crowned by the ruins of an
old watch-tower—perhaps a Moorish Atalaya.
Near Prades, on an elevation overlooking the fertile valley, is the
ancient hermitage of St. Jean Baptiste, now private property, though the
chapel is open to the public. The Canigou presents an imposing aspect
from the terrace, and not far off are the interesting ruins of an old
monastery.
“The long ribbed aisles are burst and shrunk,
The holy shrines to ruin sunk,
Departed is the pious monk,
God’s blessing on his soul!”
The hermitage of St. Christophe is on a mountain shelf shaded by a
venerable hermit oak, looking off over a beautiful valley sprinkled with
villages such as Ria, Sirach, etc. Beyond tower the calm, grand heights
of the Canigou, that, like the contemplative soul, stands above the
world, its gray sides relieved by no soft green pasture-land, and
yielding no corn or oil to man, but holding in its stern recesses the
cold glacier springs whose waters pour down through summer heat from its
storehouses of ice and snow to refresh the thirsty plain, fit emblem of
the holy influences that rain down from the sanctuaries it overshadows.
The huge St. Christopher may well be set up among these giant peaks,
’mid flood and fell. His beautiful legend is told in a series of
bas-reliefs around the walls of the old chapel of rubble-work. On the
10th of July, when he is specially honored here, as in Catalonia, the
surrounding villages come here in procession, stopping on the way to
pray at the oratory of St. Sebastian. After their devotions at St.
Christopher’s they eat their lunch among the rocks and drink from the
stone basins in the caves. Not far off is Ria with its castle—the cradle
of an historic race from which descended the old counts of Barcelona, as
well as many a king and queen of Aragon, Navarre, France, etc. Several
of the present sovereigns of Europe, in fact, might trace their descent
from the old lords of the obscure hamlet of Ria.
The valley of the Tet contracts to a mere gorge at Villefranche, where
there is barely room for the river and the two streets that constitute
the town. This is one of the first places fortified by Vauban. Further
on there is only a mule-path along the ravine shut in by wild, rocky
mountains whose sides are lashed by fierce torrents. On one of these is
the hermitage of St. Pierre de la Roca, reached by climbing a steep path
cut in the sides of the cliff. The chapel fell to ruin at the
Revolution, and the Madonna, which had been found ages before in a cave,
was carried to the parish church. It is now owned by private
individuals, who have had it restored. Adjoining is the hermitage, that
looks down on the beautiful villages of Fulla and Sahorre. Directly
behind rise tall cliffs, and beyond is a vast amphitheatre of mountains,
above which towers the majestic Canigou. A convent once stood close by,
the monks of which served the church of the _Tour Carrée_ at the foot of
the mountain, now in ruins. The convent, too, is gone. You see only the
remains of the old kitchen with its marble pavement and fine cistern;
and, climbing up the side of the cliff by means of a ladder, you come to
a terrace where the monks had their parterre of flowers for the garden.
Close by is the Virgin’s Cave, where the Madonna was found. The chapel,
which is only twenty-five feet long and ten wide, has few ornaments
except the statues of St. Peter and St. Teresa. Before the entrance are
several tombstones, on one of which is this inscription:
“Thou who regardest this tomb, why dost thou not despise that which
is mortal? A similar dwelling is reserved for all mankind. What thou
art, I was. What I am, thou wilt be. I was honored in the world, and
now I am laid away and forgotten in the tomb. I shone in the world
with my rich garments; now I am naked in the grave. I only inspire
horror. I lived in delights....”
Unfortunately the inscription is incomplete. There is no name, no
device, to indicate who it was that had thus tested the pleasures of
life. The stone only echoes the eternal refrain: _Vanitas vanitatis_.
The hermitage of Notre Dame de Doma Nova is on a peak in the ancient
seigneurie of Domanove. At the foot is a rivulet that feeds the stream
of Riu-Fagés. The terrace is shaded by evergreens. You enter by a pretty
porch and find yourself before a mediæval-looking altar with a Madonna
dressed in the Spanish style. This statue was found under a juniper by
means of a lamb that had strayed thither. Among the _ex-votos_ on the
walls is a painting of a hermit tied to a pillar by a band of Huguenots
who are setting fire to the chapel he is in. This commemorates a
pleasing instance of Protestant toleration in 1580.
The Huguenots of Béarn made several raids into Roussillon in the
sixteenth century, and a company was organized to resist them, for which
several communes were rewarded by the king of Spain with special
privileges. Ille, for instance, was allowed to hold a fair.
The hermitage of Notre Dame de la Roca stands on a naked cliff not far
from Nyer. In the depths of the ravine below flows the Mantet ’mid rocks
and frightful precipices. Near by are the ruins of an old battlemented
tower, and on the other side of the stream, in a still wilder, more
inaccessible spot, is the cave where the Madonna was found by a girl in
search of fagots. The chapel is vaulted and adorned in Spanish fashion,
with a retablo over the altar, on the panels of which are painted the
mysteries of religion. The Virgin and Child are in silken garments; and
an iron _reja_ protects the sanctuary. People come here to pray in time
of calamity, and often hang their votive offerings on the wall.
The hermitage of St. Jacques de Calahors is but little frequented. It
has a poor desolate chapel with rude images of the Virgin and St. James,
and an altar to St. Antich, probably some Spanish saint. If any one
wishes to live in poverty and undisturbed solitude, he could find no
more suitable place than the wild, desolate region of which St. Jacques
is the culminating point.
“Never was spot more sadly meet
For lonely prayer and hermit feet.”
The hermitage of La Trinité is known to have existed in the ninth
century. Think of that! A thousand years of prayer in this sacred
desert! What fruits of immortal life from this obscure region! The
present chapel is of the twelfth century. Here is a curious crucifix
known as the _Santa Majestad_, said to have come down from the age of
Charlemagne. It is in great veneration, and sung in quaint Catalan
_Goigs_ perhaps as ancient as the image itself. The Christ is clothed in
a long tunic that allows only the hands and feet and head to be seen. He
is fastened to the cross by four nails, and around the head project long
rays. There are several of these singular crucifixes in the Pyrénées
Orientales, and we remember seeing a similar one at Naples, clad in its
long crimson tunic.
The chapel is surmounted by three crosses, of which the central one is
the highest. Behind rises a peak, on which stands the old donjon of
Belpuig that dates at least from the thirteenth century. La Trinité is
very popular in this pastoral region, and on St. Peter’s day and Trinity
Sunday the mountains ring with the _Goigs_ of the shepherds and
herdsmen.
One of the most picturesque hermitages in the valley of the Tet, and
certainly the most popular, is Notre Dame de Font Romieu, a mountain
solitude surrounded by pines, delightful in summer, but so snowy in
winter that the chapel is closed to the public about the middle of
November, and scarcely opened again till spring. But in the summer it is
open night and day, that the shepherds may come here at any hour they
are at leisure. The actual chapel is of the seventeenth century, but it
is on the site of one much older, built to receive the Virgin found here
in 1113. This venerated statue is kept at Odello the greater part of the
year. On Trinity Sunday it is brought here in solemn procession and left
for a few months, when it is carried back with equal pomp. On these days
there are five or six thousand pilgrims. The Virgin and Child are
crowned and clothed in rich garments, so their faces alone are visible,
but they are evidently very ancient. The fountain that, according to the
_Goigs_, sprang up where the statue was discovered is beneath the high
altar, and the water is conveyed by pipes beneath the pavement of the
chapel to the court, where the pilgrims go to drink. It is remarkably
pure and cool. One pipe extends to a private room, where there is a
large reservoir, twelve feet square, made of a single block of granite,
for the purpose of bathing. This tank is inscribed: _Fons salutis
Maria_. Those who come here to bathe first say the rosary before a
statue of the Virgin at one end of the room, after which they walk
several times around the reservoir, praying Our Lady de la Salud as they
go. A short distance from the hermitage is another fountain, called St.
Jean.
One peculiarity about the chapel is that one-half of it is higher than
the rest. You traverse part of the nave, and then ascend seven steps to
the remainder, into which open the side chapels and the sanctuary. The
retablo of the high altar is covered with bas-reliefs of the life of the
Blessed Virgin, which, as well as the other sculptures, were done by
Suñer, an artist of the seventeenth century from Manresa, Spain. The
walls are covered with an infinite number of _ex-votos_, such as
crutches, long tresses of hair, rude pictures of the Virgin invoked in
time of danger, etc. The whole edifice is rich with gilding and
sculpture, and, when filled with lights and flowers on great festivals,
is quite dazzling. Over one of the altars in a niche is an old painting
of San Ildefonso of Toledo receiving the Santa Casulla from the hands of
the Virgin. We love to find this great servant of Mary in her
churches—him who seemed clothed with her virtues as with the garment she
gave him, and who is never weary of dwelling on her exalted mission.
“Lo, by means of this Virgin the whole earth is filled with the glory of
God!” exclaims he. The Mass here on his festival is obligatory for the
parish of Odello.
Near the church is a still higher eminence, to which you ascend by a
path winding around the mount with the Stations of the Cross up the sad,
funereal way, terminating in a Calvary with the uplifted image of Him
who alone can heal the serpent’s wounds that filled our souls with
death.
The buildings at Font Romieu are quite extensive. There is a hostelry
with a gallery of eleven arcades in front, where meals are prepared and
rooms furnished those who wish to make a retreat. During the summer not
a day passes without visitors. But the great day of the year is the
patronal festival on the 8th of September, when the people of all the
neighboring valleys come here, displaying a variety of physiognomy and
costume hardly to be found elsewhere. Sometimes they amount to ten or
twelve thousand. From the earliest dawn you can see them flocking in
from every quarter, in the costume of their own valley, praying aloud or
singing sacred hymns. As soon as they come in sight of the Calvary they
fall on their knees to salute the uplifted Image so powerful to save,
and again at the sight of the holy chapel. They hear Mass, go to Holy
Communion, and, after completing their devotions, they scatter over the
green to eat their lunch, when the whole scene assumes the aspect of a
rural festival full of innocent gayety. Venders of fruit, cakes, and all
kinds of wares, secular and holy, fasten themselves upon you with
amusing pertinacity, while wandering musicians, in hopes of a few sous,
begin to play on various rustic instruments—the flageolet, oboes, and
perchance, at a proper distance from the holy chapel, the tambourine and
bag-pipe.
Meanwhile, _Goigs_ succeed each other all day long in the chapel, sung
by peasants to rude mountain airs quite in harmony with the words and
place. Every valley awaits its turn to sing its hymn before the Holy
Mother of God.
“Love of Mary is to them
As the very outer hem
Of the Saviour’s garments blessed!”
One would think the age here still Golden, so naïve is the piety, so
simple the manners, of these mountaineers.
We come now to the valley of the Tech, abounding in harvests and rich
meadows kept verdant by the mountain streams. The air is pure and
exhilarating. The pastures are full of sheep and goats. On one hand are
the ridges of the Canigou with watch-towers and ruins of old castles on
the tops, and mines of iron ore in their bosom. The sides of the gorges
are bristling with gloomy pines, and the rocky cliffs aflame with the
rhododendrons that grow in their crevices. On the other hand is the long
line of the Albères with pleasant villages in their folds, and torrents
of crystal coursing down their sides. Beyond is Spain, true land of
Mary. Prats-de-Mollo is the last town on the frontier. It is an old
place, at the very source of the Tech, surrounded by the fortifications
of a bygone age, and commanded by a fort on one of the heights above. A
few miles from the town is the hermitage of Notre Dame de Coral,
delightfully situated on a mountain among trees that afford an agreeable
shade to the weary pilgrim, while cool springs are at hand to quench his
thirst, and rooms provided should he wish to tarry. The Madonna is in
great repute, not only in the province but across the border. The word
_coral_ is supposed to refer to the heart of the oak in which the Virgin
was found. But that was ages ago. It is known to have existed in 1261.
This ancient image is now enclosed in another, likewise very old, as if
to enshrine it. It is over the high altar, behind which is a stairway
that enables the votary to approach it. At one of the side altars is
another of those ancient crucifixes similar to the Santa Majestad at La
Trinité, supposed to be of Spanish origin. It came from an old hospice
at the entrance of a Coll, or mountain pass, not far from
Prats-de-Mollo, where lodged pilgrims to Compostella in the middle ages.
There is still a round building remaining that formed part of this
hospice, with four openings towards the different points of the compass,
in which lights used to be placed to guide the traveller by night. The
chapel, too, called Notre Dame du Coll d’Ares, is still standing, but is
sequestrated.
But to return to our hermitage. Among the numerous _ex-votos_ on the
chapel walls is a curious painting of a young man, seized by two demons,
invoking the aid of the Virgin, who appears and carries him off by the
hair of his head. Beneath is the inscription: “This miracle was wrought
by Maria Santissima del Coral in favor of Joan Solána in the year 1599.
Thomas Solána, his descendant, had this painting done in 1704 for the
honor and glory of the _Verge Purissima_.”
Mgr. Gerbet, Bishop of Perpignan, visited this hermitage in 1857, and
commemorated his visit by a graceful poem which runs thus in more sober
English prose:
“Señora del Coral, for ages the protectress of the pious people of
Prats, Tech, and St. Sauveur, as soon as a turn in the mountains
brought thy chapel in view, the song of the pilgrim burst from my
heart. The rock of Aras, once consecrated to false gods, exorcised
at thy coming, has ever since proclaimed the true Lord. Let thine
ancient power be again renewed. Destroy in us all devotion to
worldly idols with their lowering influences. And accept this
ephemeral homage in union with the _Goigs_ that for so many ages
have resounded in these mountains. Let my verse mingle with these
ancient hymns, as among thy venerable elms the flower of a day
springs up and then dies.”
Between Prats-de-Mollo and Tech, not far from the source of the
Comalada, a branch of the Tech, is the hermitage of St. Guillem de
Combret in the midst of the ridges that shoot off from the Canigou like
huge buttresses. In ancient times there was a _Pausa_ here where
pilgrims to Spain found shelter—a kind of station or hostelry, where
pious people exercised their charity in allaying the fatigue of such
holy wanderers. The Pausa Guillelmi is spoken of in the donation of a
part of Mt. Canigou to the abbey of St. Martin by Count Wifredo of
Barcelona. In the eleventh century it seems, however, to have belonged
to the Benedictines of the neighboring village of Arles, whose church,
still standing, contains the shrine of SS. Abdon and Sennen, noted for
the perpetual flow of miraculous water. These saints are very popular
all through these valleys, and are called by the peasants _Los Cossos
Santos_, or the Sewed-Together Saints, perhaps because they are never
mentioned apart. There is only a part of their remains here, brought
from Rome at some remote period, as the guide-book sneeringly says, to
free the neighborhood from the dragons and other wild animals that
infested it. We know that when these saints were exposed to the fury of
two lions and four bears in the Coliseum, the animals became tame and
harmless before them. No wonder that, crowned in heaven, they should be
equally powerful against error, or the wild beasts, whichever it might
be, that infested these mountains.
The lives of the saints do not mention St. William of Combret, but the
ancient _Goigs_ and sculptures of the chapel set forth a few details of
his life. According to these, he was a Frank who came to seek solitude
and oblivion among these Pyrenees. The wild goats used to come and offer
him their milk for nourishment. And to confound the impiety of the
smiths (who are still numerous at Arles) he wrought, as by miracle, a
bell in their presence that still rings the hour of prayer—an iron bell,
very broad in shape and sharp of clang. The rough altar of solid stone
he is said to have brought here unaided. He died at Alp in the Spanish
Cerdagne, and two blind women are known to have recovered their sight at
his tomb. His statue in the chapel represents him with book and crosier,
as if an abbot. Beside the hermitage is a small garden and a fountain of
delicious water. On St. Guillem’s day the parish of Tech comes here in
procession; High Mass is offered; four gospels are sung in the open air,
as if to proclaim it to the four quarters of the globe; benediction is
given with a relic of the True Cross; and _pains bénits_ are distributed
in remembrance of the hospitality of the old Pausa. Prats-de-Mollo comes
here on St. Magdalen’s day, for to her the place was dedicated before
the time of St. Guillem. Religious traditions never seem to grow dim in
the memory of these tenacious mountaineers.
Three miles from the watering-place of Amélie-les-Bains is the hermitage
of St. Engracia in a green valley that once belonged to the Benedictines
of Arles. The cell is in ruins, and the little chapel very poor. The
walls are about four feet thick, and the dim light makes it seem like a
cave. There is only one altar, with the virgin martyr of Zaragoza on it,
a palm in her hand and a nail piercing her brow. Her legend is told in
some old paintings on the wall. There are statues, too, of the _Cossos
Santos_.
Coming down to Ceret, where the Albères sink into the plain, the Tech is
spanned by an immense arch, by no means so pretentious in the spring,
when the snow melts in the mountains and the waters come pouring down
through the wild gorges, sweeping everything before them. A little way
from the village is the hermitage of St. Ferréol on the plateau of a
mountain. The road to it passes through vineyards, and is bordered by
cherry, walnut, and other trees. The chapel is in such veneration that
the peasants often used to ascend the mountain on their knees with a
candle in their hands, in fulfilment of their vows, and perhaps do so
still. Before it is a terrace shaded by elms, beneath which are two
springs. Here is a fine view over the valley of the Tech extending to
the very sea, while in the background are the everlasting mountains. In
the chapel is a statue of St. Ferréol in the garb of a Roman soldier,
with a sword in his left hand. He is said to have been an officer of
some high grade, martyred for the faith at Vienne, in Dauphiné, in 303.
There is an altar here to Notre Dame dels _Desemparats_—the Catalan for
abandoned or forsaken. There are times in every one’s life when one
feels the need of invoking such a Madonna, and she may well be set up
here in a solitude that harmonizes with the feelings of those who have
need to appeal to her. To be friendless is solitude, says Epictetus. The
women of Valencia wear combs on which is graven the image of Nuestra
Señora de los Desemparados, but whether this is by way of bewailing
their forsaken condition, or to announce their readiness to be consoled,
or merely by way of averting the possible contingencies of life, we
cannot say.
A Catalan inscription on the holy-water vase states that it was given by
a hermit of St. Ferréol who had been a slave at Constantinople
twenty-four years. The chapel is specially frequented in time of
epidemics, and on the festivals of SS. Lawrence and Ferréol, when
worship is conducted with great pomp, the _Goigs_ never cease around the
altars.
The hermitage of Notre Dame del Castel is on a mount belonging to the
chain of the Albères, a few miles from the pretty village of Sorrède.
The pathway up the height is bordered with violets, wild thyme, furze,
and various shrubs. You pass three crosses, and a small oratory where
the processions of Rogation week stop on their way to the mount to sing
a hymn to the Virgin. The hermitage is in a fine position, shaded by
trees, the terrace overlooking a vast extent of country with the
immensity of the sea in the distance. In sight are several places of
interest—the rock of Montblanc, where once stood a royal château; the
_Cova de las Encantadas_, or the fairies’ cave; and, on the top of an
isolated peak, the ruins of the old castle of Ultrera, which history
says was taken by Wamba, King of the Visigoths, in the seventh century.
Don Pedro of Aragon received its keys from Don Jaime of Majorca in 1344.
Finally, it became the property of the lords of Sorrède. Marshal
Schomberg took it from the Spanish in 1675, and the place his troops
occupied is still pointed out as the Camp des Français. The castle being
dismantled by order of Louis XIV., Jeanne de Béarn, who had seigneurial
rights over it, took possession, among other things, of the ancient
Madonna in the chapel, and built another to receive it. This statue had
long before been miraculously discovered in a cave of the mountains.
There is a singular expression of sweetness in the face, and both Mother
and Child are considered _muy hermosos_. She is dressed in Spanish
style, the veil that falls around her partly covering the Child. Great
crowds come here on the festivals of the Virgin, where Mass is sometimes
sung at an altar under the trees, and the people, spread around on the
neighboring heights, give it the aspect of an amphitheatre.
Not a mile from the hamlet of La Roca, where Philip le Hardi in his
campaign against Aragon lodged with all his court, is a pleasant valley
watered by a limpid stream and shaded by trees. Out of it rises a low
hill from which you can see the Albères and their forests of cork-trees,
and among them the ruins of the castle of La Roca, where the king of
Majorca took refuge from Don Pedro of Aragon. Here is the hermitage of
Notre Dame de Tanya, with a well before it shaded by fine old
plane-trees. On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary the people of La
Roca come here in procession. There are daily services during the
octave, among which is the rosary at sunset. On the eighth day there is
a Mass of thanksgiving, after which the people return processionally to
La Roca.
Near the Coll de Prunet, through which passed Hannibal and the hosts of
the Cæsars, is Notre Dame del Coll, shut in by the mountains and their
forests of evergreen oaks and cork-trees—a popular chapel, where people
come to pray to be delivered from the _goître_ and all throat diseases
common in the mountains. The _Goigs_ contain the only accounts of its
history, from which it appears that the chapel was built in the ninth
century to receive a Virgin discovered by means of an ox. There is a
painting over the altar of a herdsman and dog kneeling before the
Virgin. The statue has been gilded, and the dress only allows the head
to be seen. Here are manacles worn by captives in Moorish times, brought
in gratitude for their deliverance and suspended before the image of Him
“whose pierced hands have broken so many chains” other than those of
material bondage. There is an altar, too, to St. Quitterie of Aire, to
whom there are also special _Goigs_. She is invoked for hydrophobia.
About two miles from Argelés is the hermitage of St. Ferréol in a wild,
solitary place among the cliffs of the Albères, the savage aspect of
which is softened by the almond, fig, cherry, and oak trees. Before the
chapel ran the ancient “Carrera de Espagna,” by which Philip le Hardi
went with his army when he undertook the disastrous war against Pedro
III. of Aragon, in 1285, continuing along beneath the castle of Ultrera
to the Coll de la Massane. The chapel used to have two holes in the wall
to receive the alms of the passer-by when the doors were closed. It has
been restored from the ruin into which it had fallen, but is seldom
visited.
On a bare rock not far from Argelés is the hermitage of Notre Dame de
Vic, apparently very ancient, from the thick walls and low heavy arches
of the chapel. Just below is a dark ravine lined with trees, and a
cistern that catches the water trickling down the rocks. A family now
lives in the hermitage. From it you can see over a vast plain, and
beyond is the Mediterranean Sea, a perpetual beauty in itself.
The hermitage of Notre Dame des Abeilles is near the sea-coast, not far
from the Spanish frontier, in a region once noted for its honey. In some
seasons it is approached by the dry bed of a mountain torrent that comes
down in the spring through the undulating hills covered with vines and
olives. As far back as 1657 the chapel was known as the Capilla Antigua,
and was famous for the perpetual miracle of its ever-open door which no
human hand could keep closed. It contained one of those images which was
“not willing to be shut up.” This was an old Madonna, black as that
which Giotto loved to pray before, with a honeycomb in her hand, sweet
to the taste as the knowledge of wisdom to the soul, reminding one of
the spouse of the Canticles, whose lips drop as the honeycomb. People
used to come from Spain to revere this Virgin, but it was removed for
safety in 1793, and is now in the parish church of Banyuls-sur-Mer,
where, as in ancient times, a lamb is offered at her altar on Whit
Tuesday, the feast of Notre Dame des Abeilles, which is afterwards sold
to the highest bidder to defray the expenses of the festival. On the top
of a neighboring mountain, about two thousand feet above the level of
the sea, may be seen the old historic tower of Madeloc.
Three miles from the town of Collioure is the hermitage of Notre Dame de
Consolation, to which you ascend out of vines and plantations of olives,
almonds, and figs by a path cut in the rocks. By the wayside is an
oratory here and there with some saint in the niche, as St. James, St.
Ann, and Our Lady of Many Griefs. You seldom find a more charming spot
in summer. The terrace before the chapel is shaded by alleys of lindens,
chestnuts, and elms, some of which are of enormous size, and beneath
them are fountains that diffuse their cooling waters. Below is a
vineyard noted for its products, and through an opening between two
hills can be seen the fortress of Miradon, the belfry of Collioure, and
the sea in the distance. The ancient image of Our Lady has disappeared,
but there is a modern one in the sculptured retablo. Here on certain
days, as St. Ferréol’s, is a great gathering. The popular _Goigs_ are
sung to airs of simple melody, and every one goes down the eighteen
steps to drink at the miraculous fountain. He who has prayed in this
mountain chapel among the pious peasantry, and wandered in the shady
alleys of the delightful terrace, and drunk of the waters, finds it
difficult to tear himself away.
Such are a few of the ancient hermitages of the Pyrénées Orientales. Not
one is without some beauty of its own that would commend it to the heart
of the poet; not one without the balmy fragrance of some holy legend so
attractive to the imagination; not one without its altar where God has
for ages revealed himself, and the solitude where he loves to speak to
the heart. Well may we exclaim with one[100] who was himself a hermit
for a time on the shores of this very sea: “How delightful this
boundless solitude where nature silently keeps watch! This silence has a
thousand tongues that prompt the soul to soar away to God and wrap it in
ineffable delights. Here no noise is heard but the human voice rising
heavenward. These sounds full of sweetness alone trouble the secret
solitude. Its repose is only interrupted by murmurs sweeter than the
repose itself—the holy murmur of the lowly psalm. From the depths of the
fervent soul rise melodious harmonies, and the voice of man accompanies
his prayer to heaven.”
Footnote 100:
St. Eucher.
ROSARY STANZAS.
GLORIOUS MYSTERIES.
I.
PSALM cxxv. 5.
Once lost and found, again the Lost is found!
Drinking his voice, and feeding on his face,
Again her care and grief of heart are crowned;
Her lifelong grief outmeasured by the grace
That rained upon her in each moment’s space
As she beheld Him living who was dead.
Away the clouds of Time such meetings chase.
Wells of delight like those by tears are fed;
The soul to joy like hers by sorrow must be led.
II.
PSALM lxxxiii. 6-8.
The mountain-roots lie in the lowly vale.
Mother bereaved! from height to vaster height
Ever ascending, his last triumph hail!
On wings of fire her love has taken flight,
To follow where he is gone beyond her sight;
Heaven is not far off, Love’s wing is strong.
She sees the royal portals clothed in light;
To Son and Mother there high thrones belong:
Whom dying will unite, life cannot sever long.
III.
ACTS i. 14.
In the pale light of subterranean glooms,
Rude art of early centuries portrays
Upon the wall of Roman Catacombs
Jesus’ great Mother, Mary, as she prays,
With arms uplifted, while apostles gaze.[101]
Even so she prayed before the Spirit came
To consecrate the Pentecostal days,
With rushing power and tongues of lambent flame.
Can aught be then denied, if prayed in her great name?[102]
IV.
CANTIC. ii. 17.
Shades yield to light. The Twelve from every land
Are gathered round the dying Mother’s bed;
Tranquil she lies, awaiting the command
To arise and come. She hears, and bows her head:
One _Fiat_ more, and Mary is with the dead;
But, sought the third day in her empty tomb,
On wings of angels borne, had upward fled,
Where flowers of Paradise undying bloom,
And glories passing thought her future home illume.
V.
JOHN xvii. 22.
From tiny rills the mightiest rivers grow;
Insensibly from small to great they glide,
City and plain rejoicing as they go.
But never less than great the treasures wide
Of Mary’s peerless grace. Full they abide
For evermore; and deep and strong and free
The current of that overflowing tide;
Beyond all ear can sound, all eye can see,
Mingling her glorious wealth with the Everlasting Sea.
Footnote 101:
_Le Oranti_ of the archæologists.
Footnote 102:
John xvi. 26.
PANTHEISM _VERSUS_ ATHEISM.
Protestantism is very unfortunate in its warfare against modern
unbelief. It is daily losing battles, losing men, and losing ground; and
it feels so little reluctance to give up one dogma after another as to
create the impression that the time is not far off when it will deliver
up its last citadel and accept the yoke of the enemy. The fact is so
well known that it needs no proof; nevertheless, as we have a striking
illustration of it in a phase of the struggle which is now going on
between Protestant and infidel thought on the all-important dogma of the
existence of God, we will make it the subject of a short discussion,
that our readers may form a clearer conception of the suicidal strategy
of some Protestant controversialists.
A work has recently appeared which purports to be a natural history of
atheism.[103] Its author is an accomplished Protestant scholar, a
learned professor, an elegant writer, and an earnest advocate of
religious ideas in accordance with the Bible as interpreted by his
private judgment. His object is to refute atheism. Of course history,
reason, and revelation are all on his side, so he is well armed; whilst
his antagonist, though boisterous and aggressive, is by no means
formidable, having had his strength thoroughly broken by former defeats.
In such a condition of things the victory should evidently belong to the
champion of Divinity. And yet no. Our champion strikes, indeed, some
heavy blows, but while thus struggling with the enemy he falls into a
quagmire. In other words, he grapples with a senseless atheism only to
plunge into an equally senseless pantheism.
With regard to the first chapters of the work we have little to say. The
author proves pretty conclusively that atheism is against reason. He
shows that the belief in the existence of God has been universal not
only among civilized nations but also among barbarous tribes. “Atheism,”
says he, “is a disease of the speculative faculty.” “It indicates a
chaotic state of mind.” “It is a doctrine so averse from the general
current of human sentiment that the unsophisticated mass of mankind
instinctively turn away from it, as the other foxes did from that
vulpine brother who, having lost his tail in a trap, tried to convince
the whole world of foxes that the bushy appendage in the posterior
region was a deformity of which all high-minded members of the vulpine
aristocracy should get rid as soon as possible.” This argument against
atheism was well known to the ancients, who laid great stress upon it,
as they saw that a universal agreement of mankind on the existence of
God could not but proceed from our rational nature; but our author
considers it as a simple “presumption,” rather than a proof in favor of
the theistic doctrine.
He then argues from the principle of causality and from the wonderful
wisdom displayed in the architecture of the universe. This, too, is very
good. Next, he meets the objection drawn from the existence of evil in
the world.
“If there were no poverty,” says he, “where were charity? If every
person were equally independent and self-reliant, where would be the
gracious pleasure on both sides which arises from the support given
by the strong to the weak? Where again would be the topping virtue
of moral courage, unless the majority, at some particular critical
moment, were cowards?... In fact, always and everywhere the
development of energy implies the existence of that which energy
must subdue—namely, evil in some shape or other. Therefore the
existence of evil is not a proof that there is no God; but it is by
the overcoming of evil constantly that God proves himself to be God,
and man proves himself to be God-like, when in his subordinate
sphere he does the same.”
This answer is tolerably good; but we doubt if the atheist will be
silenced by it. The author should have distinguished physical from moral
evil. The existence of physical evil he could have shown to be perfectly
reconcilable with God’s infinite goodness and providence; whereas the
existence of moral evil should have been shown to be in no manner
derogatory to his infinite sanctity. This has been done very fully by a
multitude of philosophers and theologians; but it could not be done
consistently by our pantheistic writer, because, as we shall see, all
moral evil, according to his pantheistic theory, would either emanate
from God or be immanent in him, with a total ruin of his infinite
sanctity. Hence the atheist, after all the reasonings of the learned
professor, may still urge that the existence of a God is incompatible
with the existence of sin; and we think that the professor will be at a
loss how to answer the difficulty so long as he holds to his pantheistic
views.
As to the genesis of atheism the author makes many good and thoughtful
remarks. There is a sort of atheism which arises from an absolute
feebleness or babyhood of intellect. This he calls “atheism of
imbecility”; but, says he, “we need not detain ourselves with this type
of intellectual incapability. It is not atheists of this class that we
are likely to meet with in the present age; and if we did meet them we
should be much more likely to remit them summarily to some hospital of
incurables than to a thinking school.”
The next type of the atheistic disease has its origin in moral
depravity. There are men whose career is “like a piece of music made up
of a constant succession of jars, which shakes the strings so much by
unkindly vibrations that the instrument, from the force of an unnatural
strain, cracks itself into silence prematurely. Now, unharmonized
characters of this description are naturally indisposed, and practically
incapacitated from recognizing order, design, and system in the
constitution of the universe, and of course cannot see God.” This root
of atheism is very well illustrated by Mr. Blackie. Here is a beautiful
passage:
“It occurs to me to set down here the features of one of the most
notable of those disorderly characters who lived in ancient Rome at
the same epoch when the hollow atheism of Epicurus was dressed up
for a day in the garb of poetical beauty by a poet of no mean genius
called Lucretius. The man I mean is Catiline. Hear how Sallust in a
well-known passage describes him: ‘Lucius Catiline, born of a noble
family, a man of great strength, both of mind and body, but of a
wicked and perverse disposition. To this man, from his youth
upwards, intestine broils, slaughters, rapines, and civil wars were
a delight; and in these he put forth all the energy of his youth. He
could boast of a bodily frame capable of enduring heat and cold,
hunger and watching, beyond all belief; he had a spirit daring,
cunning, and full of shifts, ready alike to simulate what he was not
and to dissimulate what he was, as occasion might call. Greedy of
others’ property, he was lavish of his own; in passion fiery, in
words copious, in wisdom scant. His unchastened ambition was
constantly desiring things immoderate, incredible, and beyond human
reach.’ This is exactly the sort of character, to whose completeness
if anything like a philosophy is to be attributed, atheism will be
that thing.”
In our age, however, according to the author, all the varieties of
speculative and practical atheism which we meet with in common life are
“weeds sprung from the rank soil of irreverence.” Man being naturally a
religious animal, atheism can then only spring up when, in the
individual or in society, any influence arises which nips the natural
bud of reverence in the soul. Thus power may foster a strong feeling of
independence, which may end in a monstrous self-worship. But liberty
also, as the author well remarks, when unlimited, leads to godlessness.
There is an atheism of democracy no less than of despotism. From extreme
democracy, as from a hot-bed, atheism in its rankest stage naturally
shoots up. There is nothing in the idea of mere liberty to create the
feeling of reverence. The desire of unlimited liberty is an essentially
selfish feeling, and has no regard for any Power from above. The
fundamental maxim of all pure democracy is simply this: “I am as good as
you, and perhaps a little better; I acknowledge nobody as my master,
whether in heaven above or on earth beneath; I will not be fettered.”
But, continues the author, unlimited power and unlimited liberty are not
the only social forces that are apt to run riot in the exaggerated
assertion of the individual and the negation of all superhuman
authority. There is the irreverence begotten of pride of intellect.
Knowledge, of course, does not directly produce irreligion or extinguish
piety, on the contrary, the more a wise man knows of the universe, the
more he is lost in admiration of its excellence. But the knowing faculty
is not the whole of a living man, and to bring forth its healthy fruits
it must go hand-in-hand with a rich moral nature; divorced from this,
knowledge begets intellectual pride and opens the way to godlessness.
Here the author points out the fact that there is something in the
researches of modern science, at least in certain conditions of the
intellectual atmosphere, not apparently favorable to the growth of piety
and the cultivation of religious reverence. In not a few modern books of
physical science we find nothing but “a curious fingering of wretched
dumb details utterly destitute of soul. Whatever is in the book, depend
upon it, God is not there. You will hear no end of talk about laws and
forces, developments and evolutions, metamorphic forms, transmuted
energies, and what not; but it is all dead—at least all blind. For
seeing intellect and shaping reason there is no place in such systems.”
The author strongly condemns this godless science, and shows at length
its fickleness and unwisdom; and we might almost mistake him for a
Catholic apologist, were it not that he ventures to speak of “non-sense”
in connection with the Council of Trent, at which he irreverently
sneers.
In the next chapter he treats of polytheism, whose origin he traces to
misdirected reverence towards the powers of nature. He shows that
polytheism was not atheism, and that polytheistic society could reach a
certain degree of morality not to be found among atheists. To our mind,
this chapter, though learned, is nearly superfluous; for it has scarcely
any bearing on the history of atheism. In like manner we think that the
chapter on Buddhism, which comes immediately after, and which fills
seventy pages, was uncalled for. The author says that the British
atheism of Bradlaugh, John Stuart Mill, Miss Martineau, Tyndall, and
others called his attention to the assertion that in the far East
atheism had been publicly professed for more than two thousand years,
and was at present the corner-stone of the faith of more than four
hundred millions of the human race. Could such an assertion be true? He
could not believe it. To talk of a religion without God was, to his
mind, “as to talk of the propositions in Euclid without the postulates
on which they depend.” He therefore determined to get at the root of the
matter, and thus he discovered that Buddhism was not atheism. It is to
show this that he gives an elaborate explanation of the Buddhistic
system. We need not discuss it, though we believe that some Buddhistic
errors which he points out are somewhat exaggerated. We only repeat that
the natural history of atheism would have lost nothing, and perhaps
gained something, if this long digression on Buddhism had been omitted.
And now we have reached the last chapter of the work, where the author
endeavors to make theologians responsible for a kind of modern atheism
which he calls “atheism of reaction,” and where he makes his strange and
foolish profession of pantheism. It is with this chapter alone that we
shall be concerned in the following pages; for it is the evil doctrine
contained in this objectionable chapter that spoils the whole work and
gives it a totally anti-Christian character. Is the author a Freemason?
Is he the mouth-piece of the Scotch and English lodges, whose members
are anxious not to be ranked among atheists, though they have no
definite creed? We do not care to know. But we may well affirm that his
book is full of the Masonic spirit, and answers so well the present
needs of British Freemasonry that we cannot be much mistaken if we call
it a Masonic work. It is well known that the English Freemasonry, either
because less advanced or because more prudent than the Masonry of
France, thought it necessary to protest against a suicidal resolution
lately passed by the latter, which permits the admission of candidates
to membership irrespective of their belief or disbelief in the Great
Architect of the universe. This resolution was strongly condemned by the
English lodges, which lost no time in sending out a public official
declaration that, so far as the English fraternity was concerned, no
member would be recognized who did not profess to believe in the Great
Architect, according to the old Masonic constitution. The wisdom of this
measure cannot be doubted; for the English Masonry enjoys still a
certain degree of respectability, which must not be compromised by a low
sympathy with the desperate atheism of the French communists.
Nevertheless, so long as they talk of a “Great Architect of the
universe” without explaining more particularly what they mean by these
words, there is reason to fear that their protest against the French
infidels is a deceit. The pantheist, the Buddhist, and the agnostic, and
even the materialist and the fatalist, can admit an Architect of the
universe, provided they are allowed to put upon these words a free
construction. One will identify him with Law, another with Nature, a
third with Force, a fourth with Matter, and perhaps a fifth with Satan
himself; for, as the old Manichæans held that this material world was
the work of a bad principle, so there are now men (not unknown to
Freemasonry) who consider Satan as their friend, their master, and their
god. There are lodges where the “Great Leonard,” a satanic apparition,
is an object of worship. No doubt these lodges recognize him as the
“Great Architect of the universe.” And Proudhon was so bold as to
publish that he was in love with Satan: “_Viens, Satan; viens, que je
t’embrasse!_”
At any rate, if the book we are criticising has been written in the
interest of the British Freemasons, it fails to show that they are more
orthodox than their French brothers whom they have excommunicated. The
pantheism professed in the book is just as worthless as the French
atheism; for pantheism, just as much as atheism, makes all religion
impossible. Hence a book which refutes atheism in order to establish
pantheism, however filled with Scriptural quotations to make it look
religious, is an anti-Christian book.
The atheism of reaction, of which the author speaks in the first part of
this chapter, is, according to him, “a recoil” from the exaggerations
and dictatorial imperiousness of theological orthodoxy. “Even theism,”
he remarks, “the only reasonable theory of the universe, in the
blundering fashion in which you state it, may possibly produce atheism,
the most unreasonable of all theories.” The Reformation “was
unquestionably a reaction from the excess of sacerdotal assertiveness,
and the abuse of ecclesiastical power in the latter centuries of the
middle ages.” This excess “gave sharp offence to the delicate conscience
of Martin Luther, and roused his sleeping wrath into a thunder-storm of
holy indignation.” How? “By parading the public places, and marching
through the highways of Christendom with a sacerdotal gospel of
salvation by works—by conventional and arbitrary works, penances, and
payments of various kinds imposed by authority of the all-powerful
clergy, and having little or nothing in common with the morality of a
pure life and a noble character.” “Against this abuse Luther protested
exactly in the same way, and with similar effect, as St. Paul protested
against the ritualism of the Jews.” “_The just liveth by faith._ This
great doctrine has saved the world twice, once from the cumbrous and
narrow-minded ceremonialism of the Jews, and again from the despotic and
soul-stupefying sacerdotalism of the Romanists.”
All this trash is beneath discussion; it only shows that the author is
little acquainted with the men and the doctrines to which he refers. He
seems never to have reflected that such “delicate consciences” as that
of Martin Luther had as little scruple about falsifying history as they
had about marrying nuns, rebelling against authority, or shedding blood.
Even Protestants would now smile at the “thunder-storm of holy
indignation” roused in the good soul of Luther at the thought of a
gospel of salvation by works of penance. Well might even Lucifer’s
“delicate conscience” have burst into a storm of “holy indignation,” as
he could not work out his salvation without controlling his pride; and
he might have protested against God’s orders, just as Luther did, by
alleging that “the just liveth by faith.” How the reformers succeeded in
“saving the world” by this doctrine of salvation without works, can be
argued from the fact, attested by our author himself, that “anarchy and
confusion, with the braying of a theological ass here, the cackling of a
clerical goose there, and the raving of a sectarian madman in a third
quarter, began to show face to such a degree that sensible and
quietly-disposed men, like Erasmus, became seriously alarmed before the
spirits they had conjured up, and retreated, with a devout timidity,
into the sacred ark of the old Catholic Church.” This confession speaks
volumes.
The author describes a sort of rampant orthodoxy which delights in
doctrinal exaggeration of mysteries, and which is never so happy as when
it can plant itself behind the broad shield of unintelligible formulas
and traditionary shibboleths, to pluck Reason by the beard, and bid open
defiance to the grand principle of the Scottish philosophy called common
sense. And this, he says, excites an atheistical reaction. We really do
not know of any orthodoxy which delights in “plucking Reason by the
beard.” The Scotch Presbyterians may have done something of the kind,
but they have no claim to orthodoxy. True orthodoxy is nowhere but in
the church whose centre is Rome. But the Roman Church never used
unintelligible formulas, never had shibboleths, and never plucked Reason
by the beard, but on the contrary made use of the plainest language and
the best cultivated reason to teach the revealed truth, and to defend it
against heretics and unbelievers. Had the Protestant sects as much
regard for Reason, and for the great principle of the Scottish
philosophy called common sense, they would soon perceive that their
claim to orthodoxy is nonsensical and their Christianity a delusion. And
if they were logical, they would not, when their ministers pluck Reason
by the beard, feel inclined to an “atheistical reaction,” but would only
conclude that their ministers do not belong to God’s church, and have
neither grace nor mission to teach Christianity.
The author admits the necessity of faith; but he scouts the doctrine
that whoso believes not every dogma about the divine nature shall be
eternally damned.
“The spirit,” he says, “from which damnatory declarations of this
kind proceed is a mingled spirit of ignorance, conceit, presumption,
insolence, and pedantry, and has more to answer for in the way of
creating atheism than any other fault of Christian preachers that
has come under my observation. Against declarations of this kind,
however solemnly made, and however traditionally hallowed, the moral
and intellectual nature of the most soundly-constituted minds rises
up in instinctive rebellion: the intellectual nature, because the
propounding of dogmas in a scholastic form about the nature of the
Supreme Being shows an utter ignorance of the proper functions and
limits of the human intellect; and the moral nature even more
emphatically, because to make fellowship in any religion conditional
on the merely intellectual acceptance of an abstract proposition
addressed to the understanding, is to remove religion altogether out
of its own region, where it can bear fruit, and to transplant it
into a soil where it can show only prickles that fret the skin, and
thorns that go deeply into the flesh.”
This is wisdom! Therefore, according to this writer, to believe in three
divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is unnecessary for
salvation, and to say the contrary is conceit, insolence, and pedantry.
It is difficult to conceive how a Christian could fall into such
absurdity. The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the very base of
Christianity. It is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost that we are baptized; it is by the Son of God that we are
redeemed; it is by the Holy Spirit that we are sanctified. Without this
faith there is no Christianity, and without Christianity there is no
salvation. We need not be afraid that “the moral and intellectual nature
of the most soundly-constituted minds should rise up in instinctive
rebellion” against this doctrine; for the history of eighteen centuries
proves very conclusively that soundly-constituted minds have never
rebelled against dogma. Nor do we see why the intellectual nature should
denounce the use of the scholastic form in the propounding of dogmas.
Such a form is clear, precise, and full of meaning; it is therefore the
best intellectual form. And as to the moral nature, we can only say that
nowhere is it more cultivated than in the Catholic Church—a truth which
no one disputes—whilst the assumption that “the _merely_ intellectual
acceptance of an abstract proposition” suffices to qualify a man for
religious fellowship, is a clear proof that the author has never read
our Christian catechism.
“But,” says he, “it is not only in their way of presenting faith
generally, but in their rash and unreasoned statement of special points
of Christian belief, that our theologians have greatly erred.” And he
mentions the doctrine of predestination and reprobation, the doctrine of
original sin, the doctrine of eternal punishment, the doctrine of
creation out of nothing, and the doctrine of God’s providential
intervention in human affairs. We do not deny that the doctrine of
predestination and reprobation has been discussed rashly and in an
irreverent manner so as to create scandal and discord; but it is on the
Protestant, and especially on the Calvinistic, preachers and writers
that lies the responsibility of such deplorable quarrels. It was their
private judgment pushed to excess and their pride that roused the storm.
Of course our Catholic theologians could not look silently on such a
wanton perversion of truth; to defend human liberty on the one side and
God’s justice on the other they had to take part in the difficult
controversy. They often differed in matters of detail, but their
conclusions as to the main point—that is, as to the dogma—were uniform
and irreproachable. Mysteries, however, do not cease to be true because
men cannot unravel them. Theologians do not claim the privilege of
tearing asunder the veil through which mysteries are seen; but they
claim the honor of defending the objective truth of mysteries against
the attacks of heresy and unbelief. This is why theologians investigate
and expound mysteries; and to contend that the result of their labors is
to encourage atheism is to abandon “the great principle of the Scottish
philosophy called common sense,” or, to use another phrase of the
author’s, “to pluck Reason by the beard.”
The author says that he has brought forward this matter (of
predestination and reprobation) specially because the Calvinistic view
of it, as laid down in the catechism used in the elementary schools of
Scotland, occasions “no small amount of misery and self-torture to young
persons beginning seriously to look into the great truths of religion
and morals.” We agree with him. The Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation
makes man the helpless victim of a tyrannical and cruel God, destroys
all the seeds of piety, and fosters despair. But if its adoption may
lead to atheism, it is not the fault of theology; it is the fault of
Calvin’s rebellion against the church.
The next good service done by theologians to the anti-Christian
tendencies of some “respectable” (?) classes of the community has been,
according to our author, their inculcation of the doctrine of original
sin. “Original sin,” says he with Coleridge, “is not a doctrine but a
_fact_”; by which he means, we suppose, that the first man sinned, but
that from this fact we cannot conclude that his children are born in
sin.
“Moral merit and demerit are in the very nature of things personal;
to imagine their transference is to destroy their definition. If
every baby when born, in virtue of an act of transgression committed
some six or eight thousand years ago by the father of the race, must
be confessed a ‘hell-deserving sinner,’ and lying on the brink of
eternal damnation as soon as it lies on its nurse’s lap, then every
man of sound moral feeling is entitled to protest against a doctrine
of which such a cruel absurdity is a necessary postulate.”
Here again the author is at fault. The dogma of the inheritance of guilt
from our first parent is not an invention of theologians, but an
explicit doctrine of the New and even of the Old Testament. To omit
other quotations, St. Paul the apostle, whose authority is so frequently
appealed to by our author, declares that Adam sinned, and that _in him
all men have sinned_. Now, if St. Paul cannot be charged with doing a
good service to anti-Christianity by preaching this doctrine, why should
theologians be denounced for preaching it?
The author argues that “merit and demerit are personal,” and that “to
imagine their transference is to destroy their definition.” Yes; but the
dogma of original sin does not imply any such transference. The original
sin is _personal_ and _inherited_, not _transferred_. “Out of good
seed,” as the author tells us, “a good plant will grow, and out of bad
seed a bad plant.” Is the badness of the plant _transferred_? No; it is
inherited. And so it is with the stain of original sin. We are born of a
degraded father, and we are a degraded race—degraded not only physically
but morally; that is, deprived of the supernatural grace which
accompanied the original justice in which man had been created. This is
what St. Paul expresses by saying that we are born “children of wrath.”
It is not in virtue of an act committed six thousand years ago that
every baby is _formally_ a sinner; he is a sinner owing to his own
personal destitution of supernatural grace, just as the child of a
redskin is _formally_ a redskin, not by the skin of his father but by
his own. This doctrine has been taught and held from the origin of
Christianity by the most learned, the most acute, and the most holy men,
without their sound moral sense being hurt by it; it was reserved to our
vicious and ignorant generation to take scandal at the pretended cruelty
involved in such divine dispensation. What a pity that God, in shaping
his decrees, forgot to consult our learned professor of Greek![104]
The doctrine of eternal punishment is, according to Mr. Blackie, another
“stone of stumbling” set up by the Christian doctors. The ancient
Greeks, he remarks, had also taught this doctrine; but they taught it in
a very modified form. Only a few flaming offenders were condemned to a
state of helpless reprobation and inexhaustible torture. But the
Christian churches “committed themselves to a theology drawn up by
scholastic persons in a series of formal propositions which challenge
contradiction and refuse compromise. Therefore the doctrine of infinite
torture for finite sins is still stoutly maintained as a point of
Christian faith, and as stoutly disowned by a large class of benevolent
and thoughtful persons, who look upon such a doctrine as utterly
inconsistent with the conception of a wise and benevolent Being.” He
then adds that if there were not a great deal of dogmatic obstinacy, a
fair amount of hermeneutical ignorance, and a considerable vein of
cowardice also in the ecclesiastical minds, this stumbling-block might
easily be removed. For “it does not require any very profound
scholarship to know that the word αἰώνιος, which we translate
_everlasting_, does not signify eternity absolutely and metaphysically,
but only popularly, as when we say that a man is an eternal fool,
meaning only that he is a very great fool.”
This last argument is easily answered. In fact, it does not require any
very profound scholarship to know that the word αἰώνιος here means
_everlasting_ in the sense of perpetual duration. This is evident from
collateral passages of Scripture, from which we know that the fire of
hell “shall not be extinguished,” that, the smoke of the torments of the
wicked “shall ascend for ever and ever,” that their worm “shall never
die,” etc., all which expressions, according to our “hermeneutical
ignorance,” more than suffice to annihilate the professor’s pretension.
Besides, the ancient translators of the Bible were as good professors of
Greek, to say the least, as Mr. Stuart Blackie; but they never suspected
that there would come a time when such slang as “an eternal fool” would
mean “a very great fool.” It is too late now for any professor to
pretend that the ancient Greek had no correct interpretation till
English slang made its appearance.
The other argument consists in saying that a finite sin cannot deserve
an infinite punishment. This, too, is easily answered. The act of sin is
finite, but it violates the infinite majesty and sanctity of God, and on
this account it partakes of infinity. However, let us drop this
consideration, which is too scholastic to be understood by certain
modern professors of Protestant institutions. We have another answer. A
man can dig out his eyes in less than a minute; the act is finite, but
its result is perpetual blindness. In like manner a man loses, by
sinning, his fitness to see God in his glory; the act is finite, but the
consequent unfitness is, of its nature, everlasting. God alone can
restore the sinner to his previous condition; but this he is not obliged
to do. The rehabilitation of a sinner is a real miracle, just as the
resuscitation of Lazarus, and miracles are not the rule but the
exception. God warns us that “the hope of the sinner shall perish,” that
“now is the acceptable time,” and that after death “there is no
redemption.” And yet we are accused of “dogmatic obstinacy” because we
do not renounce this doctrine of faith!
We are told that there is a large class of “benevolent and thoughtful
persons” who look upon such a doctrine “as utterly inconsistent with the
conception of a wise and benevolent Being.” But our “dogmatic obstinacy”
compels us to remark that this wise and benevolent Being knows much
better than those “benevolent and thoughtful persons” what his wisdom
and benevolence require; and therefore it is from his word, not from
those “thoughtful persons,” that we must accept the solution of the
problem. It may be that in doing so, we exhibit “a considerable vein of
cowardice”; but it is wise to fear God. We are weak and he is almighty.
“Another stumbling-block which theologians have laid in the way of
the devotee of physical sciences is _the creation out of nothing_.
This dogma, which, as every scholar knows, is not necessarily
contained in any place, whether of the Old or New Testament, arose
in the Jewish Church, and has been stamped with orthodox authority
in Christendom, partly from a pious desire to magnify the divine
Omnipotence; partly from the timid stupidity of clinging to the
letter instead of breaching the spirit of Scripture; and partly also
from the evil trick which we have just mentioned of importing
metaphysics and scholastic definitions into the Bible, from which
all the Scriptures are the furthest possible removed. Now, the
objection to this doctrine on the part of modern thinkers I conceive
to be this: that, though not perhaps absolutely impossible, it is
contrary to all known experience, and highly improbable if we are to
judge of the constitution of things from what we see, not from what
we choose to imagine. It is the vulgar imagination which delights to
represent the Supreme Being as a sort of omnipotent harlequin,
launching the _fiat_ of his volition, as the nimble gentleman in the
pantomime strikes the table with his wand, and out comes a man, or a
monkey, or something else, out of nothing. This is man’s crude
conception; but God’s ways are not as man’s ways, and his way is
_evolution_. Nothing is created out of nothing; and mere volition,
even of an omnipotent Being, cannot be conceived as bringing into
existence a thing of an absolutely opposite nature, called matter.”
To answer these reckless assertions in detail would take a volume.
Fortunately, however, we may be dispensed from such a task, as there are
hundreds of excellent books, both philosophical and theological, where
the dogma of creation is fully established and victoriously vindicated.
On the other hand, our professor does not give any proof of his infidel
view; he merely asserts what has no possibility of proof. “Nothing is
created out of nothing,” says he; but philosophy demonstrates that
nothing is, or can be, created but out of nothing. “God’s way is
evolution.” No; God’s way is creation. Evolution is man’s way, as Mr.
Darwin and all his admirers know; and, since (as the author reminds us)
God’s ways are not as man’s ways, it follows on his own showing that
God’s way is not evolution. Evolution is impossible without antecedent
creation. The subject of evolution is matter, and matter is a created
being. To deny the creation of matter is to assume that matter is
eternal and self-existent, or, in other terms, to make it an independent
being or an appurtenance of Divinity; and this colossal absurdity even
the author must reject, as he confesses that the nature of matter is
“absolutely opposite” to the nature of Divinity.
The author imagines that the absolute opposition between God and matter
makes it impossible for God to create matter, because “mere volition,
even of an omnipotent Being, cannot be conceived as bringing into
existence a thing of an absolutely opposite nature.” These words show
the author’s philosophical ignorance of the law of causation. The law is
that efficient causes must always be of a nature entirely different from
that of their effects. The efficient cause of gravitation at the earth’s
surface is the substance or matter of the earth itself; but gravitation
is neither matter nor substance, but something entirely different. The
soul is the efficient cause of the voluntary movements produced in our
organism; and yet those movements have nothing common with the substance
of the soul. And the same is to be said of all other effects as compared
with their efficient causes.[105] Hence it is idle to argue that an
omnipotent Being, owing to his spirituality, cannot create matter. The
author will say that every effect must be contained in its cause, and
that matter is not contained in God. To which it must be answered that
effects are _eminently_ and _virtually_, not _formally_, contained in
their efficient causes. If the effect existed formally in its cause its
production by the cause would become a contradiction; for the effect
would exist before its effection. Effects are said to be pre-contained
in their causes only in this sense: that causes possess a power
competent to produce their effects. Causation is action, and action is
the production of an act. Every act produced is the formal principle of
a new existence, or of a new mode of existence. To say that God cannot
create matter is to say that God cannot produce an act giving formal
existence to matter; which amounts to the denial of omnipotence. Still,
the existence of matter must be accounted for. Matter undergoes
modifications and is subject to natural agents; it is therefore
essentially potential and contingent. How, then, did it come into
existence? And how is it potential, if it is not created out of nothing,
since nothingness is the only source of potentiality?
But we are told that creation out of nothing “is contrary to all known
experience.” This shows what new kind of philosophers nowadays we have
to deal with. They want to see God making a few acts of creation before
they consent to believe, just as they want a lecturer to prove his
theories by a series of visible experiments. God, of course, will not
satisfy their curiosity; he has given them the light of reason and the
light of revelation, which are quite enough. But were God to condescend
to their yearning, would they believe even then? Would not these men,
who have the impudence to speak of an “omnipotent Harlequin,” declare
with equal profanity any visible fact of creation to be jugglery?
The author tells us also that “if we are to judge of the constitution of
things from what we see, not from what we choose to imagine,” we shall
find out that creation is improbable. At this we need not wonder; for
the author is a great enemy of scholastic definitions and of
metaphysics—that is, of intellectual light. He sees with the eyes of his
body, but he shuts the eyes of his reason. Had he less horror of
metaphysics, he might learn that “the constitution of things” proclaims
in the loudest and most unmistakable language the fact of creation; and
that every change or movement in the universe furnishes a peremptory
demonstration of it. But what can a man see who discards definitions and
disregards the principles of real philosophy?
And now let us see to what conclusions the author is led by his style of
reasoning. He says:
“To us dependent ephemeral creatures all existence is a divine
miracle; and the continuity of that divine miracle in the shape of
what we call growth is, so far as we can see, the eternal form of
divine creativeness. The absolute dualism of mind and matter which
is implied in the received orthodoxy of the church is not warranted
by any fact that exact science can recognize; nowhere do we find
mind acting without a material instrument, nowhere matter absolutely
divorced from the action of inherent forces, inasmuch as even the
most motionless statical condition of things most solid is always
produced by a balance of forces in some way or other—forces which,
if they are not blind, but acting according to a calculated law, as
they manifestly do, are only another name for Mind. This view of the
constitution of the universe ... is generally disowned with a
certain pious horror as pantheism, a word to which a great chorus of
thoughtless and ill-informed people are straightway ready to echo
back atheism, with the feeling that the two terms, though
etymologically as opposed as white and black, are practically the
same.... Pantheism, scientifically understood, has nothing to do
either with materialism or with atheism. It ... simply denies the
existence of two opposite entities in the world of divine reality,
while it asserts the existence of only one. The world is essentially
one; and the All, though externally many, is, when traced to its
deepest roots, not different from the One; as the human body, for
instance, is both one and many.... The term pantheism, therefore, is
not opposed to unity, or to the principle of unity in the world,
which is God; and a pantheist, as Hegel well said of Spinoza, may
more properly be said to deny the world than to deny God.”
This is the quagmire into which the professor, as we said at the
beginning of this article, has fallen. The view he takes of “the
constitution of the universe,” the assertions he makes, and the
arguments he employs are a mass of confusion to which no more
appropriate name can be given than _nonsense_. We are “dependent
ephemeral creatures.” Yes. But how could he call us “creatures,” he who
denies creation? or “dependent,” he who makes us one with God? or
“ephemeral,” he who includes us in the eternal All? Is not this a
flagrant contradiction?
To us “all existence is a divine miracle.” If so, the author cannot
consistently be a pantheist. Miracles are facts transcending the power
and exigencies of nature. Pantheism divinizes nature, and admits of
nothing transcending the power and exigencies of nature; and therefore
pantheism can admit of no miracle.
“Growth is, so far as we can see, the eternal form of divine
creativeness.” Growth implies change, whereas the eternal form of divine
creativeness is altogether unchangeable. Hence, so far as we can see
(and we see it most evidently), growth is _not_ what the professor
imagines.
“The absolute dualism of mind and matter is not warranted by any fact
that exact science can recognize.” If so, then exact science should find
a way of reconciling the well-known inertia of matter with the equally
well-known immanent and reflex self-activity of mind. For, as the latter
excludes the former, their existence is the most incontrovertible
evidence of the absolute dualism of matter and mind; and this evidence
is quite scientific, too, for it is the result of universal and
unexceptionable experience. But our men of science, who profess to deal
with nothing but matter, are not the best judges about the attributes of
mind. They are gross and material; they must see, and touch, and smell,
and subject everything to chemical analysis; and spiritual substances
refuse to be thus manipulated. Hence no wonder if these latter
substances are not recognized in any fact of exact science so long as
“exact science” is confined to the study of matter.
“Nowhere do we find mind acting without a material instrument.” Be it
so; it does not follow that matter and mind are one and the same thing.
The organ is not the organist, and the instrument is not the artist.
“Nowhere do we find matter divorced from the action of inherent forces.”
Quite true; but these forces of matter are absolutely blind. The author
pretends that they are not blind, because “they act according to a
calculated law”; but this is a new blunder. It is not the forces of
matter that have calculated the law, it is God that subjected them to
the law; and their acting according to the law is a mechanical
necessity. The very fact of their inviolable subjection to the law
proves their utter blindness; for were they intelligent, they would have
given before now some instances of proud rebellion at least in the hands
of the torturing chemist.
“This view ... is generally disowned as pantheism.” Certainly. Let the
author remember “the principle of the Scottish philosophy called _common
sense_,” and let him ask himself if a view generally disowned deserves
the honor of being adopted by a professor of a Scotch university.
“Pantheism, scientifically understood, has nothing to do with atheism.”
May we ask how pantheism can be “scientifically understood”? Science is
concerned only with material phenomena. God, mind, and spiritual things
in general are beyond its reach. How, then, can what is above science be
understood “scientifically”? And, again, how can pantheism be
“understood” at all, since it is as contradictory as a changeable
immutability, a compounded simplicity, or a sinful holiness? That the
terms “pantheism” and “atheism” are etymologically opposed is quite
clear; but our question is one of things, not of mere terms. The atheist
says to God: “Thou hast no existence”; the pantheist says: “Thou art a
compound of matter.” Which of them is better? Which is less
irrational—the one who degrades his Creator, or the one who merely shuts
his eyes that he may not see him? After all, neither the one nor the
other has an object of worship—the atheist because he denies its
existence, the pantheist because he denies its superiority; and thus the
atheist and the pantheist are twin-brothers, with this only difference:
that the latter wears a mask of hypocrisy, that he may the easier seduce
those who would be disgusted with the impudence of the former.
“The world is essentially one.” No greater blunder could be uttered.
“The All, though externally many, is not different from the One.” The
truth is that things cannot be “externally many” unless they be also
intrinsically and substantially many. Thus in the human body, which the
author brings forward as a fit illustration of his view, the limbs are
many because each one substantially differs from each other. It is the
negation of identity that makes things be many; and no such negation can
be conceived without entities intrinsically distinct. Hence, if the All
is “many,” it must intrinsically differ from the One.
“Pantheism is not opposed to the principle of unity in the world, which
is God.” To this we say, first, that pantheism is opposed to the fact of
plurality in the world. This fact is so manifest that no professor can
plead ignorance of it. We say, secondly, that the world has unity of
design, of composition, and of government, but no unity of substance.
This, too, is as evident as noonday.
“Spinoza may more properly be said to deny the world than to deny God.”
Were this granted, it would still be supremely foolish to trust and
follow a leader who denies the world. But Spinoza denies God as well, if
not explicitly, at least by implication. To set up a mass of
contradictions, and to call it “God,” is to declare that there can be no
God; and this is just what Spinoza did, through ignorance, we suppose,
rather than malice, though not without a sovereign arrogance and
presumption.
Before we end we must take notice of an attempt, on the part of Prof.
Blackie, at answering the objection that pantheism destroys religion,
“because it destroys human personality, and denies individual
responsibility, on the foundation of which all human society, as well as
all religious obligation, is constituted.” He answers thus: “Freedom,
personality, and responsibility are facts which no theological or
metaphysical theories can meddle with, any more than they can with
generation, or appetite, or digestion.... The answer to all such
speculative objections from transcendental theories, when brought into
the world of practice, is a fact and a flogging.”
Bravo! Freedom, personality, and responsibility are facts. The
pantheistic theory contradicts them, but cannot interfere with them any
more than with generation, appetite, and digestion. Hence when any one
argues from the pantheistic theory against freedom, personality, and
responsibility, he must be answered with “a fact and a flogging.” And,
_vice versa_, if any one from freedom, personality, and responsibility
argues against the pantheistic theory which makes these things
inexplicable and impossible, he, too, must be answered with “a fact and
a flogging.” Does the reader understand the excellence of this
liberalistic logic? Yes, with a fact and a flogging; for the eloquence
of the scourge sometimes replaces with advantage the doubtful efforts of
a hesitating tongue: _Si non prosunt verba, prederunt verbera_. What a
candid confession of pantheistic impotence! But then, if flogging is to
be resorted to, who shall be found more worthy of it than the pantheist
himself, who wantonly contradicts by his theory what his common sense
recognizes to be a fact?
The book we have thus far examined contains many other errors on
important points of religion; but our readers need not be detained any
longer in their refutation. The author admits a general providence, but
a providence which imparts particular favors in reward of prayer he does
not admit. Answers to prayers he considers to be “as ridiculous as
interpretations of judgments are presumptuous.” For him “the idea of a
God, constantly interfering in answer to prayer, or otherwise, is one of
the most anthropomorphic of theological conceptions.” “Asceticism and
monkery form a very sad and lamentable chapter in the history of the
church.” Abstinence and mortification are “a pedantic and ridiculous
sort of virtue,” and they are “abnormal, monstrous, inhuman, and
absurd.” Then “there is, and can be, no such thing as a priesthood in
Christianity.” It would take too long to enumerate all his theological,
philosophical, and historical blunders, for his book is full of them; so
we must give up the task.
In the last pages of the work we find a fairly good refutation of
atheism, as maintained by Miss Martineau, Mr. Atkinson, and Prof.
Tyndall. But what is the use of such a refutation, if it is intended
merely as a first step towards pantheism? A pantheist has no right to
refute atheism. Whatever he may say against it can always, in one manner
or another, be retorted against himself; and when the retorsion is
pushed on to its last consequences, his defeat takes the aspect of an
atheistic victory. Thus nothing is gained, and discussions become
interminable, to the great satisfaction of the sceptics. It is for this
reason that most of the Protestant controversies on religious topics
cannot be settled. Truth, if mixed with error, has little, if any,
chance of victory; and books in which truth is compelled to minister to
error are all the more pernicious because their poison is less
recognizable. If this _Natural History of Atheism_ is what we assume it
to be—a Masonic work—then we must confess that the Scottish Masons could
not be served better than by such a baneful mixture of Calvinistic
dogmatism and pantheistic dreams.
Footnote 103:
_The Natural History of Atheism._ By John Stuart Blackie, Professor of
Greek at the University of Edinburgh. New York: Scribner, Armstrong &
Co. 1878.
Footnote 104:
Children dying in original sin, though children of wrath, are not
necessarily “hell-deserving sinners,” as the author objects. Most
Catholic theologians maintain with good reasons that they will be in a
state of _natural_ happiness, though debarred from the vision of God.
Footnote 105:
See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1874, where we have proved that
_all efficient cause is infinitely more perfect and of an infinitely
better nature than any of its effects_ (“The Principles of Real
Being,” p. 584).
THE CREATED WISDOM.[106]
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
I.
Created Wisdom at the gate
Of Heaven, ere Time began, I played;
The Eternal Wisdom Uncreate
Beheld me ere the worlds were made.
I danced the void abyss above:
Of lore unwrit the characters
I traced with wingèd feet, and wove
The orbits of the unshaped stars.
When first the sun and moon had birth,
When seas rushed back, and hills up sprang,
Before God’s eyes in sacred mirth
Once more I circled, and I sang.
I flashed—a Thought in light arrayed—
Beneath the Eternal Wisdom’s ken:
When came mine hour I lived, and played
Among the peopled fields of men.
Blessed is he that keeps my ways,
That stands in reverence on my floor,
That seeks my praise, my word obeys,
That waits and watches by my door.
Footnote 106:
Proverbs, cap. viii.
CONRAD AND WALBURGA.
CHAPTER III.
“Moida! Moida! you were right; you knew him better than I did: Conrad
Seinsheim has already proposed,” were Walburga’s first words as she
entered her home in Fingergasse, where her friend was awaiting her to go
out for a walk.
“Oh! good, good. How delighted I am! You’ll soon be back in your old
castle,” cried the joyous Moida, springing up from her seat by the
window and dancing round the room.
“Alas! I scarcely dare yet to give full rein to hope,” added Walburga,
shaking her head.
“What is that? I didn’t understand you!” said the other, abruptly
pausing in her merry skips. “Of course you said yes to him? Of course
you did?”
“I said neither yes nor no; he is to return in three days for an
answer.”
“O you naughty, puzzling creature! Why didn’t you tell the poor fellow
yes on the spot, as I did to my darling Ulrich?”
“Why?” said Walburga, looking pensively at her; then, after hesitating a
moment: “Well, Moida, it was because I have thus far adroitly, but
perhaps foolishly, concealed something from him; you know what I mean.
And, like a coward, when the crisis arrived, when he asked for my hand,
I still put off the revelation for a brief space.”
“Well, Mr. Seinsheim will be a fool, a big fool, if he doesn’t marry
you; that’s all I can say,” replied Moida, tenderly twining her arms
about her friend’s neck. “And, what’s more, if I didn’t think we were
all of us going to live near one another at Loewenstein, I’d hate him
for trying to take you away from me.”
“Well, you and I have certainly been very happy together, have we not,
Moida?”
“Oh! very, very, very; and you should have kept your pretty nightingale,
so as to have brought him with us to Tyrol.”
“Perhaps I ought,” answered Walburga, her countenance now clearing up;
for hope, sweet hope, was just at this moment flashing its rays into her
bosom and inspiring her to believe that Conrad would surely accept her,
accept her exactly as she was, and, like a brave, good husband, bear
upon his own shoulders as much of her cross as he was able.
A few minutes later the two friends were passing through the park on
their way to Foering. This place is simply a beer-garden—one of the many
within an hour’s walk of Munich. Here on the warmest summer day the air
is cool, for the spot is high and commanding, and, moreover, well shaded
by elm-trees. But better than breeze or shade is the beer—beer such as
one can taste only in Southern Bavaria. In the middle of the garden is a
platform elevated a few inches above the ground, where those who are
fond of dancing may trip it merrily to the music of a fiddle, harp, and
flute, dropping now and again a copper into the tin plate which one of
the minstrels passes through the crowd.
When Moida and Walburga arrived Foering was well-nigh deserted, and they
had no difficulty in being helped at once to whatever they wanted, for
the good-natured waiter-girl had only them to wait on. But ere long
other people began to come. First appeared a husband and wife, the
former carrying the baby—the best of all babies, of course—and so bound
up in swaddling-clothes that the little thing could do naught except
wink. Then followed a soldier hand-in-hand with a buxom lass, with
nature’s own rouge glowing on her cheeks; and hand-in-hand these two sat
down, and hand-in-hand they quenched their thirst out of the same mug,
the beverage tasting all the more like nectar for this sweet communion
of lips.
Presently a pursy gentleman waddled into the garden, his respiration so
laborious that you could hear him from afar, and dropped heavily down
upon the same bench where Moida and Walburga were seated. To judge by
his appearance you would have declared there was not a spark of
sentiment in his whole composition; he looked to be a sheer mass of
beer-drenched humanity. Yet this was wide, wide of the truth. Herr Wurst
was organist of the cathedral, was passionately fond of poetry, and knew
by heart every song of the Minnesingers. In short, he was a Bavarian
every inch of him, and never was so much soul hidden in a sausage.
And thus on, on the people came, all jovial, all orderly, and to look at
them you might have fancied they had not a care or trouble in the world.
Then by and by the music commenced. ’Twas a waltz from Strauss, and the
corpulent organist, who knew our young friends—for they both sang in his
choir—danced thrice round the platform with each; and the baby in
swaddling-clothes lay upon the bench like a little Stoic while its daddy
and mammy whirled round too; and the buxom lass and the soldier likewise
danced—danced so hard, threw such life into their motions, that when at
length they paused to give their hearts a rest you might have thought
they had been out in a shower of rain.
“How often dear Ulrich and I have enjoyed ourselves here!” spoke Moida,
when she and Walburga were once more seated over their beer-mugs. “I do
believe we once danced a whole hour without stopping. And oh! how sweet
it was to coo and whisper our love to each other while we flew round.
Why, I don’t think I knew what life was till I became his betrothed.”
“Well, I hope you each had a glass of your own to sip the beer from,”
remarked Walburga, smiling.
“No indeed; we went halves in everything. And now—just think—we are soon
going to be married! And you too. O Walburga! Walburga!”
The latter, who was still under the radiant influence of hope, and who
seemed to feel anew the warm touch of Conrad’s lips, cried: “Yes, yes,
my future is bright, and I will prove by my devotion to him how grateful
I am; and there’ll be no happier husband than Conrad Seinsheim!”
Presently, however, her countenance fell, and in a low, grave tone she
added: “But suppose all this were not to happen? Everything must remain
in doubt and uncertainty till I meet him again, you know.”
“Oh! but he is so full of good sense, so unlike the rest of the world,
that you may dispel all doubt. Conrad is sure to take you—sure,”
answered Moida.
Cheered by these words, Walburga, who was not blest with the same even
temperament as her friend, and who too easily flew from one extreme to
the other, became once more blithe and cheerful, and she proceeded to
speak of Conrad in a strain which their brief acquaintance hardly
justified. But love engenders love; and excited by the thought that she
was loved by him (Walburga had never had a lover before), a tender,
responsive passion now inspired her tongue, and during the rest of the
afternoon even Moida’s high spirits did not soar higher than her own.
“And now,” said Walburga, when the sun was verging near the horizon—“now
let us seek the grove into which my dear nightingale flew; I long to
hear him singing his song in liberty.”
“And making love to some other pretty bird,” returned Moida, as she rose
from the table.
Accordingly, they wended their way back to the park; and in about half
an hour Walburga came to a halt and said: “Here is the spot; just among
these bushes he disappeared.” Then, after listening a moment, she added:
“And that is his voice. Hark!”
“May it not be another nightingale?” observed Moida.
“Well, let us approach softly and try to get a peep at the one that is
now singing; if ’tis mine I’ll know him by a bit of blue ribbon I tied
about his neck.”
Presently they caught a glimpse of the little songster amid the green
leaves, and, by the ribbon he wore, ’twas undoubtedly Walburga’s pet.
“Oh! how glad I am I set him free,” spoke the latter in an undertone, as
if she feared to disturb his roundelay. Then, pointing towards a
neighboring bush: “And look! look! Yonder is his mate.”
Walburga had scarcely breathed these words when the other bird took wing
and perched itself close beside hers. And now the song waxed softer and
more melodious, and a tear glistened in her eye as she gazed upon this
happy scene of love-making.
Presently a rushing, swooping sound was heard; ’twas like a blast of
wild wind, and the girl gave a start. Moida was startled, too, and
wondered what it was. But before either of them could utter a cry or
hasten one step to the rescue, a hawk had pounced upon Walburga’s sweet
warbler and carried him away.
* * * * *
The next three days were anxious ones for Conrad and Walburga. The
former endeavored to beguile his thoughts by watching the work which was
going on at the castle, and spent as much time as possible beside
Ulrich, under whose skilful hand the pristine beauty of the interior of
the tower was fast returning.
Whenever the youth spoke of Moida, Conrad’s face would light up, and he
would exclaim: “Yes, yes, a happy day is coming for her and you and all
of us.” Yet down deep in his heart he felt a strange misgiving. He
remembered the pensive look which more than once had shadowed Walburga’s
countenance whilst they were conversing together; nor did Conrad forget
the tear—the tear he had been so tempted to kiss away. “And there was a
shyness, too, about her which I cannot understand,” he said to himself.
“She seemed afraid to look at me. And when finally I proposed, instead
of answering yes or no she put me off for three long days.”
Conrad’s own temperament, as Moida Hofer had discerned, was not unlike
Walburga’s; and now the thought of waiting this space of time was very
trying to him. At one moment he was full of hope; at another he was
certain that he would be rejected, and then he was plunged in despair.
Yet, singular to relate, when at length the dawn of the third day did
arrive, Conrad was seized with a mysterious impulse not to leave
Loewenstein; and Ulrich, to whom he had opened his heart and confided
all his thoughts, was unable to comfort him and give him courage to
shake off the gloom which had come over his spirits.
“I had a dream last night,” spoke Conrad—“a dream that has wrought on me
a most vivid, painful impression. I believe I shall never get over
it—never!”
“Pray, what was the dream?” inquired Ulrich.
“I thought I was standing on the brink of a river, whose dark waters as
they rolled by me gave forth a moaning, melancholy sound; and ever and
anon along the surface of the flood there passed a human head; and every
face of the many, of the thousands, I saw float by wore traces of pain
and woe, while some were stamped with a sorrow perfectly indescribable.
And, oh! one of these faces”—here Conrad shuddered—“was the face of
Walburga. And she watched me and watched me until she disappeared in the
distance with a mournfulness no human tongue can express. Then when she
was gone I heard a voice cry out: ‘This stream hath its fountain in the
heart of poor humanity; and these waters are all the tears which have
been shed since Paradise was lost.’”
“What a curious dream!” said Ulrich. “But I beg you to forget it. ’Tis
only a dream.”
Walburga, too, was impatient and anxious for the time to fly by. And now
while she sat at her easel waiting for Conrad to appear—’twas the
morning of the day she had named—her heart fluttered at every footstep
that approached. Her countenance was paler than usual, and on it were
marks of grief. Nor ought we to smile at the girl for feeling so acutely
the death of her nightingale; it was such a cruel death, and she had
loved the bird so much. Indeed, it was her very love for it that had
prompted her to set it free. Only for this her pet would still have been
warbling in its cage; now nothing remained of it save a few scattered
feathers.
“Alas! will my heart, perhaps, be torn like his?” she sighed, as she
waited and listened.
But hour after hour went by, and still Conrad did not come; nor did he
show himself at all this day, nor the following day either.
And then Walburga murmured to herself: “Ah! I might have known it would
be so. He has been told by somebody else what I should have let his own
eyes discover. Now I shall see him no more.”
The evening of the sixth day, after having waited for him at the
Pinakothek, but, as before, in vain, the poor girl went her way home,
where she might bow her head on Moida’s breast and silently lament. But
lo! on reaching her humble abode her friend was not to be found—Moida
was gone! On the pin-cushion was found a slip of paper, whereon was
written: “Stay calm, dear Walburga, and trust in me; I’ll be back
to-morrow.” Moida did not reveal that she was gone to Loewenstein to
learn what had become of Conrad Seinsheim.
* * * * *
As changeable in spirits as the one whom he so passionately loved,
Conrad arrived in Munich, his heart ravished with joy at the prospect
before him; for Moida had assured him beyond the shadow of a doubt that
ere the clock struck noon Walburga would be his affianced bride.
“She has been expecting you day after day,” said Moida; “and I can
hardly forgive you for putting her patience to such a trial.”
The day was anything but pleasant; the rain poured down like a deluge,
and the streets were gloomy and deserted. But when there is blue sky in
our heart all the clouds in the heavens cannot shut it out; and so
Conrad did not heed the tempest in the least. At length he reached the
Pinakothek; and when Walburga found him once more by her side, she had
to call forth all her resolution, in order to preserve a mien of calm
and dignity.
Only by a great effort she succeeded; at least her eyes did not stray
from the canvas, and, except for a flush of color which came over the
paleness of her cheek, one might have fancied she was not even aware of
his presence.
“Gracious lady,” began Conrad in faltering accents, “I am come late—very
late, I know. But I hope not too late?”
“Oh! no, sir. I forgive you,” answered Walburga, with a smile which at
once doubly assured him that the happy moment was indeed close at hand.
“But pray be patient yet a little while,” she added, “and watch well
what I am about to do; ’tis the finishing touch to my picture.”
“Your beautiful picture!” ejaculated Conrad. “How I long to see it
hanging in Loewenstein Castle.”
And now, while Walburga went on with her brush, he fell into attentive
silence. But he said within himself: “Only for what Miss Hofer has told
me of you, of your kind heart, I should set you down as the cruelest of
mortals for keeping me in a fever of suspense during such an age as a
single minute.”
Presently Conrad’s expression became one of amazement, and, quite unable
to contain himself, he exclaimed, “Why, what are you doing?”
But without making any response the girl continued her work; and her
hand was wonderfully steady, considering that Conrad’s trial, great as
it was, was not greater than her own. Nay, the agony of waiting was
tenfold more poignant for her than for him.
In a few minutes she had finished, and then again he cried out, this
time loud enough to be heard in the main gallery: “Why, why do you
disfigure your _chef d’œuvre_ by a hideous birthmark?”
With a tremor and cheek white as death Walburga here let her brush fall,
then abruptly cut short Conrad’s exclamations of regret at what she had
done by saying:
“Pray listen, sir; I am about to answer the solemn question you put to
me a week ago.” But before going further she paused a moment, perhaps to
smother a wail of anguish that was ready to burst from her lips; and
while she paused Conrad leaned towards her to catch the coming words,
and you might have heard the beating of his heart. Then Walburga spoke:
“My response, sir, is—No!”
There are times in life when we scarce can put faith in what our ears
plainly tell us; to Conrad Seinsheim this was such a time. His
expression when these words reached him, it were impossible to describe;
he stood like one petrified.
In another moment, with astonishment, and wrath, and grief struggling
madly in his breast, he turned and hastened out of the Pinakothek; and
as he went, oh! bitterly did he curse the hour, the fatal hour, when he
first laid eyes on this beautiful but utterly heartless and deceiving
woman.
O Conrad, Conrad, Conrad! why didst thou not stay thy rash flight an
instant—only an instant—and give Walburga one other glance? Hadst thou
done this, we verily believe, nay, we are certain, thy flashing eyes
would have softened to tenderness and pity.
For at the sound of thy departing steps she turned round towards thee,
and her face was as the face thou sawest in thy dream. But destiny
shaped it otherwise: thou didst not pause, and Walburga floated down the
dark stream, away from thee for ever and for ever.
* * * * *
Ulrich retired to rest, the night which closed the stormy day when
Conrad went to Munich, in a very happy mood. Not only did he believe
himself on the high-road to success, for Conrad had promised to find him
steady employment, but the absence of his benefactor made the youth
confident that Walburga had put an end to his suspense by giving him a
favorable answer. “Yes, Conrad told me that if she accepted him I need
not expect him back till to-morrow, or the day after at the very
soonest.”
Nor even when five days elapsed, and the owner of the castle still
remained absent, did Ulrich think it strange. “I am sure,” he said to
himself, “I didn’t leave my Moida’s side for five days after we were
betrothed—no indeed.”
But why none of them dropped him a line to impart the glad tidings did
surprise him a little; Moida, at least, might have written two words.
Finally, a letter did come from Moida, but it brought anything save good
news; and when the poor fellow had read it through he sank down on the
grass near the ancient tombstone and wept bitterly.
When this day closed Loewenstein was quite deserted, except by Caro, the
aged poodle, who wandered all about the dusky ruin, whining and
wondering what had become of his master. Yet, cheerless as Loewenstein
was this evening and many an evening afterwards, ’twas less cheerless
than the erewhile happy home in Fingergasse.
But Conrad Seinsheim knew naught of this; he believed all the grief, all
the lamentations, to be his own. And, indeed, he suffered much. From
hateful Munich he sped away he did not care whither: to Nuremberg, to
Dresden, to Prague—on, on he travelled, half distracted; until by and
by, after three weeks of aimless, feverish wandering—his heart spoke to
him and said: “Thou hast been hasty; return to the Pinakothek and ask
Walburga once more to be thy spouse.” And Conrad listened to the voice
of his heart and went back.
* * * * *
Three weeks have passed away since Walburga pronounced that doomful
No—only three weeks. Yet what changes may be wrought in this brief space
of time! Is yonder haggard visage moving through the Pinakothek the
visage of Conrad Seinsheim?
Yes, it is he; and how his deep-sunken eyes glow as he draws nigh to the
spot where hangs Carlo Dolce’s picture of Innocence! Like sparks out of
a tomb they seem.
But she whom Conrad is looking for is gone. “Pray tell me,” he said,
addressing one of the _custodes_—“tell me where is the young lady who
was copying this painting a few weeks since. Is she anywhere in the
gallery?”
“She is dead, sir,” answered the other, quietly tapping a little black
box with his knuckles and taking out a pinch of snuff; “and she is to be
buried to-day.”
“Dead!” repeated Conrad, starting back. “Dead!”
In another moment he was hastening with winged feet to the God’s-acre.
And as he sped along the streets, every merry laugh that reached his
ears sounded like a dismal croak; and the sky overhead, albeit never so
cloudless and bright, seemed to shadow every object like a vast funeral
pall.
How bitterly did Conrad now reproach himself for the rash words he had
uttered when he saw Walburga tracing the birthmark on her picture!
“Fool, fool, fool that I was! I should have divined in an instant what
she thus meant to convey to me, and I should have answered: ‘Even so,
dear girl, I will take thee and cherish thee!’”
When Conrad reached the Leichen-Haus[107] the funeral bell was already
tolling—the Leichen-Haus, whose ghastliness cannot be dissipated by all
the bright-burning tapers and garlands of sweet-scented flowers which
surround the dead. Breathless he turned to the sheet of paper posted by
the doorway, whereon are written the names and station in life of those
who are to be buried; and breathless he read the names.
Walburga’s stood third on the list, and, as coffin number two was just
passing out of the building, Conrad saw that he was not more than in
time. He pushed his way through the crowd, and in another moment found
himself beside Walburga. She was the only one of the departed who
retained any look of life about her; you might almost have fancied she
was blushing at the curious eyes which were staring upon her, as she lay
still and motionless in the narrow box, and that she heard them
whispering, “How handsome she would have been, except for that ugly
birthmark!”
We need not tell what Conrad felt at this moment; those who noticed him
nudged one another, and said in undertones:
“Her lover, perhaps. Poor fellow!”
Not many followed Walburga to her last resting-place; for she had been
of a retiring nature, and had kept much to herself and her one devoted
friend. There might have been five or six persons in all who saw her
lowered into the grave; and among the few who sprinkled holy water upon
her there was Conrad Seinsheim. As he did so an inner voice whispered to
him and said: “Walburga is near thee; she sees thee; she is immortal and
happy for ever.”
Then, when the last clod of earth had been well packed down by the
grave-digger’s spade, Conrad turned away to seek Moida Hofer. Ulrich
accompanied him, and when they gained the high-up chamber where Walburga
had lived so many peaceful years, they found Moida standing beside a
table on which lay _Master Eckart_ and Blessed Henry Suso’s _Little Book
of Eternal Wisdom_, an empty bird-cage, and a tress of golden hair.
“She loved you truly,” spoke the girl, looking at Conrad through her
tears. “She told me so; they were almost her last words to me.”
“Oh! I know it now, but, alas! too late. She is gone!” replied Conrad;
and the word gone sounded through the room with long-drawn pathos. ’Twas
as if his voice had passed the word on to other voices, who kept
repeating: “Gone! gone! gone!”
Here Moida and Ulrich fell to weeping; and when by and by they uncovered
their faces, they were surprised to find that Conrad had disappeared. He
must indeed have glided away like a spirit, for neither of them had
heard his footstep; and, to their further wonder, the sunshiny curl had
vanished too.
* * * * *
“How strangely things turn out!” spoke Moida to her betrothed one
evening, as they were seated side by side at the foot of Loewenstein
tower, watching the sun go down.
“Strangely, strangely!” answered Ulrich.
“Poor Conrad!” went on Moida. “Had he come back only a few days
sooner—and he came with the full intention of proposing again—if he had
arrived even one day before the saddest of all the days I have known,
Walburga might have lived.”
To this the youth made no response; he could not speak, and his tears
set Moida weeping again; while old Caro, who perceived that his mistress
was in sorrow, let droop his head, and his tail ceased to wag. Presently
the sun disappeared. But still in the twilight the lovers remained
thinking of the past.
By and by a voice was heard singing within the tower, and after
listening a moment and sighing, “Poor, poor Conrad!” Moida rose up and
peeped through the lowest of the grated windows. Ulrich did the same,
and what did they behold? Wrapped in a long, flowing gown, and pacing
round and round the room, was Conrad Seinsheim. Yet not everybody would
have recognized him; for his hair, which now reached down to his
shoulders, was turned quite gray, and so was his beard, and you might
have taken him for an aged man.
The song he was singing was one full of tenderness and love; and ever
and anon Conrad would pause and listen, and press to his lips a lock of
sunny hair.
Then suddenly, like a person who hears an answering voice, his ghostlike
visage would glow with rapture, and you might have fancied he had caught
a vision of heaven.
“Really, I sometimes think Conrad is not mad at all,” observed Moida
solemnly. “At this moment I do believe he sees dear Walburga. Look!
look! He is beckoning!”
“It may be so,” returned Ulrich. “At any rate, he is infinitely happier,
judging by his expression and his songs, than many a man who is not
mad.”
“Well, I’ll not say ‘Poor Conrad!’ any more,” added Moida. “For I verily
believe he knows Walburga is ever hovering near him; nay, that at times
he actually sees her. There, look again! look! How he smiles! And his
outstretched hands may indeed be clasping hers now, albeit they are
invisible to you and me.”
Here there was a brief silence, after which Ulrich remarked, “I am very
pleased, my love, that you keep the little lamp so nicely trimmed before
the image of our Blessed Mother: for the image belonged to Walburga.
See, now Conrad is praying before it.”
“Oh! ’tis not I who trims the light,” replied Moida. “Conrad takes
entire charge of the shrine; I merely bring him oil and tapers.”
“But, darling,” continued Ulrich somewhat abruptly, and with a look of
seriousness, “if Conrad’s mysterious condition last much longer ’twill
plunge us into still greater difficulties; will it not? Why, already all
your slender means have been swallowed up, as well as the few florins I
had, in paying off the swarm of laborers who were employed upon this
ruin. Now all work is stopped, and ’twill be a bitter cold place to
spend the coming winter in. Yet what can we do? We must surely stay by
Conrad, for he was extremely generous to you and me; and if we abandoned
him in this dark hour ’twould be very cruel.”
“Ay, let us prove his stanch friends, now that he is unable to help
himself,” answered the girl, brushing away a tear.
“Well, if he could only sleep he might grow better,” pursued Ulrich.
“Our kind friend hasn’t closed his eyes in ever so many nights,” said
Moida. “Nor does he take enough nourishment to keep another person from
starvation. In fact, his condition is exceedingly mysterious. An inward
fire seems to be consuming him; you can see it shooting out of his eyes;
but still on he lives—on and on; apparently happy, too, withered to a
skeleton though he is.”
“Ay, what can keep good Conrad alive?” said Ulrich.
“Might it be that Walburga’s spirit feeds him?” spake Moida, in an
awe-stricken whisper.
Here the subject of their remarks rose up from his knees and began again
to sing:
“Und weil es nicht ist auszusagen,
Weil’s Lieben ganz unendlich ist,
So magst du meine Augen fragen,
Wie lieb du mir in Herzen bist!”[108]
When the song, of which we have given but a stanza, was ended, Caro
uttered a melancholy howl that awakened the echoes far up the mountain
and set the owls in the ruin hooting; then following his mistress, who
passed into the tower to make sure that Conrad’s door was properly
fastened for the night, the old dog curled himself up on a rug and was
soon asleep.
Moida, however, went out again to spend a half-hour more with her
betrothed, watching the stars and wondering what fate was in store for
herself and him.
“If these stones could only speak, what tales they’d tell!” observed
Ulrich, after she had nestled down beside him and flung half her shawl
about his shoulders, for the air was rather chilly.
“Yes, very interesting stories no doubt,” returned Moida. “They’d tell
us of many a brave knight and fair lady, of many a pageant and
tournament. But remember, dear boy, what I have often said to you:
beware of dwelling on those dead and buried days. And I, too, must
beware; for, do you know, since I am here I occasionally feel myself
drifting into a dreamy state, and I might almost fancy this ruin is
enchanted and that it has thrown a spell over me. But believe me,
Ulrich, believe me, the past is past and can never, never come back.
Whatever your forefathers were, however wealthy and noble and
powerful—some of them even placed kings on the throne—you, at least,
must toil to win your daily bread; and I mean to help you. Therefore be
of stout heart and look only to the future. And even if we have to live
like these owls we will marry some time or other; and happy days are in
store for us yet.”
Moida had scarcely spoken these words when she and her betrothed were
startled by a loud, wailful cry which seemed to proceed from Conrad’s
chamber. Nor can we wonder that it made them both spring to their feet;
for not once since poor Seinsheim had been confined had he wept a tear
or uttered a single lamentation. Yet ’twas undoubtedly his voice they
had just heard. But what could have wrought this sudden change in him?
In another moment they were within the tower. Then Moida with trembling
hand turned the key of his door and entered, followed closely by Ulrich.
“O Moida! Moida!” cried Conrad, as she advanced toward him, “why did you
wake me? Why did you not let me sleep on? ’Twas a celestial vision I
had—oh! celestial. But, alas! now I am awake—stark awake; and now it all
comes back to me—all, all. She is dead! dead! dead!”
Here he burst into a paroxysm of grief, and uttered anew the shriek of
woe which had been heard a minute before.
“I do believe his reason is restored,” whispered the girl, turning to
her betrothed.
“Oh! let us thank God,” answered Ulrich.
“Conrad, dear, good Conrad,” spoke Moida, now gently taking his hand in
hers, “you have been living indeed in a vision for many days past; but
now you appear to be yourself again. So do not mourn; rather kneel and
pray, and I will pray with you, and so will Ulrich. Let us offer thanks
to God for your happy recovery.”
“Well, yes, I will pray—pray to be taken where Walburga is,” answered
Conrad, in a somewhat calmer tone, yet still weeping bitterly. “O Moida!
if you only knew how happy I have been. Why, blessed Walburga was near
me all the while; and every time I sang she responded in a strain such
as only angel lips can breathe. But now—now her face has disappeared,
her voice is silent—she is gone! O Moida! if my blissful vision was
madness, then would to God I had stayed mad!”
“Well, dear friend, Walburga is no doubt in heaven, and I believe she
does often hover round you; for she loves you, and knows that you love
her; and I am confident nothing would so rejoice her soul as to have you
pray—to see you back once more in the faith of your youth. On her dying
bed this was her ardent hope. Oh! do, do.”
“I am what I used to be in my early years,” replied Conrad, a glad smile
lighting up his wan face. “I am, indeed. Blessed Walburga led me
back—and— But hark! She is calling me! Hark! Hark!”
Here Conrad sank slowly to his knees, while an expression came over him
which filled the other two with alarm. Then Ulrich, without losing a
moment, hastened with all speed to the monastery for a priest. The path
down the mountain was a difficult one, especially at this hour. On the
way back the good father and Ulrich might have gone astray and arrived
too late, but for their meeting a man with a lantern, who offered to
light them up the rugged ascent.
Nigh unto death as he was, Conrad’s soul lingered yet an hour in its
mortal tenement—a long enough time for him to be shriven and to receive
the last sacrament of the church; after which the man with the
lantern—and who, by a happy providence, turned out to be the village
notary—drew up in brief words Conrad’s will and testament, whereby
Loewenstein Castle, and all his other property besides, was bequeathed
to Ulrich.
“And now, ere I depart hence,” spoke Conrad in a voice barely loud
enough to be heard, and placing Moida’s hand in the hand of her
betrothed, “let me see you joined in matrimony. Ay, let the holy bond be
made right here by my couch, and do thou, reverend father, pronounce
them man and wife.”
Such a ceremony at such a time and place the latter had never yet
performed. But so urgent was Conrad’s appeal to have it done on the
spot, without an instant’s delay, that he overcame a little scruple.
Then, just as Conrad’s immortal part was winging its flight, Moida, the
patient, faithful Moida, who had waited so long for this golden moment
to arrive, found herself the bride of her own dear Ulrich; and like a
bright rainbow illumining a rain-beaten landscape, a gleam of joy, great
joy, shone through her tears, and never before was happiness so
strangely blended with sorrow as here in this chamber of death.
Then, kneeling down side by side, Moida and Ulrich breathed a prayer for
the repose of the soul of him who had been so very good to them. And may
we not hope that near them at that solemn moment was the soul of
Walburga, greeting the spirit of the one whom she loved, and ready to be
his guide in the dark, dismal region which Conrad had still to pass
through ere he came to the home of the blest?
END.
Footnote 107:
A building in the Munich cemetery to which all are taken immediately
after death—no exception, save for the royal family.
Footnote 108:
Words by Jean Paul.
“And as ’tis not for tongue to tell,
For love knows naught of time or space,
So diving down my eyes’ deep well,
Find graven on my heart thy face.”
DANTE’S PURGATORIO.
TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS.
CANTO SEVENTEENTH.
Now, that thy mind with more expanded powers
May conceive this, give _me_ thy mind, nor shun
To reap some harvest from this halt of ours.
Bethink thee, reader, if thou e’er hast been
Among the Alps o’ertaken by a cloud,
Through which all objects were as blindly seen
As moles behold things through their visual shroud;
How, as the vapors dank and thick begin
To thin themselves, the solar sphere’s faint ray
Scarce pierces them,—and readily may’st thou
Conceive (when first I saw it) in what way
To me the sun looked that was setting now.
From such a cloud, and following as I went
My master’s faithful steps with even pace,
I came to where the day’s last rays were spent
On the low border of the mountain’s base.
O gift imaginative! that dost so
Of ourselves rob us, that oft-times a man
Heeds not though round him thousand trumpets blow!
If thee sense move not, whence the power that can?
A light moves thee, Heaven-kindled, that doth flow
By will divine directed, or its own.
My fancy with her fury was engrossed
Who took the shape of that sweet bird[109] well known
To be of his own song enamored most;
And here my mind was in itself so chained
That it received no object from outside.
Then into my high fantasy there rained
The image of a person crucified,[110]
Fierce in his aspect, with a face of hate,—
And in this look despitefully he died.
Round him there stood Ahasuerus great,
Esther, his spouse, and Mordecai the true,
Of whose just word just action still was mate.
And, as this image from my mind withdrew,
Of itself breaking, as a bubble does,
Failing the water under which it grew,
A damsel[111] weeping on my vision rose,
Moaning aloud and crying: “Why, O queen!
Hast thou through anger wished thyself undone?
Not to lose thy Lavinia, thou hast ta’en
Thy life and lost me! Mother, I am one
Doomed to mourn thee before a husband slain!”
Even as our slumber, when a flash of light
A sleeper’s eyes doth suddenly confront,
Is broken, quivering ere it dieth quite;
So fell my vision, as a beam past wont
In its excess of splendor smote my sight.
I turned to see where ’twas I had been brought,
When a voice called to me: “Climb here the hill!”
This put all other purpose from my thought,
And gave such eagerness unto my will
Of him who counselled thus to mark the mien,
As rests not wholly satisfied until
Face unto face the speaker may be seen.
And, as one sees not the sun’s figure clear,
Through light’s great superflux that blinds our gaze,
So was my visual virtue wanting here.
“This is a heavenly spirit” (Virgil says),
“That with his splendor veils him from thine eye,
And guides us our way up, nor waits for prayer.
He does by us as men _would_ be done by;
For who sees need, and doth, till asked, forbear,
Already seems ill-purposed to deny.
Such invitation let our feet obey!
Haste we to mount before the darkness grow,
For then we could not till return of day.”
So spake my leader: I beside him slow
Pacing, we bended toward a stair our way;
And, as my foot the first ascension pressed,
I felt a movement near me as of wings
Fanning my face, and then a voice said: “Blest
Are the peacemakers! them no _bad_ wrath stings.”
Already overhead the sun’s last rays
Were so uplifted, followed by the night,
That round us many a star began to blaze.
And, as I felt my body’s waning might,
“Why dost thou fail me, O my strength?” I said:
But having come now where we climbed no more,
On the stair’s brink we ceased our toilsome tread,
Fixed as a vessel that arrives at shore.
I stopped awhile, and waited as to hear
In this new circle aught perchance of sound;
Then thus addressed my lord: “My Father dear!
Say, what offence is punished in this round?
Stay not thy speech although thy feet are stayed.”
“The love of good,” thus Virgil me bespoke,
“Wherein deficient here is perfect made;
Here the slow oar receives amending stroke.
But that thy mind with more expanded powers
May conceive this, give _me_ thy mind, nor shun
To reap some harvest from this halt of ours.
“Never creator”[112] (he began), “my son,
Was without love; nor anything create;
Either love natural, or that nobler one
Born of the mind; thou know’st the truth I state.
Natural love ne’er takes erroneous course;
Through ill-directed aim the other may,
Or from excess, or from a want of force.
While o’er its bent the Primal Good hath sway,
While with due check it seeks the inferior good,
It cannot be the source of wrong delight.
But when it swerves to ill, or if it should
Seek good with more or less zeal than is right,
Against the maker doth his work rebel.
Whence may’st thou[113] comprehend how love in you
Must of all virtue be the seed, as well
As of each action to which pain is due.
Now since love must look ever towards its own
Subjects’ well-being, things are from self-hate
Saved; and since naught can be supposed alone
To exist, from the First Being separate,
Hatred of Him is also spared to men.[114]
Remains (if rightly I divide, I say)
The ill that’s loved must be a neighbor’s then,
And in three modes this love springs in your clay.
One, through the crushing of his fellow, fain
Would come to eminence, with sole desire
His greatness o’er that other’s to maintain.
One at another’s rising feareth loss
Of power, fame, favor, and his own good name;
So sickens, joying in his neighbor’s cross.
And there is one whom wrong so weighs with shame,
That greed of vengeance doth his heart engross;
And such must needs work evil for his brother.
This threefold _bad_ love those mourn here below:
Now I would have thee learn about another,
Which runs to good but doth no measure know.
All vaguely apprehend a good wherein
The soul may rest itself; and all men woo
This imaged good, and seek its peace to win.
To look thereon if _languid_ love[115] draw you,
Or ye be slow to seek it, such a sin,
After meet penitence, on this round ye rue.
There is another good,[116] but far from bliss!
Nor makes man happy: it is not the true
Essence, of all good fruit the root: To this
The love which too much doth itself resign
Is mourned for in three cornices above;
But _how_ tripartite[117] I will not define;
Thou shalt, by seeing, learn about _that_ love”.
Footnote 109:
“Who took the shape of that sweet bird.” Reference is here made to the
story of Procne, wife of Tereus, King of Thrace, and sister of
Philomela. To revenge herself on her husband, Procne murdered their
child, Itys, cut him into pieces, and served up the flesh to the
father. Tereus, discovering the truth, pursued and was on the point of
overtaking her when, at her prayer, she was changed by the gods into a
nightingale, and her sister Philomela into a swallow, according to
Probus, Libanius, and Strabo.—_Purg._ ix. 15.
Footnote 110:
This is Haman, who was _hanged_ upon the gallows that he had prepared
for Mordecai, as we read in the Book of Esther; but Dante’s word is
_crocifisse_.
Footnote 111:
“A damsel,” etc. This was Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus and Amata.
Lavinia had been secretly promised in marriage by her mother to
Turnus, King of the Rutuli. The marriage was displeasing to the gods,
and the oracles declared that Lavinia should marry a foreign prince.
The foreign prince was Æneas, who, on his arrival in Italy, became the
friend and ally of Latinus, and won his favor as suitor to Lavinia.
Turnus thereupon declared war against both, and was killed in battle
by Æneas. Amata, having been informed prematurely of the death of
Turnus, and enraged at being unable to prevent the marriage of Lavinia
with Æneas, hanged herself in despair.
Footnote 112:
“Never Creator ...” In this passage Virgil explains to Dante the
nature of love according to the mediæval philosophy, viz., God is
love. “_Deus caritas est_,” and so are all created things, as derived
from him. Love in man is natural or rational—that is, of the mind.
Natural love, or the love towards all things necessary to one’s
preservation, cannot err. Rational love can err in three ways: first,
when directed to a bad aim—that is, to evil; secondly, when directed
excessively to earthly pleasures; thirdly, when directed feebly to
those things truly worthy of love, the celestial. As long as love
turns to the Primal Good, the celestial, or seeks with due check the
inferior, or terrestrial, it cannot be the source of wrong, or sin.
“But when it swerves to ill,” ... etc.
Footnote 113:
“Whence may’st thou ...” Love is the source of good works, as of bad
ones; thus, according to St. Augustine, “_Boni aut mali mores sunt
boni aut mali amores_.”
Footnote 114:
“Hatred of Him ...” Love cannot turn against its subjects (viz., men
cannot hate themselves); and as these subjects cannot exist separate
from their First Being, they cannot therefore hate God. (Men may deny
or blaspheme, but not hate, God.) It follows, therefore, that, as no
_bad_ love can be directed against one’s self or against God, that it
can only be against one’s neighbor, and this can be in three forms:
viz., by Pride, or the love of good to ourselves and of evil to
others; by Envy, or the love of evil to others, without cause of good
or evil to us; by Anger, or the love of evil to others on account of
real or imaginary evil to us.
Footnote 115:
“... Languid love ...” Sloth; indolence to seek the true good, which
is God.
Footnote 116:
“There is another good ...”—the love of this world and earthly
pleasures.
Footnote 117:
“Tripartite ...”—three other _bad_ loves: Avarice, Gluttony, Lust.
THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH.
A generation has passed away since the beginning of that which is
commonly known as the Tractarian movement in the Church of England; the
early leaders of the little band whose influence has been and still is
felt throughout the length and breadth of the land have, with two
exceptions, gone from among us; the names of Father Newman and Doctor
Pusey are known to all our readers, the one as that of a devoted son of
Holy Church, the other as that of an Anglican still firmly attached to
the cause which he espoused in early life.
Which of these eminent men is to be taken as a fair example of the
results of the movement? What is the tendency of the High-Church party?
Do its doctrines and practices lead people to the Catholic Church or
keep them out of it? Questions like these can hardly fail to occur to
the mind of any intelligent observer of the state of religion in England
in the present day, and on them must chiefly centre the interest of
Catholics in the subject.
The different parties contained in the Church of England give contrary
answers to the questions we have proposed. Low-Church or Evangelical
Anglicans are unanimous in their denunciations of “Puseyism” and
“Ritualism” as the high-road to Rome; some of them even go so far as to
say that the Jesuits are the hidden but real promoters of what they look
upon as a return to the errors and evils swept away by the Reformation.
The High-Church portion of the Church of England is equally earnest and
positive in the assertion that what it calls the revival of Catholic
teaching and Catholic practice does not lead men to Rome, but keeps
them, to use its own language, true to the faith of their baptism.
In face of these conflicting statements we turn to the testimony of
Catholic priests engaged in the work of conversion, and to the personal
experience of converts. We believe that every priest who has experience
in conversions will unhesitatingly endorse the statement that most of
the converts received into the Catholic Church come from the ranks of
the High-Church or Tractarian section of the Anglican communion. Many of
these converts, especially of those who were formerly Anglican
clergymen, have felt it right to lay before the public the motives which
determined them to take a step so serious in its nature and
consequences. We have therefore a considerable number of published
documents to refer to, and the testimony that they bear is in perfect
accordance with that of our priests. The question, however, is not so
easily settled. If you lay these facts before a Ritualist he will at
once assure you that those who have left the Church of England were
weak, or unstable, or impatient, or that they were driven from their
position by the imprudence or fault of others, most probably by the
errors of their bishops. They will, in fact, deny that conversions are
the natural and legitimate result of High-Church teaching, and will
treat them as exceptional cases, to be blamed, indeed, and deplored, but
not to be viewed as indicating a general tendency.
It will therefore be interesting to examine a little into the work of
the High-Church movement, and to judge for ourselves how it bears on the
interests of the church.
We begin at once by admitting that the High-Church party is opposed to
the Catholic Church—deliberately and actively opposed. The language in
which it condemns converts is at least as strong as that in use among
Evangelicals. The principle of private judgment, which furnishes the
convert with an argument unanswerable in the case of his Low-Church
opponent, is not recognized by the High-Churchman, although we do him no
injustice in saying that it underlies his whole course of action. The
High-Churchman’s belief in Anglican orders, coupled with his ignorance
as to the meaning of jurisdiction, enables him to suppose that the
Catholic Church in England is schismatical, and to denounce those who
submit to her authority as guilty of grave, if not of unpardonable, sin.
If, then, the High-Church or Tractarian party does in any sense or to
any degree promote the cause of conversion, or prepare the way for souls
to return to God’s church, we must say that such work is done
unconsciously and involuntarily.
The original principle of the High-Church movement was reverence for
antiquity; it was, in the intention of its leaders, a return to the old
paths. The past has ever had a charm for minds of a certain order; to
those who have not realized the supernatural character of the church,
who have not grasped the great fact that, in virtue of the promise of
her divine Lord and of the power of his Spirit, she is ever the same,
ever preserved from error, ever guided unto all truth, antiquity is a
matter of primary importance. Ignorant of the existing Divine authority,
the Protestant who believes that our Lord founded a church upon earth
goes back to the earliest days of its history; he traces the stream to
its source; he thinks that there it must needs be purest. It may be that
the labor is great, that the study required is beyond the reach of many,
and that, after all, the materials at his command are too often
insufficient, and that he is ultimately compelled to fall back on the
exercise of his private judgment; but in the absence of a living
authority there is nothing that he deems more likely to guide him
aright. The view, we must admit, is from his position perfectly
reasonable, and we may bless God that the reverent and conscientious
study of the past has brought many of the best and most gifted of the
Anglican body to bow their heads in allegiance to the Vicar of Christ;
they have found that the truth they sought is, to use the words of
Moses, not above them nor far off from them, but very nigh unto them.
But the influence of this awakening of reverence for the past has told
upon many who have not joined the Catholic Church; it has even left its
mark on material things. The old churches which our Catholic forefathers
built, wherein they worshipped and beneath whose shadow they rest, have
been restored; through the length and breadth of the country they stand
in their venerable beauty, and seem at once to bear testimony to the
piety of former ages and to await England’s return to the faith.
We believe the High-Church section of the Anglican communion to be
promoting the cause of conversion in several ways.
First, by the valid administration of baptism. High-Church clergymen
know what is essential to the validity of baptism; they believe baptism
to be a sacrament and necessary to salvation, and consequently they are
very careful in instructing their people as to its importance and in
giving it properly. In former days, and in the case of ministers who did
not believe that baptism really affected the eternal salvation of an
infant, there is reason to fear that there was an immense amount of
neglect. By baptism, as we know, the habit of faith is implanted in the
soul, and accordingly in converts from Anglicanism we often find a
wonderful power of grasping the truths of the Catholic religion; as soon
as a doctrine is presented to them the mind seems at once to respond to
it; faith is there, as it is in the soul of the baptized child.
Most of the doctrines of the Catholic Church are preached and taught by
the High-Church clergy with more or less distinctness; and here we must
observe that in speaking of the High-Church or ritualistic body we are
compelled to use terms whose signification is somewhat vague. The Church
of England may be said to contain three different schools of opinion,
High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church; but no one of these has any
definite standard. Among those who are called, and who would call
themselves, High-Churchmen there are many varieties and shades of
opinion; the writings or sermons of one High-Church clergyman may, of
course, be disavowed by another. Up to the present time Dr. Pusey, who
more than any other man might seem to have been a leader, does not feel
it necessary to adopt the ritual for which some of his disciples are so
earnestly contending. All that we can, therefore, hope to do is to give
a general idea of High-Church and ritualistic teaching, premising that
on most points there is more or less divergence amongst the teachers.
It is not surprising that many of those who look back to the past for
guidance and instruction should have come to view the so-called
Reformation with regret. The ordinary Protestant boldly declares it to
have been a necessity, but many High-Churchmen openly deplore it; they
repudiate the name of Protestant, and, in defiance at once of history
and of etymology, call themselves Catholics. There is something,
however, in a name, and we may fairly believe that the disavowal of the
epithet Protestant tends to educate people out of the idea of
protesting; it is certainly true that if the Church of England ceases to
be Protestant, she cuts the very ground from under her feet, and
abolishes her only plausible _raison d’être_; but the English mind, with
all its good qualities, is not, generally speaking, logical, and words
are too often used without a very accurate idea of their derivation or
import.
Those Catholic doctrines which have been most fiercely opposed and most
grossly misrepresented in England are now openly and earnestly
inculcated. We may almost say that the conflict is gradually being
narrowed to the one subject of the authority of the Holy See and the
questions immediately depending on it. For the High-Church Anglican
believes that our Lord founded a church; he professes to take that
church as his guide, though he strangely persuades himself that its
authority is at present in abeyance. He would obey the voice of a
general council, but in order to have a general council it is absolutely
necessary that his bishops should take part in the deliberations; in the
expectation of an impossible conjuncture of circumstances he practically
disobeys every one who in the meantime claims his allegiance.
But a vast amount of Catholic teaching is, as we have said, finding its
way into the minds and hearts of Englishmen; Catholic practices and
devotions are being revived, the way is being prepared for the church.
There is a wonderful connection between the different doctrines of our
holy faith; the soul that earnestly and devoutly believes one truth is,
if we may so speak, predisposed to believe the next that may be
presented to it, and this not only from a reasonable perception of the
beauty, the fitness, and the mutual relations of the different truths,
but from the habit of mind which is produced and cultivated by acts of
faith. Each act of faith contains or implies an act of homage to the
truth of God; the soul that worships is on the way to receive fuller
light.
We have in a former paper[118] dwelt at some length on the subject of
confession in the Church of England; we have shown that it is habitually
practised by a considerable number of earnest Anglicans, and that it is
publicly urged upon people by some of the clergy as the ordinary remedy
for post-baptismal sin. It is quite certain that confession is believed
in very much more widely than it is practised. The most extreme of
Anglicans cannot possibly maintain that the Church of England requires
it of every one; to the majority of people, especially if early habit
has not facilitated the practice, there can be no doubt that it is
painful and difficult. We therefore often find persons who thoroughly
believe that the English clergy possess the power of the keys, and yet
never themselves seek for the benefit of absolution. The matter is left
quite optional, or rather the penitent is to be judge in his own case,
and to decide whether he does or does not require this special means of
grace. The scanty utterances of the _Book of Common Prayer_ seem to
imply that peace of mind is the principal object to be attained by
confession. If, therefore, an Anglican can “quiet his own conscience,”
he is quite justified in doing so without any extraneous aid; and,
indeed, in so doing he would seem to be carrying out the intention of
the framers of the Prayer-Book.
The doctrine of the Real Presence is perhaps the one which has taken the
deepest root in the mind of advanced Anglicans. We might multiply
extracts from their books of devotion and instruction conveying the
Catholic faith on this point in its completeness. Our prayer-books,
especially the _Golden Manual_ and the _Garden of the Soul_, are largely
used. Many Catholic books of devotion have been translated for
Anglicans, and, although most of the translations are more or less
spoiled by a process of adaptation, in many of them the doctrine of the
Holy Eucharist is unimpaired. The _Lauda Sion_, the _Pange Lingua_, and
the _Rythma_ of St. Thomas are preserved and faithfully translated. Nor
is the teaching confined to words; the meaning of the ritual, of which
we hear so much in the present day, is to be found in the belief in the
Presence of our Lord which it expresses and inculcates. The so-called
altars of many Anglican churches are decked with flowers; the crucifix
stands upon them; lights are burned; the clergy wear vestments like
those used in the church; celebrations of the communion are
multiplied—it is made the central act of worship; fasting communion is
insisted on; confession is recommended as the fitting preparation for
communion. A confraternity has been founded with the name of the
Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, and with the object of promoting
the devotion which naturally flows from a belief in the Real Presence of
our Lord. Attendance of non-communicants at the communion service is in
many churches recommended and encouraged, and devotions for such
worshippers have been published. Incense and music are employed in the
service; chancels are richly adorned. In some chapels communion is
reserved, and a rite, evidently imitated from the Catholic Benediction
of the Blessed Sacrament, is practised.
Ritualists have also learned to invoke Our Lady and the saints. Fifty
years ago Keble wrote:
“Ave Maria! Thou whose name
All but adoring love may claim!”
and now the _Angelus_ and the _Memorare_, the Little Office of the
Blessed Virgin and the Rosary, are in use in the English Church. The
saints are honored and their intercession is sought. Extreme Unction is
considered to be a lesser sacrament, and sick persons are anointed. The
dead are prayed for in the touching and beautiful words which holy
church puts into the mouths of her children.
It is needless to say that the doctrine of apostolic succession is most
firmly maintained by High-Churchmen. Not only are the Catholic doctrines
which have furnished the chief mark for Protestant hostility and the
principal subjects of misrepresentation now maintained and inculcated,
but others which, without being formally contradicted, have been
obscured and neglected are now brought forward with a clearness which
leaves little to be desired. The Catholic devotions to the Sacred Heart,
to the Holy Child, to the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of our
Lord, cannot fail to make those who use them enter more and more into
the great mystery which lies at the very foundation of the Christian
faith.
Moreover, the idea of duty, of conscience, of a work to be done in the
sanctification of one’s own soul, is constantly kept before the mind.
Daily self-examination is part of the rule of life. The fasts of the
church are observed often, indeed, with a severity greater than that
required by the church, but natural among those who have no guide save
their own conscience for the details of their practice. Her sacred
feasts are also kept, and thus our separated brethren have some share in
the holy teaching which each season of the ecclesiastical year impresses
on the heart. During the Holy Week which has just passed the _Tenebræ_
were sung in many ritualistic churches. On Good Friday the Three Hours’
Agony was preached in several places, the Reproaches were sung, and a
devotion somewhat resembling that of the Stations of the Cross was
practised. On Easter day the communion was celebrated as early as five
o’clock and repeated several times. The histories of the saints are
being made familiar to people’s minds. The literature of Ritualism might
of itself furnish the subject of an interesting study. The _Imitation of
Christ_ is one of the most familiar books of piety, and among the books
adapted from Catholic sources are the _Spiritual Combat_, many of the
works of Fénelon and Bossuet, Rodriguez, Courbon, Pinart, Avrillon, and
other spiritual and ascetic writers. Faber’s hymns are constantly sung
in churches. _The Catechism of Christian Doctrine_, with some
variations, is in the hands of the children of Ritualists. The Catholic
Breviary has furnished the material for the day and night Hours used in
many of the religious houses, and the very prayers of the Mass have been
interwoven in the Anglican Office for Communion. An ample supply of
juvenile literature places the doctrines of which we have spoken in an
attractive form before the minds of children. Catholic pictures are to
be seen everywhere. Several newspapers and magazines are devoted to the
publication and discussion of matters relating to the interests of the
High-Church party.
A very important feature in the revival of the last thirty years is the
foundation of religious houses in the Church of England. There are now
upwards of thirty Anglican convents, in which women lead a life of
seclusion and devote themselves to the practice of works of charity and
piety; they are in many cases bound by vows and live in obedience to
authority. A few communities of men also exist. These Anglican religious
call themselves monks and nuns, and wear a dress unlike that of secular
persons. They keep the canonical hours of prayer, they give up all
earthly ties, and their rule is in some cases taken from one of those
originally framed by a saint and sanctioned by the church.
Retreats and missions more or less resembling our own are given by some
of the Anglican clergy. We have recently heard that in a place where the
conversion of some of the clergy seemed likely to be followed by that of
a considerable body of their congregation, a retreat has been given with
the special object of settling the minds of the waverers in their
allegiance to the Church of England.
After all that we have said it will not surprise our readers to hear
that people are often received into the church who thoroughly believe
every Catholic doctrine, and, on making their submission, have no
difficulty to surmount and nothing new to learn.
Prejudices are being dispelled; an interest in that body which has ever
held the doctrines now recovered by Anglicans has been awakened. On
their own principles High-Church people who go abroad feel bound to
attend Catholic churches; the Catholic religion is better understood
than it used to be, our ceremonies are imitated, our works of charity
and devotion appreciated.
A work, then, is being done by that party in the Church of England
commonly known as the Tractarian or High-Church party. Its influence has
reached many whom we could not have hoped to reach. It has put many in a
position where they are accessible to conversion. It has taught many
souls the need and the value of sacraments. It has awakened a hunger and
thirst whose ultimate satisfaction is only to be found in the church. It
has trained souls to habits of self-examination, of self-denial, of
earnestness, of meditation, and of generosity. It has, we may trust,
kept many from ever falling into grievous sin; and while we are of
course unable to admit the validity of Anglican orders, and consequently
of sacraments dependent on such orders, we rejoice to think that what
the devout soul believes to be a sacramental communion may prove a
spiritual communion and be a means of grace and blessing.
Can we, then, as Catholics hold out the right hand of fellowship to
those Anglicans who believe so much of Catholic doctrine, and who would
fain persuade us that they have a right to the name we bear? Can we bid
them God-speed and wish them success? Alas! we cannot. Whilst we
appreciate their self-denying labors, whilst we admire their devotion
and believe that the grace of God is leading them on to better things,
we are constantly and sadly reminded that as yet they are in schism,
that they are defying or ignoring the authority which in the name of
Christ claims their obedience.
The opposition to the church is a feature of the very advanced party
which we cannot overlook; it is impossible to say how many souls its
influence has kept out of God’s church. The means used to hinder the
work of conversion are various and too often successful. We began by the
statement that most of our converts come from the ranks of Ritualism,
but we must in some degree qualify it by saying that to many it has only
been the final stage; that they have passed through it on their way from
dissent or Low-Church Protestantism into the church. Whether they would
have come to their true home more speedily if they had not on the way
been attracted by that which has so great a semblance of truth we cannot
say. Conversion is of course a work of God’s grace; but we cannot help
feeling that while High-Churchmen have got rid of many of the prejudices
and misconceptions which keep other Protestants out of the church, they
are themselves surrounded by influences hard to overcome. There is more
to satisfy both taste and devotional feeling in Ritualism than in
ordinary Protestantism; there is more to keep the mind back from honest
inquiry. The ordinary Protestant is bound to “prove all things and hold
fast that which is good.” If he has a doubt, on his own principles he
ought to follow it up, to question, to examine, and reason till he
arrives at conviction. The Ritualist is too often taught to put away a
doubt or question as a sin. He is hedged in on every side. He is
forbidden to inquire. If he be in perplexity he is recommended to devote
himself to good works; he is told to avoid controversy.
The branch theory and the dream of corporate reunion are constantly
brought forward to combat the convictions of those who are drawing near
to the church, and to defend a position which is felt to be exceptional.
The branch theory maintains that the church of Christ is divided into
three distinct branches, the Roman, the Greek, and the Anglican; each
one of these, according to its adherents, has preserved all the
essentials of a church, and each one claims with equal authority the
obedience of the faithful over whom it reigns. The Catholic Church,
accordingly, is the teacher appointed by God for Christians who live in
Italy or Spain; the Greek Church is in the same manner the guide of the
inhabitants of Russia, and the Anglican Church of those in England and
her dependencies. The divergence or contradiction that may be observed
in the teaching of these three bodies is ignored, or it is asserted that
they are one on all essential points. The church, according to this
view, is more or less a national institution. St. Paul, indeed, declared
that there was neither barbarian nor Scythian; but this theory boldly
asserts the distinction between Englishmen and Romans, and again between
Englishmen and Russians. Perhaps national vanity may find some
satisfaction in the idea of a branch church specially for British
subjects. Some curious consequences follow from the view we have
explained. In the first place, a man is bound to change his religion as
often as he crosses the Channel. The Anglican would, he is told, be
guilty of an act of schism by worshipping in a Catholic church in
England; as soon as he arrives at Calais, however, it becomes his
bounden duty to attend Mass on all Sundays and days of obligation, and
if he were to be present at any Protestant worship, even though
conducted by one of his own ministers, he would commit an act of schism.
Church and schism, in fact, change places.
No Protestant is stronger in his condemnation of those who become
Catholics than are many of the clergy who hold the branch theory. It
might, indeed, appear that if each of the three branches has an equal
claim to be called a church there could be little objection to the
change; and yet these teachers declare it to be in England a sin even to
enter a church belonging to the “Roman branch,” and to become a Catholic
is said to be risking one’s salvation.
Closely connected with this theory is what we must call the _dream_ of
corporate reunion. It is of course evident to all who have read our
Lord’s words in his Gospel that all Christians ought to be _one_, and
though people may persuade themselves of an invisible unity in
essentials, few can feel that the present state of things is altogether
as it should be.
The wish for union, coupled with an absolute confidence in the reality
of Anglicanism, has led to the hope that terms may at some time be made
with the Catholic Church. The duty of submission is thus evaded; people
are told that they are bound to wait till common action can be taken. It
is hoped that in some mysterious manner “Rome” will yet be induced to
see her errors in regard to England. People who have a strong leading
idea look at everything through a medium of their own. They grasp at
straws; the kindly courtesy of some good priest, or the ignorant
credulity of some poor peasant, is taken as a token of the coming
amalgamation. The fact that the Catholic Church has in the strongest
manner condemned the scheme of reunion is ignored, the insuperable
obstacles which at once present themselves are unheeded, and for the
sake of an unreal and unfounded dream those who would fain submit to
God’s church are held back.
Besides the expression of these general principles there is a vast
amount of special and personal action hostile to the church. It is not
enough to assure the poor famishing soul that the Church of England
supplies its every want, that it has never turned the graces already
bestowed to sufficient account; it is also warned that it is a sin even
to think of leaving its present position. The obedience claimed by and
rendered to Anglican directors is such as would astonish Catholics. The
Anglican director, generally speaking, has not learned to obey, and this
may be the reason why his manner of ruling is so absolute. It is no
uncommon thing to find people forbidden to enter a Catholic church,
although the director himself believes our Lord to be present on its
altar; conversation or correspondence with Catholic friends about the
church is in some cases prohibited, as well as the reading of Catholic
books. The director will sometimes promise to answer for the soul that
blindly obeys him. Means such as these are used to bind the conscience,
and it is probable that they keep back many who would bravely face
persecution.
It is to be feared that the temper of mind prevalent among the
ritualistic clergy is one little likely to lead to submission to the
church; for we must receive the kingdom of God as little children, and
nothing can seem less indicative of the childlike spirit than the tone
of insubordination constantly to be met with. The authority of the crown
is set at naught; that of their own bishops is defied; obedience is
little known amongst them; nevertheless by God’s grace many a soul from
among the clergy as well as from among the laity bursts the trammels
that have bound it, and finds its true home and rest. It is said that
the present year is bringing into the church a harvest greater than that
of any year since the time of Father Newman’s conversion; and if it be
so, we may well appeal to all Catholic hearts for the aid of their
prayers.
We look towards these separated brethren with a longing sympathy. We
feel that the grace of God is appealing to their hearts in a very
special manner. We acknowledge that the difficulties which keep them
back are of no common order. We admire their earnestness, their devotion
and charity; we appreciate the courage and constancy with which they
suffer for what they believe to be the truth; and if we are compelled at
times to use language which has a tone of harshness or sternness, it is
because we are solemnly bound to be faithful to God’s church, and
because we know that we can do them no greater kindness than to convince
them that they are spending their labor for that which cannot satisfy
them, and to lead them on to the enjoyment of all the blessings which
the Precious Blood has purchased for them.
We believe that the influence of the Tractarian movement has been felt
even in America, and we hope that the sketch here given of its bearing
on the great work of conversion may not be devoid of interest to those
who would deem it a joy and a privilege to help a soul into God’s
church—a work for which the power of sympathy and the intelligent
comprehension of its position and difficulties are most important
qualifications.
Footnote 118:
See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1878, “Confession in the Church
of England,” by the Right Rev. Mgr. Capel, D.D.
THE NEWSPAPER PRESS OF NEW YORK.
One of the most remarkable features of this most remarkable century is
the unparalleled growth of that branch of ephemeral literature known
_par excellence_ as the press. This increase has not been confined to
any particular nation or locality, but is as observable in conservative
Europe as in expansive America. Still, in this country, and particularly
in New York, newspapers have multiplied during the last fifty years with
a rapidity that has astonished not only the public but even their
projectors and proprietors. It is within the memory of many now living
when our city knew not the luxury of a daily journal, and its most
inquisitive and anxious inhabitants were obliged to wait a whole week
for current news and editorial comments thereon. Now we are so imbued
with a craving for early information that few persons in active life are
satisfied with a morning paper, but must have likewise two or three
evening editions. The last generation were content to wait for an
indefinite period for intelligence of what was going on in the Old
World; to-day we are sadly disappointed if we cannot read over our toast
and coffee of what has happened a few hours previously at the principal
points of interest throughout Christendom. Business enterprise,
competition, steam power, and the telegraph have been mainly
instrumental in changing the character of journalism and creating wants
hitherto unfelt; increase of population and a love of superficial
reading, which, like jealousy, makes the food it feeds on, have done the
rest.
Before proceeding to point out some of what seem to us to be the grave
defects of the secular press, we freely and thankfully admit that its
tone as regards the Catholic Church has greatly improved within the last
few years. Those who remember the scoffs and sneers, the outrageous
calumnies and downright falsehoods, which were usually associated with
everything Catholic in so many New York journals a quarter of a century
ago, now look with more than complacency on the comparative fairness
which at present characterizes their reports, correspondence, and
editorials. The manner in which the life and death of the late Pope, the
venerable Pius IX., was treated and commented upon is a notable example
of this growing spirit of liberality and good sense alike gratifying to
their Catholic readers and honorable to themselves. Now and then, of
course, we found expressions and sentiments opposed to our sense of
historical truth and moral rectitude; but as a whole the non-Catholic
press have expressed very just and impartial views of the multifarious
labors and shining virtues which distinguished the career of the
wonderful man who was lately called to his reward. The same may be said
of their allusions to his successor, Leo XIII. Abandoning the senseless
and mischievous course of their European contemporaries previous to the
meeting of the conclave, they gave us a truthful and succinct account of
the meeting of that august body, the result of its solemn deliberations,
and excellent sketches of the life and services of the illustrious
prelate selected to bear the burden laid down by Pius IX. For all this,
considering how Catholic questions were formerly treated, we ought to
be, and are, thankful. Again, looking nearer home, the services and
ceremonies of the church are described with much more regard to their
sanctity and less to the gratification of idle curiosity and insensate
popular prejudice than formerly. Some of the press accounts of the
nature and reason of fasts and feasts, abstinence, prayer, and good
works, which are especially enjoined at particular periods, have been so
precise and discriminating that the conviction is forced upon us of
their having been written, or at least dictated, by persons fully in
accord with Catholic teachings.
Yet while we cannot but admit this salutary change and admire the
variety, system, and attention to details exhibited in the mechanical
arrangement of news, and the extraordinary industry displayed in the
general manufacture of our modern newspapers, it must be confessed with
regret that in elevation of tone and honesty of purpose there has been
little or no improvement on the slower and less attractive productions
of our ancestors. We may take as an example the metropolitan press of
New York, which in point of ability, influence, and circulation far
surpasses that of any other city on the continent. Let any impartial
person, after the careful perusal of any one of our five or six
prominent daily newspapers which are supposed to control and lead public
opinion, ask himself what there is in its pages to command the attention
of the moralist, or to move the sceptical or thoughtless to a sense of
his duty to God and his neighbor: what stern rebuke has been
administered to the growing spirit of peculation and heathenism which is
constantly gnawing at the vitals of society. How seldom do we find in
the labored essays, the disjointed platitudes, the pretentious
diatribes, the ornate editorials, or the epigrams which distinguish our
prominent journals a sentiment or an argument based on sound views of
morality and religion! With a constituency at least professedly
Christian, they bandy with words and phrases, opinions and speculations,
essentially anti-Christian. One sneers at the Catholic Church and
everything we hold sacred; another patronizes us in a manner more
insulting than complimentary; while the others, when not openly
misrepresenting and maligning us, allude to our faith in a manner even
more objectionable. All without exception, possibly without knowing it,
are the advocates of the secret societies abroad, which are endeavoring
to undermine the fabric of social order and Christian civilization, and
the apologists for those home fanatics who seek to excite public
prejudice against us, and oppose class to class and creed to creed for
their own selfish and diabolical ends.
Of course we do not expect secular newspapers to become active exponents
of the great truths of religion, nor should it even be required of them
to give undue prominence to the publication of matters of a religious
character. That is not their province. But appearing as they do in a
Christian community, and being supposed to reflect in a great measure
the feelings, views, and moral status of the people who support them, we
have a right to demand that they adhere to the teachings of that moral
law which ought to govern us all, and that when they treat of sacred
things, and deal with questions affecting faith and religion, it shall
be done with that serious reverence which persons are bound to observe
in social life. Neither do we ask that they advocate the superior claims
of Catholics, nor even enter upon our defence against the many
unscrupulous enemies who are constantly rising up against us; but we do
insist that we shall not be insulted, that our opinions be respected,
and that the code of morals which all who profess to be Christians
acknowledge be not constantly and persistently outraged.
The secret of this apparently unanimous anti-Catholic feeling which we
lament in the New York daily press is to be found in the mental, not to
say moral, inferiority of the editorial fraternity as a class. Since the
death of Greeley and Raymond and the practical retirement of Bryant we
have had no really able journalist among us; while, unlike Paris,
Berlin, London, and other European cities, where the foremost statesmen
and most profound thinkers scorn not to take up the editorial pen
occasionally, we have no voluntary contributors above the level of
mediocrity. A New York editor is usually a man paid to write something
or anything on certain subjects, whether he be familiar with them or
not. He writes not to express his own well-considered convictions, or to
give the public the benefit of his study and experience of a particular
topic, but simply to meet a special emergency, and to embody, more or
less lamely, the half-formed notions of his employer, who is as likely
as not an uncultured man himself. Hence the greater number of what are
called leading articles which appear in our daily papers, instead of
presenting clear views, sound reasoning, and reliable information
artistically epitomized, are seldom other than a mass of hasty, crude,
and shallow speculations on topics of the greatest importance. With the
mass of casual readers, who are too busy to look beneath the surface,
such productions pass for gospel truths, and therefore are likely to do
more harm than more elaborate articles; but to the intelligent reader it
soon becomes obvious either that the heads of the writers are astray or
that their hearts are not in their work. The latter surmise, we are
inclined to believe, is more generally correct. How can a Hebrew, for
instance, write a eulogium on the glories of the Catholic Church; a
Catholic, no matter how lukewarm, praise the Communists and applaud the
Carbonari; or a follower of the stern precepts of Calvin glorify free
love and exalt the doctrines of universalism? Yet such anomalies are
frequently found in New York journalism, where every man seems to be in
the wrong place. The well-known fact that the editorial staff of all our
large dailies is principally made up of persons of diverse
nationalities, creeds, and opinions accounts for the discordance
noticeable in every one of their pages. They have no fixed principles.
No matter what political party journals may support, and how emphatic
they may be in their advocacy of this or that public measure, when they
come to treat a great social question, or one of vital importance to the
honor and reputation of the republic, one column of the same paper is
usually found to contradict the other, and the principles advanced
to-day are in imminent danger of being condemned to-morrow.
To this rule, however, there is an exception. It seems to be a canon of
the press of this city, and we might add of the entire country, that
Catholics can be abused, scoffed at, and misrepresented with impunity.
Their religion is unfashionable; their social, commercial, and political
influence small in comparison with their numbers; the world is not their
friend, nor the world’s law, and therefore the generous and large-minded
editors of our newspapers, when at a loss for something else to say,
have always an arrow in their quiver for the “tyranny of Rome,” and the
dangers to which their beloved country is exposed from the “machinations
and encroachments of Romanism.” Vulgar nicknames and insulting epithets
applied to the church and the religious orders, which have long since
been banished from the vocabularies of other countries, are freely used
with a coolness and a facility which show that the writers are either
too ignorant to know when they are vulgar, or so barren of ideas and
expressions that they are compelled to borrow those which have done
service in the days of a bigoted and fanatical generation.
But turning from the editorial page to what constitutes the bulk of our
journals, we find their dangerous character revealed. What mainly fills
their capacious pages and constitutes their principal attraction for the
generality of purchasers? Extended reports of divorce cases, criminal
trials, matrimonial escapades, and the minutiæ of executions; “spicy”
paragraphs and indecent anecdotes to which the ordinary and instructive
news of the day is only an adjunct. The sensational style of reporting,
the dressing-up of disgusting topics in romantic phraseology, though
unknown a few years ago, or confined to a few disreputable weekly
papers, is fast becoming a distinctive feature in New York journalism.
It is a growing evil, as well as a most insidious one, and the keen
competition which exists between proprietors of daily journals for
popular patronage has a direct tendency to develop it still further. So
much, indeed, do our papers, big and little, vie with each other in
catering to the depraved taste of a certain portion of the people that
it has become a matter of serious consideration with many persons
whether they can safely introduce into their families the papers they
are obliged to take for business purposes.
It is very safe to assert that too many of those who collect the city
and suburban news for the daily press are as devoid of conscience in
their method of communicating as they are often shameless in their
manner of procuring their information. They seem to think that a
reporter, in his official capacity, has no moral responsibility, and act
consistently with the supposition. They fairly revel in scandal;
consider vice only something to be elaborately depicted in their
respective newspapers, and crime, no matter how heinous, a fitting theme
for their nimble and facile pens. Their excuse for all this prostitution
of ability which might be turned to some good account is that the public
demand this highly-seasoned style of reporting, forgetting that they
themselves have excited this prurient taste, and that if, repenting of
their past misdeeds, they were to return to the old-fashioned method
their present admirers would soon follow them.
It is certain that the degeneracy of the newspaper press in this respect
is fast sapping the morals of the community, particularly the younger
portion of it. Once familiarized with crime of every sort and degree
through the florid descriptions of the reporters, our young men and
women must necessarily become mentally debased. Their thoughts,
unbidden, will stray to matters of which they have lately read, a
dangerous curiosity will be excited, and from constant reflection they
will begin to lose that horror of sin which is one of the safeguards of
virtue, which every pure-minded youth should keep constantly before his
eyes. The mind once disturbed, the imagination led astray, every
defaulter and swindler, if he be a criminal on a large scale, is apt to
appear to them as “a smart fellow”; the betrayer of female innocence,
the faithless husband or disloyal wife, as one more sinned against than
sinning; and even the murderer, whose sayings and doings are faithfully
chronicled, and whose solemn exit from the world is made the occasion of
a grand dramatic scene, becomes in some degree a hero and a victim of
revengeful law.
Of course it is easier to point out the evils which disgrace the
editorial profession, and so materially impair the usefulness of the
press, than to suggest an adequate remedy for them. It is useless to
appeal to the conductors of newspapers; for as long as Catholics can be
abused with impunity, and the moral sense of the community be shocked by
vile and obscene descriptions of crime and criminals with profit to
themselves, they will heed neither advice nor remonstrance. The cure
rests with the public who purchase and support such journals. As far as
Catholics are concerned, the true course would be to establish a daily
paper of their own, which would reflect their sentiments and opinions,
and furnish them with reliable foreign and domestic news collated in
unobjectionable style; but this, it seems, is impossible at present. The
embarrassed financial condition of the country is opposed to the
initiation of such an enterprise. Our only present resource, as long as
so many of us must read daily papers, is to concentrate our patronage on
that journal which presents the least objectionable features, and, by
encouraging it to do better things, prove to its contemporaries by the
strongest of all arguments to them—their decreased circulation—that the
Catholics of this city and vicinity will no longer pay to be abused and
calumniated. But there are many among us who from habit take daily
papers with which we can well dispense. We advise them to discontinue
their misdirected patronage and bestow it on our struggling weekly
Catholic journals. They will thus administer a wholesome lesson to
bigotry and immorality, and at the same time give encouragement and life
to Catholic serial literature.
There are, however, other and more cogent reasons why the reading of
daily papers, now so prevalent, should be discouraged, or at least
confined within reasonable limits. There can be little doubt that their
constant and persistent perusal is apt to create a distaste for more
profound and healthful reading. Drawing our opinions mainly from the
hastily composed contributions of overworked correspondents and editors,
we are pretty sure to fall into the habit of reaching conclusions and
entertaining views of life neither logical nor well considered. Like
those who feast overmuch on sweets, we conceive a dislike for solids and
as the body suffers in the one case, the mind naturally is impaired by
indulgence in the light and meretricious literature of which newspapers
are, if not the worst, certainly the most widespread and exemplary,
types.
Americans, to paraphrase a well-known expression, are a newspaper-ridden
people. We must have some sort of paper at breakfast, dinner, and
supper. We are not even satisfied with one each day, but require two or
three more every twenty-four hours. The time that should be devoted to
the study of good books, wherein can be found solid instruction and food
for reflection, is thus too often wasted on the lucubrations and
speculations of half-informed men who are as incapable of emitting sound
ideas as they are of appreciating the immoral drift of much that daily
falls from their own pens. Hence inordinate readers of newspapers
necessarily become shallow-minded, superficial thinkers; their
intellectual tastes are vitiated, and their judgment is weakened and
perverted. Like a shattered mirror, their minds are incapable of
reflecting one entire well-defined image, but present only fragments of
thought in forms indefinite and distorted. The higher aspirations of our
nature, those sublime conceptions which lift us above the grosser things
of earth, and, even in this life, bring us nearer and nearer to our
Creator, can never be generated by ephemeral newspaper literature. While
we may feel compelled by business considerations or a natural political
curiosity to glance over the columns of our daily journals, we should
not forget that the intellect receives neither health nor strength from
prolonged indulgence in such enervating pursuits. Newspapers undoubtedly
have their use and mission; they have become an important factor in our
present system of civilization, and are capable of accomplishing much
good in their own sphere; but their effect and scope are limited, and
should be circumscribed so that they be not permitted to interfere with
the reading of solid history, the works of our best writers, and the
essential duties of life, among which must be considered the pursuit of
Christian knowledge and the elevation and purification of the immortal
part of our being.
MY FRIEND MR. PRICE.
A STORY OF NEWPORT.
The summer was upon me, and with it the yearning for the dulcet plash of
the salt sea wave.
“Whither?” became the vexed question of the hour, and Newport made reply
to it.
To Newport I accordingly transported myself. I shall not say whether it
was last season, or the season before, or even the season before that
again. The readers of this narrative must determine the exact date. I
refuse point-blank to do so.
Newport was in the height of the season when I entered my humble name,
John V. Crosse, Lexington Avenue, New York, on the leaf of the register
at the Ocean House.
It was a lovely evening in August, and the piazza of the hotel was
crowded with high, mighty, and fashionable humanity. Dinner was a thing
of the past, and the drive was looming in the near future. Ladies were
chatting in parti-colored groups, men smoking in acrobatic postures. A
delicious stillness prevailed—a warm, life-caressing glow. A wooing
message from the sea, laden, as it sped upon its errand inland, with the
perfume of a myriad glowing flowers, fanned the cheek. The sun shot bars
of molten gold between the trellised branches of the slumbering trees,
and the indolence of waking repose descended upon everything like a rosy
cloud.
I went on the piazza, and, selecting an able-bodied wooden chair, flung
myself into it, placing my feet on the iron railing in front of me, ere
proceeding to light a cigar. When I had succeeded in emitting half a
dozen puffs of my most excellent weed I looked right and left of me.
On my right sat a man of about thirty, or perhaps more, apparently tall,
and slender to leanness. He was dark as a gipsy, with coal-black hair
waving naturally but sparse upon the temples—he had removed his
hat—which had a craggy look. His large eyes were deep-set, while his
mouth wore an expression of superb self-complacency. He was
clean-shaved, except for a fringe of long, silky black whisker far back
upon the cheek, but both moustache and beard were clearly marked by the
blue-black shade on his lip and jaw. The man was not ugly—just escaping
ugliness by a very narrow margin. He was well dressed in a suit of light
Scotch tweed that fitted him like “the paper on the wall,” whilst a
certain _je ne sais quoi_ bespoke the Englishman.
On my left lounged a handsome young fellow with clear blue eyes, a fair
moustache, and one of the brightest smiles I have ever seen upon a human
countenance. He twirled an unlighted cigar between his red lips, and as
vehicle after vehicle dashed up to the “ladies’ entrance” fair dames and
damosels gave him cheery and gracious salutation, cheerily and
graciously responded to, accompanied by the flourish of a rakish little
straw hat perched on the side of his superbly-set head.
With these two personages the narrative has much to do.
I sat smoking the one post-prandial cigar allowed me by my doctor,
contemplating with indolent satisfaction the fragrant greenery in front
of me, when my meditations _apropos_ of nothing were brought up with a
sudden jerk by the young fellow on my left asking to be permitted to
light his cigar from mine.
Now, as a matter of fact, I have a very decided and deep-rooted
objection to surrendering my cigar to anybody, rich or poor, gentle or
simple; I like no one to handle it but myself; and therefore, instead of
transferring the glowing weed to his expectant fingers, I dived into the
breast-pocket of my coat, and producing a tin box containing wax
matches, placed it, together with its contents, at his disposal.
“You are an Englishman,” he gaily exclaimed, extracting a vesta as he
spoke.
“No, but very English on the subject of the handling of my baccy,” I
laughed.
“You are not far astray. You should have seen the tramp that deprived me
of a genuine Lopez this morning. I couldn’t refuse him, so I left him
the weed.”
“I consider that the——”
“_Per Bacco!_ there she goes,” he suddenly interposed, and, flinging my
match-box into my lap, he vaulted over the railing into the
carriage-drive beneath.
Two ladies seated in a pony-phaeton flashed past.
“I’m English,” exclaimed my right-hand man, tapping the ash from his
cigar with a finger white and delicate as wax, “and I’m glad to find
that _one_ American sees the abomination of handing every cad his cigar
who chooses to ask for it.”
Being very Starry and Stripey, I was about to defend the practice in
vogue amongst my countrymen, although thoroughly against my convictions,
when he asked:
“Do you know who that fellow is?”
“What fellow?”
“That long-eared, long-legged jackass who took that railing as if he was
at school.”
“I never saw him before.”
“You’ll see him again. I lay seven to two. And I’ll take the odds that
he tells you that he’s Grey Seymour, whatever that may be; that he’s
over his long ears in love with a Miss Hattie Finche, whom he followed
here from Martha’s Vineyard; and that she has five hundred thousand
dollars.”
“I suppose that one of the ladies in the pony-carriage was Miss Hattie
Finche?”
“The whip—yaas.”
“I wonder can she be a daughter of Wilson Finche, of New York?”
“The tallow-man, Beaver Street and Fifth Avenue?”
“Ay, and Chicago and ’Frisco,” I added.
“That’s the identical geranium.”
“And is Wilson Finche in Newport?”
“He has taken a cottage on the Ocean Drive for the season.”
“I must look him up.”
“Are you acquainted with him?” the languor of manner disappearing, and a
vivid interest rushing to the front.
“Very well indeed.”
“And with his daughter?”
“Why, certainly.”
“Stop a minute!” fumbling in his breast coat-pocket. “You’ll introduce
me.”
The coolness of this proposition actually staggered me. Introduce a man
of whose name even I was in total ignorance!
“I could not venture to do such a thing,” I responded somewhat gruffly.
I did not relish the idea of being treated in this off-hand way—of being
openly and deliberately made a cat’s-paw.
“Oh! yes, you will. Here’s my card. Let’s have one of yours,” thrusting
his pasteboard almost into my reluctant hand.
With very considerable deliberation I searched for my double eye-glass
hidden away somewhere in the depths of my capacious waistcoat—I was fat,
and fair, and fifty-five at that date—and, carefully wiping it with a
scarlet silk handkerchief, adjusted it to my eyes and read:
_Mr. Herbert Price,
Temple, London, E. C._
“Let’s have your card,” said Mr. Price, as though I were a tradesman
with whom it pleased his high mightiness to have dealings.
“I am not in the habit of”—
“There, now, you’re going to put me aside. Where’s the use? Why wouldn’t
you help a poor hungry, briefless English barrister to this piece of
gilded gingerbread? You’re not going for her yourself?”
Oho! I inwardly chuckled.
“Not much. I have seen too many of my peers wrecked upon the rock-bound
coast of matrimony to permit my argosy within those shallow and
treacherous waters.”
“I guessed you were a bachelor,” observed Price facetiously.
“And might I ask, sir, how you were led to imagine this?” I felt curious
to hear what the fellow would say.
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Smith.”
“I am not Mr. Smith.”
“Well, Mr. Jones.”
“I am not Jones.”
“Robinson.”
“Your pertinacity, sir, ought to make your fortune at the Old Bailey.”
“Well said, Thompson. Now, you wish me to tell you how I guessed you
were a bachelor. Firstly,” putting up his finger and tapping it with his
cigar, “your general complacency; secondly, your linen—no married man
ever commands the linen of a bachelor; thirdly, your gaiters—such fit,
such polish!—fourthly, your isolation; and, fifthly, the methodical way
in which you do everything, from lighting a cigar to playing a fantasia
on your handkerchief with your nasal organ.”
“I am not aware that I am more methodical than other men of my age and
habits.”
“Are’n’t you? Then just watch yourself.”
“You are a very peculiar specimen of your country, Mr. Price.”
“I can return you the compliment; and as one good turn deserves another,
you’ll introduce me to Miss Finche.”
“You must excuse me, Mr. Price.”
“But I won’t.”
“I beg to differ from you.”
“We shall see.”
“We shall.”
Mr. Price rose and quitted the piazza, returning after a brief absence.
“Now, Mr. John V. Crosse, of Lexington Avenue, New York, as you say in
this queer country, I have posted myself. You are confoundedly rich,
living on your dollars, and are not a half-bad sort of elderly
gentleman.”
“May I ask to whom I am indebted for this portrait, sir?”
Somehow or other I couldn’t get up a feeling of anger. I tried, but it
wouldn’t come.
“The clerk inside. I know you now, and you know me. I am the son of Sir
Harvey Price, of Holten Moat, Sevenoaks, in Kent. The Moat is about one
of the last of the Tudor residences in England. We have been in that one
corner since the battle of Hastings, and the Moat has never run dry
since Queen Bess visited us, when the waters were turned off and red
wine turned on. I am the sixth son, and poor as a sixth son ought to be.
I was sent to the bar because I had an uncle on the bench. My uncle died
while I was keeping my terms. I am an honor-man of Oxford, and last year
my brief-book showed one hundred and fifty pounds. About ten weeks ago
my godmother died; she left me five hundred pounds. I paid my tailor
just enough to maintain a doubtful confidence in me, my boot-maker
ditto. Like an able general, who always prepares beforehand for a
retreat—although Wellington, our best man, failed to do this at
Waterloo, having the forest of Soignies at his back—I have paid for the
rent of my chambers in advance. I have come here just to ascertain for
myself if red Indians are to be met with on Broadway, and buffalos to be
potted on Fifth Avenue. This is the story, and here is the man. Will you
introduce me to Miss Finche _now_?”
I must confess that the story, brief though it was, and told in a short,
sharp, jerky way, somewhat interested me. I had no reason to doubt it,
and yet I was too old in the devious paths of the world to accept either
the narrative or the man at sight. Surely, if he were so well connected,
he should be able to obtain letters of introduction to some persons in
society, and then it would be plain sailing enough for him.
“You won’t take me on trust?” he exclaimed after I had said as much to
him.
“I have arrived at that time of life, Mr. Price, when I take nothing on
trust. I must know my butcher, my baker, my wine merchant, my
boot-maker, _et hoc genus omne_.”
“Never mind,” he gaily cried. “You’ll be sorry by and by, when you see
me engaged to Miss Finche.”
“You seem to have a tolerably strong belief in your powers of—”
“Audacity. You are right. _Toujours de l’audace._ I am a man of a single
idea; the idea at present on my groove of thought is the gold Finche.
The lion in my path is Grey Seymour. If he were poor I wouldn’t have a
chance; but he has millions, and money doesn’t fall in love with money.
Your heiress always spoons on a pauper, while your _aurati juvenes_ go
in for penniless governesses. _Ne c’est pas, mon vieux?_ Give us a
match. I’ll go and take a swim; and you go and call on Wilson Finche.
His direction is—stay; I’ll write it down for you. There!” he exclaimed,
handing me a card: “‘Wilson Finche, Esquire, Sea View Cottage, The
Cliff.’ You’ll find him at home now, Crosse, and in that beatific
condition which is the outcome of a Château Lafitte of the ’54 vintage.
_Adios!_”
Obeying the mandate of this very peculiar young man, I strolled down to
The Cliff.
The wide sea heaved and plashed beneath me with a dull, dulcet murmur.
Away out on its unruffled bosom lay great patches of purple, denoting
the passage of some fleecy cloud onwards, ever onwards. White sails
dotted the deep green sea like daisies on a dappled field. The shingle
caressed by the wooing wavelets was red and brown, while the wave-kissed
pebbles flashed in the sunlight. Boats like specks were drawn up on the
beach, and sailors were busy with sails and cordage and the impedimenta
of their craft.
Finche’s marine residence stood boldly prominent, all corners and gables
like an old cocked hat. It was new and pert-looking, and wore the air of
a coquette in a brand-new toilette from Worth’s. A ribbon border of
glowing scarlet geraniums led from the lich-gate to the Queen Anne
porch, whereon sat, or lay, or reclined—it was all three—my old friend,
his body in one of those chairs which invalid passengers on ocean
steamers much affect, to the envy of all who do not possess the luxury,
his feet on a camp-stool, beside him a small marble-topped table,
whereon stood a bottle of claret, a crystal glass of wafer-like
thinness, and a box of cigars. Price had spoken wisely.
After the usual exclamations of greeting had dried up I complimented
Finche on the beauty of the location.
“Yes, sir; it costs money, but what’s money if you don’t get value for
it? Thompson—you know Thompson, of Brand & Thompson—that man, sir, has
four millions, sir, and what value does _he_ take out of it, sir? A
back-room in Thirteenth Street; a breakfast at a foul-smelling
restaurant, sir; a five-minute dinner at Cable’s; an unhealthy supper at
another restaurant, and half a dozen of newspapers. _That’s_ what _he_
has for his four millions.”
“You are wiser in your generation, Finche.”
“I am wise in this way, sir”—Finche is very sententious, and his
shirt-collar is always troubling him—“I must have value for my money.
One hundred cents for my dollar is good enough for me. If, sir, I can
get one hundred and fifty, so much the better; but, sir, I never take
ninety, or ninety-five, sir, or ninety-and-nine, sir. Help yourself to
that claret—it’s a Nat Johnson, sir; I paid twenty-five dollars a case
for it in the year ’70. It’s value for the money, sir, _I_ tell _you_.”
“You are here with your _Lares_ and _Penates_,” I observed, after some
further remarks upon the value of the surroundings.
“What do you mean, sir?” Finche is as ignorant as a chimpanzee.
“Your household gods.”
“Yes, sir. I am here with my daughter and my wife. My daughter gets
value, sir, in the hops at the Ocean House, and the nice society she
meets with—real bang-up swells, sir. My wife gets value out of the salt
water, sir—health, sir, which improves her body and her temper, sir. She
is a quick-tempered woman is Mrs. Finche, and when she’s ill, sir, she’s
ugly.”
At this moment the pony phaeton which I had observed from the piazza of
the hotel dashed up to the lich-gate.
“My daughter and her friend, Miss Neville, an English girl, sir, of a
very high family, poor as cheap claret, sir, but proud as a coupon, sir.
She’s on a visit to us, but we get value out of her. She sings lovely,
sir; you shall hear her. It entertains our swell friends, and thus we
strike a balance. The tall one is my daughter, sir.”
I saw a slim but well-proportioned figure, clad in a rich black silk
dress, the cut of which, even to my masculine eyes, betrayed the hand of
an artist; a face, though not beautiful by any means, earnest and
interesting, surmounted by a profusion of little fair curls, arranged,
as was the fashion, so as to conceal the forehead; a picturesque hat, a
pair of diamond solitaire earrings, and upon the whole a person
decidedly “fetching.” Her companion was _petite_, and constructed, as
they say of saucy steamers, upon the most perfect lines. She was a clear
brunette, and as she swept somewhat haughtily past the glowing ribbon
borders I bethought me of Cleopatra, and the passage down the Cydnus of
that boat which wrecked the fortunes of the luckless Antony.
Of course I gazed at the possessor of five hundred thousand dollars, as
the “penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree” counted for nothing.
“Hattie, this is my old friend, Mr. Crosse, of Noo York, who has come to
Newport to take some value out of the summer-time.”
Miss Finche was very gracious, presenting me with a hand encased in a
glove of many buttons, and flashing a row of magnificent teeth between
each smile.
“Are you a ‘cottager,’ Mr. Crosse?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Are you at the Ocean or the Acquednuk?”
“The Ocean.”
“The other is quieter.”
“There is better value at the Ocean, Hattie,” observed her father.
“One sees everybody worth seeing there. Isn’t the piazza charming, Mr.
Crosse?”
“Of its kind, yes; but I would prefer a little of this,” sweeping the
horizon with my hand.
“It is very beautiful,” said a sweet, low voice by my side, a voice that
“chimed” into my ear—I can use no other word. It was Miss Neville who
spoke.
“There is great value to be got out of that view at sunset, sir—yellows
and reds, sir, that would set up a painter, if he could only fetch up to
the right color and give good value to the buyer.”
Miss Neville imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders, while I winced at
this commercial view of marine painting. I wondered what Mr. Hook, R.A.,
or my rising young friend Mr. Quartly would have said to the man of
tallow.
“Hattie, another bottle of this wine, although it’s a pity to drink it
on a hot day; one doesn’t get the value out of it. Get into the house,
girls; I want to have a talk with my friend Crosse here. What is
Bullandust going to do in Lake Shores?” addressing me.
I protested.
“Finche,” I said, “I’ve come down here for sea, and sky, and trees, and
_dolce far niente_.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Well, loafing,” I laughed.
“There an’t no value to be got out of that.”
“Isn’t there, though? And I mean to drop Wall Street, and scrip, and
shares, and every sort of business. I won’t even look at a newspaper
till I choose to go back.”
“You an’t in earnest?” said my host, gazing at me in solemn
astonishment.
“A fact, upon my honor.”
“Well, that—say, there’s some one saluting. It’s not me—I don’t know the
man. It must be a friend of yours, sir.”
I adjusted my double glass and gazed towards the lich-gate.
A slight sense of shock vibrated through my system. Leaning upon the
gate, and nodding at me like a Chinese mandarin, was Mr. Herbert Price,
Temple, London, E. C.
“You seem to be having a good time there, my friend,” he gaily cried.
What could I say? What could I do?
“It’s awfully hot for walking.”
“Won’t you step in, sir?” said Finche.
I could not say, Don’t ask this man. Of course a gossip and a glass of
wine, and a mere formal introduction to Finche, meant nothing.
“His name’s Price,” I hurriedly whispered—“stopping at Ocean
House—London barrister—don’t know him.” Whether these last three words
were lost upon Finche or not it is impossible to determine, inasmuch as
he took no notice of them whatever.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Price. Any friend of my friend Mr. Crosse is
welcome here, sir. Get a chair. Take that other one, sir, with the back
to it; you’ll get more value out of it. That’s my principle—take value
out of everything. A glass of wine, sir? It’s a Château Lafitte that
cost me twenty-five dollars a case in ’70, sir. Touch that gong, sir!”
A servant appeared in obedience to the tocsin.
“Ask Miss Finche to send me another bottle of this wine, then take the
empty bottle. Put it carefully by, Mary, as all the bottles have to go
back after I have taken the value out of them, which I guess I do,” with
a chuckle.
“Did you walk down, Mr. Crosse?” asked Price.
“Yes.” I was on the borderland of indignation. I felt
foolish—checkmated.
“You had no difficulty in finding the place.”
“I can always find _my_ friend’s house, Mr. Price.”
“You were dull enough about it on the piazza when we were speaking about
Mr. Finche. What a glorious spot you have here! It reminds me of
Devonshire. Ah! you American millionaires know how to live.”
“We try to get value out of the world.”
“And you succeed. Your good health, Mr. Finche. Ah!” smacking his lips,
“that _is_ wine. What a superb thing to sit beneath one’s vine or
fig-tree, drink such nectar as this, and to be able to—pay for it!” with
a light laugh.
“You are from London, sir, my friend Crosse tells me.”
I could have flung the contents of my glass into Finche’s face. Price
would perhaps think I had been singing his praises.
“Yes, I hail from that little village on the Thames.”
“A lawyer?”
“One of the briefless. I did not choose the profession, I assure you.
Like my first frock, it was chosen for me, and I was thrust into it _bon
gré mal gré_. I’ll tell you who I am and what I am. I have told my
friend Crosse already.” And he summed up the case, much in the same
words as he had addressed to me.
Finche was impressed by the mention of the title, and deeply interested
in a detailed description of the Moat.
“I am happy to meet you, sir, and should be glad to visit Sir Harvey
Price at Holten Moat when I go to England next year, sir. Do you purpose
taking much value out of this country, sir?”
Price actually winked at me, and that wink spoke the following words:
“I mean to take five hundred thousand dollars if I can.”
A bell sounded.
“Supper, gentlemen!” said Finche. “Let us get in. No ceremony here, Mr.
Price. We have no Moats for three hundred years in our family, although
we see them every day in our neighbor’s eye—ha! ha!”
It would never do to have this pickpocket, for aught I knew to the
contrary, enter beneath my friend’s roof under the very peculiar
circumstances of the case. Had he been an ordinary travelling
acquaintance it would not have much mattered, but a penniless adventurer
bent upon matrimonial designs—never!
“Mr. Price and I are going back to the Ocean House,” I said in my
sternest tone, and in a manner so marked as to bear but the one
interpretation.
“What do I hear, Mr. Crosse?” exclaimed Miss Finche, emerging from the
interior, arrayed in a bewitching toilette of fleecy white and delicate
lilac.
“My dear, this is—”
“I beg your pardon, Finche, but could I—” I burst in.
“This is Mr. Price, of London, a friend of—”
“Finche, I may as well”— But the pompous old ass would have his bray,
and Price was conversing with Hattie Finche ere I could utter the words
of explanation that were ready to spring from my lips.
“Gentlemen, you would like to wash your hands. Just step up to my
_sanctum_. Tompkins” (to a servant), “show these gentlemen to my
_sanctum_.”
When the door had closed upon us, “Mr. Price,” I said, “do you call this
fair?”
“Everything is fair in love.”
“Bosh, sir! You find in me a man unwilling to wound the feelings of
another. I have gained nothing by acting the part of a gentleman.”
“I deny that!” his coat off, his head deep in the marble basin. “You’ve
made _me_ your friend for life.”
“And who might _you_ be?”
“I’ve told you. See, now,” his hands dripping, “here,” plunging one of
them into the breast-pocket of his coat, which was lying on a
bed—“here’s a ten-pound note; spend every shilling of it in cablegrams.
You have my own, you have my father’s address. Wire him, wire anybody
you like, you’ll have your reply to-morrow. My story will be
corroborated in every particular. _That_ ought to satisfy you.”
I shook my head.
“Time with _me_ is money. This fellow, Grey Seymour, is to meet her
to-morrow at a garden-party at Mrs. Dyke Howell’s. His millions will
come into play, and such heavy artillery will sweep my rusty flint-locks
into ash-barrels. A duel with artillery is all very well, but when the
batteries are all on one side one side wins. My chances depend on what
running I can make to-night. I can talk to women as few men can. It is
my faculty. I know where to reach them, and how. It is _nascitur non
fit_ with me. I don’t go on Doctor Johnson’s idea of making an idiot of
a girl’s understanding by flattery. That is false in theory, false in
practice. Now, you are not half bad. Stand by me,” placing his hand on
my shoulder, “and, by George! I’ll do something for you yet.”
He was thoroughly in earnest, and hang me if I could refuse him. I
suppose it was my bounden duty to have done so. Common sense and common
prudence nudged me ere I took his proffered hand, but, heedless of the
whisperings of still, small voices, I permitted myself to go with the
tide. It was treating my friend Finche badly; it was placing myself in a
false, if not a worse, position; and yet—I could not utter that absurdly
small word “no.”
The morrow would tell its own tale, for I had resolved upon telegraphing
without the assistance of Mr. Price’s ten-pound note, and a few hours
could do no possible harm. If Miss Finche were to lose her heart in the
space of an evening, she would prove a very noteworthy exception to the
great sisterhood to which she belonged.
The addition to her dinner table did not seem to please Mrs. Finche, an
emaciated, waspish, red-nosed lady, whose thin lips had an unpleasant
twitch in them, and whose bright, beady black eyes darted angrily hither
and thither like a pair of beetles in search of prey.
I sat next to her; opposite to me Miss Neville; Finche was at the foot
of the table; on his right _my_ friend Price, on his left the heiress.
“What brings _you_ to this fashionable place, Mr. Crosse?” asked mine
hostess, the inference being “plain to the naked eye.”
“Well, I thought I’d like to take a peep at the gay goings-on.”
“Ah!” an icy chill in the monosyllable.
Mrs. Finche being very silent, and, if not silent, snappish, I directed
my conversation to Miss Neville, whom I found to be absolutely charming.
I had travelled a good deal, and, from the loneliness of my life, read
about as much as ordinary men, and I discovered, to my most intense
pleasure, that there was at least _one_ young girl in the nineteenth
century the possessor of ideas above the level of sweet things in
sheathe-like costumes, or the latest methods for beautifying the human
face divine.
Miss Neville was thoroughbred, and all unconsciously showed her lustrous
lineage in every movement, every gesture, every word. Blood will tell,
and it spoke its own emblazoned story in the winsome elegance of this
“rare bit o’ womankind.”
Mr. Price laughed and talked, and narrated piquant anecdotes, and kept
Miss Finche well in hand, causing the host “all the time” to indulge in
a vast, expansive smile. Finche was getting the value of his mutton and
his claret out of his friend’s friend. He was satisfied. After dinner
the young ladies returned to the Queen Anne porch, while the waspish
hostess proceeded to take forty wide-awake winks. We mankind talked
generally, and, although pressed to remain at our wine, Price and I were
glad to get from beyond the range of our host’s perpetual “values.”
As we were seated upon the wooden steps at the feet of the fair ones,
gazing out across the wide, wide ocean, gilded with the expiring rays of
the setting sun, and canopied by a sky of pale blue merging into
delicate green, and again into white, the lich-gate swung back and Grey
Seymour swung in.
“What a glorious evening! Are you for a walk on the cliff?” asked the
new-comer, eyeing Price and myself as he spoke. “How do?” he added,
addressing me.
“Mr. Seymour, Mr. Price,” said Miss Finche, while the two men nodded
stiffly.
“A walk on the cliff, by all means; don’t you think so, Maude?” asked
Miss Finche, addressing Miss Neville.
“_Comme vous voulez._”
“Let’s go as we are.”
We sallied forth.
“What a nuisance, this fellow’s turning up!” whispered Price angrily. “I
shall have to fall back.”
Seymour and Miss Finche led the way. I did the elderly and protecting
party.
“I place them in your charge,” were the parting words of mine host. “The
youngsters will take value out of one another; _you_ take value out of
the whole lot.”
I dropped behind, and proceeded to enjoy the glories of the night in my
own way. Soon came that entrancing blue light which steals in between
day and dark, and the stars began to throb in the great canopy, and that
“hush” which Night sends as her envoy to earth was passing over hill and
hollow, and land and sea.
I sat down in a little nook on the cliff—a corner that seemed almost
clean out of the world, and as if the earth had suddenly ended there. I
thought over many things, and in the _bizarre_ reflections consequent
upon the adventures of the day came a dreamy sensation of admiration for
the fair young girl whom destiny had thrown beneath the roof-tree of my
friend Wilson Finche. I felt strangely interested in her already. Why, I
did not ask myself. She was a blaze of intelligence, a mine of
intellectual wealth. I do not mean for one second to say that she was a
genius, but there was a tone of high culture about her that shed itself
like a fragrant perfume.
Miss Finche appeared to me to be a very nice, ladylike, ordinary class
of girl—one of those patent-mannered, warranted-to-go-well sort of young
ladies who rove at their sweet wild will in the garden of society; but
beside Miss Neville she was absolutely colorless.
I sat thinking over the strange freaks of fortune, that give thousands
of dollars to some girls, leaving others without a dime, when the sound
of approaching voices scattered my reverie to the night breeze that
gently fanned my pepper and salt—too much salt—whiskers. I was in a
hollow beneath the cliff. The speakers were Grey Seymour and Hattie
Finche.
Miss Finche’s tone was cold and resolute.
“I do not love you, Mr. Seymour. I never could. I will not hold out a
particle of hope.”
“Don’t say that, Hattie—anything but that. Hope is all I have to live
for,” he cried in a quivering, agonized way that made me sad to hear.
“I tell you fairly I can give you no hope.”
“_Try_ and love me. I can make life a dream to you. Your every wish
shall be gratified. My whole time shall be spent in anticipating your
lightest fancy. O Hattie! do not drive me to despair, desperation.”
She was silent. They had stopped right opposite to where I sat
concealed. I frankly confess I was too much interested to think of
making my proximity known. It was a mean thing to remain where I was. I
reproach myself while I write.
“I do not care for your money,” he raved on. “I have millions, ay,
millions at my command, and those millions shall be spent to make your
life an idyl.”
“Did I not tell you that I could not care for you last season? Did I not
repeat it at Martha’s Vineyard two weeks ago? Now I repeat it again and
for the last time. Let us be friends.”
“Friends!” he bitterly cried.
“Yes, friends, and good friends. Why not? In a short time you will
wonder you ever were in love with me, and—”
“Never!” he burst in.
“Oh! yes, you will. And, what is more, you will fall in love with
somebody else.”
“Do you wish to drive me mad?”
“On the contrary, I wish to bring you to your senses. Listen to me
calmly.”
“I cannot.”
“But you must. This passion of yours is a boyish love.”
“It is my life.”
“Nothing of the kind. I don’t want your love. I could not return it.”
“But you won’t try.”
“I will not indeed. I am selfish enough to care for my own happiness,
and my happiness—that is, the matrimonial part of it—does _not_ lie with
you. You are very fond of me?”
“I—”
“Now, don’t rhapsodize. You would do a good deal to make me happy?”
“Anything.”
“Would you be willing to make a sacrifice for me, if I earnestly asked
you?”
“Try me, Hattie!”
“Well, then, I’ll put you to the test.”
“Do,” firmly, resolutely.
“You know Maude Neville. She is young, beautiful, penniless. She hasn’t
a friend in the world. Be her friend.”
“What am I to do?”
“Marry her.”
There was a sound as though he had sprung backwards.
“This is insolence, Hattie,” he exclaimed hotly.
“Don’t be silly,” coolly observed Miss Finche, and I heard no more, for
they had moved onwards.
This was a strange experience—a woman refusing a man, and then asking
him to make love to another. I had read much of the doings of the sex,
but this situation beat anything I had ever seen on the stage. Miss
Finche’s evident self-possession, not a ripple in her voice, told how
truly she spoke when she told the luckless love-sick youth she did not
care for him, while the coolness, not to say the audacity, of the
proposition almost staggered me. And Miss Neville—was not she to be
consulted in the business? I was very much mistaken in my estimate of
that young lady if _she_ would haul down her colors at the bidding of
any captain afloat, if she had not a mind so to do herself.
When I arrived, all alone, at the cottage, it was to find Miss Finche
flirting heavily with Mr. Herbert Price, Miss Neville playing a
brilliant fantasia of Chopin’s upon the piano, and, _mirabile dictu_,
Mr. Grey Seymour, his face, his neck, his ears in a rosy glow, leaning
over her and turning the leaves of the music. Could he have—pshaw!
impossible.
“You know Mrs. Dyke Howell?” was Mr. Price’s observation, as we turned
out of Sea View Cottage on our way to the Ocean House.
“Very slightly.”
“But you _do_ know her?”
“Well—yes.”
“You’ll get me a card for her garden party to-morrow?”
“Well, considering that I haven’t got one for myself, I—”
“That’s nothing to the point. A man can ask a favor for a friend he
wouldn’t ask for himself, you know.”
“But you are _not_ my friend.”
“I mean to be, though. Friendship must begin somewhere, and ours
flourishes like Jack’s bean-stalk.”
“’Pon my word, I—”
“There, now, you’ll write for the card to-night: ‘Mr. John V. Crosse
presents his compliments to Mrs. Dyke Howell, and would feel much
obliged for an invitation for an English friend’—it looks well to have
an _English_ friend—‘for her garden party to-morrow,’ or words to that
effect. We’ll send it off to-night, and you see, old man, it will get
you an invitation as well.”
“You are the coolest hand I ever even read of.”
“Must be. My godmother’s legacy, like Bob Acre’s courage, is oozing out
at my fingers’ ends, and I’ve nothing but my return ticket and my
audacity to look to. Come, now, Crosse, don’t do things by halves.
You’ve introduced me to a very nice family. Can’t say I admire my
mother-in-law. What son-in-law does, though? The old boy is no end of a
bore, but Hattie is all there.”
“I did not introduce you, Mr. Price; you introduced yourself.”
“Never could have done it but for you; _ergo_, logically, you introduced
me.”
To my shame be it said, I wrote a note from the Ocean House to Mrs. Dyke
Howell, a haughty lady of cadaverous aspect, and a nose resembling that
of the late Duke of Wellington, who believed in that small monarchy
called Knickerbockerdom, and in everything high, and mighty, and
fashionable.
The cards came without note or comment, and _my friend Price_ and I
started for Hawthorndale. He wore a frock-coat that, even irritated as I
was, evoked admiring comment, and a tall hat so shiny that I felt I
could have shaved by it.
Before starting I telegraphed to Sir Harvey Price, Bart., Holten Moat,
Sevenoaks, Kent, England, in the following words:
“Is your son Herbert in America? Is he a barrister? Describe him. Of
the utmost importance. Telegraph instantly to
“J. V. CROSSE, Ocean House,
Newport, R. I., U. S. A.”
I chuckled as I handed over my greenbacks.
“He doesn’t think I’ve taken him at his word. A few hours will unriddle
him,” were my thoughts as we emerged from the hotel. I had seen Grey
Seymour that morning _en route_ to bathe. There were black shadows
beneath his eyes, and the great brightness which I had so much admired
the day before had faded out of his face. What was the issue of that
most remarkable conversation?
He was the first person I encountered after passing through the icy
fingers of Mrs. Dyke Howell, and much of the old look had returned.
“Have you seen the Finches?” he asked.
“No.”
“By the way, who is your friend Mr. Price?”
“He’s no particular _friend_ of mine—merely a travelling acquaintance.
He’s a member of the English bar, and very clever.” This latter
assertion I believed in my heart.
“Is he rich?”
“Oh! dear, no.”
“Unmarried?”
“Yes. That is, I believe so.”
“I see him here to-day. I suppose Mrs. Howell knows him.”
I was considerably relieved when young Roadwell, of the Coaching Club,
cut in with a query as to a pair of roans which Seymour was about to put
under the hammer, and left the pair diving “full fathom five” into the
mysteries of horse-flesh.
The Finches arrived later on in full force—Mrs. Finche in yellow and
green and red like a mayonnaise of lobster; Hattie in floating white;
Maude Neville in black and orange. My friend Price clung to Miss
Finche’s side like her breloquet, while Grey Seymour seemed to devote
himself to the brunette.
“_Ma foi_,” thought I, “can the convocation of last night have so soon
borne fruit? It would not be difficult to fall in love with Miss
Neville, but the falling out of it first is the trouble.”
I did not see Price until eleven o’clock that night. He had gone home
with the Finches—I was left out in the cold—and returned to the hotel in
splendid spirits.
“Anybody there?” I asked with assumed carelessness.
“Nobody but Seymour.”
“Ah! Spooning over Miss Finche?”
“Not a bit of it; it’s over the other one. He was with her all day
to-day, and by Jove! sir, to-night they were on the balcony doing
moonlight like anything.”
“Where is he? Did you leave him behind you?”
“No; we left together, but he didn’t seem to want me, and—”
“And did _you_ see that?” I sneered.
“Why, of course I did. _I_ wasn’t going to do The Cliffs at this hour. I
prefer my cigar on the piazza here.”
I did not see either of my gentlemen the following day, save in a casual
way. Seymour appeared to be picking up his good looks, and as the table
to which I was relegated was within range of his _quartier_, I could
perceive, from the flotilla of plates and dishes around him at
breakfast, that his rejection by Hattie Finche had in nowise impaired
his appetite.
I was in love once, twenty-five years ago, and I lived on it. A sweet
cake and a glass of champagne twice a day kept me in the flesh. I
wouldn’t undertake to try that “little game” again. Judging from my own
symptoms at that critical period of my existence, I fairly argued that
Grey Seymour had either over-lived his passion for the heiress, that he
was off with the old love and on to the new, or that his mistress and he
had come to an understanding after they had passed beyond my coigne of
vantage. I must own I was “sairly and fairly” puzzled. The reply to my
cablegram was anxiously awaited. Properly speaking, it was due upon the
evening of the day on which I set the wires in motion. Allowing for the
difference in time between Newport and London, say six hours and a half,
and having despatched it at 9 A.M., I might fairly have reckoned on a
reply that night. The Moat, however, was some little distance from
Sevenoaks, so I shouldn’t be utterly disappointed were forty-eight hours
to elapse ere tidings would reach me. As it was, however, the appearance
of every despatch boy sent a thrill of expectation through me, and a
pang of corresponding disappointment when I sought the message on the
rack under the letter C.
It was upon the second morning that Price came down to breakfast arrayed
in nautical costume, deep, dark, desperate blue flannel, with a superb
Maréchal Niel rosebud in his button-hole, and a genuine air of festivity
in his whole appearance.
“What mischief are you up to to-day?” I asked.
“A sail with my friends the Finches.”
“_My_ friends, if _you_ please, Mr. Price.”
“To be sure; I quite forgot. Doosid nice people. I say, I _am_ making
the running, and I mean to win, as we say in the race-course, ‘hands
down.’”
“Ahem! It doesn’t follow that if you win the daughter you’ll get over
the father,” I observed with a knowing air.
“Oh! I’m not going to trouble myself about _him_. _You’ll_ square him
for me.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Price?” almost aghast at this cool impudence.
“I mean that old fogies understand one another. You’ll rub it into him
that I am a man of considerable genius; of keen perception, calm
deliberation; in the habit of hand-balancing conflicting propositions, a
brilliant orator, and that I have tact, which is better than talent, and
audacity, which is better than either or both.”
“If I were to speak about you at all to _my_ friend Mr. Finche, I should
certainly pay a glowing tribute to this last quality,” sneeringly.
“That’s a good fellow. You’re a brick of the most adhesive quality. You
go for Finche when I give you the word. I mean to pop for Hattie the
first good chance.”
“Well, really, I—”
“I know what you’re going to say: ‘Man is man and master of his fate.’
Shakspere says ‘sometimes.’ I mean to play the waiting race. The man who
can afford it gets three to one in his favor. I can only be beaten by a
dash-horse now. Here comes the man whom I imagined was the favorite, and
he is not entered for the race at all.”
Grey Seymour joined us, also arrayed in dark blue, a red rose in _his_
button-hole.
“These are our favors,” laughed Price: “Miss Finche yellow, Miss Neville
red.
“‘Oh! my love is like a red, red rose that sweetly blows in June!’”
And gaily humming that song which Sims Reeves has made all his own, he
lounged out of the immense _salle à manger_, casting criticising glances
_en passant_.
I am fond of the sea. I never was sick in my life, and once upon a time
thought of running a saucy schooner. Would I, like Paul Pry, drop into
this party with an “I hope I don’t intrude”?
The hour was rapidly approaching when I must take action with reference
to my friend Mr. Price. He had entered Finche’s house under my _ægis_,
and I was bound in honor to protect Finche and Finche’s child. Yes, I
would join the yachting excursion _bon gré mal gré_, and in a few
straight words tell Wilson Finche exactly how the land lay.
I donned a blue flannel suit—no man goes to Newport without one—and
taking an old-fashioned telescope under my arm, went upon the piazza to
await the appearance of Grey Seymour, who was still occupied in going
through the entire _menu_ for his matitudinal meal.
“A telegram for you, sir,” said the clerk, as I passed the desk.
“At last,” I muttered, as I tore it open.
It was from Lady Price, and dated Holten Moat:
“My son is in America. Barrister. Tall, thin, dark. Black mole under
left ear. Scar on right wrist. Telegraph if in trouble.”
At that particular moment Mr. Price appeared on the corridor, engaged in
chewing a tooth-pick.
I went to him, and, without a single word, seized his right hand, baring
his wrist. The scar was there. I then wheeled him round, and took a
rapid and searching look behind his left ear.
“Ah!” he laughed, “looking for the _macula materna_? So you’ve been
telegraphing home, you incredulous old codger,” scanning the open
telegram.
“Read it,” I said. I should mention that the black mole was in its
place.
“Why, you’ll frighten the old lady into fits. Write her at once, Crosse,
and tell her I’m as safe as the milk in a cocoanut. Don’t spare your
dollars, old man!”
* * * * *
When I left Newport the Finches were still at Sea View Cottage, and my
friend Mr. Price on a visit in the house. About six months later I
received cards to attend at the nuptials of Miss Hattie Julia Maria Anne
Finche to Herbert Price. An attack of the gout prevented my putting in
an appearance, but I sent both bride and groom a little present. To the
daughter of my old friend I gave a pearl necklace; to his son-in-law a
diamond ring, with the words inscribed in raised letters, “_De l’audace.
Toujours de l’audace._”
I may mention that Grey Seymour and his charming bride honored me with a
visit some time, later on, _en route_ to Europe.
THE PRINCIPLE OF BEATITUDE IN HUMAN NATURE.
St. Thomas defines beatitude, in respect to man, to be “the perfect good
in which the natural tendency of the human will to universal good
attains complete rest.”[119] This is beatitude objectively considered.
Subjectively, it is the actual fruition consequent upon attainment, and
rest in the quiet possession, of the perfect good which is the object of
volition. This fruition is an immanent act within the nature of the
human subject, and must therefore proceed from a principle within the
human nature. Nature denotes the same thing with essence, expressing
only as a distinctive term its being a principle of activity. By reason
of his essence, the human being has within him a principle by virtue of
which he desires, seeks, and is impelled by the movement given him by
his First and Final Cause toward the attainment of beatitude. As
intelligent, universal truth is his object, to which his intellect is
connatural; as volitive, universal good is his object, to which his will
naturally corresponds.
The idea of universal good is obviously the one which lies at the
foundation of this conception of beatitude. It is well known that the
notion of good as a universal is one of the transcendental predicates;
that is, of those which are outside of everything which does or can mark
out any generic ratio, or diversity of kind between any existing or
possible beings. Good is not a genus or kind, in opposition to some
diverse genera or kinds which are not good; and, _à fortiori_, it is not
a species, under which individuals are to be classed as specifically
different, by the note of goodness, from other individuals who by their
specific difference are something else than good. It is the species
which completely determines the essence of every existing thing, and the
specific difference which marks its essential unlikeness to other things
whose essence is other than its own. Therefore no being can be
essentially unlike any other by reason of one being good and the other
somehow dissimilar to good. The predicate of good belongs to all genera,
and, of course, to all species and individuals, as a universal notion
transcending all their respective determining notes, and identifying
itself, in the analogical sense proper to each of them, with all and
singular of these notes.
Good is whatever is consonant to nature, whatever is a perfection, or
subserves to the conservation and increase of a perfection. It is
coextensive with being, and identical with it, as are all the
transcendental notions, which merely present the same object of thought
under various phases. Whatever is thinkable, as an object is an entity;
as having its own entity undivided in itself and divided from every
entity other than itself, is a unity; as an intelligible entity is a
verity; as containing in itself reason for the volition that it should
be what it is, it is a good. All these notions are contained in the
notion of being, and are as universal as being, which has in opposition
to it only nothing, that is, no-being, no-one-thing, no-true-thing,
no-good, mere negation and nullity.
We are at present concerned only with actually existing rational
nature, in its relation to universal being as the object of its
volition, or movement towards the universal good in which it seeks for
beatitude. Whatever is consonant to rational nature, gives it
perfection or subserves to its perfection, is its good. Good is being
regarded in its aspect as something desirable, in which the will can
rest with complacency. Every actual, concrete essence is good, as
such, because it has being, and in so far as it has being; and it
presents, therefore, an object to the will which is desirable and in
which it can have complacency. The rational nature is in itself a good
as an actual being, and it is a good to itself, or, in other words, it
is a good for it that it exists. The universe in which it exists is
all good in essence and nature. Universal nature is in consonance with
itself, and its laws tend to the perfection, conservation, and
augmentation of being, throughout its whole extent. The movement of
will in rational nature toward the universal good is only a higher
kind and mode of an operation which is common to all nature. Things
destitute of sense are put into operation toward the general end of
the universe by blind and fatal laws, which receive their impulse and
direction solely from the will and motive power of their creator.
Those which have sense but not reason are incited to movement by a
vital impulse and the excitement of their sensitive faculties by
external objects. Rational nature moves itself by intelligence and
will toward the good which is its object. Intellect has for its
connatural object universal being as verity, and tends toward an
adequation between itself and its object. So, likewise, the will in
respect to the good of being. This adequation constitutes the
beatitude of rational nature, and an approximation to it is an
approach toward beatitude which constitutes a greater or lesser degree
of imperfect felicity. The principle of beatitude has therefore been
pointed out and proved to exist in human nature. The intense longing
for it is matter of self-consciousness to every human being. The
natural tendency and longing for beatitude cannot have been implanted
by the Creator in order to be frustrated. There is no place in the
nature of things for any other intention and end of creation, except
to produce the good of being in all its grades and orders, according
to the determinate measure prescribed by the divine intellect and the
divine will. The good of inanimate nature necessarily falls short of
any final and complete term in itself, because it does not contain any
faculty of apprehension and complacency. Mere sensitive apprehension
and complacency in living, irrational beings do not adequately supply
this deficiency, because they attain only to the lowest and most
imperfect good, in a partial and deficient mode. All nature below the
rational, therefore, furnishes only an element, an inchoate and
incomplete material substratum for the formal and complete good of
created being, which can only possess a final actuality and become an
end in itself in rational nature. Material beings have only their own
essence and existence, which are exclusive and isolated, determined by
necessary laws to merely extrinsic states and movements, in which they
are totally inert. They have no return upon themselves and no capacity
of receiving any other being into their own. Therefore they can have
no self-consciousness or self-activity, no cognition or sentiment.
Sensitive beings have a partial return upon themselves by sensation
and sensitive cognition, and a limited self-activity. A spirit returns
upon itself with a complete retroaction, and can receive other beings
into itself according to the mode of the recipient, that is, ideally.
It has therefore complete self-consciousness and self-activity,
intelligence and volition, and in the human essence, by virtue of the
union of the rational part with the animal, it has also a more perfect
kind of sensitive life. It apprehends and possesses its own being, and
universal being outside of itself, as a verity by intelligence, as a
good by volition. When it is perfect and permanent in its natural
good, the possession of this good is in itself beatitude. There is no
other term or effect which can possibly have the ratio of an end to
the intention of the Creator in the creative act, for it is the only
complete and final good of being. Created being is nothing but a
participation of the uncreated and necessary being, and an imitation
of it in the finite order. Finite beatitude is, therefore, a
participation of the infinite beatitude of the divine nature, and an
imitation of it. God alone is THE BEING, who exists by his essence,
and possesses being absolutely and in plenitude. In the same sense in
which He alone is, whose Name is EGO SUM QUI SUM, He alone is _good_
and He alone is _blessed_. That is, He alone is good by his essence
actually and in plenitude, and is alone by his essence possessed of
the plenitude of blessedness.
Boethius defines the eternity of God as “the perfect possession, all at
once, of boundless life.” This may answer as a definition of the
beatitude of God. His being is living being, in all respects boundless,
and so absolutely in act that it is incapable of any increase or
diminution. The being of God is essentially good, and an object of
complacency. The life of God consists in the act of intelligence and
volition in which he knows and wills his own being, as infinitely
intelligible and infinitely desirable. For God, to be and to live is to
be blessed. The vision of his own essence presents to him an object of
infinite complacency in which his will rests with a perfect and eternal
quietude. What his essence is, and what that good is which constitutes
the infinite beatitude of God, we cannot know except in an analogical
manner. The universe of created being is an image and imitation of the
divine essence. Whatever being and good we can perceive in the works of
God we know must have its archetype in the essence of God, existing in a
supereminent mode and an infinite plenitude. Created beauty is something
which being seen pleases, in which the will reposes with complacency
when it is apprehended by the intellect. Infinite, absolute, uncreated
beauty must please infinitely the infinite intelligence which beholds it
by a comprehensive vision. This is the nearest approach we can make to a
conception of the beatitude of God.
The being of God is the archetype and source of all created being, and
his infinite beatitude the archetype and source of all finite beatitude
in created, intelligent beings. Creation proceeds not from want but from
fulness of good in the infinite Being; not from necessity but from free
volition. It is an overflow of power, intelligence, and love, diffusive
of the good of being from the boundless sea of the divine essence into
the streams which it fills. Its ideal possibility is in the divine
essence as imitable, presenting to the divine intelligence innumerable
terms of the divine omnipotence, and to the divine will innumerable
objects of volition and complacency. The act which brings it out of
nonexistence into existence proceeds from the three Persons of the
Blessed Trinity equally and indivisibly. The origin of the creative act
is in the Father, the medium in the Son, the consummation in the Holy
Spirit. The almighty word of intelligence and volition calling the
nonexistent universe into existence, proceeding from the Father as the
origin of infinite and finite essence, in the Word is the creative ideal
and measure of all the intelligible and intelligent creation, in the
Spirit is the cause and principle of all created good. The formal
principiation of the divine essence, proceeding from the Father and the
Son as its active principle, whose term is the person of the Holy
Spirit, is pure Love. Love is the consummation of the infinite being of
God, and its eternal efflorescence is beatitude, the perfect possession
of boundless life which is a boundless good, totally, existing in a
present whose duration is without any before or after, without beginning
or end or successive parts, and unchangeable by any increase or
diminution. It is a maxim of philosophy that operation is in accordance
with the nature of the operator. An artist produces a work corresponding
to the nature of his art. The work of the Holy Spirit is like himself.
The divine essence in his person being love, the consummation of the
divine work in creation effected by him must be good; and that good in
its last result is beatitude. He is “The Lord and Giver of life.” The
life of the intelligent creature is like the life of God. He is finite,
and therefore his duration is not eternity. It has a beginning, and a
before and after, and its totality is not possessed all at once in one
present, but its parts succeed each other without end. Although he
cannot possess his past and future at one time, he possesses always his
present, which glides with him through all time, and is an imitation of
the eternal, ever-enduring present of eternity. The perfect possession
of all that constitutes his life, without any fear of losing it,
constitutes his beatitude. Divine love, diffusive of the good of being
out of its own plenitude, can have no other end in creation, in so far
as this end is contained within the creation itself, except the
beatitude of intellectual creatures.
The idea from which creation receives its form is in the Word, and
intellectual creatures are specially made in his image. In the
Incarnation, the Word united to his divine nature a rational nature,
consubstantial with that which is common to the whole human race, and
allied generically to the highest as well as to the lowest orders of
created beings, that is, both to the spiritual and the corporeal
extremes of nature. The created nature thus assumed into personal unity
with the divine nature in Immanuel, who is the only-begotten Son of God
the Father from eternity, has become the nature of God, and as such
entitled to receive from the divine nature the communication of its
plenitude of being and of good, in so far as this is communicable in a
finite mode and measure. The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Son,
both in the eternal order of the Trinity and in the temporal order of
creation, is communicated to the human nature of Immanuel as the
principle of life and beatitude. The hypostatic union of created and
uncreated nature in the person of Jesus Christ is the masterpiece of the
Lord and Giver of life, the ultimate term of his creative act. The
beatitude which he imparts to the human nature of Jesus Christ is the
supreme participation of its rational intelligence and will in the
divine act of comprehensive vision of the divine essence and infinite
complacency in its absolute beauty, which constitutes divine beatitude.
The angels were destined to the same beatitude, and, those excepted who
forfeited their right by sinning, they have attained it. The human race
was created for the same destination, and the elect will receive their
perfect consummation in the same sempiternal glory and blessedness which
belongs of right to the humanity of the Eternal Son, on the day of the
universal resurrection.
It is evident that this supernatural beatitude in God completely fulfils
the definition of beatitude given by St. Thomas as _bonum perfectum quod
totaliter quietat appetitum_. The object of the rational human appetite,
that is, of the will, is universal good, which is in God in the most
absolute and perfect plenitude. But universal good is also in creatures
by participation, and presents a proper object of complacency to the
will in perfect harmony with its primary object of beatific love. Our
Lord Jesus Christ in his human mind and human heart not only has the
immediate intuition of God and of all things in God, together with the
love which accompanies this highest mode of knowledge, but also the mode
of knowledge and love which is strictly natural. He delights in the
contemplation of the beauty of his own human nature, in the works which
he performed through it, in its dignity and exaltation, in the splendor
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the angels and the saints, in his entire
and universal kingdom both of mind and matter. He delights in loving his
companions in celestial glory, and in receiving their love, in radiating
light and beauty and happiness all around himself through countless
realms of space and numberless multitudes of beings. His human nature
was not essentially changed at the resurrection, but only glorified. He
has therefore that sublimated corporeal and sensitive life which is
proper to the nature which he assumed, with the sensitive cognition and
enjoyment resulting naturally from its attributes and faculties.
The kingdom of heaven has therefore its visible and natural as well as
its divine aspect. Natural beatitude in the possession of universal
created good, in the enjoyment of the works of God, in science, in the
sentiment of the beautiful in created objects, in activity, in society
and friendship, co-exists with the uninterrupted contemplation of the
divine essence, and the perfect quietude of everlasting repose on the
bosom of God. The quiet and repose of the spirit in beatitude by no
means signifies inaction and the slumber of the faculties. God, who is
immutable, is most perfect act, and the first mover of all things. The
rest of beatitude is in opposition to the restless inquietude of a
spirit which has not found its equilibrium, and is impelled by
unsatisfied longings to seek for its perfect good. Its rest consists in
its having found its equilibrium in the stable possession of the perfect
good. But the presence of the due object to the intellect and the will
calls forth their most perfect and intense activity, and the very
qualities of the glorified bodies of the blessed saints in heaven prove
that they also will be active, and not for ever standing still in one
posture or reclining indolently on grassy meads, as some seem to imagine
is the Christian belief. It is indeed most difficult to form any
imaginary pictures of the future life which are in any way satisfactory
to reason. But whatever we can represent to ourselves by such efforts
which can give some idea of a glory and a beatitude worthy of rational
beings in a perfect state, assuredly will be realized in a way far
beyond our conceptions.
The aim of the foregoing exposition has been to prepare the way for
presenting, in the natural element which exists in supernatural
beatitude, that which is the purely natural good due to the intellectual
nature left to itself in its own native sphere, the underworld below
heaven. We call this sphere of pure nature native to the intellectual
nature in general, because it belongs there by virtue of its essential
being, prescinding from any higher destination given to it gratuitously,
whether simultaneously with its original creation or subsequently to it.
It is an underworld relatively to the supernatural order whose last
complement is in the hypostatic union realized in the Incarnation. The
state of pure nature in respect to the only species of simply
intellectual or rational creatures known to us, is treated by Catholic
theologians in a merely hypothetical manner; as a possible state, in
which angels and men might have been constituted by the Creator, or in
which he could, if he pleased, place other beings generically similar to
angels or men, in other spheres of the universe which are distinct from
our earth and the celestial abode of the angels. Whether there are now
or ever will be such beings, inhabiting the numerous worlds with which
the vast extent of real space is filled, can only be matter of
conjecture. But the human species, and the hierarchy of pure spirits
with which it is in present relation, were destined for the supernatural
order immediately depending from the royal seat of Immanuel, the
sovereign head of the host of deified intelligences, as its centre. In
respect to the human race, therefore, the state of pure nature is
presented under another aspect as a state of lapsed nature, and the
sphere of the underworld is its native sphere actually and by virtue of
natural generation, by reason of a fall and a sentence of deprivation.
On this account, the permanent future state of all human beings who are
finally excluded from heaven, in Christian eschatology is primarily
considered as a state of loss. Whatever felicity is possible in this
state appears as something remaining from the original destination of
mankind, and not as the complete good of human beatitude. For this
reason, we have presented first the total ratio of beatitude in respect
to human destiny, before considering what remains after the sum of
supernatural good has been deducted.
Substantially, the state of lapsed nature as denuded is the same with
pure or nude nature. The question of the object and nature of pure
natural beatitude is the one to be decided, in order to determine what
amount of good in the endless life of human beings who lack the beatific
vision of God is conceivable and possible. There is only one serious
difficulty in this question. It arises from the consideration of the
very essence of intelligence as related to the universal truth, and will
as related to the universal good. The intellect, as such, by its very
nature, seeks for the deepest cause, and for an adequation with the
intelligible being of its universal object, and the appetite of the will
follows it. How, then, can the intellect rest in any object except the
absolute, necessary, infinite essence of God, apprehended by a clear and
immediate intuition, or any other object but this perfectly quiet the
appetite of the will? It is evident that if the intellectual nature, as
such, has in it an exigency and a longing which cannot be satisfied with
any good to which its faculties are commensurate, beatitude is something
essentially supernatural. In this case, the natural order must be merely
inchoate, potential, needing to be completed by the supernatural.
Intellectual beings could not, then, be created for a purely natural end
and destiny; the only end suitable and fit for them would be that which
reaches its consummation in the beatific vision. Defrauded of this in
any way, even without any voluntary fault of their own, they must be
miserable during eternity through the suffering of the pain of loss, or
at least continue for ever in a state of arrested and imperfect
development, in which absence of suffering would be due only to
insensibility, with an imperfect kind of felicity similar to that which
men possess in this earthly condition, from the common enjoyments of
human life.
We deny, however, that there is any exigency in created nature for the
supernatural good. The difficulty above stated, that God is necessarily
the supreme object of the created intellect and the created will, we
answer as follows. Intellect, by nature, seeks God, according to its own
mode and measure. The operation of the will is determined by the
intellect. _Nil volitum nisi prius cognitum._ The divine intellect,
which is the divine essence considered as intelligent subject, is in
adequation with the divine essence considered as intelligible object.
God has immediate, comprehensive cognition of himself by his essence.
Every created essence is infinitely different from the divine, and
therefore has an operation intrinsically unequal to the act in which the
divine life consists. _Operatio sequitur esse._ The being of an
intelligent creature is within the order of the finite, of the imitated,
participated existence, activity, enjoyment, which is a diminished image
of the archetypal reality in the Creator. All this is within the circle
of nature, and when this circle is perfect, including whatever belongs
to it, there is no exigency of anything beyond. The knowledge of God,
not as he is in his essence, within his circle of immanent being, but as
he is in the terms of his creative act, in the universe, in the
intellectual light and intelligible essence of the created spirit
itself, is within the circle of nature. As the Author of nature he is
knowable and lovable, by perfect and well-ordered faculties of pure
nature without grace and without defect. Natural beatitude does not
require the immediate and intuitive, but only the mediate and
abstractive cognition and contemplation of God, and does not exact any
kind of union of the will to God as the sovereign good, except that
which terminates by natural sequence its own rightly directed and
completed spontaneous movement. Even now we can find God by reason, and
take complacency in his perfections. Much more can beings of a higher
perfection attain to the knowledge of God in a manner proportionate to
their kind or degree of perfection, and with a complacency corresponding
to their knowledge, if their intelligence and will are rightly
co-ordinated, and directed toward their proper object. As respects the
universal verity and good of being in the created universe, there is no
difficulty whatever in supposing that it can be attained within any
finite limits, in a state of pure nature.
This inferior sphere of natural beatitude being thus theoretically
possible, it is most reasonable to suppose that all human beings who at
the general resurrection are dispossessed of any right to the kingdom of
heaven, and at the same time free from all actual sin, receive their
ultimate destination in such a sphere. There is no reason in the order
of justice why they should be deprived of any perfection or good of
which they are naturally capable. In the “restitution of all things,”
the ἀποκατάστασις, there will be no deordination left in the universe,
and no imperfection of order belonging to an inchoate condition of
nature. _Venit dies, dies tua, in quâ reflorent omnia._ Inanimate
creation will become resplendent with the beauty which the last touches
of the divine Artist have given to his consummate work. The influence of
the life-giving Spirit will be poured in a full torrent through all
parts of the universal realm of living being. In this general
restitution we may be certain that the thousands of millions of human
infants who have never attained to the use of reason in this world, and
have never received the grace of regeneration, will be raised up, by the
bounty of their Creator, in the full perfection of their human nature,
both corporeal and intellectual, to live for ever in the enjoyment of
all the good which is due to pure nature, participating in their own
inferior degree in that excellence and felicity which in its highest
perfection belongs to the blessed in heaven as an adjunct of their
supernatural glory and beatitude. Moreover, it is altogether congruous
to the order of redemption in Jesus Christ, and probable, that they will
receive, in common with the whole creation, their own special benefit
and increase of natural good, through the Incarnation. There is no
obstacle in their nature to the reception of any good except that of the
beatific vision. They may, therefore, enjoy the vision of the glorified
humanity of the Lord, worship him and love him as their creator and
benefactor, see and converse with the angels and saints, and in every
respect enjoy a better and more desirable immortality than that which
would be possible in another system of divine providence which did not
contain a supernatural order.
Besides those who die in infancy, there are many adults who may be
considered as on the same level with infants in respect to moral
responsibility. Balmes proposes the opinion that a large proportion of
the most ignorant and spiritually undeveloped part of mankind,
especially those who are born and brought up in a low state of
barbarism, never attain the rational level of a well-instructed
Christian child of five or six years old, who, nevertheless, is regarded
in Catholic theology as incapable of mortal sin.[120] Among the whole
multitude of those who are destitute of the ordinary means of salvation,
each and every individual either has the use of reason sufficiently for
full moral responsibility, or he has not. If he has not, he is, in the
moral relation, an infant, at most capable of venial sin; but if he has,
either he has divine faith sufficient for obtaining salvation, or the
sufficient grace and means for attaining the faith, or neither of these
requisites for working out his salvation by his own voluntary efforts.
In this last case his lack of faith is no sin, and he is only
accountable for the observance of the natural law according to his own
conscience. If he keeps this natural law, he is subject to no eternal
penalty besides the privation of supernatural beatitude. All men,
therefore, who really incur the responsibilities and the risks of a
moral probation, have an opportunity of meriting heaven, or at least of
attaining that natural felicity hereafter which is the lot of infants
who die without baptism.
From all these premises we deduce one general conclusion, that the
notion of a doom to everlasting infelicity and misery, which is a dire
and inevitable calamity involving the great mass of mankind, by reason
of the state in which they are born into this life, is a chimera of the
imagination, and not any part of the Catholic faith or a just inference
from any revealed doctrine. The sufferings of those who have not
deserved punishment by their own voluntary transgressions of the divine
law are temporary, disciplinary, intended for a final good, and in the
end abundantly compensated. Many of the sufferings which have the nature
of punishment are condoned altogether, and many others are temporary and
in their last result beneficial to those who are subjected to their
infliction. No rational and immortal being is permanently deprived of
the proper perfection and good of his nature by fate or destiny, or by
the arbitrary will of the Creator and sovereign Lord of the universe.
The order of reason and justice of itself produces only universal good,
and this universal good embraces the private and personal good of each
individual being, except in so far as he has freely and wilfully made
himself unfit and unworthy to participate in it. Eternal retribution is
awarded solely to personal merit or demerit in proportion to its
quantity. Outside of the order of just retribution, there is no action
of God upon his creatures except that of pure goodness and love,
bestowing gratuitously, unmitigated good without any mixture of evil.
The desire for permanent beatitude in endless life, and the natural
principle of beatitude implanted in every rational nature, are not
frustrated and thwarted through any deficiency in nature, or failure of
divine Providence to carry out his original design and intention to its
complete and ultimate term. The only failure is in the free and
concreative cause to which God has given dominion over itself and its
acts and the effects of those acts, with power to produce in prescribed
limits as much or as little good as it chooses. This free cause is
free-will, which is the only cause, in every rational creature finally
deprived of his original right to beatitude, of the state of irreparable
privation in which he is placed by the “restitution of all things.” The
restitution brings all nature into order and to perfection, in so far as
each thing in nature is receptive of its proportionate good. Rational
nature is receptive according to its rational appetite or the attitude
of the will. Those rational beings who have determined themselves to a
state of volition contrary to the order of reason and justice are, in so
far as they are affected by this state, receptive only of a violent
reaction of order against their will, repressing and confining their
inclination to a perverse activity. The privation of beatitude is
co-extensive with the contrariety between the will and the permanent,
irreversible order of reason; and this contrariety is proportional to
the misuse of freewill by sinning during the term of probation. Their
evil is nothing but spoiled good, and they are themselves the spoilers.
It is through no defect of goodness in God, or deficiency of good in the
order of nature, that they are what they are. Every thing and every
person in this order is in the right place and the due relation,
according to the highest reason and the most perfect justice. God has
made all things well, they are what they ought to be, and there is no
flaw or defect in the _bonum honestum_ of the universe. God must take
complacency in the fulfilment of his own wise and just will, and every
rational being must concur with intellect and will in that which God
wills. This is precisely what St. Thomas affirms when he says that the
beatitude of the just will be increased by their knowledge of the
eternal punishment of sinners, and there is no sense or reason in the
diatribes of rationalists against him or any other theologian who does
not overpass the limits of Catholic and rational doctrine on this head.
Another conclusion which may be reasonably deduced from sound
theological principles and probable opinions is, that the majority of
mankind, and of rational beings in general, are in a state of perpetual
felicity in the world to come. There is no reason whatever for supposing
that more than a third part of the angels fell with Lucifer. It is
probable that the greater number of adults who live and die in the faith
and communion of the church are finally admitted into heaven. We cannot
deny that numbers of those who have lived under the natural law, without
any explicit faith in Jesus Christ, have been also saved by
extraordinary grace. Nor is it possible for us to determine what
proportion of the great mass remaining may eventually attain some degree
of inferior natural felicity similar to that which is the lot of infants
dying in original sin. The number of infants who have received baptism
and have died before the use of reason at least equals the number of the
baptized who have attained adult age, and to these must be added all
those who died in infancy before the sacrament of baptism was
instituted, and had received remission of original sin under the ancient
covenant of grace. The entire multitude of infants who have died since
the beginning of the world at least equals the number of adults, and it
is therefore certain that the majority of all human beings will possess
in the future life either supernatural or natural beatitude. There is no
reason, therefore, for the supposition that the Christian and Catholic
doctrine represents the vast majority of human beings as destined to a
state of everlasting misery. If any one is disposed to entertain the
hypothesis that the universe is filled with a multitude of rational
beings who are neither angels nor men, whose number bears a quantitative
proportion to the physical magnitude of the vast cosmical system of the
starry heavens, there is as much reason for supposing that they are all
eternally good and happy as for supposing that they have existence. In
respect to mere extensive and numerical quantity, the amount of good
resulting from the creative act of God far surpasses the sum of that
possible additional good which has been frustrated by the failure of
free, concreative causes to co-operate with the first cause toward the
great, final end of creation. In reality, the absolute, eternal decrees
of God are not in any way frustrated by the failure of a certain number
of creatures to attain the good for which they were destined. They leave
no gap in the universal order which the foresight of God has not filled
up. Their loss is exclusively their own, and their sins have only
furnished an occasion for bringing out of the evil which they have
attempted a far greater good than they could have effected by a faithful
co-operation with the will of God, greater glory to the Creator and to
the universe, more splendid merits in the just, a more magnificent
exhibition of wisdom and love in the cross, through which the divine
Redeemer of men triumphed over sin and death. “He humbled himself,
becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God
hath also exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above every
name: that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are
in heaven, on earth, and in hell; and that every tongue should confess
that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.”[121] The
perfection of the whole creation, in subordination to the sphere of
supernatural glory inhabited by the sons of God, is also clearly
declared by St. Paul to be a consequence of the exaltation of Jesus
Christ through the cross. “For the expectation of the creature waiteth
for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject
to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in
hope: because the creature also itself shall be delivered from the
servitude of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of
God. For we know that every creature groaneth, and is in labor even
until now. And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first
fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting
for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body.”[122]
Satan himself, with all those whom he has seduced into sin in the mad
hope of thwarting the divine work of the Incarnation, has only
contributed by his efforts to destroy the universal order, under the
overmastering intelligence of God, to increase its splendor. In the end
he will be found to have wound himself up by going around in his
circuit. A few years ago there was a bear in the Central Park, who was
permitted to live on a grass-plat, fastened by a long chain to a stake
in the middle. By going continually round and round his post, he used to
wind himself up so tightly that he could not stir. Satan is like this
bear. His great achievement, and masterstroke of policy, was the
crucifixion of the Son of God, by which he was exalted and obtained a
name above every name, before which every knee _in hell_ shall bow and
every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God
the Father. This is the one great example of the universal action of
divine Providence in bringing out of all evil a greater good than that
which the evil destroys or prevents.
St. Paul anticipates an objection, which is likely to occur to some
minds, in respect to the justice of God in the unequal distribution of
grace, and the withholding of mercy from those whom he permits to work
out their own final perdition. “Thou wilt therefore say to me: Why doth
he then find fault? For who resisteth his will?” The answer is a rebuke
of the presumption of those who pretend to dispute the sovereign right
and dominion of God over his creatures, and thus in reality make the
divine Majesty subservient and responsible to his own subjects. “O man,
_who art thou that repliest against God_? Shall the thing formed say to
him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus? Or hath not the potter
power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and
another to dishonor?”[123] The whole mass of mankind being destitute of
any right to supernatural grace and beatitude, there can be no complaint
against the sovereign will of God for conferring the grace of
regeneration upon some and withholding it from others. None of those who
have made themselves positively unworthy of everlasting glory by their
sins are entitled to mercy. That God withheld all hope of pardon from
the fallen angels and gave that hope to men, that to some sinful men he
gives more grace than to others, and that he compels those who rebel
against him to glorify him against their will in their own defeat and
the overthrow of all their plans, is no ground of complaint against the
divine justice. “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated”; that is,
loved less, and excluded from certain special, gratuitous blessings
bestowed on Jacob. “What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God?
_God forbid!_” No creature is made to suffer without sufficient reason
or deprived of any natural or acquired right. But in respect to
gratuitous gifts, and especially graces conferred upon the unworthy, God
is absolute master. “For he saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I
will have mercy.” It enters into the very notion of grace and mercy that
they should be purely gratuitous. The whole order of grace in respect
both to angels and men is purely gratuitous. It is therefore absurd to
argue from the justice and goodness of God, and from the superabundant
mercy which he shows toward sinners in this world, especially when they
are within his special circle of grace, the Catholic Church, that he
will give grace or show mercy after the day of judgment, in derogation
of the order of justice. It was a purely gratuitous act of goodness in
God to elevate human nature by the hypostatic union, and to give angels
and men a share in the privileges of the sacred humanity. The rewards
conferred on merit in this order are indeed rewards of justice, but the
whole basis of the justice by which glory is proportioned to merit is
laid in a gratuitous grant of the very conditions of merit, the grace
which made it possible, and the promise of reward on which the title to
the kingdom of heaven rests. Absolute, indefeasible, personal right to
the glory of heaven does not exist except in Jesus Christ the Lord, who
is a divine person, and whose merits are infinite and equal to all the
benefits conferred by the Father upon creation. The rights of all those
who share with him, the Blessed Virgin Mary included, have been
conferred by him upon them. The beatific vision is a pure boon of
goodness to every creature who attains its possession. All might have
been left in their natural state without any possibility of attaining
it, without any derogation of the order of eternal law in respect to
intellectual nature. There is no reason, therefore, why the number of
the elect, once completed, should ever be increased, or the gates of
heaven reopened to admit new citizens and princes of the celestial
Jerusalem. Those who have never forfeited a right to admission through
their own fault have no reason to bewail their exclusion.
Those who have lost their right cannot possibly hope to recover it,
because they are left in their despoiled nature, utterly impotent to
turn back toward the supernatural good, deprived of all grace and beyond
the reach of the economy of mercy, which has passed away for ever. In
respect to supernatural life they are dead, and as incapable of
resuscitation by any effort of their own as a corpse is incapable of
repossessing itself of the soul which has departed from it. The
ἀποκατάστασις is not a resurrection to spiritual life in grace, for this
belongs to the preceding, initial order of regeneration which has
terminated with the end of the present world. The bodily resurrection
and restitution of nature gives only to human beings the complement of
the life which they already possess, whether supernatural or merely
natural, and to the physical universe its complement of perfection in
the eternal order. The angels remain intrinsically unchanged in their
spiritual, incorruptible nature, as God made them in the beginning. The
holy angels continue in the possession of the supernatural mode of being
which they acquired by their free and active co-operation with grace,
before the probation of man commenced, without any increase of essential
glory and beatitude. The fallen angels remain in the state into which
they voluntarily precipitated themselves at the same time. The change
which takes place at the end of human probation is, for the angels, only
extrinsic. The holy angels cease to combat with the demons, and to
minister in the economy of redemption. The demons are compelled to
desist from their war against Immanuel and his kingdom, and are
relegated to their destined abode. All human beings are placed in the
state and condition in which they are to remain for ever, those who have
followed the demons in their rebellion in a state similar to theirs, as
those who have obeyed God are in a state similar to that of the holy
angels. It is this part of the Christian doctrine which Origen wholly
misunderstood. He may be excused from wilful and contumacious heresy, on
account of the paucity of means at his command for learning the complete
doctrine of the apostles, and the modest, hypothetical manner in which
he proposed his erratic theories. We may also give him the benefit of
the doubt respecting the entire purport of what he really and
persistently did teach out of all that mass of wholly uncatholic and in
a great measure absurd opinions, so justly condemned by the patriarchal
synod at Constantinople in its fifteen anathematisms, and in a general
way by several subsequent œcumenical councils. It is impossible to
doubt, however, that one fundamentally erroneous conception was fixed in
his mind, and gave occasion to the fanciful hypotheses of aeons and
ages, and transitions of spirits up and down through the scale of being.
This conception was an exaggeration of the freedom of will inherent in
rational nature. Because no creature is either holy or wicked by his
essence, but every one is capable of good or evil, he argued the
perpetual flexibility and vertibility of free-will between good and
evil. Permanence in good must therefore be attributed only to a habit of
right determination, and permanence in sin to an opposite habit or
obstinacy of purpose to do wrong. Perhaps his various and apparently
conflicting statements can be reconciled, if we suppose that he admitted
the actual perseverance of some in holiness through a kind of moral
impeccability acquired by long and persistent efforts, with a consequent
eternity of unchangeable beatitude; and an opposite state of
irreclaimable perverseness in others with everlasting misery as its
necessary penalty. Those who are in the middle between these two
extremes are then variable, vacillating between the opposite poles of
moral good and evil, happiness and infelicity, at least during
indefinite periods of duration. Our modern rationalistic Christians to a
certain extent are involved in the same imperfect philosophical notions
which Origen, in the lack, of a Christian philosophy, borrowed from
Neo-Platonism. They do not understand the nature of grace, which gives
immutable holiness and impeccability as a perfection to a created
essence which in itself is capable of defect. Hence, they cannot get a
clear idea of a permanent state of indefectibility in good except as a
moral habit resulting from a series of acts. Nor can they understand the
opposite state of deficiency and privation as something permanent in
itself, apart from the habit of sinning which has been contracted by
acts of sin and may be removed by contrary acts under the influence of
moral discipline. They choose to consider the state of those who become
perfectly good, here or hereafter, and attain the felicity of heaven, as
something fixed, because it is agreeable to the feelings to think so.
They also strive to make the prospects of those who are not very good,
and even of those who are very bad, as hopeful as possible, in view of a
certain, or probable, or at least possible, future conversion at a more
or less remote æonian period, because it is likewise agreeable to the
feelings to anticipate this happy change. Moreover, they are very
willing to accept the teaching of the Bible and the Christian tradition
concerning the eternity of heaven, without seeking too anxiously for
metaphysical or moral demonstration of its intrinsic credibility,
because it satisfies the natural desire of the heart for perfect good.
We do not deny that there is some truth in their reasonings concerning
acquired habits of virtue and vice, but they are defective as an
argument for the determination of the future destiny of souls. The
certainty of a fixed and immutable state of sanctity and beatitude for
the just in heaven does not depend either on these reasonings, or on an
exegetical and critical interpretation of certain words in Holy
Scripture. It has a deeper foundation. The human soul of Jesus Christ is
impeccable because of its indissoluble union with the divine nature in
his person. The angels and saints are impeccable because they also are
united to God by an indissoluble union. The Holy Spirit is in them as
the principle of their spiritual life. They love God above all things by
a happy necessity, and their intuitive vision of his essence, the
infinite good, with the perfect quietude of the will in the enjoyment of
this good, raises them above all possibility of attraction toward any
object which could allure them from their willing worship and allegiance
to their sovereign Lord. Moreover, they actually possess the inferior
good in the most perfect manner, with an unbounded liberty to follow all
their inclinations, which are all innocent, in conformity to reason, and
identical with the will of God. The indestructibility and immortality
which belong to their essence as spirits, by nature, pervades their
entire actual being with all its accidents, so that they are incapable
of suffering any deterioration or injury.
In the natural order of beatitude, the perfect intellectual cognition of
God accompanied by perfect natural love to him as the most perfect
being, together with the complete possession of all connatural good,
removes all tendency to evil. Nature seeks good by a necessary law,
rational nature by its spontaneous, voluntary movement. No rational
being seeks evil gratuitously or for the sake of evil, but only under
the aspect of good, not _sub ratione mali_ but _sub ratione boni_. Where
no illusion is possible, no sin is possible. Liberty of choice between
the contraries of good and evil is not intrinsic to liberty of will, or
a perfection of liberty, but a defect. It belongs to a defective order
and to a defective subject, an order of probation and a subject placed
under a trial of his obedience. The order and the subject are arranged
to suit each other. The subject is required to move toward his end by
using his reason and will rightly, and concurring with the Creator in
bringing the inchoate order of creation to its due perfection. The order
is such that it is not yet perfect, but capable of being made so by the
operation of free, intelligent beings upon it. When the time of the end
is reached, in the ἀποκατάστασις, this moral order is superseded; there
is nothing which can be injured or abused or misdirected. Intelligent
creatures which are made perfect have no more scope for election between
contraries; their spontaneous and voluntary action is necessarily toward
the true, universal good, and their liberty of choice has no possible
terms which are not within the circle of order. They cannot think or
will otherwise than right, because they are perfect and all things which
come in contact with them are perfect. In this way they are brought into
a similitude with God. He is what he is by necessity of nature, though
he is most pure and simple act, wholly free from any extrinsic
limitation or intrinsic contradiction to his will. He does what he will
beyond his own being, but only that which is good. It is a perfection of
his will that he cannot sin, as it is of his intellect that he cannot
err or be ignorant. Falsehood and evil are nothing, and cannot terminate
a divine act. _Bonum ex integrâ causâ, malum a quovis defectu_—Good is
from complete cause, evil from any defect. God is absolute, infinite,
first cause, and no defect in his causality is possible. Second causes,
when they possess and exert their integral causality, are deficient in
nothing which belongs to them. All those beings which are constituted in
their ultimate perfection are in this integral state, and therefore are
above all liability to evil throughout eternity.
This flexibility and vertibility in respect to good and evil, imagined
by Origen as perpetually inherent in rational creatures, is a mere
figment of his imperfect philosophy. He had scarcely any books to read
which could help him to satisfy his unbounded curiosity to penetrate
into the rational sense of the doctrines of revelation. Besides the
Scriptures themselves, there was only pagan philosophy for him to study.
Our modern philosophers have cast away the Catholic theology and
philosophy, and strive to reconstruct the higher science for themselves,
though with very poor success. The old Protestant theology was a
doctrine of cruel, inexorable fate, which suppressed all freedom and
justice in the moral order. The new theology which has subverted it
restores the freedom of the will, and protests against the gloomy
exaggerations and perversions of Christian dogmas which make them
incredible and insupportable. But, in the effort to substitute more
rational ideas, it overthrows or weakens the stability of the whole
order of creation in its relation of dependence on the sovereign power
and will of God. The wisest and most sober of those who are seeking for
some stable and certain doctrine regarding the destiny of man and the
final cause of creation, confess that they are in doubt and cannot solve
the most momentous of the problems which force themselves on their
attention. They never will find the light of truth until they return to
the true church of Jesus Christ, and by her lamp recover the lost clew
which guides the steps of the wayfarer through the labyrinth. The one
dark mystery which like a cloud overshadows the bright disc of light
“which enlighteneth every man coming into this world,” the mystery of
moral evil and its punishment, cannot be ignored or reasoned away.
Catholic theology does not create this mystery but finds it existing. It
cannot remove it, but it, so to speak, absorbs it in another, the
mystery of moral probation. And this mystery, awful as are the
responsibilities and risks which it presents to view as environing those
beings who are called to run and to contend for the supernal prize upon
the arena, has in it more of light than of darkness. It throws new
splendor upon the ἀποκατάστασις in which the order of reason and justice
finally and universally triumphs. Its dark spot is reduced by the
exposition of the Catholic doctrine as authoritatively taught by the
church, in connection with certain or probable and permissible reasoning
from revealed or rational premises, to its smallest limits. The gloom of
doom and fate in the destiny of rational beings is scattered like an
unwholesome mist from the swamps of error, in the light of this
doctrine. The universality and perpetuity of the struggle and danger of
probation are reduced to the limits of a relatively small number and
brief period of duration. The numerical proportion of the losers to the
winners in the strife is reduced to the lowest terms which are
consistent with a fair and judicious estimate of the probabilities of
the question. Moreover, the multitude of beings, whether greater or
lesser, who suffer eternal loss as the penalty of their irreparable
failure, are not losers through mischance or inferiority to competitors,
as in a strife where one person wins at the expense of a less capable or
less fortunate rival. Neglect or contempt of their own supreme good,
deliberate and wilful wasting of their day of grace, are the sole causes
of their failure. Their loss of beatitude is the penalty of their
demerit. It is equally proportioned to their ill-desert, and this is
limited to the sins committed during the time of probation which have
never been remitted. The demerit of the angel which determines his
eternal destiny is the demerit of one act only, the sin by which he fell
from grace. The demerit of the man is confined to the sins of his mortal
life unforgiven at the moment when this life ceases. The notion of an
eternal increase of demerit, and a corresponding augmentation of torment
without end, is a mere human invention without any foundation in
Catholic doctrine. God has set bounds to the dangerous liberty of choice
between good and evil, and to the evil as well as the good resulting
from its exercise. Hell can become no worse than it is when the last
sentence of the Judge has been pronounced, and the active hostility of
the powers of hell against the kingdom of God is suppressed for ever
when they are made to bend the knee before the name of Jesus, and to
confess his glory. “Qui crucem sanctam subiit, _infernum confregit_.”
The unending warfare between good and evil, the perpetual strife, the
infinite series of changes, the eternal fluctuations and revolutions of
Neo-Platonic philosophy, are a wild dream. The inventions and
exaggerations and distortions produced by the working of the human
intellect and imagination upon a mystery of God, have no value and are
not to be confounded with the revealed truth made known through the
teaching of the church. Clear and adequate knowledge of the future life
is reserved for the future life. In the obscurity of this present state
we not only have the veracity of God as the motive and ground of faith,
but also the perfect, unerring intelligence of the human soul of Jesus
Christ as the medium of transmitting to us the revelation of those
things which are not seen but believed, and its pure love for humanity
as the warrant of confidence in the divine goodness. Human reason and
justice, impersonated in their ideal and integral perfection in union
with the divine wisdom in Immanuel, will be the standard and measure of
the final judgment by which the destiny of all men and all creatures
will be determined for eternity. We need not have any misgivings, lest
the ways of God should not be vindicated before the whole rational
universe.
Footnote 119:
These are not the exact words, but they express the exact sense of St.
Thomas in the following passage: Beatitudo est bonum perfectum quod
totaliter quietat appetitum.... Objectum autem voluntatis, quæ est
appetitus humanus, est universale bonum. _Summa Th._, 4, ii. q. 2. a.
5.
Footnote 120:
_Mélanges_, French translation, vol. i. Essay on the Maxim, No
Salvation out of the Catholic Church.
Footnote 121:
Philipp, ii. 8-11.
Footnote 122:
Rom. viii. 19-23.
Footnote 123:
Rom. ix. 19-21.
ENGLISH STATESMEN IN UNDRESS.
EARL DERBY, JOHN BRIGHT, AND MR. GLADSTONE.
The recent resignation of Earl Derby was an act entirely characteristic
of the man. He is not at all like Mr. Gradgrind, but he reminds one very
forcibly of that unamiable stickler for, and worshipper of, facts. Let
one come to Earl Derby with a new fact, or, better still, with a new
application of old facts, and he is sure of a patient, candid, and
intelligent hearing; but if he approaches him with a theory, or a
sentiment, or a hypothetical conclusion based upon “ifs,” Earl Derby
will be as unresponsive and immovable as a statue. His ruling passion is
to be, or at least to appear, positively practical; the phrase most
often on his lips is “common sense.” His illustrious father was a writer
of established fame; a gay man of the world; fond of society and proud
of his popularity with “the sex”; a captivating orator and an extremely
skilful Parliamentary debater; moreover, he did not disdain to stoop to
tricky devices when sober argument and sound reason would not ensure
success. The present Earl Derby is prosaic to an almost painful degree;
he cares little for society, and has not even “a redeeming vice”; his
political and personal honesty is unimpeachable; he is as incapable of
wilfully deceiving or misleading a foreign diplomatist as he would be of
cheating his butcher; his speeches, in and out of Parliament, are models
of wise dulness and calm force; they may in vain be searched through and
through for a flight of fancy or an extravagant expression; and as for a
joke—his lordship, as seen and heard in public, is apparently incapable
of either making or understanding one. Sometimes those listening to him
are tempted to laugh at him; but he never invites them to laugh with
him. To hear him discourse for forty minutes at a time upon the
comparative advantages of closed and open sewers, or demonstrating, with
mathematical exactness, the superiority of natural manure over
artificial compounds, is instructive, but it is not exhilarating. Lord
Derby, however, is not without ideas. It was he who furnished Mr.
Disraeli with a popular cry in 1874, when, hard pressed for a policy,
and finding that appeals concerning the Straits of Malacca failed to
fire the popular heart, that versatile and humorous statesman startled
the country by declaring that the most pressing, inspiriting, and noble
duty of the government at that moment was to improve the drainage of the
kingdom. This was Earl Derby’s happy thought, and Mr. Disraeli was
enraptured when, on asking his lordship to put it in shape, the latter
proposed the formula, “Sanitas sanitatum; omnia sanitas.” There is a
belief entertained by some of Earl Derby’s more intimate friends that at
heart he is a sentimental, romantic, susceptible person, and that he is
so morbidly timid of being suspected of such amiable weaknesses that he
has fabricated for himself an artificial disguise for public wear, in
which he may appear as the hard, dry, prosy, unsentimental,
matter-of-fact business man. It does not stand to reason, it is claimed,
that any man, and above all an English nobleman with practically
boundless wealth, in the enjoyment of vigorous health, and in the prime
of his life (he is now only fifty-two years old), could possibly be so
preternaturally dry and skilfully prosaic as is Lord Derby. “It must be
put on,” they say, “to hide the natural romance and tenderness of his
disposition”; and as one of the proofs of the correctness of this theory
they relate the story of his first and only love; of its frustration by
accidents not wholly beyond his control; of his long and patient, but
not hopeless, waiting for the death of the rival who had carried off the
prize; and of his calm confidence, fully justified by the result, that
he in his turn would win the lady. The story is true; but it may bear a
different moral than the one assigned to it by those who fancy that Earl
Derby, reversing the plan adopted by Hamlet, has chosen to put a solemn
disposition on to hide the antic joyousness of his real nature. A
sufficient acquaintance with Earl Derby will establish the fact that, if
he wears a disguise, it fits him so well that no one can detect the
imposition. He always seems to be exactly the same; never hot, never
cold, never excited, never listless, attentive to everything that is
said to him, replying without hesitation but without haste, most often
in words that might have been cut and dried six months before.
His resignation, as previously remarked, was entirely characteristic of
the man. He will not be led along a tortuous path; and the policy of
Lord Beaconsfield on the Eastern question has been very crooked. Its
very success depended on its crookedness. The two earls are great
friends; in fact, Lord Beaconsfield would be guilty of ingratitude if he
should ever cease to regard Lord Derby with affection. Nor is it to be
supposed that Lord Beaconsfield is a whit more patriotic than Derby, or
that he has a keener sense of what is necessary for the safety of the
empire. The difference between them is the difference between the daring
yet keen speculator and the staid and methodical merchant. Lord
Beaconsfield is sometimes willing to try the hazard of the die.
Something may always turn up; there is the possibility of an alliance
with Austria; there is the chance that Italy may be willing to repeat
the part that Sardinia played in 1854; it is on the cards that the death
of Bismarck or of the Emperor William may effect a radical change in
Germany’s foreign policy; it is possible that France may be magnanimous
enough to forget how England left her naked to her enemy in 1870, and
that the allied French and English armies may again fight together in
the Crimea. Lord Beaconsfield is popularly supposed to argue thus; but
Lord Derby is subject to no such illusions. At least, he will take no
chances. He has no sentimental horror of war, as John Bright has. He
would fight soon enough if he saw his way clearly to a successful issue
of the conflict; but he does not see his way. For England to enter
single-handed into an armed struggle with Russia would in his opinion be
madness; and he is convinced that she cannot count upon a single ally.
It is true that some of the German people are not much in love with
Russia; but the German government, Lord Derby affirms—and he ought to
know—is altogether on the side of Russia, and an unkind neutrality is
all that England can expect from that source. As for France, not a
single French politician would advocate an English alliance for war; the
Crimean War was never popular in France, and the 100,000 French lives
lost in that struggle are still lamented. Sardinia joined England and
France in the war of 1854 because she was in a position in which an
adventurous policy was desirable; but now Sardinia is swallowed up in
Italy, and Italy has all she can do to make both ends meet at home. The
great hope lies in Austria; but Earl Derby knows that Francis Joseph,
Alexander, and William are three sworn friends, and he sees, moreover,
that one of these would not be likely to break with another of the
triumvirate unless he were assured that the third would either aid him
or remain neutral. Still more plain is it to Earl Derby’s cool
perception that the internal divisions of Austria are so grave that she
would be mad to engage in a war which, if unsuccessful, would split the
empire in twain. The Magyars sympathize with Turkey, the Slavs with
Russia, the Austro-Germans with neither; the army could not be trusted;
and the finances of the empire are in such a condition that it was with
the greatest difficulty that the government the other day raised a loan
of twenty-five millions of dollars. It is clear enough to Lord Derby
that England, without an ally, would be worsted; and it is equally clear
that she cannot safely count upon an ally. Of course all things are
possible. She may secure an ally; but it is only a chance, and Lord
Derby will take no chances.
There is another fact that weighs upon him: the consideration that the
war, if entered upon, has no definite, practical object. The cant is
that it is necessary in order to regain for England influence in Europe;
but this is a consideration that has no weight in Lord Derby’s mind. He
sneers at it in his dry, prosaic manner as something that is ridiculous.
In a certain sense he is a democrat. He recognizes fully the fact that
England is practically a democracy, and on a memorable occasion he
shocked the Lords by telling them that the people were their
“employers.” But he is keenly alive to the fact that a government which
shapes its course in accordance with the ever-shifting breeze of popular
caprice cannot have an intelligible or consistent record; and the other
day he took occasion to point out that the “employers” of the
government, in regard to the Eastern question, had not been of the same
mind for six months together. Two years ago it was as much as one’s life
was worth to say a word in favor of the Turks or against the Russians;
now it is all the other way. Turkey might have been saved, and not a
voice was raised; now she is irretrievably lost, and every one is crying
out that she must be saved. So Earl Derby refuses to help his
“employers” to embark in a war without an object well defined, without
reasonable hope of success, and without an ally. He does it without the
passion that Mr. Gladstone displays; without the rhetoric John Bright
uses, without a flourish, or a poetical quotation, or a sarcasm—simply
as a dry, shrewd, cold-blooded, and clear-headed merchant would do when
asked to imperil his fortune by wild investments on the Stock Exchange.
One of the writer’s most memorable conversations with Lord Derby was on
a summer morning in 1872, when he was resting in the cool shade of the
Opposition, and had plenty of time on his hands to devote to those
subjects of social science and political economy in which one might
imagine he takes more real personal interest than in adjusting the
balance of power in Europe or in maintaining the prestige of England on
the continent. The Stanleys for four centuries, and I know not how long
before, have been large landholders. The first Earl Derby was created by
King Henry VII. in 1485—seven years before Christopher Columbus
discovered America—but the family had been a rich and powerful one long
ere that. The Lord Stanley whose designed failure to bring up his
contingent to the support of Richard III. at the battle of Bosworth
Field had so much to do with the defeat of that resolute monarch was the
father-in-law of his conqueror and successor, Henry VII.; and the young
George Stanley whose head was so opportunely saved by the suggestion of
the Duke of Norfolk, that there would be time enough to decapitate him
“after the battle,” was the fifteenth predecessor of the present earl. I
was accompanied in this visit by an English commoner, who was greatly
interested at that time in certain projects for the systematic
improvement of the dwellings of the working-classes—projects which Earl
Derby also regarded as worthy of his attention. The large estates of the
family in England and Ireland have always, or at least for a very long
time, been well administered. Neither the former nor the present earl
has been accused of being a bad landlord; they were not given to
rack-renting, and their tenants did not fear to ask them for favors. The
former earl was perhaps more quick to grant a request from a tenant than
the present one; but if the plea be a good one the applicant will not go
away denied. But it must be a good one; of all men in England Lord Derby
is perhaps the least easily deceived. There is nothing imposing in his
town-house. It is not a palace, like the magnificent mansion of the
Marquis of Westminster; nor does it stand apart in dull and ugly
grandeur, as does Devonshire House; nor bewilder and delight the visitor
by the splendor of its saloons and the beauty of its grounds, as does
Stafford House, the glories of which so dazzled the Shah of Persia that
he asked the Prince of Wales, who had just entertained him in shabby
Marlborough House, why he permitted the Duke of Sutherland, a subject,
to dwell in a state so superior to that which royalty itself maintained.
Earl Derby’s town residence is a plain building in Piccadilly, not far
from the almost equally unostentatious house where the richest lady in
England resides. There are houses on Park Avenue, New York, which are
finer than the London residences of either Lord Derby or the Baroness
Burdett-Coutts; and there is little in his lordship’s dwelling that is
either rare or strange. The great historical and romantic heirlooms of
the family are elsewhere—at Knowlsey Park, for instance. We held our
conversation on the occasion referred to in a room looking out upon St.
James’ Park and the Green Park. The windows were open; the sweet, fresh
air of the morning came freely in. From the leather-cushioned chair in
which I sat I could see a portion of the façade of Buckingham Palace,
the west front of Westminster Abbey, and the towers of the Parliament
House. The earl questioned me for some time concerning the actual
condition of affairs as they then were in America; and his questions
were sometimes hard to answer. One thing impressed me as rather
remarkable: he made no mistakes in his questions; that is, he did not
ask how far Chicago was from Illinois, or whether New York and
Washington were under the same municipal government—interrogatories
which another very studious and painstaking English nobleman once put to
me. Had we yet made any satisfactory progress in solving the problem of
the true relations between capital and labor? We had certain facilities
at our command for working out that solution; would we work it out, and
if so, how? Was there any common interest and common feeling between
American workmen and American masters? The abolition of slavery was
doubtless a fine thing; but had it not been accompanied with, or
followed by, a long series of financial, industrial, and political
mistakes? It was with a feeling of relief that I found my examination
ended, and became a listener instead of a talker.
On the subject of improved dwellings for the working-classes he held
very firm convictions. Unquestionably these were needed, but he did not
wish to be a party to any scheme which proposed to build little palaces
for working-men, and to rent them at one-tenth of their value, making up
the deficiency by contributions from the rich. That was all nonsense.
Nor was he very much enraptured with the Peabody buildings; they were
well enough in their way, but they were not available for those who most
needed them. The thing to be done was to make the workmen help
themselves. How? Well, possibly by co-operation. The earl thought that
much might be accomplished by an aggregation of sixpences. As for
co-operation in distribution, that had already demonstrated its own
usefulness; would it not be well to attempt the experiment of
co-operation, strictly confined to the workmen themselves, in buying
lands, erecting houses, and selling them, on long time, to themselves?
He had in a drawer of his table an elaborate calculation of what might
be accomplished in this way; but after producing it he suggested so many
objections to its practicability that I soon regarded it with contempt.
The agitation concerning the demands of the agricultural laborers was at
this time just beginning to make itself felt; and the conversation
drifted into a rather desultory discussion of that subject. The earl
made two points very clear: in his opinion the extension of the suffrage
to the agricultural laborers would greatly increase the strength of his
own party, and if he cared only for that he would advocate it; but it
would not advance the interests of the peasants nor promote the general
welfare of the country. He made some very hard and dry statements on
this point. I was rather taken aback by them, but did not attempt to
controvert them. Subsequent events in the United States have shown that
the earl had a prophetic ken. He disclaimed, with something like
animation, the idea of comparing the liberated and enfranchised slaves
of our Southern States with the English peasants; but he said that the
party that had enfranchised the slaves would not retain their political
allegiance, and would probably owe its ultimate overthrow to them. Men
are not grateful beings, he said; it is a great mistake to count on
their gratitude. Besides, the negroes will believe that they were
enfranchised not so much for their own sakes as for the reason that they
might aid in keeping their liberators in power. Unless negro human
nature was unlike Anglo-Saxon human nature, the enfranchised negroes
would say to themselves: “What has been given to us belonged to us; the
men who gave it wished to buy us to serve them; but they have only given
us what was rightfully our own, and they have nothing more to give us. A
vote is nothing to us, save for the use we can make of it. We do not
care whether this man or that man is President; but we do care whether
our rent is lowered or raised, or whether we are on good or bad terms
with our landlords.”
It was in this way that Earl Derby demonstrated to me that the negro
vote in the South, so long as the rights of property were held sacred
and order was preserved, would always be at the disposal of the
land-owners of that region; and he drew the same conclusion as to the
results of the enfranchisement of the English peasants. Affairs were bad
enough as they were; despite all the new devices for securing the purity
of elections, they were not pure, and he did not see how they were ever
to be made pure. It was in 1849, if I remember correctly, that Earl
Derby visited the United States and the West Indies. He was then a very
young man. Mr. Fillmore was President. A very different political
atmosphere prevailed at Washington and elsewhere from the present one.
The young Lord Stanley observed affairs for himself and drew his own
conclusions. At heart I think he was more pleased with the South than
with the North or West; and, without saying so in words, he left upon me
the impression that he did not entertain a very high opinion of our
Republican statesmen.
It is more pleasant to hear him talk in private than to listen to him in
public. But he is not a bad speaker, as English speakers go. He was
better in the Commons when Lord Stanley than in the Lords as Earl Derby.
But whenever he speaks he impresses you as being an earnest and sincere
man—not earnest in the sense of enthusiastic, but sober, steady, and
fully believing in the truth of what he is saying and of the necessity
of his saying it. He is not what is called a popular man, but he is
esteemed and respected by every one. His father died in the autumn of
1869; the nine years that have since passed have been eventful ones for
the present earl, and his responsibilities have been heavy. But they
have not dismayed or disheartened him, and when I last met him he was
looking younger and rather less grave—more happy, I thought—than
usually.
In certain respects Mr. John Bright resembles Earl Derby; in others he
is the very contradiction of the earl. Physically the two men are not
very unlike. Either of them would do very well for a model of the
traditional John Bull; indeed, _Punch_ has often used both of them for
this purpose. Mr. Bright is fifteen years the senior of Earl Derby, and
two years younger than Mr. Gladstone. Earl Derby has been in active
political life for twenty-six years; Mr. Bright for thirty-five years;
and Mr. Gladstone for forty-six years, for he was returned as the Tory
member for Newark in 1832, when Earl Derby was a child of six years; and
he had sat in Parliament eleven years before Mr. Bright entered the
House in 1843 as member for Durham. It is a curious fact, to which I
have heard Mr. Bright refer with some mirthfulness, that he sat in the
House for four years without opening his mouth. It was not until 1847
that he made his maiden speech in the House; it was a plea for extending
the principles of free trade, and it gave him a national reputation. As
between Derby, Bright, and Gladstone, the latter must be admitted to be
the greatest man—greatest in his acquired knowledge, greatest in his
natural genius, greatest even in his oratorical power. But there is at
times a charm in the speeches of John Bright that the finest utterances
of Mr. Gladstone never carry with them. Mr. Gladstone captivates the
fancy, pleases the taste, convinces the judgment, for the time being at
least; Mr. Bright touches the heart and subdues it. I am not certain but
that his skill in this depends upon a trick. Mr. Bright in his life has
been the doer of some heartless and cruel things; he has wrought more
mischief than most men of his age; his idea of progress has been that of
the _bourgeoisie_, not that of the workman; his beau ideal of a country
is a republic where there is no titled aristocracy, but where the
working-classes, having fair wages, are quite content with their station
and have no inconvenient aspirations beyond it. The manufacturers and
the traders are Mr. Bright’s “people”; he would like to see nothing
above them; he thinks those below them should be content with the
station wherein God has placed them. Mr. Bright has often fanned popular
discontent, but it has been too often for the purpose simply of using
the power thus evoked to pull down something that stood above him. The
mercantile spirit is strong in him. Anything that was for the good of
trade was good in his eyes; the trader was always his idol. But he had
“a way with him” that enabled him to carry along the hearts of the
workmen. His personal appearance and deportment had something to do with
this: his round, florid, solid, “English” face, his almost magical
voice, the ease and power of his delivery, his wonderful mastery of
plain and forcible but really elegant English, the aptness with which he
could introduce a quotation from Holy Writ or from some familiar English
poet or rhymster. I find myself unconsciously writing of Mr. Bright in
the past tense. It is only while revising these lines for publication
that the sudden death of his wife occurs. That bereavement will be very
hard for him to sustain; it is probable that his public career has
ended. When the utter breaking down of his health compelled him to
retire from Mr. Gladstone’s cabinet in December, 1870, he was in a
deplorable condition. After many months of entire abstinence from mental
excitement of any kind his mind began to resume its strength. But from
that time there has always been danger of another collapse. An intimate
friend of his family told me that Mr. Bright was in the condition of one
whose arm had been broken and who had the bones reset. “So long as he
does not use the arm, and allows it to rest in its sling, all will go
well; but if he strikes a blow with it, it will fall shattered at his
side.” It was during this period of convalescence and rest that I saw
Mr. Bright most frequently. The attachment between his wife and himself
was very evident. He petted her as if she had been a bride in her
honeymoon. On one occasion, when breakfasting with them, the
conversation turned chiefly on the then recent declarations of President
Grant in his Des Moines speech concerning secular education and the
rights of the Catholic Church in the United States. This must have been
some time in December, 1875. I was grieved, although not surprised, to
hear Mr. Bright express sentiments of very bitter hostility to the
church, and a desire to see education wholly taken from her control. He
confessed that he did not know anything about the merits of the question
as it stood in the United States, but he applauded the President for his
boldness in bringing the subject forward. Mrs. Bright, seeing that the
topic was an agitating one to both of us, adroitly turned the
conversation into another channel, and Mr. Bright was presently telling
me stories of Mr. Cobden and of the early struggles for free trade. He
said that one of the things he most prized was a copy of a resolution
passed in 1862 by the New York Chamber of Commerce, expressing its sense
of the devotion which he had manifested to the principles of
international justice and peace.
Mr. Bright is a fascinating conversationalist, and it is a great
pleasure to listen to him. Like most men who have not been born to high
positions, but who have attained them by the force of their own genius,
there is sometimes observable a little stiffness, or _mauvaise honte_,
in his manner. There is some difficulty here in expressing one’s self
clearly without seeming to be offensive. Mr. Bright has often expressed
great contempt for the English hereditary nobility; and he is, or was,
in the habit of regarding them as a pack of fools. The aristocracy of
England have not failed to afford abundant instances of what Mr. Bright
was fond of calling their “unwisdom.” More than this, the personal
littleness, meanness, duplicity, and cruelty of some of these hereditary
noblemen cannot be denied. But it would be impossible for one of them,
if you were lunching with him, to tell you that the sherry you were
drinking cost ninety shillings a dozen, and therefore must be good.
Mr. Bright has very frequently expressed an ardent admiration for
American institutions, and he has often been accused of wishing to
Americanize the British Constitution. Had Mr. Bright been born to an
earldom, he would have been the greatest stickler for the rights of his
class who has lived since the days of Louis XIV. A dozen English
noblemen could be named who are more ardent republicans than is John
Bright. He does not like to see men above him; but he is quite content
to see any number below him, so long as they help him to lower those
above him to his own level. Men speak of him as a radical; but he is
nothing of the kind. Mr. Gladstone is tenfold more of a radical. If John
Bright lived in the United States he would belong to the conservative
party, whatever its name might be. Between him and such men as Auberon
Herbert, Charles Bradlaugh, and the other republicans in England there
is a great gulf fixed; and this not at all by reason of the irreligious
opinions of these men. He would like a republic well enough, if he were
always to be President, and if the rights of property were secure from
all infringement. It is an utter misconception of Mr. Bright’s character
to rank him among enthusiastic, unselfish, and theoretical reformers and
philanthropists. His passions are strong, but his hate is far fiercer
than his love is powerful; and he cares infinitely more for the “freedom
of trade” than for the freedom of man. His opposition to the bill for
preventing and punishing the adulteration of articles of food
illustrates this curious trait in his character. He said, almost in so
many words, that it were better that the people were half poisoned and
wholly cheated than that the government should interfere between buyer
and seller, to protect the former and lessen the gains of the latter.
This is the true Manchester spirit—the spirit that has led the
cotton-makers of Lancashire to load their fabrics for the Eastern
markets with so much glue and chalk that a fabric which appeared of the
best quality became a worthless rag as soon as it was wet—a deception,
by the way, that has now cost England the loss of a very large share of
her Chinese and Indian trade.
Mr. Bright is also violently inconsistent at times. We conversed once
for a long time on the question of the extension of the suffrage to the
agricultural laborers and to women. Some of his remarks reminded me of
that shrewd American politician who was in favor of the Maine Liquor
Law, but was opposed to its enforcement. Mr. Bright and his party had
recently suffered some mortifying disillusions. The new voters,
enfranchised by the Reform Bill, which Mr. Disraeli had taken up and
passed after the Liberals had dallied with the question for years, began
to manifest evidences of insubordination—not at all, however, in the
right direction, from Mr. Bright’s point of view. It must be understood
that a superstition had sprung up to the effect that all the new voters
must necessarily be on the side of the Liberals; just as it was supposed
that the enfranchised negroes in the United States must all vote the
Republican ticket for ever and a day. There was this difference between
the two cases: the Republicans had actually freed the negroes; the
English Liberals, led by Bright and Gladstone, had talked about
enfranchising the lower classes in England, but, while talking about it
and disputing where the line should be drawn, the Tories, led by
Disraeli, stepped in and accomplished the work by establishing what is
virtually household suffrage. The former Earl Derby, led an unwilling
captive by Disraeli, had reluctantly given his assent to this measure,
which he called “a leap in the dark”; but at the time of which I speak
it was becoming plain that this leap had landed the Conservative party
upon very good ground. The new voters, instead of swelling the ranks of
the Liberals, were to a great extent found in the train of the Tories,
and Mr. Bright was disgusted with them. I have good reason to know that
he disliked the idea of universal suffrage, and that he had quite as
sincere a horror of the _residuum_ as that which Mr. Lowe expressed. The
“conservative working-man” was beginning to show that he really existed
and was not a myth. The voters of the kingdom had been vastly increased
in numbers; but the new voters, when they came to the polls, were found
to be quite as conservative, and in many cases more so than the old
constituencies. This was a source of keen mortification and
disappointment to Mr. Bright, and the first results of the Ballot Bill
caused him no less chagrin. He had indulged in two illusions: let us
have a general suffrage (not universal but general) and secret voting,
and we shall carry every election district and be masters of the
situation for ever more. Household suffrage and the ballot were
provided, and from that day to this the Liberal party has grown weaker.
Mr. Bright took no care to conceal from me the annoyance that these
results gave him; and it was plain that his faith in the good sense and
integrity of the masses was weakened. The impression he left on my mind
in this conversation was that he would have preferred a much more
limited suffrage; no one should vote, for instance, who did not pay a
rental of perhaps six pounds a year. As for the future, there were two
classes yet to be enfranchised—the agricultural laborers and the women.
With regard to the latter Mr. Bright referred me to his brother Jacob.
“He is the great man for the women,” said he. “He has that matter in
charge; he can tell you more about the merits of their demands than I
can. I am a little afraid of women as voters. Women are naturally easily
led away by romance and glitter; and I suspect a showy ministry would
always be more apt to secure their support than a sober and dull
administration.” With regard to the claims of the agricultural laborers
for the suffrage he was cold and guarded in his expressions.
Theoretically they should have what they asked; but as a practical
measure, and one of immediate action, it was plain that he preferred to
allow affairs to rest as they were. He feared that the peasants with
votes in their hands would be seduced by the Tories, as the new voters
in the boroughs had been. “A little more education would be desirable
before thus increasing the constituencies,” said he. “What kind of
education, Mr. Bright?” “Well, certainly not that of the parish school,
with the parson as the real teacher; and that, as affairs now are, is
almost all they can have.”
The study of Mr. Bright’s course upon the great question of the present
day in England—war with Russia or surrender to her—is full of interest
to those who wish to closely analyze his character. Eighteen months ago
Mr. Bright—Quaker as he is, apostle of peace as he is, trader and
manufacturer as he is—was altogether in favor of war; that is, of a
certain war—the war of the Russians against the Turks. In the
Christmas-tide of 1876 Mr. Bright could say nothing too harsh in
condemnation of those who were attempting to prevent Russia from
entering into the war with Turkey. He spoke, he said, in the name of
Christianity, but only to remind his hearers that the Russians were
Christians and that the Turks were Mohammedans. Very curious language at
that time came from the lips of this great peace advocate. In substance
it was an appeal to Englishmen to encourage Russia in her attempt to
drive the Turks from Europe, “bag and baggage,” as Mr. Gladstone has it.
English Christians were bade remember by this Quaker peace-apostle that
seven hundred years ago their ancestors fought to regain possession of
Bethlehem and Calvary and the Mount of Olives; and that those sacred
places now, as then, were in the possession of the infidels whom Russia,
if not interfered with by England—would soon drive forth. England should
stand by. If she interfered she would prevent the war; she must not lift
a finger nor say a word save in approval of the Russians; and they must
be left to wage war as they wished or as they could. Eighteen months
have passed; the Russians have waged their war; it has been marked at
every step with revolting horrors; half a million of Mohammedans and
hundreds of thousands of Christians have perished in it; and Mr. Bright
ought to feel satisfied. But now that England proposes to interfere and
to fight a little on her own account, Mr. Bright boils over with rage,
and calls all England to observe the unparalleled wickedness of the
government in proposing to employ its Indian troops to sustain the
empire. It is infamous to employ them, especially against “Christian
Russia.” War conducted by Russia is not at all shocking; war waged
against her is the unpardonable national sin. Russia might shed oceans
of Christian blood in her wars, and Mr. Bright be content; but when
England proposes to use Mohammedan soldiers in efforts to save English
interests in the East from utter ruin, Mr. Bright raises his hands in
horror and declaims against the wickedness of war. Radical
inconsistencies like these are natural to Mr. Bright. They are
observable in many of his acts; they crop out in his conversation. He
has spoken eloquently against persecution for opinion’s sake; but, to
judge him by his tone, he would burn Earl Beaconsfield at the stake
to-morrow.
In all my conversations with Mr. Bright there were two things that
impressed me: his indifference to, and want of sympathy with, the
question of university education in any of its aspects, and his
perfectly ignorant hostility to the Catholic religion. This hostility
was not active, or it was rarely so; but it was implanted deep in his
mind, and it colored to a great extent some of his most important
actions. Without knowing anything at all about the church, and without,
as I believe, having even so much as read a Catholic book, he had put it
down among his self-evident truths that the church was the foe of what
he most held dear, and he hated her accordingly. Mr. Bright’s instincts
are clear, and they did not deceive him here. The church is the foe of
what he most holds dear; for in the ideal society which John Bright
would create, if he had his way, the temple would be a cotton-mill, the
priests would be the manufacturers, and the people would have “free
trade” for their god.[124]
Mr. Gladstone has within him the power of being as plodding and patient
in his search for dry facts as Lord Derby is; he is as passionate in his
hatreds and as inconsistent in his affections as is Mr. Bright; but he
has what neither Derby nor Bright possesses—genius. He is a far more
attractive man than either. It was my dear friend, the late John Francis
Maguire, who first brought me into personal contact with Mr. Gladstone.
We were talking together in the lobby of the House of Commons one summer
evening in 1870, the year after the passage of the Irish Church
Disestablishment Bill, when Mr. Gladstone came by and stopped to speak
to Maguire, to whom he was very much attached—as who was not that knew
him? After a few moments Mr. Gladstone complained of the heat in the
lobby. “Let us go out on the terrace,” said he. “But I must not leave my
American friend; come along, ——. Mr. Gladstone, permit me to present my
friend.” We moved along the long corridor to the terrace that overhangs
the Thames; and here, while they continued their conversation, which was
of no interest save to themselves, I had ample opportunity to regard at
close range the then ruler of England. He was sixty-one years old; he is
now sixty-nine. The disappointments, defeats, and ardent but
unsuccessful conflicts he has fought during the last four years have
aged him; but he is still hale and vigorous, and, for all that one can
see, may count upon many years of active life, which indeed no man will
begrudge him. He is not by any means an Adonis, and never has been; but
as we sat together that evening on the stone bench of the terrace he
seemed to me a fascinating man. His voice in conversation is melodious
and pleasant, with an occasional touch of a strange, melancholy minor
key. If he be interested in his subject and on good terms with the
person to whom he is speaking, he is a most charming conversationalist.
He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford; he entered Parliament as the
member for Newark in the Tory interest in 1832. He has had forty-six
years of almost uninterrupted public life. He was under-secretary for
the colonies in 1835 under Sir Robert Peel, and vice-president of the
Board of Trade in 1841; he revised the tariff in 1842, and was president
of the Board of Trade in 1843; he was returned for Oxford in 1847, and
became a Liberal in 1851 on the questions of university reform and
Jewish disabilities; he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Coalition
Ministry of 1852, and was sent on a mission to the Ionian Islands by the
then Lord Derby in 1858; he was Chancellor of the Exchequer again under
Palmerston in 1859, and repealed the paper duty, making possible the
establishment of the penny newspaper; he aided Cobden to accomplish his
commercial treaty with France, and amused himself by interfering
officiously with the domestic government of the kingdom of Naples; he
was defeated for Oxford in 1865, but immediately returned for
Lancashire, and after the death of Palmerston became leader of the House
as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Russell. He brought in his Reform
Bill in 1866, was defeated on it, and went into opposition; he brought
in and succeeded in effecting the passage of his Irish Church
resolutions in 1868; he was defeated for Lancashire at the general
election of 1868, but returned for Greenwich, and took charge of the
government as Prime Minister in that year. He disestablished the Irish
Church in 1869; passed the Irish Land Bill in 1870; abolished purchase
in the army in 1871 by the arbitrary exercise of the prerogative of the
crown, and negotiated the Treaty of Washington. In 1874, anxious to
finish his Irish work, he evolved from out of the depths of his own
inner consciousness an Irish University Education Bill, and had the
extreme mortification of seeing it not only rejected by the Catholics
but violently opposed by the English and Scotch Liberals. He appealed to
the country, not on that question but on a new project invented by
himself for the abolition of the income tax; his majority of sixty
members was turned into a minority of as many, and his old foe,
Disraeli, came marching into power with drums beating and colors flying.
Since then Mr. Gladstone has conducted a species of independent
opposition of his own; he has sought to punish the Catholics for their
refusal to accept his University Bill by writing several venomous
pamphlets to show that Catholics could not be loyal subjects; he has
endeavored to upset the Disraeli administration on various occasions; he
conducted the Bulgarian outrage excitement with great skill; and for the
last few months he has been almost incessantly engaged in the most
strenuous and violent efforts to prevent England from interfering in any
way with Russia in the execution of her designs against Turkey. This was
the extraordinary man with whom I was sitting on that summer evening.
After a while he turned to me to ask me about some of his American
friends, and thus I was drawn into the conversation. Mr. Maguire, for my
benefit, I think, diverted it into the channel of the then remaining
causes of Irish discontent; and the conversation became animated and ran
on until the unlucky ringing of a division bell compelled both the
premier and the Irish member to run off and leave me alone—not, however,
before Mr. Gladstone had given me an invitation which I was not slow, in
future days, to accept.
Thus it came about that many conversations were held between us, and the
memory of them is for the most part extremely pleasant. We spoke
generally on the immediate questions of the day, occasionally diverging
into wider and more fragrant fields. He had at this time a very wide
circle of Roman Catholic friends; and he was so fond of their society
that Mr. Newdegate and Mr. Johnson, of Edinburgh (the secretary of the
Anti-Papal League), got up the story that he was about to be received
into the church. This rumor grew into the fact that he had been actually
received; but to this there was the variation that he had become a
communicant of the Greek Church! There never was any foundation for
these stories; but it is probable that there was a period in Mr.
Gladstone’s life when, had he not been Prime Minister of England, he
would have become a Catholic. This reminds me of a story that Cardinal
Manning once told me. He and Mr. Gladstone were very old and very dear
friends; and this friendship continued unbroken until Mr. Gladstone’s
assault upon the church in his “Vatican” pamphlets. I do not think the
friendship thus sundered has ever been restored. But the story was this:
One day the premier was talking with the archbishop, and after a little
pause he said: “What a pity you ever left us, Manning! Had you remained
with us you would have been Archbishop of Canterbury to-day, with
£15,000 a year!” “I clasped my hands,” said his grace, “looked up to
heaven, and exclaimed with all my heart, ‘Thank God for having saved my
poor soul!’”
Mr. Gladstone’s town residence in Carlton House Terrace was pleasant to
visit. He had enjoyed being a victim to the old-china and Wedgwood
mania, and some of the rooms were crammed with his successes in the
collection of “uniques” in this line. He—or some one in his
confidence—had had good taste in pictures, and some excellent works of
old and new masters hung upon his walls. It was wonderful to hear him
talk about blue china, but I think his strong point in this line is
Wedgwood. It was pleasanter, however, to draw him away from his china
and lead him on to talk about men or books. He discussed both, on
occasion, with a freedom and incisiveness that were somewhat startling.
It was amusing to see the care with which he sometimes avoided speaking
about Mr. Disraeli, and the latitude which he allowed himself on other
occasions in denouncing and ridiculing him. He once complained bitterly
that Disraeli was not an Englishman and had no English blood in him; and
when I ventured to suggest that the wretched malefactor could scarcely
be blamed for circumstances so wholly beyond his control, he looked very
glum for some moments, and then turned the conversation aside, as if
disinclined to accept even that apology for his foe.
It is that curious trait in Mr. Gladstone’s character which makes it so
difficult for him in his public speeches to make a statement without
qualifying it, or amplifying it, or stating several hypothetical cases
with reference to it, that renders his conversation so charming.
Beginning to tell you something about Pius IX., for instance, he will
branch off into a story about Father Newman, an anecdote of Mazzini, a
reminiscence of Orsini, Palmerston, or Louis Napoleon, an adventure that
happened to himself in Naples, his feelings when he recognized an old
college chum of his as a bare-footed friar in a monastery on the Alps,
and so on. It is like the _Arabian Nights_, for one story grows out of
the other, and all the time he does not forget the original subject, the
Pope, but comes back to him, and winds up with the story about him, told
with all due emphasis and action. There was a time when for Pius IX. Mr.
Gladstone entertained what seemed to be a truly sincere admiration and
respect; occasionally the feeling appeared to be even that of affection.
As for the insensate hatred and dread of the church which fills the
breasts of Messrs. Newdegate and Whalley, Mr. Gladstone never shared it.
This, however, did not prevent him from making his outrageous attacks
upon the church, in order to revenge himself upon the Irish and English
bishops for refusing to support him in his University Bill. His passions
are very strong. The difference between him and Mr. Disraeli is that the
latter seems never wholly in earnest, while the former always is. Some
of the language in which he has allowed himself to indulge in his recent
speeches on the war question have been marked with a degree of
passionate violence that would seem to indicate a mind overwrought.
There used to be a cruel saying in the London clubs that “Mr. Gladstone
would die either in a mad-house or a monastery.” I believe the credit of
the _mal mot_ was given to Mr. Disraeli. There seems small hope left of
the monastery, and there was probably never any danger of the mad-house.
But Mr. Gladstone has now been out of power for four years; he reflects
that his own imprudence thrust him out; he can see no prospect of a
return to power; and he feels that under the guidance of Earl
Beaconsfield England is being led into grave dangers. He chafes and
frets, and the apparently unreasonable violence of his language is only
the candid expression of his sincere wrath and fear.
Of these three statesmen, Earl Derby, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Bright, Mr.
Bright is the dandy. The earl is negligent in his dress, and thrifty
therein; but his valet, or some one else, manages to turn him out neatly
every morning. Mr. Gladstone is positively careless as regards his
attire, and one imagines that nobody but himself has anything to do with
it. It has been whispered about that Mr. Gladstone’s tailor pays a large
sum every year to have his identity concealed, for Mr. Gladstone’s
clothes fit him so badly, or seem to do so, that the tailor’s business
would be ruined if his name were known. The shocking bad hat of Mr.
Gladstone, and his baggy “Sairey Gamp” of an umbrella, so often pictured
in _Punch_, are no exaggerations; the last time I saw him he was sailing
down Pall Mall under full steam for the Reform Club, with this identical
hat and umbrella. There is a deep mystery connected with his legs, or
with his trowsers, for they bag to an incredible extent at the knees,
and are always too long at the lower extremities. I have said that he
was not an Adonis, but when he is pleased and happy there is something
winning in the expression of his mouth, and his eyes are wonderfully
eloquent. Mr. Bright’s rich but plain costume is always faultlessly neat
and clean; his linen spotless; his shoes have an almost unearthly
lustre; his hat shines in rivalry with them. When, on the occasion of
his taking office as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancashire, he went to
Windsor “to kiss hands,” the queen, it is said, was enchanted with him,
and the Princess Beatrice, who is much given to speaking out her mind,
is reported to have exclaimed: “Ever since Louise married young Mr.
Argyll, I have supposed that nothing was left for me but one of Marshal
and Snelgrove’s young men. But if any one of those tradesmen were as
handsome and good as this old tradesman, I’d take him in a moment.”
Mr. Bright’s handwriting is small, elegant, and beautifully distinct.
Mr. Gladstone writes a rapid, bold, and running hand, at times rather
illegible. He is somewhat too fond of his pen; of late he has written
too much on unimportant subjects. Earl Derby has a happy dread of
committing himself on paper, and writes but few letters. “Do not write
to me,” he said one day; “come and talk with me; it will be better for
each of us.” Mr. Gladstone once made a very happy retort to a question
put to him in the House of Commons concerning one of his letters. Mr.
Bouverie, with all due solemnity, and after having given a day’s notice
of his question, asked the premier if his attention had been called to a
letter published in the _Times_, purporting to have been addressed by
him to the correspondent of a New York journal, and whether he had
really written the letter. “It is quite true,” Mr. Gladstone replied.
“Mr. —— addressed me a very proper and courteous letter, upon certain
matters connected with the Treaty of Washington and the negotiations at
Geneva, and I replied to it. He subsequently obtained my permission to
make the letter public. And I have to add that I often have to write
letters to much less important persons than the representative of an
influential American journal.” As he had recently written a letter to
Mr. Bouverie, the hit was thought to be a good one, and the House
laughed.
Footnote 124:
The writer, for whose opinion we have all respect, has the advantage
over us of a personal knowledge of Mr. Bright, and an acquaintance
with his public career to which we cannot pretend. So far, however, as
our knowledge goes, our estimate of Mr. Bright is far from agreeing
altogether with that of the writer. We always believed Mr. Bright to
be a man of large heart, of generous impulse, and of large mind,
circumscribed by certain defects of education and inherited prejudice;
but always a man wishing to see right done and to do right.—ED. C. W.
RELATIONS OF JUDAISM TO CHRISTIANITY.
II.
THE INFLUENCE OF JEWISH IDEAS ON HEATHEN PHILOSOPHY.
Strabo, after having mentioned the great number of Jews residing in
Cyrene, a city celebrated for its schools of Greek literature, adds that
“it would be difficult to show a spot upon earth where they were not
found and where their influence was not felt.” The influence of which he
speaks must not be restricted to that which they acquired everywhere by
their remarkable industry, commercial capacity, and wealth; it was felt
in the higher field of thought, and was brought to bear on heathen
philosophy, in which it produced considerable modifications. We are
chiefly concerned with the Greeks, whom all admit to be the
representatives of philosophical speculations in the ages we are
reviewing.
It is the opinion of Aristobulus, of Aristeas, and of Philo that the
Greek philosophers were acquainted with the sacred books of the Hebrews,
and that they derived from them those great truths relating to God, the
soul, a future life which we find in their writings. We can easily
understand this to have been the case when we reflect that the Hebrews
were already in Egypt in great numbers, when the learned men of Greece
repaired thither in search of knowledge; and in order to account for the
opinion just mentioned it is by no means necessary to have recourse to
the national pride with which its supporters are supposed by our
rationalists to have been animated. Because Aristobulus, Aristeas, and
Philo were Jews it does not follow that they should have been so blinded
by the desire of glorifying their nation as to make them lose their
well-known critical acuteness. Besides, they were not the only ones who
perceived that the Greeks had borrowed from the Hebrews. Antiquity is at
one in recognizing the fact. The Fathers of the primitive church who had
occasion to touch upon the subject do not hesitate to affirm it from
observations of their own. “Our sacred books,” says Tertullian, “are the
treasure from which philosophers have drawn all their riches. Who is the
poet, who is the sophist, that has not borrowed from the prophets? It is
at those sacred sources that the philosophers have striven to quench
their thirst. These men, impelled by their passion for glory, endeavored
to reach the sublimity of our Holy Scriptures, and when they found in
them anything that suited their views they made it their own. But as
they did not consider them as divine, they made no scruple to alter
them. And, moreover, they could not understand many a passage the sense
of which was obscure even for the Hebrews, to whom the books belonged.”
St. Justin equally affirms that “Plato took from Moses his doctrine of
creation, as well as his notions on the Word, or _Logos_, and the Energy
or Spirit of God, though all these truths appear strangely disfigured in
the Athenian philosopher.” Again, Clement of Alexandria tells the
Neo-Platonics that their master, Plato, had borrowed from the books of
Moses his most sublime doctrines and purest moral precepts, and adds:
“We state the fact that the Greeks, not satisfied with transferring to
their writings the wonderful events related in our sacred books, have
stolen from us our principal dogmas in altering them. They are caught in
the very act of theft as to what regards faith, wisdom, knowledge and
science, hope and charity, penance, chastity, and the fear of God, which
virtues are the offspring of truth alone.” Eusebius tells us that
Pythagoras had held communications with the prophets at the time when
the Jews were exiles in Egypt and Babylonia. Hennippus, according to the
testimony of Josephus, confirms that fact by saying that Pythagoras had
embraced and professed a part of the doctrines of the Jews, and had
transmitted their philosophy to the Gentiles. Clearchus affirms that
Aristotle had spoken to him of his conversations with a Jew “from whom
much was to be learnt.” Theodoret is not less positive. “Anaxagoras and
Pythagoras,” he says, “in their travels in Egypt, had made the
acquaintance of learned men of that country and of Judea. It is to the
same source that Plato came later in search of knowledge, as we are
informed by Plutarch and by Xenophon.” “What is Plato?” said the
Pythagorean Numerius. “He is a certain Moses who speaks Attic.” The
negations without proofs which men of rationalistic tendencies oppose to
this view cannot stand before the overwhelming testimony of the Fathers,
doctors, and historians of the primitive church, corroborated as it is
by more than one pagan author. Our modern Catholic writers, without any
exception that we know of, have recognized that influence of revelation
on the heathen mind. “The laws which Solon gave to the Athenians,”
remarks Fleury, “had a great analogy with those of Moses. The principles
of Socrates are founded on those of the Hebrew legislator; his notions
of the unity of God, the immortality of the soul, the distinction
between good and evil, the merits and rewards of virtue, the
chastisements of vice, are all derived from the sacred books. The
political system exposed by Plato in his _Republic_, in which he enjoins
that every one should live by his own labor, without luxury or ambition,
without innovation or change, under the sway of justice the greatest of
all goods, and the government of a wise ruler devoted to the happiness
of his subjects, is nothing else but the theory of the constitution
which governed Judea.” “Aristotle,” says M. de Maistre, alluding to a
passage already quoted, “conversed with a Jew in comparison with whom
the most distinguished philosophers of Greece seemed to him but
barbarians. The translation of the sacred books into a language which
had become that of the universe, the dispersion of the Jews over the
whole world, and man’s natural curiosity for everything new and
extraordinary had caused the Mosaic law to be known everywhere, which
thus became an introduction to Christianity.” “The doctrine of the
Hebrews,” writes M. de Bonald, “was spread with their writings in those
parts of Asia and of Europe bordering on Palestine. It was not unknown
to the Greeks, and undoubtedly gave to the philosophy of Plato that
stamp of elevation and of truth by which it is characterized.”
But it is to Alexandria that we must turn in order to follow the
developments and modifications of Greek thought in the three centuries
which immediately preceded, and in the four centuries which followed,
the coming of Christ. Ptolemy I., during his glorious reign, that lasted
from 306-285 B.C., among other monuments with which he adorned the city
of Alexander, established the famous Museum or University of Alexandria,
with its vast library, which is said to have contained seven hundred
thousand volumes. It soon became the centre of intellectual life. There
the most renowned teachers in philosophy, poetry, mathematics,
astronomy, and the arts lived and taught. Thither would resort the
learned of many countries and religions. From the time of its foundation
to that of Proclus, the most important of the Neo-Platonics, who died
four hundred and eighty-five years after Christ, that school continued
to flourish, but then began to decline until every trace of it
disappeared before the invasions of the barbarian Mussulman. For a long
time the philosophy of the Museum consisted in commentaries on Plato and
Aristotle. But the Jews of the Greco-Egyptian city, which had become
after Jerusalem the most important seat of their religion, were destined
to give a new direction to these speculations; and from it arose that
peculiar school of thought denominated Neo-Platonism. It was an effort
made to reconcile together popular belief with philosophic thought, and
was common both to the Jewish and to the Grecian schools. The first
endeavored to blend Judaism with Hellenism, as the latter did to give a
logical and doctrinal foundation to heathenism.
It is not easy to fix the date when the movement began. Some trace it
back to Aristobulus. He lived under Ptolemy Euergetes, whose reign
extended from 247-221 B.C., and had been the teacher of that illustrious
prince, who, disdaining the coarse divinities of Egypt, addressed his
homage to Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, and sacrificed in the Temple
of Jerusalem, where he left marks of his munificence and of his piety.
It is true that Aristobulus appealed to Orphic poems in which Jewish
doctrines are found in support of the assertion that the Greek poets and
philosophers had borrowed their wisdom from the Jews. But this opinion,
which is shared by Aristeas and others in those ages, is not peculiar to
Neo-Platonism, and is by no means one of its characteristics. Others
pretend that the earliest traces of Jewish-Alexandrian philosophy are to
be found in the Septuagint. According to them, the authors of this
version of the Biblical writings into Greek, made by order of Ptolemy
Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.), knew and approved the principal doctrines
of this philosophy, and contrived to suggest them by apparently
insignificant deviations from the original text. But the passages on
which they rest their argument do not necessarily force us to admit this
conclusion. We find that they avoid representing God under sensible
forms; such ideas as God’s repenting, being angry, etc., are toned down
in their expression; in the same way euphemisms are used when there is
question of sensible manifestations of the Divinity; there are omissions
and explanations in the translation which are not authorized by the
original text. It is evident that the translators were influenced in
their work by the dread they had lest Jehovah should be assimilated to
the false divinities of pagan mythologies. All this competent critics
concede, but fail to see in the Septuagint a union of Greek
philosophemes with Jewish ideas. Be this as it may, it was at the dawn
of Christianity, when the Ptolemies had gone and the Romans came in,
that the Neo-Platonic movement was really inaugurated; and if it did not
originate with Philo, it was in him, at any rate, that it first attained
to importance. Philo belonged to a rich family of Alexandria, and was
born about twenty-five years before our era. He lived long enough to be
placed at the head of the legation to Caligula in favor of his people,
and to write an account of it in the reign of Claudius. What gives a
special interest to his writings is that they were composed at the very
last period of the Jewish nation, before the appearance of Christianity.
In religion a zealous Jew penetrated with the truth and goodness of the
Hebrew revelation, and a Greek by education—a man, besides, of high
intellectual gifts—it is no wonder that he should wish to blend in a
harmonious whole the two elements of his own being, and to fuse the form
of Greek thought with the substance of Jewish belief. In his endeavors
to realize this object Philo falls into grievous errors, and on several
points deflects from the Jewish faith into Greek views. “His love of
Greek philosophy,” says Allies, “had led him, as it seems unconsciously,
to desert the divine tradition of Moses and the orthodox Jewish belief.”
Here, then, we are concerned with two questions: first, What did Philo
contribute to Greek thought? and, secondly, How far his orthodoxy
suffered by its contact with it.
Philo introduced into philosophy two principles the result of which can
be traced throughout the whole subsequent periods of Neo-Platonism: the
principle of faith, or the need of a revelation in order to acquire the
knowledge of God and of the great problems relating to human life; and
the principle of grace, or of a special assistance from heaven in order
to make this knowledge practically available. Now, these principles had
been either entirely ignored by the Greek philosophers or had remained
without any significance to them down to Philo’s time. Reason was the
only light by which they were guided, and scientific thought their only
source of knowledge. We find in them no assumption of supernatural
revelation, no requirement of contact with the divine other than what
might be produced by the effect of thought itself. Greek philosophy in
its whole tenor was rationalistic. “On the contrary,” observes Allies in
his _Formation of Christendom_, “the religious and philosophical system
of Philo is based upon the idea of a revelation made to man by God, and
of holiness, the result of divine assistance. His conception of God is
derived to him from the theology of the Old Testament; it comes to him
as a gift from above, not as an elaboration of his own mind.” Hence it
is that his notion of the Supreme Being is so much above that given us
by Plato and Aristotle. The God of Plato is an ideal and metaphysical
God, not absolutely personal, not free; the God of Aristotle, or his
_Primum movens_, the first Motor, is mechanical, and holds in the
universe the office of the spring in a watch, by which all its parts are
moved; but the God of Philo is life, and, as he constantly calls him,
“the living God.” “He is one, simple, eternal, unoriginated, and
absolutely distinct from the world which is his work. His own being is
incomprehensible. We can only predicate of him that he is ‘He who is.’
He is most pure and absolute mind, better than virtue and better than
knowledge, better than the idea of goodness and the idea of beauty. He
is his own place, and full of himself, and sufficient for himself,
filling up and embracing all that is deficient or empty, but himself
embraced by nothing, as being one person and yet everything” (_Legis
Allegor._, l. xiv., quoted in Allies). His providence is fully
recognized. “Those who would make the world to be unoriginated, cut
away, without being aware of it, the most useful and necessary
constituents of piety—that is, the belief in Providence. For reason
proves that what has an origin is cared for by its father and maker. For
a father is anxious for the life of his children, and a workman aims at
the duration of his works, and employs every device imaginable to ward
off everything that is pernicious or injurious, and is desirous by every
means in his power to provide everything which is useful and profitable
for them. But with regard to what has had no origin there is no feeling
of interest, as if it were his own, in the breast of him who has not
made it. It is a worthless and pernicious doctrine to establish in the
world what would be anarchy in a city, to have no superintendent,
regulator, or judge by whom everything must be distributed and governed”
(_De Mundi Opificio_, apud Allies). In his work entitled _Quod Deus est
Immutabilis_ Philo ascribed to God absolute knowledge. “To God,” he
says, “as dwelling in pure light, all things are visible, for he,
penetrating into the very recesses of the soul, is able to see
transparently what is invisible to others, and by means of prescience
and providence, his own peculiar excellences, allows nothing to abuse
its liberty or exceed the range of his comprehension. For, indeed, there
is with him no uncertainty even in the future; for there is nothing
uncertain and nothing future to God. It is plain, then, that the
producer must have knowledge of all that he has produced, the artificer
of all that he had constructed, the governor of all that he governs.
Now, Father, Artificer, and Governor he is in truth of all things in
heaven and the world. And whereas future things are overshadowed by the
succession of time, longer or shorter, God is the Maker of time also....
For the world by its motion has made time, but he made the world, and so
with God there is nothing future, who has the very foundations of time
subject to him. For their life is not time, but the archetype and model
of time, eternity; and in eternity nothing is past and nothing is
future, but there is the present only.” In his conceptions of the
Godhead and of his attributes it is evident that Philo, as long as he
follows the light of revelation and keeps clear of the false notions
which he had drawn from Greek sources, rises far above the speculations
of the Greek philosophers on the same subjects. Plato himself in his
happiest moments never reached such heights. For Philo, God is goodness
and sanctity itself. By this he does not mean only that he is the
boundless ocean of all perfections, the archetype of all holiness and of
everything that is good, but that he is the origin of all human virtue,
which flows from him into his rational creatures as from its only
source. “It is God,” he writes in his _Allegories of the Law_, “who sows
and plants all virtue upon earth in the mortal race, being an imitation
and image of the heavenly.” According to him, man, in order to reproduce
in himself the divine resemblance in which holiness consists, must be
freed from the influence of his sensuous nature, the source of his
weakness and sinfulness. But in that nature no power is to be found to
transform itself, as no nature has the power of changing itself into
anything other than what it is. The consequence is that “he must betake
himself to a higher power, and receive from it as a loan that strength
which fails in himself.” The difference between this doctrine and that
of the older philosophers is palpable. When Plato and Pythagoras
recommend to their disciples the subduing of the senses as a condition
to reaching truth, they suppose that man can do it by his own efforts
and without any help from above; and this is precisely what Philo
denies. Furthermore, the knowledge of God, in which man finds his
perfection and supreme happiness, is not a mere ray of cold light, but
it leads to an intimate union with him, which is the ultimate point of
Philo’s system; and this union, as everything perfect in human nature,
is an immediate gift of God. Thus Philo would reach knowledge and virtue
by the gift of God, bestowed through his grace, whilst down to his time
Greek philosophy, adhering to its own principle, scientific thought,
would reach them by the exercise of reason alone.
It is impossible to overrate the influence which Philo, with his
powerful genius and vast erudition, must have exercised not only among
his co-religionists but among the Greek-speaking populations of
Alexandria and other countries. The most authorized writers have at all
times rendered justice to his great merits. Josephus says that he was “a
man illustrious in all things”; Eusebius extols “the abundance, the
richness, the sublimity of his style and the depth of his thoughts”; St.
Jerome, speaking of his works, says that “they are most remarkable and
innumerable”; St. Augustine praises him as “a philosopher of universal
erudition, whose language the Greeks do not hesitate to compare to that
of Plato.” Photius also testifies that “his writings gave him an immense
reputation among the Greeks.” This truly admirable man went, as did all
the great philosophers of antiquity, over the whole range of human
knowledge: history, ethics, jurisprudence, politics, metaphysics,
cosmogony, physics, mathematics—no department of learning did he leave
unexplored. In morals he rises far above Stoicism, and approaches to the
sublimity of the Gospel—a fact which probably was the origin of the
opinion entertained by some that Philo had embraced Christianity. But
the glaring errors which are found in his works on several important
points show that he was rather the disciple of Plato than a follower of
Christ.
No Christian would have held, as he did, the independent existence of
matter, which is the subversion of the dogma of creation _ex nihilo_
taught us by revelation. For Philo God is not, strictly speaking, the
Creator, but the _Demiurgos_, the Artificer and Arranger of the world.
He admitted the Stoic doctrine of the human soul being a fragment or
derivation of the divine Mind. He places the origin of evil in the
conflict of matter and spirit. Accordingly, the body is an absolute
contradiction to the mind, and, as such, the source of all evils. He
thinks that the earthly shell is a prison out of which the soul longs to
be set free. Thus it is not the abuse of free-will, but rather the
conflict between the flesh and the spirit, which is made the source of
evil. On these four points Philo’s ideas are identical with those of
Plato and the Greek school. Philo is further notorious for his
extravagant use of allegory in the interpretation of Scripture on the
one side, and in giving a moral sense to the Greek myths on the other;
besides, it is asserted that his doctrine on the _Logos_, or divine
Word, is erroneous, and has thrown considerable obscurity over his
otherwise elevated and exact conceptions of God.
According to the Alexandrian philosopher, the _Logos_, or the Word,
would be “an intermediary being between God and the world,” “the
first-born of God,” “the highest of all the divine forces or potencies,”
“a creature whose instrumentality he used to give existence to all other
creatures,” “a second God.” The _Logos_ is also the directing power of
the world, the divine Providence that governs all things. “The divine
Word,” he says, “flows down as from a fountain, like unto a stream of
wisdom, to inundate souls enamored with heavenly things. It is by his
Word that God gives to the children of the earth the knowledge of that
which is.” Finally, the Word holds the office of mediator between man
and God; in this regard it is “the Supreme Pontiff,” and may be called
“the Paraclete, or Consoler.” If we take some of these expressions in
their literal meaning—if the Logos is, properly speaking, a creature,
and yet a second God endowed, as it appears from the passages which we
have just quoted, with the attributes of the Divinity—there is no doubt
that Philo is at variance with the orthodox teaching of the Jews, who
were always averse to anything that would in the least go against their
belief in the unity of God. Creation in the first book of Genesis is
simply attributed to God: “At the beginning God created heaven and
earth,” and in the Book of Wisdom and other passages of Biblical
writings there is nothing to indicate that the Word, the Energy or the
Virtue of God, by which he created all things, is not identical with
God. In Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 14, Wisdom is said to have been created
before the world. But there is no question here of any creative act,
properly so-called. The meaning is that the Word, who is the Wisdom of
the Father, was produced from eternity by an ineffable generation; for
Wisdom is spoken of as existing before all time, and therefore is
eternal and God himself. The notion of the _Logos_ which is attributed
to Philo would likewise be at variance with that of his master, Plato.
The doctrine of Plato on the subject is contained in his theory of
ideas, the types, exemplars, or immutable reasons of things, present to
the mind of the Creator, which determine in him the essence of each
class of beings, and direct him in the production of his works. Did
Plato make of those types or ideas separate existences and substantial
beings distinct from God? Aristotle interpreted in this sense certain
expressions of his teacher. But in antiquity as well as in our own days
Plato found strenuous defenders who refused to admit that he ever
intended such an absurdity. For our own part, we believe that the whole
of his doctrine is faithfully exposed in the following passage of
Atticus, apud Eusebius, one of his most illustrious disciples: “Plato,”
he says, “had recognized God as the Father and Author, the Master and
Administrator, of all things. Understanding, by the very nature of a
work, that he who produces it must first of all conceive its plan in his
mind to give it existence afterwards according to that type, he saw that
the ideas of God were anterior to his works; that they were the
immaterial, purely intelligible, eternal, immutable exemplars of
everything that exists; that in them was the first being, the being _par
excellence_ from which all things derive their being, since they are
only in the measure in which they reproduce their types. Being fully
aware that those truths are not easily understood, and that language is
inadequate to formulate them in a clear manner, Plato discoursed of them
as best he could, opening the way to those who would come after him; and
absorbed in that consideration, making his whole philosophy converge
towards that object, he declared that wisdom consisted in the knowledge
of the divine exemplars, and that such was the science which would lead
man to his end or beatitude.” Again, if it be true that Philo conceived
the _Logos_ as a being distinct from God, his doctrine has nothing in
common with the Christian dogma of the Word as exposed in the Gospel of
St. John. The Word that was at the beginning, and by whom all things
have been made, was with God, and the Word was God. But it would not be
fair to condemn a man before having made honest endeavors to give to his
words the most favorable interpretation of which they are susceptible.
When Philo calls the Word “the first-born of God,” “the first creature,”
nothing forces us to attach to these expressions any other meaning than
that we give to similar locutions which we find in Scripture, and in
some of the early Fathers; as, for instance, St. Paul, Coloss. i. 15,
who, speaking of the Word, says that “he is the image of the invisible
God, the first-born of every creature”; and Clement of Alexandria, who
declares that the Word is “the first created wisdom.” Besides, it is
probable that Philo had some idea of the personality of the Word. We
must not forget that he based all his philosophical speculations upon
revelation as found in the Old Testament, and that he could not have
been wholly ignorant of the teachings of Christianity. When, therefore,
he uses the expression “second God,” or “the other God”—_alter Deus_—it
is possible that he intends to designate by it the Second Person of the
Blessed Trinity.
Be this as it may, certain it is that Philo’s ideas are found permeating
Neo-Platonism in that phase of it into which it entered in his time, and
which is also denominated Neo-Pythagoreanism, because in that school an
attempt was made to revive the doctrines and method of Pythagoras, as
well as his mode of life. It will be sufficient here to direct our
attention to Apollonius of Tyana, the chief representative of the
Neo-Pythagoreans of that period. He was a contemporary of Christ. His
life, written by Philostratus in the third century, is a
philosophico-religious romance in which the Neo-Pythagorean ideal is
portrayed in the person of Apollonius. He had visited many countries and
sojourned with the sages of India, whom he admired, and whose
pantheistic notions he adopted. His doctrine is no more that of the old
Greek philosophers, who considered reason as the only means of
knowledge. He pretends to be in direct communication with the Deity,
from which he derives light and strength; and in this immediate contact
with Heaven his whole being is purified and elevated to a degree of
power which gives him, as he pretends, the dominion over the forces of
nature. And as the soul is, according to him, a portion of the divine
intelligence, and the source of all good to man, so the body, which is
regarded as the prison of his higher nature, must be the source of the
disordered affections which gain mastery over his soul. All the ascetic
life of Apollonius is therefore directed to subdue this tyranny of the
body. This he must do first in himself and then in those around him.
There is no doubt that this tone of mind, which began to prevail at the
very time Christianity made its appearance in the world, was favorable
to it. Henceforth the several schools of philosophy shall be brought in
contact with Christian dogma and the contest carried on in the same
field. On the one hand, the Greek philosophers were in search of a light
which they did not possess; they were forced to acknowledge in spite of
themselves that the speculations and systems had failed to give a
solution to the most important problems with which humanity is
concerned; they had been made aware of the insufficiency of reason to
effect this purpose; they felt the need of a special assistance from
above as a check to the corruption of nature. And, on the other hand,
the champions of a new religion saw the necessity of becoming thoroughly
acquainted with the ideas of their opponents, in order to meet them on
their own ground and gain admittance into the very heart of pagan
learning. “In the truest sense of the word,” says a writer in the
_Dublin Review_, “Christianity is a philosophy, and, what is more to the
purpose, in the sense of the philosophers of Alexandria it was a
philosophy. The narrowed meaning that in our days is assigned to
philosophy, as distinguished from religion, had no existence in those
times. Wisdom was the wisdom by excellence, the highest, the ultimate
wisdom. It meant the fruit of the highest speculation, and at the same
time the necessary ground of all important practice. A system of
philosophy was, therefore, at that period, tantamount to a religion.
When the Christian teachers then told the philosophers of Alexandria
that they could teach them true philosophy, they were saying not only
what was perfectly true but what was perfectly understood by their
hearers. The catechetical school was, and appeared to them, as truly a
philosophical lecture-room as the halls of the museum.” It was in this
light that the Neo-Platonics must have looked upon such men as Clement,
Origen, and other writers of the Christian school. They listened with
deep interest to the words of those teachers, who, with a clearness and
authority which they had not known before, propounded doctrines that had
already found an echo in their hearts. “Your masters in philosophy,”
they were told, “are great and noble; but they did not go far enough, as
you all acknowledge. Come to us, then, and we will show you what is
wanting in them. Listen to these old Hebrews whose writings you have in
your hands. They treated of all your problems, and had solved the
deepest of them whilst your forefathers were groping in darkness. All
their light, and much more, is our inheritance. The truth which you seek
we possess. ‘What you worship without knowing it, that we preach to
you.’ God’s Word has been made flesh, has lived on earth, the Perfect
Man, the Absolute Man. Come to us, and we will show you how you may know
God through him, and how through him God communicates himself to you.
Asceticism and the subduing of the flesh by mortification are good and
commendable, but the end of it all is God and the love of God, and this
end can only be attained by a Christian.” Thus those very matters of
intellect and high ethics in which they especially prided themselves
were brought back to them with an intensity of light that made visible
the darkness which surrounded the teachings of their old masters.
It does not matter that Christianity found its most bitter enemies in
the ranks of Neo-Platonism. It was a great advantage for it to be
brought hand-to-hand with all forms of error. The battle raged for three
hundred years; but from the very first Christianity proved itself
superior to its antagonist by the influence which it exerted even then
on heathen philosophy, whose tone and temper were completely changed as
early as the time of Plutarch—that is, about fifty years after Philo.
That influence is unmistakable, as Champagny clearly shows in his
_Antonines_. Philosophy has become more pious, more worshipful. The idea
of one supreme God is more definite; God is spiritual, not material; he
is the pattern of every virtue, and his providence extends over the
world and man. The principles of morality are purer and in many cases
recall the spirit of the Gospel. “In the time of Severus,” says Allies,
“all the thinking minds have become ashamed of Olympus and its gods. The
cross has wounded them to death.” It is in vain that the later
Neo-Platonics and court philosophers strive to shelter retreating
heathenism in a last fortress. They only prepare the way for the
Christian faith, which they strenuously combat. When the Emperor
Severus, regarding with the eye of a statesman and a soldier that faith,
contemplates its grasp upon society, and decrees from the height of the
throne a general assault upon it; when his wife encourages Philostratus
to draw an ideal heathen portrait, that of Apollonius of Tyana, as a
counterpart to the character of Christ, tacitly subtracting from the
Gospels an imitation which is to supply the place of the reality, they
confess by the very fact the weakness of heathenism and the ascendency
which the religion of Christ had already obtained. Soon after Origen
could discern and prophesy the complete triumph of that religion. To
Celsus, who had objected that, were all to do as the Christians did, the
emperor would be deserted and his power fall into the hands of the most
savage and lawless barbarians, he replied: “If all did as I do, men
would honor the emperor as a divine command, and the barbarians, drawing
to the Word of God, would become most law-loving and most civilized;
their worship would be dissolved, and that of the Christians alone
prevail, as one day it will alone prevail, by means of that Word
gathering to itself more and more souls” (Orig. contra Celsus, apud
Allies).
Philo, therefore, in inaugurating the Neo-Platonic movement in
philosophy, was only fulfilling the mandate delivered to his people,
that of preparing the way of the Lord and disposing the nations for the
acceptance of the Gospel. The church succeeds the synagogue as the
divinely-accredited teacher of mankind; the long-cherished hope of the
Hebrews is realized, and the true kingdom of David, is established upon
earth to hold universal sway. The Gentile world, through the
instrumentality of the chosen people, had been made to share in the
great hope of a Redeemer, and within it aspirations had been developed
and longings were felt which philosophy was unable to satisfy; and at
the very time when its inanity appeared more manifest Christ reveals
himself to that world as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and
presented to it in his own person that form of virtue which Plato
thirsted to see embodied. Under his influence the face of the earth is
renewed; what human genius, with all its efforts, had failed to
accomplish, what such men as Plato, Pythagoras, and others could not
accomplish, even among a small number of adepts—this and infinitely more
was realized, not merely within the narrow circle of a few privileged
disciples, but among the masses, among the learned and the ignorant, the
rich and the poor, the rulers and the ruled, the powerful and the weak;
not in one corner of the globe, but all over the world, from north to
south and from east to west; not only in countries favored by great
intellectual aptitudes, where the arts and sciences flourished, where
civilization with all its refinements had reached the highest degree of
perfection, but in countries most abandoned, among savage tribes and
barbarous nations plunged in utter darkness. Surely a new principle of
life has taken possession of the earth—a divine principle which gives
rise to those heroic virtues which we see displayed in every rank of
society and in all climes, and by which the human race is transfigured.
This result was foretold centuries before; it is the new creation spoken
of by the Psalmist: “Thou shalt send forth thy spirit, and they shall be
created; and thou shalt renew the face of the earth” (Ps. ciii. 30). It
was preceded by a series of events so combined that it is impossible not
to see in them the supernatural action of divine Providence and the
profound wisdom of God, who makes use of apt means for the furtherance
of his end. Besides, there is a wonderful unity of truth discernible
from the very beginning, and which appears in an unbroken chain
throughout the course of ages. It is the same Word, the same light,
which was communicated to our first parents that we see increasing in
intensity until it reaches in Christ the splendor of the full day. The
first revelation of the Word to man is to be found in his natural
reason, which is pervaded with primary truths that are axioms in the
intelligence of mankind. “But on these,” says Cardinal Manning
(_Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost_), “descended other truths from the
Father of light, as he saw fit to reveal them in measure and in season,
according to the successions of time ordained in the divine purpose. The
revelations of the patriarchs elevated and enlarged the sphere of light
in the intelligence of men by their deeper, purer, and clearer insight
into the divine mind, character, and conduct in the world. The
revelations to Moses and to the prophets raised still higher the fabric
of light, which was always ascending towards the fuller revelation of
God yet to come. But in all these accessions and unfoldings of the light
of God truth remained still one, harmonious, indivisible; a structure in
perfect symmetry, the finite but true reflex of truth as it reposes in
the divine intelligence.” None of the much-boasted theories of our
modern rationalists gives us that unity which is the test of truth. The
restoration of our fallen race by the manifestation of the Word is the
leading principle of Schlegel’s _Philosophy of History_; and the
greatest minds, as St. Augustine and Bossuet, admitted no other in their
immortal works. How puerile, in comparison with their grand and luminous
conceptions, are all those systems which would fain explain the
destinies of man without God! To the dreamers who have invented them can
be applied the words of St. Paul: “They detain the truth of God in
injustice. They have become vain in their thoughts, and their foolish
heart has been darkened” (Rom. i. 18-21).
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE DIVINE SANCTUARY. A series of Meditations upon the Litany of the
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. By the Very Rev. Thomas S. Preston,
V.G., Pastor of St. Ann’s Church, N. Y. New York: Robert Coddington.
1878.
We welcome most gratefully this new book for the month of June. We hope
it will go a long way towards placing the observance of this month on a
level with that of the month of May; for the more the devotion to the
Sacred Heart increases among us the more abundant will be the graces it
always brings.
The book, however, is not intended for the month of June alone, but can
be used at any time, and particularly on the first Friday or Sunday of
every month. The author’s idea, in choosing the Litany of the Sacred
Heart and forming a meditation on each of the invocations to this
“divine sanctuary,” is a very happy one. He has divided the whole into
three parts, viz.: “The Glories of the Sacred Heart,” as shown in the
first thirteen invocations; “The Sorrows of the Sacred Heart,” as
contemplated in the next eight; and “The Offices of the Sacred Heart,”
as appealed to in the remaining nine. At the head of each meditation is
an appropriate passage of Holy Scripture.
As to the excellence of the meditations themselves, there is no need of
our dwelling on it. It is enough to know, from his past efforts, what
Father Preston is capable of in dealing with devotional subjects. This
kind of book is his peculiar _forte_. We are sure the little volume will
be highly prized by all lovers of the Sacred Heart, who will also find
the Litany itself, together with a beautiful Act of Consecration,
immediately following the list of contents.
GOOD THINGS FOR CATHOLIC READERS: A Miscellany of Catholic
Biography, History, Travels, etc. Containing Pictures and Sketches
of Eminent Persons, representing the Church and Cloister, State and
Home, etc., etc. With over two hundred Illustrations. Second
edition, with Additions. New York: The Catholic Publication Society
Company. 1878.
This large and very handsome volume is in every way a gem. It contains
more varied and interesting information—much of it of positive and
immediate value—than any work we know. It is called “second edition,”
but really it is a new volume, containing twice as much matter as the
original. Its sketches of Catholic biography, with excellent portraits,
are brought down to the present year. The last face that looks at us
from the pages is the beautiful one of the Rt. Rev. M. M. de St. Palais,
the lamented Bishop of Vincennes, who died in June, 1877. Near him is
the noble countenance of Bishop Von Ketteler. Dear old Father McElroy
looks out at us with his bright eyes, his head leaning against his hand.
Archbishops Bayley and Connolly and Bishop Verot are there. There is
also the leonine head of Dr. Brownson, and an excellent sketch of his
life. But it is dangerous to begin the list of these Catholic heroes and
holy men whose portraits and biographies are here given us. One lingers
by each one, for each one is full of attraction. A good sketch and an
excellent portrait of our late Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., catch the eye
as we open the volume of 638 pages. Interspersed with these biographical
sketches and portraits is every kind of interesting matter with pleasing
illustrations. No book could make a more acceptable present; for it is
indeed an exhaustless mine of “good things”—things, too, which young and
old will find equally good.
* * * * *
We are in receipt of a number of volumes and pamphlets, many of which
have been noticed and the notices are already in type, but owing to a
variety of necessities have been regretfully held over from month to
month. We trust to satisfy everybody in our next number. A word to
publishers: They are very apt to send in what are called “seasonable”
books on the eve of THE CATHOLIC WORLD’s going to press, and appear to
be surprised at not seeing a notice duly appear “in season.” For
instance, devotional works intended for the month of May come to us by
the dozen when the May number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD is already passing
through the press. If all publishers bore in mind, as some do, that the
magazine is to all intents and purposes prepared a month ahead of date,
there would be no surprise at the long delay which “seasonable” books
that arrive out of season have to endure.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXVII., No. 161.—AUGUST, 1878.
DR. EWER ON THE QUESTION, WHAT IS TRUTH?[125]
Ten years ago Dr. Ewer produced an argument proving the failure of
Protestantism by some solid reasons, which he avers have been met “not
by argument, but by a gale of holy malediction and impotent scorn,” on
the part of those who were included in his indictment. Dr. Ewer being an
accredited minister of a society whose official designation in its own
ecclesiastical law and before the civil law of the land is “the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States,” it was a very natural
inquiry whether he had not indicted his own church and himself as
participants in this general failure or religious bankruptcy, and was
not morally bound to abandon an institution denounced by himself as not
only insolvent but fraudulent. The late illustrious Dr. Brownson did the
reverend gentleman the great honor of reviewing the argument which he
had put forth, in the pages of this magazine. Not with malediction and
scorn, but with sober logic, he pointed out his inconsistent and
self-contradictory position, as a Protestant minister denouncing
Protestantism, and proved that the only possible logical alternative of
Protestantism, for one who admits the divine origin of the Christian
religion, is the genuine and pure Catholicism of the holy, Catholic,
apostolic Roman Church. To the many failures of Protestantism, not only
to construct any real form of Christian religion, but also to destroy
the actual and historical Christianity which it has renounced, Dr. Ewer
added another in his own person by failing to answer the arguments of
Dr. Brownson. Although strongly urged to undertake the task, he
absolutely declined to do so; and in presenting himself anew, after a
lapse of ten years, with the proffer of something which he is pleased to
call “Catholic Truth” as a substitute for Protestant error, he does so
under the great disadvantage of having failed to vindicate himself from
the charge of teaching what is only one of the Protean forms of the very
error which he so solemnly denounces as subversive of all faith or even
natural religion.
The present lecture, besides containing a renewal of the indictment of
Protestantism, and a restatement of the assertion that the truth
opposite to its errors is embodied in the infallible teaching of a
Catholic Church existing in his own imagination, has also what purports
to be a palmary refutation of the dogma of Catholic faith defined by the
Council of the Vatican respecting the infallibility of the Roman
Pontiff. Perhaps the lecturer considers that this is a sufficient though
late rejoinder to the arguments of Dr. Brownson in THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
Not so. Dr. Ewer’s Catholic Church has been proved to be an _ens
rationis_, an abstraction, and its imaginary infallibility to be mere
moonshine of the fancy. The logical idea of organic unity, of corporate,
Catholic, unerring teaching and legislating and grace-giving
hierarchical authority, representing Christ on earth from his ascension
to his second coming, has been demonstrated to have no counterpart and
expression in the order of real and actual existence, except in the one
church over which Peter presides in his successors. If it is proved that
the successor of Peter, with the concurrence of the bishops, clergy, and
faithful who obey his supreme authority, has committed an act of
self-stultification, this lamentable catastrophe affords no more ground
to Dr. Ewer and his little party to claim a gain of cause for their
_petite église_ than it does to the Rev. John Jasper to maintain the
triumph of his ancient and primitive doctrine that “the sun do move.”
Let us suppose that the utter failure of Protestantism is demonstrated.
Let us suppose, also, that the Church of Rome has erred. Does it follow
by any logical reduction that the party of Dr. Ewer, however respectable
in regard to learning and intellectual ability, morality and religious
zeal, is not also in error? By no means. The only conclusion which does
logically follow is that two-thirds of those who are called Christians
are very seriously in error regarding the true and real nature of the
Christian religion which they profess. It is possible that the remainder
may also have erred. The Greek Church may have erred, the Church of
England may have erred, the Oriental sects may have erred. Some of them
must have erred, for they disagree among themselves in regard to two
important matters, one as to what pertains to the essence and integrity
of Catholic faith, the other as to what pertains to the essence and
integrity of Catholic order. There is a general disagreement and
disunion, without any external criterion or legitimate tribunal of
judgment by which their differences can be adjudicated and terminated.
The appeal which some of our Anglican friends are wont to make to an
œcumenical council of Christendom is about as practical a method of
constituting such a tribunal as an appeal would be to Moses, to the
twelve apostles, to the Council of Nice, or to a special commission of
archangels. Failing all possible recourse to an actually existing and
infallible tribunal, we are thrown back upon the necessity of judging
for ourselves between the various systems and forms of doctrine
professedly Christian, on their intrinsic merits, and the rational
evidence which each of them can adduce in its own behalf. Whoever thinks
that we are really in this predicament will, if he holds firmly to
Christianity and at the same time follows the dictates of reason,
conclude that the various forms of Christianity are only
differentiations of the same generic ratio, and will seek for some
rationalistic or broad-church basis of reconciliation and union among
Christians. If he does not hold by some kind of strong, and dominant
conviction to the Christian religion, he will adopt the opinion of Mr.
Froude and many other men of the nineteenth century, that it is a
religion destined to become obsolete and be replaced by a new religion
or by nihilism. So far from liberating those who are “breast-deep in
torrents of scepticism,” Dr. Ewer plunges them with a stone to their
feet to the bottom of the sea of scepticism. He loudly proclaims that
there is no remedy for doubt, misery, and spiritual ruin except in the
coming and the remaining upon earth, in visible, audible form and
presence, of God made man, by his natural and mystical body, through
whose organs of human speech the truths of salvation are infallibly
declared to those men who are willing to hear. Yet he denies all the
evidence there is that any such mystical body of Christ, possessing and
exercising the requisite power of infallible speech, has continuously
existed, and does now exist, on the earth, giving to men an unerring
external criterion of judgment whereby they may discern Catholic truth
from Protestant errors. Having first swept away rational theology and
all certitude concerning revealed truth which can be gained from the
private study of the Scriptures, he annihilates the living, teaching
authority of the perennial church, and leaves nothing whatever which can
furnish a refuge from the universal sea of doubt, not even a Noe’s ark.
The land which he points out is a mirage, the ark of safety is a
phantom-ship. Man is justified, according to the gospel of Dr. Ewer, not
by faith alone, but by theory alone; not by the works of the law, but by
the plays of the imagination. With very great pomp of language he
exclaims: “In this God embodied in the one church, in this God
continuously visible and audible, therefore, behold, gentlemen, the
fountain of infallibility which you seek; for God himself cannot err nor
falsify.” This is an encouraging and promising invitation. Surely, if we
can find this divine oracle, this sacred tabernacle over which a pillar
of fire reposes all through the hours of this present darkness as a
token of the abiding of the Spirit of Truth within its sacred enclosure,
we may be satisfied, and if this bright cloud precedes we may march with
confidence through the desert toward the promised land.
Let us be sure that the Son of God has come into the world, that he has
founded a church with sovereign and unerring authority to teach his
truth and his law, that we know with certainty which is this church, and
it is obvious that all reasonable cause for doubting in regard to things
necessary to our interior peace of mind and our eternal salvation is
removed. Dr. Ewer’s theory is right and consistent so far. But he fails
to verify his own conditions, and does not designate any real and
concrete body which fulfils the exigencies of his theory. He asserts
that whoever holds his theory is a Catholic, and that there are three,
and only three, churches which are parts of the one body that, according
to the theory which he calls Catholic, must necessarily be identified
and recognized as the mystical body of Christ. He exhorts his hearers to
listen, “as the one Holy Catholic Church in all its parts, His own body,
raises its voice,” which he says is “the voice of God on earth, chanting
aloud that all the people in all time may hear, and be without excuse,
the unaltering, irreformable truth.” What is the sum and substance of
this truth? It is, he informs us, “the solemn, Catholic Creed of Nice,
Constantinople, and Athanasius.” This creed, moreover, he asserts, has
been chanted “in unison round and round the world in unbroken strain,
following the tireless sun, through the centuries and the millenniums,”
by his imaginary catholic church, a body existing in separate parts,
without any head or unity of organization. Dr. Brownson has demonstrated
that such a body cannot exist either in the realm of nature or in that
of grace, and we need not repeat his arguments. We simply affirm, at
present, that this unison of voices without discord or interruption,
chanting continuously from the apostolic age the three creeds above
mentioned, is a myth, and no historical fact. Dr. Ewer appears to rely
on it as the external criterion of Catholic truth, and if it vanishes,
as it must under the historical test, he is left to the mercy of the
torrents of scepticism, along with the other Protestants. The creeds, in
their external form, are a growth and a development from the germ which
first existed under a simpler form. The slightest acquaintance with
early church history suffices to show how long and violent a warfare was
necessary in order to establish the Nicene Creed with its test-word of
orthodoxy, “consubstantial with the Father,” as the permanent,
universal, and unchangeable formula of faith, even among those who truly
held and confessed the Catholic faith itself in regard to the true and
proper divinity of the Son. The additions made by the First Council of
Constantinople were not universally adopted, or the council itself
completely ratified and recognized as œcumenical, until at least seventy
years after its celebration.
If the doctrine contained in the creeds is regarded in itself,
prescinding from its verbal expression, the case is much worse for Dr.
Ewer’s theory. The Arian heretics were numerous and powerful, and they
were able to persecute the Catholics and lay waste the church in a
fearful manner. They were nevertheless Catholics, according to Dr.
Ewer’s definition. They professed to have the genuine, apostolical, and
primitive faith, and accused the Catholics of having altered and
corrupted it. They recognized the visible church, the apostolic
succession, the hierarchical order, the sacrifice and sacraments
instituted by Christ, and continued the outward show and appearance of
conformity to established Catholic usage, and even to the language of
the Fathers respecting the mysteries of faith. They were intruded into
the possession of the titles, churches, and other temporalities of many
of the most important episcopal sees, and sustained in their usurpation
by the civil power.
After the extermination of the Arian heresy came the Nestorians. They
also professed to be orthodox and Catholic, anathematized the Arians and
all the previous heretics, confessed the Nicene Creed, and, when they
were condemned and cut off from the church, so far from ceasing to
exist, they increased and flourished in a remarkable way for centuries,
and still remain as a separate organization with their bishops, who have
succeeded in an unbroken line from those of the fifth century.
The Eutychians or Monophysites received the decrees of the councils of
Nice and Ephesus, anathematized the Nestorians, and denounced the
Catholics as Nestorian heretics. After the Council of Chalcedon, which
condemned them, they persisted in maintaining their position as being
the genuine Catholics, and formed a new sect, which still subsists in
Egypt and the East. A century after the Council of Chalcedon, out of six
millions of Christians in the patriarchate of Alexandria, there were
only three hundred thousand Catholics, and in Asia Minor the divisions
and dissensions caused by the Monophysite and Nestorian heresies were so
great that the peace and stability of the Eastern empire were seriously
compromised. This was the occasion of an effort at reconciliation made
by the Emperor Heraclius, in concert with Sergius of Constantinople and
Cyrus of Alexandria, which brought in a new heresy, the Monothelite,
with new disorders, new persecutions, and another violent struggle for
life on the part of the Catholic faith, that resulted after fifty years
in a sixth œcumenical council, where the Monothelite heresy was
condemned. What reason has Dr. Ewer for excluding these heretical
Eastern sects from his comprehensive Catholic Church? They have always
received the creeds of Nice and Constantinople. They hold fewer heresies
than those which are admitted by the Church of England, and, apart from
their special heretical tenets, are in close conformity of doctrine and
order with the Greek Church. They always protested that they held the
primitive, Catholic faith, and that they were unjustly condemned because
they resisted the effort to impose new dogmas and additions to the creed
as terms of Catholic communion. The history of the whole period of the
first six councils completely falsifies and nullifies Dr. Ewer’s theory,
and shows his fanciful chant in unison to be as mythical a song as was
ever sung in the brain of a woman with a bee in her bonnet. It has a
very nice sound to appeal to the first six councils. Even the
Presbyterian General Assembly could vindicate their orthodoxy before
Pius IX. by loudly proclaiming their assent to all the dogmatic
definitions of the first six councils. But what do the majority of men
know about these councils? The same objections which Anglicans make
against the seventh, and Greeks and Anglicans alike make against the
councils of Lyons, Florence, Trent, and the Vatican, are of equal force
against those of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. The
number of bishops present in each of them varied from one hundred and
fifty to six hundred and thirty, out of a whole number of prelates
certainly much larger even in the beginning of the fourth century, and
estimated by the emperors themselves, who must have had better means of
information than any others at the time, as having increased in the
fifth century to a total of five or six thousand. The church went on
very well for three centuries without any œcumenical councils. When the
necessity arose, each council was sufficient for the present emergency,
but not sufficient for the new ones which arose and demanded new
councils and new decisions, of equal authority with the preceding. Each
one has met the violent opposition of the rebellious, the schismatical,
and the heretical appellants from the present, actual authority of the
church to some ideal tribunal of their own imagination, in the past or
in the future, which they can call what they choose, the Catholic Church
or the Word of God. Their word of God is their own private
interpretation of Scripture, or of Scripture and tradition together;
their Catholic Church is themselves and their particular party,
pretending to speak in the name of the church and to be her
interpreters. The whole is worth as much as the œcumenical council
forged by Photius, acts, decrees, signatures, and all, and promulgated
at large among the Eastern bishops, in support of his usurpation of the
see of Constantinople. The council of Photius was Photius himself, and
the Catholic Church of Dr. Ewer is Dr. Ewer and the other members of his
party. There is no really existing and speaking society which says: “I
am the church, composed of three parts, Roman, Greek, and Anglican.”
This is the language of certain individuals put into the mouth of an
imaginary society. The principle of individualism, which is the first
principle of schism and heresy, is just as really at the bottom of Dr.
Ewer’s theory as it is at the bottom of Chillingworth’s. It breeds the
same discord and disunion, and leaves men exposed to the same inroad of
scepticism. Controversies concerning what the church is, what her
authority and infallibility are, which are the true councils, which is
the true Catholic communion, who are the lawful pastors to whom
obedience is due, confuse and disturb the mind and conscience as much as
controversies concerning the true sense of Scripture, the true doctrine
of the Person of Christ, or the conditions of salvation in general.
There must have been an external criterion, a rule of determination, by
which the orthodox faith and Catholic communion could be discerned from
Arian, Nestorian, Monophysite, and Donatist counterfeits. That same rule
must exist now; it must be an infallible test of every kind of spurious
Christianity and spurious Catholicity. It is necessary that this rule,
if it be really sufficient, should determine not only between Caiphas or
Mohammed and Christ, between apocryphal and genuine Scriptures, between
Arius and Athanasius, Macedonius and Basil, Nestorius and Cyril,
Dioscorus and Leo, Pyrrhus and Maximus, but also between Calvin and
Bellarmine, Elizabeth and Pius V., Nicholas and Pius IX., Döllinger and
Cardinal Manning, Dr. Ewer and Dr. Brownson. It must determine not only
between church and no-church, Bible alone and Bible with apostolic
tradition, priest and preacher, but between bishop and bishop, the
usurpation and the just right of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the
pretence and the reality of infallible authority, the minimum and the
maximum of doctrine which must be accepted as pertaining to Catholic
faith. These are not non-essential matters or questions of debate
between theological schools. They relate to obligations of conscience in
which the salvation of the soul is involved, and are eminently
practical. The Spanish prince Hermenegild had such a practical rule, and
obeyed it by sacrificing his life rather than to receive communion from
an Arian bishop. Marie Antoinette had the same, and died without the
Viaticum rather than to receive it from a constitutional priest. An
Anglican living in St. Petersburg, and in doubt whether he was bound to
remain in his own sect, to join the Russian national church, or to
become a Catholic, or was at liberty to choose between the three, would
need the same rule. Who could decide the doubt for him? His own clergy?
The Russian clergy? Catholic priests? The judgment of any of these, as
private individuals, is not infallible. They can only help him to find
some rule under which they are personally acting, and which proceeds
from an authority superior to themselves. According to Dr. Ewer, neither
of these authorities is supreme or infallible in itself; it is only in
so far as they agree in transmitting the judgments of an authority in
abeyance, that they can furnish an infallible rule. This is no rule
which meets his case. They agree only in telling him that he must obey
the rule recognized by the first six councils. Where is that voice of
God which is audible to all men who will hear? Where is the embodied
Christ who will take him by the hand? What has become of the chant in
unison of the one, Catholic Church, musically uttering unalterable
truth? Suppose that the Christians of the first seven centuries had been
left without any better rule than this, what perplexity and unutterable
confusion would have been the result—quite as bad if not worse than that
which exists among our modern Protestant sects.
An extrinsic and infallible rule of faith must be one that in a
self-evident manner manifests itself as really extrinsic to those who
present it, and superior to their individual judgment, and it must be
universal. The teacher and the judge must speak in the name of a really
existing society which is actually one and universal, and in a manifest
identity with itself in the past, by unbroken continuity of life and
self-consciousness from the time of its origin in the divine institution
of Christ. The instructor of the one who seeks the truth must teach him
what the church thinks and commands, and give him a criterion of
certainty that she does think and command what he ascribes to her, so
that if he falsifies her teaching he will disclose and betray his own
deception in the very act of deceiving, like one who hands over a
package of money which had been entrusted to him with a letter
containing a description of its contents. Such a rule of faith, with its
criterion of certainty and of self-verification, without any doubt the
Catholics of the first seven centuries possessed. Their living and
immediate rule was a church really one and obviously one with itself in
its present and in its past. It declared itself to have always held and
meant just what it was now saying. The faithful believed and obeyed it,
because its continuity and identity from St. Peter and the apostles were
obvious by manifest signs and tokens which could not deceive them.
Heretics and schismatics could not successfully mimic the voice of the
true church. Their lack of continuity, _i.e._, apostolicity, of unity,
of Catholicity, and of sanctity as well, was obvious. Their counterfeits
were always put forth as the genuine coin of ancient stamp, but as coin
which had been hidden or defaced until they had discovered it, or
burnished it anew. The lawful issues of new coin from the old mint they
denounced as counterfeit or adulterated. Their very pretence of
returning to a kind of old Catholic doctrine more ancient and more
Catholic than that of the present church, was a sure, detective test of
their spuriousness. Continuity could not be in them, or universality, or
unity; because their only claim to a hearing, and their only
justification of their rebellion, implied that the church had not
preserved these notes unimpaired. They were self-contradictory, and
affirmed and denied the Catholic Church in the same breath. So likewise
their successors. The so-called Greek Church is a contradiction to
itself, in respect to its schismatical position, and a concrete
absurdity. The Anglican sect is not on a par with the schismatical and
heretical churches of the East in any way, and deserves no consideration
in the treatment of the question of the actual extension of the Catholic
Church. The theoretical church called Anglo-Catholic is an _ens
rationis_. We give it only a hypothetical position in our discussion, as
a possible society which might be organized in accordance with Dr.
Ewer’s theory, if there were one real bishop to undertake the
experiment. This hypothetical church is an hypothetical absurdity, as
the Greek Church is a real one. The absurdity consists in the
contradiction between the concrete and practical actuality of separate
existence as a partial and incomplete church, and the confession of
faith in one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church, having infallible
authority in faith and morals. If the one church continues to exist as a
complete, integral whole, there is no place for another partial and
incomplete church, and any society which exists under that name is
condemned by itself as an anomaly and a crime. If it does not exist, the
church has failed. There being no whole, there can be no parts. There is
no church at all of divine institution, no mystical body of Christ on
earth. There are only human organizations, each of which is changeable
and fallible. The profession of belief in the one, holy, Catholic, and
apostolic church is, therefore, a profession of belief in a falsehood.
_Mentita est iniquitas sibi._
In that part of his theory which is Catholic Dr. Ewer affirms as a
necessary consequence from the nature of God as a God of love, together
with the method which he has chosen for manifesting his love through the
Incarnation, that the Catholic Church must be really existing: “that God
has still remained, and will to the end of time remain, in a one,
undying, ever-fresh, amazing, organic, visible, audible, tangible, and
recognizable body of human matter, known as the mystical body of God on
earth.” Once more he says: “As Jesus Christ was the only being who dared
to call himself God, so Catholicity is the only Christian body that
dares to call itself infallible; that dares to begin its discourses, to
give its truth, to pronounce its judgments, and to pardon sin, ‘In the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’” This is
given as a token of the true church, the real possessor of infallible
authority.
From this it follows that the church whose supreme ruler is the Roman
Pontiff is the one, Catholic Church, complete and integral in itself,
and in no sense a compart with the Greek and Anglican churches as other
parts making up with it, as a composite totality, the Catholic Church.
The members of this church are on the same footing with the Catholics of
the earlier ages, and have the same rule. They recognize one church,
distinct and separate from all others, as perfect and infallible, with
its continuous series of œcumenical councils. This church, and this
church alone, dares to assume the exclusive name and prerogatives of
Catholicity, to proclaim itself infallible, and to command obedience to
its decrees as the necessary condition of salvation. The Sovereign
Pontiff of Rome, and he alone, dares to call himself the Vicar of Christ
and the Head of his entire mystical body, the church. But that most
illogical and inconsistent of men, Dr. Ewer, confronted by Pius IX. and
the Œcumenical Council of the Vatican, and feeling himself and his
pseudo-Catholicism smitten by their anathemas, suddenly drops his
Catholic disguise, and, showing himself in his true character as a
Protestant and a sceptic, cries out: “LET US EXAMINE.” We have no
objection to an examination. For a Catholic, to examine the dogmatic
decrees of an œcumenical council or of the pope in respect to matters of
faith, with an examination of doubt and hesitancy, is _ipso facto_ a
renunciation of his rule of faith and an act of apostasy. For one who is
in inculpable ignorance or doubt concerning the criterion of truth and
the proximate rule of faith, to examine with sincerity and honesty of
purpose is a duty as well as a right. Dr. Ewer puts himself and his
auditors into this position, as seekers, inquirers, who are invited to
“go back and start all over again—without a Bible, without a church,
without sacraments, without any religious notions—_and see where we
shall come out_.” An interesting exploration, assuredly! Dr. Ewer, and
those who follow his guidance, come out, by a tolerably short path, to a
logical position, which is the next one to a final term of the process.
Nothing remains to be determined, except the subject of the attribute of
infallibility, in its specific and individual being as really existing,
and representing the sovereign authority of Christ on earth. Even this
is determined in respect to the past existence of the body which is
recognized as the one, true church, and was assembled in the first six
councils. The one point to be examined is whether the body assembled in
the Council of the Vatican is identical with the one, true church
assembled at Nice, Chalcedon, and Constantinople, in œcumenical council.
If it is, the examination is terminated; the infallible church is found
really existing in the present, with the same specific and individuating
notes by which it is identified as existing in the past. If not, the
examination is equally terminated, for there is no other body even
ostensibly similar to this one which remains to be examined.
Consequently, Dr. Ewer and his followers have come out into a _cul de
sac_, or no thoroughfare.
Dr. Ewer, having examined the claim of the Vatican Council to be the
_Ecclesia Docens_, defining the Catholic faith with infallible authority
equal to that of the Council of Nice, does not merely dispute or deny
it, but scouts and ridicules it with most contemptuous language,
unsurpassed by any ever used by Arians or Eutychians against previous
councils and definitions. Its great dogmatic decree defining the
infallibility of the Roman Pontiff he vituperates as “this flagrant
instance of the fallacy known as ‘begging the very question at issue’;
an instance which is perhaps the sublimest in its presumption, and the
most absurd in its simplicity, that the world ever stood amazed at.”
This is a strong assertion and powerful rhetoric! But what we want is
evidence and logic. Has Dr. Ewer furnished any? There is some pretence
of an argument, and, such as it is, we will endeavor to sift its value.
The argument is briefly this. The dogmatic decree is the product of two
factors, the collective judgment of the bishops apart from that of the
pope, and the judgment of the pope himself. The judgment of the bishops
being confessedly not final and infallible in itself, it is the judgment
of the pope which must make the decree defining his infallibility final
and infallible. Therefore, he defines his own infallibility by the same
infallibility. He declares himself to be infallible because he is; the
reason why we are bound to believe is identical with the very object of
belief, _idem per idem_.
We will first point out the consequences to Dr. Ewer’s own theory from
the argument he has used against the infallibility of the pope, and show
its thoroughly sceptical tendency, and afterwards refute it in a more
direct manner. The infallibility of the church or of œcumenical councils
has never been defined by any of the councils acknowledged by Dr. Ewer.
It has always been taken for granted. Suppose that the Council of Nice
had explicitly declared this doctrine as a dogma of Catholic faith. It
would have affirmed the infallibility of a council as its own infallible
judgment, and the infallibility of this judgment itself would rest on
the infallibility of the church in council, the very thing defined, as
much as the infallibility of the judgment of Pius IX. rested on his own
declaration that he was infallible. It would be the same in the case of
the imaginary future council gathered from the three parts of Dr. Ewer’s
catholic church. The taking of infallibility for granted was just as
much a begging of the question, on the part of the _Ecclesia Docens_, in
her ordinary universal teaching and her solemn definitions, as if she
had expressly defined it. According to the same logic, the affirmation
of their infallibility and inspiration by the twelve apostles would have
been a begging of the question. It would have been a demand for belief
in their inspiration, because they declared that they were inspired.
Even so with our Blessed Lord. He declared that he was the Son of God,
and required absolute faith in his words because he was the Son of God,
and the very reason for believing his declaration rested on his actually
being the Son of God. It is exactly the same with the intellect and
reason of man. The demonstrations of reason rest on first principles
which are taken for granted. Why do you take them for granted, we may
ask of the intellect. Because they are evident to me. What is the proof
that what is evident to you is truth? I am intellect, and am made to see
truth? By what authority do you affirm that? By my own, because I am
intellect and reason. But I want an authority, extrinsic to you, as a
warrant that you do not err when you say you are intellect and reason,
and that what you call self-evident is really so, and not a mere
hallucination. There is none.
Let us go back to God himself. We believe God on his veracity, _i.e._,
because he is truth in his essence, his knowledge, and his manifestation
of the same to us. This veracity of God, which is the reason for
believing whatever he makes known to us by revelation, is made known to
us by God himself, and we depend on his truth for the certainty that it
is truth, that he exists, and that he has manifested to us the truth.
If, therefore, the declaration of the infallibility of the pope by the
pope himself is a logical fallacy because the infallibility of the
person and the act declaring it is implied and presupposed, there is a
logical fallacy at the bottom of all faith and all science, of the first
acts of reason and intellect, of the very idea of being and reality.
This is Kantian and transcendental scepticism and nihilism pure and
simple. Being and nothing are identical. We are swallowed by the abyss
of the unknowable, and the only fate possible or desirable for us,
phantoms of a nightmare, is to be swallowed by the lower abyss of
dreamless unconsciousness.
There is a real affinity between the pseudo-Catholicism of Oxford and
scepticism. The former breeds the latter, and has actually been
succeeded by it in the English universities and in many individual
minds. Its sophistical methods pervert the reasoning faculties and
undermine the basis of certitude. There is, moreover, a reaction caused
by the refusal to draw from premises which can only find their just
conclusions, their logical consequences, in genuine and complete
Catholicity, which drives men back upon a rejection of all Christianity
and all rational theology. As for the great mass of the present doubting
generation, they are disgusted and repelled, if they are not rather
moved to laughter and contempt, by the exhibition of such an illusory
and fantastic claim of authority, before which they are exhorted to bow
down. If Protestantism is a failure, and the authority of the Roman
Pontiff and the great councils which have been celebrated under his
presidency is futile, and the doctrine of the Greek Church is only
Catholic in so far as the Church of England agrees with it, and this
final measure of truth is only ascertained by taking the opinion of one
small party of individuals, most men will conclude that Catholic
authority is the most baseless of pretensions, and that Christianity
itself is a failure. It is very unwise for any man to attempt to play
the prophet, and assume to speak to men with a solemn air in the name of
God, in these days, unless he has very authentic credentials. The pope
can speak to the world as the Vicar of Christ, and receive some
respectful attention. Any Catholic priest preaching Catholic doctrine
has the pope, and the whole hierarchy, and many past centuries behind
him, to overshadow him with their majesty. But the world cares nothing
for what is said officially by the Patriarch of Constantinople or the
Archbishop of Canterbury, much less for Dr. Ewer, and others like him
who attempt to play the priest and imitate the Doctors of the church. In
the great controversies of the age they count as a cipher. Whatever else
the men of the coming age may do, they will not become Greco-Russian or
Ritualistic. The issue is between Rome and anti-Christianity. Our only
reason for noticing such a theory as that of Dr. Ewer is that numbers of
individual members of his communion who are personally worthy of all
respect are hindered by its speciousness from perceiving clearly the
truth over which it casts a haze, and that others are likely to be
prejudiced against the truth which it misrepresents and denies. It is a
pseudo-Catholicism. Those who imbibe its Catholic ingredient are
hindered from embracing the genuine Catholicity, toward which they have
a tendency. Those who assimilate its uncatholic and sceptical element
are hardened in their unbelief. We have said enough to show that it is
no substitute for pure Catholicity and no antidote against scepticism.
We drop this theory now out of sight, and during the remainder of this
article we shall present to the candid inquirer for truth whose mind may
have become confused by following the exposition of sophistry, a brief
counter exposition of the integral Catholic truth in respect to that
extrinsic, infallible criterion and rule by which it is ascertained with
certitude, and all Protestant errors, or errors in faith or morals of
any kind, are rejected.
In the first place, we repudiate utterly that extravagant _fideism_, if
we may call it so, which makes an extrinsic rule, an authority exterior
to the individual intellect and reason, and a faith or belief on
testimony or authority, whether human or divine, the ultimate and only
source and basis and rule of certitude in knowledge of the higher
truths. We can never begin with any such source and criterion, and of
course never progress and finish. Discursion of the reason, and faith as
well, must have an intrinsic starting-point, which for man is in both
the senses and the reason. We want no other light, and can have none, by
which to see light itself, or rather to see illuminated objects in and
by light. The intellect is a spiritual light. All men who have the use
of their senses in a normal and healthy condition, and likewise their
reason, see and feel and hear and understand and reason and know,
without doubting; and when they reflect, they are certain that they do
perceive sensible and intelligible objects. Each one knows this for
himself, independently of the rest of mankind, as well as by the
agreement and common sense of all. The intellect and reason of each one,
and the intellect of mankind in general, is that to which we appeal, as
containing the first principles and the intrinsic criterion of truth.
Whoever pretends to doubt these first principles, or asks for somewhat
above them and exterior to them, throws himself out of the rational
sphere, and with him it is useless to argue. By intuition and
discursion, by self-evident principles and demonstration, a great amount
of certain science, even in natural theology, is attainable. Belief on
testimony is rationally based on the evidence of the veracity of the
witnesses, and furnishes another great amount of knowledge. Besides what
is thus made metaphysically, or physically, or morally certain, there is
a much larger quantity of that which is probable, in philosophy,
physics, history, and all kinds of higher science. In respect to those
things which are made known by divine testimony, that is, by divine
revelation, the fact of the testimony is accredited, and made rationally
credible, by the motives of credibility attesting and authenticating the
revelation. The veracity of God is known by the light of reason. That
which is really contained in the revelation, however it is transmitted,
whether by books or by tradition, can be known in a great variety of
ways, like other facts and ideas of the purely natural and human order.
It is by no means absolutely necessary to prove the infallible authority
of the church before we can refute scepticism, false philosophy,
infidelity, or heresy. Christianity and Catholic theology rest on a
sound rational basis and can be proved to the reason of one who is
competent to understand the arguments. Revelation itself is absolutely
necessary only for the disclosure of truths which are above reason. And
these very truths can be demonstrated, not indeed by their intrinsic
connection with truths of natural theology, but by their extrinsic
connection with the veracity of God, through a logical syllogism.
Whatever God testifies is true; but God has testified the mysteries
contained in the Holy Scripture; therefore these mysteries are true. It
is only necessary to prove the minor, and the demonstration is complete.
The greatest part of the distinctively Catholic doctrines can be proved
historically, critically, and logically, without resorting to the divine
authority of the church. In great measure its human authority suffices,
together with extrinsic sources of proof. In this way many Protestants
have conclusively proved a great quantity of the truth contained in the
Christian revelation. Even infidels are able to perceive and to prove
that the religion established by Christ is the Catholic religion, and
that whoever believes in the divine mission of Christ, or even in the
existence of God, is logically bound to believe in the supremacy of the
pope and in all the doctrines defined by the Roman Church.
What, then, is the necessity of revelation? It is absolutely necessary
for the disclosure of truths above reason, and morally necessary for the
instruction of the great mass of men in all religious and moral truth,
in a perfect, certain, and easy way, adapted to their spiritual needs.
What is the necessity of an infallible authority in the church? It is
necessary as the ordinary means of applying this instruction
efficaciously and unerringly, in respect to all the dogmatic and moral
truths and precepts, with absolute and universal certainty, to the minds
of all men, in a simple, easy, and unmistakable manner, and of
determining finally controversies and condemning heresies.
A specious and fallacious objection is made on the very threshold of the
argument on infallibility to show that there is necessarily a begging of
the question from the start, and that some prior infallibility must be
assumed as a reason for affirming any infallible extrinsic authority
whatsoever. This is the very sophism we have previously brought to view,
and which is the very essence of universal scepticism. It is objected
that we cannot really identify and appropriate an infallible rule
without a previous infallible criterion, and that we cannot apply it
without the same criterion. The mind of man is fallible in determining
that there is an infallible authority, what is that authority, what it
teaches. But if I am fallible in the very judgment upon which rests the
infallibility of the criterion which I assume as a safeguard against my
own liability to error, I can never get beyond a fallible conclusion.
This is the very argument of sceptics and probabilists against physical
and metaphysical certitude. The senses are fallible, reason is fallible.
Men are sometimes deceived by trusting to their senses, to their reason,
to the testimony of others. Therefore we ought to doubt everything, or
at least to rest satisfied with probability and a kind of blind,
instinctive assent. We must substitute practical reason for pure reason.
This is all sophistry and false philosophy. Fallibility is not essential
but accidental in sensitive and intellectual cognition. It is a
deficiency of nature, not a natural incapacity for certitude. Some would
say that the intellect and reason are infallible within a certain
sphere, so that by reason the mind infallibly joins itself to the higher
infallibility of the church, and infallibly receives the truth from its
teaching. We think it more accurate to restrict infallibility to that
criterion which is absolutely and universally exempt from all liability
to the accidental defect of error. In respect to the senses and to
reason, we say they are fallible _per accidens_ and by a deficiency in
their operation. Nevertheless, we can be certain, in many cases, that
they do not and cannot fail to give us certitude through any such
accidental failure and deficiency. We can test their accuracy, as in
observing sensible phenomena, and in mathematical calculations. This is
enough to overthrow scepticism and probabilism. There is such a thing as
rational certitude, and this suffices for our purpose. By rational
certitude human reason can obtain, without any fear of error, its
infallible criterion. By the same it can receive and apply its
infallible judgments without fear of error. We are not analyzing
supernatural and divine faith, but the rational process which underlies,
accompanies, and follows faith with more or less explicitness and
completeness, and which is the preamble of faith for those who are not
yet in possession of Catholic faith, but are sincere inquirers. No one
is asked to grant any begging of the question of infallibility, or to
accept any proof of _idem per idem_, or to give unqualified assent to a
mere probability. The truth of Christianity, and the identity of
Catholicity with it, are proved with conclusive certainty by the motives
of credibility. The same proof which establishes the divinity of Jesus
Christ establishes the divine authority of the Catholic Church. This
authority is infallible because divine and supreme, and having the right
to command the firm, undoubting assent of the intellect to its teaching,
and the unconditional submission of the will to its precepts. The
authority of the church once established, its testimony to its own
character and prerogatives must be received as true. The divine mission
of Jesus Christ was proved by his miracles, and his own affirmation of
his divinity was thus made credible. The mission and authority of the
apostles are authenticated by his commission, and the church founded by
them is identified by the manifest notes of unity, sanctity,
apostolicity, and catholicity. The hierarchical organization of the
church, its principles of unity and government, the constitution of its
tribunals, and the respective attributions of the ruling, teaching, and
judging magistrates who preside over the whole or particular parts, must
be determined by its own traditions, laws, usages, and declarations. In
any matter of controversy respecting any of these things, the supreme
authority must decide without appeal. Find the sovereign authority to
which the whole church is subject by its organic law, and there can be
no further question. In every perfect and unequal society there is a
sovereignty which is considered as practically infallible, that is, as a
tribunal of last resort, from which no appeal can be taken. In a society
having divine authority to teach and judge in matters of faith and
morals in the name of God, this practical infallibility must be a real
infallibility in the strict sense of the term. From this principle
springs the reason and obligation of the recognition of infallibility in
œcumenical councils. They are supreme, because they contain all the
authority which exists in the church. Although the entire episcopate
numerically is not present in such a council, the authority which it
possesses is equivalent to that of the whole episcopate. The accession
of the suffrages of the bishops who are absent from the council supplies
what is wanting in respect to numerical quantity in the representation
of the whole body at the deliberations and decisions of the council.
Their tacit assent, which in due time becomes the explicit and formal
profession of complete concurrence, adds moral weight and invincible
force to the authority of the conciliar decisions. This is augmented by
the assent of the whole body of the clergy and laity. It is no matter
how numerous dissidents and recusants may be among bishops, clergy, and
people, or how long their protest and rebellion may continue. They
separate themselves from the true body, and are legitimately excluded
from it, and therefore their suffrages do not count. That unanimity
which is a criterion of truth is not a unanimity of Catholics, heretics,
and schismatics together, but of Catholics alone. There is requisite,
therefore, some certain mark by which Catholics can be discerned. The
Catholic episcopate, the Catholic priesthood, the Catholic people,
Catholic councils, Catholic creeds and confessions, the Catholic
communion, must be discriminated in some plain and obvious manner from
all their counterfeits, however great the semblance of reality which
these counterfeits bear on their surface. The test of separation from
the true faith and the true church, and the authority which judges of
the fact of separation, must be clear and indubitable. The œcumenical
council must have its complete and legitimate authority, in which the
authority of the whole church and the whole episcopate is concentrated
and applied, independently of the assent or dissent of any number of
individuals, even bishops or patriarchs, who are not actually concurring
in its judgment. It must have power to command assent and to punish
dissent, or its authority is nugatory. It is a plain, historical fact
that the supremacy of the Apostolic See of St. Peter gave to the
episcopate its unity, and to the episcopate assembled in general council
its final authority, from the first age of the church, and from the
beginning of its action through œcumenical councils. The councils were
not complete without the pope, and it was his ratification which
confirmed and made irreformable their judgments.
The Council of Nice and the Council of the Vatican are precisely alike
in this respect. The bishops possess now, as they have always possessed,
conjudicial authority in deciding matters of faith with the pope,
whether in or out of council, as they are, in all other respects, _jure
divino_ co-regents with him of the universal church. But they do not
share in his supremacy and sovereignty, even though they may be bishops
of apostolic sees and have patriarchal jurisdiction. He is the supreme
judge, as he is the supreme ruler. As such, his right to judge in
matters of faith, without the aid of a general council, as well as to
make laws and exercise all the plenitude of jurisdiction, has been
acknowledged by all the œcumenical councils and by the whole church in
every age. It is false to say that the dogmatic decree of the Council of
the Vatican made any change in doctrine or law respecting the authority
of the pope over the episcopate, whether assembled or dispersed, and
over the universal church. The Council of Florence, to go no higher,
defined the plenitude of his power. The Creed of Pius IV., to which
every bishop, and every particular council since Trent, has been obliged
to swear assent, proclaims the Roman Church “The Mother and Mistress of
Churches,” denoting by the words “Magistra Ecclesiarum” not supremacy in
government but in defining and teaching doctrine. The undoubted
authority of the pope to teach and define doctrine by his apostolic
authority, to condemn heresies and errors, and to command not only
exterior but interior obedience and assent even from bishops, was
universally recognized before the Council of the Vatican assembled.
Appeals from his judgments to an œcumenical council have been forbidden
for centuries past, under pain of excommunication. The infallibility of
the pope in his decisions _ex cathedra_ is a necessary logical deduction
from his supreme authority in teaching and judging. It is false to say
that it was doubtful before the Council of the Vatican defined it. It
has been implied and acted on, as a fundamental principle of the
Catholic Church, from the beginning. Some Catholics doubted or denied
it, and the church wisely tolerated their error for a time, as she
tolerated the Semi-Arians, awaiting the opportune occasion of destroying
the error without damaging the cause of truth and the salvation of her
children. That some few bishops at the Council of the Vatican still held
to the Gallican error, that it was taught by a few professors and
learned writers, that it was held by a small minority of the clergy and
educated laity, and that a still greater number were not clearly aware
of the true and Catholic doctrine, does not prejudice the case in the
slightest degree. All these were bound as Catholics to recognize the
infallibility of the definition solemnly promulgated by the pope with
the assent of a majority of the bishops. Those who refused were
excommunicated as heretics. The pope, together with all the bishops,
clergy, and faithful of the Catholic Church, are united in the
profession of the faith as defined in the Vatican Council, precisely as
they were united in the profession of the dogmas defined at Nice,
Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople, at Florence and at Trent. It is
absurd to deny to a tribunal competent to define with metaphysical
accuracy the most abstruse truths concerning the trinity of persons in
the Godhead, and the divinity and humanity of the Incarnate Word, an
equal ability to determine the attributions of the distinct parts of the
Catholic hierarchy, and to define clearly how the infallible church is
constituted in respect to the relations between her head and members. It
is absurd to recognize the Council of Nice as infallible, and to deny
the infallibility of the Council of the Vatican. They rest upon the same
basis, the divine constitution of the Catholic Church in the episcopate
as the _Eccelesia Docens_, with authority to teach and to command
assent, under the supremacy of the successor of St. Peter in the Roman
See. This is not an arbitrary authority to impose any opinion which may
happen to command a majority of suffrages and receive the sanction of
the pope. Neither is it an original authority, founded on inspiration,
to propose truth immediately revealed. It is authority, in the first
place, to deliver authentic testimony of the faith handed down by
tradition from the beginning and continually preserved in the church,
but especially in the Roman Church. It is authority, in the second
place, to interpret and declare the true sense of all past decrees and
decisions, of the general teaching of the church in past ages, of the
doctrine of the Fathers and Doctors of the church, and of all records in
which evidence is found of the traditional doctrine derived originally
from the apostles. In the third place, to interpret and judge of the
true sense of the Holy Scriptures, the principal source from which
knowledge of revealed truth is derived. Finally, to declare the revealed
dogmas contained in the Written and Unwritten Word, in Scripture and
Apostolic Tradition, in clear and precise terms which are fit and proper
to express them intelligibly, that is, to define dogmas of faith, and to
require universal assent to these definitions under pain of anathema.
The inerrancy, or infallibility, is a security from the accident of
error in these dogmatic definitions, which results from a supernatural
and divine assistance, overruling the conclusions of the human judgment
which have been reached by a human and rational process, so far as
needful, in order that they may not be faulty either by excess or defect
as an exact expression of the revealed truth. This divine assistance is
not given exclusively to the pope as an individual, to regulate the acts
of his own mind, in thought or investigation regarding the revealed
truths. It extends itself over the church universally, and over all the
processes and methods by which the doctrines of revelation are preserved
and developed in her living consciousness, and proclaimed through her
organs to the world in their integrity. In the councils of the church it
is by the assistance of the Holy Spirit to the deliberations of the
bishops and theologians, as well as by his overruling direction of the
exercise of his office of supreme judge by the pope, that the result is
reached in the solemn and final decisions. This result is not a blind
determination, a passive reception of an impulse superseding reason. It
is a rational certitude, an enlightened judgment based on motives which
are convincing and conclusive. It has the highest human authority, apart
from the divine sanction which confirms it. When the prelates of the
Vatican Council presented the dogmatic decree defining the infallibility
of the pope, to Pius IX. for his sanction, history, theology, the
consent of Fathers, Doctors, councils, and Catholic Christendom, and the
Holy Scriptures as interpreted by a series of the most learned and holy
men who have adorned the annals of the church, demanded through them the
solemn confirmation of this decree. Pius IX. was called upon to declare
the tradition of the Roman Church, the doctrine of his predecessors, the
principle upon which the Holy See had always acted in defining faith and
condemning heresy. He was asked to complete and confirm by his supreme
authority the explicit or implicit judgment of nine-tenths of the
Catholic episcopate. The absolute finality and divine authority of his
judgment was not dependent upon his personal assertion of his own belief
in his infallibility, as its support. His right and power to determine
that the decree of the council should be final and irrevocable were
beyond question or controversy. The fact that, by virtue of his right as
Vicar of Christ, he defined something respecting the nature and extent
of that right is irrelevant as an objection, and to make use of it as
one is a sophistical artifice. If Almighty God is credible when he
declares his own veracity, if Jesus Christ is credible when he declares
his own divinity, the Vicar of Christ is credible when he declares his
own infallibility. If God is God, he must be veracious; if Christ is
Christ, he must be God; if the Vicar of Christ is his Vicar, he must be
infallible. God does not command our belief without giving us evidence
that he is God; Jesus Christ does not require our submission to his
divine authority without giving us evidence that he is the Son of God;
the pope does not exact our obedience to his infallible judgments
without giving us evidence that he is the Vicar of Christ and the
Vicegerent of God on earth. The Catholic religion makes no demand for
irrational assent to anything. It is not mere logic and philosophy, but
it contains both in their ultimate perfection, and will bear the most
rigorous rational examination. It is logically consistent and consequent
throughout, from its first principles to its last conclusions. There is
no other religion or philosophy which is so, and the most illogical of
all is pseudo-Catholicism.
Footnote 125:
A lecture by the Rev. Dr. F. C. Ewer, “Catholic Truth and Protestant
Error,” reported in the New York _Tribune_ of May 11, 1878.
CHILD-WISDOM.
A little maiden, dear through kindred blood
And loving from her very birth begun,
Stood at my side one summer afternoon
And hearkened quiet stories: bits of verse
That told of shipwreck and of strong sea-birds
That rode on sunny waves or beat their wings,
Storm-driven, ’gainst the sea-washed beacon-light.
Delighting in sad tales, wide-eyed she gazed,
Yet fearing, half, their ends might be too sad;
Still, bidding e’er, with doubtful joy in grief,
The repetition of each dolorous strain.
Then, choosing ’mong my books some pictured page,
She took my Roman missal on her knee,
Turned o’er its many pages one by one,
Seeking the prints that there lay interleaved,
Still patient turning as with conjurer’s touch
To win a richer harvest than she found.
From these oft-questioning, full-budded lips
No _ave_ e’er had dropt in that sweet faith
That holdeth brotherhood with Bethlehem’s Babe
Blessing from Mary’s knees—true, guileless faith
That, suing so God’s Mother, dares to share
With Him dear claim unto her mother-love.
The thoughtful maiden’s little, childish life
Had grown ’mid alien faith where men half feared
To honor her whom God hath honored most,
Even while cherished they as solace sweet
Through sorrow’s hours, and sickness’ length of days,
Some picture of the Maid Immaculate
With heaven-bent eyes and meekly-folded hands,
’Mid luminous clouds, the cherubs at her feet—
The sinless Maiden dowered with quenchless grace,
Filling earth-weary hearts with rest and trust
By the mute strength of her soul’s purity.
And knew the little child of Jesus’ name—
By reverent mother and much-loving aunt
Told the sad story of Jerusalem’s loss.
So, still with constant question turning o’er
My pictured hoard, she begged that of its wealth
Some might to her be given, choosing first
What brightest shone with color deep and rich,
And, though, because to each least line there clung
Some precious thought, her question oft denied,
Persisting ever; till at length were found
Some little prints, less treasured, at her will.
One, holy Joseph, with enraptured gaze,
The blossoming palm of justice at his side,
The Sun of Justice shining on his arm;
Another, our dear Mother Undefiled
Clasping in loving arms her Child Divine;
This favor found, but gave not perfect joy,
Since all uncolored, and so lacking worth
In ever-longing gaze of wide gray eyes
That pleaded softly, while the small child-lips
Begged that at least the little plain black print
Might have some color sweetness on it set,
Winning so heightened beauty as complete
As the bright pictures that she might not have.
The missal’s store no longer coveted,
It was laid by; the fairy colors brought
That should with simple touch the magic work
That might for all that wealth denied atone.
Expectant stood the little maid demure,
The round cheeks bent intently o’er the work,
The eyes drawn very near to closely watch
Each line of added joy the swift brush gave.
Clothed was the Mother in her cloak of blue,
And crowned the Child Divine with halo wide
That in its golden light still sadly bore
The shadow of his cross. With lesser glow
Was drawn the shining ring that loving wreathed
The Queen of Grace, crowned fairest in her Son.
Not so the little maid would have it done:
Just such bright halo cruciform must shine
Round Mary’s head, and spreading, too, more wide
Than his, her Child’s—his Mother, was she not?
More near the round cheeks drew: protesting lips
Would have the Mother with His glory crowned.
Telling the little one how God alone
The nimbus wears wherein is lined the cross,
I traced along the Mother’s simpler ring,
With gilded brush, a circle of fair stars
That in the asking eyes by far outshone
The shadowy cross’s sorrow-dimmed halo.
And so the maiden was well comforted,
And bore in triumph her much-prized spoils
Of that still, sunny afternoon’s calm talk
And pictured pages of my holy books.
And I a fine-wrought, warm-hued picture kept
That looked from innocent eyes of truthful soul
With child-wise lips and pure, unconscious heart,
Sweet witness bearing to our Mother’s state—
God’s stainless Mother with his glory crowned,
And in his sorrow sharing for our sake.
PARISIAN CONTRASTS.
THE PARIS OF 1871 AND THE PARIS OF 1878.
PARIS, May 22, 1878.
Scenes and sensations there are in life which seem to cut themselves
into the soul as diamond cuts into glass, and on May 22, 1871, occurred
one of this kind. On the afternoon of that day I was sitting on the
balcony of a house in London with a large and merry party watching the
“return from the Derby” up Grosvenor Place, every house and balcony in
which was similarly draped in red and filled with bright faces and
brighter dresses, with youth, beauty, and fashion, when a friend
appeared amongst us, sad and solemn, come from his club in breathless
haste, evidently burdened with some important news. In a few seconds a
thrill of horror ran through the lively circle, for he had announced
that the “Tuileries was burning! Paris was in flames!” Never shall I
forget the sensation. All at once the countless carriages below, full of
ladies and children, ranged in a line along the street; the
four-in-hands coming back from Epsom, driven by, and filled with, the
reigning “hopefuls” of the “Upper Ten,” whose faces as they passed
betrayed the varied effect of the race on purse and betting-book; the
dust-stained inmates and blue-veiled coachmen of the open landaus and
hansoms, with their emptied picnic-baskets slung behind; the serious
countenances of some, the smiling features of others; the
thousand-and-one comic-tragic incidents of the motley multitude which
make the return from this annual British Olympic game so celebrated—all
suddenly faded from our view, for the eyes of the soul became transfixed
on the appalling scenes then occurring in Paris, and their possible
consequences caused all hearts to feel sick with anxiety and dismay.
_L’imagination travaille_, it is true, at such moments, and is prone to
exaggerate; but had not the Versailles troops succeeded in entering the
city, our fancy would in no way have outstepped the reality. Until that
day all had believed themselves prepared for the worst. The murder of
the archbishop and his martyred companions had sorely grieved mankind,
and a repetition of the guillotine scenes of the Reign of Terror we felt
might any day occur; the idea was not unfamiliar, but so wholesale an
instrument of destruction as petroleum, such demons has _les
Pétroleuses_, had never entered into our wildest calculations. “The
terrible year,” as the French have since so aptly named it, 1871 most
truly was, not only for them but for the thinking world at large, who,
from the universal confusion, the ungoverned passions, the
fast-increasing atheism, had need of a confidence in Providence,
supernatural in the highest degree, not to lie down and die of sheer
despair.
Eighteen months later I passed through Paris on my way home from
Switzerland, but so dolorous was the impression that I had fain leave it
in a couple of days. Ruin, desolation stared one in the face at every
step, and the smell of petroleum seemed to haunt one at every turn. The
blackened shells of the historic Tuileries, of the beautiful Hôtel de
Ville, the Conseil d’Etat, the Ministry of Finance, the Gobelin tapestry
manufactory with its art treasures accumulated there during the last
three hundred years, the blank in the Place Vendôme caused by the
destruction of its splendid column, the felled trees in the Bois de
Boulogne, and the complete annihilation of St. Cloud, town and palace,
were sights which deprived us of all happiness during the day and of
peaceful rest at night. Not less melancholy was the effect of the sad
countenances of the inhabitants. The elasticity and cheerfulness which
had formerly seemed to be a component part of Paris air was gone, and in
its place one only heard tales of their sufferings in those days of
anarchy, of the Pétroleuses seen gliding stealthily through the streets,
of the petroleum strewn round St. Roch and the chairs piled up in the
nave of Notre Dame, so that both churches might be set on fire, when the
troops providentially entered just in time to prevent this and many
other wicked designs being carried out. Instead of the brightness one
remembered of yore, people seemed to have a suspicious dread of their
neighbors, and veiled communism undoubtedly still lurked even in the
best _quartiers_. One notable instance of the kind will never be effaced
from my memory, and even now, though mayhap unjustly, makes me view
Parisian cabmen with anything but affection.
My friend and I, feeling dejected and oppressed by sad thoughts, one
morning determined to indulge our feelings by a kind of pilgrimage to
the scene of the massacres, especially as we had known and revered the
sainted archbishop at the time of the Vatican Council in Rome. Calling a
cab, therefore, on the Boulevard des Capucines, we quietly desired the
grinning coachman to drive us to the Rue Haxo. In an instant his
expression changed to one of sturdy anger. He knew no such street; had
never heard of it before; could not possibly take us there. Perceiving
at once the spirit we had to deal with, and that he had divined our
object, no other cab, moreover, being within view, we insisted no
further on the point, but tranquilly told him to drive instead to La
Roquette—the prison where the unfortunate victims had been confined.
Knowledge of so large a place we knew he could not deny, and, trusting
to our own general idea of its position, we felt satisfied when he
apparently started in that direction. However, on and on we went, in and
out of lane and street, without seeming to approach the object of our
search, but as we proceeded soon found ourselves amongst a most
forbidding population, men and women looking stern and sulky as we
passed, and exchanging glances with our driver, who appeared known to
many, while on more than one window were the ominous words, “Ici on vend
le pétrole!” An involuntary shudder seized us, not diminished on
reaching an open height whence we beheld La Roquette in a distant part
of the town, and our horse’s head turned exactly the opposite way. The
truth suddenly flashed upon us. Our Communist driver, possibly one of
the undetected incendiaries or murderers himself, calculating on our
ignorance, while unable to plead such on his own part, had cunningly
outwitted us by driving in and out toward a different point, whither
doubtless he would have gone on indefinitely but for our unexpected
discovery. It was too dangerous a neighborhood in which to quarrel with
him, even though but mid-day; therefore, merely telling him that we had
altered our intentions, we tranquilly desired him to return to our
original starting-point on the Boulevard des Capucines. Most curious was
it then to note the same instantaneous change of countenance as before,
but this time to an exultant expression as undisguised as the sulky mood
of the previous hour. And how could we wonder at it? For had he not
succeeded in defeating the object we had in view, and, moreover,
inspired us with so much fear that we sighed to get away from such a
population and never breathed freely again until safely back in the more
civilized quarters? Our courage, however, then revived, and, determined
not to be altogether conquered, we bade him turn aside and stop at the
_ci-devant_ Hôtel de Ville. Incredible as it now sounds, again he
feigned ignorance, then pretended to have lost his way, and at length,
when we forced him to “land” us there, the scowl and growl he honored us
with made us realize, more than any description ever could, what such a
being might be if uncontrolled, above all if multiplied indefinitely.
* * * * *
To-day, the 22d of May, 1878, as I stand in the new building on the
Trocadéro and behold the scene before me, thinking of this recent past,
I am tempted to doubt my own identity. Paris—the same Paris that was in
flames on this day seven short years since—now lies, like a vision of
beauty, outstretched around; the pretty Seine winds beneath its
beautiful bridges, the countless boulevards are thick in shade and
perfumed blossoms, the then unfinished streets finished, the scars and
wounds well-nigh (though not completely) removed, all faces bright and
people civil, and the whole city still hung with the thousand flags
spontaneously hoisted on the opening day of the Exhibition, when England
and America were everywhere given the posts of honor beside the
tricolor. Opposite, the huge main building of this same Exhibition,
standing on the Champ de Mars, is crowded with its fifty and sixty
thousand daily visitors;[126] the gardens between it and this Trocadéro,
connected by the bridge of Jéna, are covered with a moving mass of all
nationalities, while the Spanish restaurant, Turkish kiosk, Chinese
“summer palace,” English buffet, Hungarian cafe, dotted with others
around the grounds, tell of peace, and of a national revival
unparalleled for its rapidity in the history of the world.
And what subjects for deep thought, what food for philosophic
meditation, as one gazes at this glorious landscape, and from the hidden
recesses of one’s memory spring forth recollections of the past few
years!
My own acquaintance with this Champ de Mars dates from 1865, when in the
August of that year I here witnessed a review of fifty thousand men in
honor of Don François d’Assise, King Consort of Spain. On this last 1st
of May, 1878, the same royal personage, long since classed amongst the
_ex’s_ residing in this capital, walked beside the Marshal-President,
MacMahon, and the Prince of Wales in the procession which opened the
Exhibition, and it were but natural to presume that thoughts of his
previous visit must now and then have flitted across his royal brain. On
that former occasion military of all arms lined the sides of the then
arid square, while the imperial party advanced from the Porte de Jéna up
its centre to a tribune in the Ecole Militaire. First came the empress,
beautiful and popular, loudly cheered as, in her open carriage, she
passed along the lines; next appeared the little Prince Imperial, not
more than nine years old, riding far in front quite alone on his tiny
pony, followed by his father, the emperor, and his royal guest, Don
François d’Assise, escorted by an apparently brilliant gathering of
distinguished military men. No prophetic eye was there to point out
those who in brief time were to court the national defeat, or whose
names would soon become bywords for corruption and incapacity.
Nor in the large mass of soldiery who required two hours and a half to
march past, albeit in quick time, could any one discern the possibility
of coming gigantic disasters. Alas! alas! what reputations have since
then been blown into thin air, what calculations dashed to the ground,
what history “acted out,” fearful suffering endured, theories exploded!
Such thoughts are overpowering—sufficient to make the giddiest spirits
ponder. And such, in truth, has been their effect of recent years in
France; for, side by side with the marvellous material resurrection of
this energetic nation, its religious revival has grown to astounding
proportions. Not that we ever can admit with many passing observers that
the French people were so completely devoid of religion as it has been
somewhat the fashion to affirm—and on this point we thoroughly agree
with the article by an eloquent Protestant writer in the _Blackwood_ of
last December—but the terrible events of 1871 have made the most
frivolous more sober-minded, forced many an indolent mind to reflect,
and from thoughts have made them now proceed to acts, to good works and
alms-deeds. Above all they seem to have learnt the necessity of
expiation and of prayer, and the whole Catholic portion of the French
community since then have fallen upon their knees and endeavored to
pray. Their pride, it is true, has been humbled, but they have taken the
lesson properly to heart, and appear to have realized the truth that in
all things, human as well as divine, “in order to live we first must
die,” and that without supernatural aid even humility itself cannot be
acquired.
And here it must be noted that mortifying as the defeat by the Prussians
has been to French pride, it never could have produced the permanent
effect on their characters which has been achieved by the frantic
outbreak of the Commune. This it is which has so thoroughly sobered the
entire nation and made them feel that every one must combine as against
a common enemy. The republic, too, whether destined to last or not, has
been productive of one incalculable service in depriving all its
citizens of the possibility of shirking individual responsibility by
throwing the blame, as heretofore, of every failure on some supposed or
real despot; so that, while they have arisen from this death-struggle
wiser and better men, Frenchmen now see the necessity, almost for the
first time in their history, of taking an active part in public affairs
and putting their own shoulders to the wheel.
But leaving these reflections, let us turn to the Champs Elysées and
take a seat beneath its trees. What a contrast between the May of ’71
and this one of ’78! That all terror and woe, this one all joy and
contentment. French mothers with their _bonnes_ and babies are in groups
around far and near, mingled with foreigners of all sorts and
nationalities. Faultless carriages pass by, drawn by magnificent,
high-stepping horses, of a size and breed formerly unknown in France,
and which make many an Englishman exclaim with wrath: “This is the way
in which all our horses are taken out of our country!” Doubtless he is
right, though only to a certain degree; for the perfection to which
horses now attain in France is said to be mainly due to the climate,
which has been found to suit equine nature in a way undreamt of some few
years since. Thus the breed, when once imported, is improved on French
soil, and easily accounts for the multitude of fine horses at present
met with all over Paris. This fact, however—together with the taste for
horses, driving, and every other thing connected with the existing
Anglomania, so foreign to the Parisian natures of forty years ago—owes
its discovery to the late emperor, little as any Frenchman now likes to
admit its possibility. Before his day no one ever thought of holding the
reins, and almost as little of riding, not only in France but on the
Continent, leaving such matters to grooms, as Easterns leave dancing to
hired performers. But if these tastes were fostered by him before the
war, the extraordinary development they have since acquired is one of
the remarkable changes in modern Paris, and denotes both greater
wealth—despite the Prussian indemnity—and more manly habits than in the
“good old days long, long ago.” Louis Napoleon no doubt laid the
foundation, but during the republic the edifice has been raised. He it
was who inspired the tastes, prepared the ways and means, laid out the
roads and drives—the marshal-president and his “subjects” who now profit
by them. Perhaps one of the prettiest and most interesting sights
nowadays in this beautiful city is the daily Parisian overflow of riders
to the Bois de Boulogne between the hours of eight and ten, not only of
men but of ladies, whose wildest dreams in former times never aspired to
such an expensive pleasure. On a fine May morning “Rotten Row” has here
a formidable rival both in numbers and in the steeds, with the
difference, too, that instead of riding up and down a monotonous,
straight road, the happy-looking parties of equestrians in Paris, almost
invariably numbering many ladies, turn off into the fifteen small and
large roads that surround the lake in the Bois, and there for a couple
of hours enjoy a genuine country canter or a walk beneath pleasant
shade. And mingled with these are pony-phaetons well driven by ladies,
returning later laden with ferns, wild flowers, and greenery of various
kinds. There is true enjoyment in sitting on a bench in the Avenue de
Boulogne (once de _l’Impératrice_) and watching the well-shaped horses,
their healthy looks and glossy coats, which would awake the envy of many
a London groom, and are not more striking than the good seats of the
fair riders and the vast improvement in those of the younger men. Of the
number in the early morn the soldier-like President may here be seen,
accompanied more than once during this month of May by the Prince of
Wales or some other royal visitor.
But this is the afternoon, and, though our thoughts have flown back to
the morning, we are sitting in the Champs Elysées and the hour for
driving has arrived. Here comes a four-in-hand, driven, though somewhat
badly, by the young Marquis de Château Grand—strictly _à l’Anglaise_, as
he fondly hopes—closely pursued by the Duc de Grignon in his pretty
dog-cart, attended by his English groom. “Victorias” with duchesses and
countesses—the bluest blood of the blue faubourgs—follow in countless
numbers. But whose is this open landau with its four black horses and
gay postilions, containing two ladies in close converse as they pass
along? The stout one is Isabella, ex-Queen of Spain—what memories her
name evokes!—the younger “La Reine Marguerite,” as her intimates love to
call her; in other words, the wife of Don Carlos, now the inseparable
companion of Isabella, with that remarkable disregard to
conventionality, considering the remonstrances of her son’s government,
which has always been as strong an element in her character as the
_bonhomie_ that has led her into this intimacy, and also makes her love
her present Parisian life almost as much as she ever did her throne. A
few seconds later a handsome man rides slowly by, attended only by his
groom, his sad, pensive countenance amidst this gay throng telling a
tale of care and inward sorrow. It is Amadeus, son of Victor Emmanuel,
but unlike him in most respects, now Duke of Aosta, once too “King of
Spain,” and still grieving for his lost wife. Then, turning round to
look again at the mass of children, _voué_ to the Blessed Virgin,
driving up and down in their blue and white perambulators, and which
thus silently bear witness to wide-spread French devotion amid all the
seeming worldliness, the eye falls on General de Charette as he walks by
with some old friend, and whom we last saw commanding the Papal Zouaves
in Rome during that eventful winter of 1870. Since then he has seen fire
and fought valiantly for his own native land, he and his corps, as in
the ages of faith, first making a public act of consecration to the
Sacred Heart, the scapular being emblazoned on their regimental colors.
Trial and suffering, however, have rather improved than injured him, for
he has grown in size and freshness, mayhap owing somewhat to present
happiness and the fair American who has lately brought him both wealth
and beauty. Looking towards the road again, the Crown Prince and
Princess of Denmark are seen driving past, but only to make us miss the
sweet, smiling face of the Princess of Wales and the pleasant manners of
the Prince, seen here on their road to the Exhibition every afternoon
until last week, but now returned to England, not, however, until they
had become such universal favorites and so completely won French hearts
that if this were 1880 and not 1878, universal suffrage, it is said, if
Paris were a criterion, would be very likely to offer Queen Victoria’s
heir the doubtful honor of MacMahon’s place.
Nor does this in any way complete the list of royal representatives
during this month of May in Paris. Archdukes of Austria, princes of
Belgium and Holland, with Orleans princes and princesses, old and young,
and, neither last nor least, the blind King of Hanover, Bismarck’s
victim, and now permanently settled in the gay capital, may be here
discerned by those who care to penetrate their _incognito_.
And not only during the day but at night is the city gay and full of
life, for balls and _fêtes_ are going forward, where twelve and fourteen
royalties may often be seen at a time; nay more, unlike as in imperial
days, _the_ faubourg has come forth from its retreat, and legitimacy has
opened its doors with hospitality, oftentimes with regal splendor.
Where, then, are the signs of poverty and depression which the enormous
indemnity paid to Prussia and the sad events of recent years might lead
a foreigner to expect? Naught but wealth and comfort is apparent; money
and money’s worth; the rich showing every outward mark of luxury, the
people well clad and housed; that squalor which makes itself so
painfully visible by the side of London riches here entirely absent,
life bright and cheerful as far as casual observers can perceive.
But beneath all this enjoyment, the flutter of flags on the “opening
day,” the gathering of foreign princes as in the palmiest period of
imperialism, and the evident revival of trade, in no other country is
there so great a dread of impending evil, such a vague, undefined fear,
baseless it may possibly be, but which it were folly to ignore. 1880 and
the termination of the Septennate are ever before French minds, and the
dreaded lack of durability, of a firm basis to their edifice, and the
possible renewal of the Commune horrors seem nowadays always uppermost
in their thoughts. Despite the outward symptoms of brightness, perhaps
even frivolity, no change is more impressive to any one formerly
acquainted with France than the grave and sobered character of the
nation; the reflection which misfortune seems to have evoked, and the
subdued tone their crushing defeat has stamped upon the entire people.
The old crowing of the Gallic cock, so Napoleonic and offensive to
strangers of yore, has, at least for the present, entirely disappeared
and been exchanged for a tranquil manner, a greater civility in
answering questions, and a total absence of the “swagger” so universal
in the ante-war period. Hence, too, springs a sudden awakening to the
possibility of other nations having special merits unnoticed formerly,
with a studying of their minds and habits as compared with their own
both in the press and private circles, which unconsciously betrays how
terrible an ordeal the French have been passing through and how little
they count upon its being as yet fully past.
Nothing, therefore, is so interesting and at the same time touching to
any one who has not been in Paris since 1867 as to note the signs of
change in these respects which meet us at every turn. One time it is the
eloquent tribute of the _Figaro_ to the reign and subjects of Queen
Victoria on the birthday of that constitutional monarch; at another, the
strict neutrality, so foreign to their natures, which this excitable
people are maintaining in the present turmoil of the Eastern question;
yesterday I noticed it at a dinner, when a heedless remark about the
ruined Conseil d’Etat caused all the party to shudder and to exclaim,
one after the other, that hard as it had been to eat horses—nay, dogs,
and even _cats_, as many of them had had to do during the siege—the
suffering was as naught compared to the terror of those fearful Commune
days. One who had lived near the Palais Royal had seen the Tuileries
burning from the end of her own street, another had been roused from her
work by a shell throwing the opposite chimney down into her
court-yard—and now that it is rebuilt an inscription records the
fact—while a third had slept for the two worst nights, if sleep it could
be called, in the cellar of her house, amongst the odds and ends of a
band-box maker’s stock, who occupied the place. But the most singular
experience of all, perhaps, was that of a family who then lived at their
villa twelve miles outside of Paris, and became aware of the Conseil
d’Etat being in flames from a shower of burnt paper falling on their
lawn on that May evening of the 22d, 1871, of which some scraps showed
the government stamp and belonged to documents of the state. And,
perhaps, of all the Commune misdeeds the burning of this building and
the Hôtel de Ville was the most malicious, for in both places marriage
contracts and family deeds were kept or registered, and the loss and
confusion which have hence ensued in families can never properly be
estimated.
But it is especially in the churches, just where passing travellers have
neither the time nor opportunity for observation, that the strides in
religious fervor become most apparent. Above all in the Faubourg St.
Germain is one at once conscious of breathing a different atmosphere.
There the bells, as in old Catholic Swiss and German towns, wake one at
five or half-past five o’clock of a summer morning, and keep up a
constant call to Mass thenceforward until a late hour. There, too,
should one turn in to a church on coming home from the Exhibition, he is
certain to find devout women, and men also, lost in meditation before
the Blessed Sacrament. “Kneeling-work” (as a late writer names this
_œuvre_) and “reparation” are the practice of the day in the orthodox
quarter. But especially before the Grotto of Lourdes in the Jesuits’
Church, Rue de Sèvres, is the crowd of ardent petitioners never ceasing
and intensely fervent. I have watched them with admiration the many
times I have been there myself, and the thousand ex-votos, many from
military men, prove that their prayers have not been made in vain. The
faubourg is also like a network of “Mother Honors,” second only to Rome
itself in their number and variety. Sisters of Charity especially flit
about it in every direction, and are even to be met with in the
omnibuses or shopping with the utmost simplicity amidst the vast crowds
of the Bon Marché. The devotions of the “Mois de Marie,” moreover, lend
the district at this moment an additional source of ardor.
May, too, has ever been the month of First Communions, and those who
know French life understand what this implies. The whole winter, nay,
for many previous years, the catechism has been leading up to this
point, and now since Easter Sunday the examinations have been constant
and severe. Each parish has a day set apart in May for this great event,
preceded by a short retreat, attended many times a day by all the
children. Then on the happy morning the whole church is given up to the
ceremony. All is arranged most systematically: the nave set apart for
the two hundred or three hundred young communicants—rich and poor mixed
together—the boys in front with white rosettes in their new jackets, the
girls in rows behind enveloped in long white veils. Beautiful hymns are
sung by the whole congregation, led by one of the priests; a touching
sermon is preached by the curé; the parents are in the aisles, and many
follow their children to the holy table. In the afternoon the little
ones again meet to renew their baptismal vows in presence of the Blessed
Sacrament, and the day closes by Vespers and Benediction. On that day
week, before they lose their first fervor, in the same church the same
children receive confirmation. These have been _fête_ days for the whole
family, nay, parish; and as parishes and churches are numberless in
Paris, tiny brides and white-rosetted boys are met in all quarters
during the whole of this beautiful month. If any of these children have
the misfortune in after-years to lose their faith, their parents and the
clergy at least have faithfully and zealously fulfilled their share of
duty, while, on the other hand, it is a certain fact that in most cases
this care lays the foundation of the solid virtues and tender piety, of
that religious element in French life so well described by Mme. Craven
and others, and which, side by side with the frivolity, is now making
such sure and steady progress in every part of France.
The month of May, too, is here, as in England, the period of charitable
bazaars, annual meetings, and rendering of accounts. Amongst others, two
societies, the immediate offspring of the Commune, are now attracting
much attention. One is that of St. Michael, to whom devotion as ancient
patron of France has revived with marvellous ardor, and under whose
protection has been placed the society for the distribution of good
books; the other, “Les Cercles Catholiques,”[127] or Working-men’s
clubs, more deeply interesting than any other of the present day.
At this present moment Paris counts its eighty different “Cercles,”
while the provinces possess not less than two thousand. The third Sunday
after Easter, the Patronage of St. Joseph, is their annual feast, and on
that day, while gay Paris was attending the races in the Bois de
Boulogne, we were present at the afternoon service in the Cathedral of
Notre Dame. A more imposing sight, with greater promise for the future,
it were impossible to conceive; for six thousand members, but only that
portion which consists of the schools and apprentices—many from the
Belleville quarters—had marched thither, each headed by their own
chaplain and carrying handsome banners, unfolded as they entered the
church. For them the nave was set apart, all others being in the aisles,
while the meek, venerable Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris sat opposite the
pulpit during the sermon, the blind Monseigneur de Ségur at his side,
the Comte de Mun and other gentlemen of the society directing the
general arrangements.
The now celebrated hymn of the Sacred Heart composed by the blind old
bishop was first sung; and if the sensation of the Derby Day in May,
1871, had cut deeply into my soul, it was now all but effaced by the
sublime, thrilling emotion caused by this vast multitude answering each
verse chanted by the choir by the famous, heart-stirring chorus of
Dieu de Clemence,
Dieu Vainqueur,
Sauvez, sauvez la France
Par votre sacré Cœur.
The effect at any time would have been marvellous, but with the
knowledge that these six thousand youths had almost all been to Holy
Communion that very morning, with such a past in one’s memory, and a
congregation composed of such elements before one, it became simply
overpowering. Moreover, we all knew that at the same hour, nay, at the
same moment, the same prayer was being offered up in two thousand other
churches in France; for, the provincial branches had made arrangements
that their ceremonies should thus coincide with those of Paris. A
procession, rendered picturesque as well as impressive by the six
thousand lighted tapers winding in and out of the nave and aisles of
this grand, historic cathedral and headed by the cardinal-archbishop,
followed the short sermon, when a public act of consecration, with
Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, brought this most heart-stirring
and encouraging celebration to a close.
And now, on the 30th May, since writing the above lines, another
impressive ceremony has taken place in the same cathedral, but
strikingly illustrative, too, of the increasing influence the religious
element is obtaining in France—namely, a public act of reparation for
the intended celebration of Voltaire’s centenary and in memory of Joan
of Arc. Good principles have certainly made more progress than was
supposed, for public opinion and the protests of the religious portion
of the nation have forced the government to forbid the demonstration in
honor of the enemy of Christianity. But, to show even-handed justice,
they equally forbade all homage to Joan of Arc, even that of depositing
wreaths around her statue in the Rue de Rivoli—erected, by the way, on
the spot where she was wounded when attacking Paris for the king.[128]
No authorities, however, could or would interfere inside a church. Hence
at three o’clock precisely the act of reparation commenced, every spot
in the vast cathedral being occupied by a crowd, composed in greater
part, too, of men, though the ladies, especially the “Enfants de Marie,”
distinguished by their lighted tapers, mustered strong under their
president, the Duchesse de Chevreuse. Amongst the number, in her Spanish
mantilla, I recognized “La Reine Marguerite,” with many another
high-born dame of far-sounding title. It was purely a work of
devotion—vespers and benediction, the _Miserere_ chanted by this
enormous congregation, constituting the “reparation,” followed by a
“Regina Cœli” which in beauty nothing could surpass. But the
countenances of all present were a perfect study in themselves, showing
the depth of their emotion and how different such ceremonies are in a
country like this, where every one attends them for a solemn and public
purpose, far more than for private, individual motives. It lends a
sublimity to such acts that raises the spirit high above ordinary
moments. Who, for instance, could behold the vast multitude beneath the
roof of this lofty nave, which goes back to the ancient days of France,
without remembering that Providence had saved it seven short years since
from destruction by its own sons, and that the chairs whereon they were
kneeling had been piled up in that same spot, in the hope of putting an
end to all ceremonies or worship of this kind? As one listened to the
“Regina Cœli,” and gazed on the beautiful statue of the Virgin Mother
presenting to us the Divine Infant, and which stands amidst the lights
and flowers over the altar outside the choir, courage and hope revived,
and all left the sacred edifice with renewed grace to encounter their
struggles in the cause of right. Most surely prayer and expiation are
the strength and the duty of modern France, and with such reward as has
been already vouchsafed to them her sons and daughters need no longer
despair.
Footnote 126:
The largest number at the Exhibition was on a Sunday, when upwards of
111,000 entered the building.
Footnote 127:
For a full description of these excellent associations see THE
CATHOLIC WORLD, January, 1878, “Catholic Circles for Working-men in
France.”
Footnote 128:
The Place des Pyramides in the Rue de Rivoli is on the site of the
ancient ditch of the fortification in the Faubourg St. Honoré, and is
known to be the spot where Joan of Arc was wounded.
THE CREATED WISDOM.[129]
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
II.
Behold! I sought in all things rest:
My Maker called me: I obeyed:
On me he laid His great behest,
In me His tabernacle made.
The world’s Creator thus bespake:
“My Salem be thy heritage:
Thy rest within mine Israel make:
In Sion root thee, age on age.”
Within the City well-beloved
Thenceforth I rose from flower to fruit:
And in an ancient race approved
Behold thenceforth I struck my root.
Like Carmel’s cedar, or the palm
That gladdens ’mid Engaddi’s dew,
Or plane-tree set by waters calm,
I stood; my fragrance round I threw.
Behold! I live where dwells not sin:
I breathe in climes no foulness taints:
I reign in God’s fair court, and in
The full assembly of His saints.
Footnote 129:
Ecclesiasticus xxiv.
THE VENERABLE MOTHER MARY OF THE INCARNATION.
A decree of the late Holy Pontiff permitted the introduction of the
cause of the canonization of Mary Guyard Martin, known in religion as
Mother Mary of the Incarnation, foundress of the Ursuline Convent at
Quebec. There is in this much to console and encourage us. Up to this
step no servant of God who lived or labored even transiently in any part
of our continent lying north of the Rio Grande had ever been proposed
for that exceptional public honor which the church permits by a decree
of canonization.
To any servant of God whose life, stamped with the impress of sanctity,
seems to justify a belief on our part that he is now reigning with
Christ in glory, we may address our prayers to obtain those more
abundant temporal and spiritual graces which we crave as a means to our
ultimate end, salvation; but this devotion is for our own closet. The
church permits no public honors till she has examined with the closest
scrutiny the life, writings, virtues, and miraculous gifts of the one
whom thousands are honoring in private.
Exalted sanctity was developed in the mission life in our northern
wilds, in the first rude cloisters, in laborious ministry, in patient
suffering; but there were no monarchs or wealthy communities to
undertake the long and often expensive investigations and evidence
demanded at Rome, where, as the saying is, it almost requires a miracle
to prove a miracle.
Spanish America under the Catholic kings was differently situated, and
that part of the western world numbers not a few canonized or beatified,
as well as many whose process of canonization, begun long since, has
been laid aside amid the changes in the political world, which in this
century show us the government in almost all Spanish-speaking countries
the enemy of religion.
Mexico and Peru were the two great centres of Spanish power, originally
rich, prosperous, semi-civilized states. In and between these two states
flourished nearly all those whose canonization was undertaken or
completed. It would be an error, however, to suppose that the Spanish
colonies were all that the church desired, or that they were models for
a Christian state. The popular picture of them is dark enough, and the
untempered zeal and vivid imagination of Las Casas gave to the enemies
of Catholicity and Spain an authority for the most fearful charges. Calm
Spanish accounts, however, reveal facts which show that, in the mad rush
for wealth aroused by the opening of these golden realms, an immigration
poured into our shores which made light of the salutary teachings of
Catholicity, and even of humanity or the natural law. The sudden wealth
did not tend to chasten or spiritualize these natures in which pride,
avarice, and lust held such sway. Yet it was with adventurers of this
kind that the church began her mission to bring the Indian to the
Gospel, the Spaniard back to the spirit of the Gospel. There was
opposition alike from Indian and Spaniard. If missionaries fell, slain
by the Indians whom they sought to enrich with blessings beyond all
price, a bishop died like St. Thomas of Canterbury, slain by his own
Christian countrymen. Shining sanctity, however, exerted its influence
and ultimately prevailed.
In Mexico the humble Franciscan brother Sebastian de la Aparicion filled
Puebla with the odor of his virtues, and the process of his canonization
attested his sanctity so clearly that he was beatified by Pope Pius VI.
The causes of the Venerable Gregory Lopez and of the Venerable John
Palafox, Bishop of Puebla and Viceroy of New Spain, were also
introduced, while missionaries either born in Mexico, like St. Philip of
Jesus, or laborers for a time in that field, won in Japan the crown of
martyrdom, recognized by the beatification of the church.
St. Louis Bertrand for several years illumined by his holy life and
gospel eloquence the coast of South America from Panama to Santa Marta
and Carthagena, laboring among the Spaniards and the conquered Indians,
and endeavoring, as did all his order, to save the latter from misery
here and hereafter, as well as to bring his own countrymen to the
practice of the religion which they professed. As though one saint
prepared the way for another, Blessed Peter Claver came in the next
century to devote his life on that same coast to a still more degraded
race, the enslaved African. New Granada thus has her saints, but Peru is
the favored spot in our whole continent—Peru, where religion seems at so
low an ebb, where governments of a day, put up for sale by prætorian
guards, agree only in one point: hostility to the church of God and to
the well-being of the people. Peru was above all other parts blessed by
the example of exalted sanctity. St. Toribius Mogrobejo, called from
among the laity to the archiepiscopal see of Lima, illustrated his
stewardship by untiring zeal—reviving religion in the clergy and people,
extending the missions, erecting institutions of learning and
charity—and by the wise decrees of synods and councils confirming his
holy work. Among those who labored in his diocese was the holy
Franciscan St. Francis Solano, whose zeal has made his memory hallowed
from Tucuman, in the Argentine Republic, to Panama, but who is honored
especially at Lima, long the scene of his apostolic ministry. His heroic
virtues, the miraculous gifts with which God endowed him, gave a force
to his words that no human eloquence could equal and the most hardened
sinners could not resist.
While Lima, the City of the Kings, had these two brilliant examples
before her, a child of benediction was born of a father Spanish in
origin and an Indian mother. Little Isabel Flores y Oliva was, however,
known from her cradle as Rose, and the church, in canonizing her,
adopted this name, which St. Toribius, too, gave her when he conferred
the sacrament of confirmation. Her wonderful life of austerity and zeal,
of intense love of God and her neighbor, has made the name of the Lima
virgin known throughout the world; and even before her canonization she
was declared protectress and principal patron of all the churches of the
New World.
She is one of the glories of the Order of St. Dominic, and in her day
two humble lay brothers, in convents of the same order in Lima, were
conspicuous for sanctity. Blessed Martin Porras, a mulatto, holy,
zealous, full of love for the sick, the poor, and the afflicted, was
looked upon by all as a saint and an angel of mercy. His labors and his
fame were shared by the Spanish lay brother Blessed John Massias. What a
privilege it must have been to have lived at that time in Lima!
Coeval with the last of these flourished in Quito the secular virgin
Mariana de Paredes y Flores, whose life so resembles that of St. Rose
that she has been called the Lily of Quito. Her beatification by the
late Pope Pius IX. gave us another patroness for the western world.
The canonized and beatified in Spanish America thus represent all states
and ages: the episcopate, the priesthood, the religious state, and
secular life.
Spanish America, in the wild rush of the restless and adventurous to its
rich and luxuriant soil, resembled California and Australia as we have
seen them in our days, could we imagine the tide of emigration Catholic,
with some of the knightly graces of chivalry still powerful, and devoted
clergy and religious striving manfully to recall the wild horde from
their temporary forgetfulness of religion, morality, and civilization.
When we turn from this picture to that of Canada, we find a contrast as
striking as the difference of the climes. In Canada labor, hardship, the
deepest religious feeling prevailed from the outset and left their
impress on the colony. The world has rarely witnessed a community so
completely guided by religion and morality as the first Canadian
settlers, and so deeply imbued with them as to elevate to its own
standard the repeated emigrations of more than half a century. The
austere virtue of Canada was gay and cheerful; it had none of the
ferocious Puritanism of New England, which enforced religious tyranny,
and pursued with unrelenting hate alike dissenting whites and
unbelieving natives. While New England, narrow and restrictive in
character and territory, hugged the bleak coast of the Atlantic, Canada,
under the broader, higher impulse of Catholicity, won the friendship of
countless native tribes and pushed her conquest thousands of miles into
the heart of the continent. “Peaceful, benign, beneficent were the
weapons of this conquest. France aimed to subdue not by the sword but by
the cross; not to overwhelm and crush the nations she invaded, but to
convert, to civilize, and to embrace them among her children,” is the
testimony of one to whom Catholic piety seems only a wild dream.
Time has shown on what a solid foundation they built who laid the
corner-stones of the Canadian colony. At a critical moment, when the
court of France, yielding to the spirit of licentiousness and infidelity
which had leperized the higher classes, was forging a rod of iron
wherewith in the hands of the neglected and demoralized masses to
chastise the monarchy and the aristocracy, God in his providence saved
Canada by what seemed a death-blow, by allowing it to pass under the
sway of England, the bitter enemy of Catholicity and France. But though
the French spirit in the colony died out, her teeming population is
intensely Catholic, well trained, well guided, holding their own against
Protestant and infidel influence.
With such results we may look to the founders of the Canadian
commonwealth for examples of high and exemplary virtue. The history of
the Canadian Church has not been written even in French, and does not
exist in English; it has seemed scarcely necessary to write separately
the history of a church when the history of the colony is so imbued with
the religious element that, deprived of it, her annals would be almost a
blank.
In every history of Canada we trace the life of the church; we see
governors whose lives were models of Christian piety, of strict
administration, of skill and courage; priests and missionaries whose
austerity, zeal, and piety shrank from no hardship, no peril, no
torture; religious devoting their lives to education and works of mercy;
colonists, the whole tenor of whose career recalls us to the days of the
primitive church, influenced by the highest motives of faith.
Among all the founders of Canada the eye rests especially on her
martyred missionaries; on Mother Mary of the Incarnation, foundress of
the Ursuline Convent, Quebec; on Margaret Bourgeoys; on Bishop Laval; on
Catharine Tehgahkwita, the Mohawk maiden, who rose to such sanctity. To
them devotion has been constant though private, fervent, and not
unrewarded.
The time has come when the Head of the church has been solicited to
sanction and confirm the devotion so long entertained for one of these
heroic souls—Mary Guyard Martin, known in religion as Mother Mary of the
Incarnation.
She was born at Tours, in one of the loveliest provinces of France—one
that gave that kingdom some of its master-minds and American
colonization some of its most energetic and manly pioneers. Her father,
Florence Guyard, was a wealthy silk manufacturer, and her mother
belonged to the noble house of Babou de la Bourdaisiere, one of her
ancestors having been deputed by Louis XI. to escort St. Francis of
Paula to his states. The hereditary piety of the family was marked by a
special devotion to this servant of God.
Mary was born on the 18th day of October, in the year 1599, and showed
from her cradle marks of God’s predilection. Her childish soul had no
greater passion than a lively charity and most tender compassion for the
poor and the sick, viewing in them the beloved of Jesus and Mary, whose
names were the first she learned from a pious mother’s lips. On one of
her little errands of mercy she was caught by the shaft of a cart and
thrown so violently to the ground that bystanders rushed to raise the
child, whom they supposed terribly injured, only to find that she had
escaped unharmed, protected, as she always believed, by the influence of
the prayers of the poor and afflicted.
When only seven she had a vision, in which our Saviour called her in an
especial manner to be his alone. Her docile heart responded to the
divine vocation, and from the age of nine or ten she sought the most
retired places and least-frequented churches, in order to spend a
considerable part of the day in communion with our Lord. She watched the
devout persons at prayer, and imitated their humble and pious attitude,
and, ignorant of meditation or mental prayer, made her spontaneous acts
of virtue, repeated the prayers she knew or ejaculations prompted by her
own innocent heart.
As she grew and began to study, the influence of her girlish companions
could not wean her from her love of spiritual things. In pious books she
found her greatest and most unwearied delight, and her piety only grew
more solid as her mind was enabled to understand the mysteries of faith
and the immensity of God’s love and mercy. Her whole soul tended to the
consecration of herself to our Lord in some religious retreat, and she
expressed to her mother her desire to enter the Benedictine convent at
Tours, then the only one in the city; but as her pious mother, after
advising her that she was yet too young to take such a step, heard no
further allusion, she supposed it a mere passing thought and not a solid
vocation. The child had not the advantage of a wise and prudent director
at this moment, and her future was apparently to lie in secular life;
yet Providence was but guiding her surely to her real vocation.
At the age of seventeen her parents proposed that she should accept the
hand of a young man of good character who solicited her as his wife. She
evinced the greatest repugnance to enter a state so incompatible with
the recollection and prayer which were her great desire. But as her
parents had accepted the offer she durst not resist. “Mother,” she
exclaimed, “as the whole thing is determined and my father insists on
it, I feel obliged to obey his will and yours; but if God does me the
grace to give me a son, I here promise to consecrate my son to his
service; and if he restores me the liberty I am now about to lose, I
promise to consecrate myself to him.”
The young wife accepted her new life courageously. Her husband, Mr.
Martin, was a silk manufacturer, employing many operatives, and she had
a certain supervision over a number of them who lived on the place. But
these new duties did not cause any relaxation in her pious practices;
she heard Mass every day, and gave a considerable time to meditation and
pious reading. Affection founded on the purest motives united her and
her husband, who soon learned to revere the holy wife whom God had
granted him. Yet her life was not free from bitter trials. Even greater
were in store. She had passed but two years in the marriage state, and
had been but six months a mother, when her husband was almost suddenly
taken from her. The widow of nineteen, with her helpless child, saw her
property swept away, law-suits encircle her in their deadly meshes, and
a lot of almost absolute destitution await her. She soon returned to her
father’s house, and in a garret room led the life of a recluse.
God now began to favor her by interior lights, and placed her under the
guidance of experienced directors. She consecrated herself to his divine
service, but the future was not made clear to her, and a further period
of trial was to purify her virtue. A sister, also married, urged her to
come and aid her in the business that devolved upon her. Mme. Martin
reluctantly yielded, but was ungratefully made the drudge of the house,
and then burdened with the superintendence of her brother-in-law’s
extensive forwarding business. Amid all this distracting toil,
apparently so incompatible with high spirituality, the servant of God
maintained an almost uninterrupted union with God. Amid all the din and
bustle of business life she was raised to the highest contemplation. In
all this she subsequently beheld God’s providence. Writing at a later
date from Quebec, she said: “I see now that all the states, all the
trials and labors through which I passed, were a preparation to form me
for the work of Canada. This was my novitiate, from which I issued far
from being perfect, but yet, by the grace of God, in a state to bear the
difficulties and hardships of New France.”
Heaven was fitting her alike for the external work in founding a
religious community in a scarcely-organized colony, and for conducting
its members with the experience of the highest mystical knowledge.
As the ties which bound her to the world fell away her longing for the
religious life increased. Her director, however, deemed it her duty to
remain in the world in order to superintend the education of her son;
but he ultimately allowed her to make vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience, the last referring to her director, and in temporal affairs
to her sister and brother-in-law.
Her austerities at this time were constant and severe. She slept on a
bare board, wore hair-cloth, mingled wormwood in her scanty food, and by
frequent disciplines—even with nettles—and fastings mortified a body
already over-burdened with daily toil. For this privileged soul, raised
to the highest contemplation, and prepared by the heavenly Bridegroom
for the most sublime union, mortifying the body with austerities that
rivalled the anchorets of Thebais, was not even in a religious cloister,
but immersed from morning to night in those business cares and details
which seem so incompatible with a spirit of prayer and of
recollectedness. She not only gave so much of her time to God and made
all her labor one prayer, but in her great heart was always solicitous
for her neighbor. Over the working-people under her direction she
exercised the greatest influence, giving them from time to time clear
and persuasive instructions suited to their understanding, and by
counsel and mild reproof guarding them from offending God or recalling
them from danger. But it was especially in the hour of sickness that
they found her a true mother, rendering them all the service and care
that the best of mothers could lavish on them.
It was not to be wondered at that she came to be regarded as a saint;
but God, to purify her and preserve her from any self-esteem, permitted
her suddenly to fall into the greatest aridity. Her fidelity when all
sensible consolation was withdrawn was rewarded by extraordinary
favors—visions in which the most profound mysteries of faith seemed laid
open to her gaze.
The period at last arrived when she could place her son in a suitable
institution and follow the inclination which had so long been to her as
a vocation. Yet she was far from beholding to what order she was called.
Her first inclination had been towards the Ursulines, while the
contemplative order of Mount Carmel seemed most in unison with her whole
spiritual life. Her director was a father of the order of Feuillants,
and the general, desirous of securing for a convent of nuns of his rule
a soul so privileged and so highly advanced in the ways of perfection,
offered to assume the education of her son. While she remained thus
undecided the Ursulines founded their first house at Tours. She felt at
once that Providence wished her among them. A knowledge of their rule
and of their profession of serving their neighbor confirmed this
impression, and she felt convinced that she was not called to a purely
contemplative life. A pious bishop, about to found a Visitation
monastery at his see, heard on his way through Tours of the pious widow,
and called upon her. He pressed her earnestly to join the community he
projected, but all confirmed her in believing that the Ursuline was the
order into which she must enter.
She did not, however, propose the step either to her director or to the
superior of the convent, with whom she soon formed a holy friendship;
but one day, visiting the convent to felicitate Mother Mary of St.
Bernard on her re-election as superior, it came into her mind that her
friend would offer her admission into the community, and she had no
sooner congratulated her than the superior exclaimed: “I know well of
what you are thinking: you believe that I am going to offer you a place
in our community. I do indeed, and it depends on yourself to become one
of our number.” Her director, however, showed no favor to the project
until the divine call became so distinct and irresistible that he could
not oppose it.
The Archbishop of Tours authorized the convent to receive her without a
dowry; her sister assumed the education and future care of her son, and,
giving him her last instructions, she parted with him and her aged
father. Then, with the blessing of the archbishop, she entered the
convent, expecting to commence her novitiate as a lay sister, but to her
confusion was placed among the choir nuns.
She had reached the haven for which she had so long prepared herself by
prayer and mortification; but a storm soon arose. Her son, excited by
some who disapproved of her course, made his way into the convent, and
by cries and complaints and boyish threats so interfered with the order
of the community that it seemed impossible to retain the novice. A
Jesuit Father, however, becoming acquainted with her great virtues and
the difficulty of her position, took charge of young Martin’s education
and placed him in a college of his order.
Thus freed from the last care, Mme. Martin took the white veil of a
novice, and assumed in religion the name of Mother Mary of the
Incarnation. In the sacred abode of piety new lights seemed to be given
her. A knowledge of Latin was imparted to her without study, and an
infused understanding of the Scriptures. Her fellow-novices listened to
her eloquent and solid expositions with breathless wonder. But in a
moment darkness overspread her soul, and she was assailed by the most
horrible temptations. All her spiritual life seemed an error and an
illusion; a self-deceit and a deceit in her director. Unfortunately her
wise and experienced spiritual guide was removed about this critical
time, and was replaced by one who regarded her as an ill-directed
visionary. Her devotions in behalf of the obsessed sisters of Laudun
made her the object of terrible visitations. Her son, after a brilliant
opening at college, was led astray, and tidings came that he was
threatened with expulsion. Everything seemed to thwart the vocation of
the servant of God; but for two years amid all these trials she
persevered in her novitiate, and when her superior directed her to
prepare for her profession she obeyed, and pronounced her vows on the
25th of January, 1633, rewarded for a brief period with the highest
spiritual consolation, only to be followed by a fresh season of trial.
At last a new and experienced director enlightened and relieved her
soul; and this strong woman, taught in the bitter school of experience,
became mistress of novices. Soon after in a prophetic vision she saw the
Blessed Virgin and our Lord overlooking some vast land sunk in the
depths of heathen darkness. Without knowing yet to what part of the
world this vision seemed to call her, she became filled with a desire to
aid by her prayers and other good works the missionaries laboring in
pagan lands. But this did not divert her from her duties as mistress of
novices. Her instructions to the young candidates were full of unction,
and based especially on the words of Holy Writ. She explained fully and
clearly to them the Psalms of David, which form so large a part of their
office, and the Canticle of Canticles, in which the great masters of
spiritual life have seen such mysteries of the union between the elect
souls of predilection and our Lord. She also composed for their use a
catechism, which the judicious Father Charlevoix, the historian of New
France, regarded as perhaps the best then extant in French. “We may at
least aver,” he adds, “that there is none in which the truths are
explained with greater order, precision, and conciseness. The selection
and application of the passages of Scripture show that Mother Mary of
the Incarnation was one of those who in her age knew the Holy Scriptures
most thoroughly. All breathes a wonderful simplicity which avoids that
dangerous curiosity, the ordinary cause of pride, levity of mind, and
insensibility of heart.”[130] The novices formed by her showed how
solidly she had grounded them in spiritual life, and how fully her great
experiences and trials had enabled her to guide them through all the
dangers of that period where unwise and rash directors make shipwreck of
so many vocations or hurry the unstable and doubtful into professions
for which they have no grace of state. The novices of Mother Mary of the
Incarnation can be traced among the superiors and important officers of
many of the greatest Ursuline convents of France.
The interior sense of a vocation to the foreign missions grew steadily
within her till her very body wasted under the longing and yearning to
know the will of God. Her prayer was incessant. At last a divine light
suffused her soul, and at the same time these words were spoken to her:
“Ask me through the Heart of Jesus, my most amiable Son; it is through
it that I shall grant thy desire.” From that moment, she declares, she
felt so intimately united to the Heart of Jesus that she spoke and
breathed only through it.
Among the points she often inculcated on the novices was a constant
devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of which she was one of the early
propagators, although God did not make her the instrument of its general
diffusion. She would say to her novices: “The Eternal Father has made
known to a person that he is ever disposed to grant what is asked of him
through the Heart of his Son.”
One day she explained to her director, the Jesuit Father Dinet, her
interest in the foreign missions and her mysterious dream. He remarked
that it seemed very possible, and that Canada was probably the country
designated in the vision. She had never heard of the colony begun there
by France some twenty-five years before, and knew absolutely nothing
about it; but some days afterwards, while in choir, she had an ecstasy
and the vision was repeated, but she heard distinctly: “It is Canada
that I show thee; and thou must go thither to found a house in honor of
Jesus and Mary.” God’s designs were becoming clearer; and when a few
days later she received from the Jesuit Father Poncet—now known for his
labors and sufferings in Canada and New York, but then a perfect
stranger to her—one of those Jesuit _Relations_ which our bibliophiles
so eagerly seek, and a pilgrim’s staff from Loretto, she felt that the
land for her future labors and prayers was beyond the Atlantic. Father
Poncet sent with the pilgrim’s staff these words: “I send you this staff
to invite you to go and serve God in New France.”
In her heart she responded fully; but how was she, a cloistered nun, to
begin a convent in a distant colony of a few log huts, a colony with no
female population, where everything was poor, scanty, struggling, and
laborious? How was she to become the pioneer nun among the backwoodsmen
who had begun to clear the Canadian forest? Nothing could seem to most
minds more preposterous in a nun in a quiet convent in a quiet
provincial town in France. Yet Providence was guiding her surely to her
work. A holy young widow, Mme. de la Peltrie, who had reluctantly
entered the marriage state when her heart was in the cloister, had
responded to a call in a Jesuit _Relation_ of Canada, where Father Le
Jeune exclaimed: “Alas! cannot some good and virtuous lady be found
willing to come to this land to gather up the blood of Jesus Christ by
instructing the little Indian girls?” She resolved to devote herself,
and, when stricken down by illness and given up by physicians, she made
a vow to St. Joseph, promising to consecrate under his patronage her
fortune and her life to the service of the Indian girls. A recovery from
the very brink of the grave, that seemed a miracle, confirmed her.
Baffling all the objections of her family, she sought some community of
religious to begin the work in which she desired to take an active part.
The Jesuit missionaries from the shores of Lake Huron were writing to
Mother Mary of the Incarnation; the Jesuits in France had resolved to
attempt an Ursuline convent in New France. Mme. de la Peltrie and Father
Poncet wrote to Mother Mary of the Incarnation to undertake the great
work. The divine call so mysteriously given was at last accomplished.
Her letter to the holy widow shows the fulness of her heart.
“Ah! my dear lady,” she writes, “beloved spouse of my divine Master,
in finding you I have found her whom I love in truth, since there is
no greater or truer love than to give one’s self and all one has for
the person beloved. And since it has pleased His mercy to give me
the same sentiments, it seems that my heart is in yours, and that
both together are but one in that of Jesus, amid those vast and
infinite spaces where we embrace the little Indian girls, teaching
them how to love Him who is infinitely amiable. Do you really mean,
madame, to do me and those of my companions whom God well chose this
favor, to take us with you and connect us with your noble design?
For five years now have I been awaiting the opportunity to obey the
urgent summons which the Holy Ghost has made me; and, not to speak
untruly, I believe that you are the one whom his divine Majesty
wishes to employ to enable me to enjoy this blessing.”
This was in November, 1638. So rapidly did all progress that early in
spring two pious companies gathered at Dieppe to found amid the unbroken
wilderness of Canada the first convents of religious women—the first,
indeed, between the Mexican frontier towns and the icy ocean.
On a vessel devoted to St. Joseph, already designated to Mother Mary as
the patron of Northern America, embarked May 4, 1639, Mme. de la Peltrie
and her attendant, Mother Mary of the Incarnation, and Mother St.
Joseph, the only Ursuline of Tours who was permitted to join her, though
all desired to do so; with Mother Cecilia of the Holy Cross from the
Ursuline convent at Dieppe, three Hospital Nuns of the order of St.
Augustine, Father Vimont, Superior-General of the Jesuit Missions in
Canada, with two missionaries for that field, Father Chaumonot and
Father Poncet.
The voyage was menaced at first by pirates and cruisers; was long and
stormy, and the vessel escaped as by a miracle being crushed by a
mountain-like iceberg. Yet, amid storm and blast, the vessel was a
monastery and chapel; Mass was said, and the nuns, in two choirs,
chanted the office of the day. On the 15th of July they reached
Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, and the passengers in a smaller
vessel then ran up the river to Quebec.
At daybreak on the 1st of August the whole population of the little
settlement was gathered on the height, their eyes fixed on Ile Orleans.
At last boats were seen putting out. The Chevalier de Montmagny, Knight
of Malta, Governor of Canada, marched to the water-side with his
garrison, followed by all the settlers, and the cannons of the fort
saluted the sisters as their barks touched the strand.
Mother Mary of the Incarnation had reached the field of her labors,
designated so long by heaven. It was a land endeared to her by the will
of God. When she stepped ashore she and her companions prostrated
themselves and kissed with respect the land so long desired. They were
then escorted to the Church of Our Lady of Recouvrance, where a _Te
Deum_ was chanted and Mass offered up. All communicated, and Mother Mary
remained long before the altar in a holy ecstasy.
The work of building up her convent began. After visiting the Indian
mission at Sillery the Ursulines took up their temporary residence in a
little house in the lower town. One of the two rooms was choir,
dormitory, and refectory; the other a school, where their first pupils
were six Indian and some French girls born in the colony. A little
chapel was erected beside this rude convent, and here this little
community spent three years amid trials, hardships, and suffering,
awaiting the completion of the new structure. Quebec was but a hamlet of
two hundred and fifty souls, and, though Mme. de la Peltrie generously
devoted her fortune, the work made but slow progress. In the selection
of the site Mother Mary showed not only a superior judgment and prudence
but a holy submission of her will. When the question of the site was
raised their director, Mme. de la Peltrie, and the sisters fixed upon a
spot. Mother Mary alone recommended a different one, and gave her
reasons. Her opinion was rejected almost without examination, and the
building was begun at the proposed place; but the difficulties and
disadvantages were soon seen. The work was stopped, and the site
suggested by the servant of God was adopted as really the only
practicable one.
When the Ursulines were installed in this temporary convent Mother Mary
of the Incarnation was at once elected their superior. The instruction
of the Indian girls being one of the principal objects of the
foundation, Mother Mary commenced the study of the Algonquin language,
spoken by all the tribes on the St. Lawrence. It was no easy task, but
she acquired it with an ease that astonished all.
The discomforts of these pioneer nuns were not yet completed. Their
little convent was crowded to its fullest extent with Indian girls, whom
they washed and clothed, and were endeavoring to form to European life,
when the good nuns were dismayed to find the smallpox make its
appearance in the Indian villages. Their school became an hospital, and
the Ursulines stripped themselves of all their linen for the use of the
sick.
The arrival of two sisters from the Ursuline convent at Paris gave the
holy superior great joy, but the members of the little community were
now from three different houses, each with special rules of its own, and
great diversity of opinion prevailed as to the rule to be adopted. The
patience, piety, and caution displayed by Mother Mary were those of a
saint; and her really great mind and thorough knowledge of nature and
grace enabled her to blend all into one happy community actuated by the
same spiritual instinct.
But the very existence of the house was menaced. The expenses,
especially in the great multitude of articles that it was necessary to
import constantly from France, and the aid given to the Indians in
health and sickness, exceeded all their income, and Mme. de la Peltrie
withdrew for a time to Montreal, depriving them of her usual and
stipulated contribution. Their agent in France assured them that the
establishment must be abandoned, that there was no way left except to
return to France. But Mother Mary was undisturbed. Her holy soul never
lost its calm, its union with God. She wrote incessantly, and her
appeals to hundreds of charitable souls in France brought alms that
saved the convent.
Mme. de la Peltrie returned to the community she had helped to found,
and on the 21st of November, 1642, the Ursulines took possession of
their new monastery. It was not the only consolation of the venerable
superior. Letters from France announced that her son, after securing a
favorable position at court, had abandoned the world and entered the
novitiate of the learned order of St. Benedict, where in time he became
an illustrious member.
The new building was spacious, but in their poverty they still had much
to suffer, especially in the long Canadian winters. Then came the
overthrow of the Hurons in Upper Canada, the massacre of many holy
missionaries personally known to Mother Mary, who beheld at her doors a
crowd of fugitive Hurons. Their language she learned, to be able to
labor for their good, if God spared the colony; for the Iroquois,
intoxicated with success, now ravaged the valley of the St. Lawrence,
and no one was safe even at Quebec.
While all were paralyzed by fear, and the colony in its sorest distress,
fire broke out in the convent one December night toward the close of the
year 1650, and before dawn naught remained but the walls. Mother Mary
was the last to leave the burning structure. The whole community and
their pupils were left in the snow, in their night-dresses, nothing
having been saved of their clothing or stores. The Hospital Nuns
received them with open arms and the whole town endeavored to meet their
wants.
All was gone. There seemed no course but to return to France. Such was
not, however, the decision of Mother Mary and her heroic companions.
“The resolution was that, without further delay, we should rebuild on
the same foundation, inasmuch as our courage had not been crushed by the
weight of this disaster, and as our vocations were as strong or stronger
than before, and the girls of French and of Indian origin needed our
services.”
The work was begun at once, Mother Mary and the other sisters helping to
clear away the ruins. A little house which Mme. de la Peltrie had
erected became their temporary convent, while by loans they paid the
workmen to continue the work on the new building. The work cost thirty
thousand livres, and the furnishing and supplies required still more.
Yet all came so wonderfully that Mother Mary of the Incarnation declared
it to be a miracle and ascribed it to the special protection of the
Blessed Virgin.
Soon after an Iroquois army spread terror through Canada, till a heroic
band sacrificed themselves in an attack on the ferocious enemy, and by a
glorious death so crippled them that the savages retired. During the
panic caused by these cruel invaders the Ursulines were forced to leave
their convent, which became a fortified house. Then came an earthquake
which convulsed the whole country, attended by meteors that filled all
with terror and alarm. Amid all these dangers Mother Mary of the
Incarnation preserved unruffled her calm and serenity of soul.
One of the founders of the colony, she lived to see it develop and
strengthen; children born on the soil had grown up under her guidance
and become mothers of families, handing down to coming generations the
solid Christian instruction imparted to them by Mother Mary of the
Incarnation and her sisters in religion. Canada had grown, too, from a
mere mission to an organized church with a holy bishop at its head, a
seminary for the training of candidates for the priesthood, a Jesuit
college, and inferior schools. Her work was well-nigh accomplished. In
1664 she felt the first symptoms of the disease which was to terminate
the long death of her earthly existence and unite her for ever to her
heavenly Spouse. Extenuated by austerities, labor, and vigils, she was
attacked by a continued fever, accompanied by effusion of bile and
violent pains which gave her no rest by night or day. Her constitution,
naturally so strong and enduring, could no longer resist the inroads of
the malady. She was soon at the point of death, and received the last
sacraments amid the sighs and tears of her spiritual children. All
Quebec was in tears, for there was scarcely a family in which she was
not looked up to as a guide and mother. The continual prayers seemed to
move Heaven to spare her to them for a time. But she survived only to
remain on the cross in a state of continual suffering. Masses, novenas,
prayers were offered for her complete recovery; but she herself offered
none. Several persons, among others Bishop Laval, who visited her
regularly, implored her to solicit her cure from God; but she replied
that she felt utterly unable to frame such a prayer. “Of what use can an
infirm old woman of sixty be? Oh! do not prolong my exile; let me go to
my God.”
She did not even beg for a cessation of her pain or her state of
suffering. The office of superior had been for the third time conferred
upon her; from this she now asked to be relieved, as she was unable to
discharge the duties incumbent on it. But when her director declined to
permit this she submitted without a murmur and continued to bear the
burden.
“My present condition,” she wrote to her son, “is most dear to me,
because the cross is the pleasure and the delight of Jesus. I can
never recover from my long malady, which has very painful and
torturing consequences. But nature grows tame to suffering and
becomes familiar with pain. I even feel attached to it; and I fear
that my tepidity will oblige the divine goodness to deprive me of
it, or at least to moderate it. Everything I take is like wormwood,
and constantly brings to my mind the gall in the Passion of our
Lord. This makes me love this state.”
Yet in a state which would have kept most persons prostrate on a bed she
labored as unremittingly as ever. She rose the first and retired the
last, attended all the duties of the community, conducted an extensive
correspondence, and, when too weak to do other work, employed her time
in painting or embroidery. Her existence during the eight years she
spent in this state was as great a mystery as her whole mystical life
had been.
Her missionary zeal never flagged, and the great consolation of these
years was to instruct in the Algonquin and Huron languages the younger
members of the community, to enable them to continue after her death the
instructions which she had been in the habit of giving. It would seem as
if her wish had been gratified, for two centuries after her death Huron
girls were among the pupils in the convent she founded, playing beneath
the very tree where she and Mme. de la Peltrie had washed, dressed, and
instructed the Indian children.
Her works compiled for the use of the sisters, had they escaped the
conflagrations of the monastery, would give her a high rank among the
authors in Indian languages, for they comprised two extended Algonquin
dictionaries, an Iroquois catechism, and a huge volume of Bible stories
in Algonquin.
She could now walk only when supported. Mother Mary of St. Joseph went
to receive her reward. Mme. de la Peltrie was also taken from her.
On the night of the 15th of January, 1672, an oppression of the chest
seized Mother Mary of the Incarnation, attended with incessant vomiting
and fever. The end had come, but amid the most exquisite suffering not a
sigh, not a complaint, scarcely the quivering of a muscle, betrayed what
she was undergoing. She seemed absorbed in an ecstasy. She received the
last sacraments with unspeakable joy, and asked pardon of her director,
her superior, and the community for all the trouble she had given them.
She spoke to the younger sisters in the most touching and eloquent terms
to excite them to esteem their vocation and to encourage them to care
for the Indian children.
But the community could not part with its founder. They offered up
earnest prayers in her behalf, and her director, Father Lalemant,
commanded her to join her prayers with them. Though anxious to be united
to God, she obeyed. An immediate improvement ensued. She rallied so as
to join the community in the devotions of Holy Week.
On the evening of Good Friday the pain of two tumors that had formed
became intense. An operation was performed, but she sank gradually, and
on the 30th of April entered into her agony. It was long; but the
strength of purpose evinced in life enabled her even then to raise the
crucifix repeatedly to her lips when speech and hearing were gone. At
six o’clock in the afternoon, after looking around on her sisters, as if
to take a last farewell, she gave two sighs and expired.
The news of her death spread rapidly. She had been regarded as a saint,
and all flocked to the convent. Every pious person in Quebec desired
some relic; so that everything belonging to her was carried away, and
the Ursulines had great difficulty in retaining her large rosary, which
has been preserved to this day as their chief relic. Her funeral service
was attended by all the dignitaries in church and state, and a sermon by
Father Jerome Lalemant, her chief director during her long mission in
Canada, depicted her labors and her sublime virtues.
Her body was interred in the chapel vault, and amid all the vicissitudes
of war, conflagration, and change of nationality the Ursulines have
continued guardians of the precious remains of their foundress.
She had in life impressed all as one elevated above the common order,
one who received extraordinary graces from God, and who corresponded
with them. The missionaries, men versed in the direction of souls and
the paths by which divine grace leads them, all entertained the highest
esteem for her virtues. Her fellow-Ursulines living with her, watching
her minutely from day to day and from year to year, could aver that they
had never seen her commit a fault against meekness, patience, humility,
charity, modesty, poverty, or obedience, and that she never let an
occasion pass unheeded of practising those virtues.
When, therefore, all could piously believe that she was reigning with
Christ, the confidence of the afflicted led them to seek her
intercession, and the consolation derived has kept alive devotion to her
to this time; while her letters, published by her son, revealed to the
masters of spiritual life the wonderful interior and mystic life led by
this nun in a rude convent amid the handful of log-houses which
constituted the capital of New France.
Father Charlevoix alludes to the opinion of “two learned prelates who
have not always been of the same opinion [evidently Bossuet and
Fénelon], but who, nevertheless, agree in regarding her as one of the
brightest lights of her age.” Bossuet in one of his arguments says:
“Mother Mary of the Incarnation, Ursuline, who is called the Teresa
of our days and of the New World, in a lively impression of the
inexorable justice of God, condemned herself to an eternity of pain
and offered herself for it, in order that God’s justice might be
satisfied, provided only, she said, ‘that I be not deprived of the
love of God and of God himself.’”
Mr. Emery, superior of St. Sulpice at Paris, wrote:
“The Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation is a saint whom I
revere most sincerely, and whom I place in my esteem beside St.
Teresa. In my last retreat her life, her letters, and her
meditations alone constituted my reading and the subject of my
mental prayer.”
Father Charlevoix wrote her life in gratitude for favors obtained by her
intercession.
“Indebted,” says he, “as I have reason to believe, to the merits of
the foundress of the Ursulines in Canada that I did not end my days
in a foreign land in the flower of my life, it seemed to me that I
could not do less than extend her knowledge among men. Not that she
was hitherto unknown. The eulogium pronounced upon her by the
greatest men, and her own works, in which we admire an exquisite
taste, sound reason, a sublime genius, and that divine unction which
so well distinguishes the writings of the saints, have already
placed her in the rank of the most illustrious women.”
Father Galifet, in one of his spiritual works, says:
“Her life was full of marvels by the heroic virtues she practised,
by the supernatural gifts with which she was endowed, by the
choicest favors of her divine Spouse, by unspeakable communications
of the Divinity, by the wisdom she derived from the Scriptures and
from the mysteries of faith, and finally by the experience she had
of all conditions of interior life, which rendered her a thorough
mistress in this Divine knowledge.... This wonderful servant of God
had an extraordinary devotion for the Sacred Heart of Jesus at a
time when this devotion was yet unknown. She could have learned
nothing about it from men. It was from God himself that she learned
this in a heavenly revelation.”
Even Protestant writers, to whom all Catholic spiritual life is
something unreal and deserving only of scorn and contempt,
_blasphemantes quæ ignorant_, recognize in Mother Mary of the
Incarnation a woman of a rare and singular combination of qualities, and
never ascribe to her a fault. “She had uncommon talents and strong
religious sensibilities,” says Parkman. “Strange as it may seem, this
woman, whose habitual state was one of mystical abstraction, was gifted
to a rare degree with the faculties most useful in the practical affairs
of life.” “Her talent for business was not the less displayed.” “Now and
henceforward one figure stands nobly conspicuous in this devoted
sisterhood. Marie de l’Incarnation, ... engaged in the duties of
Christian charity and the responsibilities of an arduous post, displays
an ability, a fortitude, and an earnestness which command respect and
admiration.” “Marie de l’Incarnation in her saddest moments neither
failed in judgment nor slackened in effort. She carried on a vast
correspondence, embracing every one in France who could aid her infant
community with money or influence; she harmonized and regulated it with
excellent skill; and in the midst of relentless austerities, she was
loved as a mother by her pupils and dependants. Catholic writers extol
her as a saint. Protestants may see in her a Christian heroine,
admirable with all her follies and faults.”
The follies and faults consisted in her being a Catholic, a nun, and in
rising to the higher states of mystical life.
And how are we to regard this inner life of this remarkable woman? Was
this clear and gifted mind, this pure soul, this person devoting a long
life to incessant occupation and free from all selfish taint, one to be
readily self-deceived? Was anything that passed in her soul, as
described by her, without its parallel in the history of the church? By
no means. It is, indeed, the state to which few comparatively are called
by God, and to which all who are called do not rise. But it is one
recognized by the church, which is the pillar and ground of truth, and
from the case of St. Paul there have been ever in the church remarkable
examples of great souls combining the exterior activity with the highest
contemplation. Wise and spiritual directors are seldom wanting as
guides, and the highest authority in the church is frequently called
upon to decide questions that arise.
“Moreover,” says Father Charlevoix, in reference to this very case,
“we have general rules which, being founded on good sense, are
within the reach of all; and they are given to us by the Doctors of
the church and by all the masters of interior life, as sure means to
guarantee us against seduction. I will not mention all, as the
detail would lead me too far, and the rules can readily be found. I
shall speak of only one of the most important, which includes the
principles of all the others. According to this rule, we may believe
that what passes in the soul is a favor of heaven, if in the conduct
of the person who receives it, in the matter in question, in the
manner in which it occurs, and in the effects which it produces,
there is nothing that does not lead to God, nothing savoring ever so
little of one’s own mind, or which can come from a suggestion of the
devil. For if in a vision, revelation, or any similar impression
nothing can be discovered that is not conformable to pure doctrine
and sanctity of life, if there is no ground for prudently fearing
surprise or deceit, on what basis can we pronounce the whole to be
frivolous? It may be that after all it is only an effect of the
imagination, but, at least, nothing is risked if the soul in which
it occurs remains in distrust of self and in humility.
“But if it is only an operation of the enemy of salvation to seduce
and lead into sin, a little application and experience will soon
reveal the venom hidden under the appearance of piety....
“When, then, we are told of a person to whom it is said that God
communicates himself in an extraordinary manner, if this person is
recognized by all acquainted with him to have a sound and upright
reason, a firm mind, imagination under control, solid virtue based
on Christian simplicity, humility, and distrust of self; if his
conduct never belies itself; if he perseveres to the end in the
exact discharge of his duties; if on all occasions he does works
worthy of that sublime state in which he is represented to be—there
is, I admit, no indispensable obligation of giving credit to what is
said in regard to him; but there is, it seems to me, a reasonable
prejudice in favor of this person, and we can scarcely avoid a want
of the respect due to God’s gifts in a soul which has all the
appearances of being so singularly adorned. I may even go further,
and if Lactantius has proved the truth of the Christian religion by
showing that it is in all points conformable to reason and nothing
contradicts it, would I not have some right to maintain that we can
recognize God’s operation in a soul when what passes there is in
perfect accord with good sense, faith, reason, and itself?”
When two centuries had elapsed after the holy death of Mother Mary of
the Incarnation, and her memory was still fresh in the minds of the
Canadian people and of the few remaining bands of Indians, and temporal
and spiritual graces were constantly ascribed to her intercession, a
process in due form was drawn up by the authority of the Archbishop of
Quebec in regard to the miracles attributed to the servant of God. This
was duly authenticated, and sealed and despatched to Rome in 1868 by a
clergyman selected for this duty. These documents were presented to the
secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and, according to a wise
regulation, must lie there untouched for ten years, during which time
nothing is to be done in regard to the desired beatification.
The Ursulines solicited the beatification of the illustrious member of
their order; the remnant of the once powerful Huron nation attested the
traditional reverence for her who had welcomed them when wretched
fugitives from Iroquois cruelty, and had lavished her kindness on the
hapless women and children, teaching them to suffer as Christians and
training them to die worthy of the name.
The hierarchy of Canada, assembled in Provincial Council in that year,
gave to the Holy See their testimony in regard to the fame of the
servant of God.
“Nearly two centuries have elapsed,” say these venerable prelates,
“since the death in the Lord of Mary Guyart, called in religion
‘Mary of the Incarnation,’ first superior and foundress of the
Ursuline convent erected in this city of Quebec. How illustrious she
was both in the theological virtues and in the observance of the
religious life is attested by history and by constant tradition. The
tree is still shown under which she sat and taught the Indian girls
the rudiments of the faith; the wandering tribes still retain a
tradition of the benign mother who first introduced into this land,
then seated in darkness and in the shadow of death, such an
illustrious example of monastic life in her sex.
“As years have gone by, the fame of her sanctity and her miracles
has not decreased, but is rather increased from day to day,
especially as many aver openly every day that they have obtained
great temporal and spiritual benefits through her invocation....
“Assembled in provincial council, turning to your paternity with the
utmost confidence, we cannot refrain from expressing our most ardent
desire, as well as that of our diocesans, and of all the Ursulines
scattered throughout the whole Catholic world, of soon publicly and
solemnly invoking her whose assistance we now often implore
privately but efficaciously.”
Such was the testimony of the Archbishop of Quebec and the bishops of
Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton, St. Boniface, Kingston, Toronto, St.
Hyacinth, Three Rivers, St. Germain, and Sandwich, given in the most
solemn form.
The ten years of patient waiting had almost ended in 1877, and further
steps could be taken. The documents were by a special permission opened,
the life of the servant of God and her writings were proposed. It was
then for the Holy See to decide whether they presented such a case that
the cause of her beatification could be introduced, and the long
law-suit, so to say, be commenced in which her life, writings, and
miracles should be subjected to the severest scrutiny. The Sacred
Congregation of Rites reported favorably, and one of the latest acts of
the great Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IX., was:
“Our most Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., having deigned to permit on
the 9th of September of last year that the question of the signature
of the commission charged with introducing the cause of the servant
of God, Sister Mary of the Incarnation, be brought up in the Sacred
Congregation of Rites, in ordinary session, and without the
participation and the vote of the consultors, although it is not ten
years since the day of the presentation of the process of the
ordinary in the Acts of the Congregation of Rites, and that the
writings of the said servant of God have not been inquired into or
examined;
“The Most Eminent and Most Reverend Cardinal Aloysius Bilio, Prefect
of the said congregation, in the name and in the absence of the Most
Eminent Cardinal Bartolini, reporter of the cause, at the instance
of the Rev. Benjamin Paquet, Private Camerlengo to his Holiness, and
Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the Catholic University of
Quebec, designated as postulator in this cause, in view of the
postulatory letters of a great number of cardinals of the holy Roman
Church, of venerable prelates and persons illustrious by their
ecclesiastical and civil dignity, to-day proposed at the session of
the Sacred Rites, held at the Vatican, the discussion of the
following question: ‘Should the commission of introduction of the
cause, in the case and for the object in question, be signed?’
“The same Sacred Congregation, having maturely examined all things,
having heard the address and report of Father Lorenzo Salvati,
promoter of the faith, has decided to answer affirmatively, that is,
that the commission should be signed, if such was the will of the
Holy Father.—September 15, 1877.
“The undersigned secretary having then made a true report of all
the foregoing to our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., His Holiness
ratified and confirmed the decision of the Sacred Congregation,
and signed with his own hand the commission of introduction of the
cause of the venerable servant of God, the said Mary of the
Incarnation.—September 20, 1877.
“A., Bishop of Sabina,
CARDINAL BILIO, _Prefect_.
”PLACIDUS RALLI, _Secretary_.”
Years will be spent in the investigation; and meanwhile the hearts of
the devout, not only in Canada but throughout this country, will turn
with confidence to this wonderful and holy woman, this early propagator
in the western world of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, soaring
to the highest mystical contemplation, yet immersed in constant, active
labor—a fitting patroness indeed for so many of us who find the best and
holiest impulses of our lives choked and stifled by the thorns and
brambles of earthly cares and duties. Her intercession will be as
powerful as it has been, and it may be in God’s providence that
confidence will be rewarded by some striking mark of favor to attest the
sanctity of his servant.
* * * * *
The body of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation, at the time of
the removal of the remains of the deceased members of the community to
the new choir in 1724, was placed in a leaden coffin with those of Mme.
de la Peltrie and Mother St. Joseph. They were again taken up in 1799
and placed under the communion screen. On the 30th of April, 1833, the
ever-constant devotion to Mother Mary of the Incarnation led to another
verification of her relics. The leaden coffin was found full of clear,
limpid water, which was devoutly preserved as a relic of the holy
foundress, and has been, under God, the instrument of many cures which
are regarded as miraculous.
The first of these occurred, we may say, on the spot. One of the
scholars, Miss Margaret Mary Gowan, had for a year been deprived of the
use of an arm. Full of confidence in the Venerable Mother Mary, she
began a novena, applying the water that had touched her venerated
relics. A total cure followed. This remarkable restoration was soon made
known, and far and wide the afflicted turned as of old to this holy
servant of God for temporal and spiritual aid.
Cures like that of Father Charlevoix had taken place from time to time,
but the authentications had been neglected or perished in the repeated
destructions of the convent by fire. The miracles of recent date are
well attested. Miss Gowan became a Sister of Charity, and is, we
believe, still alive to give her testimony of the cure wrought in 1833.
The devotion of the Venerable Mother Mary is generally a novena, using
especially her prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus[131] and the
application of the water.
Among the prodigies ascribed to this servant of God are the cure of Mary
Coté, a girl of twelve living at Black River. She had been blind for
five years after an attack of small-pox. No pupil, iris, or cornea could
be distinguished in either eye, and the pain, especially in winter, was
intense. Dr. Morin examined her and declared it an incurable case of
_leucoma_. By the advice of Miss Bilodeau, the teacher at the place, to
whom the child was brought to prepare for her First Communion, she began
a novena to Mother Mary of the Incarnation, applying a drop of the
water. On the fourth day, during Mass, the child felt all pain leave her
eyes, and, raising them for the first time, saw the altar and a large
statue of the Blessed Virgin upon it. On examining the eyes they were
found clear and limpid. A few reddish stains remained for some days in
the left eye, but gradually disappeared. The cure was complete and
durable, and was attested by the physician, the teacher, and others who
were eye-witnesses. This remarkable cure occurred June 8, 1867.
The cure of James McCormac, a boy five years old, in 1868, is also
attested in a most satisfactory manner. He suffered from terrible
internal pain, especially in the bowels, and from a contraction of the
leg, and hip disease. No sooner had a novena been begun and the water
applied than the pain ceased and the child was able to get upon his feet
and walk, though uncertainly, like a young infant not yet accustomed to
step. At the end of the novena he walked perfectly, and from that time
enjoyed complete health. Damian Gavard was similarly cured at St. Alban
in 1876.
The devotion to the Venerable member of their order extended to the
Ursuline convents in Europe, and cases are reported from Aubresles,
Quimperlé, Carhaix, Blois, Mons, in France and Belgium, as though
Providence was preparing near the Eternal City testimony of the sanctity
of the Canadian nun.
Footnote 130:
It was published in France in 1684 under the title of _L’Ecole
Chrétienne_.
Footnote 131:
Prayer of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation:
“It is through the Heart of Jesus, my way, my truth, and my life, that
I approach thee, O Eternal Father. Through this divine Heart I worship
thee for all who worship thee not; I love thee for all who love thee
not; I acknowledge thee for all the wilfully blind who through
contempt acknowledge thee not. I wish by this divine Heart to fulfil
the duty of all men. In spirit I traverse the whole world to seek all
the souls ransomed by the most precious Blood of my divine Spouse, in
order to satisfy thee for them all by this divine Heart. I embrace
them in order to present them to thee through it, and by it I ask of
thee their conversion. Wilt thou, O Eternal Father, suffer them to be
ignorant of my Jesus, or live not for him who died for all? Thou
beholdest, O divine Father, that they live not yet. Oh! make them live
through the divine Heart.
MABEL WILLEY’S LOVERS.
Early one June morning, not many years ago, a young couple might have
been seen strolling along by the side of a babbling brook a short
distance from the village of North Conway, New Hampshire.
Harry Fletcher, although a late riser when at home, had determined to be
up betimes this morning and catch a mess of trout for breakfast. Not for
his own breakfast, however, but for that of Miss Kitty Gibbon, who, like
himself, had come to pass a few weeks at the Kearsarge House.
“’Twill please her,” thought Harry, “to hear how I left my comfortable
couch for her sake, at an hour when only farmers are stirring.”
But Miss Gibbon, who had seen him the evening before making ready his
fishing-tackle, had said to herself: “I’ll be up early, too, and go with
him.” And she kept her word; nay, she was down before her admirer. And
when the latter discovered Kitty seated on the piazza reading
_Middlemarch_, he of course invited her to accompany him; which
invitation Kitty accepted, but not until he had asked her a second time;
and then she closed the book slowly, lingering a moment over the last
line and exclaiming: “What an interesting tale this is!” So that Harry
was half tempted to apologize for thus interrupting her reading.
“The truth is, Miss Gibbon,” he said, as they wended their way toward
the stream—“the truth is, I know that you like fresh trout. For no other
human being would I have risen at such an unearthly hour.”
“Indeed!” returned Kitty with an air of perfect indifference. Yet,
accustomed as she was to receiving attention and to hear flattering
words, she could not prevent a tiny rose from blooming on her pallid
cheek when Harry went on to assure her upon his honor that this was the
truth.
In our opinion Miss Gibbon is an attractive young lady. But most people
might not agree with us; and not a few of her rivals declare it is only
her money that makes her so pleasing to the gentlemen. There is, indeed,
a slight cast in one of her eyes, and her forehead is somewhat too broad
for a woman’s. But then she is gifted with a melodious voice (a rare
gift among American women) and has exquisite teeth, which she knows how
to display to the best advantage by a merry laugh practised before the
mirror. Her hair, too, wonderful to relate, is all her own, and, despite
the care which she bestows on her toilet, one glossy ringlet always
manages to escape from its thraldom and fly hither and thither. But the
best feature Kitty possesses—at least so think we—is her nose. It is a
bold Roman nose, which proclaims her to be a girl of character; and we
are convinced that, however spoilt she may be by fortune, there is a
solid groundwork of worth in Kitty which would reveal itself if the
occasion demanded it.
Her mother, who is a rich widow, has been living five or six years
abroad, most of the time in Paris, and Mrs. Gibbon only came home this
summer because she thought that a trip across the ocean would be good
for her daughter’s health.
Harry Fletcher, Kitty’s companion this June morning, is the son of a
prominent New York banker; and as it seems to be one of the laws of
nature that wealth should attract wealth, we cannot wonder if he and
Miss Gibbon have very soon become known to each other.
“He will be as good a catch for you, child, as you will be for him,”
spoke the watchful mother. “And if you play your cards right we may be
back in Paris before October, bringing Mr. Fletcher along with us; and,
considering his prospects, he will do almost as well as a count.”
It would be untrue, however, to say that there was no real love between
this youthful pair. Money may, indeed, have first drawn them together;
but now, after only a fortnight’s acquaintance, we doubt, if one of them
were suddenly to be stricken with poverty, whether poverty would
separate them.
“How charming this walk is!” exclaimed Harry, as he took Kitty’s hand to
help her over a fallen tree.
“In Paris such a delightful walk would not be possible,” answered Kitty.
“Do you really enjoy it?” said Harry. “It must seem so different from
the Champs Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne.”
His companion was silent a moment, and ’twas not until he repeated that
the pine woods and stony fields of New Hampshire must appear very rugged
and unpleasant to her that she said:
“Well, but here, sir, I do for once in my life feel that I am free. Why,
at the fashionable _pensionnat_ where mother put me I was not allowed to
walk out alone even with my cousin Arthur.”
“Oh! you can’t imagine how I long to see Paris,” continued Harry.
“Well, despite what I have just said,” answered Kitty, “it is a most
fascinating city—the queen of cities; and there is a large colony of
Americans there, who have made up their minds to die in Paris, and who
look upon their countrymen here as semi-barbarians.”
In a few minutes they reached the brook and Harry cast in his fly. But
no fish rose; and presently he gave another throw. This time it was not
skilfully done, or rather it was most skilfully done, for the fly, as it
went circling round his head, got caught in Kitty’s truant curl, who
laughed and said: “You have hooked a big trout now, Mr. Fletcher.”
“Well, I came purposely to catch a mess for you,” returned Harry. “But
may I crave leave to keep this one dear fish all for myself?”
“What do you mean?” laughed Kitty, as he tried to disentangle the fly.
“I mean—” here his fingers stopped working and his voice trembled. “I
mean—” Kitty, who understood him well enough, in another moment gave the
happy response, and Harry was so overjoyed that he wound up his line and
did not fish any more.
But they did not return immediately to the village; they felt drawn
nearer to each other in the lonely woods, with only the trees and the
brook to watch them; and so on and on they wandered, until by and by
they emerged from the forest and saw before them an old farmhouse with
moss-covered roof, on which the morning sun was shining, and round about
the homestead the stream made well-nigh a circle—a bright, silvery
circle, murmuring sweet music to those who dwelt there. The lovers
paused a moment and gazed upon the scene without speaking. Then
presently Kitty said: “I could live in such a spot all my life.”
“So could I,” said Harry, turning his sparkling eyes upon her. “With you
I could live anywhere.”
“Let us draw nearer,” continued Kitty, “and speak to the young woman who
is feeding the turkeys by the door; and quite a pretty girl she is,”
Kitty added in an undertone, as Mabel Willey turned towards them.
“Yes, if one admires a dark complexion,” said Harry.
“And buried among these hills!” continued Kitty compassionately. “But I
forgot what I said a moment ago; if I could be happy here with you, dear
Harry, why, she may have a lover too, and not pine one bit for city
life.”
The genial way in which Mabel returned their greeting quite won Kitty’s
heart, while Harry inwardly confessed that, although he did not like
brunettes, she was the handsomest one he had ever seen. And when
presently he glanced down at her bare feet she did not blush, but
quietly remarked:
“I have been gathering lilies, sir, at the pond, and I had to wade in
after them.”
But Harry thought no excuse was needed; for Mabel’s foot was as
perfectly shaped as her hand—a sculptor might have chosen it for a
model.
“What a sweet home you have!” observed Kitty. “And the swallows love it,
too; how many there are skimming over the grass!”
“’Tis not my home,” returned Mabel. “I am here only on a visit to my
grandfather.”
“Indeed! Well, may I ask where your home is?” continued Kitty.
“In Illinois. My parents settled there twenty-three years ago, when they
were first married, and I was born there, and I like it much better than
New Hampshire.”
“Do you? And what part of Illinois are you from?”
“Lee County; and we live on the bank of a beautiful river called Rock
River, which is full of black bass and pickerel, and in autumn ’tis
covered with mallard and teal. Oh! I love Rock River.”
“Well, if your home is a more delightful spot than this it must be
exquisite indeed.”
“I never saw a finer beech-tree than that one yonder,” put in Harry.
Then turning to his betrothed and dropping his voice, “Let us go cut our
names upon it, Kitty, to preserve the memory of this happy day.”
“Oh! do,” answered Kitty aloud. Then, taking Mabel’s hand, she added:
“You must know, my dear, that he and I are just engaged. I spoke the
sweet yes to him as we were strolling up the brook—this
never-to-be-forgotten brook.”
“Engaged—going to be married,” said Mabel in a musing tone and fixing
her dark eyes upon Harry, who wondered what she was thinking of while
she watched him so wistfully. Then presently Mabel went on:
“Yes, do cut your names on the tree, for you must never forget this
day—never; and your names will be visible upon it many years to come.”
All three now bent their steps to the beech, where Harry deftly carved
his name and the name of his betrothed upon the bark.
“Why, how strange!” cried Mabel when he had finished. Then, taking Kitty
by the sleeve, she drew her to the other side of the tree, where, lo! in
letters almost obliterated by Time, was written _Harry Fletcher—Mabel
Willey!_
“Then you have a lover, too, of the same name as mine,” observed Kitty.
“I a lover! I have none,” returned Mabel. “Besides, do you not perceive
that these names have been here a long time, for the bark has nearly
grown over them?”
“Well, who were these lovers, then?—for such no doubt they were,” said
Kitty.
“I do not know; I only discovered the names yesterday. I’ll ask grandpa
as soon as he comes back from the mill.”
“Do,” said Harry, “for I am curious to know.”
“And before you return to Illinois,” continued Kitty, “please come to
the Kearsarge House, in order that I may see you again; for where your
home is, is far, far from where ours is going to be.”
“We intend to live in Paris,” said Harry.
“In Paris?” observed Mabel. “You mean, of course, the Paris that is in
France?”
“Is there any other?” said Kitty, inwardly smiling at her simplicity.
“Oh! yes. There is a Paris in Oregon and another in Texas.”
Here the talk ended by Mabel promising to visit Kitty ere many days were
over.
“I should not have expected to meet such a fine-looking, well-mannered
girl in a place like this,” spoke Miss Gibbon, when she and Harry were
out of Mabel’s hearing.
“In America pretty girls are as plenty as blackberries,” answered Harry.
“Well, we certainly carry off the palm in Europe,” added Kitty. “But
this young woman is a peasant.”
“A farmer’s daughter,” said Harry.
“Oh! we should call her a peasant in France, Harry dear. And I have some
misgivings as to what mother will say when she hears that I have invited
Mabel to visit me at the hotel.”
“Well, she is dark-complexioned, and I’ll swear she is an Italian
baroness,” returned Harry, laughing.
“Oh! yes, do. A capital joke! Why, we know ever so many baronesses
abroad. Ma has a large circle of noble acquaintances.”
“Really!”
“Yes. And I know three American girls married to counts. But there was
no love between them during the courtship—not a spark—’twas all pure
business from beginning to end, and I am told the young ladies are now
very unhappy.”
“Well, our way of courting is the best,” said Harry.
“Judging from my own experience it undoubtedly is,” continued Kitty,
looking tenderly at him. “The walks we have enjoyed together have taught
me what you are, and taught you what I am; and, oh! how fortunate it is
that I came back to America this year.”
“Most fortunate for me,” said Harry.
“And for me, too, dear boy. But now, to speak seriously about Mabel; I
am in a quandary. What shall I do? Ma will see at a glance that she is a
peasant.”
Mrs. Gibbon was highly pleased when her daughter told her of her
engagement to Henry Fletcher, Jr.
“_Console toi, ma fille_,” she said. “_S’il n’a pas de titre, l’argent
au moins ne lui manque pas._”
But, as Kitty had feared, she was not at all pleased when she heard
about Mabel Willey.
“_Mais, mon Dieu! C’est une paysanne!_” groaned the widow, who was wont
to speak French to Kitty, and spoke it well, too—“_une paysanne!_” Then,
sinking down in a rocking-chair, “_Mon Dieu!_” she sighed, “_mon Dieu!
quel scandale._”
Here the matter was let drop, for Mrs. Gibbon was too delighted with
Kitty’s engagement to remain long out of humor.
Three days later, while the widow was seated on the piazza, fanning away
the mosquitoes and wishing with all her heart that she was at Biarritz
or Trouville, up rattled a farm-wagon. An old man was driving, his back
pretty well bent with years, and beside him sat Mabel.
“Grandpa, I’ll not be long,” said the girl, alighting from the vehicle,
and speaking loud enough to be overheard by a number of guests.
“_Mon Dieu!_” groaned Mrs. Gibbon, who guessed who it was.
Now, Mabel did not know Kitty’s mother, but it so happened that it was
she whom the girl first addressed.
“I am come to call on Miss Gibbon. Can you tell me, madam, whether she
is in?” inquired Mabel.
“Go ask one of the servants,” replied the widow, her eyes darting
flashes of anger as she spoke. Then suddenly a bright thought struck
her; quick a change came over her features, and, dropping her voice, she
added just as Mabel was turning away, “Stop! I remember now Miss Gibbon
has gone on a picnic and won’t be back till quite late.”
“Oh! too bad,” ejaculated Mabel. “I may never see her again.”
In another moment the wagon drove off and the girl was on her way to the
West.
When Harry returned the following week to New York and told his father
of his betrothal to Miss Gibbon, the heiress, Mr. Fletcher senior was as
pleased as Kitty’s mother had been.
“But now, my son,” he said, “you must not be idle any longer; you must
come down town and learn business.”
“Business!” exclaimed Harry with an air of surprise.
“Why, yes. Have I not been steadily at work in Wall Street more than
twenty years? During all that time no holiday have I taken—not one,
except a fortnight after your mother’s death. Then I own I did pass a
short while in the country, for grief rendered brain labor out of the
question. And now I am worth a million at the very least; and with such
an example as I have set you would you lead a drone’s life?”
“Well, but, father, I am quite satisfied with our fortune; ’tis large
enough, and I—I have promised Miss Gibbon that we should make our home
abroad.”
Mr. Fletcher was so taken aback by these words that he could only knit
his brow; he could not speak.
Then Harry proceeded: “And, father, I think you ought to take a holiday
this season. What is the use of racking your brains for more money,
since you have a million? Oh! I wish you had been with me at North
Conway. I had such pleasant rambles among the hills, such fine
trout-fishing! And in one of my walks—’twas the morning I proposed to
Kitty—I found our name carved on a tree.” The youth now described the
big beech and the brook and the old farm-house; for it was a
never-to-be-forgotten morning, and he loved to tell all he remembered of
those happy hours.
While he was speaking the look of displeasure which had clouded his
father’s face when he began gradually passed away; the stern,
matter-of-fact business man grew pensive; and when at length Harry came
to describe Mabel—dark-eyed, barefooted, graceful Mabel Willey—the
attentive listener shaded his eyes with his hand, and Harry could not
imagine why his parent sighed. But the young man adroitly took advantage
of his emotion to again ask if he might not go live in Paris. “I
promised Miss Gibbon, father, that we would make our home there. You
surely would not have me break my word?”
Mr. Fletcher merely answered: “Hush! speak no more about it. Go! go!”
Whereupon Harry, now in the blithest of moods, hurried off to get his
trotting-wagon; for he had invited Kitty to take a drive in the Central
Park.
At this same hour, while Harry and his betrothed were enjoying
themselves together, conversing chiefly about Europe—their own country
seemed to hold very little place in their thoughts—Mabel Willey was
engaged in household duties with her mother.
Mabel was right when she praised her Western home: a log-house standing
on a knoll which overlooked a swift-flowing river; beyond the river a
broad expanse of rolling prairie, where the grouse were wont to gather
in springtime, and for hours long their voices, saying, “Coo-ooo,
coo-ooo, coo-ooo,” would reach Mabel’s ear; while ever and anon a black
bass would spring up out of the flood, marking the spot where he fell
back into the water by a ring of widening, quivering ripples. And, oh!
how the girl loved these sights and sounds. But most of all did she love
the deer, who would steal out of the forest of a moonlight night in
autumn and make incursions into the corn-field hard by. Nothing had ever
disturbed the harmony of this sweet spot. Husband and wife loved each
other with true love, and God had blessed them with six children, of
whom Mabel was the eldest; and when you saw Robert Willey felling a tree
or following the plough you knew where his offspring had derived their
health and strength from, while in the mother’s face still lingered
traces of the beauty which young Mabel had inherited. But Robert did not
perceive that _his_ Mabel was changed: no, as fair in his eyes was she
now as when he wooed her in the far-off days of his youth.
Above the broad fireplace in the room where the family assembled of an
evening, to chat and make merry after the labors of the day were over,
were these words, painted in large letters and taken from the Book of
Proverbs:
“Give me neither beggary nor riches: lest perhaps being filled, I should
be tempted to deny, and say: Who is the Lord? or being compelled by
poverty, I should steal, and forswear the name of my God.”
What a happy hour this evening hour was! Sometimes Mr. Willey would tell
the young ones a story; and when he began, what a scramble there was for
his knees! Sometimes he would look over the columns of the _Prairie
Farmer_, gleaning therefrom useful hints for his vocation. While he was
thus occupied his wife would read aloud to the children. But she did not
select anything from a silly dime novel or illustrated paper, but
generally something in Washington Irving’s _Sketch-Book_, or one of
Cooper’s tales; and let us say that the tale they all liked best was
_The Pioneers_.
“I am glad you enjoyed your visit to grandpa,” spoke Mrs. Willey one
morning, as she rested awhile at the churn.
“Oh! ever so much,” answered Mabel, who, with sleeves rolled up, was
busy skimming cream. “But I forgot to tell you, mother, that a few days
before I left him there came to the house, at a rather early hour, a
young gentleman and lady from one of the hotels in North Conway. They
had strolled up Wild-cat Run, which, you know, winds almost round
grandpa’s home, and had become engaged to each other on the way. I told
them it was quite romantic. The girl was stylish-looking, but didn’t
appear to be strong; her face was like wax-work, and her dress was made
in such a fashion that I think she must have found it hard work to
breathe. But she was exceedingly polite, and I was quite taken with her
before we parted. The young gentleman likewise was a very pleasant
fellow, and much better-looking, too, than she was. I judged by his
hands that he has never done any work in his life, and his moustache was
twisted and curled in the most coquettish way imaginable—just like
this.” Here Mabel put her fingers to her upper lip, then twirled them
round and round to Mrs. Willey’s great amusement.
“But what I want most to speak of,” she continued, “is the big
beech-tree.” Mabel now proceeded to tell how Harry had carved his name
and Kitty’s upon it, and how she had discovered the names of Harry
Fletcher and Mabel Willey upon the same tree in letters barely legible.
“O child!” exclaimed her mother, when she was done speaking, “you cannot
imagine how vividly my girlish days come back upon my memory when you
speak of that old beech. Yes, I can see Harry Fletcher cutting his name
and mine upon it just as plainly as if it were yesterday. A handsome
fellow was Harry. He wanted me to be his wife. I did not dislike him—no,
indeed. We were good friends; we sat side by side at school; we picked
huckleberries together. Many folks thought I should marry him. But there
was another young man courting me, one who bore the same name as myself,
though no relation; and one day we all three met, and my lovers agreed
that I should then and there decide which of them I’d choose. And ’twas
your father, Mabel, who won me; nor have I ever for a single moment
regretted my choice. Yet Harry Fletcher was a brave, generous fellow,
very smart, too, and I have often wondered what became of him. All I
know is that soon after I refused him he quitted our part of the country
to seek his fortune elsewhere.”
“Right, wife, right! A splendid fellow!” cried Mr. Willey, entering the
dairy to get a cup of milk. “Why, I was thinking about him myself only a
few minutes ago while I was looking at our corn—and a fine crop it’s
going to be, a mighty fine crop. And I wondered whether Harry, if he is
still in the land of the living, has a farm like ours and a snug
log-house to shelter him. Many things may happen in the length of time
since he and I parted; this world has many ups and downs—it’s a regular
seesaw.”
After talking awhile about Harry Fletcher Farmer Willey said: “Come,
wife, let’s take a row; and I’ll bring my rod along and catch a mess of
black bass for supper.” Mrs. Willey, who liked to see her husband play
as well as work, gladly assented. They did not fish much, however, for
the skiff was long and broad and leaked never a drop; and the six happy
children went a-rowing too. It did your eyes good to look at them, and
your ears good, too, to hear them—so healthy and strong and rollicksome
they were; dipping their hands in the water, sprinkling each other’s
faces, singing, laughing; and finally barefooted Dick, who was ten years
old, wittingly tumbled overboard and played fish around the boat—the boy
could swim like a fish—to the great amusement of his brothers and
sisters.
Three months after this pleasant excursion on the river Mabel found
herself again in New Hampshire. The truth is her grandfather, whose
feelings had been much wrought upon by the visit she had paid him in
summer, could not bear to be separated any longer from those whom he
loved, and, moreover, he was of an age when farm-labor was getting
rather irksome. Accordingly, he had written to Mrs. Willey, telling her
that he wished to spend the rest of his days in Illinois, and begged
that he might have the company of young Mabel in the long, tiresome
journey to the West. “For she is a bright girl,” he said, “and can take
charge of me and my trunk, and of herself too.”
So Mabel, who, fond as she was of home, was not averse to seeing a
little of the world, went to fetch her grandfather; and now in October
we find her passing with him through the city of New York.
“It’s just like a beehive, this town,” spoke Mabel, as she paused a
moment in Broadway near the Astor House to try and discover the
ticket-office of the Michigan Southern Railway.
“Such a crowd makes my head swim,” said the old man, who was leaning on
her arm.
“Well, I’ll ask somebody where the ticket-office is,” added Mabel.
And she did ask somebody, and that somebody happened to be no other than
Harry Fletcher, Jr., who was on his way down town with his father. Right
cordial was the meeting between them.
“I have often thought of you,” said Harry.
“Indeed! Well, the morning we first met was a blissful morning for
you—was it not?” returned Mabel, with a laughing gleam in her eye.
“Pray, sir, how is Miss Gibbon?”
“Oh! extremely well. She is now in Philadelphia, bidding good-by to some
friends, for we sail shortly for Europe.”
“But you will not really settle abroad, as you once told me?” said
Mabel. Then, with a little hesitation, she added: “Men like you, sir,
ought to live in their own country.”
“You are more eloquent than you imagine,” answered the youth. “But I
have promised Miss Gibbon that we should make our home in Paris.”
Here Mr. Fletcher senior shook his head, while Mabel’s grandparent
observed: “Why, young man, isn’t this country big enough for you?”
Harry made no response, but, taking a pretty rosebud from his
buttonhole, he presented it to Mabel, saying: “We may never meet again,
but Miss Gibbon and I will often speak of you when we are far away.”
Closely during this brief conversation had Harry’s father watched Mabel,
and now he took her hand and pressed it, and the girl wondered why he
gazed upon her with moistened eyes. Then, after showing her the
ticket-office, Mr. Fletcher went to a flower-stand near by and bought
her a beautiful bouquet which quite threw into the shade Harry’s
rosebud. “Oh! thanks, sir,” said Mabel, as she accepted the flowers.
“How delicious they are!”
When presently they parted Harry said to his father: “Miss Willey is a
very fine girl, isn’t she? And I’ll not let Kitty call her a peasant any
more.”
Mr. Fletcher did not seem to hear this remark; he appeared like one
absorbed in a reverie. But of a sudden he burst out: “A peasant! a
peasant! By heaven! there is not a princess in Europe better than Mabel
Willey.”
“Well, Kitty would not call her a peasant except for her mother,”
continued Harry. “But Mrs. Gibbon has filled her head with foolish
notions.”
“Such as living in Europe,” answered Mr. Fletcher. Then, with a sigh, he
added, “O Harry! how you have disappointed me. Why, I would rather see
you wed a girl like Mabel, even if she were poor, than have you pass
your days in a foreign land.”
“Would you really?” exclaimed Harry.
“But, alas!” went on Mr. Fletcher, now speaking to himself—“alas! ’twas
I who urged him to make a rich match. Yet I have been rolling up money
for years and years; and now, when I am worth a million, my only child
is going to spend my fortune among foreigners.”
As they pursued their way to Wall Street, Harry noticed the unhappy look
on his father’s face and again advised him to take a holiday. But Mr.
Fletcher answered: “I wish I could. But I have been so long in the
treadmill of business that now I should not know how to play if I went
away.”
And so the millionaire went down to his office, while the heir to all
his wealth, with a fresh rosebud sticking in his buttonhole, repaired to
Delmonico’s to kill time, as he expressed it—to kill time sipping sherry
and thinking about Paris and Kitty Gibbon.
But the banker’s thoughts were of Mabel Willey. “She brings me right
back to the dear old days,” he sighed—“the dear old days. She is the
living image of her mother.”
For once in his life Mr. Fletcher was absent-minded, and the president
of a trust company, who came to talk with him upon important business,
fancied that he did not evince his usual shrewdness and penetration.
They were still engaged in earnest conversation when a piece of news
reached them, a startling piece of news, that made them both stare and
wonder if their ears told the truth: the Confidence Trust Company had
closed its doors!
But Harry, who heard of it at Delmonico’s, was not startled in the
least; nay, he rather enjoyed the excitement which quickly followed. He
was rich; how could this failure harm him? Ere long other failures were
announced, and Wall Street became filled with an excited crowd—so filled
that it was well-nigh impossible to move about; crash followed crash,
and, judging by men’s faces, you might have thought the end of the world
was at hand.
Yet Harry calmly edged his way through the throng, always careful of the
pretty rosebud, over which he frequently placed his hand for protection.
But ere this memorable day came to an end Harry grew serious.
“This is going to prove the greatest financial crash our country has
known since the Revolution,” said Mr. Fletcher to him in the evening;
“and, my son, I may be utterly ruined.”
“And I’ll not be able to go to Paris,” said Harry inwardly. “Oh! what
will Kitty say?”
But it was not so much Miss Gibbon as Miss Gibbon’s mother, who took to
heart the sudden, unexpected, astonishing change in Mr. Fletcher’s
fortune; for the banker, who had been entangled in many speculations,
did indeed lose nearly all he possessed—so little had he left that the
widow made up her mind that her daughter should not marry his son if she
could prevent it.
A few days after the panic Harry called on his betrothed, who was now
back from Philadelphia. He meant to tell her the whole sad truth, and
afford her an opportunity to break off the engagement, if she wished to
do so. In the parlor he found Mrs. Gibbon, who seemed to be expecting
him (he had written Kitty a note to say he was coming), and the widow’s
countenance chilled his heart as he entered. Harry began by making a
commonplace remark about the weather—the equinoctial was raging—then
went on to speak of the unhappy change in his father’s fortune,
wondering all the while why Kitty did not appear.
“We have heard of it,” answered the other, “and needless to tell what a
shock the news gave us. However, such misfortunes will happen—_c’est la
vie_. And now that you have been so frank with me, Mr. Fletcher, let me
be equally frank with you, and say that my daughter and I have had a
long, serious talk on the subject. Miss Gibbon, you know, has set her
heart upon living abroad—indeed, we wish to be back again by the end of
the month, and—”
“And now that I am penniless,” interrupted Harry, “perhaps you deem it
best that the engagement be broken off.”
“I regret to say it is the conclusion we have come to.”
Harry, who had feared this would be the step which Mrs. Gibbon would
urge Kitty to take, nevertheless wished to see the young lady in person,
and so he said: “But may I not speak with Miss Gibbon a moment? I—I—”
“She has a bad headache and is confined to her room,” interrupted the
widow. “Besides, sir, I am fully authorized to speak for my daughter,
who, you are aware, is not yet of age.”
“Oh! but do tell her I am here; let me speak only a word to her,” said
Harry in a pleading tone.
“I am sorry that I cannot grant your request,” answered Mrs. Gibbon
firmly.
With this the interview closed, and Harry departed in a sorrowful mood
indeed.
For a while the blow quite stunned him. The tears did not flow; he could
only sigh and groan. He wished he had been born poor, and that Kitty had
not been an heiress. “For then poverty would not have separated us; we
should have toiled for our daily bread, and been as happy as if we had
lived on Fifth Avenue.”
The following week he read in a newspaper the names of Mrs. Gibbon and
her daughter among the passengers by the steamship _Russia_ for
Liverpool.
“Well, Harry, let us not despair,” said Mr. Fletcher a month after the
panic. “Happy days may yet be in store for us.”
And as he spoke his thoughts turned westward to Rock River—to Mabel
Willey.
“And why not?” he asked himself, after musing a moment. “Why not? Many a
man as old as I am has married a girl as young as Mabel.”
“Well, yes, father, I do believe happy days are in store for us,”
returned the youth, his countenance brightening; for he was beginning to
recover from the blow which his heart had received (young people easily
recover from such blows). Besides, he had come to the conclusion that
all had happened for the best. Miss Gibbon was not worthy of him,
otherwise, despite her mother, she would certainly have managed to
communicate with him ere she sailed. It was only his money she cared
about. “And, father,” he added, “I could be perfectly content on a farm;
yes, I know I could, and you have enough left from the wreck of your
fortune to buy a farm, and we might live together on it very happily.
Suppose, therefore, we go West—say to Illinois, where Mabel Willey’s
father lives.”
“Just what I was thinking of,” said Mr. Fletcher, with a tender
throbbing of the heart, which might have changed to a bitter pang had he
known what was passing through Harry’s mind; for Harry, too, had asked
himself:
“Why not? I abominate rich girls now. Mabel is quite good enough for
me.”
Accordingly, to Illinois they went, and arrived in the most glorious
time of the year—Indian summer.
“Why, I do declare! Can it be possible? Is this really my old friend
Harry Fletcher?” cried Mr. Willey, as he grasped the other’s hand, while
Mrs. Willey and Mabel and all the little ones stood in a gaping circle
round them.
“Yes, I am he and nobody else,” was the response, given in a voice
quivering with emotion.
“Well, you are welcome—a thousand times welcome!” put in the wife, a
tear glistening in her eye. “Ay, Harry, it makes us young again to look
at you.”
“And here is the image of yourself in the dear old days,” spoke Mr.
Fletcher, turning towards Mabel, who blushed and looked very pretty,
while Harry Fletcher, Jr.—who did not dream of his parent falling in
love—whispered to Mabel:
“How romantic this is!”
“Very,” answered Mabel. “But pray, sir, why didn’t you bring Miss
Gibbon? Or perhaps you are married, and I should say Mrs. Fletcher?”
“I’ll tell all about it by and by,” said Harry in a low tone. “It is an
exceedingly painful subject. I am trying to forget it.”
Then, after a pause, and drawing the girl aside, he added:
“I may as well tell you now: our engagement is at an end—Miss Gibbon is
in Europe.”
When Mabel heard this her kind heart was deeply moved for Harry as well
as for Kitty. Mabel had no lover, but she had often thought that if she
had one how dearly she would love him. “And if our engagement were to be
broken off, I hardly think I should ever smile again.”
“Well, Harry,” continued Mr. Willey, addressing his old friend, and at
the same time sweeping his hand over the landscape, “is not this a
charming country? Look, yonder is the prairie; and there is Rock
River—isn’t it a fine stream? And there you see my timber—I have fifty
acres of it; and that is my corn-field—a good fifty acres of corn; and
there are my cattle; and I have no end of chickens and turkeys; and I
have a good orchard. In fact, I want for nothing, absolutely nothing.”
“Well, you ought to be happy,” answered Mr. Fletcher.
“Happy isn’t the word,” put in Mrs. Willey.
“Right, wife,” said the farmer. “I’d not change places with the richest
man in New York. People talk about the panic. Why, it hasn’t harmed me a
bit. My corn is ripening just as well now as before the crash; my land
is all paid for; I owe not a dollar to anybody; and I really don’t know
what worry means.”
“No worry!” murmured Mr. Fletcher, pressing his hand to his brow. “Alas!
when have I been free from it?”
“Well, it is worry and not work that kills people,” went on Mr. Willey.
“So stay out here and buy a quarter section; ’twill make you ten years
younger. No life so happy as a farmer’s life.”
“The very thing I intend to do,” said Mr. Fletcher. Here Mabel clapped
her hands, and all the little ones laughed and clapped their hands too;
while Mrs. Willey said to herself: “How very pleasant it would be if the
son of my old lover were to marry Mabel!”
It was long since Mr. Fletcher had passed a happier day than this first
day in Illinois; the balmy air, the entire change of scene, the gladsome
faces around him, but above all the company of sweet Mabel, who insisted
on showing him all over the homestead, obliterated from his mind the
troubles and worries he had gone through and really made him feel many
years younger.
The following week Mrs. Willey was delighted when she heard Harry ask
her daughter to take a row on the river. “I have only a short letter to
write,” said the youth, “then I’ll be ready. Will you come?”
“Suppose we take a row,” said Harry’s father to Mabel a few minutes
later—he had not heard Harry’s invitation.
“To be sure,” replied Mabel. “But shall we go immediately, sir, or wait
for your son? He asked me to go with him as soon as he had done a little
writing.”
“Oh! indeed,” said Mr. Fletcher; and now for the first time it occurred
to him that perhaps Harry might fall under the influence of this simple
yet bewitching maiden. “Well, if he does,” he added inwardly, “dearly as
I feel that I could love her—for her mother’s sake, dearly, dearly—I’ll
not stand in my boy’s way.”
However, Mr. Fletcher and Mabel did go down to the river without waiting
for Harry, who made his appearance on the bank in less than twenty
minutes, waving his hand and shouting lustily.
But Mr. Fletcher seemed not to hear his voice; at least he did not hear
it for a long time—so long that Mabel fancied the old gentleman, as she
inwardly called him, must be a little deaf. At length she made bold to
inform him that his son was calling; whereupon Mr. Fletcher looked round
and exclaimed: “Oh! ay, to be sure, so he is.” And now the bow of the
skiff was turned slowly shoreward. But the oars did not move very
briskly; nay, so sluggishly were they plied that the boat drifted a good
half-mile below the landing-place—poor Harry following it along the
shore, while Mabel was tempted more than once to ask her companion to
let her have the oars.
“Well, well, I have had my day,” sighed Mr. Fletcher, about a quarter of
an hour later, as he sat on a stump watching with tearful eyes his son,
whose vigorous young arms were now sending the boat upstream as rapidly
as he himself had sent it down with the current. “No, I must not lament;
Mabel is worth a dozen city flirts, and I hope that Harry will fall in
love with her.”
“Is it not a beautiful view from this knoll?” spoke a voice, presently,
close behind him; and, turning, Mr. Fletcher beheld Mabel’s mother, who
had approached him unheard over a bed of moss.
“It is indeed!” he replied. “And the most beautiful object in the whole
landscape is your daughter.”
“Well, Mabel is a jewel, and no mistake,” continued Mrs. Willey. “And
right glad am I that she and your son are enjoying themselves together
on the river.” But even as she spoke a strange thought flashed upon the
mother, for she perceived that the eyes of her old suitor were moistened
with tears.
“Can it be possible,” she said to herself, “that he, too, is falling in
love with Mabel? Well, I hope not; for there will be a poor chance for
him while young Harry is about.”
We need scarcely say that for Harry Fletcher, Jr., this was only the
first of many pleasant excursions on the river with Mabel; and day by
day the recollections of his former life—the dinner-parties, the operas,
the balls he had gone to, the pretty girls he had danced with—grew
dimmer and dimmer in his mind’s eye. More than once, too, did Mrs.
Willey discover Harry’s father watching the happy couple from the stump
on the knoll.
“How strangely things turn out!” spoke Mr. Fletcher, a fortnight later,
when Mabel’s mother once more approached him over the bed of moss.
“Perhaps you are thinking of just what I am thinking,” returned Mrs.
Willey. “If so, it is indeed strange, and, I may add, a most romantic
way of taking revenge on me; eh, Harry?”
“Ah! little did I dream of this the day when I proposed to you and you
refused me,” continued Mr. Fletcher, shaking his head. “It seems only
yesterday. Yet here is a son of mine, with beard on his chin, as much in
love with your daughter as ever I was with you.”
“And I guess there’ll not be any nay spoken this time,” answered Mrs.
Willey.
At these words Mr. Fletcher buried his face in his hands and sighed,
while the other, who remembered the tears which had once moistened his
eyes as he sat looking at Harry and Mabel from this same spot, felt more
than ever convinced that her child had two lovers, and wished that she
had two Mabels, in order to be able to give one to each.
Yes, Harry and Mabel were already deeply in love, and Mabel, for whom it
was quite a new experience, trembled every time the youth met her—and he
met her very often between sunrise and sunset: at the churn, feeding the
poultry, gathering chestnuts—“For now I am sure he is going to propose,”
she would say to herself.
At length a morning came when Harry resolved to put the all-important
question. Why dally any longer? He had made up his mind to become a
farmer; Mabel would be just the wife for him; she was not only handsome
but healthy—no headaches, no dyspepsia. If her hands were not so soft as
Miss Gibbon’s, what of it? They were industrious, willing hands, and
able to do almost everything except thrum on a piano.
Accordingly, Harry went in quest of Mabel, who, one of the children told
him, had gone to pay a visit to their neighbor. Whereupon he took the
lane which led to the adjoining farm, and had proceeded about half way
when he saw the girl coming towards him. She did not walk with her usual
elastic step; her eyes were cast upon the ground, nor did she raise them
until he was quite close, and then Harry perceived that she was very
pale, and seemed to be startled, as if she had not heard him
approaching.
“Dear Mabel, what is the matter?” said Harry, taking her hand as he
spoke. “I never saw you look troubled before. Are you ill?”
In a voice wonderfully firm, considering the poignant anguish she was
suffering, and forcing to her lips the ghost of a smile, Mabel answered:
“Ill? No, indeed, sir! And I should not have been moving at such a
snail’s pace; I should have been running, flying, for I bring you great
news—news that will ravish your heart with delight.”
“Really! Well, pray, what is it?” said Harry, who felt the hand which he
clasped growing colder.
“Miss Gibbon has arrived,” continued Mabel. “She is at our neighbor’s;
she mistook the road, and went there instead of coming to our house; and
I told her to wait where she was until I found you and broke the glad
tidings So, Mr. Fletcher, make haste, do, for Miss Gibbon is longing to
meet you.”
Here Mabel, who could not trust herself to utter another syllable, tore
away from him, leaving Harry perfectly dazed and bewildered.
But Mabel did not go home. No, into the woods she plunged, where no eye
might witness the tears which now rolled down her cheeks. And it
happened that somebody else was strolling among the trees at the same
time, pensive and musing over days gone by. Suddenly the girl found
herself face to face with Mr. Fletcher. In vain she strove to hide her
grief—too late; not ten paces separated them.
“Why, Mabel, dear, darling Mabel,” cried the other, who fancied that a
lover’s quarrel had broken out between herself and Harry, “what has
happened? ’Tis the first time I have seen anything but gladness on your
sweet face.”
As Mr. Fletcher spoke he drew her affectionately towards him. But it was
several minutes ere she could check her sobs sufficiently to answer.
Finally, yielding to his solicitations, Mabel opened out her heart; she
told him the whole truth, and we may faintly imagine what Mr. Fletcher’s
feelings were as she went on to confess her love for his son, and the
cruel shock which her heart had received a half-hour since when she met
Miss Gibbon.
“And Miss Gibbon told me, sir, that she loved Harry as much as ever;
that she had sold all her diamonds, run away from her mother, come alone
the whole way from Paris to find him, and that her mother should never
part them again.”
A spell of silence followed Mabel’s confession, and during the silence
Mr. Fletcher’s heart throbbed violently.
“Well, Mabel,” he began presently, and looking her full in the face,
“you have unbosomed yourself to me, let me now reveal my inmost feelings
to you. I, too, have a cause for sorrow—one which I find it impossible
to overcome. Nobody can remove it except you; but you can remove it—you
may make me the happiest man in Illinois, if you choose.”
“I!” exclaimed Mabel in surprise. “O sir! I will do anything, anything
to make you happy.”
“Ay, child, the happiest man in Illinois,” exclaimed Mrs. Willey, who
had caught these last words as she pushed her way through the trees, and
was determined to back him up in his suit with all the authority she
could command.
“O mother, mother!” cried Mabel, leaving Mr. Fletcher and flinging
herself in her parent’s arms.
“Come, come, child! Don’t take on so about it,” continued Mrs. Willey.
“I know what the trouble is. But it can’t be helped. Harry loved Miss
Gibbon before he ever laid eyes on you, and she loved him, and they were
once engaged to be married; and now they are engaged anew—not the least
doubt about it, for I have just left them walking arm-in-arm, cooing
together like a pair of doves. So, Mabel, dry your tears, and let me
declare you would make me the happiest woman in the State, if you would
accept the hand of my dear, good friend Henry Fletcher.”
“What! marry the old gentleman?” whispered Mabel, looking up in her
mother’s face; then turning she gazed furtively on Mr. Fletcher, who had
retired a few steps, while a smile, a very faint smile, played on her
lips.
“Hush, child!” returned Mr. Willey in an undertone. “He is not old; his
heart is just like a boy’s.” Here Mabel again hid her face in her
mother’s bosom, and the latter began to feel a little vexed, for she
fancied that she heard Mabel laughing.
“Be my wife, Mabel!” exclaimed Mr. Fletcher, drawing near, “and then
I’ll settle here, and Harry will too, and we will all be happy
neighbors. Oh! speak, dear Mabel, speak.”
“Give me until to-morrow,” answered Mabel, with her face still
concealed.
“Surely I will,” said Mr. Fletcher.
“O child! be business-like and arrange the matter at once,” urged Mrs.
Willey.
“Not now; to-morrow,” said Mabel—“to-morrow.” And she ended her words
with a sigh.
With this Mr. Fletcher withdrew, and mother and daughter went their way
home—the mother eloquently pleading the cause of her old lover, Mabel
patiently, reverently listening; and when they reached the log-house,
whom should they meet standing by the porch but Harry. He was alone, and
appeared much confused as Mabel fastened her eyes on him—poor Mabel!
Then in broken accents he said: “Mabel, Mabel, can you forgive me? I—”
“Forgive you! Pray, for what?” she exclaimed, interrupting him. “Did I
not tell you I brought glad news? And I hope that you and Miss Gibbon
will live long and happily together.”
“Oh! how good, how generous, how noble you are,” said Harry, who knew
full well that Mabel loved him; in more ways than one she had let the
dear secret escape her. “And fortunate will be the man who wins you!”
Here the girl stood silent a moment; a violent struggle was going on
within her. Then, a sunny look beaming over her face, “Who _has_ won
me,” she replied.
“Well spoken, child!” exclaimed Mrs. Willey, clapping her on the
shoulder—“well spoken!”
“Why, Harry,” added Mabel, “I am going to be your step-mother.”
“Really, truly!” cried a voice from an upper window. “My Harry’s
step-mother!” In another moment Kitty Gibbon came rushing down the
staircase at a break-neck pace, and half choked Mabel with her embraces.
Her arms were still clasping Mabel’s neck when the elder Harry appeared
on the scene; and we may imagine, if we can, what his feelings were as
Mabel stretched out one of her hands towards him.
Presently Mr. Willey arrived; then the grandfather and all the little
ones; and while they were rejoicing together a man on horseback galloped
up.
“Is there a lady here named Miss Gibbon?” inquired the stranger.
“Yes, I am she,” answered Kitty, looking somewhat agitated, for she
could not imagine what the fellow wanted; all sorts of things passed
through her head.
“Well, I have a telegram for you,” continued the man, handing her an
envelope.
“A telegram! Why, so it is, and from Europe, too!” cried Kitty. Then,
tearing it open, she read as follows:
“Kitty, I forgive you. Will allow you $5,000 per year. Count de
Montjoli heart-broken. Write at once. God bless you!”
“Oh! it is from mamma,” she said, after reading it to herself. “And now
I’ll read it aloud. And, Harry, listen well, for it’s jolly. But let me
say before I begin—and I wish mother could hear me—you are worth, dear
boy, all the counts in the world.”
Here Kitty read over the telegram, after which followed a general round
of embraces. All were indeed happy beyond measure, Mabel as well as the
rest; and the girl said to her mother, “You have chosen a husband for
me, and no doubt chosen for the best.” Then, with a smile, she added:
“And I promise to grow older every day and catch up to him by and by.”
“And you will teach me how to be a farmer’s wife,” said Kitty to Mabel.
“And I’ll play boss over you all,” spoke Farmer Willey, spreading forth
his brawny arms so as to covey the whole group.
“Yes, yes,” said young Harry, “and I will write to New York and tell
others who are crying over hard times to follow our example and come
West.”
“Do, do!” exclaimed Harry’s father. “Here is health and no worry, sound
sleep by night, and—”
“Wives to be had without much wooing,” interrupted Mabel, glancing
archly at her future husband.
“Darling girl!” replied Mr. Fletcher, with tender pathos in his voice.
“This is the blessed end of an old, old courtship. Ay, Mabel, the shadow
of my days, like Hezekiah’s, runs backward when I gaze upon you.”
“Well spoken!” exclaimed Mrs. Willey, with tears of joy glistening in
her eyes—“well spoken! And, oh! most sincerely do I thank God that my
old lover has won his Mabel at last.”
ON THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT LAFAYETTE, N. H.
I.
Thou rear’st thy graceful head, thy serrate crest,
O noble mountain, o’er the busy vale,
Franconia’s seething, motley-crowded dale:
Below, we inly chafe; on thee, we rest.
The scars that seam thy fir-crowned, rocky breast,
The rifts that rend thy floating, cloud-spun veil,
Tell but of nature’s laws the ordered tale—
Each change with seal of sovereign might impressed.
If void of man’s proud gift, a living soul,
At least thou knowest naught of rebel will,
Of petty passions, pettier aims, that toll
The knell of love and praise his days should fill.
Here rest we, while thine anthems heavenward roll,
And list the voice of God, so sweet, so still.
II.
Ay, rest, poor human soul, but not for long:
That searching voice hath bid thee look below,
Where freshening streams by dusty roadsides flow,
Where sunlit dwellings vales and uplands throng.
It bids thy fretted, fainting heart be strong,
It whispers of a glory passing show,
Of loftier intercommune thou mayst know
Than mountain top, skies’ sweep, or forest song.
Above yon hamlet gleams a glittering cross,
A beacon light to show where dwells the Lord.
He calls! our brethren call! Can that be loss
Which brings us nearer Him whose life outpoured
Hath power to right all wrongs, lift this poor dross
To heights where thought of man hath ne’er yet soared?
THE PRUSSIAN PERSECUTION EXHIBITED IN ITS RESULTS.
Seven years ago the government of the new German Empire, pursuing the
Protestant traditions of Prussia, and spurred on to action by the occult
power of Freemasonry, began its gigantic attack on the Catholic Church.
It opened hostilities without the customary declaration of war, and, in
order to hide the real motives and aims of the campaign, its crafty
rulers professed well-meant intentions and a sincere solicitude for the
welfare of the church, declaring over and over again that the religious
policy they were inaugurating was exclusively directed against the
Jesuit or ultramontane influence in the church. Soon, however, and as
the government gradually unfurled the banner of persecution, the dark
designs of Freemasonry appeared in their real light and character.
Whilst the ministers moved heaven and earth to produce some plausible
pretexts in justification of the announced legislation, such as the
pope’s infallibility, the pretended encroachments of the Roman Church on
the domains of the state, the creation of the Centre party, etc., the
national liberals in the Landtag dogmatized on the religion of the
future, the first mission of which was to bring Christianity into
harmony with the spirit of the age, or, as one of their leading organs
put it, “to reconcile the faith of our forefathers with the reason of
their children.” At last, when the legislators had gained the conviction
that the reasons alleged for the May Laws found neither credence with
Catholics nor favor with honest Protestants, they threw off the mask,
and Infidelity, fully armed and with colors flying, boldly entered the
lists of the _Kulturkampf_. The final aim of the struggle, so long and
persistently denied, now openly acknowledged, was nothing less than the
annihilation of the Roman Catholic Church, and thereby of Christianity
itself. Whatever exception Prince Bismarck may have taken to this
sweeping programme in favor of his own idea of a German state church,
with the emperor for its head, appears irrelevant before the
extraordinary fact that he placed himself at the head of the enemies of
Christ, and with their help worked for the destruction of his religion.
For this end, and for this end only, did the German infidels devise and
pass the May Laws. Have they succeeded? Will they ever achieve their
object? To these questions we unhesitatingly oppose a decided never. As
Catholics we have the promise of Christ that his church here on earth
will last to the end of the world; as witnesses of the persecution and
its results we proclaim with unspeakable satisfaction that the attempt
to destroy the church in Germany has completely failed. Although the
body of the church has been roughly handled, although it bleeds from a
thousand wounds, and stands mutilated, disfigured, a most piteous sight,
still the church itself, the Catholic faith, has remained untouched and
shineth forth with increased splendor, strength, and beauty. Men have
suffered, not their religion.
Taking a bird’s-eye view of the present condition of the Catholic Church
in Prussia, we discover an immense field of desolation on which a seven
years’ relentless war has spread intense misery and suffering, heaped
ruins upon ruins, and well-nigh destroyed every monument of Christian
faith and piety. The guides and pastors of the church are dispersed, the
whole hierarchy is broken up, hundreds of priests eat the bitter bread
of exile, many more waste their lives in prison, and greater still is
the number of those for whom the exercise of priestly functions is
accounted a treasonable crime. More than one million of loyal Prussian
subjects are doomed to live and die without the blessings of the church.
In more than seven hundred parishes no sacraments can be received, no
Mass be heard, no Christian burial obtained. New-born children must be
baptized by lay hands or carried with personal danger to distant
parishes. The sick and dying are denied the last sacraments, unless
they, too, can be conveyed to neighboring churches. All Catholic
seminaries, schools, and educational establishments are either closed
altogether or taken possession of by the Protestant government. Convents
and monasteries are empty or inhabited by criminals, their former
saintly inmates driven out of their homes and country. Catholic
orphanages, hospitals, reformatories, all charitable institutions are
suppressed, and the church property of dioceses deprived of their
bishops is sequestrated by the civil power. Catholic religious
instruction in popular and higher schools, no longer under the control
of the church, is now exclusively taught in the name and by authority of
the Prussian government.
This sad work of destruction and persecution appears sadder still when
viewed in the ghastliness of its details. By clause 1 of the law of May
11, 1873, all papal jurisdiction in matters of church discipline was
transferred from the pope to the German ecclesiastical authorities, or,
in other words, German Catholics were, declared cut off from the visible
head of their church. This law, on the very face of it, could have no
practical meaning in the nineteenth century, and therefore remained a
dead letter. Beyond a certain number of penalties inflicted on priests
and editors for publishing papal documents addressed to German bishops
and priests, or forwarding letters of excommunication to apostates, no
harm was done to any one by this law, and diocesan communications are
uninterruptedly carried on by the pope, not publicly, it is true, but
almost as completely and safely as if the Holy Father enjoyed the
Prussian government’s sanction for it.
Far more mischievous, downright disastrous to the German hierarchy,
became the various laws concerning the education and appointment of
priests to the ecclesiastical office. With regard to the clause
prescribing a state examination in science for ecclesiastics over and
above the usual examination in philosophy and theology, its severity
could not hitherto be tested; for, although the official list of
thirty-four examiners is every year published in the leading newspapers,
not one Catholic candidate has presented himself for examination. This
clause, too, may therefore be termed a failure. On the other hand, the
appointing and not appointing of priests to vacant parishes became fatal
to all Prussian bishops. Whenever they proceeded to such appointments
without giving the required notice to their respective ober-presidents,
or if they failed to comply with the latter’s orders to fill up vacant
parishes, the bishops were in all cases prosecuted, fined, or
imprisoned. For a time fines were paid by some good diocesans, or the
bishops’ sold furniture was bought back and restored to their owners;
but when, from the continued and increased severity of such
prosecutions, it became evident that the well-meant aid of good
Catholics contributed only to enrich the persecuting government without
removing their chief pastors’ difficulties, perhaps also on the express
wish of the exalted victims themselves, the generous practice was
discontinued, and the bishops, some reduced to utter poverty and unable
to pay the ever-increasing penalties, were ignominiously dragged into
prison. The Archbishop of Cologne alone was condemned to pay at very
short intervals 120, 150, 3000, 21,000, 88,500, in all 112,770 marks.
His brother bishops, even those not deposed, had to suffer similarly
high and numerous penalties. What made a great many of these
condemnations appear excessively hard and unjust was the bishops’
inability to fill up the vacancies; for they had no longer priests at
their disposal, since the closing of the seminaries made new ordinations
impossible. Thus the government asked an impossibility and punished the
bishops for not achieving it. With the exception of the Prince Bishop of
Breslau and the Bishop of Limburg, who escaped imprisonment by going
abroad, all the Prussian bishops had to go to jail, some for months,
others for years. As soon as their imprisonment was over proceedings for
their “deposition” were instituted at the royal Tribunal of
Ecclesiastical Affairs in Berlin. To the official summons to lay down
their offices the bishops answered in substance that, the state not
being a spiritual power capable of investing them with or depriving them
of their ecclesiastical offices, they did not consider themselves
empowered to accede to the government’s request; and that as the church
alone—_i.e._, her head, the pope—had endowed them with the said offices,
she alone possessed the spiritual power to dismiss them. The answers
which priests gave to the government, when summoned to lay down their
offices as parish priests, were couched in equally decided language.
Thus Dean Leineweber, of Heiligenstadt, wrote to the ober-president
that, according to the principle and teaching of the Catholic Church,
Bishop Martin, although “deposed” by the state, was still their bishop,
and that consequently no priest was released by this “deposition” from
the vow of obedience by which he is bound to his bishop; moreover, that
a faithful priest is a better and more loyal state officer than an
unfaithful priest, and therefore could not in any way admit that his
removal from office was required by the interest of the state. The
government, however, paying no heed to the bishops’ refusals to resign,
summoned them one after the other before the Supreme Tribunal of
Ecclesiastical Affairs. After a short trial, at which the accused
bishops neither appeared in person nor were represented by counsel, the
court pronounced sentence of dismissal from their offices as Prussian
bishops on the ground that “the accused had so grossly violated their
duties as _servants of the church_ that their remaining in office
involved a serious danger incompatible with public order.” In this way
the Prussian government managed to get rid of seven bishops—viz.,
Archbishop Melchers, of Cologne, who is supposed to reside in Holland;
Cardinal Ledochowski, Archbishop of Gnesen-Posen, now in Rome; the
Prince Bishop of Breslau, living in the Austrian part of his diocese;
Bishop Martin, of Paderborn, now in Belgium; Bishop Brinckmann, of
Münster, present residence unknown; Bishop Blum, of Limburg, somewhere
with the Benedictines; Dr. Janiszewski, suffragan Bishop of Posen, in
Cracow. The three episcopal sees of Treves, Fulda, and Mayence being
vacant through the death of their former occupants, there are now nine
dioceses without visible spiritual administration in Prussia. The only
remaining bishops are those of Hildesheim, Osnabrück, Ermeland, and
Kulm. For what reason these church dignitaries are allowed to remain in
office, although they committed the same transgressions of the May Laws
and are in every respect in the same position as their brethren, is
indeed difficult to say; the only reasonable explanation we can venture
to offer for this forbearance is either the government’s determination
to discontinue the useless persecution, or the emperor’s unwillingness
to consent to the expulsion of _all_ the Catholic bishops from the
country over which he rules. Even an emperor may dread the verdict of
history.
As was to be expected, the “deposed” bishops, although far away from
their flocks, found the necessary means and ways to carry on the
spiritual administration of their dioceses, either by appointing secret
delegates or with the help of certain priests with whom they keep up
regular communications. Of course their conduct involved, in the eyes of
the government, fresh and very grave offences, which were resented by
endless prosecutions not only against the bishops themselves but all
persons, laymen as well as priests, whom the public prosecutor suspected
of helping the bishops in the exercise of their “illegal” episcopal
functions. Summonses to appear again before the royal tribunal in Berlin
were nailed on the doors of the bishops’ former residences, and in the
trials which ensued the accused were sentenced _in contumaciam_ to fines
and years of imprisonment. And as the government could neither exact the
inflicted penalties nor lay hold of the convicted dignitaries, it issued
disgraceful writs of arrest in which the Prussian gendarmes were ordered
to watch for the said criminals, and, when apprehended, to deliver them
to the next police station for the execution of the sentences passed
upon them. The bishops, in their safe retirement, could afford to smile
at these futile attempts on their liberty, but those persons who
remained within the grasp of the government had to suffer many hardships
for the support they had lent to their bishops. Hundreds of priests are
constantly harassed with summonses to make depositions concerning the
secret delegate, but, to their glory be it said, all proved faithful,
all persistently refused to give the demanded evidence, declaring their
inability to recognize the authority of civil courts of justice in
purely ecclesiastical affairs. The only case in which the prosecution
was successful is that of Dean Kurowski, of Posen, who, on secondary
evidence, was pronounced to be the secret delegate of Cardinal
Ledochowski, and sentenced to two years and four months’ imprisonment.
Released in October, 1877, he received his dismissal from office in the
beginning of the present year. Connected with the illegal exercise of
episcopal functions was the persecution of the Rev. Dr. Kantecki, editor
of a Polish newspaper, who sat six months in prison without trial simply
because he refused to turn king’s evidence; and that of Fathers Herold
and Pudenz, of Heiligenstadt, who were kept in jail for more than one
year for not revealing the name of the secret delegate.
Another deplorable consequence of the law concerning the education and
appointment to ecclesiastical offices is the closing of all priests’
seminaries, which took place almost immediately after the promulgation
of that law in 1873, in consequence of the refusal of the authorities to
admit the delegates of the government as inspectors of these purely
ecclesiastical institutions. Since then not one priest has received
ordination in Prussia. That is not, however, a great hardship, as no new
priests can, under the present circumstances, be appointed in Prussia,
and a great many Prussian young men are constantly ordained abroad who
will one day return to their country. On the other hand, the number of
vacant parishes increases rapidly every day. At the present moment there
are in Prussia about 700 parishes deprived of priests—viz., in the
archdiocese of Cologne, 121; in the diocese of Treves, 153; Paderborn,
68; Münster, 70; Limburg, 33; Fulda, 30; Hildesheim, 22; Osnabrück, 23;
Kulm, 14; Ermeland, 13; Breslau, about 100; Posen, about 100; in the
principality of Hohenzollern, 19, to which must be added more than 100
curacies.
Of the exiled secular priests of Prussia about three hundred found a
field for their labors in Bavaria; the others went chiefly to Belgium,
Austria, Italy, England, and America. As the religious orders were
expelled from the whole German Empire, their members had to settle
outside of Germany; they emigrated either to America, or went as
missionaries among the heathens, or transferred their establishments to
Belgium, England, etc.
The number of Prussian Catholics deprived of church ministrations now
amounts to one million and a half. If these wish to hear Mass on Sundays
or receive the sacraments, they must attend the services in churches of
their neighborhood, and sometimes walk as far as ten and fifteen miles.
In a great many places, and now in nearly every widowed parish,
so-called lay services have been arranged by the parishioners, at which
one of them reads the prayers of Mass, and, if not forbidden by the
local police, a sermon as well. In the afternoon they sing Vespers and
hymns in the same manner. At first it was feared that even this poor
comfort would be taken away from the desolate parishes, for in many
places the conductors of lay worship were prosecuted and heavily fined
for exercising illegal functions in church; but later on both the
officials and the judges took a more lenient view of these cases and
abstained from interfering with them. Now and then, however, the
forsaken parishes have the unexpected joy of hearing Mass in their own
churches. In every diocese, especially in that of Posen, banished or
newly-ordained priests travel in disguise through the country,
baptizing, hearing confessions, giving the last sacraments to the dying,
and saying Mass in every deserted church they can reach. Notwithstanding
the greatest vigilance by day and by night, the police seldom succeed in
arresting one of these faithful shepherds, for the parishioners exercise
a strict watch over the police and give their pastors timely warning of
the enemy’s approach. When found out the itinerant priests invariably
undergo a severe punishment of two or three years’ imprisonment,
followed by banishment from their country. How loyal to these priests
not only the Catholic but even the Protestant and Jewish population is
may be seen from the following case, taken out of many. From
Schwerin-on-the-Wartha, diocese of Posen, Father Logan, whom the
government had exiled several years ago, managed for a whole year to
administer a parish in the neighborhood, and to carry the consolations
of his ministry wherever they were required. During that time he kept a
well-attended shop in the little town, and travelled about in the
neighborhood apparently as a cattle-driver, in reality as a good
shepherd of souls. At last discovered and tried, he was committed to
prison for thirteen months. Forty-six such priests, mostly newly
ordained, are said to administer the vacant parishes of this
much-troubled diocese, in which meritorious work they are successfully
assisted by the great landowners, who provide them with food and
shelter, and, when wanted, with safe hiding-places. Several of them have
lately been discovered and thrown into prison. Greatly and unnecessarily
increased was the number of vacant parishes by the arbitrary decision of
some ober-presidents, that junior priests, after the death of their
elders, should abstain, under pain of expulsion, from all parochial
work, even from saying Mass. In vacant parishes the dead themselves fell
under the application of the law, for Dr. Falk decreed that founded
Masses cannot be said in such parishes, but must stand over until the
vacancies are filled up with legally-appointed priests.
According to one of the May Laws, a parish which has stood vacant for
one year possesses the right of electing a new priest. This law was
evidently passed with a view of destroying the authority of priests as
well as bishops; in fact, it was a bait thrown out to Catholics to join
the state church. But Catholics at once understood the malign intention,
and spurned it, to the amazement and discomfiture of the persecuting
party, which had built its brightest hopes on the working of that law.
Not one vacant parish in the whole kingdom of Prussia has as yet been
found willing to elect a new pastor. Whenever the Landrath convened an
election meeting for that purpose, the invitation was either not
responded to at all, or, if for prudence’s sake the electors appeared at
the meeting, it was decidedly refused with the declaration that the
parishioners had no power to elect their own priests, and that they
would never acknowledge a pastor who was not sent to them by their
bishop. Such being the firm attitude of all Prussian parishes towards
that particular law, how could the government flatter itself with the
hope that its own nominees would be received and acknowledged by the
faithful? And yet Dr. Falk, disregarding all previous experience, went
on imposing state priests on protesting parishes wherever he found an
opportunity for it, to the great injury of the faithless priests
themselves, who were excommunicated, to the parishes that rejected them,
and to government, which made itself only the more odious. By this time,
however, the ministry must see their mistake, for, in spite of the many
enticements and premiums offered to priests of doubtful character and
doctrine, the government during the interval of three years has not been
able to gather more than twenty-one apostates round its state-church
banner. Twenty-one out of ten thousand! With the exception of one, all
these misguided men belong to the provinces of Silesia and Posen. Here
is a complete list of them: Mr. Mücke in Gross Strelitz; Kolany in
Murzyno; Nowacki in Obornik; Lizack in Schrotz; Kubezak in Xionz; Brenk
in Kosten; Kick in Kähme; Gutzmer in Grätz; Würtz in Grabia; Moercke in
Podwitz Golembiowsky in Plusnitz; Sterba in Leschnitz; Pischel in
Girlachsdorf; Kenty in Boronow; Grünastle in Cösel; Sabotta in Kettch;
Czerwinski in Zirke; Büchs in Gross Rudno; Rymarowicz (Posen); and
Glattfelder in Balg (Baden).
Besides these state priests who profess to remain faithful to Rome, the
Prussian government introduced two apostates in vacant parishes, one of
whom is the Old Catholic pastor, Struckberg, presented by the Protestant
Baron von Dyherrn to the fat living of Oberherzogswaldau in Silesia, and
the other the notorious Suszynski, the married state-priest of Mogilno,
who enjoys the emoluments of his sinecure comfortably at Königsberg. In
all these state parishes the faithful refuse to entertain any
communication, social or religious, with the intruders, and fulfil their
religious duties in other churches. As to the congregations of these
state priests, they principally consist of a few bad Catholics or
government officials, such as burgomasters, policemen, etc.; in some
even Protestants and Jews attend, and several count no other members
than the clergyman’s housekeepers.
As the sect of Old Catholics must be looked upon as forming part of
Prince Bismarck’s intended state church, it may fittingly be mentioned
in connection with the state parishes. None of the 26 _Kulturkampf_ laws
issued in Prussia and the German Empire since 1871 has been more abused,
more arbitrarily and unjustly applied by the government, than the
so-called Old Catholic law, which grants to Old Catholic communities the
joint use of Catholic parish churches and cemeteries, and the joint
possession of the Catholic Church property, wherever a considerable
number of these sectarians exist. How ober-presidents apply that law and
determine the meaning of the word “considerable” may be seen by the two
cases of Braunsberg and Königsberg, where in the one case about 20 and
in the other about 40 Old Catholics formed, in the governor’s
estimation, a sufficient number to allow the application of the law, and
to rob as many as 10,000 Catholics in one instance of their churches and
property. The ober-president’s partiality and self-contradicting conduct
received a further illustration by the treatment of the Catholics of
Hohenstein, who, although numbering 1,500, were refused permission to
build a church in the town because the number 1,500 was not considered
“considerable” in the meaning of the law. The thousand Catholics of
Willenberg who petitioned the government for the same purpose received a
similar answer. Thanks to this unjust application of the law, the Old
Catholics obtained hitherto possession of 13 beautiful Catholic
churches—viz., in Witten (10,000 Catholics to 76 Old Catholics); in
Breslau the Corpus Christi Church (20,000 Catholics to a few hundred Old
Catholics); in Neisse the Church of the Cross; in Hirschberg St. Ann’s
Church (3,000 Catholics to 250 Old Catholics); in Königsberg; in
Wiesbaden (15,000 Catholics to 250 Old Catholics); in Bochum (10,000
Catholics to about 200 Old Catholics); in Cologne St. Gereon’s Church
(10,000 Catholics to 87 Old Catholics); in Crefeld St. Stephen’s; in
Boppard the Carmelite Church (5,000 Catholics to 45 Old Catholics); in
Coblentz the Jesuit Church; in Bonn the Gymnasium Church; and quite
recently the parish church of Gottesberg in Silesia. In nearly all these
churches the Old Catholics made their first entrance with the help of
the police, the doors being forced open with hammer and crow-bar. Since
they fell into Old Catholic hands most of them stand empty. On Easter
Sunday about 20 to 30 worshippers attended in the robbed church in
Wiesbaden; in several places grass is growing on the pavement
surrounding the churches, and in others mushrooms are springing up
freely at the very foot of the altars. There can be no doubt that the
sect is already declining. Were it not for the aid in money and other
advantages which its members receive from the Prussian government, it
would probably by this time have shared the fate of _Rongeanism_.
According to the report read at the fourth Old Catholic synod at Bonn,
in May, 1877, there were at that time 35 Old Catholic communities in
Prussia, counting in all 6,510 people with civil independence; in Baden
there were 44 communities, in Bavaria 31, in Hesse 5, in Oldenburg 2, in
Würtemberg 1. The total number of adherents, women and children
included, amounted in Prussia to 20,524, in Baden to 17,203, in Bavaria
to 10,100, in Hesse to 1,042, in Oldenburg to 240, in Würtemberg to
223—in all 49,342 out of a population of 14 millions. The number of Old
Catholic priests in the whole German Empire is now 56. In the course of
last year four of them and a good many laymen from Wiesbaden and
Dortmund retracted their error and returned to the mother church; others
became Protestants.
Although passed in May, 1875, the law ordering the dissolution of
Catholic religious congregations has not yet been fully carried into
execution, not out of regard for the establishments themselves, but
because the state interest required a departure from the rule. The last
term granted to Catholic sisters engaged in education expires on the 1st
of October next. Their expulsion is causing the deepest grief among all
classes of German Catholics, for the good sisters have, by their noble
and self-sacrificing exertions, so endeared themselves to the hearts of
the people that they are looked upon as—what they really are—the
greatest benefactors of the people, without whose help the moral and
religious training of the young will remain defective. More than all do
the poor and unhappy feel their departure, for it was chiefly on
orphanages and other charitable institutions that the expelled nuns
exercised their salutary influence. Now that these establishments no
longer stand under the direction of those ministering angels, who work
only for the love of God and man, the respective parishes have to grant
salaries to their successors, for which the poor as well as the rich are
compelled to contribute. In a great many towns, however, they cannot be
replaced at all, not only for want of means but also for want of the
competent persons, and about 10,000 orphans of the poor are left
destitute by the expulsion of the nuns. No wonder, then, if under such
circumstances the parting scenes were everywhere heart-rending; not only
sobbing children thronged round their foster-mothers in uncontrollable
grief, but the inhabitants, burgomasters, and magistrates came to
express their thanks for the eminent services they had rendered to their
parishes, and their deep regret at seeing them driven out of home and
country—their own beloved benefactresses. No exact statistics regarding
the number of expelled nuns have as yet been published, nor is it
possible to say what has become of them all. It is, however, computed
that about 500 houses have been broken up, which must have included at
least between two and three thousand inmates. The Ursulines of Dorsten
transferred their establishment to Holland, where forty pupils followed
them on the very day of their expulsion. The house of Posen went to
Cracow; those of Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Duderstadt, Kitzlar, etc.,
emigrated partly to North America, partly to neighboring countries. The
Sisters of Our Lady, whose convents had been established more than 200
years in Essen and Coesfeld, went 250 strong across the Atlantic, and
the School Sisters either returned to their families or left off their
religious habits and continued their calling as lay teachers. The names
of the other congregations that had to leave this year are chiefly the
following: The English Ladies (Fulda and Mayence), the Franciscans
(Frankfort, Erfurt, Treves, Fulda, Aix-la-Chapelle, Bonn, Oberwesel,
Emmerich), the Sisters of Mercy conducting orphanages (Posen, Breslau,
Lauban, Myslowitz, Steinfeld, Bromberg, Peplin, Düsseldorf, Crefeld,
Bonn, Dortmund, Berncastle, Malmedy, Lannerz, Berge-Borbeck, Mayen,
Rheinberg, Paderborn, Schroda, Düren, Bitburg, Neuss, Neustadt,
Osnabrück, Salzkotten), the Sisters of St. Charles (Boppard, Oberglogau,
etc.), St. Vincent de Paul (Deutz, Nippes, Ehrenfeld), the Daughters of
the Holy Cross, and the Poor Sisters of Christ. Those Sisters of Mercy
who exclusively devote themselves to hospital work have been allowed to
remain; their exact number was a short time ago 5,763.
Of all the laws enacted since 1871 against the Catholic Church in
Prussia, none will be attended with more injurious effects than the law
regulating school supervision and religious instruction in popular
schools. Not content with having removed nearly all ecclesiastical
district and local school inspectors, and appointed Protestants and
“liberal” Catholics in their place, the government has also forbidden
the priests to teach the Catholic religion anywhere except in church out
of school hours. In a decree issued by Dr. Falk in March, 1876, the
right of parents to bring up their children in accordance with their
religious principles is virtually denied, at all events practically
destroyed, for it places the whole teaching and supervision of Catholic
religious instruction under the supreme control of the Protestant
government, and thus arbitrarily cancels clause 24 of the Prussian
constitution, which guarantees to recognized religious societies the
right of conducting religious instruction either through their priests
or laymen invested with the _missio canonica_. By virtue of this
ministerial ordinance the government, feeling its hands strengthened and
unshackled, proceeds to all kinds of arbitrary and unjustifiable changes
in matters of religious teaching. It sets aside Catholic catechisms and
reading-books hitherto used in schools with ecclesiastical approbation,
and replaces them by works more in harmony with the spirit of the age;
it commissions schoolmasters (now already about 1,000) to teach the
Catholic religion only in the name and by order of the civil power,
threatening them with prosecution if they ask for or accept the _missio
canonica_ from church authorities; it either dissolves Catholic schools
or amalgamates them with Protestant institutions under the name of
simultan-schools, all of which stand under exclusively Protestant
direction; it appoints Protestant and Jewish teachers to purely Catholic
schools; it compels, as was recently done in Crefeld, Catholic children
to attend Protestant school prayers; it limits the hearing of Mass to
two days in the week, and strictly forbids Catholic teachers to exhort
their pupils to a greater frequency of the Sacraments of Penance and
Holy Communion; in one word, it uses all possible means to Protestantize
Catholic children in popular schools. Priests and parents, school boards
and parishes, have sought redress of this bitter grievance in
innumerable petitions and protests addressed from all parts of the
country to the emperor, the ministers, to both houses of Parliament,
demanding in the name of liberty, of justice, of the constitution, of
natural and human rights, that the teaching of their religion should
again be declared free and placed under the only rightful authority,
that of the church; but neither the prayers of distressed parents nor
the powerful agitation got up by the leading Catholic representatives
proved of any avail, Dr. Falk invariably rejecting all petitions on the
ground that the grievances complained of did not exist—an assertion
which the minister, if he had ventured to do so, could not have
reconciled with the truth of facts. As ministers and national liberals
alike expect the realization of their plans from the destructive school
policy rather than from any of the other May laws, the Prussian
government feels the less disposed to make concessions on this question,
as it enables them to administer the poison of infidelity to the rising
generation in a quiet and imperceptible but systematic and effective
manner. Catholics have therefore nothing to hope from the present rulers
of Prussia towards an equitable settlement of the religious question, as
party interest, and not justice, is the moving principle of the May
legislators. If the faith of the next generation is to be saved, it must
be done by the parents themselves; if they take the religious
instruction in their own hands, if by vigilance and self-devotion they
detect, counteract, and destroy the evil influence of heterodox
school-teaching, no power on earth will be able to interfere with their
children’s faith; but if they neglect this solemn duty, which now
devolves upon them with a fearful responsibility, they will have to bear
the guilt of their children’s apostasy. Happily there is little or no
ground for such apprehensions, now that bishops, priests, and laity have
all so manfully withstood the storm and so far passed unscathed through
the crucible of the persecution. Persevering in their course of loyal
attachment to the church, Catholic parents of all classes of society
look after their children’s faith and teach them catechism at home, in
which excellent work they are effectually assisted by the advice and
practical help of numerous societies instituted for that purpose all
over Prussia.
Whilst Catholics heartily rejoice at the failure of their enemies’
endeavors to destroy their church in Germany, they deeply feel the
enormous losses and sufferings which the application of the May Laws has
so wantonly inflicted on so many thousands of their innocent
co-religionists. Apart from the innumerable convictions of bishops,
priests, and laymen for so-called May-law transgressions, Prince
Bismarck alone instituted more than 7,000 prosecutions for alleged
offences against his person. In his eagerness to silence opposition he
spared neither sex nor age, neither office nor rank, proceeding with
equal animosity against statesmen and artisans, distinguished writers
and poor peasants, washerwomen and children. The sums paid in fines and
the time spent in prison for _Kulturkampf_ offences are said to be
enormous; our readers may form an idea of the magnitude of the penal
results of the persecution by the perusal of the following statistics:
Within the first four months of 1877 Prussian courts of justice
pronounced sentences of imprisonment amounting to 55 years, 11 months,
and 6 days, and fines to the amount of 27,843 marks. The victims were
241 priests, 210 laymen, and 136 editors of newspapers. Imprisonment of
12 years, 8 months, and 14 days was decreed for offences against the
emperor, and 8 years, 4 months, 7 days for 68 Bismarck offences. Besides
these penalties, the police made 55 arrests, 74 domiciliary visits, and
56 dissolutions of unions and assemblies. A compositor of a Mayence
paper, father of eight children, was sentenced to three months’
imprisonment for having used a disrespectful expression towards his
majesty whilst in a state of intoxication; a doctor had to spend a whole
year in a fortress for a similar offence; a rag and bone gatherer got
five and a half months, and a poor servant-girl of nineteen years of age
one month’s imprisonment.
A few more instances, taken at random from the masses of _Kulturkampf_
convictions, will further exemplify the nature of the offences and the
penalties with which they were visited. Bishop Brinckmann received one
year’s imprisonment, Vicar-General Giese two years, Father Fievez three
months, Father Haversath four weeks, for alleged embezzlement of
diocesan money; in reality for preventing certain church funds from
falling into the hands of the government, which had no claim whatever to
them. In Münster 2,500 heads of families were fined for not sending
their children to school on Corpus Christi day. The successive editors
of the _Kuryer Poznanski_, the _Germania_, and the Frankfort _Zeitung_
have for several years past gone to prison, some for publishing papal
and episcopal documents, others for offending the emperor, Prince
Bismarck, and other members of the administration. Father Isbert, of
Namborn, Treves, spent 903 days in the prison of Saarbrücken for
“illegally” saying Mass, hearing confessions, etc. In April, 1876, the
priests of the diocese of Posen had to pay 163,463 marks for similar
offences. Father Simon was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment
because he removed the sacred Host from the church of the Girlachsdorf
the day before state priest Pischel’s installation. Fathers Bruns of
Geldern and Kroll of Adekerke were prosecuted and punished for refusing
absolution to two penitents. A French priest accidentally staying in
Hanover was condemned to a fine of 4,800 marks for saying Mass in a
private chapel. Dean Leineweber, of Heiligenstadt, went to prison for 18
months for granting dispensations; Father Nawrocki two years for
secretly administrating the parish of Goszieszy. Besides endless
prosecutions, hundreds of the inhabitants of Marpingen had to pay fines
for granting hospitality to pilgrims.
But the Catholic clergy had to suffer for not acknowledging the May Laws
as well as for transgressing them. By the so-called Bread-basket Law,
intended to starve the priests into submission, many thousands lost
their income and had to bear great misery, especially in poor parishes,
where church offerings usually consist of farthings. In the diocese of
Fulda, for instance, the average income of a great number of parish
priests fluctuated between twelve and twenty pounds a year. In other
districts they fared in so far better as their parishioners indemnified
them for the loss of their state emoluments and homes by voluntary
contributions or gifts in kind, such as meat, bread, firewood, etc. This
help, if lastingly established, might have considerably alleviated the
existing distress; but unfortunately the Prussian government forbade
public offerings and collections for the relief of priests in distress,
on the ground that such illegal remunerations encouraged resistance to
the state laws. This harsh, not to say inhuman, proceeding, however,
only harmed its victims for a time; for very soon the inventive spirit
of the faithful found out other means of relief, over which the most
watchful officials could obtain no control. In addition to secret parish
subventions the priests now receive regular assistance from the
_Paulinus_ Verein, which charitable association collects contributions
not only in Germany but also from foreign countries, among which England
especially has distinguished itself.
Destructive as the _Kulturkampf_ has been to the outward organization of
the church and the happiness and worldly interest of the people, its
consequences have in many other respects proved an immense blessing to
the Catholic Church in Germany. Instead of having been destroyed or
weakened, as her enemies hoped, she has, on the contrary, become
stronger and more powerful in her influence over the masses, more
respected by her adversaries, better understood by Protestant
Christians, better loved and obeyed by her own children. Lukewarm
Catholics, formerly almost ashamed of professing their religion in
public, now no longer shrink from manifesting their loyal attachment to
the church; nay, more, they stand up in her defence, and edify others by
the regular fulfilment of their religious duties. The devout crowds that
fill the churches on Sundays and all festive occasions; the enormous
increase of regular communicants; the frequent processions from widowed
dioceses to cathedrals of other dioceses for the reception of the
Sacrament of Confirmation; the deep and universal grief shown by the
people at the death of Pope Pius IX. and their cordial rejoicing at the
election of his successor; the numerous addresses of loyalty sent on
every possible occasion to the banished bishops by millions of the
faithful; the touching attachment of the masses to their pastors—all
these and a great many more significant manifestations afford ample
proof that the Catholic Church has gained, and not lost, by the
_Kulturkampf_. And it may not be exaggeration to say that never at any
time did the religious sentiment among German Catholics shine forth so
brightly, their piety so fervently, their spirit of self-sacrifice so
strongly, their love for their church so unboundedly, as now after seven
years of relentless persecution. Giving to the state what belongs to the
state, but fearlessly obeying the church in all matters that regard
their eternal salvation, the German Catholics, bishops, priests, and
people, stand firm and unshaken in their resolution to remain true to
God and his church, and to lose wealth, freedom, life itself, rather
than give up one particle of their faith.
Nor are the beneficial consequences of the persecution limited to a
revival in religion; they are also felt, with almost equal power, in the
political and literary life of the Catholic portion of the German
nation. Purified, ennobled, raised from a state of political servility
to a sense of self-dignity, the persecuted German Catholics feel their
love of freedom rekindled, their sunken courage revived, and a hitherto
unknown power—the power of outraged honesty and truth—growing and
spreading among them, and defending their inalienable rights with energy
and success, in society, in parliament, in the press, and in general
literature, wherever religious and political liberty and independence
are wont to assert themselves. The Catholics of Prussia now constitute a
political body second only in importance to the national liberals, whose
influence in the country is rapidly declining. If the wishes for a
return to a religious policy, as expressed by the emperor shortly after
the late attempt on his life, should be carried out by his ministers, we
may live to see Prince Bismarck courting the help of the Catholic Church
to save that same state which resolved upon and worked for her
destruction. How valuable the support of the Catholic party would be to
the perplexed German government in these critical times is sufficiently
shown by the number of its representatives in the various parliaments:
in the Reichstag the Catholic Centre party counts 98 members; in the
Bavarian Chamber of Deputies it commands the majority; in Baden, where
only one Catholic sat in parliament before the year 1870, there are now
13 Catholic deputies. The best illustration of the growth of the
Catholic party in Germany was furnished at the last elections, when, in
spite of the arbitrary dissection of Catholic voting districts, Catholic
members were returned with overwhelming majorities wherever a sufficient
number of constituents made such elections possible. The same success
attended the elections of municipal officers, but unfortunately to no
purpose, as the Prussian government, contrary to right and justice,
annulled all elections of Catholic burgomasters and appointed its own
creatures to the vacant posts.
Another creation of the _Kulturkampf_ for which we cannot be too
thankful is the German Catholic press, which for its tone, skill,
influence, and general success stands unrivalled by any press in the
world. Beyond a few more or less obscure provincial papers, Germany
possessed no Catholic press organization before the year 1870; now
nearly 200 of these spirited children of the persecution flourish in the
German Empire. Foremost among all appears the _Germania_, of world-wide
reputation, which expounds and defends the political programme of the
Catholic party with such statesmanlike ability that Prince Bismarck
himself, in one of his parliamentary speeches, was fain to acknowledge
the superior character and excellence of the paper. Worthy associates of
the Berlin central organ of Catholic publicity are the great provincial
daily papers, such as the _Deutsche Reichszeitung_ in Bonn, the
_Kölnische Volkszeitung_ in Cologne, the _Westphalian Merkur_, and last,
not least, the smaller provincial and local papers, all of which, in the
involuntary absence of the chief pastors of the church, teach and guide
the people in the paths of religion as well as in those of public life.
The influence of the Catholic press over the people was felt in two
ways: in the first place, it succeeded in preserving and consolidating
among them that spirit of union, order, and loyalty of which the bishops
and priests had given such admirable examples; and in the second place
it prevented, by its wise admonitions, the exasperated people from
abandoning the policy of passive resistance as recommended by the
bishops, so that, in the midst of incessant, almost unbearable
provocations, the Catholic population of Prussia has not been found
guilty of one single act of rebellion or open resistance to the state
power.
The difference of the effects which the May-law legislation has had on
the Catholic and the Protestant inhabitants of Prussia must strike every
one. Whilst to the former the _Kulturkampf_ has been a school of
improvement, of moral and religious regeneration, the latter have
derived none but deplorable results from it; witness the general
lawlessness, the frightful increase of crime, the sunken state of
morality, and the all but complete extinction of Christianity which now
prevails among the Protestant people. According to the _Nord Allgemeine
Zeitung_, Prince Bismarck’s non-official organ, not a day passes in
Prussia without murder and manslaughter, and the demoralization of the
lower classes has reached such a depth that there is no longer any
security for life and property, that the son murders his father, that
the intoxicated father stabs his son, and that the servant kills his
master on the slightest provocation. School-boys have become regular
frequenters of public-houses; they fight duels in love affairs, commit
suicide for the most trifling causes, and help to fill the overcrowded
prisons. Since 1874 the number of prisoners has increased by nearly two
hundred per cent. To mention a few instances only, in 1872 the town of
Frankfort-on-the-Main had 1,072 convicts; in the present year it has
5,323. In the province of East Prussia more crimes were committed in
1875 than in the 20 preceding years together. Sacrileges, theft, murder,
suicide, immoralities are the crimes of most frequent occurrence in
Protestant Prussia. In the one small province of Schleswig-Holstein not
less than 212 suicides were recorded in the year 1874; and in the city
of Berlin in 1875 there were 284 (213 men and 71 women) cases, besides
38 corpses found in the Spree. In one month of the year 1876 the army
counted 26 suicides—_i.e._, one-fifth of the whole mortality. Another
offence, formerly little known in Prussia, but now spreading in an
extraordinary manner, is the wholesale evasion of the obligatory
military service. According to official returns the number of young men
who evaded that duty by going abroad increased within the period of 1862
to 1872 from 1,648 to 10,069. Last year it was about twice the latter
number. We may here add that Catholic priests are now also obliged to
serve in the army as private soldiers. It is a remarkable fact, perhaps
only a coincidence, but at all events one of the fruits of Bismarck’s
anti-church policy, that socialism has grown in Prussia in proportion as
crimes have multiplied. In the year 1871 the socialists had only two
members in Parliament; now they have 13, representing two millions of
adherents, who support 45 socialist newspapers. The party has not
reached its maturity yet; but if the Prussian government, disregarding
the disapproving vote of the Reichstag, should proceed against it with
violent repressive police measures, it is sure to grow rapidly into a
dangerous power that may one day shake the new German Empire to its very
foundation.
Prince Bismarck did not intend to injure the Protestant Church by his
May legislation, but, whether intended or not, it is now an undeniable
fact that the two great results of that legislation are the growth of
socialism and the accelerated extinction of Christianity in the German
Protestant Church. When preachers of the Gospel are allowed to declare
from the pulpit that to them the Bible is nothing but Jewish literature,
that our Lord Jesus Christ was a mere man, that the idea of a Trinity,
sacraments, miracles, etc., are human inventions, can it surprise any
one if socialists go further still, and in numerously-attended meetings
openly deny the existence of God and eternal life? Enabled by the May
Laws to utter any blasphemies they like, the German infidels carry on
their anti-Christian propaganda on a very extensive scale, and succeed
in drawing hundreds of thousands of Protestants out of the established
church. They alone make use of the so-called Alt-Catholic law, which
gives freedom to leave a church without joining another, and which was
passed for the purpose of inducing Catholics to follow the lead of the
Alt-Catholic Bishop Reinkens. This ostentatious secession from the
Protestant Church, however, is not its greatest loss; far more
disastrous to its existence is that wholesale defection which takes
place quietly, without people thinking it worth while to go out of the
church. They simply abstain from frequenting places of worship, and
refuse all ministrations from their clergymen for themselves and their
children. During the last three months of 1874—that is to say, in the
year following the promulgation of the May Laws—16,631 Protestant
children remained unbaptized, and 8,346 Protestant couples refused to be
married in church. In the year 1875 Berlin alone had 9,964 civil
marriages without church blessing, and 15,000 children who received no
baptism. In Königsberg the number of civil marriages not accompanied by
any church ceremony was 36 per cent., in Dantzic 47 per cent., in
Breslau 53 per cent., in Stettin 68 per cent. In Berlin 70,000
Protestants reject their church altogether. There only 18 per cent. of
the whole Protestant population go to church; in Worms 6 per cent., in
Mayence 5 per cent., in Giessen 5 per cent., in Darmstadt 3 per cent.,
in Chemnitz 3 per cent., and in some other places of Saxony only 1 per
cent. In short, the Protestant Church in Germany is irretrievably lost.
Thus it has come to pass, under God’s providence, that the blow which
Prince Bismarck aimed at the Catholic Church glided off from the Rock of
Peter, and fell with deadly effect on the Protestant Church, of which he
counts himself a stanch adherent.
SONNET.
THE MORAL LAW, AND THE UTILITARIAN PHILOSOPHY.
That law which cynic-sophists desecrate,
Creation deft, they boast of mortal hand;
Custom’s weak nurseling; or, by sea and land,
A tyrant’s edict fencing doubtful state,
Is older than the brazen books of Fate;
A bondage unto liberty; a grand
And circumscribing harmony, unplanned,
But from the breasts of all things good and great
Where’er the flame of thought and feeling played,
Issuing divine, a universal birth,
Before the first-born zephyr sang its ode,
Before pines grew on mountains of the north,
Before the greater light, or less, had flowed
O’er the glad bosom of the new-shaped earth
“THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.”[132]
The strangest and saddest commentary upon that dreary religious
sentimentality known as positivism, or the Religion of Humanity, was the
infatuation of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill with regard to two
very commonplace women whom these men, one the founder and the other the
ablest exponent of the religion, foolishly loved and worshipped in life,
and actually deified after death. Guizot says that Comte was crazy, but
Mill was confessedly a man of rare logical acumen, thoroughly-trained
intellectual powers, and with no trace of mental alienation. One does
not know whether to laugh at or to pity the maudlin sentimentalism of
his love for his wife, the idolatrous honors he paid to her portrait and
bust, and the painful conflict of his soul, halting between a frantic
wish to believe in the presence and intimations of her disembodied
spirit, and the necessity of rejecting, according to his theory, all
hope or belief in the hereafter. There is something at once ludicrous
and shocking in this, the only religious sentiment that such a mind as
Mill’s would admit—the worship of a woman’s memory as the full
satisfaction and highest reach of religion. The worship of woman
irresistibly suggests the crowning of the Goddess of Reason by the
French Revolutionists; and we trust our reflection will not be
misconstrued when we say that woman holds her true and rightful position
only in the Catholic Church. The tolerance of divorce in Protestantism
is an injury to the sex, and when we glance at woman’s relations to most
of the philosophico-moral systems that have been the outgrowth of the
religious rebellion of the sixteenth century, we see how wise and tender
the church has ever been in her treatment of the weaker vessel. St. Paul
has laid down for all time the true idea of woman in her religious
relations, and every attempt to change those conditions has resulted in
failure and shame.
The Religion of Humanity is one of those vague terms which logic rejects
with scorn. The phrase has a certain hazy beauty for hazy minds; but its
gross spirit means the deification of man, the boundless extent of his
natural powers, a worse than Pelagian confidence in his own moral
strength, and the natural, social, and civil equality of woman. In our
own country the system has not revealed all its deformity, nor are its
principles apparently very familiar even to its advocates; but all its
hideousness is laid bare in the writings of the German Feuerbach, and it
is sad to think that Mrs. Lewes (George Eliot) devotes her uncommon
powers to the exposition of its distinctive doctrinal phase—namely, that
all religion is a diseased state of our consciousness, and its exercise
through any form or in any sphere gives us neither present comfort nor
future hope.
A primal instinct and yearning of the human heart tends toward an object
of infinite blessedness and beauty. Descartes inferred from our
knowledge and love of Infinite and Absolute Being, in which all glory,
perfection, mercy, and power co-exist, that such a Being really _does_
exist; and this famous proof of the existence of God has never been
shown to be false or unwarranted, though some philosophers have held
that it is not strictly a demonstration. Our readers know how cogently
and eloquently Dr. Brownson expatiates upon that beautiful formula, _Ens
creat existentias_. GOD IS. Every affirmation and reality announces that
glorious and all-sufficient Being. Nothing less than himself can satisfy
our immortal longings and aspirations. The very difficulties that
enshroud our ideas of the Supreme Being seem to be only “dark with
excess of light.” Nor has this truth, on which man’s feet have been
stayed since the creation, ever been shaken. Dr. Newman, using
Lamennais’ argument from universal authority, but without falling into
Lamennais’ mistake of its being the only argument, challenges the world
to explain away the universal consent of mankind to the divine
existence. Cicero only echoes Plato when he says that there never was a
nation, no matter how barbarous, that had not some idea of the existence
of God. Talleyrand used to say: “There is somebody that has more
intellect than Napoleon and more wit than Voltaire, and that somebody
is—mankind.” The great heart of the world leaps to its Creator, and the
testimony of individual experience in all ages but repeats the saying of
St. Augustine: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord! and our hearts
are restless until they rest in thee.”
If we compare this noble and sublime creed, “I believe in God the Father
Almighty,” with the hollow metaphysical and humanitarian beliefs of our
unhappy age, we at once recognize the profound truth and beauty of many
of the utterances of the ancient Fathers upon the subject of religion.
Their simple and antique majesty of thought and phrase is like a statue
of Michael Angelo’s alongside of a _bizarre_ specimen of fashionable
ceramics. St. Clement of Alexandria holds that there is only one
religion, and the great argument of St. Augustine’s _City of God_ is the
essential unity of the divine _cultus_, coming from Adam, through the
patriarchs, the prophets, fully revealed in Christ the Son of God, and
destined to endure for ever. All theology germinates from the invocation
of the three divine Persons. When we bless ourselves we worship God,
with the worship of unending ages, from everlasting to everlasting. The
church condemned the proposition that all the virtues of the pagan
philosophers were vices. Christ, the God-Man, is the object of religion,
and, as thus presented, he fulfils all the yearnings and hopes spoken of
by the humanitarians, who, in making the human race at once the subject
and object of worship, fail to see that Catholicity gratifies man beyond
his wildest dreams of exalted manhood and infinite progress; for
humanity cannot be raised higher than it has been raised by the Eternal
Son of God, who, clothed with our glorified humanity, which he will
never lay aside, “sitteth at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
It seems an unworthy concession to a very weak school of scepticism for
Max Müller, in the May number of the _Contemporary Review_, to propound
the queries, What is religion? Have we any religion? and, after giving a
long and flattering notice of every fool that says in his heart there is
no God, to inform us graciously that there is a term for God in every
language with which he is acquainted. The logical vice of nearly all
non-Catholic scientific men here and in Europe at the present day is an
ignorant and unwarranted obtrusion of their crude theories upon the
subjects of religion. They have no perception of the exquisite sense and
appositeness of the old saying, _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_. A satirical
friend, after listening to Proudhon’s theories about the creation,
remarked to him: “What a pity God had not the benefit of your
suggestions when he made the world!” and such was the hebetude of the
infidel that he rejoined: “In that event creation would have been
infinitely better.” Huxley, who is pronounced a scientific charlatan
even in those studies upon the _invertebrata_ to which he has devoted
twenty-five years, has the blasphemous audacity to call his Creator “a
pedantic drill-sergeant”; and Tyndall refers to his God as an
“atom-manufacturer.” Max Müller has far greater reverence, but his
latest utterances convict him hopelessly of pantheism, which is about
the absurdest form of “religion” that any unfortunate man can adopt.
It is a curious exemplification of the state of religious thought in
England when such a man as Müller is selected to deliver a course of
lectures upon theology. His only qualification is his philological
learning, of which Scaliger, the greatest of modern philologists, said
its value in theology has been very much over-rated. To such an extent
does Müller carry his linguistic fanaticism that he derives all reason
and all truth from language. He settles a controversy by appealing to
the root of a word. The most cursory study of etymology suffices to show
that it is in the main a vague guess-work; and the words we employ to
express the subtlest operations of the intellect are so many metaphors
or images drawn from sensible objects. The word religion may be derived
from three distinct roots, _relegere_, to read back, to retrace; or
_religere_, to collect; or _religare_, to bind together; and an
enthusiastic etymologist, warming with the subject, would run us back to
Babel. Who would suppose that the word _goose_, for example, which, on
the “bow-wow” theory of language, must have originated with an old
farmer driving his poultry to market, is traceable directly to the
Sanscrit, through the Teutonic, Gothic, Latin, and Greek, and enjoys a
proud pedigree of Aryan etymology? Like all modern specialists, Müller
drives his philological hobby through all theological science. He has
done a very great injury to religious thought by his constant prating
about the essential oneness of all creeds, and his studied purpose to
represent Christianity as only a modification of the great
“world-creeds,” with a very decidedly expressed preference for the Vedas
over the Gospels and for Zoroaster over St. John the Evangelist.
If Protestantism continues to disintegrate as rapidly in the next decade
as it has in the last two, our theological professors may skip all the
tracts at present devoted to the refutation of the principles and
consequences of the Reformation. The older controversial works are
already antiquated, and the theological lore of thirty years ago is no
longer available. Yet it is very doubtful if any solid advantage can be
gained by the study of modern philosophy. The Holy Ghost, ever ruling
the mind of the church, brought about the definition of Papal
Infallibility at the most opportune period of the world’s history. The
only salvation for the human intellect is the dogmatic authority of the
church, and the clearer this is shown and enforced the better for the
world. The day of tedious Christian controversy is gone for ever.
Amicable discussions upon controverted points of doctrine are no longer
possible. The field has been narrowed down. The contest now is conducted
upon the primal bases of the primitive truths—God or Satan, heaven or
hell. “Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die!” When the admired and
acknowledged “leaders of modern thought” are come to such a pass as to
ask if life is worth living? is there a hell? is not man the beginning
and end of himself? was not Christ sublimely self-deceived? does not
matter contain the promise and potency of all life, and is not
immortality a splendid dream? it is manifestly useless labor for a
Catholic theologian to pore for years over the question of Anglican
Orders or the Donation of Constantine.
Our objection to the prolonged study of philosophy must be understood
not of Catholic philosophy, which is the handmaid of revealed truth, but
of those degrading systems that the materialistic mind of the age is
constantly spawning. The facilities of the printing-press, and the habit
of writing philosophical articles and systems in the common languages,
have familiarized the world with a vast amount of error. One advantage
of the learned tongues lay in their preventing many people from
obtaining the little learning which is proverbially a dangerous thing.
In our day we not only have technical treatises on science, philosophy,
and theology, but popular hand-books which aim at the greatest
simplicity and directness. Materialists give illustrated lectures to
unscientific people, and labor strenuously to accommodate their ideas
even to the unformed mind of childhood. The newspapers teem with all
sorts of crude theories, and no effort is spared to disseminate the most
outrageous fallacies. When Diderot and D’Alembert started the
_Encyclopédie_ there were protests and remonstrances from the church and
from scientific bodies; but few persons could afford to purchase the
huge tomes, as compared with the multitudes that now can buy for a few
cents a dangerous publication at any news-stand. The New York _Daily
Graphic_, not content with printing a likeness of Müller, gave also long
extracts from the article to which we have adverted; and nothing is
commoner than a so-called philosophical essay even in our lightest
magazines. With the help of a learned and often unintelligible
phraseology the impression is left that a mighty mind, after many mental
throes, has given birth to a wonderful truth or profound reflection
destined to influence modern thought and lead eventually to the
widest-reaching social results. The only remedy for such a delusion is
to impress readers with a modest consciousness of their own ability to
penetrate the sibyllic meaning, which, if they fail to do, is very
likely without any meaning at all. By this manly and rational process it
is surprising how quickly one sees through absurdities, and catches a
glimpse of the ass’ ears under the lion’s skin. Our present study of the
Religion of Humanity will illustrate this idea (not in our own case, of
course). Let us take up a few of the most famous _dicta_ of
humanitarianism. Note the obscurity of the language, which in many cases
is intentional. In Eckermann’s _Conversations with Goethe_, who may be
regarded as the first arch-priest of positivism, the sage of Weimar
expressly remarks that philosophical writers contemporary with him had
told him that when they were most perplexed and confused, that was the
very time when they courageously wrote on! This is enough to make a man
give up metaphysics for the rest of his days.
“My theory,” says Feuerbach, “may be condensed into two words—nature and
man. The cause of existence is not God—a vague, mysterious, and
indefinite term—but nature. The being in which nature becomes conscious
of itself is man. It follows that there is no God—that is to say, no
abstract being, distinct from nature and man, which disposes of the
destinies of the universe and mankind at its discretion; but this
negation is but the consequence of the cognition of God’s identity with
the essence of nature and man.”
What does Feuerbach mean by nature? Something distinct from man,
evidently, for he continually separates them. Ah! man is the being in
which nature becomes conscious—of what? Then nature, God, and man are
said to be identical in essence. But if God is only an abstract term,
how can an abstraction enter into a conscious essence, and how does it
follow that after all there is no God? Oh! you mistake. This negation
(of what?) is a consequence of a cognition, etc. Now, all this stuff
amounts to nothing but low, base materialism. There is not a particle of
reasoning, fancy, or poetic beauty in the entire book from which this
extract, which is clear by contrast with others, is taken. Yet George
Eliot, who is trumpeted through the world as a glorious prophetess of
humanity, deemed it worth her patient toil to translate this bathos into
English. In the foregoing extract are used at random words of deep and
pregnant import, the meaning of which has been fixed by the sharp and
subtle but eminently truthful and honest minds of Catholic philosophy
and theology. These words are vilely misused by reputed philosophers,
until there is no clearness or exactitude of statement in half the
philosophical treatises that one takes up to read. The church herself,
in her dogmatic infallibility, has defined for all time the meanings of
certain expressions which she has made touchstones of the faith—_tesseræ
fidei_. The devil was the first to equivocate, and his children have
always followed his example. The term “nature” has an exact
philosophical meaning which Feuerbach knew, and his school know.
Essence, existence, cognition, and cause are words that have to be
weighed with the nicest care when used in a philosophical disquisition.
If these writers are sincere they should speak their meaning plainly,
and not darken counsel with vain words. The plain English of the extract
is this: “There is no God in the sense of creator or judge of man. Man
is his own God. We cannot know that anything exists outside of our own
consciousness.” Even this is obscure, because there is darkness upon the
face of these abysmal depths of unbelief, over which the Spirit of God
never moved.
The Religion of Humanity, in contradiction to the very consciousness and
irresistible instincts and traditions of the human race, thus assumes
that there is no God but man, out-Mohammeding Mohammed, who admitted
that there is one God, and contented himself with the humbler title of
prophet. It stands alone in its horrible deformity. It is a leper from
which all other creeds shrink. It has attempted to prove its identity
with many of the old pagan beliefs, but, notwithstanding a cumbrous and
learned exposition of mythology, no such identification could be proved.
There are some gibing comments upon the gods in Lucian, and Juvenal at
times hints slyly at the amours of Olympic Jove; but there is no student
of mythology but knows the depth of the religious sentiment in the vast
masses of the Greek and Roman states. The worship of the earth, sea, and
skies was idealized. It may be boldly asserted that ancient history does
not present any traces of the gross materialism of modern times.
Æschylus repeatedly declares that there was a power superior to Jove
himself, and the researches of Niebuhr have established the virtual
monotheism of Greece and Rome. Despite the multitude of gods, there was
the _Deus Optimus Maximus_, clearly spoken of by Tully, and not
obscurely intimated in nearly every relic of ancient literature and art.
The attempt to trace the Religion of Humanity back to the beginnings of
the human race proved a complete failure. Man never worshipped himself
as the Supreme God. There was a broad distinction made between the
heroes or the emperors to whom divine honors were decreed and the gods
themselves. These are but the commonplaces of the history of religion;
but the attempt showed a consciousness of weakness on the part of this
wretched school of unbelief. Euripides himself would have upbraided
them:
Απιστ᾽ ἄπιστα, καινὰ χαινὰ δέρκομαι.
Ἔτερα δ᾽ εφ ἑτερῶν
Κακὰ κακῶν κυρεῖ.[133]
Every effort that has been made to find a purely natural and human cause
for religion has failed. The wide study of religion which modern
scepticism has unweariedly pursued always results in perplexing it the
more. Volney went to Palestine to disprove the ancient prophecies, and
his book shows their literal and startling fulfilment. Fichte used to
open his lectures upon God with the blasphemous remark, “Gentlemen,
to-day let us construct the Supreme Being,” but all attempts at such
construction have only brought out more clearly the immemorial belief of
his creatures in his existence. The permanency of the original
traditions of the human family is so remarkable a phenomenon, in view of
the perishableness of merely human records, that the most sceptical
minds have been struck with fear and amazement. It is like the living
proof of the Psalmist’s words: “If I go up into heaven, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and flee to the outermost ends of
the earth, thou art there!” Even the pantheism of Brahminism is
something entirely distinct from the confusion and chaos of the Religion
of Humanity.
Strauss, in his last book, _The Old and the New Faith_, asks if the
modern world is as religious as the ancient world was, and he appears to
derive satisfaction from his conclusion that there is a vast falling off
in religion. But as he does not deign to define what he means by
religion, we are left in the dark. One loses patience with the perverse
stupidity of the British and American public, that have always their
ears erect for what Strauss will say, and sceptics will complacently
assure you that there are arguments in Strauss that have left
Christianity in a deplorable plight; whereas the fact is, Strauss’ _Life
of Christ_ is familiarly cited in the schools of Germany as an
illustration of the futility of an argument against well-authenticated
human testimony. Whately wrote a book to prove that such a person as
Napoleon Bonaparte never existed, and Strauss wrote a book to prove that
Christ never existed, both with equal success.
The true _animus_ of Comte, Strauss, Renan, and the other heads of this
school is demoniac hatred of Christ. Why are they for ever attacking
him, if, as they claim, all religions are preparative of the advent of
this Religion of Humanity? Why can they go into hysterics of admiration
over Socrates, Voltaire, and Shakspere, yet foam with fury at the name
of Jesus? They will not even credit our Saviour with effecting the
slightest moral good in the world, but refer to his blessed religion as
a darkness and blight on the human intellect. Surely no true measure for
the elevation of humanity would throw aside Christianity. But it is
clear that these men have no true love for man. It is only their
insufferable pride that will not bend the knee before Christ, or bend it
in mockery like Renan and the author of _Ecce Homo_. They cry out, “Son
of David, what have we to do with you?” and their cry is that of lost
souls. All the infidel literature about Christ that has appeared so
abundantly in the past score of years bears traces of this humanitarian
spirit. They fain would make out Christ to be a mere man, but they are
in this quandary: that he had no “humanitarian” notions. He came to do
the will of his Father. He said nothing about the Sublime Humanity, the
greatness and glory of this world, the god-like intellect of man, the
progress of vast ideas, the universal diffusion of knowledge, the
infinite progressiveness of the species, the force of cosmic influences,
and the gorgeous future that will dawn for woman. Therefore, worse than
paganism, the Religion of Humanity will not erect a statue to him.
Comte, desirous of giving hierarchical form to positivism, invented a
worship and a calendar in which were commemorated three hundred and
sixty-five “eminent servitors of humanity” in place of the saints of the
Catholic Church. He began with Moses and ended with himself. Among the
saints were Bichat, Condillac, Gutenberg, and Frederick II. of Prussia.
He also invented a public service, a hymnal, and a certain form of
worshipping the Sublime Humanity, by which he probably meant himself. He
himself adored the Sublime Humanity as embodied and idealized in a very
commonplace lady. Guizot says of him that he made repeated attempts to
commit suicide, and in his review of positivism seems to think the
insanity of its founder a sufficient refutation of his strange opinions.
He admits, however, that long before Comte’s death his religion had made
considerable progress in France and in England, where it was
enthusiastically embraced by two men who, one would suppose, would be
the last to adopt a fantastic creed—J. S. Mill and Wm. Hartpole Lecky,
the historian of rationalism.
Toning down the sublimities of the irrepressible Comte, and not deigning
to admit his hierarchy or his saints—which, to say the truth, smacked
too much of Catholicity—the positivists of England and America contented
themselves with a denial of all supernatural religion, and announced
with a flourish of trumpets the infinite perfectibility of the human
race, the glory of humanity, the cosmic emotion which is the deepest
religious feeling of humanity, and the superiority of aggregate
immortality to a private or personal existence after death. Man, very
much in the abstract, was exalted to the throne of the Deity. All this
blatant puffing of modern progress, development, and evolution is kept
up by these man-worshippers. The spirit is the spirit of pride. But it
must in justice be said of Mr. Frothingham that he is not so
enthusiastic in the cause of humanity as he might be. His book on the
subject is quite tame when contrasted, say, with Comte’s _Woman and
Priest_. He does not gush enough, and he has not the irreverent boldness
of his master, Theodore Parker. Mr. Frothingham is not by any means an
emotional man, and this is fatal to his humanitarian progress. Nor is he
a deeply-read man even in his own theology, though, to be sure, no sane
man would blame him for that defect.
The doctrine of the infinite progressiveness of man is another of those
high-sounding phrases that no logic will tolerate. There can be no
internal progress in religion. All the scientific discoveries that may
be made to the end of time will not have the slightest influence upon
one jot or one tittle of revealed truth. Nor will they have any
essential or related power over the truths of natural theology, or what
is generally known as such. The relations of man to God, the coming of
Christ, the establishment and conservation of his church, are truths and
facts that can never be changed. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but
the word of God shall not pass. This is why the church is so calm when
all Protestantism is in a ferment about science. The two spheres of
truth, divine and human, supernatural and natural, can never collide.
Man may progress in many things, but religion, the Everlasting Yea, as
Carlyle calls it, cannot from its very nature change, transform,
advance, increase, or diminish. The humanitarians long for the day when
there will be no sects and no religious differences. Then the best plan
is for all the sects to enter the Catholic Church. They want a religion
for man, and surely that religion is the best which God himself made for
man.
There is a great deal of speciousness in this cry of progress, culture,
and modern enlightenment, and even Catholics are deceived by the spirit
of pride, for man from the beginning loved to consider himself a god
knowing good from evil. Humanitarianism gains adherents in Catholic
countries who would roar with laughter at the idea of turning
Protestants. France never forgets those delusive words, liberty,
fraternity, and equality, and this religion of humanity has blazoned
them over the world. The restlessness under church government, the
rational submission which the faith exacts, the lessons of
mortification, and the stern portrayal of man which Christianity
presents are all influences that tend to the progress of
humanitarianism. No man likes to hear the dread truth regarding his
slavery to the devil, the necessity of grace, the duty of confessing,
and his unutterable weakness. It is these that are the unpalatable
truths which spoil the teaching of the Ideal Man, as they call our
Saviour. Comte would not suffer him to be enrolled among his saints,
perhaps for the reason that St. Frederick the Great of Prussia used to
refer to our Lord as _L’Infame_. If there is one truth most saliently
brought out in the Gospel, it is that without Christ we can do nothing,
and this would never suit the apostles of the infinite progressiveness
of the human race.
This latter absurdity, most ridiculous when applied to religion, is not
a whit more reasonable as applied to science. There must be a limit. The
human mind is not infinite. No doubt we shall continue our improvements
in machinery. There can be no vast progress made in literature or art.
It seems from the history of the race that our powers are limited, and,
though we boast of our great mechanical improvements, Washington Irving
said that he would not be surprised if they yet unearthed a locomotive
engine from the ruins of Persepolis. Infinite progress would seem to be
only a figment of the brain of a poetic humanitarian. It is well known
that Don Quixote, who certainly gave himself up to redressing the wrongs
of humanity, was peculiarly eloquent upon the charms and perfections of
Dulcinea; though the honest old knight, crackbrained though he was,
would have crossed himself devoutly at the idea of Dulcinea being a
divinity in any other sense than that familiar to true lovers.
* * * * *
The motives for moral action presented by the humanitarian theory are
very noble but, alas! very impracticable. While we entirely dissent from
the opinion of Bentham and Paley, that selfishness is the guiding
principle of our actions—an opinion which is at once an insult and a
falsehood—still the vast majority of mankind cannot be influenced by the
very airy and sublime notions of our philosophers. Even natural goodness
appears to be prompted by heavenly intimations and aids. _Gratia
supponit naturam._ Of course a good work, to merit salvation, must be
attended with grace from its origin to its consummation. But our
humanitarians will not even promise us happiness hereafter, and we know
how slim are the chances for happiness in this world. This great
humanity for which we must labor is only an abstraction. No doubt a man
may have a real and pure love for his fellow-man on merely speculative
grounds or through natural kindness of heart; for have we not a Bergh
for the brutes? All of us, however, feel how vague and impotent such a
feeling must be or is likely to become. Christ unites love of our
neighbor with love of God, its reason and cause, and there is a world of
sweet philosophy in this precept on which depend the law and the
prophets. It is the only motive that has been found fruitful in any age.
Charity is a Christian growth. There was not one hospital in pagan
Athens or Rome, though there were numerous coteries of eminent
philosophers.
From whatever side we view this strange “religion,” its hollowness and
absurdity become apparent. Its genesis in a morbid mind clouded at times
with insanity, and its elaboration in other morally unbalanced
intellects, awaken at the outset doubts of its coherency. The vagueness
of its formulas wearies and confounds the critic. It has no
philosophical structure, and, we are afraid, no theological results. Its
literature is marked with weak sentiment and an effusive love and praise
of mere naturalism—we were going to say mere animalism—which cannot hold
any mind that has a perception of the true dignity and exaltation of
human nature as created by God and redeemed by his only Son. So far as
we are aware, it has exerted no appreciable influence upon the morality
of the world, and its failure to commend itself generally to the
humanity it so loudly praises would indicate that men perceive its
intrinsic weakness and ineptitudes.
We know that many Protestants condemn and detest this creed as heartily
as does the church, which in simple and noble language condemned it in
the very first session of the Vatican Council. But we cannot help
thinking that Protestantism has had much to do in bringing the monster
to birth. It is the logical evolution of Protestant right of private
judgment, of personal independence of the doctrinal authority of the
church, and of unwise tolerance of all sorts of mischievous religious
vagaries. Stripped, of all disguises and forced to speak in true tones,
this deified man of the Religion of Humanity is the Antichrist, setting
himself up as God and claiming to be God. It is the apotheosis of man,
who renews the folly of building a tower of pride in which he may secure
himself against the wrath of the Eternal. But before the face of His
wrath who can abide? It will not do to speak of the Omniscient as the
Unknowable or the Unknowing.
The worst feature of this _placitum_ is that it is militant and
aggressive. Comte, as we have said, established a regular system of
worship, and what passes under the more respectable name of Unitarianism
is really formulated positivism. We should care little for it, did it
openly profess its origin and purpose, but it works under a false name
and has no scruples about deceiving the confiding and unwary. The Boston
_Index_ would be highly indignant if asked to defend Comte’s calendar of
saints and to explain the _culte_ of the Sublime Humanity; and George
Eliot places in the mouth of Daniel Deronda the most exquisite praise
and appreciation of the Hebrew creed. Comte says that the day advances
when we shall worship no being inferior to man; and as no man is very
much disposed to think another greater than himself, especially under
the religious teachings which we have analyzed, each of us will act
practically upon Satan’s declaration to Eve, “You shall be as God.”
There is no doubt that as the doctrinal authority of Protestantism fades
away year by year, this pronounced individualism will more boldly assert
itself. The gospel of vulgar and intense selfishness will triumph, and
the worst phases of paganism will return. St. Paul complains of the
heathens that they were without affection, and this was because of their
creed. The spirit of modern infidelity hates and despises the poor, the
ignorant, and, like the Spartans of old, would soon dispose of the sick,
the lame, and the blind. Herbert Spencer luckily is no philosopher,
though he labors hard to synthetize humanitarianism. Should this
monstrous parody on religion ever take clear and scientific form, all
traces of faith and charity in Protestantism will disappear. Fetichism
itself would be better than this horrible worship and deification of
selfishness. If a man believes in anything outside of himself as
something diviner and better than he, there is hope for him; but woe to
him and to his neighbor when he enthrones himself upon an altar and
worships his humanity. It is to be hoped that much of the excessive
laudation of ourselves in these days springs from no deeper source than
an overweening opinion of our abilities. It may be only vanity. It may
not be spiritual and intellectual pride. This question we leave to the
reflection of our readers, with a concluding remark that all exaltation
of the merely natural powers of the human intellect is attended with
extreme danger to moral sanity. The man who has cast off the yoke of the
church, the traditions of his race, and the honest suggestions of his
conscience has already joined the ranks of the arch-deceiver who first
flattered us with hopes of divinity, and now tempts us with unbounded
visions of the enlightenment of the world, social progress, the
political amelioration of the human race, the downfall of all tyranny in
church and state, and the splendid advent of the coming man; but he only
lures us to that awful destruction which hurled him from heaven because
of the usurping thought, “I will become like unto the Most High.”
Footnote 132:
1. _Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit._ Von L. A. Feuerbach.
Leipzig.
2. _The Essence of Christianity._ Idem. Translated by George Eliot.
London.
3. _The Religion of Humanity._ By O. B. Frothingham. New York.
Footnote 133:
_Hecuba._
SONNET.
UNCONSCIOUS FACULTIES.
Say, do the mighty winds in silence sweep
The crystal breadth of ocean’s quivering plane?
The unmeasured forests, quickening in their sleep,
Breathe they no sound, or breathe that sound in vain?
Say, can our compass small of ear and brain
With Nature’s boundless concords measure keep?
Not so! _Her_ lyre, we know, hath tones too deep,
Too high, for man to hear, or to sustain.
Nor doubt that likewise in this soul of ours
Functions and faculties there work alway
Below the level of our conscious powers;
And chords whose music—were there aught to wake
Its echoes ’mid that inner world—would shake
To dust our tenement of mortal clay.
PEARL
BY KATHLEEN O’MEARA, AUTHOR OF “IZA’S STORY,” “A SALON IN THE LAST DAYS
OF THE EMPIRE,” “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” ETC.
CHAPTER I.
THE REDACRES.
The Redacres were at home on Saturday evening—at home in the pleasant,
simple way that used to be the fashion in Paris some twenty, or even
ten, years ago. They lived in an entresol in the Faubourg St. Honoré and
their friends flocked to them in troops regularly every Saturday,
crowding the spacious, old-fashioned salon, where there was always a
cordial welcome to be had, cheerful conversation, excellent tea, and a
blazing hearth when the weather was cold. It was bitterly cold on this
January evening when I beg to introduce you to the Redacre family. The
head of the house, Colonel Redacre, was a retired cavalry officer, who
had lost his left leg at Balaklava; Mrs. Redacre had been a beautiful,
and was still a lovely, woman; there were two sons who were at Eton, and
two daughters, both at home, Pearl and Polly.
The colonel had spent ten years in India, and his wife had become so
acclimatized to those burning skies that she could not bear the climate
of England on leaving them. She was, indeed, a chronic invalid, and this
was why they lived abroad. At least, Colonel Redacre always gave his
wife’s health as a reason for not living in England, and took no small
share of credit to himself for making this sacrifice of personal choice
to his duty as a husband. When old friends, who knew how strong were his
English predilections, pitied him for having to reside in France, he
would heave a sigh, and, looking towards his wife reclining on her
cushions, say: “Yes, yes; but she’s worth it, bless her!” And nothing
was prettier than the smile with which Mrs. Redacre would thank him for
this remark when it was made in her hearing, as it generally was.
It was past nine, and there were a good many people in the salon. Some
of the ladies were in full evening dress, having turned in for an hour
before going to some larger assembly; but the greater number were in
plain morning dresses. There was a whist-table in a far corner of the
large, square room, and the players were deep in their game, the
partners being Mrs. Monteagle and the Comte de Kerbec, the Comtesse de
Kerbec and Mr. Kingspring.
Polly Redacre was singing, accompanied by her sister Pearl. Polly was a
beauty. The most fastidious critic could not have found a fault in her
face; the lines and the coloring were alike perfect. And yet, when you
had paid this inevitable tribute of admiration to the chiselled features
and brilliant complexion, to the harmonious grace of her movements, your
eyes turned to Pearl’s face and lingered there, riveted by some more
potent spell than mere beauty. You never dreamed of analyzing Pearl’s
face; you enjoyed it, and you said involuntarily, “What a sweet girl! I
should like to talk to her. What a spirit there is in her eyes! what fun
in those dimples!” And your own face broke into sympathetic smiles.
There was a close family likeness between the sisters; both were rather
above the medium height, and both were very fair. Polly’s eyes were deep
blue, almond-shaped, and black-fringed. Pearl’s were brown, bright and
limpid as a Scotch pebble; as to their shape, you never gave that a
thought; you only saw that, whether the light in them was soft,
mischievous, or merry, they were good to look at.
The song was over.
“Mme. la Baronne Léopold, Mme. Blanche, et M. le Capitaine Léopold!”
called out the servant. Pearl and Polly flew to greet Blanche, who was
Polly’s bosom-friend, and the three girls betook themselves to a private
corner of their own, and were soon deep in confidential talk. Mme.
Léopold got out her tapestry, and began stitching away by the shaded
lamp near Mrs. Redacre’s sofa; and Léon, after doubling himself in two
before the ladies of the house three separate times, fell in with a
group of gentlemen on the hearth-rug. Presently Mme. Léopold looked up
from her floss silks and called out to the young girls:
“Have we interrupted the music, mesdemoiselles? I implore of you to go
on with it! My son will be in despair if you don’t; he perfectly adores
music. I hope you will induce him to sing a duet with you—that one from
_Fra Diavolo_ that goes so well with your voice, Pearl. Do make him sing
it, dear child, I pray you!”
Thus adjured, Pearl drifted away to capture the reluctant and, so far,
unconscious songster, who again doubled himself in two, and vowed that
he was a miserable singer, but at the orders of _ces demoiselles_.
“Are we not to see Léopold this evening?” inquired Col. Redacre in his
loud military tones.
“Can I say? He is so busy. He keeps me hard at work, too; I write twenty
letters a day for him, and still he can’t get through all his
correspondence. One must have real patriotism to serve one’s country in
France, my dear colonel.”
“Humph! It is easy enough to serve it when one can stay at home and keep
one’s legs,” grunted the colonel. “I should not mind writing five
hundred letters a day if I could get my leg back.”
“Ah! but you are a hero,” smiled Mme. Léopold.
Presently, throwing aside her tapestry, she sallied over to the
card-table, and, laying her hand on Mrs. Monteagle’s shoulder, “Will
your game soon be done, chère madame?” she said. “I want to have a
little chat with you, and it is so difficult for me to get to you in the
day! M. Léopold, since he is in the Chamber, works me to death. Not that
I complain of it. I am proud to be of use to him; but it is a life of
sacrifice.” And the patriot’s wife sighed.
“My dear baronne, if there be a thing I resent it is having my game of
whist interfered with,” burst out Mme. de Kerbec before Mrs. Monteagle
could answer. “How is Mrs. Monteagle to give her full attention to the
game, if you stand there watching the minutes till it is over?” And the
irate whist-player turned down her hand and looked indignantly at the
intruder.
Mme. Léopold fled with a pretty pretence of terror; and Mrs. Monteagle,
whose attention had been disturbed by the interruption, after nervously
surveying a wretched set of cards, threw a low trump—on her partner’s
ace.
M. de Kerbec uttered a meek “Oh!” of expostulation.
“I feel for you, Jack—I do indeed,” said Mme. de Kerbec. “The idea of
having a partner that trumps one’s ace the second round!”
“Dear me! I thought it was the third round,” said Mrs. Monteagle; “that
was why I risked my little trump.”
“Then you deserved to lose your little trump!” said Mme. de Kerbec. “You
should have trumped high if you trumped at all; third in hand _always_
plays high!”
“Ma chère amie,” put in meekly M. de Kerbec, “one plays as one can; my
partner may not have any high trumps.”
“Good heavens! count,” screamed his wife, “the idea of your exposing
your partner’s hand in this way!”
“Ma chère amie, I am not exposing it; I merely suggest that—”
“Hold your tongue, count! What business have you to suggest? What sort
of whist is this? I thought whist meant _hush_; and you have done
nothing but chatter ever since we sat down.”
When Mme. de Kerbec addressed her husband as “count,” those who knew M.
de Kerbec felt for him; when she called him “Jack” they congratulated
him. His real name was Jacques; but though she had been married to him
for thirty years, and lived nearly all that time in France, his wife had
never modified her hard English ring of the soft French name, hammering
it out with three _k_’s at the end.
“It sounds so uncommonly like _whack_” Col. Redacre used to say, “that I
feel for poor Kerbec, as if I saw the stick coming down on him.”
He jocosely called Mme. de Kerbec “Captain Jack” one day, and the name
stuck to her, as appropriate nicknames sometimes will. And yet Captain
Jack was very kind to her husband, letting no one bully him but herself.
Her partner this evening, Mr. Kingspring, was an excellent player, but
he had his temper so well in hand that no one suffered from this
superiority. If his partner had trumped his ace on the first round, he
would have received the stab with a lovely smile; but when he succeeded
in trumping his adversary’s ace, or some such indelicate feat, he had a
way of quietly chuckling that was very offensive to Capt. Jack.
To-night, however, they being partners, she beamed on him.
“Ha! ha! This time we looked out,” said M. de Kerbec. “When monsieur
leads trumps we know that means mischief.”
“What do _you_ mean by making such remarks?” demanded Mme, de Kerbec.
“Will you hold your tongue and attend to the game? Go on, partner; very
well played. Oh! it is my turn.”
The game went on in silence for a couple of rounds.
“Humph!” muttered Mme. de Kerbec, putting the ten of clubs on Mrs.
Monteagle’s deuce; M. de Kerbec threw the knave, and Mr. Kingspring took
it with his queen. Mrs. Monteagle looked aghast.
“Why, count,” she said, “I made sure you had either ace or king. I led
from nothing.”
“Really, Mrs. Monteagle, you are past praying for!” exclaimed Mme. de
Kerbec indignantly.
“I was certain my partner had the ace,” pleaded the culprit.
“How could he have it when I took the very first trick with it?”
“So you did, ma chère amie,” said the count, “and I quite forgot it, or
I should have played my king; but I thought monsieur had the ace, and
would have come down on me with it.”
“You thought, forsooth! What business had you to think at all? You know
the rule—third in hand; you should have stuck to the rule and taken the
consequences.”
“Ma chère amie, you sometimes remind me that it is part of genius to
know when to break rules.”
“Don’t throw my words in my face, count. And don’t argue with me about
whist. I have been playing whist with you these thirty years, and
_everybody_ knows I am a better player than you!”
“Shall I bring you some tea now?” said Pearl, advancing to the
whist-table and cutting short the little discussion between the count
and Capt. Jack.
“I shall be _most_ thankful for a cup, my dear,” said that lady in an
aggrieved tone; “but not strong. I can’t have my night’s rest spoiled
for anybody. Jack, you know how I like my tea; just go and get me a cup,
if it’s not too much trouble.”
The obedient Jack flew to obey.
The large room was now very full; there were a few groups of splendid
ladies in diamonds and shining silks and a great many gentlemen in
uniform that gave quite a brilliant air to the unceremonious gathering.
Polly Redacre was a picture to look at as she moved about in her white
muslin, her bright gold hair shining more effectively than any coronet
of jewels, and her cheeks flushed with pleasurable excitement to the
brightest rose tint. She knew she was by far the loveliest object in the
room, and she took great pleasure in the thought. And who shall blame
her? Pearl certainly did not. Indeed, Pearl had a great deal to answer
for in the way she ministered to her sister’s vanity; for she was ten
times as vain of Polly’s beauty as Polly herself was. Col. Redacre was
talking very loudly, while his right hand expostulated with Balaklava,
his wooden leg, so called in memory of the field where he lost the
original. Every change in the weather affected Balaklava painfully; for
the colonel declared that his wooden limb had more sensibility in it
than all the rest of his body combined. To-night the sudden frost that
had set in was shooting fifty razors a minute in and out of it. He was
confiding this detail to M. de Kerbec’s sympathizing ear in his very
loudest tones when a voice called out:
“Jack, is this tea sweetened?”
“Certainly, ma chère amie; that is—I really don’t know, now I remember.
Mlle. Pearl prepared it, and I have no doubt it is well sweetened.”
“You have no doubt! I dare say not. You care very little about what
interests _me_, count. Pray don’t trouble yourself about it now.” And
Jack retreated, meek and snubbed.
“The selfishness of men!” said Mme. de Kerbec, as she helped herself
from the bowl Pearl held out—“the selfishness of men! He knows if there
is a thing I _detest_ it is tasting my tea without the sugar.”
While the tea-serving was going on Léon Léopold stood with his back to
the wall and watched the pretty tea-table with its glistening silver and
porcelain, and graceful cup-bearers hurrying to and fro; he never
dreamed of lending more than a moral assistance to the latter, as an
Englishman in his place would have done. Blanche was intimate as a
sister with Pearl and Polly Redacre; but Léon seldom showed himself on a
Saturday evening. He was on the most distant terms of acquaintanceship
with the ladies of the family, with whom he was always as silent as a
sphinx. No wonder Polly voted him a muff. But Pearl declared her belief
that Léon had plenty of fun in him, if one only could get at it. He was
very good-looking, rather striking, indeed, in appearance; not tall but
finely proportioned, with a blue shaven chin and a short black
moustache, and solemn, coal-black eyes that had a way of looking at you,
Pearl said, as if to see whether you or he should look longest without
laughing. Colonel Redacre thought highly of him, and said he had the
making of a first-rate soldier in him; but Pearl declared this was
because Léon listened so attentively to the description of the Balaklava
charge every time her father related it, which was pretty nearly every
time he met Léon.
“And that song we were to have had from your son?” said Mrs. Monteagle,
taking her tea-cup to a seat near Mme. Léopold. “I have a poor opinion
of a young man who can sing and won’t sing; either he is shy, which
means that he is a goose, or he wants to make a fuss over it, which
means that he is a coxcomb.”
“My dear boy, you must execute yourself after that!” exclaimed his
mother, laughing.
“I but await the orders of ces demoiselles,” protested Léon, starting
from his position against the wall and doubling himself in two before
Pearl. He went straight to the piano, and soon the room was echoing to
the lament of the disconsolate lover to his Eléonore. Léon had a fine
voice, fairly cultivated, and, if he had not sung exactly as if he had
been a wooden man, it would have been very pleasant to listen to him;
but Pearl said it was just like accompanying an automaton.
“How well they suit!” observed Mme. Léopold in a _sotto voce_, as she
glanced towards the piano, where Léon’s black head showed above Pearl’s
fair face and dancing brown eyes. Mrs. Monteagle knew at once why she
had been convened to a little chat by Léon’s mother.
“Yes; they make a good effect as contrasts.”
“And both are so musical! My son has a passion for music.”
“If he has all his passions under as good control as he seems to have
this one, he is a model young man—indeed, a model man for any age,” said
Mrs. Monteagle with a little grunt that was peculiar to her. To judge of
Mrs. Monteagle’s character from seeing her at whist would have been a
grievous mistake; you would have supposed she had not the spirit of a
mouse, whereas she had, on the contrary, a very high spirit, and held
her own everywhere and against all comers except at cards, and above all
when Mme. de Kerbec was playing. She laughed at Mme. de Kerbec
everywhere except at the whist-table, and there she was completely cowed
by her.
“I suppose I am not a witness to be trusted,” remarked Mme. Léopold;
“but I can testify that he _is_ a model man. He is certainly a model
son, and a good son is generally good in every other relation.”
“That depends. He loves you, so it costs him nothing to be good to you.
We are all of us good to those we love.”
“And why should he not love his wife? Is there any reason why he should
not love her?”
“Not that I know of; but I did not know he had a wife.”
“Ah! but I have got one for him. Chère madame, that is why I wanted to
have a little chat with you. I have found a perfect wife for my son, and
I want you to arrange it. Do you not guess?”
Yes, Mrs. Monteagle did; and involuntarily her eyes wandered to the
piano, where Pearl was striving earnestly, but in vain, to draw out by
her passionate accompaniment some responsive spark from the dark face
that was solemnly appealing to his Eléonore, her own face meanwhile
flushed with the effort and the music; perhaps also by her endeavors to
keep those dimples under control, for they seemed actually bursting with
suppressed laughter.
“How lovely she is!” said Mrs. Monteagle, instead of answering the eager
mother.
“She is a most sweet girl, and would, I feel sure, make a perfect wife
for my Léon.”
“And you are equally sure that he would make her a perfect husband?”
“Chère madame! can you look at him and doubt it?”
“Is he so very much in love with her?”
Mme. Léopold gave an imperceptible start, and put her handkerchief to
her mouth with a little cough; but the pantomime was lost on her
companion, who was watching Pearl and observing mentally, “She is not in
love with him, at any rate.” The brown eyes were sending forth sparks of
merriment, and looked as if they were on the point of exploding outright
with fun.
“My son is the very soul of honor,” Mme. Léopold went on to explain.
“Before doing anything that could in the faintest degree compromise
Mlle. Pearl, it was necessary for me to arrange all the essentials; and,
as an old and valued friend of the family, I thought you would be, of
all others, the person to help me in this. Let us, therefore, come to
the point at once in all simplicity. What is her _dot_?”
“Her _dot_! Good gracious! how should I know?”
“Not, perhaps, the exact sum, but you surely must know _à-peu-près_,
intimate as you are.”
“I have not the remotest idea on the subject. I never heard that she had
a _dot_ at all. Now you mention it, I should think it highly probable
she had not. But if your son be really attached to her, that—”
“_Bonté divine!_ No _dot_! A man of Col. Redacre’s position not give his
daughter a _dot_! You are surely not serious?”
“Indeed I am. He has two sons to provide for, and in England the sons
come first; the daughters are provided for by their husbands. Your son
being an only son and so well off, it does not—”
“But his sons will have a _carrière_; and besides there is an estate
that is to come to the eldest, I understand. Then there is the mother’s
fortune to be divided amongst the younger children. Surely the girls’
_dot_ will come out of that?”
“You seem to be much better informed about the family affairs than I
am,” said Mrs. Monteagle. “I know nothing about Mrs. Redacre’s fortune;
but, now you mention it, I dare say it will be divided amongst the
younger ones. In any case I should think your son ran no risk in
trusting all that in Col. Redacre’s hands.”
“There can be no question of risk. I know my duty to my son better than
to let him run any risk on such a point as that. It must be all clearly
and distinctly understood before he is committed in any way.”
“It seems to me he is committed very extensively, if he has fallen in
love,” said Mrs. Monteagle. “You should not have thrown him in Pearl’s
way, if you were not prepared for his running risks.”
“_Qu’elle est donc romanesque!_” exclaimed Mme. Léopold, putting her
handkerchief to her mouth, as if she were exploding with laughter; but
Mrs. Monteagle could see that she was not laughing at all.
“What is it that you wish me to do in the affair?” she inquired. “Do you
want me to sound Pearl and find out whether she returns your son’s
affection?”
“_Grand Dieu!_ that would be madness. I would not breathe a word that
could disturb the dear child’s peace of mind until we find out what the
exact figure of her _dot_ is. Surely you can help me to do this.”
“What odd people you French are! Ha! ha! ha!” And Mrs. Monteagle fell
back in her chair and had her laugh out, in spite of Mme. Léopold’s
agonizing pressure of the hand and imploring eyes at her to be quiet.
“Col. Redacre would think I had taken leave of my senses if I were to go
and catechise him about his money affairs,” said the incorrigible
confidante when she had sufficiently recovered herself.
“But through the family lawyer you might do it. Chère amie,” pleaded the
mother, “could you not ask him?”
“He would tell me to mind my own business. Besides, I don’t know the
man’s name, or where he lives, or anything about him.”
“But you could easily find out. How do families do in England in such
cases? How do the parents find out about the young people’s fortune
before they ask for them in marriage?”
“They don’t find out, and they don’t ask; the young people manage their
own affairs first, and leave the parents to fight over settlements
afterwards.”
“And if it turns out there is nothing to settle on either side? Suppose
the young folk have become engaged without any money between them?”
“That is their affair; they must get out of it as well as they can.”
“And the young lady’s name is compromised, and if she loves the man she
breaks her heart and dies! Very sensible and very pretty indeed!”
“Tut! tut! They don’t die off so easily as all that, pretty dears! Every
girl I know has had her little romance before she marries; and all the
better for it. It takes the nonsense out of a girl to be crossed in
love.”
“How shocking!” cried Mme. Léopold, lifting up her hands. “With us a
young girl goes to the altar with the virgin bloom of her heart
untouched.”
“Pish! Don’t talk such stuff to me, my dear lady,” said Mrs. Monteagle
with a contemptuous grunt. “Virgin bloom, forsooth! You marry your
daughters before they are out of the nursery, while they are ignorant
babies that have had no time to develop either mind or heart or
character. And what comes of it half the time? When one sees the way you
French people arrange your marriages, the wonder is that you are not ten
times worse than you are—ten times worse!”
There was plenty of noise in the room, and, what between Polly’s
performance on the piano and the general buzz of voices all round, there
was little danger of the private conference being overheard; still, Mme.
Léopold cast nervous glances on either side while Mrs. Monteagle thus
denounced the evil courses of the French people.
“Then you decline to be my intermediary in this matter?” said the
disappointed mother, lowering her voice to the most confidential tone.
“I decline to commit an impertinence that would lead to my being shown
to the door—and very properly; but I shall be most happy to convey the
offer of your son’s hand to my young friend Pearl, if you and he honor
me with the mission.”
“Thank you, dear madame; you are very kind. I must consult first—”
“M. le Baron Léopold!” called out the servant. Mme. Léopold started, and
with a discreet pressure of the hand moved away and joined the group
gathered round Mrs. Redacre’s sofa.
“Who expected to see you appear this evening, legislator? I thought you
were at headquarters governing the country,” said Col. Redacre,
propelling reluctant Balaklava to meet the deputy.
“I have just come from the Intérieur, where we have been holding a
little private council,” said M. Léopold, a fine, solid sort of man,
whom you might fire jokes at for an hour with impunity, so well encased
was he in good-natured self-approval.
Everybody was glad when he appeared, for the deputy was delighted to see
everybody, was always in good temper, and always had some bit of
pleasant news—news, that is, that he considered pleasant. In person he
was the very opposite of his son Léon; very stout, and tall in
proportion, florid in complexion, a shining bald head, and bland, fussy
manners. This evening he looked big with some mighty intelligence.
“What news? Are we to have war or not?” asked Mr. Kingspring, who with
several others crowded round the deputy.
“I myself think we are,” he replied; “but I have been talking with
Canrobert, and he thinks it will blow off.”
“_Quel malheur!_” said a voice from behind him. It was Léon’s.
“Ah! you soldiers call it a misfortune when you miss the chance of
having your heads blown off.”
“Or our legs, which is much worse,” growled Col. Redacre; “when a man is
shot at all he ought to be shot outright.”
“My dear Hugh!” protested Mrs. Redacre from her sofa.
“And so Canrobert thinks it will blow over?” said Léon, who was another
man now that he felt himself safe amongst his fellow-men. “That is hard
on us, after calling us back from Marseilles just as we were going to
embark. We made certain there was war in the wind when the order came to
return. The colonel will be horribly disappointed; he was sure to get
his command if war had been declared.”
“Well, my opinion is that it will be declared,” said the baron; “so
cheer up and hope for the best.”
“If you go to war I don’t see how _we_ are to keep out of it,” said Col.
Redacre.
“That would be most unfortunate,” said M. de Kerbec. “I should have to
leave France.”
“Why so? You are not a naturalized Englishman, are you?” said M.
Léopold.
“Not exactly; but our property is in England; and besides, my wife hates
living there. But of course I could not consider that; a man must
overrule his wife and take her interests in hand, even against her will,
when his judgment dictates. I invariably do so.”
“You poor creature!” thought Col. Redacre. “But I don’t contemplate our
going to war with France,” he added aloud; “we should take sides with
her against Austria—that is to say, if Prussia joined her—”
“Which she won’t,” said M. Léopold emphatically. “I have just been
saying so to one of the ministers—I won’t name him, because what he said
to me was confidential—”
“And what did he say?” inquired M. de Kerbec.
“He said—I don’t mind repeating it, as I have not mentioned names—he
said that it was impossible at this stage of affairs to say what England
or Prussia would or would not do.”
“I could have said as much myself,” said Col. Redacre; “one need not be
a minister of state to say that.”
“He said a great deal more than that, though,” said the deputy. “He told
me several facts connected with the state of the army and the condition
of the troops that threw a great light on future probabilities. He seems
to think our arsenal, and artillery, and all that are in a much more
flourishing condition than either Austria’s or Prussia’s, and he has not
the smallest doubt as to the issue if we go to war. His facts and
figures were, indeed, perfectly conclusive to my mind.”
“It was the Minister of War, then,” said Col. Redacre. “Come, now,
baron, don’t be playing the diplomat with us already. You are not at the
Foreign Office yet.”
“My dear friend, I beg of you don’t let this go beyond ourselves!” said
M. Léopold, his bland features assuming an expression of fussy concern.
“You know I speak out here as amongst friends whose discretion I can
trust.”
“Who the deuce, now, should we go and denounce you to?” said his host.
“What else did _la guerre_ say?”
“You must not ask me; I really must not say any more,” said M. Léopold.
“The emperor is very anxious, it appears; he has not slept for three
nights.”
“No more have I,” said the colonel; “but that was Balaklava’s fault,”
and he tapped angrily on the offending limb. “If these arm-chair
soldiers had a touch of the frost in a wooden leg, they would not be in
such a hurry to go to war.”
“It would be much worse if you were in England; the damp would kill
you,” said M. de Kerbec, meaning to be consolatory.
“You are greatly mistaken; it would do nothing of the sort,” snarled the
colonel. “The climate of England agreed with me perfectly; I never
enjoyed a day’s perfect health since I left it. You don’t suppose it is
for my pleasure that I live out of my own country? It is on account of
my wife’s health; she could not bear the damp.”
“No more could Balaklava, papa,” said Pearl, slipping her hand into his
arm and looking archly into her father’s face.
“You minx! How dare you contradict me?” said the colonel, scowling down
on the saucy brown eyes. “You know very well if it was not for your
mother’s sake I would not stay an hour in this country.”
“_Mon cher colonel!_” protested three Frenchmen in chorus.
“Oh! you are very good fellows, you French, and your climate is not so
bad, and Paris is a pleasant enough place; but there is no place like
one’s own country.” And the exile heaved a sigh that would have melted a
stone.
“England is the most delightful place in the world to live in when one
has an estate and a good rent-roll,” said Mr. Kingspring; “but under
other circumstances it is not so pleasant.”
“When one is hard up, you mean. I don’t know the place that is pleasant
under those circumstances.” And the colonel almost groaned this time.
“Your property is in Devonshire, is it not?” inquired M. de Kerbec, who
liked to show off his knowledge of English country geography.
“It is in the moon, sir,” replied Colonel Redacre. “I have a worthy
cousin who has a property in Devonshire which it is generally supposed
he means to leave to me, which in fact he must leave to me; but unless
he leaves something more than the estate as it stands it will be of
precious little use, I suspect. A fancy place, sir, a fine, picturesque
old place, but brings in nothing and takes a deal of keeping up.”
“He is a very old man, the dean, is he not?” said M. de Kerbec.
“He is nothing of the sort. Am I an old man? He is five years older than
I am—a most worthy, excellent man. I wish him a long life; I have no
murderous thoughts concerning him. His fortune would be a boon to a
family man like myself; but one gets used to dragging the devil by the
tail.”
“I hope the devil gets used to it, too,” said M. Léopold. “If he
doesn’t, the poor wretch must find it very uncomfortable.”
“The wonder is that he has any tail left, considering how half the world
is engaged in pulling at it.”
The colonel laughed, and so did everybody else. The deputy’s little joke
proved rather a relief. Colonel Redacre had a way of airing his
pecuniary grievances in public that was sometimes embarrassing to
people; it was difficult to know what to say. French people especially
were at a non-plus on these occasions; but they mostly set down the
colonel’s grumbling to the evil behavior of Balaklava. If Balaklava was
making him miserable, then there was no pleasure to be got out of life.
When a man had only one leg he should at least have had ten thousand a
year as a set-off to the accident; this would enable him to travel about
in the wake of the sun with his household gods around him. He could not
do this with three thousand a year—not as an English gentleman
understands travelling.
You have already discovered that Pearl’s father was the last man to
mislead any one intentionally as to her fortune. If Mme. Léopold or
anybody else assumed that she was to have a large fortune because the
colonel lived like a gentleman, that was no fault of his; it was absurd
and unreasonable to imagine that he could do otherwise. Nobody expected
a man to pinch and screw for the sake of saving _dots_ for his daughters
out of an income that was barely sufficient for his wants. Least of all
did the daughters expect it. They preferred infinitely that their father
should give them a carriage and a couple of riding horses than economize
for the sake of leaving or giving them a fortune on their marriage.
Besides, there was Broom Hollow and the dean’s money, which they were
safe to inherit some day.