The day before M. de Berniers's arrival, M. de Terville had been

suddenly called to the South in consequence of the dangerous illness of

a relative. The ceremony of welcome rested therefore with Mlle.

Virginie. That young lady was far better acquainted with the habits and

character of her proposed bridegroom than he imagined. She had heard

much of him in Paris, and, since the project of an alliance had been

submitted, contrived to learn more. Being a girl of spirit and

intelligence, the information which she gained was not agreeable to her.

She regretted not having met M. de Berniers in Paris, and longed for the

opportunity of encountering him at least once or twice under other

circumstances than those which now seemed inevitable. Upon the departure

of her uncle, she set her wit to work; and as of wit she had no lack,

there presently arose from the depths of her consciousness a scheme

which promised to be successful.

"Mariotte," she said, summoning her waiting-maid, "bring me my

cavalier's dress,--wig, buckles, stockings, everything."

"Yes, Ma'm'selle. Would Ma'm'selle wish to put them on?"

"Most certainly."

"But Monsieur de Berniers is expected this morning."

"Precisely."

"And Ma'm'selle will hardly have time--"

"I shall receive him _en cavalier_."

"_Seigneur Dieu du ciel!_" said Mariotte, astounded, "but that is

impossible."

"Be reasonable, Mariotte," said Virginie, "and listen to me. M. de

Berniers proposes to do me the honor of espousing me. I have never seen

M. de Berniers, but I know something of him and I wish to know more. My

uncle earnestly desires this marriage, and it is my duty to oblige him.

But he will not urge it against my inclination. If M. de Berniers, on

arriving here, finds only the delicate and decorous young lady to whom

he offers his hand, he will assume his best manner, conceal his faults,

affect a hundred good qualities, and present nothing but a virtuously

colored portrait of himself, which, I may afterward find out, bears

little resemblance to the actual man. If, on the other hand,--do you

see?"

"Not exactly."

"Mariotte, your stupidity pains me. You know that in my cavalier's dress

nobody can distinguish me from a young gentleman of the court."

"A very young gentleman, Ma'm'selle."

"They are all mature at seventeen, now. At Paris I was taken for a man

of fashion by half the ladies at the court ball, and even found myself

with many a pretty quarrel on my hands. Well, M. de Berniers arrives;

finds not me, but my cousin Charles, do you understand, who remains at

the _château_ to receive him in the temporary absence of M. and Mlle. de

Terville. With one of his own sex he will have no concealments, and we

shall soon know, my good Mariotte, what sort of gentleman we have to

deal with."

"Then you will be--"

"My cousin Charles."

"O, impossible, Ma'm'selle! Think of the Count, your uncle."

"Mariotte, think of me. It is I who am to be married, not the Count, my

uncle. Consider, it is for my happiness."

"One would almost think, Ma'm'selle, that you _wished_ to detect some

excuse for ridding yourself of M. de Berniers."

"Perhaps."

"Ah, ah! then there is a reason."

"Possibly."

"And that reason is--"

"Tall, brave, and handsome. Mariotte, do me justice; do you think it was

for nothing that I used to dress with such double, triple care for the

last few court balls at Paris?"

"Ma'm'selle, say no more; I consent."

"A thousand thanks, Mariotte."

"But it is dreadful to so deceive one's husband before marriage."

"Much better than to deceive him after, Mariotte."

This swept aside all Mariotte's hesitation, and the plot was carried out

accordingly. M. de Berniers was received in due form by the fictitious

cousin Charles, whose disguise a keener observer could not easily have

penetrated. According to her expectation, the conceited Parisian soon

became free and confidential.

"A neat little figure," said De Berniers, patronizingly. "Come to court

a year hence, and I will point you the way to any victory you please."

"Ah, M. de Berniers, it is easy to point the way; but there are few who

can follow it so triumphantly as you. I am not so young but that I have

heard of your conquests."

"True," said De Berniers, affecting indifference; "a few countesses here

and there, and once in a way a duchess or two. But of course Mlle. de

Terville suspects nothing of that sort."

"I suspect she knows it all as well as I."

"Fancy this adventure," began De Berniers, languidly. "Only eight or ten

nights ago--"

"Pardon, Monsieur," interrupted Virginie, who began to think she had

opened a questionable game, "let me order some refreshment."

"No, I breakfasted at the inn. As I was saying, only eight or ten

nights' ago--"

"At least, take some wine," broke in Virginie again; and she rose and

summoned Mariotte, who had been listening, and who entered not without

perturbation.

"Thanks," said De Berniers. "Eight or ten nights ago--"

But the impending peril was averted by Mariotte, who dexterously spilled

a glass of wine over M. de Berniers's wig, causing him to rage after an

impotent fashion, and to drawl an oath.

Virginie was greatly confused at the unexpected and awkward prospect

which this attempt at conversation opened to her; but her thoughts were

presently diverted by the startling intelligence that Raoul de Montalvan

had accompanied her suitor, and was in attendance at the inn. Her first

sensation was one of pleasure,--unaccountable pleasure, she thought; for

why should the mere knowledge that the handsome captain was near her

occasion any particular joy? Ah! she knew; she could now have the end of

that mysterious and interesting story of the Rajah's daughter, with whom

De Montalvan had travelled through the tropical forests.

But her next feeling was one of deep embarrassment. How could she meet

M. de Montalvan in that dress? In the first place, he might have seen

her wear it in Paris, and in that case would at once detect her; perhaps

he would detect her under any circumstances, not being a vain, blind

fool like De Berniers. But, beyond that, she could not bear the idea of

such a masquerade with him. Of course she did not know why, but there

was the fact, fixed and unblinkable.

She was relieved in the way she would least have expected, and by M. de

Berniers himself. That gentleman, who was not fecund in ideas, and who,

even after becoming conscious of the existence of one within him, was

obliged to struggle with more violence than suited his temper in order

to give it birth, had, immediately after mentioning De Montalvan's name,

sunk into a profound revery. He gazed through his eye-glass from head to

foot at Virginie, until she began to fear he had discovered her secret.

At last his brow cleared, and, with a smile of self-congratulation, he

said, "I have it now! I have it now!"

Then he confided, not without a pang of wounded _amour-propre_, the fact

that, in the merry conflicts of wit at the capital, he had

sometimes--not often, like the others--suffered defeat. He related the

anecdote of the masquerade wager which he had lost to De Montalvan, and

exhorted his new friend to assist him in an appropriate revenge.

"You are young," he said; "not too tall; your complexion is as delicate

as need be; you can easily borrow one of your cousin's dresses, and,

without the slightest difficulty, could transform yourself into one of

the most charming young ladies in the world."

"But, Monsieur," hesitated Virginie.

"Say no more," added De Berniers; "I count upon your friendship. Aha! M.

de Montalvan, now we shall see. O, it is easily done, my little friend.

I will ride over for De Montalvan myself. You shall be ready when we

return. Of course I will first see you alone, and give you a few

suggestions. The principal thing, you understand, is to fascinate him to

the last extremity."

Virginie smiled, possibly with an inward conviction that she had already

learned the way to do that.

"By all means fascinate him. Spare no methods. He is a rough soldier,

and will suspect nothing. Make him declare his passion, if you can; and

perhaps we may bring him to the point--who knows? ha! ha!--of offering

marriage."

Virginie fluttered a little at this comprehensive announcement of her

guest's design, but she was amused at the unexpected turn the affair was

taking, and, without much delay, consented to array herself in feminine

apparel.

M. de Berniers returned to the inn, with exultation in his heart. While

riding with De Montalvan to the castle, he said, carelessly, "These

rosy-cheeked peasants are delightful, my friend. Are you on the watch

for adventure?"

"Not especially," said De Montalvan.

"Listen," said De Berniers. "Who knows but that in the country I might

have better fortune than at Paris. Change of scene may bring me change

of luck."

"In what respect?"

"De Montalvan, I have a fancy to renew some of our old wagers. If I fail

here, nobody will know it."

"And if you succeed, you will send an express to Paris to publish the

news."

"I don't say no; but I am willing to undertake to ensnare you as you

deluded me last year at the court ball. And that during our visit here,

or at any rate before we go back to the world."

"As you please," said De Montalvan, indifferently.

"Is it a wager, then?" asked De Berniers, half trembling with

impatience. "Yes.

"For ten louis?"

"Very well."

On arriving at the chateau, M. de Berniers sought his fellow-conspirator

alone, and, finding her duly attired, proceeded to criticise.

"Hum, another patch on the left cheek, I should say. But no matter. Pray

be careful of your voice. Nothing is so difficult to disguise as the

voice. I always detect a man instantly by his voice; though, to be sure,

De Montalvan is not experienced, like me, and there will be up trouble

in deceiving him. Now let me see you walk."

Virginie took a few steps to and fro.

"My dear friend, don't stride like that," said De Berniers; "short

steps, in this manner, if you please";--and he mincingly illustrated, to

Virginie's intense gratification.

"Now, a salutation," he added.

Virginie courtesied.

"Bad, bad," said De Berniers; "it is clear you are not used to this sort

of thing. Try this";--and he executed a profound feminine obeisance.

"That's better," he remarked, approvingly, as she affected to imitate

him; "and now these shoulders. Ah, but these shoulders are very bad. You

should curve them forward, thus,"--with which he seized Virginie's

shoulders, and endeavored to press them into what he conceived to be the

proper position.

"Take your hands away, Monsieur," screamed the young lady, springing

from him with great precipitation.

"Ticklish, I see," he quietly remarked. "And now there is one thing

more. Whatever else you do, speak low, and do not swear. I have known

many a comedy of this sort to be ruined by an inadvertent oath."

"I will try, Monsieur."

Then De Montalvan was brought, and was in proper form presented. At

sight of him, Virginie faintly blushed, which circumstance enchanted De

Berniers. "The rascal does better than I could have expected," he

thought. After a short conversation, he contrived an excuse to leave

them alone together,--his accomplice and his dupe.

"At last, Mademoiselle," said De Montalvan, dismissing the pretence of

reserve which he had maintained during his friend's presence,--"at last

we meet again; but how unexpectedly, and under what strange

circumstances!"

"Indeed, Monsieur, I am hardly less surprised at seeing you again, than

I was at your mysterious disappearance from Paris, some months ago."

"But were you not aware--"

"Of what?"

"That I was ordered to accompany M. de Richelieu to Port Mahon?"

"The orders of M. de Richelieu must be very imperative."

"To a soldier they are, Mademoiselle. But at present I am not a soldier.

The expedition is gloriously ended, and I submit myself to your orders,

and to yours only."

* * * * *

During the few days that intervened before M. de Terville's return, De

Berniers labored heart and soul--that is to say, with as much of either

as was in him--to still further entangle his misguided and infatuated

friend. It was clear to him that De Montalvan was hopelessly in love,

and, since he had so well succeeded in the beginning of his enterprise,

he saw no reason why he might not conduct it to a more triumphant

conclusion than he had at first thought possible. He took counsel with

Virginie, and besought the supposed cousin to send a messenger to M. de

Terville, explaining the case, and asking his co-operation. He even

stimulated De Montalvan's passion by privately declaring that the

prospect of marriage was irksome to him, suggesting that he should

transfer his claims, and offering to intercede with Mlle. de Terville's

uncle, if De Montalvan could assure himself of the young lady's favor.

While this bungling disciple of Mephistopheles was digging his own

pitfall, Virginie was in some perplexity. She did not reveal to her

admirer that De Berniers was hoping to entrap him; for that, she said to

herself, there was no immediate necessity; and the days were passing so

agreeably that she shrunk from making any explanation that might disturb

their tranquillity. De Berniers, pursuing his scheme, kept himself

resolutely in retirement. From the treasures of his varied experience,

De Montalvan exhumed volumes of adventurous history for the young girl's

amusement. "The dangers he had passed" endeared him to her, and, though

his apparel was still sombre, there fortunately was no black face to

interfere with the pleasant growth of her regard; for the ladies of

Louis the Fifteenth's time were not generally so indifferent to personal

appearance as the fair Venetian was said to be. And then she had

obtained the sequel of the story of the Rajah's daughter, whom Raoul had

protected in the Indian forests; and it was satisfactory to know that

his guardianship over her, though gallant and chivalrous, had not been

prompted by too ardent an emotion. Her only apprehension was in regard

to what might occur upon her uncle's return. That he would not urge her

to espouse a man whom she thoroughly detested, she very well knew; but

whether he would sanction her betrothal to a poor soldier of fortune,

was a question which she hardly dared to ask herself. Not knowing what

to do, she did nothing, and, with considerable anxiety, waited for

events to work their own solution.

M. de Terville did not appear until the day fixed for the signing of the

contract, when he arrived in great haste, accompanied by a notary, and

expressed his wish that the ceremony should not be delayed, as he was

obliged to return at once, to the South of France. As soon as it was

known that he was within the chateau, De Berniers sought Virginie, and

inquired whether her uncle had received due warning; to which she

answered that he knew all that was necessary. She then prepared to

surrender herself to destiny; for, though a spirited girl, she had not

courage enough even now to take the control of affairs into her own

hands, and could only indulge a vague hope that some beneficent

interposition of fortune might smoothly shape the course of her true

love.

The two young gentlemen joined M. de Terville and the notary in the

library, where the blank contract and writing-materials were

conspicuously displayed. De Berniers wore an air of almost supernatural

intelligence, at which the noble Count marvelled, though he was too

hurried to seek an explanation. On greeting M. de Montalvan, he

expressed regret at not having immediately recognized him. De Berniers,

fully convinced that the Count was in the plot, took this as a piece of

by-play, not, however, thoroughly understanding its purport. De

Montalvan was wretchedly ill at ease, but gathered a little reassurance

from De Berniers's declaration that he would voluntarily renounce his

pretensions, and abdicate in favor of his friend.

"Now, Monsieur, if you please, as follows," said M. de Terville to the

notary--"between Monsieur Louis de Berniers and--"

"Excuse me," interrupted De Berniers, making singular and inexplicable

signs to the Count, "Monsieur Raoul de Montalvan, if you please."

"How, Monsieur," exclaimed the Count, with hauteur.

"But surely you understand," whispered De Berniers, hastily; "of course

you must understand."

"Explain your observation," said the Count, aloud.

"Most extraordinary!" thought De Berniers. "He will spoil everything."

Then again, in an undertone, "You know he is supposed to take my

place."

"Monsieur," said the Count, more stiffly than ever, "I do not understand

this enigma."

"How stupid I am!" said De Berniers suddenly to himself. "To be sure, it

is necessary for him to affect surprise and indignation. The fact is, he

acted it too well; for a moment he almost deceived me." Then turning to

Raoul, he exclaimed: "M. de Montalvan, the Count shall know all. Learn,

M. de Terville, that, finding a total absence of sympathy between myself

and your charming niece, and feeling that I could in no way insure her

happiness, I have determined to ask you to receive, instead of my own,

the addresses of my noble friend, M. Raoul de Montalvan."

"The proposition, Monsieur, is scandalous. I refuse to entertain it. My

niece would never listen to it."

"You are wrong, Monsieur; Mlle. de Terville joins us in this request."

"Impossible. Am I to understand, Monsieur," said the Count, addressing

De Montalvan, "that my niece has indicated a preference for you over

this gentleman?"

"I hardly dare to avow it, Monsieur, but--"

"Enough!" interposed the Count, turning with rage upon De Berniers. "And

as for you, Monsieur, your conduct is nothing better than an insult to

me."

"Saperlotte!" said De Berniers to himself, "but he acts better than

Cousin Charles."

"I will deal with you presently, Monsieur," continued the Count. "M. de

Montalvan, you love my niece?"

"Devotedly," said De Montalvan.

"O, frantically!" cried De Berniers.

The Count cast a withering glance upon the unfortunate plotter. "It is

sufficient," he said; "the contract shall be drawn as you desire, if

only to punish this imbecile. But I have no disposition to control my

niece's wishes. She shall have perfect liberty to sign, or not, as she

chooses."

"That is all we ask," said De Berniers, essaying a comical grimace,

which tempted M. de Terville to order his ejection by the domestics. In

fact, he suddenly did summon a servant, but, after a moment's

reflection, merely directed him to notify Mlle. Virginie that her

attendance was requested.

Three persons awaited her appearance with vivid emotions. Raoul's hope

was higher than his expectation, and, notwithstanding his ten years of

exposure to every kind of mortal peril, he now felt for the first time

the physical panic of fear. M. de Terville was not less curious than

angry; and he was by no means indisposed to see his niece complete De

Berniers's humiliation by accepting the new rival. As for De Berniers

himself, he was revelling in all the ecstasies of satisfied revenge, and

could hardly restrain his exultation long enough to witness the _coup de

grâce_.

Of course, Virginie signed without hesitation. The fate to which she

trusted had been as kind as she could wish. As her pen left the

parchment, a remarkable scene ensued. De Berniers actually laughed

aloud, seized the Count affectionately by the hand, and so far forgot

the laws of decorum as to slap the notary upon the shoulder. He would

next have embraced Virginie with effusion, had not De Montalvan

interposed.

"You shall answer for this, Monsieur," cried M. de Terville, furiously.

"Another such offence, and I will have you expelled by the lackeys."

"My dear Count," said De Berniers, "the comedy is finished, and we can

all drop our _rôles_, except M. de Montalvan, who, I imagine, will

continue to hold his longer than he desires. And now, where is Mlle.

Virginie?"

"Is he mad?" said De Terville.

"Mlle. Virginie is here, at your service," said the lady, coolly.

"That's very well," replied De Berniers, "but I tell you the curtain has

fallen. Poor M. de Montalvan is puzzled enough already. Let us send for

Mlle. Virginie, and show him his error."

"No mere of this senseless jesting," said the Count; "Mlle. Virginie is

here; say what you desire, respectfully, and allow us to wish you good

day and a comfortable journey."

De Berniers's head began to swim. "But this is her cousin, not herself,"

he exclaimed.

"My niece has no cousin," said the Count.

"The fact is," said Virginie, "that my cousin Charles and I are one; and

my reason for the little masquerade was--"

But De Berniers heard no more. He rushed frantically from the library,

straight to the stables, mounted his horse, and galloped wildly away to

the inn, whence he departed for Paris within an hour.

M. de Terville was as much mystified as he was outraged by De Berniers's

behavior; but Virginie, although she at once confided the secret to De

Montalvan, thought it prudent to conceal it for a while from her uncle,

who remained unacquainted with all the details until after the marriage,

which was not long deferred.

It is a lamentable fact, that M. de Berniers never paid this wager. He

even contemplated sending M. de Montalvan, instead of the ten louis, an

invitation to mortal combat; but the friends whom he consulted convinced

him that he had no just cause of complaint against the captain. The only

person by whom he had really been aggrieved was Mlle. de Terville; M. de

Montalvan could not in decency be held responsible for the non-success

of a conspiracy of which he was to have been the victim. So M. de

Berniers had to accept all the ridicule of the position, without the

consolation of directing his vengeance against anybody. He did not pay

the ten louis, but it was never said that M. de Montalvan felt

dissatisfied with the result of his third wager.

FOOTNOTES:

[102] The Lieutenant-General Duc de Richelieu enjoyed the fame and

received the reward of this important discovery, due really to an

unknown adventurer. Even the claim of De Lally was set aside in favor of

the illustrious impostor.

THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.[103]

Mr. Francis Parkman has been fortunate in finding unappropriated,

untried even, a dramatic subject of well-defined and completed

historical interest, for the treatment of which his taste and talents

give him an extraordinary adaptation. He has rightfully asserted his

claims to be regarded as occupying the whole of a field whose scope and

contents he has so ably mastered, and portions of which he has wrought

to such good purpose. He has for many years had in view a series of

historical narratives,--each complete and independent in itself, though

having an organic relation to the others,--which should present the

whole story of early French and English enterprise and rivalry in North

America. Under the title of "Pioneers of France in the New World,"

published two years ago, and noticed at the time in these pages, we had

a volume which initiated the full development of the results of his

labors as far as they dealt with the earliest events and actors

connected with French enterprise on this continent. In his "History of

the Conspiracy of Pontiac," published sixteen years ago, Mr. Parkman had

already given us the last act in a drama of intense interest.

"The Jesuits in North America" is the title of a new volume, and of a

well-rounded and nobly-wrought theme. The English reader had nothing

within his reach before from which he could learn what is offered to him

here. Rich as the subject actually is in documentary and printed

materials of prime authenticity, and in the infinite minuteness of

detail in their contents, these materials were widely scattered and not

readily accessible. Mr. Parkman has either copied or procured the

copying of many thousand pages of manuscripts illustrating his theme. He

has gathered all the pamphlets, volumes, and maps which have any

relation to it. He has put himself in communication with officials,

custodians, and antiquarian students, who could help him in his

researches, and, by visits of exploration and inquiry to the localities

which form the scene of his narratives, he has faithfully met all the

conditions external to his own more special qualifications for the

exacting work which he has undertaken, and, so far, so successfully

accomplished.

We have intimated that Mr. Parkman has special qualifications, taste,

and talents for the line of historical studies to which he has devoted

his life, and in which--in spite of most discouraging and embarrassing

impediments of ill-health and physical suffering in eye and limb, and

the sympathetic demands of the brain for rest and inaction except at

long intervals and for short efforts--he has already done enough to give

him place in our foremost literary ranks. We might emphasize our

assertion of these special aptitudes and talents of his even up to a

point which to those who are not familiar with his pages would seem

enthusiastic or exaggerated. The curiosity, or sympathy, or reference to

his own historical purposes,--call it and regard it which of these

motive influences we will,--which has led Mr. Parkman to seek the

closest contact with many of the Indian tribes in our domains,--to share

their life, to be domiciled in their dirty lodges, to partake of their

unappetizing feasts, to listen to their traditionary and tribal lore,

and to endeavor to put himself into communication with the inner

workings of their thought and being,--has accrued most helpfully to the

benefit of his readers. We feel that he is for us a faithful and

competent interpreter and commentator of Indian life, manners,

superstitions, and fortunes. He has a marvellous skill in observing and

describing the phenomena of nature,--the features and scenes of the

wilderness amid which they roved. Those gentle or strong touches for

shading and blending, for bringing into bold relief, or for suggesting

what is alone for the thought and not for the sight, which the skilful

painter uses in his service, are paralleled by Mr. Parkman in the

felicity of his verbal delineations. We know of no writer whose pages

are so real and vivid in qualities harmonizing with his theme as are

his. The abundant material to which we have referred required just that

elucidation and illustration which he has given to it by familiarity

with the scenes and subjects embraced in it. In some very important

points the author, by his thoroughness, candor, and judicial spirit,

corrects some false impressions generally accepted, and substitutes fact

for the fancies of romance.

_Ad majorem Dei gloriam_,--"For the greater glory of God,"--the noble

motto of the Society of Jesus, had inspiration enough in its sublime

simplicity and fulness of aim to consecrate any great enterprise into

which piety and zeal and self-sacrificing toil could throw themselves,

under whatever limitations of ignorance or superstition. All the

perplexing questions, shifting and deepening from age to age, and

finding more adequate answers as to _what consists with the glory of

God_, may help to train a more intelligent and practical judgment in the

estimate of means and ends. But no comparative allowance of this sort

can reduce the tribute due to devotion and heroism in an untried service

for a holy cause, however bewildered and futile the endeavor. Mr. Lecky

confronts us with the perhaps undeniable, but still unwelcome fact, that

ardor and zeal cool proportionately as intelligent and practical aims

direct the humane or the religious activities of men. Enthusiasm has an

affinity, if not with superstition, yet with exaggerated and

ill-adjusted estimates of the relations between the body and the soul,

the visible and the invisible, the temporal and the eternal.

There can be no reasonable doubt that the missionary Jesuits, whose life

was so sore a martyrdom that they must have found relief even in a cruel

death inflicted by the Indians, did balance their view of what would

consist with the glory of God by some equivalent benefit which they

thought to secure for the barbarians. It has become very desirable, for

various good reasons, to concentrate all the efforts of thorough

research and of discriminating judgment upon the actual condition of the

native tribes on the northern part of this continent when European

enterprise or zeal introduced among them new and potent agencies for

good or ill. Is their decay, their extermination, to be ascribed to the

cupidity and heartlessness of the white man, with his skilled and

calculating arts for overmastering the rude children of nature? Were

they a happy, contented race, supported by the forest and the stream,

and sharing among themselves such relations as served for their uses in

the stead of the more elaborate and artificial institutions of

civilization? Did their compensatory advantages balance to any extent

the rude and stern conditions of their existence? Did the white man try,

even with moderate humanity and sympathy, to lift them to an equality

with himself, and to share peacefully and with mutual benefit their old

domain? Was their destruction a foredoomed conclusion, a calculated

purpose, an acknowledged necessity from the first? or was it slowly and

reluctantly accepted as an inevitable destiny decided by conditions

which overruled and thwarted every scheme and device of philanthropy?

Were the Indians in the way of self-development, working upwards to

intelligent improvement in their means and ways of life? Would they have

retained their heritage here up to this day, had the white man never

come among them? These and many similar questions may be asked, either

by curiosity or in the interest of humanity, or in the service of

ethnologic science. Mr. Parkman contributes more abundant and more

instructive means for discussing and for deciding these questions in the

light of authenticated facts, and of fair deductions from them, than do

all who have preceded him on the subject.

In an Essay, introductory to his present volume, he embodies the results

of many years of study, research, and personal observation concerning

our Northern aborigines,--their tribal, treaty, and confederate

relations, their distribution and numbers, their government, their

family life, their customs, modes of subsistence, and warfare, their

character and traits, their intellectual stage, their superstitions,

their religious notions and observances. It is evident that his task, to

this extent, was made an exacting one, not only by its inherent

difficulties and complications, but by the misleading and guess-work

representations of other writers who have been accepted as authorities.

He makes stupendous reductions from the romance which has invested

Indian character and life. "The noble savage," the ideal of so much

fanciful and morbid sentimentality, becomes in his pages the

representative of quite other qualities than those ascribed to him. In

all that constitutes and ennobles manhood, and in all the conditions

which should elevate the human above the brute creature, the savage and

his lot are wanting.

Mr. Parkman says of the Huron-Iroquois family, that, from average

capacity, superior cranium, and such advancement as is indicated by what

we must call their mode of government, we might look to them, if to any

of the aborigines, for examples of the higher traits popularly ascribed

to Indians. But if we so look, we look in vain. Rather do we find in

them the more repulsive and hideous qualities of the fiercest and the

foulest brutes and reptiles,--a relentless and untamable ferocity and a

homicidal frenzy. From the calm and exhaustive analysis of the

philosophy of his theme, as well as from the tragic story which fills

his thrilling pages, it is evident that Mr. Parkman traces to the nature

and circumstances of the savage himself the prime causes of his

extermination. Independently of the white man's agency,--saving only the

sale of guns by the Dutch traders at Albany to the Iroquois,--the decay

of the Indian tribes is to be ascribed to their own incapacity for

civilization, and to their own homicidal passion. One might as well

expect to neutralize the game flavor in the deer or the sea-fowl, as to

bring an Indian tribe under the conditions of what we call culture and

civilization. Mr. Everett, in his address in commemoration of the

massacre at Bloody Brook, near Deerfield, Massachusetts, vindicated the

general course of the white men towards the aborigines of these regions,

by claiming for it an accordance with the manifest will of Providence

from an economical point of view. The Indian was a wasteful, wretched,

improvident consumer and spoiler of the means of subsistence and

enjoyment for communities of civilized men. So reckless and ruthless was

he, so idle and thriftless, that he required for his precarious and

beastly subsistence a domain which would furnish cities with all their

comforts and luxuries. A thousand white men might subsist in comfort

through the whole year where five Indians could find but enough with

which to gorge themselves for a small part of the year, while for the

rest of it they suffered for lack of food, fire, and shelter.

Undeniable, also, is the fact that, according to the measure of what

represented Christianity to themselves, and the form and degree of

benefit which they personally by experience derived from it, the

earliest European comers labored sincerely, and at cost, to impart the

blessing to the Indians. They made this attempt with equal fidelity

under the inspiration and guidance respectively of the two very

different forms in which Christianity, as a religion, was accepted by

themselves, and divided the range of Christendom. Eliot and the Mayhews

stand, and will ever stand, as exponents of the purest, most patient and

persistent zeal of Protestantism, matched only, but not surpassed, by

the chivalrous devotion, constancy, and martyr-heroism of the subjects

of Mr. Parkman's volume, in all the aims and toils of their

impracticable work. The Protestant offered the Gospel to the Indians

through intellectual teachings; the Romanist tried the experiment

through a symbolism which one might, at first thought, regard as

admirably adapted to the nature and circumstances of the savage. Success

of a certain sort seemed to have secured, in both experiments, the

promise of an ultimate reward for labor.

Happily, too, the Jesuit and the Protestant might alike find comfort in

referring the disastrous overthrow of their hopes, not to the failure of

their work, nor even to the inconstancy of their respective converts,

but to the fortunes of the ferocious warfare by which the native tribes

exterminated each other. Mr. Parkman first, or most lucidly and

emphatically among our historians, and without a particle of special

pleading, but simply by the fidelity of his narrative, makes it appear

that the common impression as to the prime or fatal agency of the white

man in visiting so ruthless a destiny on the Indians is exaggerated, if

not substantially false. The tragic element in his pages, deep and

plaintive as it is, comes in to show how Christian zeal and humane

effort were thwarted by animosities and passions working among the

Indian tribes before the continent was occupied by Europeans.

One of the most suggestive exercises to which the perusal of Mr.

Parkman's book will quicken the minds of many of his readers, and for

the more intelligent pursuit of which his pages will be found to afford

the most helpful material, will be a comparison or contrast, not only of

the genius of the Catholic and the Protestant religions in the work of

missions among barbarians, but of the less spiritual and more homely

qualities of the French and English proclivities, as exhibited in their

respective relations with the savages. The French came more closely and

familiarly into sympathy and intercourse with them. The English never

could fraternize with them. If an Englishman of the lowest grade took a

squaw for his partner, he sank to the level of barbarism himself. It was

quite otherwise with the Frenchman. After the permanent occupation of

Canada was secured, a race of half-breeds constituted, so to speak, a

very respectable, as well as the most efficient, element in its

population. It was enough if the squaw of the Frenchman had been the

subject of Christian baptism. But that ordinance, however effective for

the life to come, did not qualify a native woman for English wedlock.

Sir William Johnson, indeed, made no disguise of his manner of life,

which the complexion of the daughters who sat at his table with his most

honored guests would have rendered rather difficult; but their

mother--or mothers--were not presentable.

A very engaging episode in Mr. Parkman's narrative--we propose it to our

artists as a subject of rare and novel interest, and rich in

capacity--presents us two noble specimens of Christian zeal, in the

persons of a Jesuit and a Protestant missionary in amicable intercourse

with each other. Would that we had a more detailed account of the

interview, and of the conversation which must have given it the highest

charm of courteous sympathy, though with reserve, between two men who

represented the sharpest antagonisms of creed, while a common faith may

have proved an inner attraction for their hearts. The Colony of

Massachusetts had applied to the French at Quebec, in negotiations

looking toward a reciprocity of trade. The Jesuit missionary Druilletes

was sent in that behalf to Boston. His diplomatic character saved him

from the penalty of the halter, which Puritan law had pronounced upon

any one of his profession who should be caught in this jurisdiction. He

arrived in the autumn of 1650, and had a most hospitable and kindly

reception, though he failed in his object. The scene we have proposed to

a painter is that which finds Druilletes a welcome and honored guest in

the humble dwelling of the apostle Eliot, at Roxbury, who invited the

Jesuit to remain through the winter. We are sure they met and communed

as friends,--high-souled, respecting each other, recognizing in each

other aims and purposes, and the experience, alike in success and

failure, of the arduous nature of a work which brought into a true

communion of piety the spirits consecrated by it.

Not quite a score of years--from 1634 to 1650--suffice for the dates of

the chief events in the profoundly interesting and saddening story of

effort and failure which Mr. Parkman rehearses with such masterly

ability. Starting with the renewed occupancy of Quebec in 1634, and the

accession of the Jesuits to the abortive enterprise of the Recollet

Fathers, he traces out for us the history of the Mission to the Hurons,

giving us the characters of all its agents, an account of the

settlements established, and the methods pursued till the work was

frustrated.

It is but a sad and painful story--in some of its incidents harrowing

and revolting--which Mr. Parkman has to tell us. So far as strict

fidelity to his subject would admit, he has had regard to the

sensibilities of his readers, and where he could neither hide nor

soften, he has contented himself with intimating and suggesting what it

would have been simply shocking for him to follow into further details.

With an acute skill in the reading of human nature, and a cosmopolitan

spirit of his own which identifies religious toleration and charity with

common sense, Mr. Parkman, in a few paragraphs crowded with facts and

philosophy, takes us into the inner organization of Jesuitism, indicates

the spring and aliment of its vitality, and explains to us how it

reconciles the abnegation of the will with the concentration of resolve

in obedience. Starting from Quebec as a centre of operation, and the

place where French supplies and Indian traders were brought into contact

in the spring of each year, the Fathers, following the direction of

their Provincial at home, through their Superior resident, Le Jeune,

radiated towards the dismal localities where each looked to live and

die, as the majority of them did. We ought to have their names before

us. The first six of them at Quebec were Le Jeune, Brébeuf, Masse,

Daniel, Davost, and De Nouë. To these were added Buteux, Bressani,

Ragueneau, Chabanel, Garreau, Garnier, Lalemant, Jogues, Chaumonot, and

Vimont. Most of them were very young men, of noble lineage, and with the

finest prospects of worldly success had they sought the prizes of courts

and of civilized life. With few exceptions, they were not robust, but

delicate. Eight of them died under Indian torture. Not one of them

failed in purpose or in courage.

It is not possible for the pen of either Romanist or Protestant to make

a Jesuit a lovely or attractive object to a Protestant. The flaw, if not

the falsehood, in their claim to the loftiest homage, vitiates the

appeal of the disciples of Loyola to the profoundest regard of the human

heart, independently of the antipathies of creed. It is enough to know

that their fellow-Romanists of other orders share to the full the

sentiment of distrust towards them which no pleading in their defence

has weakened in the common Protestant mind. Their devotion, their

heroism, their stern constancy to the recognized principles of their

severe discipline, does not neutralize, even if it qualifies, the

persuasion, which has not lacked evidence to support it, that, in the

service of God, they have been willing to learn art and subtlety from

the Devil. True, we are told that a generous candor will always enable

and dispose us to honor and reverence self-sacrifice with a sincere

purpose, even when folly, instead of necessity, crowns it with

martyrdom. The plausibility of this plea lies in a vague use of the word

_sincere_. The honors of martyrdom are yielded by a fine discrimination,

as graduated by a scale recognizing a varying proportion of truth and

value in the purpose for which the self-sacrifice is made. Every grain

of superstition, duplicity, or recklessness reduces--every element of

loftiness, high-thinking, and wise-purposing exalts--the honors rendered

to a sufferer and a victim. We think that Mr. Parkman has held a fair

balance in those almost alternate sentences in which, with a terse and

comprehensive way of communicating his judgment, he recognizes the

personal devotion, and compassionates the puerility and aimless toil, of

the Jesuit missionaries. They might be pardoned for believing that the

direction which the soul of a dying Indian child would take, either for

heaven or for hell, was decided by their being able to cross a moistened

finger upon its face. But to turn that saving charm into an act of

jugglery, deceiving or falsifying to the parents, was an act which

reduced the performer of it, either in intelligence or honesty, below

the level of the sorcerer.

Mr. Parkman sets up no plea, positive or comparative, in behalf of that

remarkable--we cannot say engaging--class of all-enduring men whose grim

toils and sufferings he so faithfully narrates. Yet we have been

spellbound, and deeply stirred, as we have slowly read and mused over

his pages. So graphic and skilful is his method, so animated is his

style, so vivid and real does he make the scenes, the surroundings, and

the phenomena of his subject, that, while we might dispense wholly with

the exercise of the imagination, we find that it has actually beguiled

us into its most effective exercise by persuading us that we have seen

and shared in many of the personages and incidents of the narrative.

The rules of the Order required of the missionaries something in the

nature of a diary, or journal, which, passing through the hands of the

local Superior, should reach the Provincial at Paris. From these

official papers, entering into the fullest minuteness of detail,

confidential in their contents, and of the utmost trustworthiness, were

composed "The Relations," which, annually made public, were of double

service,--in reporting the hopeful labors of those already in the hard

and dreary field, and in quickening the fervent zeal for new accessions

to it. From these Relations, and from the voluminous and equally rich

private correspondence between the missionaries and their European

friends, Mr. Parkman, contributing what he has learned from other

sources, is able to construct for us a continuous narrative, which

anticipates every question we might ask, and informs us fully on every

point of interest in his theme. He describes to us the Jesuit living on

visions and dreams, reinforcing his spirit by meditations, and keeping

his enthusiasm up to the needed point by assuring himself, on

emergencies, of the direct interposition of the saints in his behalf. He

makes us join the travelling party of the missionary as he avails

himself of an Indian escort to penetrate into the wilderness, sharing

its perils and its annoyances, aggravated always, even when not created,

by the shiftlessness of his companions. We are initiated into all the

methods and appliances of travel, of hunting, of encamping, of

lodge-building, of feasting and starving, on the trail and in the

village. The resources of forest life as presented by Thoreau, who had

houses into which he might bring up at night, the furnishings of a

wardrobe, and the comfort of salt, will be found on comparison to

obtrude many broad contrasts with the realities encountered by the

Jesuits and their entertainers. These all-enduring, patient men, born

amid the luxuries of civilized life, left all behind them when they

embarked in the canoe which was itself, with its contents, to be carried

as a burden over the frequent portages connecting streams or avoiding

cataracts. The first care of the "Black-Robes" was to provide the

vessels and materials for the mass, with paper, pen, and ink. A few

trinkets, and perhaps some implements of the rudest home-use, completed

their outfit. They were disgusted, all but infuriated, by the filth and

vermin, the loathsome familiarities, and the blinding smoke of the

wigwam. Their feelings as civilized men were outraged by the fiendish

barbarities of which they were spectators. Their lives always hung on a

thread, at the mercy of caprice, jealousy, superstition, and hate, which

were always active in savage breasts. Yet they toiled and suffered and

persevered and hoped, as men can do and will do only when they believe

themselves working for heaven,--to obtain heaven for themselves and to

fit others for it.

FOOTNOTES:

[103] The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. By

FRANCIS PARKMAN. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY.

"The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler

sentiments than are many of their sisters, have shown

themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory

of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the

Confederate and of the National soldiers."--_New York

Tribune._

By the flow of the inland river,

Whence the fleets of iron have fled,

Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,

Asleep are the ranks of the dead;--

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;--

Under the one, the Blue;

Under the other, the Gray.

These in the robings of glory,

Those in the gloom of defeat,

All with the battle-blood gory,

In the dusk of eternity meet;--

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;--

Under the laurel, the Blue;

Under the willow, the Gray.

From the silence of sorrowful hours

The desolate mourners go,

Lovingly laden with flowers

Alike for the friend and the foe;--

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;--

Under the roses, the Blue;

Under the lilies, the Gray.

So with an equal splendor

The morning sun-rays fall,

With a touch, impartially tender,

On the blossoms blooming for all;

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;--

Broidered with gold, the Blue;

Mellowed with gold, the Gray.

So, when the Summer calleth,

On forest and field of grain

With an equal murmur falleth

The cooling drip of the rain;--

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;--

Wet with the rain, the Blue;

Wet with the rain, the Gray.

Sadly, but not with upbraiding,

The generous deed was done;

In the storm of the years that are fading,

No braver battle was won;--

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;--

Under the blossoms, the Blue,

Under the garlands, the Gray.

No more shall the war-cry sever,

Or the winding rivers be red;

They banish our anger forever

When they laurel the graves of our dead!

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;--

Love and tears for the Blue.

Tears and love for the Gray.

FUGITIVES FROM LABOR.

Young America in on the anxious-seat. An imploring cry comes up from the

hearts of thousands, "What shall we do to be saved--from work?"

In the happy days of the Adamses, as Professor Agassiz has taught us to

say, when every vine was a lodging rent-free, and the fig-trees

furnished ready-made clothing, life was a pleasant pastime. But this is

an age of cash or barter. The old common-law maxim concerning pains and

penalties is the rule of modern society: _Qui non habet in crumena, luat

in corpore_,--"He who cannot pay his fare must work his passage." To

evade this law, to shirk the forecastle, and to devise some means of

climbing into the cabin-windows, is the problem that the youth of this

generation are trying to solve.

The United States offer so many _unprospected_ or half-worked placers to

sharp eyes, that we must look for a great deal of vagabondry.

Gold-miners do not settle themselves down to crushing quartz, so long as

there are nuggets to be picked up. Rare chances lie hidden in the

by-paths of this broad country, to tempt men to straggle from the ranks

of the steady workers and turn foragers and _bummers_.

And in this generation money has attained an extraordinary value. Since

Dr. Johnson announced, in his Tour to the Hebrides, that the feudal

system was giving way to wealth, most other social distinctions have

yielded to it,--particularly in America, where there were few barriers

to break down,--and money has become the chief good. Our standard of

position in society is financial worth. Our patents of nobility are

railway bonds, stock certificates, and mortgages. The income-return list

of the United States Internal Revenue Department is the _Libro d'Oro_ of

the American Venice. In this age of scepticism, the excellence of

accumulated capital is the one thing no man doubts; and when I take off

my hat to a rich man, which I always do when I meet him, I feel that I

cannot be mistaken in paying respect to something demonstrable,

tangible, real.

Money furnishes all the blessings of life in this Western

World,--health, beauty, wisdom, virtue, consideration; and some

theologians have held that even the eye of the needle may expand to

admit the camel who has dropped enough of his precious burden upon their

premises.

If wealth cannot always give health, it can help to preserve it; it is

the best of physicians.

There is nothing so becoming as property. "Handsome is who handsome

has," is the accepted modern version of the old saw.

If a rich man does not pass for sensible and good, it is his own fault.

Wisdom can be bought, generally at low prices; and virtue is always

assumed to be an attribute of Fortune except in moral didactic

treatises. A cubic ounce of gold can be beaten to cover fourteen hundred

and sixty-six square feet; and a skilful capitalist can make it hide

quite as large an area of meanness.

What weight an income adds to a man's sayings and doings! Your lucky

broker, who has just turned a corner in stocks with a fortune, thinks

Two Shillings has no right to an opinion when Half a Dollar is in the

room. Although a man with a threadbare coat may say anything now-a-days,

in spite of the Roman satirist, he can get no one to listen to him. Even

genuine wit, like a good picture, shows better in a gilt frame with the

varnish of success upon it.

It is not surprising that young men want money, and much of it, and

quickly.

There is another stumbling-block in the path of steady work. Politically

our progress in democracy is complete; but socially we hang back. The

aristocracies of Europe despised trade; with us trade is an aristocracy

that looks down upon manual labor,--an aristocracy with its gradations

of rank and of titles, from merchant-prince to pedler. All who buy and

sell consider themselves as belonging to the peerage of business. And as

the _petite noblesse_ of France liked to take a better title and gayer

armorials than belonged to them, so our lesser nobility and gentry are

fond of using a brevet business-title considerably above the position

they really fill. They are ashamed of the old English words that have

designated their callings for centuries. We all know that shops and

shopkeepers are not to be found in the United States. Even

thread-and-needle establishments and apple-stands are stores. Within

sight of where I write, a maker of false calves, and other cotton or

sawdust contrivances to supply the padding which careless Nature often

forgets to furnish, calls his workshop a studio. If I were to use the

word "slops" in a "ready-made clothing depot," the Sir Piercie Shafton

who keeps it would summarily expel me for my lack of euphemism. As a

general rule, everybody is above his business, and thinks manual labor

mean, and only fit for emigrants.

It is said that our mechanics are nearly all foreigners, and that an

American apprentice is an extinct species, like the cave bear or the

dodo. Farmers' sons prefer any way of getting their bread to working

with their hands. The pedler's caste ranks higher than the manly

independence of the plough. A country store is an object of ambition,

where the only toil is to deal out a glass of wretched tipple to the

village sots who haunt those castles of indolence to drink, to smoke,

and to twaddle over stale village news. Some young fellows solicit

subscriptions for maps or for great American works, or drum for fruit

nurseries, patent clothes-wringers, or baby-jumpers. Others aspire to

enter the religious mendicant orders of America as paid brethren. They

are too proud to work, but not ashamed to beg. Beg is perhaps a hard

word; but solicitation is begging when the solicitor personally profits

by it.

The sons of trading fathers despise the old tiresome roads to wealth of

their class. Ledgers and law-books are too slow. All are in search of

the short cut to fortune. They believe in the philosopher's stone as

implicitly as the alchemists; they seek for it as earnestly. It is a

jewel that will last forever, but its composition varies with each

generation.

We of the press get scores of letters from young men, who spread out

therein what they imagine to be their qualifications and

accomplishments,--and plenty of them, for self-satisfaction is really

the first law of Nature. Then follow their hopes and wishes and askings

for advice, which, stripped of the flimsy rhetorical wrappers they feel

obliged to use in deference to the old prejudice in favor of steady

industry, come simply to this: "What is the minimum of work on which a

clever creature like myself can live? And what kind of work is the least

irksome and the most respectable?"

My colleague Tarbox, justly celebrated as a local reporter, belongs to

the earnest school, and wishes me to take high ground, and write a

sermon on the holiness and dignity of labor. He is always ready with his

_laborare est orare_, and has by heart a passage from a German

professor, who, writing of the manners of the Romans in an epoch of

their history not unlike this of ours, says: "When a man works merely in

order to attain as quickly as possible to enjoyment, it is a mere

accident that he does not become a criminal."

But I tell Tarbox that these foreigners never understand the working of

our institutions, nor the genius of our people. As to the dignity of

labor, I have written a good deal on that text, particularly just before

elections. The phrase sounds well in leading articles and on the stump,

and may carry some comfort to a hard-working man. But I doubt if he

believes it in his heart. I certainly do not. It is not true. There is

no dignity in labor. Honesty, wisdom, manliness, there may be in labor,

but not dignity. Dignity is in repose; the proverb is as old as Julius

Cæsar. I might perhaps serve out some cut-and-dried bits of morality

that have been prescribed as specifics for such complaints since the

days of the Seven Wise Men. We keep them "set up" and ready for use. The

only fault of these excellent old remedies is, that they never cure

chronic cases of inefficiency, whether it be constitutional or

contracted. They are good for nothing unless as a mild tonic for people

who could do well enough without them. Now the cases we have to deal

with are generally constitutional. When a young man writes to a stranger

to ask upon what career in life he shall enter, he sends a diagnosis of

his character in his letter. You know at once to what subdivision of the

species he belongs. The hunting British squire recognizes only three

orders of animals,--game, vermin, and stock. The human race may be

divided in the same way. Game men take care of themselves; the vermin

make others take care of them; and the stock, useful, harmless, and

insignificant, except as an aggregate, furnish the first class with

tools and the second with victims, and hitherto have done most of the

drudgery of the world. Our correspondents belong to a sluggish but

ambitious variety of the stock, that is seeking for some respectable or

semi-respectable method of avoiding the primeval labor curse. Their own

ingenuity failing them, they apply for the use of ours. The robust men,

who have "the wrestling thews that throw the world," know how to get

what they want, and ask no one to teach them. Indeed, to ask advice at

any time is an indication of weakness. We feel kindly to those who

consult us. It is a compliment that we were chosen, and not another; but

I do not think that we respect them the more for it.

It is evident that the heroic remedies recommended by my colleague are

likely to do harm rather than good to young persons who have outgrown

their moral strength. It would be more humane to prescribe a treatment

which, though it cannot cure, may alleviate their most distressing

symptoms, and enable them to bear the burden of life without too much

suffering. I shall, therefore, exhibit some of the methods by which

young fellows of tolerable education and address may get along without

undue exertion,--_Disce puer fortunam ex me, verumque laborem ex aliis_.

For a youngster of good nerves and hopeful temperament there is nothing

better than speculation,--as gambling without pasteboard and ivory is

called. Up to-day and down to-morrow is as pleasant and exciting to men

of that mould as seesaws and swings to children with strong stomachs.

But let those made of feebler stuff beware. Between the two millstones

of winning and losing they will be ground into despair, or into

shameless roguery. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and

many there be which go in thereat."

There is no simpler way of "achieving honorable maintenance" than to

marry an heiress. But to seek fortune in matrimony is almost like

looking for it in a lottery. By some mysterious law of Providence, rich

people draw the high prizes. Money is apt to fall in love with money.

The female dollar prefers the attentions of her own kind. Cupid, "once a

god," as Tennyson writes, "is now a lawyer's clerk," with sharp eyes

wide open; and suits _in forma pauperis_ are as little likely to succeed

in courts of love as in courts of law.

Politics being a subject everybody understands by instinct, young men

will naturally turn their attention that way. The number of offices with

salaries make this country almost that Frenchman's Utopia imagined by

Madame de Staël, where every adult male was to be a public officer paid

by the state. We have even more than this. When all other hopes break

down, there is the custom-house,--that last infirmary of noble minds who

have failed in every attempt to cure the aches that empty pockets are

heirs to. No doubt the profession of politics is generally remunerative;

but where I live, a foreign order of nature's nobility rules us. We

Saxons have fought our battle of Hastings at the polls, and have lost

it; and no one can hope to hold office here, unless he came over with

Murphy the Conqueror. Even should he combine in his person that

profitable conjunction of knavery, impudence, and laziness which we call

a politician, with the physical requisites described by a philosopher of

the last century,--_Vox stentoria, sempiterna, cum cerebello vacuo_,--it

would profit him nothing.

The poet Gray makes Jemmy Twitcher marry Divinity, after being refused

by Law and Physic. These two smile only upon serious admirers. They who

follow the law--at a distance, as some one remarks, never pick up a

living. And in medicine, unless the indolent practitioner can invent a

pill or a syrup, and can borrow enough to publish lying certificates

from country clergymen, and to hire bill-stickers to dirty the face of

Nature with the names of his specifics and the wonders they work, he

will never earn his daily bread. But Divinity is more easily pleased. It

was usual in the generation now passing away to recommend the Church to

young gentlemen of moderate energy without capital. And indeed the path

seemed easy, and the prospect pleasant.

A year or two in a seminary, a white cravat, a "call" made audible by a

salary, Paley's advice in the matter of sermons,--to make one and to

steal three,--all the young women of the parish sitting at his feet,

working worsted slippers for them, and swinging their intoxicating

little censers of flattery under his nose,--such was the imaginary

programme of his career. Certainly a tolerable existence while it

lasted. But it seldom did last. The "young probationer and candidate for

heaven" married. He selected--destiny always seemed to impel him to

it--a "sweet woman," who overstocked his parsonage, and, like the

magician's apprentice in the ballad, could not rule the young spirits

she had evoked. The salary did not increase with the family, and sweet

women are never good housekeepers. The congregation began to criticise

the old sermons; a jury of stern matrons, who spoke what minds they had,

sat in perpetual session on his doctrines, his wife's dress, and his

children's behavior;--and the end of that man was dreary, if he was only

a drone in the hive of the Lord. In our day The Church is militant, and

needs her ministers in the field. Those who are not able to fight will

be sent to garrison some remote post, where there is no danger and

little pay.

Art offers many more inducements to our young friends. If they have a

knack for sketching and a "feeling for color," as the slang goes, they

need not waste much time in preparatory study. Let them devote

themselves to landscape. It is easy to draw a tree that will not shock

the eye of an ordinary observer. Little outlay is needed to hire a room;

none whatever to call it a studio. This magical word furnishes it at

once, and covers every deficiency in chairs, tables, and carpet. Studio,

Artist,--excellent, well-sounding names! In them is often the secret of

the whole business.

An artist has this advantage over other men,--he may indulge in whatever

amusements his means can afford him, and no one will find fault. Every

class has its own standard of manners and conduct. The measure and rule

for artists have come over the sea, condensed from French _feuilletons_

and _Vies de Bohéme_. They are supposed to belong, by right of

profession, to a reckless, witty, singing, and carousing guild. It is

almost needless to say that the real life of the hard-working men who

have earned fame by the brush is as unlike all this as possible. But

these vague, ultramarine notions of fun and revelry have taken

possession of the American mind, just opening to art, and established

the standard for artists here. It exists in fact only in the

imagination; for, excepting a few ebullitions in the way of hair,

beards, and black sombreros, our artists are as saturnine as the rest of

us, and not as good company around the mahogany as a judicious

combination of clergymen and lawyers. Nevertheless, so powerful is the

conventional, when it has once taken root in the imagination, that some

of our younger artists believe themselves to be wild, rollicking

fellows, who despise the humdrum existence of the rest of us, although

they are sober and economical, pay their bills weekly, and talk their

morning paper like other people. Young correspondents! you will perceive

what a chance is here for you. If a kind public, in its youthful

enthusiasm for art, invests these steady-going citizens with such

delightful romantic qualities, it will of course wink at any

irregularities of conduct on your part, as in strict keeping with the

character.

In addition, you will always find us of the press your trusty friends.

Although behind the scenes myself, the peculiar connection that exists

between items-men and artists is as inexplicable to me as the

partnership of the owl and the prairie-dog in their dwellings on the

plains. Why, when we make every other calling pay roundly for a notice,

we puff the artists gratis in the most conspicuous columns of the paper,

is a puzzle to me. But the fact exists. Hire your studio, nail up your

name on the door, and we will make a pet of you at once, and pat you

encouragingly on the back. You shall have little paragraphs of this

kind: "Salvator Smith is studying atmospheric effects in the Brooklyn

Mountains"; or, "Smith, our own Salvator, is making studies from nature

near Roxbury"; or, "He has a grand classical picture on his easel in

Green Street, representing a celebrated American in the character of the

infant Hercules, strangling the British lion with one hand and the

Gallic cock with the other." Few of our readers may have heard of Smith,

but they read these iterated notices, and soon believe Smith to be

somebody. And he has the sweet sensation of seeing his name in print at

no expense to himself, and the rare luck of fame before it is earned. In

the circle he adorns he will be looked upon as a judge in all matters

æsthetical. It is only necessary to have painted a poor picture in order

to be an authority in architecture, music, poetry, dress, decoration,

furniture, private theatricals, and fancy balls.

At this moment the fashionable world is an oyster, which with his

spatula an artist may open. A picture mania rages. Good works bring

enormous prices, and any discoloration of canvas in a gilt frame finds a

ready purchaser, if signed by a known name. We are a commercial people,

and are satisfied with a first-rate indorsement. The patron of art can

soon educate himself for the position. The pet little phrases--"chalky,"

"sketchy," "tone," "repose," "opaque coloring," and all the rest of the

technical vocabulary--are soon learned; and then if Lorenzo is able and

willing to give ten thousand dollars for a picture, he may hold a court

of artists and be sure of having a number of pleasant fellows about him.

They, too, will be sure of champagne and oysters. All the schools,

however different their theories of art may be, agree, I believe, that

both of these compositions are excellent.

Lastly, I should like to say a few words in favor of my own noble

profession, newspaper editing. Mr. Carlyle may spitefully call it "the

California of the spiritually vagabond," but there is a proud pleasure

in knowing that we gentlemen of the press furnish the great American

people with their ideas and their phrases ready made, just as Brooks

Brothers and Oak Hall provide them with their clothes. All very much

alike, it is true,--"our spring style,"--and often ill-fitting and

graceless; but we seem to fill a national want. Our names may be unknown

outside of our offices, but the great planets are perceptibly influenced

in their courses by little asteroids invisible to the naked eye, and

many a celebrity who appears daily in large type is moved by the strings

we pull, and knows it not. My comrade Tarbox says: "The oracles that

became dumb in the year of our Lord were really a necessity to mankind,

and consequently were made vocal again by the agency of Renaudot, who

invented newspapers. The Delphis and Dodonas of the nineteenth century

are newspaper offices." This may explain why young men in search of a

profitable career write to us instead of applying to rich merchants or

to dashing brokers. How fortunate that those who consult us never see

the shrine or the priests! No gold or silver glitters in the modern

_adytum_, or editor's room, and the tripod from which we distribute our

_afflatus_ to the compositors is a wooden three-legged stool, unpainted

and uncushioned. That great oracle, Tarbox himself, was not long ago a

noble savage who ran wild in the woods near some country college. Caught

and caged in that institution, he devoted three years to pipes, and one

to _belles lettres_, and receiving from a good-natured Faculty some sort

of a degree, probably that of tobacco-laureate, came thence to town;

where, inspired by a salary of ten dollars a week, he enlightens the

public on finance and politics, art and literature, manners and taste,

and writes those brilliant articles the world willingly lets die. When

the California gold mines were first discovered, a clever fellow said

that he knew of no opening for a young man like the Southwest Pass. That

is still true for rough, coarse, self-asserting characters; but for

delicate, refined, stay-at-home natures, who have wishes without wills,

there are many ways of getting their porridge without selling their

birthright of doing as little as possible. If they cannot float

buoyantly on the surface, at least they need not sink far beneath it,

but may enjoy a quiet, water-logged kind of existence, not devoid of

comfort.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_May-Day and other Pieces._ By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Boston:

Ticknor and Fields.

We wonder whether those who take up Mr. Emerson's poem now, amid the

glories of the fading summer, are not giving the poet a fairer audience

than those who hurried to hear his song in the presence of the May he

celebrates. As long as spring was here, he had a rival in every reader;

for then we all felt ourselves finer poets than ever sang of the season,

and did not know that our virtue was but an effect of Spring

herself,--an impression, not an expression of her loveliness, which must

pass with her. Now, when the early autumn is in every sense, and those

days when the year first awoke to consciousness have grown so far away,

we must perceive that no one has yet been allowed to speak so well for

the spring of our New World as this poet. The very irregularity of Mr.

Emerson's poem seems to be part of its verisimilitude, and it appears as

if all the pauses and impulses and mysterious caprices of the

season--which fill the trees with birds before blossoms, and create the

soul of sweetness and beauty in the May-flowers under the dead leaves of

the woodlands, while the meadows are still bare and brown--had so

entered into this song, that it could not emulate the deliberation and

consequence of art. The "May-Day" is to the critical faculty a

succession of odes on Spring, celebrating now one aspect and now

another, and united only by their title; yet since an entire idea of

spring is evolved from them, and they awaken the same emotions that the

youth of the year stirs in us, we must accept the result as something

undeniably great and good. Of course, we can complain of the way in

which it is brought about, just as we can upbraid the New England

climate, though its uncertain and desultory April and May give us at

last the most beautiful June weather in the world.

The poem is not one that invites analysis, though it would be easy

enough to instance striking merits and defects. Mr. Emerson, perhaps,

more than any other modern poet, gives the notion of inspiration; so

that one doubts, in reading him, how much to praise or blame. The most

exquisite effects seem not to have been invited, but to have sought

production from his unconsciousness; graces alike of thought and of

touch seem the unsolicited gifts of the gods. Even the doubtful quality

of occasional lines confirms this impression of unconsciousness. One

cannot believe that the poet would wittingly write,

"Boils the world in tepid lakes,"

for this statement has, for all that the reader can see to the contrary,

the same value with him as that preceding verse, telling how the waxing

heat

"Lends the reed and lily length,"

wherein the very spirit of summer seems to sway and droop. Yet it is

probable that no utterance is more considered than this poet's, and that

no one is more immediately responsible than he. We must attribute to the

most subtile and profound consciousness the power that can trace with

such tenderness and beauty the alliance he has shown between earth and

humanity in the exultation of spring, and which can make matter of

intellectual perception the mute sympathies that seemed to perish with

childhood:--

"The pebble loosened from the frost

Asks of the urchin to be tost.

In flint and marble beats a heart,

The kind Earth takes her children's part,

The green lane is the school-boy's friend,

Low leaves his quarrel apprehend,

The fresh ground loves his top and ball,

The air ring's jocund to his call,

The brimming brook invites a leap,

He dives the hollow, climbs the steep."

Throughout the poem these recognitions of our kindred with external

nature occur, and a voice is given to the blindly rejoicing sense within

us when the poet says,

"The feet that slid so long on sleet

Are glad to feel the ground"

and thus celebrates with one potent and satisfying touch the instinctive

rapture of the escape from winter. Indeed, we find our greatest pleasure

in some of these studies of pure feeling, while we are aware of the

value of the didactic passages of the poem, and enjoy perfectly the high

beauty of the pictorial parts of it. We do not know where we should

match that strain beginning,

"Why chidest thou the tardy spring?"

Or that,

"Where shall we keep the holiday,

And duly greet the entering May?"

Or this most delicate and exquisite bit of description, which seems

painted _a tempera_,--in colors mixed with the transparent blood of

snowdrops and Alpine harebells:--

"See, every patriot oak-leaf throws

His elfin length upon the snows,

Not idle, since the leaf all day

Draws to the spot the solar ray,

Ere sunset quarrying inches down,

And half-way to the mosses brown:

While the grass beneath the rime

Has hints of the propitious time,

And upward pries and perforates

Through the cold slab a hundred gates,

Till green lances, piercing through,

Bend happy in the welkin blue."

There is not great range of sentiment in "May-Day," and through all the

incoherence of the poem there is a constant recurrence to the

master-theme. This recurrence has at times something of a perfunctory

air, and the close of the poem does not seal the whole with any strong

impression. There is a rise--or a lapse, as the reader pleases to

think--toward a moral at the close; but the motion is evidently willed

of the poet rather than the subject. It seems to us that, if the work

have any climax, it is in those lines near the end in which the poet

draws his reader nearest his own personality, and of which the

delicately guarded and peculiar pathos scarcely needs comment:--

"There is no bard in all the choir,

Not Homer's self, the poet sire,

Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,

Or Shakespeare, whom no mind can measure,

Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,

Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,

Scott, the delight of generous boys,

Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,--

Not one of all can put in verse,

Or to this presence could rehearse,

The sights and voices ravishing

The boy knew on the hills in spring,

When pacing through the oaks he heard

Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,

The heavy grouse's sudden whir,

The rattle of the kingfisher;

Saw bonfires of the harlot flies

In the lowland, when day dies;

Or marked, benighted and forlorn,

The first far signal-fire of morn.

These syllables that Nature spoke,

And the thoughts that in him woke,

Can adequately utter none

Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.

And best can teach its Delphian chord

How Nature to the soul is moored,

If once again that silent string,

As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.

"Not long ago, at eventide,

It seemed, so listening, at my side

A window rose, and, to say sooth,

I looked forth on the fields of youth:

I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,

I knew their forms in fancy weeds,

Long, long concealed by sundering fates,

Mates of my youth,--yet not my mates,

Stronger and bolder far than I,

With grace, with genius, well attired,

And then as now from far admired,

Followed with love

They knew not of,

With passion cold and shy.

O joy, for what recoveries rare!

Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,

See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,--

Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!

Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil

Of life resurgent from the soil

Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil."

Among the other poems in this volume, it appears to us that "The Romany

Girl," "Voluntaries," and "The Boston Hymn" are in their widely

different ways the best. The last expresses, with a sublime

colloquiality in which the commonest words of every-day parlance seem

cut anew; and are made to shine with a fresh and novel lustre, the idea

and destiny of America. In "Voluntaries" our former great peril and

delusion--the mortal Union which lived by slavery--is at first the

theme, with the strong pulse of prophecy, however, in the mournful

music. Few motions of rhyme so win and touch as those opening lines,--

"Low and mournful be the strain,

Haughty thought be far from me;

Tones of penitence and pain,

Moanings of the tropic sea,"--

in which the poet, with a hardly articulate sorrow, regards the past;

and Mr. Emerson's peculiarly exalted and hopeful genius has nowhere

risen in clearer and loftier tones than in those stops which open full

upon us after the pathetic pleasing of his regrets:--

"In an age of fops and toys,

Wanting wisdom, void of right,

Who shall nerve heroic boys

To hazard all in Freedom's fight,--

Break sharply off their jolly games,

Forsake their comrades gay,

And quit proud homes and youthful dames,

For famine, toil, and fray?

Yet on the nimble air benign

Speed nimbler messages,

That waft the breath of grace divine

To hearts in sloth and ease.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, _Thou must_,

The youth replies, _I can_.

* * * * *

"Blooms the laurel which belongs

To the valiant chief who fights;

I see the wreath, I hear the songs

Lauding the Eternal Rights,

Victors over daily wrongs:

Awful victors, they misguide

Whom they will destroy,

And their coming triumph hide

In our downfall, or our joy:

They reach no term, they never sleep,

In equal strength through space abide;

Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,

The strong they slay, the swift outstride:

Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods,

And rankly on the castled steep,--

Speak it firmly, these are gods,

All are ghosts beside."

It is, of course, a somewhat Emersonian Gypsy that speaks in "The Romany

Girl," but still she speaks with the passionate, sudden energy of a

woman, and flashes upon the mind with intense vividness the conception

of a wild nature's gleeful consciousness of freedom, and exultant scorn

of restraint and convention. All sense of sylvan health and beauty is

uttered when this Gypsy says,--

"The wild air bloweth in our lungs,

The keen stars twinkle in our eyes,

The birds gave us our wily tongues,

The panther in our dances flies."

"Terminus" has a wonderful didactic charm, and must be valued as one of

the noblest introspective poems in the language. The poet touches his

reader by his acceptance of fate and age, and his serene trust of the

future, and yet is not moved by his own pathos.

We do not regard the poem "The Adirondacks" as of great absolute or

relative value. It is one of the prosiest in the book, and for a

professedly out-of-doors poem has too much of the study in it. Let us

confess also that we have not yet found pleasure in "The Elements," and

that we do not expect to live long enough to enjoy some of them.

"Quatrains" have much the same forbidding qualities, and have chiefly

interested us in the comparison they suggest with the translations from

the Persian: it is curious to find cold Concord and warm Ispahan in the

same latitude. Others of the briefer poems have delighted us. "Rubies,"

for instance, is full of exquisite lights and hues, thoughts and

feelings; and "The Test" is from the heart of the severe wisdom without

which art is not. Everywhere the poet's felicity of expression appears;

a fortunate touch transfuses some dark enigma with color; the riddles

are made to shine when most impenetrable; the puzzles are all

constructed of gold and ivory and precious stones.

Mr. Emerson's intellectual characteristics and methods are so known that

it is scarcely necessary to hint that this is not a book for instant

absorption into any reader's mind. It shall happen with many, we fancy,

that they find themselves ready for only two or three things in it, and

that they must come to it in widely varying moods for all it has to

give. No greater wrong could be done to the poet than to go through his

book running, and he would be apt to revenge himself upon the impatient

reader by leaving him all the labor involved in such a course, and no

reward at the end for his pains.

But the case is not a probable one. People either read Mr. Emerson

patiently and earnestly, or they do not read him at all. In this earnest

nation he enjoys a far greater popularity than criticism would have

augured for one so unflattering to the impulses that have heretofore and

elsewhere made readers of poetry; and it is not hard to believe, if we

believe in ourselves for the future, that he is destined to an

ever-growing regard and fame. He makes appeal, however mystically, only

to what is fine and deep and true and noble in men, and no doubt those

who have always loved his poetry have reason to be proud of their

pleasure in it. Let us of the present be wise enough to accept

thankfully what genius gives us in its double character of bard and

prophet, saying, when we enjoy the song, "Ah, this is the poet that now

sings!" and when the meaning is dark, "Now we have the seer again!"

_An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the

Christian Church._ By HENRY C. LEA. Philadelphia: J. B.

Lippincott & Co. 1867.

This exhaustive treatise of Mr. Lea upon ecclesiastical celibacy we take

to possess, like his excellent work upon "Superstition and Force," all

the capital requisites of an historical monograph,--an immense body of

information and of reference on the subject in hand, a sufficiently cool

and dispassionate manner of presenting facts, and a severe adherence to

the central question. The amount of research and indeed of scholarship

involved in the preparation of this volume is such as to command the

warmest recognition. In these days of "picturesque" histories, of hasty

criticism, and of precipitate generalizations, it is very gratifying to

encounter a writer who construes his obligations with such austerity as

Mr. Lea. He is content to marshal his facts and his _data_ into such an

order that under a close inspection no one of them conceals the

half-genuine look of its neighbor. He lets them tell their own story for

good or for evil, and is never guilty, through the wish to be vivid and

effective, of spreading his colors outside of the lines drawn by his

authorities. Within these lines even his tints are sober and discreet,

and careful not to depart too widely from those somewhat neutral hues

which, wherever man's knowledge of the past rests upon accidentally

preserved documents and monuments, must continue to be the colors of

history. Nevertheless, with all the various merits of a well-executed

monograph, Mr. Lea's work has certain of the corresponding defects.

Perhaps, indeed, it were more just to say that these defects correspond

to the limitations of the general reader's knowledge, rather than to any

imperfection in the author's programme. In the course of a special

history executed on such a scale as the present one, and with all its

soberness of style, so little mechanical in spirit, and so free from

chronological dryness, it is almost inevitable that the reader's

impressions should become somewhat overbalanced. He is likely to forget

that he is taking a partial view of a great subject, and that he must

hold his opinions liable to correction when he has surveyed the whole

field. A dishonest writer, we conceive, may readily take advantage of

this perfectly logical error. He has accumulated an immense mass of

material bearing on a particular point, extracted and expressed, by long

labor, from a field in which it has lain interfused with material of a

very different, and even of a directly opposite significance. There are

a hundred literary arts by which a writer may put forward his fractional

gleaning as a representation of the whole. In this matter of

ecclesiastical celibacy, for instance, the result of Mr. Lea's

researches is that practically the thing has never existed in the

Christian Church. That is to say, the regulations enforcing it have at

all times been more violated and eluded than obeyed. With the

Reformation a large section of the Church ceased to admit its

needfulness, and the field of its enforcement was very much curtailed.

But the Catholic Church continued to cling to it as almost the central

principle of its being, and continued likewise to connive at an

inveterate system of escape from its harsh conditions. Mr. Lea's volume

is a long record of reiterated legislation and exhortation against

unchastity, formal and actual, and of a series of equally uninterrupted

disclosures of the futility of such legislation. And, nevertheless,

there is no doubt that, during all the long ages of its history, the

Church was the abode and the refuge of a vast deal of purity and

continence, to say nothing of the various other virtues by which its

members have been distinguished. But the reader sees only the obverse of

the medal: he sees a custom of prodigious bearings, if duly carried out,

honored chiefly in the breach; and he will be very apt to close the book

with an impression that the Church has been through all time a sink of

incurable corruption. It is superfluous to say that this impression will

be quite as erroneous as it would be to assert that, on the other hand,

its practice has kept pace with its high pretensions. Neither view of

the case is just. If there is one thing that strikes us more than

another, in reading Mr. Lea's work, it is that, on the whole, the Church

must have been at any moment a tolerably faithful reflection of the

manners and feelings of the time. Its empire was practicable only by

means of a constant renewal of the exquisite and everlasting compromise

between man's transient interests and his external destiny. Taken as a

whole, it never pretended to ride rough-shod over his natural passions

and instincts. It pretended to convert them to its own service and

aggrandizement. It respected them, it handled them gently. And as these

passions and instincts have never been exclusively evil or exclusively

good, so the Church has never been wholly corrupt or wholly pure. It has

been animated by the average moral enlightenment of the time, and it has

grown with men's moral growth. Reared, as it was, upon the primitive

needs of men's nature, it is difficult to see how the result should have

been different. And if the Catholic Church has lost that firmness of

grasp upon human affection which it once possessed, it is not that

laymen have become more virtuous than priests; it is that they have

become more intelligent. The intellectual growth of the Church has

lagged behind its moral growth. Secular humanity is perfectly willing to

admit that its sacerdotal counterpart observes the Decalogue equally

well with itself; but it contests the right of an institution, of whose

long spiritual efforts this insignificant accomplishment is the only

surviving result, to impose itself further upon men's respect and

obedience. The reader has only to remember, then, that Mr. Lea's volume

is not a history of the Church at large, but only a history of a single

province, and he will find it full of profit and edification.

It is no exaggeration to repeat, as we have said, that the Church never

achieved anything like complete celibacy. A rapid survey of the ground

under Mr. Lea's guidance will confirm and explain this statement. During

the first three centuries there is no evidence that celibacy was deemed

essential to the clerical character, or even that it was thought

especially desirable. It was natural that during the early years of the

Church, and under the stress of persecution, it should not multiply the

restrictions placed upon the freedom of its adherents. Up to the period

of the Council of Nicæa, therefore, the virtues of chastity were

maintained only by isolated groups of ascetics, animated by that spirit

of Puritanism which seems to have existed in every faith in every stage

of its history. When men are looking about them for means to mortify the

flesh and to stifle the heart, a prohibition of marriage is the first

expedient that suggests itself. Until this is done away with, further

severities are impossible. Marriage, however, was not condemned at a

single blow. The first step was to forbid second marriages. A bachelor

in holy orders might marry with impunity; a widower did so at his peril.

Having effected this concession, the ascetic spirit found means to

increase its influence. It received a strong impulse at the close of the

second century, as Mr. Lea affirms, by the rise of the Neoplatonic

philosophy, with all its mystical and stoical tendencies, and by the

introduction into Europe and the rapid spread of the great Manichæan

heresy. In the view of this doctrine, man's body was the work of the

Devil, and condemned as such to ceaseless abuse and mortification by his

soul. Among the ascetic excesses which were the logical consequences of

such a dogma, inveterate chastity was, of course, not the last to be

enjoined. Manichæism was an object of violent detestation to the Church;

but as the latter could not afford to let itself be outdone in austerity

by a vulgar heresy, it began to adopt a similar uncompromising attitude

towards marriage. The Council of Nicæa was held in 325. This body,

however, was chiefly occupied with debates upon Arianism, and is

responsible but for a single enactment bearing on the subject in hand.

The bearing of this enactment is, moreover, indirect, inasmuch as Mr.

Lea conclusively proves that it refers not to lawful wives, (as in later

ages of the Church it became needful to assume that it _did_ refer,) but

to female companions of the unlicensed sort. For more than half a

century after the Nicæan Council, the movement of the celibatarian

spirit is lost sight of in the all-absorbing disputes on the Arian

heresy. A strong reaction, however, is signalized by the issue, under

Pope Damasus, in the year 385, of the first definite command imposing

perpetual celibacy as an absolute rule of discipline on the ministers of

the altar. This was very well as an injunction, but it was nothing

without enforcement. More than half a century again elapsed before the

new discipline was substantially acknowledged. By the mass of the

servants of the Church--among which several names stand apart as those

of its more eminent opponents--it was received with bitter resentment

and incompliance. But it had the popular favor for it on one side, and

on the other the passionate energies of the three great Latin

fathers,--Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome. The people had not yet reached

that state of mind when it clamored imperiously either for priestly

marriage, or, in simple self-defence, for an organized substitute. Mr.

Lea at this point devotes a chapter to the Eastern Church, of which it

is sufficient for us to say, that in this establishment the question of

celibacy was less violently agitated than among its neighbors, and that

a final decision was more speedily reached. Early in the sixth century,

Justinian published an edict which still forms the basis of its

celibatarian discipline. Marriage in orders is forbidden, and men who

have been twice married are inadmissible. Monks are of course bound to

chastity, but the lower grades of the secular clergy are free to marry.

The rise of the monastic orders in the West dates from the close of the

fifth century, when St. Benedict founded in the Latian Apennines the

community which subsequently became famous as the Convent of Monte

Cassino. With this enterprise begins the real growth of the Church,

which, of course, we do not propose to trace. With each succeeding

century its area expanded, its power increased, and its responsibilities

multiplied. It was called to preside at the organization of a new

Europe, to witness and to accelerate the extinction of the Roman Empire

and the foundation of the new nationalities, to save whatever was worth

saving from the wreck of the old society, to stand firm against the

Barbarians, to prosecute constant and wholesale conversions, and to

preserve in the midst of these various cares the integrity of the idea

of sacerdotal chastity. The idea, we say; for we may be sure that the

practice was left to take care of itself. We are told that the Barbarian

invaders were inexpressibly shocked by the licentiousness and immorality

of the Latin civilization; and if this were so, it promised well for a

thorough purgation of the Church in proportion as the new-comers were

admitted into its fold. But as we continue to read, we see that,

although upon society at large their arrival may have produced in

certain directions a healthful and renovating effect, they speedily

became converted to the general tolerance of ecclesiastical laxity.

Italy and France, up to the domination of Charlemagne, were the only

important countries in Europe. The history of France from Clovis to

Charlemagne is a long record of disorder and iniquity, in which, if the

Church plays no worse part than the state, it at least plays no better.

In Italy religion and politics are involved in an inextricable tangle of

convulsions and dissensions. During this time there is no better proof

of the practical neglect into which the canon of celibacy had fallen,

than the continual iteration to which it is subjected by councils and

synods. Gregory the Great, in his conscientious efforts in the seventh

century to enforce sacerdotal chastity at least,--or rather to check the

flagrant violation of it,--in default of celibacy, had to contend, where

France was concerned, with the powerless imbecility of the Merovingian

monarchs.

His successors found more effectual assistance in the first

strong-handed Carlovingians. Pope Zachary, in concert with Carloman, and

St. Boniface, the great apostle of the Saxons, for the first time

attached the penalties of deposition, degradation, and penance to proved

impurity of life. This was the beginning of a series of reforms, of

which Boniface was the leading spirit, and Pepin and Charlemagne the

rigid guardians. But, although sacerdotal marriage became really the

exception rather than the rule, in consequence of these enactments, it

is doubtful whether morality was improved. It was a licentious age, and

the clergy as well as the laity belonged to their age. In the tenth

century clerical marriage began again to prevail, and again the strong

hands of Gregory VII., and of the Popes who reigned under his direction,

were needed to restore some degree of discipline. But vigorous as were

their measures, and persevering their efforts, it was restored chiefly

in name. Gregory's dissensions with the Empire offer Mr. Lea an occasion

to exhibit the condition of morality in the German Church. We are unable

to see that at this moment, as for some time to come, it differed

materially in any of the countries of Europe. In many outlying

provinces--in Wales, in Bohemia, in Sweden--lawful marriage took the

place of simple cohabitation; but in the great central states the vices

of the laity were still those of the clergy. If there was one spot

indeed where these vices were more flourishing than elsewhere, all

through the Middle Ages and into recent times, that spot was the very

head-quarters of sanctity,--Rome itself. But this circumstance admits

doubtless of a sufficiently logical explanation. Rome was the spiritual

head of Christendom, but she was also a great temporal power, and to a

great extent the social metropolis of the world. This character

necessarily involved a vast deal of magnificent corruption.

In the course of the Middle Ages it is apparent that the clergy not only

continued to possess their share of the general unchastity, but to carry

it to excesses by which they alone were distinguished. The amount of

legislation bearing on this subject, recorded by Mr. Lea with immense

patience and care, is such as to defy memory and imagination, and almost

to challenge belief. There can be assuredly no better proof of the very

imperfect observation of the canons than this unceasing repetition of

them. By the time the Middle Ages had passed away, and the masses had

emerged into the comparatively brilliant light of the Renaissance,

sacerdotal unchastity had grown into an enormous evil. The disparity

between the theory of the priestly character and its actual form had

become too flagrant to be endured. Popular protests accordingly became

frequent. The abuse of those intimate relations into which the priest is

brought with the life of families, and that of the confessional more

especially, acquires horrible proportions. And as the question grows

more complex on the side of the people, so it grows more complex with

regard to the general government of the Church. This government had long

since made up its mind, with a firmness destined to be proof against

even the most formidable remonstrance, that, whatever might be the

manners of its servants, they were to remain inviolably single. The mere

ascetic and sentimental reason for celibacy had long been supplanted by

good logical and material reasons. A wife and children were speedily

found to be incompatible with the exclusive service of the Church. To it

alone, if the ambition of its great rulers was to be fulfilled, its

ministers were to be devoted. When, with the development of the feudal

system, the transmission of property and of functions from father to

sons became the groundwork of social order, ecclesiastical benefices

were disposed of in the same way as manors and baronies, to the utter

prejudice of the temporality of the Church. With this tendency the

Church waged a long and violent contest, in which she was finally

victorious. But she purchased her victory only at the price of the most

scandalous concessions; and by the system of immorality reared upon

these concessions she found her hands almost fatally entangled at the

Reformation. Dispensation to unchastity in her ministers had become a

prominent feature among those various indulgences against which the

consciences of the early Reformers rose in wrath. In every country in

Europe the people had grown weary of crying out for the abolition of

these dispensations, and the reintroduction of marriage. In Germany,

accordingly, the marriage of apostate monks and priests was among the

foremost measures of the more ardent Reformers. Luther, whose discretion

was as great as his courage, was content to wait; but he, too, finally

gave in, and united himself with a nun. It is characteristic of the

English people, that the monarchs under whose guidance they embraced the

Reformation should have shown in this particular more than the

hesitation of Luther. Henry VIII. broke short off with Rome, overturned

the monasteries, and filled the land with the beggared servants of the

old ecclesiastical order, but he would not hear of the marriage of the

Reformed clergy. It was certainly not from a general disapproval of the

institution. Under Edward, the old restrictions on this matter were done

away; but under Mary they were of course restored with a high hand. With

Elizabeth they were eventually removed forever; but it is known that the

measure had very little sympathy from the queen, and that her assent was

grudgingly bestowed.

The Council of Trent was expected to do great things toward the

pacification of the Reformers and the healing of the great schism, and

among others to pave the way for the gradual abolition of clerical

celibacy. The measure had the approval of Charles the Fifth, and of

Ferdinand and Maximilian, his successors. The Council of Trent did very

little that was expected of it, however, and least of all did it

accomplish this. It contented itself with a reenactment of certain

obsolete and threadbare canons in favor of chastity, and launched an

anathema against all those who affirmed the validity of such marriages

as had been made or should yet be made by the apostate clergy. This was

the last word of the Catholic Church for some time to come upon this

important subject. Animated with a new vitality by the great Jesuit

reaction, she had no apprehension that her hour had come, and that she

was brought so low as to be compelled to belie the sagacity of her great

founders and lawgivers. For the past three hundred years she has firmly

adhered to the principle of celibacy, and assuredly with incontestable

wisdom. With the universal elevation of the moral tone throughout

Europe, she has been less frequently mortified by having to look with

indulgence upon the licentious manners of her priests.

It seems to us that this rapid survey of the immense subject treated by

Mr. Lea is calculated to confirm rather than to enfeeble an unprejudiced

reader's sense of the marvellous achievements of the Church. The

enumeration, made in the volume before us, of its enactments with regard

to celibacy and chastity, constitutes a chapter in its internal history.

This is, to our perception, the worst that can be said of them and of

the state of things which they reveal. If the Catholic Church is to be

pronounced an institution of the past, a mockery, a delusion, and a

snare, it is not on these grounds alone, or on any exclusive grounds,

but from a broadly comprehensive point of view. Every human institution

has a private history which is very different from its public one. In

some respects the former is the more, in others the less, admirable of

the two. In the present case, the element in the picture which appeals

to our admiration is the heroic patience and perseverance, the

fortitude, the tact, and the courage with which the Church applied

herself to the healing of her internal wounds when they were curable,

and to the enduring of them when they were not, in order that, at any

cost, she might produce upon the world the impression of unity, sanity,

and strength.

_Ten Months in Brazil; with Incidents of Voyages and

Travels, Descriptions of Scenery and Character, Notices of

Commerce and Productions, etc._ By JOHN CODMAN. Boston: Lee

and Shepard.

The title of this book leaves its reviewer little to say in explanation

of its purposes. It is a lively enough book, and a book well enough

written, with a good deal of dash and piquancy in the style; and yet,

like the blameless dinner to which Doctor Johnson objected that it was

not a dinner to ask a man to, it is not a book to advise one to read. It

does not appear to us, after reading it, that we are wiser concerning

Brazil than before; even the facts in it we greeted, in many cases, with

the warmth due to old statistical acquaintances. The philosophy of the

author seems to be that the Brazilians are a bad set, and that they have

become so mainly by mingling their blood with that of their negroes,--a

race never so useful and happy as when in the discipline of slavery. Mr.

Codman contrasts their hopeless state on the lands of a good-hearted

Scotchman in Brazil, who intends to let them earn their freedom by

working for him, with their condition on the neighboring estate of a

sharp, slave-driving Yankee, who acquiesces unmurmuringly in the

purposes of Providence; "his theory being, that, as labor is their

condition, the greatest amount of work compatible with their health and

fair endurance is to be got from them. With this end in view, there is a

judicious distribution of rewards and punishments." Mr. Codman finds the

charm of novelty in these just and simple ideas, but we think we have in

past years met with the same ingenious reasoning in Southern speeches

and newspapers; and we suspect the system was one commonly adopted in

our slave States, where the occasional omission of punishments was

economically made to represent the judicious distribution of rewards.

In fact, Mr. Codman seems to have travelled and written too late to

benefit his generation. Six or seven happy years ago, an enlightened

public sentiment would have received his views of slavery with acclaim;

but we doubt if they would now sell a copy of his book even in

Charleston.

_A Story of Doom, and other Poems._ By JEAN INGELOW. Boston:

Roberts Brothers.

People who remember things written as long ago as five years have a

certain stiffness in their tastes which disqualifies them for the

enjoyment of much contemporaneous achievement; and it is fortunate for

the poets that it is the young who make reputations. Miss Ingelow's

first volume, indeed, had something in it that could please not only the

inexperience of youth, for which nothing like it existed, but even the

knowledge of those arrived at the interrogation-point in life, who felt

that here there was a movement toward originality in much familiar

mannerism and uncertain purpose. If there was not a vast deal for

enjoyment, there was a reason for hope. It was plain that the author's

gift was not a great one, but it was also clear that she had a gift. She

was a little tedious and diffuse; she was often too long in reaching a

point, and sometimes she never reached it at all. But then she wrote

"The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," and the "Songs of Seven,"

and "Divided,"--none of them perfect poems, yet all very good and

fresh,--and showed a true feeling for nature, and some knowledge of

humanity as women see it. In this second volume, however, she abandons

her maturer admirers to their fate, and seeks the favor of the young

ladies and gentlemen who have begun to like verses since Mr. Tennyson's

latest poems were written, and the old balladists and modern poetical

archaists ceased to be read. In fact, it is amazing to see how this

author, who had a talent of her own, has contentedly buried it, and gone

to counterfeiting the talents of others. The "Story of Doom" here given

is an unusually dreary copy of the unrealism of Mr. Tennyson's "Idyls

of the King," and makes the history of Noah more than ever improbable;

while "Laurance," mimicking all the well-known effects and smallest airs

and movements of the laureate's poems of rustic life, is scarcely to be

read without laughter. "Winstanley" presents an incident that, if told

in simple contemporary English, would have made a thrilling ballad; but

what with its quoth-he's, brave skippers, good master mayors, ladies

gay, and red suns, it is factitious, and of the library only,--it came

from Percy's "Reliques" and "The Ancient Mariner," not from the poet's

heart. It seems worthy of the sentimental purpose with which it was

written; but we doubt if any child in the National School in Dorsetshire

learned it by heart as his forefathers did the old ballads.

In pleasant contrast with its affectations is the beautiful little song

entitled "Apprenticed," which the author tells us is in the old English

manner, but which we find full of a young feeling and tenderness

belonging to all time, expressed in diction quite of our own. This, and

that one of the Songs with Preludes entitled "Wedlock," seem to us the

best, if not the only, poems in the book. Miss Ingelow's forte is not in

single lines and detachable passages, and her efforts are apt to be

altogether successful or unsuccessful. In the long rhyme called "Dreams

that came True," there is but one inspired line, and that is merely

descriptive,--

"In eddying rings the silence seemed to flow"

round him that waked suddenly from an awful dream. There is an

inglorious ease in the sarcasm, but we must express our regret that Miss

Ingelow did not leave this story in the prose which she says first

received it.

We suppose we need scarcely call the reader's attention to the fact that

certain faults of Miss Ingelow's first book are exaggerated in this. The

rush of half-draped figures, and the pushing and crowding of weak and

unruly fancies, are too obviously unpleasant for comment. Perhaps they

are most unpleasant in the Song with a Prelude which opens with the

bewildering statement that

"Yon mooréd mackerel fleet

Hangs thick as a swarm of bees,

Or a clustering village street

Foundationless built on the seas."

_Critical and Social Essays._ Reprinted from the New York

"Nation." New York: Leypoldt and Holt.

These brief papers very fairly represent the quality of the excellent

journal from which they are taken, and treat subjects suggested by

literary events and social characteristics with a bright intelligence

and an artistic feeling only too uncommon in our journalism. All the

essays are good, and several are of quite unique merit. The first in the

volume, entitled "The Glut in the Fiction Market," is full of a

felicitous badinage and an exquisite power of travesty, which we should

not know how to match elsewhere. The author of this admirable paper

wrote also, as we imagine, the essays on "Some of our Social

Philosophers," "Critics and Criticism," and "Voyages and Travels," which

are the best of the humorous articles in the volume. The graver essays

are almost as good in their way as these, and we especially like "Why we

have no Saturday Reviewers," "Popularizing Science," "Something about

Monuments," and "American Ministers abroad." The paper on "The European

and American Order of Thought" considers the subject with an originality

and penetration which we would willingly have had applied in a more

extended study of it.

In fine, we like all these articles from "The Nation," for the reasons

that we like "The Nation" itself, which has been, in a degree singular

among newspapers, conscientious and candid in literary matters; while in

affairs of social and political interest it has shown itself friendly to

everything that could advance civilization, and notably indifferent to

the claims of persons and parties.