PART II.

We said, in our last article,[41] that the Catholic reader would find

this second play much more painful than the first. We are sure, too,

that the non-Catholic reader will deem it inferior in point of interest.

Yet we do not agree with the London _Spectator_ that there is an

“artistic chasm” between the two plays. At any rate, whatever

constructive defects are to be found in the present performance, there

is no falling off in dramatic power.

Footnote 41:

THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1877, p. 777. We regret to be informed by

the publisher that this really great drama is now out of print.

The play is preluded by an “Introductory Scene,” in which Mary is

discovered prostrate on the tomb of Jane Grey. This does not at all

surprise us after the remorse we have witnessed in the last scene of the

preceding play. Holding herself criminally responsible for the execution

of her cousin, it was natural for her to perform “penances severer than

the Church prescribes.” The gentle Fakenham—now Abbot of Westminster—may

well express anxiety for his penitent.

“Pray God

Her mind give way not: sorely is it shaken.

These tearful macerations of the spirit,

These fasts that chain all natural appetites,

Nor mortify the sinful flesh alone,

Must be restrained: or death will close the scene.”

While he is soliloquizing Gardiner enters with Elizabeth. Fakenham has

requested the latter’s presence.

“Whate’er hath passed,

Be sure her Grace hath ever truly loved you.

Therefore we trust your coming may dispel

The baleful visions that enthrall her spirit;

Dispersed, as fiends before rebuking Saints.”

Elizabeth answers:

“You hope too much. Awakened jealousy

Preys on her, like the Egyptian’s asp.”

But she is mistaken; for presently the queen, on recognizing the “veiled

mourner,” says tenderly:

“I part

The tresses on thy brow; and gaze upon thee

_With the strong yearning of a blighted love_.

I know thee, sister! Take me to thine arms—

And let me weep.”

The weeping revives Mary’s energy, but that energy takes a shape in

which we see the old despair combined with a new fanaticism.

“ELIZABETH. These mingling tears wash out

All venom from past sorrow—”

QUEEN. “Not from mine!

Immedicable evil hath infected

The fount of life within me. I shall die

In premature decay; and fall aside

As withered fruit falls from a blasted branch.

I, like a mother by her dying babe,

Have closed the eyes of hope; and o’er my heart

Torpid despair fans with his vampire wings.”

Then, suddenly apostrophizing the “Eternal Majesty,” she appeals, as one

“hemmed in by dark conspiracies” and “baited by schismatics,” for

“prescience to detect” and “strength to control them”; deeming herself,

once more, “the Lord’s Vicegerent,” to execute his judgments.

“Fly, brood of darkness! for my prayer hath risen:

And God will hear, and smite, as once he smote

The sin of Korah: and the earth shall ope

And swallow blasphemy; and plagues leap forth

Consuming impious men: even _till the Church,

Swinging her holy censer in the midst,

Shall stay the pestilence_, God’s wrath appeased!”

This is a fine allusion to the destruction of the three schismatical

upstarts in the wilderness; and it is surprising to see a Protestant

author attribute to Catholics so much knowledge of the Bible.

Nevertheless, poor sinful mortals never make a greater mistake than when

they fancy themselves ministers of what they call the “justice” of Him

“whose thoughts are not as our thoughts.”

Perhaps Fakenham was about to make some such reply; for this

poet-created Mary Tudor—after pausing, we suppose, to take

breath—continues:

“Answer me not. I rise from this cold grave,

My penitential couch, with heart as frozen

As the dead limbs beneath, and will unbending

As this hard stone that shuts her from the world.”

Thus we are fully prepared for anything she may do; yet, in fact, she

proves singularly innocuous.

The play opens with a discussion between Gardiner and Fakenham on the

subject of the queen’s marriage. Both are agreed that she ought to

marry, for the good of State and Church; but either has his eye on a

very different candidate for her hand. The abbot’s candidate is Reginald

Cardinal Pole—a character to whom our author does full justice as among

the loftiest of his time. Fakenham thus describes him as a “student at

Padua”:

“A nobler presence

Never embodied a more gracious soul:

Ardent, yet thoughtful; in the search of knowledge

Unwearied, yet most temperate in its use.

_Whate’er he learned he wore with such an ease,

It seemed incorporated with his substance;

And beamed forth, like the light that emanates

From a saint’s brow._”

And again:

“Oft have I watched him sitting

For hours, on some rude promontory’s edge,

Wrapt in his mantle, his broad brow, sustained

With outspread palm, o’ershadowing his eyes.

And there, as one of Titan birth, he lingered

In strange community with nature; mingling

With all around—the boundless sky, the ocean,

The rock, the forest—looking back defiance

Unto the elements: _as some lone column

Beneath the shadow of a thunder-cloud_.”

For the thought in these last six lines Sir Aubrey seems indebted to

Lord Byron, that poet “of Titan birth”—who, indeed, would have sat for

the picture far better, we imagine, than Pole; except that, instead of

“looking defiance at the elements” (an attitude for which we see no

reason in Pole’s case either), his face would have shown ecstatic joy at

“mingling with all around.”

“Ye elements, in whose ennobling stir

I feel myself exalted!”

(_Childe Harold_, canto iv.)

The way Gardiner sneers at Fakenham’s candidate, and then introduces his

own, affords us an opportunity of correcting the author’s misconceptions

of this prelate. First, then, there is no proof whatever that Gardiner

was blood-thirsty, or even severe. Had he been the relentless persecutor

he is popularly represented, his own diocese of Winchester would have

become the scene of numerous executions for heresy; whereas, in fact,

not one such execution can be shown to have taken place there. Neither,

again, is there any more evidence that he egged on Mary to acts of

cruelty. If he did make the attempt, he failed signally; for the real

Mary Tudor was personally guiltless of a single act of intolerance even.

The only authentic instance in which Gardiner played the part of evil

genius to the queen was when he urged her to retain the Royal Supremacy

established by her father—her title and authority as head of the English

Church—a counsel which elicited the witty reply: “Women, I have read in

Scripture, are forbidden to speak in the church. Is it, then, fitting

that _your_ church should have a dumb head?” At the time of giving this

bad advice Gardiner belonged to the anti-papal party—which, of course,

was therefore schismatical, though nominally Catholic. And this

time-serving adhesion was the one great sin of his life. He repented of

it some time before his death, and publicly lamented it in a sermon at

St. Paul’s Cross, preached on occasion of the reconciliation of the

kingdom with the Holy See; nevertheless, the memory of it so weighed

upon his conscience when he lay on his death-bed that he asked to have

the Passion of Our Saviour read to him, and, when the reader came to the

denial of Peter, said: “Stop! I, too, have denied my Lord with Peter;

but I have not learned to weep bitterly with Peter.”

We may here remark that, had our author been acquainted with the above

facts of Gardiner’s history, he would not have sacrificed truth to

poetic effect by making him die suddenly after the burning of Cranmer;

nor, again, have put into his mouth such an un-English argument as this

against Pole’s fitness to share the throne with Mary:

“He is _but an Englishman_:

And ’tis an adage older than the hills

That prophets are not honored in their land.”

One so anxious, as Gardiner must have been at that time, to keep

_foreign domination_ out of England could never have advocated the

marriage of his sovereign with “Spanish Philip,” nor, indeed, have been

likely to call the latter’s father

“That wisest monarch, most devout of Christians,

Potent of captains, fortunate of men.”

But, of course, the poet stands to his colors. Having selected Gardiner

for the villain _par excellence_, he makes him welcome even foreign

domination in the person of a bigoted prince, who, he knows, will imbrue

his hands in the blood of heretics.

Philip does not come upon the scene till the third Act; but the

intervening scenes form a prelude to his advent.

First we have the queen in council on the question of her marriage, and

particularly of the Spanish prince’s suit. While asking Gardiner’s

advice she betrays her love for Reginald, and is quickly crushed into

abandoning that hope by the chancellor’s daring assurance that her

cousin is certainly Pope. Accordingly, she yields reluctant assent to

the prayer of Philip’s ambassador. Then, in the same scene, follows a

“patient hearing” of Ridley and Latimer, whose contumacious spirit is

well shown by the dramatist. Mary treats them with great forbearance,

and leaves them to ponder what she has said. The closing passage of this

scene is noteworthy. Latimer boasts:

“O queen! that day is past

When spiritual knowledge was confined to priests.

Our very babes drink knowledge as they suck.

Each stripling, as he runs, plucks from each bough

The fruit of knowledge.”

Mary’s reply is of surprising force and beauty:

“Ah, sirs, have a care!

The tree of knowledge was an evil thing,

_With root in hell, and fruitage unto death_.

But in the self-same garden likewise grew

Another mystery, the tree of life.

This too bore fruit, unseen till after-time:

And this was Christ. Children of Adam, we,

_Condemned to cultivate what first we stole,

Must tend the second tree with watchful love,

Or perish by the poison of the first_.”

The remaining scene of this Act and the opening scene of the next are

taken up chiefly with the disturbance occasioned by the approaching

nuptials. Underhill, the “Hot-Gospeller,” is introduced, together with

riotous citizens and the antagonists Sandys and Weston. Underhill is an

honest fellow, and loyal to his queen, whose panegyrist he becomes at

the play’s close. Though the rioters are in the minority, the rebellion

becomes strong enough to attack Whitehall Palace, where Mary is seen at

the opening of the second Act. Her masculine valor is here displayed.

First she leans from the window to encourage her soldiers, then actually

sallies forth to head them in person, and wins the day by thus risking

her life. In the second scene Underhill excites the indignation of

Sandys by his chivalrous defence of the queen not only as the one

“Whom the Lord gives to rule o’er Israel,”

but for her clemency.

“UNDERHILL. _The queen is not well served_.

You heard yourself

How, leaning from the Holbein gallery,

Where she so long stood target to your shafts,

She bade her furious knights to spare, and spake

Peace to the suppliant throng.”

“SANDYS. Yet your fierce captains

Do ramp along the streets with bloody staves,

Hunting the white-faced citizens like rats;

Or at their own doors summarily hang them.”

* * * * *

“UNDERHILL. Not fifty thus have died: a sorrowful sum

If measured by domestic pangs, yet _small

If balanced by the evil of their plots_:

Small if contrasted with the precedents

Of former feuds. In Henry’s time, they say,

Full seventy thousand their viaticum

Had from the hangman.”

But our author does more than make Underhill her apologist. He seems

anxious, every now and then, to remind us that he privately thinks much

better of his heroine than the history he has read allows him to

represent. He sets off the gentler side of her nature in strong contrast

to the vindictive, and, indeed, attributes the latter to inherited

qualities for which she is not responsible. Accordingly, in the third

and fourth scenes of the second Act Mary’s generous forgivingness, and

especially to Elizabeth, shines out gloriously.

Count Egmont, Philip’s envoy, has placed upon her finger his master’s

betrothal ring, when Renaud, the Spanish ambassador, strikes in with:

“Permit me

To be so bold as to suggest ’twere prudent

His Grace delayed till treason be put down.

_Too many prisoners your Grace releases_.

QUEEN. It was the custom of my forefathers

To pardon criminals upon Good Friday.

* * * * *

RENAUD. Pardon me: there may be

Some guiltier. Our prince must be kept back

Should your Grace yield to mistimed clemency.

* * * * *

Forgive my plainness. Can King Philip come

While criminals remain unjustified?

_Your sister waits her trial._

GARDINER. Let me speak.

While she, the princess, lives, there is no safety

For England, for the Church.”

Here Bridges, Lieutenant of the Tower, enters with a sealed warrant.

“BRIDGES. Your Grace will pardon, if, in a case like this,

Your servant feels misgiving. This sealed warrant

Commands me yield the princess—to be dealt with

As sentence shall direct.

QUEEN. O thou good servant!

Thy queen, on her heart’s knees, thanks and rewards thee.

Whose is this deed? By God’s death, answer me!

Ay, Gardiner, thou shalt answer for this thing,

If thou hast done it.

GARDINER. Let me see the paper.

A sorry trick to fright the princess! Trust me,

I had no hand in it. [_He tears the warrant._

QUEEN. _Inhuman hounds!

That worry your poor victim ere you slay it._

But I shall balk your malice. Silence, Gardiner!

Too much already hath been said: your tongues

Are deadlier than poison. Bridges, through you,

Who pitied poor Jane Grey, I shall henceforth

Secure my sister. You have known and loved her.

You are my servant now. Receive your knighthood.”

Thus foiled in their design, Renaud and Gardiner pretend, of course,

that they did not for a moment mean the death of the princess, but only

her removal; and the Spaniard goes on to explain that this “removal” was

to be effected “by a bridegroom’s sweet compulsion”—mentioning Philibert

of Savoy as a suitor—and then, finding that offer contemptuously

rejected, suggests “the kind keeping of the Hungarian queen.”

“QUEEN. Be content, sir.

_My sister hath but one friend in this council—

Myself_, companion of her youth. _It may be

She hath compassed ill against me: yet will not I,

Who fostered her lone childhood, now destroy her

By death or exile._ You are malcontent.

Conform ye to my will: I shall not swerve.”

In the following scene, where Mary and Elizabeth have it all to

themselves, the generosity of the former is the more touching by reason

of her reproaches, which Elizabeth can only answer by acting a part

which such a dissembler could very easily feign. Mary shows strong

grounds for suspecting her loyalty, but nobly acquits her and replaces

on her finger the ring which was the pledge of love between them,

saying:

“Or innocent or guilty, I forgive you.”

We regret that space does not allow us to transcribe this scene in full.

We pass to the third Act, which introduces the two best-drawn characters

of the play—Philip and Reginald Pole.

In these two men the author has illustrated—perhaps unconsciously—the

antipodal extremes of the moral results of the Catholic religion. In

Pole we see a character perfectly Christlike in its mixture of majesty

with gentleness; in Philip one who has degraded faith into superstition,

and made doctrines and means of grace the instruments of selfishness and

passion. The greater the good in a system, the greater the evil into

which it may be perverted. The amiable Fakenham tells Gardiner, in the

previous scene, his mind about the Spaniard’s portrait:

“A moody man,

Whose countenance is ghastly, bearing dismal:

For ever wrangling, rude. His glance is sinister,

Stealthy: his laughter a sardonic sneer.

_I would rather face a vulture o’er a corpse,

Than such a man, whose hell is in himself._

He is a tree of death.”

Gardiner may well wince as he replies:

“You have a caustic brush:

The canvas burns beneath it.”

Yet poor Queen Mary fondly looks forward to the coming of her affianced

as (to borrow Byron’s exquisite metaphor)

“the rainbow of her future years—

Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.”

Neither does she betray any foreboding in consequence of the storm that

ushers in her wedding-day. The bridegroom, on the contrary, peevishly

exclaims:

“A sorry day for our solemnities!

I kiss this crucifix. Avert the omen,

Most holy James of Compostella!”

_He_ does not see in this conjugal union

“The cloud-compelling harbinger of love.”

The “omen” is not unfelt, though, by some of the spectators,

particularly when Doctor Sandys gives tongue about it. The wedding-scene

is simple enough. The queen says, very prettily, when Philip offers a

diamond ring:

“Nay, my lord:

I would be wed, like any other maiden,

With the plain hoop of gold.”

It is the remaining half of the play which makes the whole so inferior

to the first play. Not that, as we have said, there is any deficiency of

dramatic power. Philip and the cardinal are masterfully handled. Full

justice, too, is done—from the author’s stand-point—to the characters of

Gardiner, Cranmer, and the rest. But a thick gloom overhangs the entire

picture; and the glaring historical untruth of much of it is no relief

to Catholic eyes.

Philip and Pole clash instantly. The Spaniard has a presentiment of this

at the moment when Sir John Gage announces

“The cardinal legate’s boat hath touched the beach.

QUEEN. The cardinal arrived! My dear, dear cousin!

Go, my lord chamberlain—go, Sir John Gage,

And bear our greetings to his Eminence.

Let his legantine cross be borne before him;

And all appliances of holy state

Attend his blessed footsteps. This our king,

And we, shall welcome him on Whitehall stairs.

PHILIP. You are right gracious to the cardinal.

In Spain we condescend less.

QUEEN. Ah! you’ll love him,

As I do, when familiarly you know him.

PHILIP. I somewhat doubt it.”

In the next scene, when the cardinal has congratulated the queen on the

return of England to the faith—telling the nation:

“Be sure

The light devolving from great Gregory

Still shines from Peter’s chair. Who turns from it

Renounces hope. Peace ripens in its beams”—

and Mary has joyfully responded:

“Here stand we without question, king and queen;

And, with our Parliament, implore the pope

For reconciliation. Take this missive:

It is sincere. Kneeling we crave your blessing!”—

Philip interjects:

“Your Eminence shall pardon my stiff knees—

Stiff, Spanish manners. Ha! I cannot kneel.”

No wonder the queen faints as the cardinal blesses her.

Philip, having thus early begun with insolence, loses no time in showing

the mixture of brute and devil that he is. He threatens to leave England

because his sanguinary counsels are not taken; whereupon we are rejoiced

to see the author make Mary as well as Pole defend the policy of “free

discussion.” Of course Gardiner supports Philip eagerly. Presently—so

outrageous is Philip’s conduct to his wife—the cardinal’s indignation

can contain itself no longer, and his dignified remonstrance stings the

king into exclaiming:

“Were I a basilisk, I’d look thee dead!”

Gardiner urges Pole to retire; but the hero answers:

“Not so. My heart is strong:

And like some stalwart wrestler, who hath need

Of exercise, and doubts nor heart nor limb,

I shrink not from the combat. _He who carries

His cross, a daily burden, well may stand

In front of any giant of the ring

Who boasts he can move spheres._”

And again he warns the monster:

“Ay: you are great

Above us by your station, as the vulture

Upon his mountain pinnacle. What then?

The arrow makes a pathway in the air:

_The peasant’s hands can reach the feathered tyrant_,

_And from the vale quench his despotic eye_.”

—“Vulture,” mark: not eagle.

We find a profound study in Mary’s love for Philip, and particularly in

its persistence. How she could feel toward such a man anything beyond

wife-like duty—she, too, who had loved Reginald Pole from her

childhood—is mysterious indeed. It will doubtless be said that the poet

intends this new love for a part of her madness—like her passion for the

worthless Courtenaye: her craving for love being such as to invest any

spouse with “Cytherea’s zone.” Then, again, the treatment Pole receives

at Philip’s hands, and his sublime bearing under it, ought to have the

result of alienating her affections from the Spaniard even more than the

latter’s behavior to herself. Hear her cry, one moment:

“Poor heart!

Thou wilt not break! Insult unmitigated!

Witnessed—by him!—by Pole! O Reginald!

Avenged!”

And the next, see her so overjoyed by an usher announcing “the king”

that she springs up from the suppliant posture in which she has just

been praying

“that even as the thief

On the third cross I may have peace in heaven”—

springs up, and exclaims wildly:

“The king! King Philip!

O speed him hither! Stay: here’s for thy news—

A jewel from my finger. Haste thee, friend.”

And again, though his Majesty enters “moodily,” she can actually greet

him thus:

“O Philip. Philip! art thou come to me?

_And shall there not now be an end of weeping?_

I was thinking of thee—whom else think I of?

I talked of thee—of whom is all my talking?

But thou art here again: _and my poor heart,

Like a caged bird, is beating at its bars,

To fly forth to the comfort of thy bosom_.

Speak—speak—_my soul_! and give me peace.”

Verily, this _is_ madness! Who has ever seen so extraordinary a picture

of woman before? Has not the poet drawn something impossible? Not at

all. He simply displays, we think, an unusual knowledge of the feminine

heart. A much less acquaintance with that organ should prevent surprise

at any phenomena it may exhibit—particularly in the shape of undeserved

love or unreasoning constancy.

Of course the poor woman’s fondness only irritates her lord, instead of

appeasing him; so he tells her bluntly what he has come for—to deliver

his ultimatum; which is, first, the removal of the legate; and,

secondly, the death of the heretical prelates. Of his feeling towards

the cardinal he says:

“Call it not hatred, but antipathy:

Such as the callow chicken feels for hawks,

Or wild horse for the wolf. Aversion call it:

That wraps me in a cold and clammy horror

When we approach. I know he cannot harm me;

_And have small doubt he would not if he could_.

But still, my flesh creeps if I do but touch him,

As when one strokes a cat’s hair ’gainst the grain.

* * * * *

Odious is his garb

Of ostentatious purple; jewelled hands;

_That beard down-streaming like the chisel’d locks

Of Moses from the hand of Angelo_.”

Like a gleam of sunshine, for a moment, comes a happy description of a

visit from Elizabeth to the queen. Underhill is the narrator. It is in

the ninth scene of this too long third Act.

“Her royal barge

Was garlanded with flowers, festooned around

An awning of green satin, richly broidered

With eglantine and buds of gold. The bright one

Beneath this canopy reclined in state,

Fairer than Cleopatra with her Roman.

Her royal sister on the bowery shore

Of Richmond met her, kissing her 'tween whiles;

Her wan cheek flushing to a healthier glow.

With hospitable care, and love, she led

Elizabeth to where, shrined in green leaves

And flowers, a tent, curtained with cloth of gold

And purple samite, stood; whose folds were wrought

With silver fleur-de-lys and gold pomegranates.

The music they so love breathed in their ears

Like amorous blandishment: and when the morn

Rippled along the wave with soberer ray,

The princess stept once more into her barge,

And floated down the current like a swan.”

Yet one more quotation from this Act; for we shall have but little to

cite from Acts fourth and fifth. The cardinal, after arguing with

Gardiner against the severe measures that are being taken under his and

Bonner’s supervision, and defending the queen from the charge of

approval—her consent having been forced, and things of which she was

ignorant done in her name—finds relief in conversing with Fakenham,

whose virtues he thoroughly appreciates. The latter speaks of his

friend’s failing strength; and Pole, at a loss to account for it, says

he has “heard of vampire poisons,” but instantly suppresses the

suspicion. They have been up all night, apparently.

“CARDINAL. A sudden sunburst!—Lo!

God’s Image in our heart is as yon orb

Unto the universe; _the eye of nature,

Dispersing rays more eloquent than tongues_;

Beams that give life as well as light; whose absence

Wraps in cold shadow all that moves and breathes.

At times that Image walks through spheres remote;

Unobvious to the largely wandering eye:

Then nightmare darkness sits upon the soul:

Then, by its own shade mantled, waits the soul,

Like some dark mourner, lonely in his house.

_But the harmonious hours fulfil themselves;

And sunrise comes unlooked for, peak to peak

Answering in spiritual radiance. This is indeed

So palpably to meet Divinity,

That hence the Pagan erred, not knowing God._”

In the fourth Act we have, first, the recall of Pole to Rome, contrived

by Philip and Gardiner. The queen refuses to let him go; but while, in

obedience to her, he remains in England, he resigns his legateship in

submission to the interdict. Then comes the picture-scene, which is

admirably contrived. The poor queen stops before Philip’s picture and

talks to it as if it were a shrine. The original enters and brutally

disenchants his worshipper. After a bitter interview, in which Mary

accuses him of conjugal infidelity, the Spaniard takes his departure,

answering her “Begone!” with a sudden “For ever!”

“QUEEN (_alone_). I submit to God’s decree.

Was it for this my maiden liberty

Was yielded?—to be spurned, despised, and still

Bear on without redress? O grief! O shame!

[_She approaches the picture of Philip._

Back, silken folds, that hide what was my joy,

And is my torture! Back!—See, I have rent you,

False, senseless idol, from thy tinselled frame!

I wrench thee forth—I look on thee no more!

And thus—and thus— [_she tears up the picture_]

I scatter thee from out

The desecrated temple of my heart! [_A pause._

My brain is hot—this swoln heart chokes my throat

Yet I am better thus than self-deceived.

Die, wretched queen! O die, dishonored wife!

_I pant for the cold blessing of the grave!_”

Next follows the trial of Ridley and Latimer. Cranmer, too, is present,

and disputes, but is not on trial. The contrast between Gardiner and

Pole is admirable. Mary, too, is represented as sedulously just. Ridley

and Latimer speak, of course, as if perfectly conscientious and worthy

of martyrdom, but make no attempt to disprove the principle of

submission to authority, insisting solely on their own infallibility.

The cardinal is at last compelled to say of them:

“This is very grievous!

Madam, so please you, these be heated men,

Who may not be convinced, and will not bend.”

He has better hopes of Cranmer; but his gentle earnestness is lost upon

him no less.

Here be it remembered that it was the secular, and not the

ecclesiastical, arm which inflicted the death-penalty for obdurate

heresy. This penalty was the law in those days—days when every kind of

felony was more severely punished than now. Whatever we moderns may

think of this law, we must not forget that heresy is the greatest and

most pernicious of crimes; and, again, that it was only formal and

aggressive heresy that got itself arraigned and condemned. Moreover,

what made the civil power so severe upon it was the fact that it was

always coupled with sedition and treason.

But before we close our remarks upon the executions in Mary’s reign, let

us look for a moment on the beautiful scene which intervenes between the

one we have been examining and the prison-scene at Oxford—the last of

the fourth Act.

Mary and Reginald are closeted together. The holy priest seeks to

comfort his cousin.

“Poor soul!

Be to yourself more charitable. Think

That One there is who answers for your faults

And multiplies your merits.

QUEEN. Hope rests there:

Or I were mad.

CARDINAL. All men are born to suffer.

What are the consolations of the Scripture,

The fruit of exhortation and of prayer,

If now you quail? No, you shall quail no more.

QUEEN. _My web of life was woven with the nettle._

My very triumphs were bedewed with tears.

What now is left?

CARDINAL. Religion. _As the sunbow

Shines in the showery gloom and makes the cloud

A shape of glory_, in thy path she stands

A herald of high promise. Blessed emblem!

Religion bids thee hope. This gloomy life

Must be amended. We must draw thee hence.

QUEEN. Thanks be to God! time works while

we grieve on.

_Deprive not sorrow of the shade she needs,

The sad quiescence of desponding thought_.

Job also raised his voice, and wailed aloud,

And so was comforted. Remember, also,

In weeping I can pray. Should I not?

CARDINAL. Yea.

Pray with thanksgiving: ’tis the sum of duty.”

The sublimity of this passage needs no comment. The rest of the scene is

equally touching. Mary speaks for an instant of Philip. She is still

obliged to say:

“Whene’er I turn my thoughts to God, one image

Stands between me and heaven. Instead of prayer

A sigh for Philip trembles on my lips.

CARDINAL. To pine thus for the absent, as men mourn

The dead, is sinful.

QUEEN. Speak no more of him.

Thoughts holier be my guide.”

Then Reginald teaches her what it is

“To stablish thrones on bounty; reign through love.”

* * * * *

_The chief of greatness is surpassing goodness_:

And that outsoars the ken of mortal eyes—

Hidden with God.”

She offers him the archbishopric of Canterbury. He answers musingly:

“He who hath stood

Upon the first step of the papal throne,

And vacant left the Vatican, may look

With eye undazzled on the chair of Lambeth.”

Then he accepts, and presently the queen observes:

“I have long thought it strange that you refused

The greater honor though the heavier burden:

The proffered crown of Rome.

CARDINAL [_after much agitation_]. Look not alarmed. [_A pause._

You touch the mind’s immedicable wound.

O God! that I had died before I knew thee!

Pardon me—pardon me!

QUEEN. We both need pardon.

Let us forget the past. God strengthen us!

CARDINAL. Fear not. _Henceforth we gaze upon each other,

As the two Cherubim upon the Ark—

The living God between._

QUEEN. Then take my hand.

It will be colder soon. May God be with you!”

This “immedicable wound” is the poet’s Protestant fancy, yet the pathos

of the scene is exquisite.

The prison-scene at Oxford gives us, first, Masters Ridley and Latimer

taking leave of Cranmer; then Cranmer watching their execution from the

window, and Gardiner, unobserved, watching him. The famous recantation

number one takes place; and the subsequent despair of the wretch closes

the fourth Act.

The fifth Act we do not care to analyze minutely, so much of it is

sickeningly untrue. Mary has become fanatical again. Pole tells her that

“the poor, by thousands, perish in the flames.” This is utterly false.

All the executions under Mary’s government did not amount to more than

two hundred and seventy-seven, and “from this list of 'martyrs for the

Gospel’ must be excluded,” says a learned writer, “the names of those

who suffered for political offences or other crimes.” Dr. Maitland, the

celebrated librarian of Lambeth, in his _Essays on Subjects connected

with the Reformation in England_, speaks of “the bitter and provoking

spirit of some of those who were very active and forward in promoting

the progress of the Reformation; the political opinions which they held,

and the language in which they disseminated them; the fierce personal

attacks which they made on those whom they considered as enemies; and,

to say the least, the little care which was taken by those who were

really actuated by religious motives, and seeking a true reformation of

the Church, to shake off _a lewd, ungodly, profane rabble_, who joined

in the cause of Protestantism, thinking it, in their depraved

imaginations, or hoping to make it by their wicked devices, the cause of

liberty against law, of the poor against the rich, of the laity against

the clergy, of the people against their rulers.” From this rabble, then,

came the “poor” who “perished in the flames.”

As to Oxford’s pretended “martyrs,” Ridley and Latimer were inciters of

sedition and brought upon themselves the vengeance of the law; while

Thomas Cranmer was, without exception, the most unmitigated miscreant in

the whole disgraceful business of what is called the Reformation. Who

will question that he richly deserved the stake after bringing to it so

many victims, in Henry’s reign, for denying doctrines which he himself

was secretly denying at the time? There are living Anglican writers who

rejoice in calling all these boasted reformers a set of “unredeemed

villains.”

Of course, as we said in our review of the first play, we acquit the

author of all conscious prejudice. The last words he puts into his

heroine’s mouth—“Time unveils Truth”—are an appeal to “the avenger,” who

will not fail to do her justice yet. It was a noble thought to make

Underhill, the Hot-Gospeller, her panegyrist. Oxford vaticinates:

“Awful queen!

Hardly of thee Posterity shall judge:

For they shall measure thee—

UNDERHILL. Let me speak, sir:

For I have known, and been protected by her,

When fierce men thirsted for my blood. I say not

That she was innocent of grave offence;

Nor aught done in her name extenuate.

But I insist upon her maiden mercies,

_In proof that cruelty was not her nature_.

She abrogated the tyrannic laws

Made by her father. She restored her subjects

To personal liberty; to judge and jury;

Inculcating impartiality.

Good laws, made or revived, attest her fitness

Like Deborah to judge. She loved the poor:

And fed the destitute: and they loved her.

_A worthy queen she had been if as little

Of cruelty had been done under her

As by her._ To equivocate she hated:

And was just what she seemed. In fine, she was

_In all things excellent while she pursued

Her own free inclination without fear_.”

NANETTE.

_A LEGEND OF THE DAYS OF LOUIS XV._

I.

A police report is scarcely the place where one would look to find an

idyl—least of all a French police report. But just as one comes at times

upon a shy violet nestling in the dusty city ways, even in such an

unpromising quarter, and in the records of a still more unpromising

time, did the present writer stumble upon a veritable romance—

“Silly sooth

That dallies with the innocence of love

Like the old age.”

Let the reader judge if it be not a genuine violet.

Of the many strange functions of the Parisian police in the days of the

well-beloved Louis XV.—and altogether most worthless of his name—one of

the strangest appears to have been that of furnishing for the amusement

of the royal circle regular reports, or rather novelettes, of all

episodes, striking or romantic, that came under their notice. The French

have always had a taste for the dramatic aspect of the law, and to this

day a _procès-verbal_ reads often like a _feuilleton_ of Ponson du

Terrail. It may be supposed that, in the narratives which thus tickled

the languid leisure of Louis, a rigid adherence to truth was not deemed

essential where a slight embellishment enhanced the interest. But all

had probably a basis in fact, which one is fain to hope was more than

usually broad in so innocent and touching a history as that of Nanette

Lollier, the Flower-Girl of the Palais Royal.

In the year 1740 there dwelt in the parish of St. Leu, at Paris, an

honest, hard-working couple named André Lollier and Marie Jeanne Ladure,

his wife; the former of whom held a subordinate position in the Bureau

of Markets, while the latter attended to their fish-stand. Between them

they earned ample to keep the pot boiling comfortably, had it not been

for the prodigious number of small mouths that daily watered around that

savory and capacious vessel; and when there came a sixteenth, it is to

be feared that honest André received it rather ruefully and altogether

as a discord in the harmony of existence—a blessing very much in

disguise. So despite the new-comer’s beauty and precocity and countless

pretty baby ways, her aggrieved parents were only too glad to accept her

godmother’s offer to take her off their hands and to bring her up. By

that good lady—who seems to have been really a most kind-hearted person,

although she _was_ a beadle’s widow—the little Nanette (so the child had

been named) was carefully instructed in such branches of learning as a

young person of her station was at that time expected to know, and

which, in truth, were not very many. There is little doubt that one

young lady of Vassar would have put the entire faculty of St. Cyr to

rout.

But Nanette was soon found to possess a fine voice, and pains were taken

to cultivate it—so successfully that when, at the mature age of twelve,

the youthful chorister made her _début_ in a Christmas anthem at the

parish church, everybody was delighted. And when during the following

Holy Week she sang a _Stabat_ better than many persons four times her

age, everybody said at once she was a prodigy.

Now, we all know what comes to prodigies. The praises, pettings, and

presents this prodigy received turned her small and not very wise head.

Good Mère Lollier wished to make a fish-mongress of her; mademoiselle

spurned the proposal. What! she, a genius, a beauty, a divine voice,

waste her life on horrid, ill-smelling fish? (She made no objection, you

will observe, to dining on them when her mother cooked them for her, but

that was quite a different matter.) She soil her pretty fingers with

scales, haggle over herrings, or dicker about dace? Perish the thought!

Her mother did it, to be sure, but then—her mother was not a genius. (Do

young ladies nowadays ever reason thus?) No; she would be a flower-girl

and sing her nosegays into every buttonhole—or wherever else they then

wore their nosegays—in Paris. The manners of the fish-market even then

lacked something of the repose of Vere de Vere, and Mère Lollier’s only

answer to this astounding proposal was a slap and—we regret to say—a

kick. She was not aware that genius is not to be kicked with impunity.

She soon discovered it to her sorrow; for in her way she loved Nanette,

and kicked her, we may be sure, only in kindness.

Shortly after this affront Nanette disappeared, and from that moment all

trace of her was lost. Word came to her parents from time to time that

she was well, but of her whereabouts their most persistent efforts could

gain no tidings. Her absence lasted three years; how or where passed no

one—we sniff the touch of the embellisher here—could ever discover, nor

would she herself divulge. At last one fine morning comes a message to

Mère Lollier that her daughter is at the convent of the Carmelites, and

will be handed over to them in person, or to any priest who comes with

an order from them.

Beside herself with joy, Mère Lollier, with just a hasty touch to her

cap—even a _Dame de la Halle_ is, outside of business, a woman—rushes

off to M. le Curé with the great news. In those days M. le Curé was the

first applied to in every emergency of joy or grief: perhaps it would

have been better for Paris if the custom had not been survived by others

less wholesome. The good priest lent a sympathetic ear; for the piety

and industry of the Lolliers had made them prime favorites with him, and

he had, besides, taken a lively interest in the fate of his little

chorister. A _fiacre_ is called at once, and the _curé_ and Mère

Lollier, with her eldest son, a strapping sergeant in the French

guards—not then such pigmies as absinthe has left them now—fly to the

convent at such a pace as only the promise of a fabulous _pourboire_ can

extract from a Parisian cab-horse. The lady-superior greets them in the

convent parlor and presently ushers in a lovely young girl—what! a

girl?—a princess, to whom Mère Lollier with difficulty represses an

inclination to courtesy, while M. le Curé wipes his spectacles and the

gaping sergeant at once comes to a salute. But the princess speedily

puts an end to their doubts by embracing them all in turn with the

liveliest emotion. It is indeed Nanette, but Nanette developed into such

beauty and grace and sprightliness as many a princess might envy. Nor is

her moral nature less improved. She is now as modest and docile as

before she was vain and headstrong; only—she will still be a

flower-girl. And yet women are sometimes called weak!

Before the young lady’s appearance in the parlor the superior had

explained to her wondering auditors how a strange lady the evening

before had brought Nanette to the convent—“Hum!” says M. le Curé

dubiously, taking snuff—and on leaving her had left at the same time

20,000 francs for her dowry, if she wished to become a religious—“Ha!”

says M. le Curé thoughtfully, brushing away the snuff that has fallen on

his band. Then he beams upon Nanette, rubbing his hands encouragingly,

while Mère Lollier nods acquiescence and the sergeant shifts to the

other leg and gapes. But Nanette, in spite of these diverse

blandishments, respectfully but firmly declined to be a religious. Her

vocation was to be a flower-girl, and a flower-girl she would be.

“’Tis the devil’s trade,” cries the _curé_, quite out of patience.

“All roads lead to heaven, my father,” answers Nanette mildly.

So a flower-girl she becomes; and it must be confessed that, in spite of

Undine, beauty seems more at home with the flowers than with the fishes.

II.

One bright morning in the summer of 1756 the loungers under the

chestnuts which then adorned the garden of the Palais Royal—that

forehanded and long-headed (though, long as his head was, he could not

keep it long) personage, Philippe Égalité, thought shops would be more

ornamental as well as more useful, so he put the chestnuts in his pocket

and built that splendid colonnade which is the wonder and delight of the

wandering American—the loungers in the shade of the Palais Royal

chestnuts were conscious of a new sensation. Not that sensations were

just then going begging. By no means. One or two royal gentlemen, by

laying their crowned heads together, had already contrived that famous

misunderstanding which was to turn a large part of three continents into

a shambles for the next seven years; to cost the “well-beloved,” in

Canada and India, the brightest jewels of his crown, and to make of

Montcalm, for losing one and his life with it, a hero, and of

Lally-Tollendal, for having the bad taste to survive the loss of the

other, a traitor or a martyr as you were for him or against him. So

often is it that for precisely the same services a grateful and

discriminating country decrees to one of her sons a monument, to another

a halter. Perhaps there is not so much difference between the two—to the

dead men, at least—as some folks imagine.

But the heroes we are to deal with are by no means of the stuff of

martyrs, and fighting, beyond an ornamental pass or two in the Bois de

Boulogne, they vote vulgar and _bourgeois_. Here under the chestnut

blossoms is a sensation much more to their taste. It is a new

flower-girl. But what a flower-girl! Figure to yourself, then, Mme. la

Duchesse, a flower-girl arrayed in silks and laces and jewels a

marchioness would give her head for (marchionesses’ heads were rated

higher then than they came to be before the century was over), with a

golden shell for her flower-basket, lined with blue satin and suspended

by an embroidered scarf from the daintiest waist in the world—a

flower-girl with the face of a seraph and the figure of a sylph, with

eyes of liquid light and hair of woven sunshine, with the foot of

Cinderella and a hand—a hand only less perfect than that of Madame,

which your humble servant most respectfully salutes.

News so important must be sent post-haste to Versailles. A score of

noblemen sprang to the saddle and rushed to lay their hearts and their

diamonds at the feet of this strange paragon. But Nanette, young as she

was, could tell base metal from good. The jewels she took from her

adorers with smiling impartiality; the other sort of trinkets—sadly

battered by use, it must be confessed, and not worth much at any

time—she rejected with equally smiling disdain. Always gracious, gay,

and self-possessed, sparkling with raillery and wit, she yet maintained

a maidenly reserve that abashed the boldest license, and her reputation

grew even faster than her fortune.

And the latter grew apace. She became the rage. Her appearance on the

Palais Royal, followed at a little distance by footmen in livery and her

maid, gathered about her straightway all the gallants and wits in Paris.

Her basket was emptied in a trice, and emptied again as often as

refilled by her servants. It was deemed an honor to receive a nosegay

from her pretty fingers, and more louis than half-franc pieces repaid

them.

Great ladies came to her _levées_—for such they really were—and even

deigned to accept from the beautiful flower-girl the gift of a rose or a

violet—gifts always sure to be recompensed in noble fashion with jewels

or costly laces, rich silks or pieces of plate. Within two years Nanette

had thus accumulated in houses, lands, and rents an annual income of

forty thousand francs, besides loading her kindred with presents.

Naturally, this circumstance did not cool the ardor of the followers

whom her beauty had attracted. One of these was particularly noticeable

for his assiduity. He was a young man about twenty-two years old, of

distinguished air and handsome features, tinged with that shadow of

melancholy thought to be so irresistible to the feminine imagination.

His clothes, too, were in his favor; for though irreproachably neat and

faultlessly cut, they had plainly seen their best days. We all know what

a sly rogue Pity is, and how untiringly he panders for a certain

nameless kinsman. Every afternoon found the melancholy young man at the

garden awaiting the flower-girl’s coming. On her arrival he would

advance, select a flower, pay a dozen sous, exchange a word, perhaps,

and disappear till the following day. Once he was absent, and the fair

florist’s brow was clouded. In other words, Nanette was extremely cross,

and many an unlucky _petit-maître_ was that day unmercifully snubbed for

presuming on previous condescension. The garden trembled and was

immersed in gloom. But presently the laggard made his appearance,

Nanette’s lovely face was again wreathed in smiles, the garden breathed

freely once more, and the _petit-maîtres_ were astonished to find their

vapid pleasantries received more graciously than ever. From this

remarkable circumstance the sagacious reader will doubtless form his own

conclusion; and we do not say that the sagacious reader will be wrong.

In point of fact, we may as well admit at once that Nanette, without

knowing it, was already in love with this handsome, melancholy stranger,

of whom she knew nothing, except that he was noble, since he wore a

sword. She would have given half she was worth to know even his name,

but she dared not ask it. As often as the question trembled on her

tongue she felt herself blushing violently and unable, for the life of

her, to open her lips. Her modesty had not been educated away by a

season in the civilizing atmosphere of the court.

Chance at last befriended her. One evening the brilliant Marquis de

Louvois, after talking awhile with the unknown, came up to the Count de

la Châtre, who was seated beside her, and said to him:

“This ass of a De Courtenaye puts me out of all patience. The king has

asked why he does not come to Versailles. I repeat to him his majesty’s

flattering question. Well! it goes in one ear and out the other. Can one

so bury one’s self in Paris?”

Think of that, good Americans, before you die! In the year of grace 1756

Paris was only a burying place for Versailles! So that 1870 had a

precedent.

“What else is he to do?” asks the count. “It takes money to live as we

do, and his father, poor fellow, left him nothing but a name, which,

although one of the first in France, is rather a drawback than

otherwise, since it won’t permit him even to marry for money anything

less than a princess; and rich princesses like to get as well as to

give.”

“True, true,” murmurs the compassionate marquis. “I had forgotten.

More’s the pity; such a good-looking fellow as he is—”

“And a connection of the royal family.”

“Faith, the king is not over and above kind to his cousins.” And the

gentlemen dismiss the royal poor relation from their noble minds as they

would brush a grain of snuff from their ruffles, and stroll off, humming

an aria from the latest opera of the famous Favart, the little Offenbach

of his little day. Forgotten art thou now, O famous Favart! and thy

immortal airs are as dead as Julius Cæsar.

But not so easily did M. de Courtenaye’s tribulations pass from the mind

of Nanette, who had lost not a word of this conversation. She thought of

him all through a wakeful night; she was still thinking of him the next

morning—having arisen for that fond purpose long before the household

was stirring—when she was startled by feeling a kiss upon her arm. She

sprang up with a little cry of anger and alarm; but her frown changed to

a smile when she recognized the offender. It was Marcel, the handsome

Marcel, her favorite brother, a year her senior, but so like her they

were often mistaken for twins.

“O Marcel!” she cried, “how you frightened me. How was one to look for

such gallantry from one’s brother?”

“But if one is the brother of Nanette?” says Marcel still more

gallantly.

Marcel has been in good company and flatters himself he has quite the

_bel air_. As an apprentice to M. Panckoucke to learn the bookseller’s

trade, wherein his sister, when he got old enough, was to set him up for

himself, he had many opportunities of seeing and hearing the wits of the

capital, not without profit to mind and manners. Indeed, he fairly

considered himself one of them already.

“Yes, my dear little sister,” he added with a patronizing air, “you are

positively the talk of the town. Go where I will—and you know I go into

the best circles,” he says pompously, adjusting his ruffles as he has

seen the dandies do—“I hear of nothing but the beautiful, the witty

Nanette. Why, it was only the other day I was at M. de Marmontel’s”—the

ingenuous youth did not deem it essential to state that he had been sent

in the honorable though humble capacity of “printer’s devil” with a

bundle of proofs for correction (the proofs, indeed, of the _Contes

Moraux_: the dullest, surely—always excepting the delightful,

interminable romances of the incomparable Mlle. de Scudéry—ever penned

in the tongue of Montaigne and Molière,) but his sister understood his

harmless vanity and did not so much as smile—“at M. de Marmontel’s with

the Duke de Nivernais, the Count de Lauraguais, M. de Voltaire, and the

Prince de Courtenaye.”

Nanette started slightly, but her brother did not perceive it. It is the

way of brothers, and this brother, besides, was for the moment rapt in

contemplation of the greatness reflected upon him by association with

these great names. He fairly grew an inch in stature as he rolled them

out, dwelling fondly on the titles. It is something to have a king speak

to you, if only to ask you to get out of the way. Marcel continued:

“The talk was all of you. M. de Lauraguais, not knowing me to be your

near relation, presumed to deny your wit and to question your virtue.”

Nanette’s beautiful eyes flashed in a way that would have made the

slanderer uncomfortable had he seen it.

“Insolent!” she murmured, clenching her little fists.

“You may imagine how my blood boiled,” went on Marcel. “I was on the

point of doing something rash when M. de Courtenaye took up the cudgels

in your behalf. 'M. de Lauraguais,’ he said with grave severity, 'is it

possible that you, a gentleman, can give currency to the lies set afloat

by baffled libertines or malicious fools against the reputation of a

defenceless girl? My life upon it, Nanette is as pure as she is lovely;

and were proof of her innocence needed, I should ask none better than

these stories of lovers whom no one has seen, or can even name. Why, had

Nanette a lover, all Paris would ring with it in an hour.’ The

impassioned earnestness of the prince made the company smile; but M.

Diderot, siding with him, said he was sure you were better than the best

that was said of you.”

Nanette’s eyes filled with tears. Had the youthful pedant been less

intent on showing his familiarity with fashionable life, he must have

had his suspicions aroused by her agitation. As it was, he was not even

enlightened when Nanette, suddenly flinging her arms about his neck in a

tender fury, kissed him twice or thrice passionately. He took the kisses

complacently as a guerdon for his story. Fraternal obtuseness in such

cases is simply limitless. “By the way, Nanette,” he added, “why

wouldn’t it be a good idea to thank the prince by sending him some of

your prettiest flowers? I can take them to-morrow with some books I am

to convey to him.”

“Nonsense!” says Nanette incredulously. “I don’t believe you even know

where he lives.”

“Don’t know where he lives?” cries Marcel indignantly. “Perhaps you will

tell me next I don’t know where the Hôtel Carnavalet is, or how to find

the Rue Culture Ste. Catherine? Don’t know where he lives, indeed!” And

Marcel flings out of the room in a state of high dudgeon that his

acquaintance with a great man should be doubted, and, worst of all, by

Nanette. We are sorry to say he slammed the door after him. The best of

brothers will do such things under strong provocation. But Nanette only

smiled—the wily Nanette!

III.

The next morning, at his frugal breakfast in a rather lofty apartment of

the Hôtel Carnavalet, the Prince de Courtenaye read with much amazement

the following letter:

“MY DEAR COUSIN: I am an old woman and your near relation. I have

long observed with pain the poverty which keeps you from assuming

your proper station. I have wealth, and not many years to keep it.

What is a burden to me will be a help to you. Suffer me, then, from

my superfluity to relieve your necessity—I claim it as the twofold

privilege of age and love—and accept as frankly as I tender it the

25,000 francs which I enclose to procure you an establishment suited

to your rank. On the first of every month 4,000 francs will be

forwarded to you in addition.”

Some commonplaces of civility ended this remarkable but not unpleasant

epistle—would that such a one some celestial postman might leave at the

door of the present writer, to whom documents of a far different

nature—but this is a painful and unnecessary digression. Let us

continue. The prince read the queer communication with conflicting

emotions, in which wonder predominated. He was not aware of any wealthy

aunt or female relative particularly prone to this sort of furtive

benevolence; but his connections were legion, and women were odd fish.

Still, his honor seemed to him to forbid his accepting a fortune so

acquired. But older and wiser heads stifled, or at least silenced, his

scruples; and secretly resolving to leave no stone unturned to discover

his mysterious benefactress, and to return to her or to her heirs every

sou of the money, which in his heart he accepted only as a loan, he

resigned himself to his good-luck with tolerable cheerfulness.

Henceforth no more elegant equipage was to be seen than the Prince de

Courtenaye’s. He became the fashion; he was the life and talk of every

_salon_—as we should say, the success of the season. Nevertheless, he

failed not to go every afternoon to the garden of the Palais Royal for

his nosegay, with this difference only: that he now paid francs instead

of sous.

A year sped away, spent by the prince in buying nosegays and in sharing

the gayeties, though not the dissipations, of the court; by Nanette in

continuing to perfect herself secretly in all the feminine

accomplishments of her time, so that now, at the age of nineteen, she

was not only peerless in beauty, but as cultivated as Mme. de Sévigné

and as learned as Mme. Dacier—no, not as Mme. Dacier—no mere mortal was

ever so learned as Mme. Dacier; but let us say as Mme. de La Fayette,

who could set Father Rapin right in his Latin and silence Ménage. Was it

for herself she underwent these prodigious labors? It is not known that

she ever mentioned. But she still sold nosegays and still reaped a

golden harvest.

One evening the Count de la Châtre was again sitting beside her when the

Marquis de Louvois once more accosted him.

“My dear fellow,” said he, “what the mischief ails Pierre?” (he spoke of

De Courtenaye). “He must be going mad. Have you heard his latest freak?

Mlle. de Craon, one of our wealthiest heiresses, with a royal dowry and

a princely income, is proposed to him, and what do you think? He refuses

her—positively refuses. What bee is in his bonnet?”

“Love.”

“Love! Is it one of the Royal Princesses, then?”

“I imagine not.”

“Who then? Some divinity of the _coulisses_, I’ll wager.”

“Louvois,” said the count gravely, “you wrong our friend. De Courtenaye,

as you know, abhors vice, and I am much mistaken if she whom he loves is

not a virtuous woman.”

Louvois shrugged his shoulders as only a certain kind of Frenchman can.

Virtue was a word not in his dictionary.

The next day the prince received this note, the second from his unknown

relative:

“MY NEPHEW: Why do you decline to marry Mlle. de Craon, who unites

all that is illustrious in birth and splendid in fortune? I will

provide you with the capital of the income I now allow you. Accept

also as a wedding-gift for your intended the jewels I send herewith.

“If you consent, wear for eight days in your buttonhole a carnation;

if you refuse, a rose.”

With the letter came a handsome jewel-case containing a million of

francs in bills—it is well for the romancer to be liberal in these

matters—and a magnificent parure of diamonds of the purest water, valued

by the Tiffany of the time at 100,000 more.

That afternoon it was noticed in the garden that Nanette was unusually

pale and silent. The Prince de Courtenaye entered at his usual hour; the

nosegay in his buttonhole bore neither pink nor rose. He drew near the

flower-girl, who offered him a posy with a hand she vainly tried to make

steady. Like his own, it had neither pink nor rose.

The prince examined Nanette’s offering attentively, smiled sadly, stood

for an instant in a musing attitude twirling the bouquet in his fingers,

and then suddenly, as one whose mind is made up:

“My child,” he said, “will you make me the present of a rose?”

Nanette fainted.

IV.

When the flower-girl recovered she found herself in her own room, her

family around her. But her eyes sought in vain the one face she most

wished to see. Her mother and sisters told her with prodigious clamor

and excitement, all talking at once at the tops of their voices, how she

had fainted—“from the heat,” the gentleman said. “Yes, from the heat,”

murmured Nanette softly, closing her eyes—how a great nobleman, the

Prince de Courtenaye, had raised her, and how, without waiting for a

carriage, and rejecting all aid, he had borne her in his arms to her

house near by.

Nanette listened with closed eyes and a happy smile. All this was balm

to her poor, sorely-tried heart. She even ventured to ask what had

become of the kind gentleman. He had waited, they told her, to hear the

doctor’s report giving assurance of her safety, and had then gone away,

invoking for her their most zealous care. Presently the prince’s valet

came to inquire after her health; but he himself did not come. Nanette

was wounded, but she said nothing. Even pain in such a cause was too

sacred a thing to be shared with another. Woman-like, she hugged her

grief as though it were a treasure, and smiled, without knowing why, at

the empty compliments of a crowd of _petits-maîtres_, who, after the

fashion of the time, had rushed to pay her their condolences, and who

ransacked Dorat for their vapid homage. Each took the smile to himself

and redoubled his insipid gallantries. But Nanette was too much in love,

if she had not been too clever, to heed them. So she contented herself

and them by smiling.

At heart she was happy, in spite of the prince’s neglect. At least he

would not marry; so much was secure. But the future: might he not have

surprised her secret—she blushed as she thought it—and would he seek to

abuse his power? No, she felt he was too noble for that, and, come what

might, she would enjoy the present hour, the happiest she had known. So

in vague, delicious hopes, and doubts not less delicious; in fluttering

fears and half-formed, undefined resolves; in pain that seemed to be

pleasure and pleasure whose sweetest element was pain—all the exquisite

_mélange_ of confused and dreamy emotions which take possession of a

young and innocent heart so soon as it has fairly admitted to itself it

loves—Nanette awaited her prince. She knew he would come; her heart told

her so. And she was not deceived.

Early the next day he was announced. She essayed to rise as he entered,

but sank back into her chair, half from weakness, half from agitation,

murmuring incoherent excuses for her awkwardness. In an instant the

prince was at her feet.

“Ah!” he cried, “I have found you out at last, my good cousin. But I am

not come to return you your benefactions; only to beseech you to make it

possible for me to keep them by adding to them a still more precious

boon.”

“And that is—?”

“This fair, kind hand. Ah darling! you cannot refuse it me when you have

already given me your heart.”

In sacrificing his name to this obscure young girl the prince was no

doubt conscious of doing a noble and magnanimous act. And so it was—how

noble, can only be realized by those who know the measureless distance

which, in the days of Louis XV., divided the nobility from the people,

or the insolent disdain with which the former looked down on the

latter—a disdain commemorated to this day in the use of the word

_peuple_ to indicate a vulgar fellow. But if he thought to conquer

Nanette in generosity, he was mistaken. The flower-girl, after a

moment’s reflection, begged her lover to give her till to-morrow to

answer. He consented reluctantly, but not doubting the result. Who could

have looked in the eighteenth century to see a fish-monger's daughter

refuse the hand of a French prince?

De Courtenaye arose the next morning satisfied with himself and with the

world, and more in love than ever. He longed impatiently for the message

which should summon him to the feet of his adored mistress to receive

the seal of his happiness. At last, after, it seemed to his eagerness,

an age of waiting, his servant brought him a letter. He glanced at the

superscription; it was in the well-known hand. He pressed the dear

characters to his lips and tore the missive open with trembling fingers.

This is what he read:

“Love blinds you. A marriage with me would dishonor you. You love me

too well for me to refuse you the most convincing proof of my love.

I give you up, and I give up life for you. When you read this the

flower-girl Nanette will have quitted the world for ever. Do not

scruple to keep the money you have received, in your aunt’s name; it

is yours by right. A kinsman, who accomplished your father’s ruin,

simply made me the instrument of his tardy atonement. I leave to my

family a fortune ample for their wants. Adieu! Think of me sometimes

in the cloister, wherein I take refuge from my heart, and where I

shall never cease to pray for you.”

So ends the history of Nanette Lollier. The Archbishop of Paris in

person, it is said, conducted her to the convent of her choice, and the

Palais Royal went into mourning. The prince was almost wild with grief;

but his prayers, his supplications, his almost frenzied entreaties,

could not shake Nanette’s resolve. He never married. The allusion in the

flower-girl’s letter recalled to him certain rumors current at the time

of his father’s death; but, as our chronicler shrewdly surmises, the

story of the kinsman was simply a device of Nanette’s affection to

disarm her lover’s pride.

This is the romance of Nanette, the flower-girl of the Palais Royal, as

it is recorded in a chronicle of the time. In the foul and fetid annals

of that most polluted reign, barren alike of manly honor and womanly

virtue, it comes to us like a jewel we lift from the mire, or a

fresh-blown rose we rescue from the kennel. Let us not ask if it be

true. Stories of disinterested love, of magnanimity and devotion, let us

rather accept as always true, saving our incredulity for narratives of

another sort. For our own part we had rather believe Tiberius to be a

myth than that Cordelia is a fiction; that Nero never fiddled in his

life than that Henry Esmond never put his birthright in the fire to

spare his benefactress pain.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

CLASSIC LITERATURE, PRINCIPALLY SANSKRIT, GREEK, AND ROMAN. With

some account of the Persian, Chinese, and Japanese in the Form of

Sketches of the Authors and Specimens from Translations of their

Works. By C. A. White, author of _The Student’s Mythology_. New

York: Henry Holt & Co. 1877.

We find on p. 12 of this new _Hand-book of Classic Literature_, as it is

entitled on the back, among the “most commendable maxims” of the

_Pancha-Trantra_—a work on morals composed by Hindoo sages—the

following: “As long as a person remains silent he is honored; but as

soon as he opens his mouth men sit in judgment upon his capacity.” The

young people who will make use of this book, which is principally

intended for their benefit and pleasure, must be the final judges of the

capacity of its author to make classic literature intelligible and

interesting to their minds. The author appears to understand them, and

to have acquired that experience and skill in adapting instruction to

the juvenile mind, by practical familiarity with young students in the

class-room, which is almost necessary to ensure success in preparing a

good text-book. The _Hand-book of Classic Literature_ is not intended as

a manual for lessons and recitations. It is not exclusively intended for

those who study Latin or Greek; and we are not aware of any considerable

number of young people who are studying Sanskrit, Persian, or Chinese,

so that evidently no such class of pupils could have been in the eye of

the author. In fact, the aim of the author is to give some general

notion of the ancient authors and their principal works, and some fine

specimens of the best translations which have been made into English, to

those who do not study the ancient languages at all, or at most learn

only the rudiments of one or two of them. Three-fourths of the volume

are devoted to the Greek and Latin classics. The remaining eighty pages

are divided between the Sanskrit, Persian, and Chinese, with a brief

notice of the Japanese. The most elaborate and valuable portion of the

work is that devoted to Greek literature. The author has made use of the

best critical works and selected a large number of the most excellent

translations. So much learning, pains, skill in faithful and idiomatic

rendering, and even poetic genius, have been expended by English

scholars in translating the Greek classics that any reader of

intelligence and taste may understand and enjoy to a very great extent

these ancient masterpieces without learning a word of Greek. We notice

as particularly discriminating and just the criticisms of the author on

the three great tragedians. Specimens of several different authors who

have translated Homer are presented, and a number of extracts from

Aristophanes and others of the generally less known poets. There must be

many whose curiosity will be excited by these choice morsels to read the

entire translated works themselves. Next in interest to the sketches and

translations from the Greek are those from the Sanskrit and Persian, on

account both of the novelty of the subject-matter to the generality of

readers, and also the intrinsic beauty of the selected passages. The

author writes enthusiastically about Zoroaster, and we think with great

justice. The song of the tea-pickers, from the Chinese, pleases us

extremely, and is one of the prettiest and most touching of the minor

pieces in the volume. The author has shown remarkable judgment and good

taste in making this compilation, and writes in all that part of it

which is of original composition in a style of peculiar accuracy and

felicity of diction. The strict and conscientious regard in which the

old saying _Maxima reverentia debetur pueris_ has been kept throughout

is an example for all those who write for the young. There is nothing

which can endanger the faith or damage the moral delicacy of the young

Christian pupil in all this volume filled up with the literature of

heathen nations. On the contrary, its effect is salutary, and shows

beautifully not only the great obscurity in which those gifted pagans

lay from the want of a clear revelation of truth, but also that the

human mind everywhere, in all times, naturally Christian, longs for the

light.

The mechanical execution of the _Classical Hand-book_ is remarkable for

beauty and accuracy. We have noticed only two or three typographical

faults in the whole volume. It is a most attractive book to take up and

read. We have said that it is not properly a class-book. It is a

reading-book for higher pupils, and a companion for lectures, suitable

for reference or use in class-readings. We recommend it most cordially

to all higher schools, especially academies for young ladies, and others

where classical studies are not made one of the chief branches of

instruction. The great number of choice and elegant extracts from the

best writers, many of which are unfamiliar, as well as the historical

notices and criticisms, make this book equally suitable for use in

families and literary circles, especially for reading aloud, as for

schools. We wish for the author the best reward which can be bestowed on

one who is devoted to the culture of young pupils—the love and gratitude

of their generous, affectionate hearts.

THE CRADLE OF THE CHRIST: a Study in Primitive Christianity. By

Octavius Brooks Frothingham. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1877.

The author of this volume is one of the representative men of the left

section of Unitarianism in this country. He is distinguished by a clear

style, a finely-cultivated imagination, and his writings are

characterized by a pervading placidity which is only occasionally

ruffled by a mocking scepticism that suggests the too close proximity of

Dr. Faust’s intimate friend.

The volume abounds in sweeping assertions, slovenly-expressed ideas, and

lacks throughout the cement of a sound logic. It fosters on Cardinal

Wiseman and Dr. Newman opinions which can only be accounted for on the

supposition of the author’s inaccurate scholarship or his contempt for

the intelligence of his readers. (See preface, page 5.) Among other

things, he informs his readers that “it has been customary with

Christians to widen as much as possible the gulf between the Old and the

New Testaments, in order that Christianity might appear in the light of

a fresh and transcendent revelation, supplementing the ancient, but

supplanting it” (page 10). The custom of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and

Catholic theologians generally is precisely the contrary. There is a

remarkable book by a Catholic on this very point, published in our own

day, entitled _De l’Harmonie entre l’Eglise et la Synagogue_, par Le

Chevalier P. L. B. Drach, a converted rabbi. The rabbi, in his two

volumes, aims at showing that a Jew, in becoming a Catholic, does not

deny or change his religion, but follows out, completes, and perfects

it. The Jewish Church and the Catholic Church are identically one, and

the former is to the latter as the bud to the full-blown flower.

With a criticism that kills beforehand the life it would dissect, Mr. O.

B. Frothingham ends by coolly telling his readers that Christianity is

extinct. And with a self-satisfied air he naïvely exhorts them, by the

efforts of their imagination, to build up a new and superior religion to

Christianity. His readers will, we opine, politely decline this task,

and leave to him who had the genius to conceive the idea its

accomplishment. What a pity he did not tell them what he means by the

imaginative faculty! For if in this, as in other things, he follows his

foreign masters, we have no reason to expect as the result of its

exercise in this direction, other than an additional illusion to the

long list of religious vagaries given to the world, from Simon Magus

down to Joe Smith and the Fox girls.

A scholar who has read the volume describes its contents as

“theological, philosophical, and speculative old shreds picked up in

German and French tailor-shops and cunningly sewed together in the shape

of a cloak by a 'cute’ Yankee apprentice, in order to cover the nudity

of the latest form of the unbelief of New England.”

The book before us shows no mean literary skill, but contains nothing

original in the way of thought or erudition, not even an original error,

though its errors are many more than the number of its pages.

THE PROBLEM OF PROBLEMS, AND ITS VARIOUS SOLUTIONS; OR, ATHEISM,

DARWINISM, AND THEISM. By Clark Braden, President of Abingdon

College, Ill. 8vo. pp. 480. Cincinnati: Chase & Hall. 1877.

Recent scientific research has at last put the orthodox world on its

mettle and elicited expressions of opinion from all shades of believers.

Coquetting with dangerous premises, even in the guise of science,

toleration of views implicitly or indirectly infidel, and a general

disposition to compromise, are not indicative of a healthy tone in any

organization avowedly Christian. Yet such tendencies have for a long

time characterized the relation of the various Protestant sects towards

scientism, and one of the greatest outcries raised against the Syllabus

proceeded from its alleged intolerance of, and general hostility to,

unhampered scientific inquiry. But coaxing and cajoling, and a

concurrent cry against the stupidity of Catholics, had no weight with

Messrs. Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, and Draper, who went on just as ever

dealing their blows against revelation and all positive forms of belief,

as though his Lordship of Canterbury were a myth and his faith a sham.

At length consistency compelled the representative men of the various

denominations to resist the further encroachments of an irreligious

philosophy, and they are beginning to do so with the bitter

consciousness that they were the very ones who most ridiculed the

sagacity of the Holy Father when he censured the tone and tendency of

modern scientism. But it is better late than never; and if the gentlemen

who, from Princeton to Abingdon, feel themselves called upon to do the

work will only graciously allow that they are eleventh-hour workers, we

will find no fault with their intention, but confine ourselves to a

criticism of its execution.

The _Problem of Problems_ is the latest addition to the

religio-scientific controversy, and it is entitled to serious

consideration because of the earnestness of the author and the elaborate

character of the work. This elaborateness is, however, more apparent

than real, and consists in a measure of diluted thought and diffuse

expression. Whether it is unfortunately a peculiarity of Western authors

to strip a thought entirely bare and leave nothing to suggestion, as the

charge is made, we are not prepared to say, but certain it is that Mr.

Clark Braden has gone far towards justifying such a suspicion. He is not

satisfied with a placid presentment of his own views, nor with a brief

arraignment of what he deems to be the errors of others, but he must

reiterate, emphasize, and in general lash himself into a state of

incandescence not at all needful for his purpose. Dignified opposition,

even if a little tame, is somewhat more congenial to the frigid tastes

of persons living east of the Alleghenies than those fervid utterances

which mistake sound for sense. This, however, is an error of form which

does not necessarily militate against the intrinsic value of the work,

nor do we think that an allusion to it is likely to discompose the

learned author; for in a little prologue, addressed to “Reviewers and

Critics,” he courts and solicits dispassionate and impartial criticism.

In addition he requests that all publishers send him a copy of what

their _imprimatur_ has allowed critics to say concerning his book. We

presume this is right; but when the request comes coupled with the

condition that every one undertaking to comment on his work must not do

so before having read it from cover to cover, we fear that it will not

always be faithfully complied with, or that he will have to read some

pages in which gall and wormwood abound more than the milk of human

kindness. The reason of this we have hinted at. The book is prolix and

repeats to a fault. Many excellent thoughts are covered up in a mass of

verbiage which emasculates and obscures them. We wish the author had the

academic fitness to cope with his antagonists—whose culture has made

their productions marvels of composition and terribly enhanced their

influence for evil. We are sorry that this charge should be the main one

to prefer against a book which was prompted by the best of motives and

which really exhibits rare evidences of argumentative power. Take even

the opening sentence, and we find ourselves face to face with a flagrant

grammatical inaccuracy: “One of the wise utterances of one whom his

contemporaries declared spoke as never man spoke was, that no wise man,

etc.” Here, apart from the slovenly repetition of “one” we find no

subject for the first “spoke,” unless it be “whom,” and that is in the

objective case. Similar mistakes occur throughout, and give painful

evidence that Mr. Braden began his scientific investigations before he

had made himself familiar with Blair or Lord Kames. We would, in

connection with this same matter of style, suggest that the too frequent

use of interrogation not only mars the beauty of a page, but has an

inevitable tendency to wearisome diffuseness. Lest, however, we may be

suspected of harshness towards the author, we select a passage at

random, that the reader may judge for himself how little Mr. Braden is

acquainted with the quality of a good style. On page 171 he says: “We

have no horses on the pampas of the New World, _although they existed as

the most adapted to horses of any portion of the globe for ages_, and

there were _equine types in the New World for several geologic epochs_.

Multitudes of cases might be given where man has carried animals into

places where they did not exist and they flourished, and even improved,

thus showing that the conditions were especially fitted for them, yet

had not produced them, although they had existed for vast ages. Hence

conditions have failed to evolve what was especially fitted to them, and

just what they would produce, did they produce anything.” We submit that

these sentences are not only clumsy in construction, but are positively

ungrammatical, and no one who undertakes the guidance of others along

the thorny paths of scientific research has a right to tax the general

patience with slipshod composition of this kind. Such examples as those

given are not isolated, but disfigure nearly every page. On page 87 we

find the following; “There was at first use of bodily organs in

appropriating food and slaying for food animals, and the use of

spontaneous productions of the earth, like animals.”

So much for the form of the book. The matter is indeed better, though

necessarily much impaired by the many faults of style. In consideration

of fair play towards the author we will not accept his own standard of

judgment while passing an opinion on his book; for we would then have

either to mistrust our own intelligence entirely or to utter unqualified

censure of all that he has written. In his appeal to “Reviewers and

Critics” he says: “If there is censure or condemnation of what is

written, let it be only after the critic understands what he condemns,

and _because he understands it_.” Now, we do not propose to condemn any

portion of the book _because we understand it_; for we freely confess

that there is much valuable thought to be found in its pages, and the

author gives proof of having a good logical mind, not hampered, indeed,

by the subtleties of _Port Royal_ or the _Grammar of Assent_, but sturdy

and vigorous, with a Western breadth and freedom. We have not space to

give even an outline of the plan Mr. Braden has mapped out for himself.

Method is an important feature of a scientific and argumentative work,

and, when judiciously adopted, goes far to promote the purpose of the

author.

Clearness, natural development, logical sequence of thought, and ready

conviction are the results of a suitable method, while confusion,

weariness, and dissatisfaction follow from a neglect thereof. Mr.

Braden’s lack of method will do much in the way of injuriously

interfering with the effect of his book. Divisions and subdivisions

without number, irrespective of reason, may swell the dimensions of a

work, but do not certainly contribute to the satisfaction of the reader.

If all Mr. Braden has written in the present volume were presented in a

more orderly and attractive manner his book would be a valuable

contribution to polemics, but the faults we have indicated will

constantly militate against its usefulness.

In the Appendix both Draper and Huxley come in for a share of censure,

but while the author utterly fails to make a point against Draper, he so

overloads with irrelevant matter his review of Huxley’s three lectures,

delivered in this city, that the reader rises from the perusal of it

with a tired memory and a dissatisfied mind.

THE CHILDHOOD OF THE ENGLISH NATION; or, The Beginnings of English

History. By Ella S. Armitage. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1877.

The authoress of this “little” book tells us, in her preface, that when

she began to write it “no _short and simple_ history of England had

appeared _which made any attempt to give unlearned people an insight

below the surface of bare facts_,” but that “since then numerous works

of the kind have appeared.” Yes, indeed, too numerous; yet, as far as we

know, not one of them so pretentious as this. With a very readable style

and a great show of erudition (an appalling “list of authorities” is

appended to her volume) she sets up for “an interpreter to those who

have no knowledge of history,” taking for her theme what she is pleased

to call the “childhood of the English nation”—by which she means the

history of England “till the end of the twelfth century.” Of course,

therefore, she has to deal largely with the work and influence of the

Catholic Church. Now, when those who are not Catholic undertake to

expound a philosophy to which they have not the key—to wit, the

philosophy of any part of history with which Catholic faith has been

concerned—we can pardon their mistakes, provided they evince that

humility which is the mark of fair-mindedness. But, if this condition be

wanting, we can only regard their attempt as a piece of insufferable

impertinence; their very concessions to our cause—a trick quite

fashionable of late—but making them the less excusable.

Here, then, lies our quarrel with the writer of this book. She goes out

of her way to theorize on matters she does not understand, instead of

confining herself to “bare facts.” For example, after acknowledging (p.

19) that “there is no saying how long the English might not have

remained heathen if Pope Gregory I., in the year 597, had not sent

missionaries to bring them to the faith of Christ,” she must needs

endeavor to account for the Papacy as follows:

“Gregory was Pope or Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604. In his time the

popes of Rome had not yet risen to the position of universal bishops and

supreme heads of the church, though they were tending towards it. All

men were agreed that there must be one, and only one, visible, united

church, but all had not yet made up their minds that the Bishop of Rome

was to be the head of that church. The church of the Welsh, for example,

and that of Ireland (!), owed no obedience to Rome. The pope himself did

not dare to call himself universal bishop: 'Whosoever calls himself so

is Antichrist,’ said Gregory I. Still, it was natural that Rome, which

had been the ruling city of the one universal empire, the queen of the

West, should be the chief centre of the one universal church, and that

the Bishop of Rome should become the head of the church, and all other

bishops should bow to his authority. This was what did come to pass in

time, but at the time of which I am now speaking it seemed very

uncertain; for things had sadly changed with Rome. She had no emperor

now; the emperor was at Constantinople; Italy was invaded by barbarians,

Rome herself was scourged by plague and famine. The Bishop of

Constantinople tried to set himself up as Universal Bishop and Head of

the Church; and that the popes afterwards won the day in this struggle

was largely due to the great influence which Pope Gregory I. gained by

his wisdom and his powerful character.”

The cluster of absurdities contained in this passage would be “matter

for a flying smile,” were it not that the ignorance displayed looks too

much like perverted knowledge. Can the lady have really failed to

perceive the transparent nonsense of supposing that such a power as the

Papacy originated in people making up their minds that the church ought

to have a visible head, and that the Bishop of Rome was the right man

because, forsooth, Rome _had been_ the seat of empire? If, again, she

knows what St. Gregory said to the ambitious John of Constantinople, why

does she not quote a few more of his remarks? “_The care of the whole

church_,” said he, “_was committed to Peter; yet he is not called

'Universal Apostle_.’” “_Who does not know that his see_ (of

Constantinople) _is subject to the Apostolic See_ (of Rome)?” St.

Gregory, like his predecessor St. Pelagius, refused the title of

Œcumenical Patriarch, or Universal Bishop, for himself out of humility;

how, then, could he tolerate the assumption of it by a bishop who did

_not_ sit in Peter’s chair?

But we need not cite this book further to show that it is valueless in

Catholic eyes.

DR. JOSEPH SALZMANN’S LEBEN UND WIRKEN DARGESTELLT VON JOSEPH

RAINER, PRIESTER DER ERZDIÖCESE MILWAUKEE, PROFESSOR AM

PRIESTERSEMINAR SALESIANUM. St. Louis: Herder.

The Salesianum is an ecclesiastical seminary near Milwaukee which enjoys

a very high reputation for the learning of its professors, the solidity

of its course of studies, and the strictness of its discipline. Near it

there is a Normal College for the training of school-teachers, and

another college for the intermediate education of boys. The man who was

the principal founder of these excellent institutions was the Very Rev.

Joseph Salzmann, D.D., an Austrian priest, who came to Wisconsin as a

missionary thirty years ago and finished his earthly course in January,

1874, honored and regretted throughout the United States. The venerable

Archbishop of Milwaukee first conceived the idea of founding a seminary

to educate priests for the Northwest more than thirty years ago, while

praying at the tomb of St. Francis de Sales, and this is the reason of

the name Salesianum by which the seminary was christened. The first

rector was the present learned Bishop of La Crosse, Dr. Heiss. Dr.

Salzmann succeeded him in office in 1868. The Rev. Professor Rainer, in

the little volume before us, gives an interesting account of the whole

life of Dr. Salzmann, but especially of his great and arduous work of

founding and establishing the Salesianum, which we may truly call a

heroic achievement. He was a thoroughly learned and accomplished

scholar, a man of sacerdotal dignity and personal attractiveness, an

eloquent preacher, with fair and seductive prospects before him in his

own beautiful Catholic land. He was well fitted to adorn those positions

in the church which are surrounded with the most outward _éclat_, and

give the opportunity of enjoying all the ease, comfort, and pleasure in

literary pursuits and quiet seclusion which are lawful and honorable in

the priesthood. Nevertheless, he chose the life of a Western missionary,

and devoted the greater part of his time and energies, not to the

intellectual and attractive employments of preaching and instruction in

the sciences, but to that most repugnant and arduous work of collecting

money and looking after the drudgery of building, providing, caring for

the material wants of new, poor, struggling institutions. It is not

possible for any who have not been brought up in some one of the old

Catholic countries of Europe to estimate the sacrifice made by young men

of refined character and education, and strong love of home and country,

when they devote themselves to missionary labor in a new country, and to

its hardest, most repulsive departments. There are special difficulties

and hardships to be encountered by those who work among our German

population. When they are bad or indifferent Catholics, they are the

most obstinate and unmanageable people with whom a priest can have to

deal, and very difficult to reclaim. Apostate and infidel Germans have a

brutality in their hatred to the Catholic Church and all religion which

is extremely odious and cannot be fully appreciated by one who has not

come into personal contact with that class, whose only god is beer and

whose church is the lager-beer saloon. _Zur Hölle_ is the appropriate

motto we have seen over one of these dens in New York. When thoroughly

imbued with the Catholic spirit, the German people are admirable. The

wonderful work of Christian civilization wrought out among them in past

ages is known to all readers of true history. Dr. Salzmann, and others

like him, are worthy successors of the apostolic men whose names are

recorded in the history of the church. They are the men who carry on the

true Cultur-Kampf in the vast realms of our Western territory. Their

acts are worthy to be classed with those so charmingly related in _The

Monks of the West_ and _Christian Schools and Scholars_. A keen Western

speculator said that “a bishop was worth as much as a railroad to a

Western town.” All that is wanted to repeat in the immense regions of

our new States and Territories the creation and development of great

civilized and Christian communities is the virile force, the manhood, of

those early times. Land and material resources exist in prodigal

abundance. It is men that are wanted—masses of people with strength and

spirit to abandon our crowded cities and old States and colonize new

domains, and men with the ability and virtue of leaders, guides,

founders, instructors, legislators, rulers, and benefactors. We trust

that the modest recital of the life of one generous young priest who

left his charming Austrian home to engage in this work may find its way

among the educated young men and young ecclesiastics of Germany. There

is work here for some among the hundreds of such young men, full of

vigorous health, full of intellectual vigor, full of sound learning, who

are at a loss to find a sufficient sphere for their activity in their

own country.