We searched a long time in vain for the tomb of Sannazzaro. Chapels,

flagstones, and mural inscriptions, all underwent a severe scrutiny;

and, supposing it must have been destroyed in some political convulsion,

when even death itself is not respected, we were on the point of leaving

the church when it occurred to us to go behind the high altar. We found

there a door which we made bold to enter, remembering how often we had

been repaid for exploring sacristies and odd nooks. There was the tomb

directly before us, in the smallest of choirs in which ever monk lost

his voice “with singing of anthems.” It is the most quiet, secluded spot

in the world—dim, frescoed, and crowded with a dozen stalls, on which

cherubs’ heads are carved. It is more like a little chantry than a

choir, and nothing ever breaks the silence but the voice of holy

psalmody. The poet’s tomb is of white marble, chiefly sculptured by Fra

Giovanni da Montorsoli. It is surmounted by his bust crowned with

laurel. The face is somewhat haggard, but the features are noble. He

wears a cap like that we see in pictures of Dante. Beside him are two

_putti_, one with a book and the other bearing a helmet, in allusion to

the different ways in which Sannazzaro distinguished himself. The

sarcophagus beneath rests on an entablature, below which, in delicate

relief, are Neptune and his trident—doubtless in allusion to the

_Piscatoriæ_—and Pan with his reeds, accompanied by fauns and satyrs,

with jovial faces and shaggy sides, as if to sing the praises of the

author of the _Arcadia_. Along the base of the monument is an

inscription by Bembo, which shows he believed Virgil to have been buried

at Naples:

“Da sacro cineri flores: hic ille Maroni

Syncerus musa proximus ut tumulo.”[83]

Footnote 83:

Strew this sacred tomb with flowers. Here, near Virgil, lies Syncerus,

his brother in the Muses.

At the sides are fine statues of Apollo and Minerva by Santa-croce.

Iacopo Sannazzaro, the inspired poet of the Virgin, was born at Naples

in 1458. He sprang from an illustrious family of Spanish origin that had

fallen from its former grandeur, but was left not without considerable

means. His mother, on becoming a widow, withdrew into the country in

order to bring him up in retirement, uncontaminated by the world; but he

soon displayed such uncommon abilities that she was persuaded to return

to Naples and there watch over his education. It is said he showed a

talent for poetry at eight years of age; but it must be remembered he

belonged to a land where poesy is like the flowers that spring up

spontaneously from the soil at every season. Of course his education was

chiefly classical; for he belonged to an age when Greek and Latin

literature was regarded as the standard of excellence, and the very

mysteries of religion were sung in the measure of Homer and Virgil. When

of sufficient age he chose as his master Giovanni Pontano, called “the

Trojan Horse” on account of the great number of illustrious poets,

orators, and warriors that sprang from his school. Pontano was then

director of the celebrated Accademia Napolitana, in which he figured as

grammarian, philosopher, historian, orator, and poet. He was the

literary autocrat of Naples,

“Whose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate.”

He was regarded as the favorite of Apollo and the Aonides, and from his

lips was said to flow a river of gold:

“Quel bel tesoro

D’Apollo e delle Aonide sorelle,

Che con la lingua sparge un fiume d’oro.”

His astronomical discoveries were announced in Latin verse. It is said

he was the first in modern times to revive the idea of Democritus that

the Milky Way is composed of myriads of stars.

Sannazzaro succeeded his master at the Academy of Naples, which at that

time held its meetings at Pontano’s residence, near which was the

Cappella Pontaniana—a gem of art, erected by Pontano in honor of the

Virgin and the two St. Johns. Here were set up the wise maxims of the

founder, graven on stone, which we translate from the original Latin:

“It is noble but difficult to restrain one’s self in opulence.

“He who never forgets injuries forgets that he is man.

“Whatever thy fortune, be mindful of Fortune herself.

“Integrity promotes confidence, and confidence friendship.

“He who decides too hastily on doubtful occasions repents too late,

though he repent quickly.

“It is in vain the law cannot reach him whose conscience absolves him

not.

“The sky is not always serene, nor does prudence always ensure safety.

“In every condition of life the chief thing is to know thyself.

“It belongs to the upright to despise the injuries of the wicked, whose

praises even are a disgrace.

“Let us bear the penalty of our faults rather than the state should

expiate them to its injury.

“Content not thyself with being upright, but find others who resemble

thee to serve thy country.

“It is by boldness and conquest a kingdom is enlarged, and not by those

counsels that seem to the timid full of wisdom and prudence.”

Such were the maxims instilled into Sannazzaro’s youthful mind. They

have a flavor of antiquity. The Academy of Naples still exists, but

holds its meetings in the cell of St. Thomas Aquinas at San Domenico’s,

where royalty itself used to attend the lectures of the Angelic Doctor.

In the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples—where Tasso found shelter—there

is a striking group of figures in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre,

gathered in sorrowful attitudes around the dead Christ—all life-size

likenesses of celebrities in the time of the artist, Modanin of Modena.

Sannazzaro is represented as Joseph of Arimathea; Pontano as Nicodemus;

Alfonso II. as St. John, with his son Ferdinand beside him.

Sannazzaro has celebrated a young Neapolitan girl in classical measure,

under the Greek names of Amarante, Phyllis, and Charmosyne, which

signify joy, love, and the immortal; but he veiled his passion, if it

was one, under mythological allusions. He took as his device an urn of

black pebbles, among which was a single white one with the motto,

_Æquabit nigras candida sola dies_, as if in time he hoped to please his

lady. But she died young, and he bewailed her in suitable elegies. In

spite of this somewhat fantastic attachment—perhaps only a poetic

fancy—it is sure Sannazzaro was all his life rather a votary of Diana

than of Venus, as became one destined to sing the praises of the

Purissima.

Admitted to familiarity with Frederick of Aragon, son of King Ferdinand

of Naples, Sannazzaro was appointed director of the royal festivities,

and in this capacity composed dramas in the language of the _lazzaroni_

for the amusement of the court. These soon became as popular in the

streets as in the palace, and were the germs of the modern Italian

comedy, which finds its broadest expression in Pulcinella’s farces at

San Carlino. One of these plays is spoken of with particular admiration,

composed in 1492 to celebrate the conquest of Granada, and acted at the

Castello Capuano in presence of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.

Sannazzaro became so attached to his royal patron that he accompanied

him in an expedition against the Turks, where he acquired the reputation

of a courageous soldier. And when the prince was deprived of the throne

to which he had succeeded, and retired to France, the poet, more

faithful in misfortune than Pontano to Frederick I., generously sold two

paternal estates to provide for his sovereign’s wants, and accompanied

him into exile. It was in the following lines he bade adieu to Naples,

which to leave is a kind of death:

“Parthenope, mihi culta; vale, blandissima siren,

Atque horti valeant, Hesperidesque tuæ;

Mergellina, vale, nostri momor; et mea flentis

Serta cape, heu domini numera avara tui;

Maternæ salvete umbræ, salvete paternæ.”[84]

Footnote 84:

Farewell, adored Parthenope; sweet siren, farewell! Farewell,

enchanted gardens of the Hesperides! Farewell, Mergellina, be mindful

of me; accept these tears of regret from the master who has naught

else to offer thee! Farewell, shade of my mother; my father’s shade,

farewell!

Sannazzaro remained with Frederick III. till his death at Tours, and

then returned to Naples, where he devoted himself wholly to literature.

The _Arcadia_, which he finished in France, was published in 1504. This

is a romance of mingled prose and verse after the manner of Boccaccio’s

_Ameto_. It caused a great sensation in Italy, and is still regarded as

one of the happiest inspirations of the Italian muse. His pleasant villa

on the Mergellina had been respected during his exile, and here he

established himself at his return. It became a rendezvous for all the

literary men of the city. On Thursdays in particular, when the scholars

and barristers had a holiday, all that was brilliant at Naples assembled

here for a frugal repast, at which poems and epigrams were recited.

Sannazzaro was very popular, and to be his friend was regarded as a

_brevet_ of immortality.

“Dipinto io sia nell’opre eterne e belle

Del mio bel Sannazzaro, vero Sincero,

Ch’allora io giugnero fino alle stelle,”[85]

Footnote 85:

Let me be depicted in the immortal works of my glorious Sannazzaro, so

worthy of the name of Sincerus, and I shall be exalted to the very

stars.

wrote Cariteo. Sannazzaro, it should be remarked, had, after the fashion

of the time, taken the more classical name of Actius Syncerus, to which

allusion is made on his tomb.

But the greatest festival of the year on the Mergellina was the birthday

of Virgil, for whom Sannazzaro had a kind of passion. He celebrated this

anniversary—perhaps in imitation of Silius Italicus, who offered an

annual sacrifice to the manes of the bard of Mantua—by a banquet, to

which he invited his most intimate friends, such as “Alessandro, the

jurisconsult, whose works, so long popular, furnish curious details

respecting the public and private life of the Romans; Cariteo, who sang

in his heterodox style the human soul formed by the Creator, from which

nothing is concealed in heaven before it assumes its earthly veil, but

which, coming below, as if fallen from some star into a human body, no

longer retains any memory of the past; Andrea Acquaviva, who dismounted

from his war-horse to take the lyre and drink from the fount of

Hippocrene; Girolamo Carbone, who preferred the Tuscan language to the

Latin, then so popular, and whose rhythm is a kind of music to the ear;

and, finally, Pontano, the master of Sannazzaro, the restorer of the

Neapolitan academy founded by Panormita.”[86] These repasts were served

by Hiempsal, a young African slave whom Sannazzaro had freed and taught

to sing the elegies of Tibullus to an air he himself had composed. It

was after one of these Virgilian feasts the poet went to hear Egidio, an

Augustinian monk, preach. He was as celebrated for his eloquence as his

learning, and was a favorite of two popes, one of whom (Leo X.)

afterwards made him cardinal. Egidio, in declaiming with his usual

animation against the vices of the time, made a happy citation from

Virgil, which delighted his hearer and led to a friendship between them.

It was this or some other sermon of his that suggested to Sannazzaro the

idea of his great poem, _De Partu Virginis_, to which he devoted twenty

years of his life—a poem of which Mr. Hallam says “it would be difficult

to find its equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification.”

Pope Leo. X., who appreciated genius in whatever way it found

expression, whether by pen, chisel, or pencil, sent the poet a brief in

1521 to encourage him in singing the mysteries of the Christian faith,

and to express his satisfaction that, at a time when the voice of a monk

was troubling the peace of the church, the Catholic faith should find a

defender among the laity—another David, as it were, to smite the new

Goliath and appease with his lyre another Saul; and he declared the poem

an honor to religion and to his pontificate. Clement VII. also wrote him

a brief, accepting the dedication, which alone, he said, was enough to

immortalize the pontiff thus honored.

Footnote 86:

Audin.

The _De Partu Virginis_ is the most remarkable poem of the Renaissance,

and its publication was an event in the literary world. It was

everywhere eulogized, and the author was styled the Christian Virgil.

Egidio of Viterbo, after reading it, thus wrote to the author: “When I

received your divine poem, I eagerly hastened to make myself familiar

with its contents. God alone, whose inspiration suggested so wonderful a

creation, can reward you suitably—not by admitting you to the Elysian

Fields, the fabulous abode of Linus and Orpheus, but to a blessed

eternity.” This poem still merits attention, if for no other reason, at

least because of its effect on religious art in the sixteenth century—an

influence which has been compared to Dante’s. Mrs. Jameson says she can

trace it in all the contemporary productions of Italian art of all

schools from Milan to Naples. She regards this influence, however, as

perverse. But let us take a brief glance at a poem which has excited so

much admiration and criticism down to the present day.

The _De Partu Virginis_ is an epic poem, in which the birth of Christ is

sung with the harmonious flow, the variety of imagery, and the elevated

tone of Virgil. But, strange to say, none of the sacred characters

introduced are called by their real names—perhaps because unknown to the

Latin muse. Even the names of Jesus and Mary are expressed by Virgilian

paraphrases. The former is called _Divus Puer_ and _Numen sanctum_; the

latter _Alma parens_, _Dia_, and _Regina_. St. Joseph is the _Senior

Custos_; St. Elizabeth the _Matrona defessa ævo_; and the Supreme Being

is styled the _Regnator_, _Genitor superum_, etc. The author calls upon

the inhabitants of heaven (_cœlicolæ_) to reveal to his limited vision

the profound secrets of the mystery he is about to sing, and invokes the

sacred Aonides as the natural protectresses of virginal purity. “Dear

delight of poets,” says he, “ye sacred Muses who have never refused me

your favor, allow me once more to take a long draught at your clear

fount. Ye who derive your glorious origin from heaven, and have so

singular a regard for what is pure, aid me in singing of heavenly themes

and celebrating the glory of a Virgin. Drive away the darkness of my

mind and show me the way by which to rise to the highest summit of your

celestial mount. These lofty mysteries were not unknown to you. You must

have beheld the sacred grotto of the Nativity. You must have heard the

sweet music of the angels that surrounded it. And it is hardly credible

you did not admire the splendor of the star that led from the extremity

of the Orient three powerful princes to render homage to the new-born

Child.

“I have not herein the less need of thy aid, thou constant Hope of men

and gods, at once Maid and Mother! If I have taken delight every year in

adorning the walls of thy temple with festoons and garlands of flowers;

if, on this delicious cliff of the Mergellina, that seems from its proud

height to disdain the waves of the sea and promise safety to the boatmen

who hail it from afar, I have hewn out for thee altars of eternal

duration; if, following the footsteps of my ancestors, I have taken

pleasure in singing thy praises and celebrating thy honor with the

immense crowds of devout people who, with lively joy, hallow the for

ever memorable day of thy happy deliverance, guide my steps in these

unfrequented paths, give me the courage to accomplish what I have

undertaken, and abandon me not in a task at once so glorious and so

difficult.”

The poet goes on to relate how the _Regnator Superum_, seeing the human

race in danger of falling into Tartarus, a prey to the fury of

Tysiphone, wishes, as all this evil has been brought about by woman,

that by woman it should be repaired. He therefore despatches one of his

ministering spirits to announce to the purest of virgins the sublime

destiny that awaits her. The messenger finds her plunged in meditation

with the prophetic page of the Sibyl open before her, and, saluting her

with reverence, he makes known the advent of the _Numen sanctum_ who

would deliver mankind from the horrors of the Styx. Fame everywhere

publishes the tidings of this mysterious event. Hell itself is told of

it. The Eumenides tremble. Alecto, Cerberus, and all the monsters of

paganism shudder with fear. The souls of the Fathers—those genuine

heroes, as Sannazzaro, after St. Jerome, calls them—rejoice. David

himself repeats his prophetic Psalms, and sings the life of Christ, his

Passion, Death, and Descent into Limbo.

But it is the great Governor of the universe himself who reveals to the

inhabitants of heaven his designs of mercy towards mankind. And when the

time of the Nativity comes, he summons Joy (_Lætitia_) to his presence,

whose privilege it is to appease the anger of the Thunderer and diffuse

serenity over his face:

“Hæc magni motusque animosque Tonantis

Temperat et vultum discussâ nube serenat,”

and sends her to announce the glad tidings of the divine Birth. Putting

wings to her feet, she leaves heaven, guarded by the Hours, and proceeds

to earth, where she reveals the great event to the shepherds. Two of

them, Lycidas and Egon, recite a part of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil,

applying it to the new-born Child. The birth of Christ is related with

delicacy and poetic grace. There is a sublime energy worthy of Dante in

the lines that speak of the Incarnation, and the astonishment of nature

in view of the prodigy. Angels in the air celebrate it by sports and

combats in the style of Homer’s heroes, with the instruments of the

Passion for arms. Other angels, like Demodocus, sing the creation,

renovation of nature, the seasons, etc. The Jordan, leaning on its urn,

is moved to its depths, and relates to the Naiads gathered about him the

wonderful event on its shores. An angel comes to bathe the Child in its

waters. A dove hovers above. The water-nymphs bend around in veneration.

The Jordan, amazed, stays its current with respect, and recalls the

prophecy of old Proteus, that the time would come for it to be visited

by One who would raise the glory of the Jordan above the Ganges, the

Nile, or the Tiber. After which the river, wrapped in its mantle,

wonderfully wrought by the Naiads, returns majestically to its bed.

This is too brief an outline of the splendid crown Sannazzaro has woven

for the Blessed Virgin, set with so many antique gems. Many have been

shocked by the mingling of paganism and Christianity in this poem, but

to us it is as if the waters of the Permessus had been turned into the

Jordan. All these pagan deities and profane allusions that sprinkle its

pages seem to sing the triumph of Christianity. They are in harmony,

too, with the Virgilian region in which the poem was written, as well as

with the spirit of the age. There was such a passion for antiquity and

for Greek and Latin authors in the sixteenth century that even religion

and art put on a classic air. Nor was Leo X., to whom it has been made a

subject of reproach, the only dignitary of the church that has felt this

fascination. St. Jerome himself was called by the accusing spirit, _Non

Christianus, sed Ciceronianus_, and he used to fast before reading the

works of the great orator, so much did he fear their ascendency.

Virgil was especially dear to the middle ages on account of the

tenderness and melancholy of his noble nature and his strange

presentiment of the future. We all remember the famous passage: “The

last age of the Cumæan song now approaches; the great series of ages

begins again; now returns the Virgin (Astrea), now return the Saturnian

kingdoms; now a new progeny is sent from high heaven. Be propitious,

chaste Lucina, to the boy at his birth, through whom the iron age will

first cease, and the golden age dawn on the world.”

The learned at that time regarded Virgil as a prophet; and the people,

as a magician. It was common to have recourse to his writings, as well

as Homer’s and other authors, to obtain prognostics. But this was not

exclusively a mediæval superstition. It was in use before the Christian

era, and has not in these days wholly disappeared. The author of

Margaret Fuller’s life says: “She tried the _sortes biblicæ_, and her

hits were memorable. I think each new book which interested her she was

disposed to put to this test and know if it had somewhat personal to say

to her.” The church has condemned this practice, even by a similar use

of the Holy Scriptures.

Dante shared in the general passion for Virgil. He makes him his

guide—“My guide and master, thou”—through the lower realms; not in

Paradise, whence he is excluded,

“For no sin except for lack of faith.”

Petrarch, too, loved Virgil and planted a laurel—“the meed of poets

sage”—at his tomb, but it was long since done to death by the cruel

hands of tourists.

A touching sequence was long sung in the church of Mantua, in which St.

Paul is represented visiting the tomb of Virgil at Naples, and weeping

because he had come too late for him.

In the time of Sannazzaro, Plato was also in great repute. Every one

remembers the festival instituted in his honor by Lorenzo de’ Medici at

his villa on the side of Fiesole, in which Ficino, Politian, and all

that was brilliant in the intellectual world of Florence took part. The

bust of the divine Plato, presented by Jerome Roscio of Pistoja, was set

up at the end of a shady avenue and crowned with laurel, and, after a

grand repast, they all gathered around it and sang cantos in his honor.

Ficino even pretended to find in Plato’s writings the doctrines of the

Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist, etc. He used to address his audience as

“My brethren in Plato,” and he makes Christ, in his descent into Limbo,

snatch Plato from the jaws of hell to place him among the blessed in

Paradise. This reminds us of the great Erasmus, who says: “There are

many in the society of the saints who are not in the calendar. I am

every instant tempted to exclaim: _Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis_, and

to recommend myself to the Blessed Flaccus and Maro.”

Another of these academies that sought to revive the antique spirit was

that of Pomponio Leto at Rome, which has brought so many unmerited

reproaches on Pope Paul II. because it was for a time suppressed by him

for carrying its passion for antiquity to a pernicious degree. One

historian after another has declared him an enemy of the sciences on the

principle of their tending to heresy! Hallam, Roscoe, and Henri Martin

all echo the calumnies of Platina against this pope. M. de l’Epinois has

proved the falseness of this accusation. As if a pope, as he says, who

was all his life an amateur of ancient manuscripts, a numismatist of the

first class, and an able judge of painting and sculpture, who took

pleasure in doing himself the honors of his collections, and provided

liberally for the education of poor children that showed an aptitude for

study, was an enemy of science! Francesco Filelfo did not think so when

he thus wrote to Leonardo Dati: “What do not I and all learned men owe

to the great and immortal wisdom of Paul II.?”

As for the Academy of Pomponio Leto, there was a general conviction that

it was pagan and licentious in its tendency, if not in actual practice.

Canensius, in his life of Paul II., says explicitly: “The pope dissolved

a society of young men of corrupt morals, who affirmed that our orthodox

faith was not so much founded on the genuine basis of facts as on the

jugglery of the saints, and maintained that it was permissible for every

one to indulge in whatever pleasure he liked.” And the Chevalier de

Rossi, in the _Roma Sotteranea_, quotes the following passage from a

letter of Battista de Judicibus, Bishop of Ventimiglia, written to

Platina a short time after the affair in question: “Some call you more

pagan than Christian, and affirm that you follow pagan morals rather

than ours. Others circulate the report that Hercules is your deity.

Another says it is Mercury, a third that it is Jupiter, a fourth that it

is Apollo, Venus, or Diana. They say you are in the habit of calling

these gods and goddesses to witness, especially when in the company of

those who give themselves up to like superstitions—people whom you

associate more willingly with than others.” M. de Rossi has also found

several inscriptions which prove that a secret hierarchy was established

by this society, of which it is reasonable to suppose Pope Paul II. was

as aware as of their other anti-Christian practices. Additional

suspicion was excited by their secret meetings from the report at this

very time that a conspiracy was formed against the life of the Sovereign

Pontiff—the more readily credited because only nine years previously the

streets of Rome had been deluged with blood by an insurrection. However,

the pope, so far from being the _farouche_ and sanguinary ruler M.

Martin styles him, let off the academicians with a short confinement,

and in 1475 Pomponio and his companions were once more quietly pursuing

their studies, having profited by so beneficial a lesson. The academy

became more flourishing than ever, and counted among its members a great

number of bishops and prelates of the church.[87] Pope Leo X. himself,

before his elevation to the papacy, was in the habit of attending its

reunions. Archæology, poetry, and music all had a part in them, as well

as other sciences, and all these Leo X. sincerely loved. “I have always

loved letters,” wrote he to Henry VIII. “This love, innate in me, age

has only served to increase; for I have observed that those who

cultivate them are heartily attached to the dogmas of the faith, and are

the ornaments of the church.” Notwithstanding this love of literature,

especially ancient, Leo X. himself realized that too excessive an

application to such pursuits might be prejudicial to the spiritual life.

Though at Florence he participated in the general admiration for Plato,

after his elevation to the Papacy he recommended to the pupils of the

Roman College to give themselves up to serious studies, and renounce

Platonic philosophy and pagan poetry as tending to injure the soul. So

also St. Odo, Abbot of Cluny, was so fond of Virgil that it finally

became injurious to his spiritual interests, and, falling asleep one day

while reading one of his Eclogues, he saw in a dream a beautiful antique

vase full of serpents. He understood the allusion and gave up profane

reading.

Footnote 87:

See essay of M. de l’Epinois.

Sannazzaro’s poem, therefore, is only an expression of the tastes of his

age. It may also be considered in harmony with those of the primitive

church, which adorned the very walls of the Catacombs with pagan

symbols, and blazoned them in the mosaics of their churches. There we

find Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur, beside David slaying Goliath. The

Jordan is represented as a river-god leaning on an antique urn, his head

crowned with aquatic plants and his beard dripping with moisture; Cupids

flutter among the vines around the form of the Good Shepherd; and

Orpheus is made the emblem of our Saviour.

The _De Partu Virginis_ is like one of those beautiful Madonnas so often

met with in Italy, not seated in a humble chair at Nazareth, but robed

like a queen, occupying a throne covered with mythological subjects and

antique devices—an emblem of the church enthroned on the ruins of

paganism.

A BIRTH-DAY SONG.

TWENTY-ONE.

Bright summer sun, to-day

Mount with thy glancing spears, a cohort proud,

O’er cliff and peak, and chase each threatening cloud,

Each gathering mist, away.

Fair, fragrant summer flowers,

Lily and heliotrope and spicy fern,

Exhale your sweets from leaf and petaled urn

Through all the golden hours.

Thou deep-voiced western wind,

The stately arches of the forest fill,

Till oak and elm to thy _andante_ thrill

As mind replies to mind.

Take up the song and sing,

O summer birds! until the joyous strains

Ring through the hills, chant in the blooming plains,

Gurgle in brook and spring.

And thou, O river deep!

Send from the shore thy message calm and plain,

As, bearing ship and shallop to the main,

Thy mighty currents sweep.

Sing, while the golden gate

Swings open, and reveals the thronging hopes,

Wingèd and crowned, that crowd the flowery slopes

Of Manhood’s first estate.

Yet soft and low! The door

Is closing, as ye sing, on Childhood’s meads;

The garrulous trump of Youth’s heroic deeds

Is hushed for evermore;

And shining shapes, that blaze

Like loadstars, with occasion wait to lure

The dazzled soul o’er crag and fell and moor

From Wisdom’s peaceful ways.

Tell him, O sunshine bright!

How clouds of lust and mists of evil thought

By Chastity’s white beams are brought to naught

Through Virtue’s silent might.

Tell him, ye blossoms sweet,

How Charity divine her perfume rare

Exhales alike in pure or noxious air,

With holy love replete.

O brook and bird and spring!

Babble your simple sermon; say, Behold

Contentment, better far than gems or gold,

Or crown of sceptred king.

Tell him, thou deep-voiced wind,

How a brave, earnest spirit may awake

Responsive thought, till distant cycles take

Their orbits from his mind;

And thou, O river wide!

Tell how a steady purpose gathers strength

From singleness of aim, until at length

On its resistless tide

It bears both great and small

With equal, silent, comprehensive love

To that great sea whose calm no storm can move,

God’s grace o’er-arching all.

So may his spirit clear,

Untroubled by the scoff, the sneer, the sting

Of clashing creeds, find heaven a real thing,

And walk with seraphs here.

Thou great Triune! thy sign

Is on his forehead. May he, manful, fight

Under thy banner, till upon his sight

Fair Paradise shall shine;

Till, crown and palm-branch won,

He shall before thee stand without a fear,

Wearing the bright and morning star, and hear

The Master say, _Well done_.

JANE’S VOCATION.

“O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum pervenire.”—ST. AUGUSTINE.

She sat upon an enormous sea-washed cliff of granite, in a flood of

golden light from the stooping western sun behind her. Beneath her the

sea-waves rippled lightly against the cliff. Far out before her the

broad expanse of sea extended till it met the sky. But on neither sea

nor sky were the girl’s eyes fastened. She was looking steadily across

the narrow gulf that separated the high promontory where her home was

from the fishing town on the mainland. Behind her was a farm-house with

its prosaic surroundings, and a few huts for drying fish were close at

hand. Not far beyond these the stage-road ran, and coming over the brow

of the promontory was the lumbering stage.

She did not hear the wheels as they went rumbling by, and did not know

how closely she was scanned. Next the driver a youth was sitting, whose

face bespoke the artistic temperament as plainly as did the portfolio

and hastily-traced sketch upon his knee. Like a flash he caught the

loveliness of the picture—its glorious framework of nature’s beauties,

its central point of that girlish figure in its graceful _pose_: the

upraised head, the hands clasped round the knee as she sat bending

slightly forward, the sense conveyed of absorbed, pathetic yearning for

something more and higher than the farm life of her home.

“Who lives there?” asked the young man of the driver; and the driver

made answer, glancing for very pleasure at the boyish, handsome face,

stamped, in spite of its vanity, with the impress of a singularly clean

and happy heart:

“Nobody much, mister: old Jake Escott and Marm Escott and Jane. That’s

Jane sitting there. She’s their niece, and the best o’ the lot.”

“Jane!” repeated the youth to himself; but to the driver he said: “Do

they take boarders there?”

The man chuckled, as if the very idea was absurd.

“Much as they can do to board themselves, _I_ guess. Shiftless set.

'Tan’t so much lack of money, though, as of go-aheadativeness. ’Twould

be too much trouble.”

“Think I’d be a trouble?”

The man laughed again. “Don’t know 'bout that. You’re as clever a chap

and as taking a chap to talk with as I’ve seen this many a day. You’re a

real true, good-hearted gentleman, you be, sir; but you’re city-bred for

all that. Reckon you’d want white napkins every meal, and all sorts of

finified stuff. Marm Escott couldn’t give you such. 'Cause why? She’s no

idea what they are.”

“I’ll try it,” the traveller said, shutting his portfolio decisively and

speaking like one who always had his way. “Can’t you stop at the

turn—there’s a good fellow—and let me and my traps down?”

“Well, well! You never meant to come here; that’s certain. Where ye

bound?”

“Nowhere.” Then, seeing the driver’s puzzled look, “Anywhere,” the youth

added merrily. “I’m come to do what I please, and stop where I please,

and stay as long as I please. This is the loveliest place I have seen

yet, and I must sketch it. Why, surely you have carried passengers

before who had no settled destination, but liked to stop where it suited

them.”

“Ye—es,” was the doubtful response. “Yes, mister. But never one quite

like you. You’re a wide-awake chap and a merry, but you look as dainty

as any city lady I ever met.”

The words were evidently taken as a compliment, in whatever way they

might have been meant. The youth slung his knapsack over his shoulder,

concealing the long name which had puzzled the driver for the whole

journey—Van Stuyvesant Van Doorm—leaped lightly down from the coach

almost before it stopped, doffed his cap courteously, and with a gay

farewell was on his way along a narrow path to the house.

A woman, remarkable for nothing except her curiously total lack of

anything noticeable, opened the door, but into that dull face an actual

sunny gleam of pleasure came as soon as she saw the blithe young face

before her. The descendant of all the Vans doffed his cap courteously

again, with an answering gleam in his very brilliant eyes. He had been

used all his life to know that people admired him, but it is to be

acknowledged that this oft-repeated fact had never lost its charm.

“Is this Mrs. Escott?” he asked.

“I be,” was the succinct reply.

No faintest shadow of a smile betrayed her hearer’s amusement. He knew

himself master already of the field. “If you please, Mrs. Escott,” he

said audaciously, in his most captivating tone and with his most

pleading, obstinate look, “I’m come to board with you.”

Mrs. Escott stared as one taken by storm and unable to collect her

scattered forces. “But—but,” she stammered, “we never take boarders, we

don’t.”

“This exception will prove the rule, then,” quoth Van. “Oh! for shame,

Mrs. Escott. You never would have the heart to turn me away from such a

view as this. I want to sketch it, and I will give you a sketch of it,

and pay you the highest board into the bargain.”

“But we an’t got nothing fit to board ye on.”

“Ah? No eggs, then, I suppose,” suggested Van mildly, pointing at the

hens cackling in the yard. “No milk, either,” he added as the lowing of

a cow sounded near by. “No berries to be had for love or money, eh? And

of course there are no fish to be found in the sea.”

The woman actually laughed. “I’ll speak to Jake,” she said, then

disappeared, and Van seated himself on the doorstep and waited her

return without fear of disappointment.

“Jane and I can pick berries,” he said to himself; and then he trilled

forth gaily, in a voice that was the envy and admiration of city

circles:

“In the days when we went gipsying,

Long time ago.”

The melody pleased him; it chimed in well with the birds’ blithe song in

the trees and the faint dash of the waves along the shore. He began the

song and went through it all as blithely and carelessly as they.

“That’s handsome, now,” an uncouth voice behind him said when he stopped

at last with a sense of buoyant delight in his own power. “That’s

handsome, stranger. Sing like that, and you’re welcome here, and no

mistake.”

This was “Jake,” then, shuffling, untidy, uncouth as his voice. A

misgiving arose in Van’s mind. Would the house, the table, his room, be

like Jake and Marm Escott? But he need stay no longer than he chose—no

longer than one night; and it was now nearly six o’clock in the

afternoon. So, all necessary arrangements being concluded, Jake trundled

a dilapidated wheel-barrow, in some vague, slipshod fashion, to the road

to “fetch the stranger’s traps,” and Mrs. Escott, going to the gate,

called loudly, “Jane! Jane! I want ye, child.”

Van, waiting in the parlor for her coming, looked attentively about him.

There was almost nothing in the room to show that any one ever came

there who cared a whit more for beauty than Jacob Escott himself did.

Rag mats of discordant hues covered squares and ovals and rectangular

parallelograms of the pine floor; the walls were decorated with coarse

prints of General Washington and of the prize ox of twenty years ago; on

the table was a big family Bible and a Farmer’s Almanac illuminating the

sombre cover with its sickly yellow, and on this was a half-knitted blue

yarn stocking.

There was a cheap piano in one corner, but it looked as though it was

never opened. The windows were not uncurtained, but, of all other things

there, they set Van’s teeth on edge with their execrable attempts at

some sort of a painted landscape; he seized the tassels vindictively,

and pulled the curtains out of sight, thus letting in the superb view

beyond.

Some one, he discovered then, had had taste enough to put flowers in the

room. A great handful of daisies and clovers and delicate grasses stood

on the sill of the window that looked out to where the narrow gulf

separated the promontory from the mainland.

“Jane’s work,” said Van to himself; and as he thought it, he heard a

slow, calm step coming through the entry, and Jane herself stood in the

doorway.

Involuntarily he bent his head with such a reverence as he had never

paid to woman before. He was the cynosure at home among all ladies, but

none yet had won from him the reverent greeting of an utter

self-forgetful absorption in another’s presence. The girl who stood

there was not beautiful, though there was nothing in her features to

displease the artist’s eye; indeed, the absence of mere material beauty

made more marked the impression conveyed in movement and feature and

face. Of all colors in the world—and Van was passionately fond of

color—he loved best the gold that is sometimes seen in the western sky

near where the sun is setting: a clear, fair hue that does not dazzle

but rests the eyes that gaze upon it. Van thought of that color when he

saw Jane’s face with its look of unclouded peace.

She lifted her eyes and glanced at him, at first with a tranquil,

unmoved expression, as though it was quite indifferent to her who it was

that she was meeting; then she gave a quicker, keener glance that

thrilled Van with an uneasy sense that she was reading him through and

through. What was it that she read? he wondered.

He tried to talk with her as she moved about the room, engaged in the

very ordinary task of setting the supper-table. Her language showed some

culture and refinement. He hazarded the question, “Are there good

schools about here?”

“I do not know,” she said meditatively. “There is the district school.”

“Why does she not say, 'I went there’?” thought Van. “That would tell me

something about herself.”

But more and more he found, as his talk went on, that Jane ignored

herself. It did not appear to enter her mind that she was anybody to be

thought of or talked about. He had at first to make conversation at the

supper-table—the farm, the fisheries, the crops—but presently Jacob

Escott made bold to ask: “What may be your occupation, sir?”

And, nothing loath, Van launched upon one of his pet topics—art and

artists. Even the plain farmer and his wife enjoyed it. How could they

resist the fascination of the merry stories, the musical voice, the face

that spoke as clearly as the words? But Jane hardly listened, and

suddenly a thought struck Van: “This is mere surface-talk after all. Can

it be that this farmer’s girl cares for anything deeper, or is it only

that she has not depth enough to care?”

They rose from the table, and Van followed Jane to the door. She did not

see or heed him. The tide was at the full; wave upon wave came heaving

gently onward toward the land as a child, tired out with play, comes

home to its mother’s arms to rest; through the twilight the dark,

restless mass of water and its ceaseless murmuring alike woke a sense of

mystery and awe; above, in the darkening skies, a pale half-moon was

shining and a few great throbbing stars. And in the dim light Van saw

Jane’s face, and it seemed to him as beautiful and as full of mystery as

sea and sky. Such a look of hunger marked it! He thought of Niobe, and

of Cassandra, and of Mariana in the moated grange, but she differed in

some inexplicable fashion from them all, and then he heard her say below

her breath: “My God! My God! My God!”

Over and over again—not what Van had ever fancied a prayer could be, and

yet to his ear more full of intense personal pleading than any prayer he

had ever heard. Faith, hope, love, expectation, keen desire, and

suffering were all summed up in two words; and though he knew nothing of

her trouble, yet when the aunt’s call for her came from the room within,

Van started as if he had been struck. He could not bear to have her

harried back into the dull life of her home.

“Just mend this, Janey, will you?” Mrs. Escott said, exhibiting a coarse

blue shirt. “Your uncle wants it for to-morrow.”

The girl’s face was tranquil and happy again by some sudden

transformation. She took the rough work—it was not clean work, either;

it had evidently been worn once or twice, Van saw with mingled disgust

and pity—and, sitting down contentedly in the dingy room, she began her

mending. She puzzled Van greatly, she interested him intensely. As he

talked to her uncle he watched with his artistically-trained eye each

expression of her face. It varied now and then, though the strange,

yearning look did not return to it. The peace was there, and an

exquisite happiness.

“She is like a dove,” thought Van. “She is like an innocent baby. Oh! if

one could take her away from this.”

But one clue to her character he was certain that he had found. He rose

up before she finished her work, and he flung open the old piano and sat

down before it. It was not so unfit for use as he had feared it would

be, and he knew how to glide skilfully over the worst notes. And then he

began to try Jane. First he sang ballads, “Robin Adair,” “John Anderson

my jo, John,” “Oh! wert thou in the cauld blast.”

“That’s fine, Phœbe,” said Jacob, and Phœbe said “Yes” with an unwonted

enthusiasm. But Jane worked steadily on, and if she heard or cared Van

could not tell, though he fancied the sweet, dove-like look deepened

upon her face.

“The brightest jewel in my crown

Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.”

The last tender notes of the song lingered under Van’s fingers, as a

knock was heard at the kitchen door, and Jacob went to answer it,

followed soon by Phœbe, who evidently recognized the voice of the

new-comer. There was a scraping of chairs on the kitchen floor—the plain

indication that somebody had come to stay awhile. Van leaned his head

forward against the music-rack, and once again before his eyes was the

scene he had witnessed in the twilight one hour before. Could the same

person who sat quietly at her rough work now be she whom he had seen and

heard then in that passion of prayer? And while he mused there rang

through his brain echoes that always thrilled his music-loving,

art-loving nature with an especial power, and that seemed now like fit

mates for the darkly-heaving sea, the star-lit sky, the girl’s yearning

face; and from the old ivory keys, that grew strangely full of power and

sweetness beneath his magical touch, rang out Chopin’s grand funeral

march.

The work dropped from Jane’s hands. He could not watch her face, for she

turned it straight toward that eastern flower-decked window that looked

out to gulf and sea; but he saw her fingers lock tightly into one

another and her form become rigidly still. When he ended she rose

quietly and went away, and he did not see her again that night.

But long that night he studied her, while an unwonted shame of himself

and a keen admiration for her grew steadily in him, and what he inferred

of her then was confirmed each day more and more.

“She does not know one-half the things that I know,” he said, “but she

has it in her to care for the highest art and beauty. And she is so

noble by nature that she _couldn’t_ spend her thoughts on a thousand

trifling things that I waste mine upon. Such a glorious creature

imprisoned here! I’ll do my best for her.”

Never used to early rising, he came down stairs the next day to find his

breakfast waiting for him and the morning of the family half over.

“Yes, we be early risers,” said Mrs. Escott. “Leastways, Jake and Jane

be. I’m a poor hand at it myself. Why, Jane here, she’s across the gulf

and home again afore six every day.”

“Across the gulf! Before six!” exclaimed Van.

“Certain sure, Mr. Van. These Catholics are queer creatures. Jane’s a

Catholic, you know.”

Habitual courtesy quelled the words of surprise and of pain that rose to

Van’s lips—surprise at finding a Catholic in this notedly Protestant

fishing settlement, pain at hearing Jane’s deepest feelings thus lightly

exposed to view. But Jane showed not the slightest shade of annoyance.

Now he thought he understood her better. One of the many marvellous

spells of Catholicism had been woven about her—some vision of beauty had

thus come into her hitherto blank life; he would strive the more now to

teach her of what he blandly deemed the freer, nobler lights of art and

science, but never should word or look from him throw scorn or jest or

trifling speech of any kind on that which was dear to her.

Love at first sight—Van had always maintained that he believed in it; he

was always falling in love with any pretty face that struck his fancy,

and then just as easily falling out of love with an unwounded heart. But

here love and pity and real reverence all awoke together and made of him

their willing slave. “I’ll go with her to Mass to-morrow,” he said, and

on the morrow he stood in the early sunrise on the beach.

So early was it that Jane herself was not yet there. He watched her

coming towards her boat, her eyes cast down, and that hungry, longing

look stamped plainly on her.

“May I go too?” he said, the gay, trifling manner gone, and that

peculiarly distinct imprint of a clean heart shining in his eyes.

Lifting her own sweet eyes, once again he felt that she read him

through; then, saying nothing, she bowed assent and stepped into the

boat. And still without a word she let him take the oars from her, and,

drawing her rosary from her pocket, she began to tell her beads. Van

thought she never would stop, and she did not till they reached the

town. Still silent, she led the way from the shore through some dull,

shell-paved paths to a small chapel, and, entering, forgot Van

altogether and went with eager footsteps up the aisle. Van stationed

himself where he could see her; she sank on her knees before the altar,

and crossed herself, and lifted up her face. The lips were parted in a

smile of ecstasy, the eyes were shining bright as though they saw

unearthly loveliness.

What Van saw was this: a square, low-studded, dingy room, poor prints of

religious subjects, mean tallow dips for candles, tawdry gilding and

hangings, artificial tawdry flowers, a plain, small altar, a few squalid

worshippers; presently an aged priest, who said Mass in a cracked and

feeble voice.

“What spell is over her?” thought Van, marvelling. “Oh! if I could once

take her out of it all, home to wealth and beauty and tenderness, and to

our churches. No need to tell her that Catholics have beautiful ones

somewhere.”

But on their way back to the farm she did not speak, and he could not

venture to break the intense calm in which she was wrapped. Every

evening he read or sang and played, or talked his best, in the parlor

where the household gathered, but she never again was there alone with

him, and in the daytime she was always busy just when he wanted her

society most. Often he was conscious that what he said or read or did

failed to make any impression at all upon her; often while he tried to

interest her he found her gazing toward that eastern window, and knew

that she did not heed him. He longed to say: “I cannot see what you find

in that dull church to give your eyes and thoughts to,” but he could not

say it.

Sometimes when he read, far oftener when he played grand music—often,

too, when they watched the sky and sea and listened to the waves, the

noble nature woke responsive to his call. But it stung him to the quick

to feel his general powerlessness to move her except when he roused his

best and highest powers; it stung him to see how little she cared for

the comforts and luxuries and prettinesses, for knowledge even and the

art, that were part of his daily existence, and which he deemed

necessary to him; it stung him to find that the meanest occupation never

made her discontented, but glad and bright instead; while what he

considered suited to her condition or her needs was as nothing to her,

and the yearning which he could not fathom seldom came into her face

when at her daily labor, but often when he told himself she ought to be

content and glad with him.

She talked very little to him; she never seemed to care whether he came

or went, and he—all his thoughts became engrossed in her.

One afternoon, near the close of a sultry day, as the first mutterings

of thunder and the first far-off flashes of lightning shone and sounded

from the dark depths of low-lying clouds above the sea—when the winds

were rising, and the poplars showed their leaves’ white faces, and the

white-crested waves broke in ominously upon the shore; when Jane’s

sensitive nature was awake and quivering in sympathy with the gathering

storm—Jacob Escott came hurrying his cattle home to shelter, bringing

with him a letter which the stage-driver had flung down to him as he

raced his horses by to town. “For you, Mr. Van,” he said.

Van opened it carelessly, read it carefully, then came straight to where

Jane stood, watching with keen delight the seething sea and storm-tossed

sky.

“Jane,” he said, “listen to me. They have sent for me to go home at

once. My father is very ill. Jane, I love you. Will you be my wife?”

She turned with great displeasure in her eyes. “You jest, sir,” she

said. “Such jesting pains me much. Even my uncle understands that now.”

“I am not jesting,” he cried vehemently. “I speak the truth. I love you.

None but you can ever be my wife. Give me your promise, Jane. I love you

so.”

At first her look of rebuke waxed sterner; then for a moment her eyes

met the pleading bright eyes fastened on her with the look peculiar to

them, that bespoke a singularly clean heart. She smiled as one smiles at

a child.

“It is impossible,” she said.

Tumultuously he hurried on: “No, no, not impossible. If I will promise

to read, to study, to be a Catholic if I can—will you think of it then?

Will you try me?”

“It is impossible,” she repeated. “You pain me.” And then, with an

effort, as though she spoke of things too sacred for the common ear, “By

the grace of God,” she said slowly, “when he makes the way plain before

me, I am to be a nun.”

“No, no!” Van cried again. “No, no! Think—listen. Think it all over

again. You do not understand. Your life has been cramped here in this

poor, mean place. That is why you want to be a nun. Come away with me to

a life that suits a soul like yours. I have seen your craving for higher

things.”

The sudden, jagged lightning cleft the skies. By its glare he saw her

face distinctly, and a noble scorn was on it, and a righteous

indignation.

“Come away with you—from _God_!” she said, and in the pause that

followed Van felt himself more mean than the dust from whence he came.

“Forgive me,” she said gently. “I forget. It is you who do not

understand. I do not mind that this house is poor and mean; my Lord was

born in a stable, and he died upon a cross. And if I suffer here and

crave for higher things, it is a suffering which even the cloister can

never cure—far less, then, you—for I crave to see the face of God! To

love my God, to cease from sin, to come to my God and be for ever one

with him in his high heaven—I hunger for it by night and by day.”

“And if this life suits you so well, and you must suffer anyhow,” Van

said curiously, “why not stay here always? or why not come with me?”

“Mr. Van,” Jane answered, “to be a nun is my vocation. God himself calls

me. I must do his will. Forgive me again, but I cannot talk any more to

you about it. If you did not seem so young to me—so like a little

innocent child, in spite of all your knowledge—I could not have said so

much.” And the next minute she was gone, leaving Van abashed and utterly

ignorant of the high meed of true praise which she had bestowed upon

him.

He went home to watch for two long days and nights beside a couch of

foolish delirium and lingering death; to see a mind of uncommon

intellect and far-famed, exquisite taste reduced to folly; to see the

eyes stare vacantly at picture and statue and familiar face alike; and

then to follow the lifeless body to the grave, and hide it there, clay

to its kindred clay. The young heir of enormous wealth and princely

possessions paced alone in his father’s halls that night, and found no

pleasure in the beauty that once had satisfied him. Even the memory of

Jane’s face was a burden to him.

“She would have to die too,” Van muttered. “And, after all, one could as

soon love a St. Catherine borne by angels as love her. I do not believe

I ever did. And yet if I did not, I never really loved any woman.”

Wherein he spoke the truth.

Yet one look of hers haunted him—that look of settled, tranquil peace,

like the undazzling gold of the western sky; and while it shone before

him the steady, tranquil voice echoed through his memory, “To be a nun

is my vocation. God himself calls me. I must do his will.”

“I wonder,” queried Van wistfully—“I wonder what my vocation is. I’m

sure it has never made any difference to me. I have sketched, and

played, and read, just as I fancied.”

And, with that great grace vouchsafed him, of which he was so ignorant,

he said like a child: “O God! what shall I do?”

The answer did not come at once. He fretted and puzzled; by and by he

began to wonder whether Jane’s religion had anything to do with her

choice. Besides, if it was worth a man’s while to think of changing his

religion because he fancied himself in love with a creature that some

time must die, had he not reason to think seriously about it anyhow?

What did she mean when she said she craved to see God’s face? What

caused that woman of so few words to speak with such power when she

spoke of that?

Van read and thought, but it was not the books that enlightened him. He

went one evening where he seldom went by day, when curious eyes could

watch him—to his father’s grave. It was a warm evening late in

September. As he passed the rectory adjoining the church, which his

father, and his father’s father, and all the Van Doorms of the region

had religiously attended, gay voices and snatches of music caught his

ear, and he looked up involuntarily.

It was a pretty sight. The gas had just been lighted, the curtains were

still up. Lonely, sorrowful Van, forgetful of his wonted courtesy, stood

still where he was and took in the whole picture with an added

heartache.

In the pleasant parlor, not luxurious, but a _home-room_, the mother sat

with her baby on her knee. Van remembered her when she came a bride to

the parish, and he was only a child of five years old. It was one of his

earliest memories—that being taken to church with the promise of seeing

the new young minister’s new young wife, if he would be very good. That

was twenty years ago, and there were lines of gray in Mrs. Charles’

hair, but her face wore the same kindly smile that had marked it then in

the freshness of her nineteen years, and at the piano a girl of nineteen

might have been taken for the bride brought back again in her youthful

bloom. She was playing some familiar melody; five or six brothers and

sisters clustered about her, sang blithely with her; a toddling child at

the mother’s knee beat time with its chubby fingers on the younger

baby’s chubby hand. Presently an inner door opened, and the pastor

entered. There was a cry of “Father! father!” a general rush to meet

him, frantic, merry embraces from the children, while the mother smiled

contented, and the father stood tender and strong in the midst of his

happy flock.

The picture lasted for a brief space only; with a pretty gesture of

horror the eldest daughter sprang toward the window and drew down the

shades, lest somebody should see, and Van stood alone outside in the

gathering night.

He plodded on dreamily to the church-yard, and sat down near the new

grave among many, many older graves where the men and women of his race

lay buried.

“Wife and child,” said Van, with a long, hard, envious sigh, “father and

mother, and happy home. And I—”

“Wife and child—father and mother.” The words repeated themselves in

that curious, echo-like fashion which words have when they come to the

mind as a part of a familiar saying, whose whole cannot be at once

recalled, and which for a time we vainly strive to place.

“Wife and child—father and mother.” Ah! something else comes: “Houses

and lands.” What is it? What is Van striving to get?

“Houses and lands.”

He has it.

“No man who hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or

mother, or children, or lands for my sake and for the Gospel, who shall

not receive an hundred times as much, now in this time: and in the world

to come life everlasting.”

He does not see with his bodily eyes at all now, but the eyes of his

soul are wide awake, and they see clear and true.

In which church—Catholic or Protestant—were the men who, not by tens or

by hundreds, but by thousands upon thousands, and through centuries upon

centuries, had carried out to the very letter the words of Christ, the

Bible words? Which, except through some exceptions that only served to

prove the rule, had by loud-voiced declamation, and an action that spoke

more loudly still, set at naught the teaching of the Master—set at

naught the example of Him who left all for them?

Van seemed to hear it once again—the missionary letters read from the

pulpit and published in Protestant magazines; the pleadings for clothes

for the missionary’s wife and children; the appeals for money, or a

missionary must leave his important field because his family could not

be supported there; the vaunted heroism of missionaries who endured to

see their children suffer rather than desert their post. Where were the

men whose heroism was such that they had no home, no family, no earthly

tie, but stood ready like the angels—true messengers—to go or to stay,

undeterred by any human consideration, where God and his church asked or

needed them?

And so it came to pass that Van understood the mystery of Jane’s

vocation; comprehended that men and women, young and old, rich and poor,

ignorant and lettered, heard, as the wedded Peter and the unwedded John

heard once the voice of Christ call to them, and literally, like them,

left all and followed him. It came to pass also that he understood

Jane’s suffering; knew that that call of God and the accompanying love

of God were a hundred-fold more in this life than the earthly joys

renounced, and yet that the promise of the everlasting life spoke of

such ineffable bliss that the longing awakened for it could only be

appeased in heaven.

Van found his vocation too. He threw himself, heart and soul, into true

Christian art. His pictures were seldom seen on the walls of rich men’s

houses, but churches and convents owned them free of price. That part of

his work, however, was the smallest part. Money and time and strength

were lavished nobly with and in aid of those who are successfully

laboring in our day to show, by research in catacombs and ruined sacred

buildings and among old missals and breviaries and parchments, that the

Catholic Church of to-day is the church of the early Christians and

martyrs.

In Italy he met and married some one very different from Jane—a very

lovely and good and noble woman—and Jane to him became more and more a

St. Catherine borne by angels, and more and more he wondered that he

ever had presumed to think of offering her an earthly love.

“Had I been a Catholic then, I never could have done it,” he told his

wife. “God had called her for himself, and set his seal upon her.”

And the happy wife said humbly: “Hers was the higher calling, dear.”

So when, one day, their only daughter came to them—a strong,

high-spirited, brilliant girl, the sunshine of their home—and told them

that God’s call had come to her to leave her home for Christ’s poverty,

and all human love for his love alone, she found no weak resistance.

“Thank God,” they said, “for the honor he has done us! For him we gladly

bid thee forget thine own people and thy father’s house.”

But of Jane they never heard, except that, when God’s time came, she

left the farm beside the sea. What need to know more of her, who was

where she longed to be—one of the great number who lose all to find All,

and, having Him whom their soul loveth, need nothing more?

COUNT FREDERICK LEOPOLD STOLBERG[88]

Footnote 88:

Frederick Leopold, Count Stolberg, since his return to the Catholic

Church, 1800-1819. From hitherto unpublished family documents. By John

Janssen. Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder & Co.

Count Stolberg, a well-known statesman and writer, a minister of the

Duke of Oldenburg, the friend of Goethe, Schlegel, Klopstock, Lavater,

Stein, John and Adam Müller, La Motte Fouqué, Körner, and others as

distinguished, the correspondent of most of the German historians,

philosophers, and _savants_ of his day, became a Catholic, after seven

years’ anxious seeking for truth, on the 1st of June, 1800, at Münster,

in Westphalia, in the fifty-first year of his age. He immediately

retired from public life, although circumstances afterwards brought him

before Germany as a representative man; and his writings spread through

all classes of his countrymen as a worthy and dignified exposition of a

religion at that time much reviled, misunderstood, and in some cases

persecuted. His example in home-life was as powerful in a smaller circle

as his writings were in a wider one; and his relations with his wife and

children (he had eighteen children by his two marriages) were such as to

make it true of him that he was a model for all Christian heads of

families. His own tastes were simple and domestic; he was fond of the

country, and was a childlike companion even to his youngest children,

while to all, as they grew up, he was a wise friend and teacher. All his

children, except Mariagnes, his eldest daughter by his first marriage,

became Catholics with him; those born after his conversion were of

course brought up in the church. His second wife, Sophie, Countess von

Redern, had shared his doubts and his experiences during those seven

years of eager search after religious certainty, and became a Catholic

also; but while he remained in intimate and sympathetic relations with

his brothers and sisters, he never influenced any of them far enough to

make them follow his footsteps. His brother Christian and his wife Luise

were his most constant and intimate correspondents; with the former

religion seemed to make no difference, as his admiration for, and

sympathy with, Stolberg was proof against anything—indeed, Stolberg

often called him his “other self”; and the latter, to judge by her

letters, was a woman of more than common understanding, a student of

science, an observer of the times, whose mind was open to receive any

new impression that had the semblance of truth or real progress in it;

an investigating and impartial searcher, better versed than most women

in classic learning, and eager for knowledge in any shape. To give up

constant intercourse with his own family and remove to a Catholic city

was the hardest sacrifice Stolberg had to make on leaving the Lutheran

communion; but he considered the change imperative for the proper

education of his children. In a letter to Luise announcing this resolve

he says: “There is no dilemma, but, even if there were, you will agree

with me that a tender conscience, in a doubtful case, must always choose

against its wishes—I mean its natural wishes, which are always

suspicious to upright morals, let alone to Christianity.” To his friend

Princess Gallitzin, the mother of the zealous missionary in America,

Demetrius Gallitzin, he says: “It is an unspeakable joy to me that my

brother and sister-in-law remain bound to me in the fullest and most

unreserved love, and that not even the shadow of a misunderstanding has

come between them and me, however painful to them is the separation from

me, from Sophie, and from the children.”

He took a house in Münster and made it his home for thirteen years,

living there through the winter and spending his summers at a

country-house a few miles out of the city, at Lütjenbeck. His children’s

studies were his first care. Greek being his favorite study, he made

each of his sons a good Greek scholar, and kept up his own studies by a

repeated round of all the great authors, read successively with each of

his many boys. Ernest and Andrew, the sons of his first marriage, were

his first pupils, and his own teaching was supplemented in languages and

history by a French _emigré_, the Abbé Pierrard, and in philosophy by

some professors resident in Münster. Stolberg did not neglect the

physical education of his boys, and would no more dispense with the

daily walk, ride, or swim than he would with the studies. His sons were

good shots, too, and in the summer he and they spent most of their time

in the open air. Their mother writes of them that they are “truthful,

generous, and good-hearted,” and “that their tender respect for their

great father increases day by day.” She was herself a patient and

judicious teacher, and fully recognized how much harm is done to

children, and the “quiet workings of God’s influence disturbed in them,

by the expectation of hurried development and individuality.” Stolberg

was already beginning his literary work in the interests of religion and

education, and in 1801 was translating St. Augustine’s _De Vera

Religione_. The early Fathers were his favorite spiritual reading; also

the Greek Testament and the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. He

wisely resolved to lead a retired life, and not enter into what is

called society; but he gathered round him a circle of real friends, in

intercourse with whom he spent many hours, especially in the evenings.

Among these were Princess Gallitzin, to whom we owe the suggestion that

produced Stolberg’s great work, _The History of the Religion of Jesus

Christ_; Prince Fürstenberg, an old man of very exemplary life;

Kellermann, his friend and pupil, and the tutor of his younger sons for

sixteen years—a priest who was the model of his order; some of the

cathedral chapter, learned and enlightened men; and many young people,

friends of his children, among whom the latter afterwards found wives

and husbands, in all cases happily acceptable to their parents. Whoever

has read the real-life idyl of _A Sister’s Story_ will see some likeness

between the home of the La Ferronays and Stolberg’s happy home. Indeed,

his friends were part of his family, and admission to his intimacy

became the ambition of all such in Münster as had minds beyond the

common run, and aspirations beyond those of fashion, politics, and

frivolity. Stolberg’s dislike to the loss of time involved in ordinary

visits and the inanities of society is thus described by himself in

1810:

“I am growing more unfit from year to year for large gatherings.

Intercourse with friends, like the leaves of the Sibylline books, is

more precious the less time it occupies and the less often it

recurs. To hear social chatter for more than an hour affects me so

that I feel much like a dead donkey.... How true are Lavater’s

words: 'Even the circle of good souls seldom gives me a new impulse,

and a thousand trivial pleasures rob me of true enjoyment. Only

solitude can shadow and cool my spirit, thirsty and weary from the

company even of loved ones; only solitude can give what no friend

can offer—a new consciousness and new life, and a feeling that God

loves me.’”

This country life which was such a relief and yearly joy to the whole

family is charmingly described in Stolberg’s letters. His garden, his

hay-field, his children’s play; his walks in the beech, oak, and maple

woods; the squirrels in the trees, the favorite kid of his little girls,

the nightingales, the blossoming fruit-trees that suggested to him the

saying that the “apple-tree did not eat of the apple”; the grottos,

rocks, valleys, castles, torrents of the neighborhood of Stolberg; the

old family house which he had not seen for twenty-eight years, and upon

which he prided himself as a possession that had been in the family for

a thousand years; the beauties of the Erzgebirg, and the Bohemian hills

that lean against it; the Scotch or Norwegian-like scenery, wild and

grand, of these mountains with their narrow, fruitful valleys and green

meadows, fringed with dark pine woods—are all described with that

heartiness and enthusiasm which real lovers of the country know, but

which, as Stolberg says, so many others pretend to, while in reality

they see in nature nothing but a cold show, a theatre decoration. “They

look complacently as into a peep-show at the sunrise and the heavens,

but their heart does not swell within them nor their eyes grow dim.” He

was as fond of childish games, especially of blowing soap-bubbles, as he

was of beautiful scenery, and counted it a sign of soul-health when he

was in the frame of mind to enjoy such games. And now that we have

before us the picture of the man in his domestic life, who in his

public, political, literary, and social life was of so much importance

and had so wide an influence, we will keep mostly to his own letters,

which give full vent to his opinions on the important events of the

time, and show him forth as emphatically of the old school, a model

Christian, a thorough gentleman, but a man of his own generation;

impatient of novelty, a great admirer of the English constitution, but a

scornful contemner of the mushroom constitutions of the Continent; a hot

_Légitimiste_, but a patriotic German; an uncompromising and somewhat

irrational foe of Napoleon, over and above his mere national antagonism

against the great and successful warrior—for instance, he believed that

“Napoleon’s greatness was kneaded out of the abjectness of Europe,”

forgetting that a man’s greatness may lie precisely in the art of taking

advantage of a weakness inherent in an adversary, and seizing the right

moment to overwhelm small minds with his stronger one; a firm believer

in the necessity of his own order, but an “aristocrat” with lofty and

beautiful theories of what aristocracy consists in; in a word, a great

Christian and a thorough man.

Besides his Greek and Hebrew studies, he was fond of English history and

literature, and knew French and Italian well; Milton and Young were his

favorite English poets, though he often quotes Shakspere too, and one of

his works, second only to the _History of Religion_, was the _Life of

Alfred_—a man whom he looked upon as a heroic model, and whose example

he wished to dwell upon as a guide to his sons through life. He also

translated the whole of Ossian. His letters relating to his home-life,

his losses and those of his relations, the death of his sons and

son-in-law, and of many dear friends, full as they are of Christian

manliness and resignation, and of moral axioms that might be taken as

mottoes, we will pass by, as they have less of individuality than his

letters containing opinions on religion, politics, and literature, as

well as expositions of theories of his own, all strongly and

conscientiously held. He firmly contradicted a current misconception in

his time—and, indeed, a not unfrequent one now—of the intolerance of the

Catholic Church.

“Only for those who confess Catholic truth,” he writes, “and yet

consciously keep aloof from the Catholic communion, is there no hope

of salvation. Of others who err in all good faith, my church teaches

me to believe that they are her members, though unknowingly. God

allows many honest Protestants to remain in error, and to fancy that

the Catholic Church, that truly merciful mother, is intolerant

against those outside her pale. It is not the true spirit of that

church to persecute, curse, or burn the erring. Infallible in her

doctrine, as were also the teachers who sat in Moses’ seat, she

still cannot preserve all her members free from imperfections in

their acts—not even the pope, nor, in the old dispensation, the

high-priest.”

In another letter he says:

“Far be it from me, as it is from every Catholic who knows the

spirit of his church, to doubt that among Protestants also there are

and have been holy souls—holy in the sense in which all true

children of God are holy; ... but my church teaches me to look upon

these as unconscious members of the true, though to them unknown,

church.”

“Overberg, of whose rarely beautiful catechism thirty thousand

copies have been sold, especially for schools and children,

expresses himself very pleasingly on this subject. No

well-instructed Catholic has any objection to make to this, but even

no half-taught Catholic can, on the other hand, mistake other altars

for that altar of sacrifice which Malachi prophesied of, and will

hold all other altars only for such as they really are.... Among

unlearned Protestants (and, as I said before, among a few learned

ones) there are very many whom the spirit of Protestantism as such

has not touched, who have never been disturbed, because they have

found in Holy Scripture a full rest and contentment, and lean with

heartfelt love on Jesus Christ, doing for love of him all they do,

in fullest confidence, and what flesh and blood would never teach

them to do. Plants that bear such fruit as this I can only hold to

come from roots watered by the Heavenly Father himself. You believe

[he is addressing Sulzer, of Constance] that the number of such

souls is small; and such a belief grieves me, for I think that it

drives many away and discourages them. And, indeed, such hard

suppositions as you make and insist upon having categorically

answered lead to embittering results. I speak from experience. For

seven years did I seek for truth with an upright heart, after God

first put it into my heart to seek. After seven years’ search was I

led, through circumstances that God overruled, to know and confess

the truth. Others have sought longer and more anxiously, and have

not found what I did, but they serve God in the simplicity of their

hearts better than I do, and will assuredly find the truth in the

kingdom of light and truth....”

“You see,” he says to his brother, “that I am not intolerant. But I

hope to God that I shall never be tolerant in the _newest sense_ of

the word—that is, indifferent, lukewarm, fit to be spat out of the

mouth of Jesus Christ.”... “Do not let,” he says to his son Caius at

Göttingen University, “yourself be led away from the rock-founded

church by the many good and worthy Protestants you meet. Among all

in error are many who are individually children of God, but they

have no church, no sacrifice, no priesthood, no Eucharist. The

helter-skelter union of both Protestant bodies (the Lutheran and the

Calvinist) must give serious scandal to the earnest souls in both,

and will, I hope, lead many into our church.”

Of the difference between feeling and truth he says:

“Certain sensations may be real to one person and unreal to another.

Not so with facts and doctrine. It is the peculiar character of the

true religion that as it must be the same in all ages, so must every

man be equally able to understand and embrace it.... I could not

believe in a true religion which it would not be possible for every

human being to believe in.... He leads some through rough paths,

others through smooth ones; some towards truth, some through error.

The way of error, _as such_, is not His way, although he is always

ready to unfold the truth, to be beforehand with, and to meet half

way, the upright soul who in all simplicity holds an erring belief.”

Indeed, in Stolberg’s experience, the difference between lukewarm and

conscientious Protestants was fully shown; for the former reviled him

for his change of religion, while the latter approved of his following

what he looked upon as truth. Other misconceptions of Catholic doctrine

he also combated, and greatly enlightened many of his friends on the

Catholic belief in the justifying merits of Christ. Holy Scripture was a

source from which he considered spiritual light to come, but, as he

observed, “the learned have not yet been able to see that the healthy

eye, like the concave mirror, gathers into one point all the scattered

rays, while _they_ split and split until the last particle of light is

lost in shadow.” Elsewhere he says:

“He who is careless of Holy Writ is careless of the life of the

soul, and he is happy if he becomes conscious, were it only now and

then, of the fact that the world, whether with its pleasures or its

wisdom, offers him nothing but what is poisonous to the immortal

spirit.”

His advice to his son Ernest, who left home in 1803 to join the Austrian

army, is full of the true Christian spirit. He recommends him to

practise every virtue that would make a man perfect, and goes into many

details which, of course, we cannot follow here, but this sentence is

almost a compendium of the whole:

“A true Christian cannot find true freedom nor true unsolicitude but

in the possession of a good conscience. Where the conscience is

tender and watchful it watches alike over every act; and the more we

pay attention to it, so much the more does it become,

notwithstanding the violence it at first does to nature, a principle

of our life which puts us in harmony with ourselves, and therefore

makes us truly free.”

Elsewhere he says, speaking to another youth, a friend of his sons:

“Lassitude and a want of courage increase the strength of the enemy;

and discontent concerning the post to which God has appointed us is

unseemly in any brave man, much more in a foremost fighter. Not the

wish that 'everything were otherwise,’ but the resolve always to act

well and bravely—or, as Holy Writ says, 'to walk before God and be

perfect’—can make men of us. That wish unnerves us; this resolve

strengthens us and gives us a might which remains with the weapons

of the fighter even on the other side of the grave. He who has done

and suffered much does not dream of soiling his crown with tears,

while he who has as yet found no opportunity of doing or suffering

has still less a right to weep.”

The melancholy which the French have aptly called “_la maladie du

siècle_”[89] was abhorrent to Stolberg—that unmanliness and cowardice of

mind which became fashionable through the writings of atheists, and

which in many phases has spread itself into our present literature as

well as our practice. He also writes concerning the same thing:

Footnote 89:

The disease of the age.

“Every human being has his own history to work out, and that this

should be thoroughly done does not depend upon the amount of talent

he has, but upon the will which few bring to it unconditionally and

in a cheerful spirit.”

Stolberg was of a healthier school and generation; he did not see the

beauty and sentiment and romance of passion running riot, misunderstood

natures, morbid hearts, vain strivings, and all the paraphernalia of a

moral sick-bed. For instance, the baneful and unreal excitements of the

theatre were very dangerous in his eyes, and the evil custom which even

good and well-meaning people fell into of countenancing private

theatricals, and letting even their young children take part in them,

was a great sorrow to him. One of the evils he deprecated was the

rousing of a false sympathy with imaginary woes, which ended by

undermining true sympathy with our neighbor’s actual troubles; another,

the vanity which play-acting fostered in young people, and the

excitement which rendered them unfit for serious study and work. It also

destroys the simplicity of the soul and that modesty which is the chief

adornment of young souls, especially of a girl’s soul.

“Young girls,” he says, “when they have once overcome their shyness,

long after the same excitement, and are always wishing to be playing

a part. The truthfulness of their nature is soon lost; seeming

overcomes being, every acted feeling destroys real feeling; the

heart becomes cold for reality, and is only to be aroused by

supposed passion.”

Public theatricals he looked upon as equally dangerous, and even wrote

against them, praising Geneva for having, until it became French,

refused to allow the erection of a theatre within the limits of its

territory. “The special charm of the stage,” he says, “lies in its

flattery of our lusts, our vanity, and our laziness.” We have often

heard fine theories advanced as to the mission and morality of the

drama, but as long as practice belies these theories it is impossible to

look upon them otherwise than as a well-meaning Utopia. Stolberg saw the

real harm done, and not the imaginary good which some high-minded and

exceptional artists would fain do.

The atheistical and deist philosophy of the eighteenth century and early

part of the nineteenth were naturally repugnant to such an upright mind

as Stolberg. He hated the wilful groping in the dark after a truth which

the “philosophers” might have found in the Gospels, had they had the

fairness to admit these on an equality, at least, with other so-called

“proofs.” He called Steffen and Schleiermacher at Halle the “new

Gnostics,” and compared their systems to the vain effort of the fabled

Danaides to pour the ocean through a sieve.

“The name of Gnostics sounds ominous,” he says, “and brings to mind

the Gnostics of the first centuries, with many of whose beliefs,

indeed, the wisdom of our newest sages astonishingly coincides.

Under their treatment even realities dissolve themselves in shadow,

while they give to shadows the form and appearance of realities.”

Jacobi was at that time a very prominent leader of philosophy in

Germany, and Stolberg mentions him many times in his correspondence with

various persons, evidently as a representative man. At one time this

teacher, the friend of Goethe, a sort of Medici among his disciples near

Düsseldorf, where he had a beautiful house, and still more beautiful

garden—now the property of the town and the appropriate scene of

artists’ banquets and popular _fêtes_—confessed himself, in the midst of

his philosophy, “a very beggar” in the true learning of the Spirit.

Stolberg often alluded to this, and, when the master’s pride had long

distanced the frame of mind in which this acknowledgment had been made,

wrote of him: “Poor Jacobi! he was richer indeed when he called himself

poor as 'a beggar.’” In 1812 he writes:

“I have just read Jacobi’s last pamphlet. The one before the last

_On a Wise Saying of Lichtenberg_, seems to me in the highest degree

satisfactory. That on _The Recension_ (Jacobi cannot help putting

odd and often trivial titles to his works) has also excellent

points, but the whole seems to me loose, and a windy toying with

views which he borrows from Christianity, the whole system of which,

however, he, as far as in him, the puny mortal, lies, seeks to

weaken and annihilate. While he praises the god-like Plato, he seems

to forget that this philosopher, or rather Socrates in his platonic

_Phædrus_, evidently longs, as a hart after the fountains of waters,

for a god-given revelation whose very possibility itself Jacobi, on

the contrary, strives to reason away.”

Schelling’s answer to Jacobi, however, equally displeased Stolberg, and

he accuses him of making Jacobi appear, “through certain wiles of

speech, now an atheist, now a fanatical dreamer,” and of taking credit

to himself for

“Having been the first clearly to prove the existence of God. His

God has been from all eternity the greatest Force, which contained

within itself, _in potentia_, but not _in actu_, that goodness and

wisdom which it developed in later ages. He falls thus into Count

Schmettau’s error, of a god who has raised himself from a lower

state to the highest, which theory one might compare with the career

of a field-marshal who has risen by degrees from the ranks....

Evidently Schelling is a man of much mind, but of overweening

vanity. He speaks of Christianity with respect, and probably

believes in the divine mission of Christ, whose system, however, it

was reserved for him—Schelling—fully to explain. He sent this paper

of his to Perthes (Stolberg’s publisher), and told him he wished me

to read it, and that I should then have quite another idea of what

his philosophy was, and discover that he did not hold the views I

attributed to him.”

At another time he writes:

“The deplorable frivolity of these times is one of their worst

signs. I find it the saddest of all. Would that one could hope,

“When the hurly-burly’s done,

When the night is past and gone,”

that things would come right again. But moral nights are not as

physical ones. The latter bring us dreams which the dawn of day

dispels. The moral nights are full of the feverish dreams of

mankind, and they have no certain limit as to time. They go

_crescendo_ from error to folly, until the awakening at the end of a

completed, comet-like course of misery.”

We have mentioned Stolberg’s warm love of his country. Prince Francis

Fürstenberg said of him during the time of the humbling of Germany under

the yoke of Napoleon: “I know, and have known in my long life, many of

the noblest men in the nation, but I saw none surpass Stolberg in

genuine love for the Fatherland. His German and imperial heart is pure

as gold and shines like a diamond.” The epithet imperial sounds odd to

our ears; it is an allusion to his belief that the Empire of Germany,

such as it existed just before the Congress of Vienna, was the proper

representative and bulwark of the nation. He blamed the Emperor Francis

very strongly for laying down his time-honored dignity later on, and

contenting himself with a local title which severed his interests

materially from those of Germany at large. He also saw in this

withdrawal of imperial authority and protection over non-Austrian

countries a danger to the Catholic faith, and a possible interference of

Protestant powers in the communications between Catholic German states

and the Holy See. But concerning the ever-vexed question of the Rhine

frontier his patriotism was quick and hot; he wished that in the new

partition at the Congress Alsace and Lorraine should be given back to

Germany, and lamented the injudicious behavior by which some of the

German troops had spoilt the evidently favorable state of mind of the

Alsatians during part of the disturbances on the frontier.

“Eighteen months ago,” he writes in 1815, “the Alsatians were very

well disposed, came to meet our troops with flags and received them

with ringing of joy-bells; then came the Bavarians, the Badeners,

and so on, and behaved so as to make them hate us. We all talk of

our wish to reunite our once torn-away brethren with Germany, but we

have angered them instead and are burning their towns and villages.

My hair stands on end and I could weep tears of blood at the

thought.”

Early in the century, a few weeks after his conversion, Stolberg wrote

thus to Princess Gallitzin:

“True patriotism embraces the highest good of the people in all

things: the blessings of faith, those of law, of freedom, and of

morals. It can never follow the path of forcible overthrows and of

revolution, nor covenant with an outside enemy, nor lend itself to

the service of injustice, even when a seeming and momentary

advantage is to be gained by such service. What a disgrace for us

Germans is the Franco-mania that reigns among us—the cap-in-hand

alliance with the Corsican adventurer, who is spreading horror and

desolation among us and knows no right but that of the sword. What

undermines all our strength, and will sink us even lower and lower,

is not only the jealousy and spirit of aggrandizement current among

the German states against the empire and the emperor, the fawning on

the French with the hope of getting their help to win new slices of

territory, but far more the weakened character of the whole people,

and their want of moral energy and good feeling—the result of the

unbelieving philosophy and immoral literature that have unnerved the

nation.”

Just as impartially he condemned in after-years, when German patriotism

had spread with a sudden rush from the field into literature, the

“coarse Teutonism” which rejected every refinement of foreign origin,

maligned every foreign custom, and made patriotism ridiculous by

enjoining upon it to be no less than rabid. He then defended all that

was reasonable and applicable to German life, all the praise-worthy

customs, books, and improvements that fashion had turned suddenly

against. He had earned a good right to be independent; for four of his

sons fought in the different German armies that overwhelmed Napoleon

after the retreat from Moscow, and one, his son Christian, a brave boy

of eighteen, died at the battle of Ligny. His two sons-in-law also,

fathers of large families of young children, were in the national army,

and the greatest enthusiasm was felt by all the members of the family,

old and young, for the cause which Stolberg called “ours, God’s,

Europe’s, mankind’s, and the right’s.”

In 1815 he wrote: “True German feeling it is to welcome all that is

noble and good, out of all ages and nations, as our own. Every one now,

with narrow minds, is Nibelungen-mad, barbaric-mad”; and concerning his

_Life of Alfred_ he says:

“Alfred belongs to us, and therefore do I wish to hold him up to the

veneration and imitation, and for the teaching, of my children. But

not only do Alfred and his people belong to us; we should also make

our own all that is great and noble in the life of all nations, yet

without losing thereby our own individuality.”

In 1805 the decree freeing the serfs in the Duchy of Holstein went into

effect, and Stolberg congratulates his brother Christian on this happy

event; naturally, the greater event of the abolition of negro slavery in

the British West Indies was a great joy to him, and he rejoiced the more

that the _Illuminati_, his special aversion, lost thereby their best

weapon against England, and that the French Declaration of the Rights of

Man could be unfavorably compared with the English constitution, on

account of a contradictory law, at that time still in force, forbidding

the liberation of the negroes in French colonies to be even mentioned

before the legislature. The alliances, dictated by fear or by interest,

of German sovereigns with Napoleon were a subject of great grief and

indignation to him, and he looked upon England with almost exaggerated

admiration because she withstood the conqueror. He said “Pitt would save

England against Europe’s will,” and his confidence in the general policy

of the English statesman was unbounded. He had, too, a kind of

historical admiration, if we may so call it, for the English form of

government, which alone he thought proper for freedom, but which he did

not believe fit for the wants of every nation, indiscriminately, on the

Continent. It strikes us, however, that the fact of the English

constitution, in its then state, being nearly a hundred and fifty years

old had somewhat blinded his mind to the facts—according to his theory,

rather suspicious, to say the least—of the change of dynasty in 1688;

for the Stuarts in England were surely as legitimate sovereigns, from

his point of view, as the Bourbons in France, whose least advances, in

the person of Louis XVIII., towards the modern spirit so incensed and

disgusted Stolberg; and when he said that “England alone stood in the

breach” against Napoleon, he forgot that she considered it her interest

to withstand him, and that a deeply-rooted prejudice egged on the nation

against him. If he had seen anything of the unreasoning panic which the

threatened invasion caused among the English, he would have been less

ready to jest at the falling through of the scheme, which he called “an

expedition to gather mussels along the British shores.” It has often

been so, we think, among Continental statesmen and thinkers: they look

upon England with exceptionally favorable eyes and weigh her doings in

special balances, forgetting the lawless and riotous disturbances that

she experienced earlier than other countries, after which she settled

into the solid, steady, conservative, law-abiding, slow-to-be-moved

nation which she had been for over a hundred years when the French

Revolution suddenly broke out. Stolberg, much as he praised England,

almost refused to see any good in the chaos of new ideas that were

seething pell-mell together; he saw nothing but the evident godlessness,

selfishness, pride, and cruelty which marked that era; and, indeed, he,

the man of another age, the lover of a lofty ideal which we shall

mention presently—the man who said that “all politics hinged on the

Fourth Commandment”—could hardly be expected to allow that out of such

confusion God could glean anything worthy of being offered to himself.

Stolberg often called Germany the “heart of Europe,” and wrote an ode

with that title; but he would not allow with the innovators that the

“philosophy” of the age was the true source of the influence his country

should have on the Continent. Allied to this false idea of many Germans

was the affected custom, in the early part of the century, of using the

French language instead of the mother-tongue, even in the nearest

domestic intercourse—a fault which the Russians also fell into, but

which at present they have seen the folly of and have nearly

successfully remedied. Stolberg heartily hated and despised this foreign

intrusion into German home-life.

“Even in my younger days,” he says with scorn, “I can remember

hearing of a gifted German girl being reproached by German women

with being 'affected’ enough to write 'German’ letters.... Germans

now write to each other, brother to brother, husband to wife, in

French.... Is that not to estrange one’s self from one’s nearest and

dearest? nay, even from one’s self?”

His relations and correspondence with well-known people of his day

furnish us with his opinions on many of the writers, _savants_,

statesmen, and philosophers, the reigning and rising public men. Of the

historian Johann Müller he says:

“No one ever seized the true spirit of history so early in life as

he did.... His life is very interesting; it is true he showed a good

deal of vanity, but also so much cheerful good-humor that one does

not feel inclined to be hard upon him for the former. His plan of

study, as he arranged it for himself, and the scrupulous way in

which he followed it out, seem to me truly noteworthy.... What a

comprehensive spirit, what feeling and sympathy for the true, the

good, and the beautiful! How early, too, he broke loose from the

unwisdom of the philosophy of the times, and how deep a religious

spirit remained firm in him in the midst of many disturbances, since

he so clearly understood the history of the world by the light of

that Providence whose finger he was always tracing in it! He once

said very beautifully that Christ was the key to the world s

history.”

In 1807 he gives the following opinion of Alexander von Humboldt:

“I know Humboldt personally. He has much understanding, much

liveliness, much industry. But is he not inclined to be too much

enslaved by the German _à priori_ tendency and by a love of the

scientific form? Is he strong enough not to let himself be carried

away by the method of modern criticism, which tends to violent

disruption from all that has gone before, instead of tracing out the

great analogies on the path of simple observation? Is he _quite_

free from a delicate and imperceptible charlatanism? Years may have

matured him, but such maturing seldom takes place when the quick

strides of science make it difficult for wisdom to keep up with

her.”

Of Frederick Schlegel’s poetry, and that of others in the

_Dichtergarten_ (or “Poet’s Garden,” a collection of fugitive songs by

various poets), he writes:

“The rarer and the more beautiful is the noble, religious spirit

that breathes through the _Poet’s Garden_, the more do I wish that

its authors might put forth all their strength. And so it would be,

if it were not for a particular theory which lies at the bottom of

the poetry—a theory whose foundation I do not know, but whose

evident peculiarity strikes the eye, bewilders the reader, forces

the Muse, and in its purposed negligence of language goes so far as

even to disfigure it. The Muse craves freedom above all things, if

she is to express what comes from the innermost of our heart or our

mind. Every trace of art lames poetry, and theory often misleads,

because it is born of human philosophy, while poetry is something

divine. Therefore poets always succeed best in rhythm where the

inspiration is great and noble, and the quickly-passing images,

thoughts, sensations only group themselves well and naturally when

they are conjured up by an infallible, all-subduing inspiration,

without the poet knowing how it happens.”

Of Niebuhr’s Roman history he writes, in 1812—not, perhaps, in the sense

that most of the readers of that work will endorse:

“I marvel at the deep learning, and often at the penetration, of our

friend; but who will read him? What a bulwark of tedious researches,

the result of which is often nothing more than a learned outwork! It

is strange that, with this fault of historical pedantry, he could

not avoid the contrary one of reasoning _à priori_, so common to the

German professors. There is much understanding in the book, and in a

few places one is pleasantly surprised at its spirit; but this

spirit is neither _a joyful nor a certain one_. He fails in

simplicity. From this springs his heavy style, despite his choice

use of words. He is too forward in making hypotheses and foregone

conclusions; for instance, his open partisanship with the plebeians

leads him to make false and hasty judgments. His pragmatical

tendency makes him unjust even to Livy, and he has no appreciation

of the noble amiability of Plutarch. Yet, with all these faults, he

must ever remain a valuable historian—not a star of the first

magnitude, but still too good to be a mere _famulus_,[90] to gather

material for great historians. Among other things, he lacks the art

of managing his style so as to appear to be led by it and yet to

make it convey exactly what the writer pleases. But concerning his

principles, some of which, however, I do not endorse, his conscience

always appears as it is, noble and tender, while his love of truth

follows him even on his hobby—hypothesis.”

Footnote 90:

Servant; meaning here a second-rate chronicler.

It may be interesting to give the opinion of some of the same men on

Stolberg himself as a historian and writer. The _History of Religion_,

which was his great work, and which he mainly attributed to the

suggestion, encouragement, and interest of Princess Gallitzin, became a

topic of discussion and interest all through Germany. Many were brought

by it to the Catholic Church, and of these most wrote to him first,

asking advice and making confidences, before they read further or asked

instructions from a priest. It was a source of deep thankfulness to him

that he had thus been the means of making others share in the same

blessings and peace which he had won through the grace and leading of

God. But his _History_ was no controversial work; it was very

comprehensive, and embraced the whole subject of true religion from the

beginning of the world, tracing the connection between Judaism and

Christianity; the fulfilment of the prophecies in Christ; the spirit of

aloofness from the world, first symbolized in the national exclusiveness

of the Hebrews, and then proved in the persecutions under the Roman

emperors in the struggle between Christianity and heathendom; and,

lastly, the gradual, onward sway which the truth at last won over error,

and which, speaking in a certain sense, culminated in the conversion of

Constantine. Here Stolberg ended his history, feeling that his life

would not be spared much longer, and that he had done his work, so far

as he felt called upon by God to witness to the truth that was in him.

The unhappy struggles, rents, and abuses of later church history he left

untouched; surely there were counterparts to them in earlier days, but

no such embittering could come from a relation of the old heresies and

divisions as would have sprung from even the most impartial discussion

of recent and more local ones. Schlegel took the greatest interest in

this work, and of the least important part he spoke thus admiringly:

“I am especially delighted at the strength and simple beauty of your

style; whoso compares it with what is called nowadays the art of

representing things will easily discover where is to be found the

true source of even this beauty.”

Again, of the second part of the history (it was divided into fifteen

parts) he says:

“I found myself much steadied and strengthened by the whole, and

particularly enlightened by the exposition on the Hebrew belief in

the immortality of the soul and on the Mosaic code. May you in the

future of your work, as often as opportunity allows, return to and

dwell upon the immortality of the soul. It seems to me the path by

which mankind at present can best be led towards truth, better than

by any other teaching regarding the Godhead.”

He then says that pantheism and a vague sentimentality had perverted

everything distinctly Christian into an empty shadow-form, but that few

were so absolutely dead to all higher feeling as not to distinguish

between the “real personal immortality, and the mere metaphysical image

of it, without a hereafter, and without a continuance of the memory.”

“Bring vividly before them the true personal immortality, and you

will often find those whom you had thought most spiritually dead and

careless to be palpably roused. To me the doctrine of the Trinity is

the central point of Christianity, and therefore the foundation and

source of all my convictions, views, and aspirations.... The

unfolding and representation of this secret of love (the Trinity) I

have found to permeate every doctrine, principle, and even custom or

rubric of the Catholic Church; although even in her pale many good

individuals are less impressed with the divine spirit of the whole

than with some one or other literal regulation.”

Johann von Müller wrote thus of Stolberg’s work:

“It is not a lukewarm, sham impartial church history, in which one

is uncertain what relation it bears to Jesus of Nazareth, but the

work of a man who knows what he believes, and would fain move all

men to believe as he does. Not a church history critically weighing

the Messiahship of Jesus from the Old Testament against his Godhead

from the New, but the work of a man who sees everywhere and at all

times Him who was and is, and is to come, and to whom all power is

given in heaven and on earth. Lastly, it is not a worldly

representation of the deceits and time-serving devices through which

Christianity crept into the world, and is still able to maintain

herself, the humble handmaid of statecraft, in these our enlightened

times, but the confession and outpouring of soul of a man to whom

the whole world is nothing in comparison with the Saviour of the

world. Of the latter he speaks so that whoever loves him must love

this book, and he who knows nothing of him will learn from this book

what Christians possess in him. Therefore, reader, if thou art a

reed, driven before the learned wind of our modern writings, look to

this rock, and see if it has not a foundation in the needs of

mankind and the love of the Godhead; and thou who knowest not

Christianity, come and see _what it is_, as thy forefathers felt it,

as it is yet, mighty in every childlike heart; and thou who

believest, come hear, and enjoy, and rejoice thy heart with the word

of life.”

Claudius spoke of the book being read by thousands, and of its

“undoubted influence in strengthening the Christian faith among the

German people.” A person in comparatively private life, Major Bülow, a

stanch Bible man, said that Stolberg’s _History of Religion_ had been a

“welcome surprise to him, although the style was not always clear to his

understanding, and he was only fearful lest the author should not live

long enough to finish it.”

Joseph de Maistre spoke thus of the work in his _Recueil de Lettres_, p.

23:

“New researches and discoveries, and the progress of the art of

tracing all up to the first sources, may correct or supplement much

in his history, may bring a new light to bear on many of his

opinions—for the work, in spite of its foundation on, and

buttressing by, much study of a high order, is not meant to be an

exhaustive scientific work; but I doubt if any, in our century at

least, will surpass the author of this history in pure love of God

and mankind, love to Christ and his church, and in pure and truly

creative spirit. How striking also are his observations on the

circumstances of our time, his opinion on the persecution of the

church by the spirit of this world, on false teachers, on the

marriage tie, and the sanctity of oaths, and many like things!”

Stolberg was rejoiced by these commendations, but more encouraged than

rejoiced. Mere vanity was far from him; he thanked God that he had been

able to supply “what these oft-repeated praises of good and

single-minded men proved to him to have been really a want.”

The ideal which we have alluded to, and which was a great characteristic

of Stolberg’s mind, was that of the mission and duties of an

aristocracy. He believed that, in the abstract, the existence and

allowed influence of such a class was an instinct inborn in man, and

that it was only when the aristocracy was false to its own principles

that the people could grow antagonistic to it. His theories on the

subject were beautiful, noble, poetic, but in his time there had been so

much evil practice that such theories were nearly swamped under it. It

was natural to his character, however, to lean more on the theory than

the practice, and to consider the latter an excrescence and abuse which

might be done away with, and the ideal thereby reinstated in its first

dignity. At first sight his theory seems simply a feudal, mediæval,

romantic one, the dream of a man proud of his own order, and nursed in

prejudices such as no change in political relations _de facto_ could

uproot but if we look closer into it, it becomes a very different and

far more worthy thing—namely, a belief in the essence of chivalry, a

standard of conduct such as King Arthur’s, a translation into altered

forms and circumstances of the Gospel rules of charity, courtesy, and

patience. Here are some of his own sayings on the subject, on which he

reasoned in a way so far removed from either fanaticism or vanity that

we place his explanations here as something wholly special to himself,

and quite different from the ordinary rhapsodies about the necessity of

various grades of classes:

“The ideal of the aristocracy[91] is not weakened through the

unworthiness of many who are of noble birth. On the contrary, the

just scorn which follows these men redounds to the honor of their

class, of which one cannot become unworthy without being despised by

all. Nature gives the aristocracy neither more understanding nor

more physical strength than she does to other classes; it takes its

worth wholly from an ideal, but not a mistaken ideal. This, like all

that is great in mankind, is founded upon the sacrifice of all that

is lower for the sake of attaining the highest.

Footnote 91:

_Adel_, nobility, from _edel_, noble, our Saxon _Ethel_ and

_Atheling_. The word is here translated by aristocracy rather than

nobility—the former being a word of wider signification, and

embracing the class of untitled gentlemen (which of course

Stolberg included), as well as that of strictly so-called

noblemen.

“The aristocracy must give up every mercantile and lower traffic.

Three things were entrusted to its keeping—agriculture, of which

kings have not been ashamed, statesmanship, and the defence of the

Fatherland.

“As an ennobled countryman the aristocrat can pursue the most

necessary, the oldest, and the most innocent work with better

results than the peasant, because he has more means, more insight,

and can better afford the danger of an occasional failure. His

experience and example teach and encourage the common countryman,

whom it is the beautiful and holy duty of the nobleman to enlighten

and to protect, and whose well-being, morals, and temporal and

eternal good it is his duty to further by every means in his power.

This business is one which, if he wishes to be respected as a

nobleman, he has no right to evade or neglect; except temporarily,

if he is chosen as a representative of his province—a business to

which he has also a special call as a citizen of the state. He must

and ought, however, to take part in the government, even if he be

not chosen by his province; and either as a magistrate or only as a

land-owner he can take a prominent part in it. The defence of his

country devolves upon no one so strongly as upon the nobleman. This

is a worthy and beautiful duty of knighthood. It is well for that

state where the aristocracy, as such, is called to the defence of

the Fatherland as leaders of their own country people, whose patrons

they are in times of peace, whose heads, judges, mediators, example,

and benefactors they should be at all times. The old, fair relations

have been rent by false representations, but they are not

effaced.... The aristocracy has an inner worth, no matter how

unworthy are many of its members. Neither royal nor priestly

anointing can preserve from moral corruption! Of how much less avail

are mere human, outward means to preserve the spiritual existence!

Indeed, they often soil it. Let every one who is of knightly

standing strive to prove by his actions that the ideal of knighthood

lives in him, in noble simplicity, in courteous behavior, in quick

willingness to give blood and lands for the Fatherland. His example

will not remain without fruit. He will be far from looking upon

certain virtues as virtues of his condition, and neglecting to

practise others or superciliously leave them to other classes. If we

hold fast to our knightly calling, the essence of knighthood will

remain to us. The shell of the thing renews itself from time to

time.... Whatever is worthy of respect in knighthood has come from

self-sacrifice.... In order to keep pace with the century, the

nobleman must be the equal of the citizen in knowledge, whenever the

two meet in the same field. If he neglects this, he will see the

burgher reigning as a cabinet minister and himself reduced to the

_honor_ of waiting in the king’s ante-chamber by virtue of his

birth. And even in war, the knight’s proper field, how can the

nobleman boast of his superiority to one who knows more than he does

of the science of war? If the knight covets intellectual

superiority, he must not seek it in emulation so much as in brave

and silent self-sacrifice. The life of his fathers must teach his

heart this lesson: _Be worthy of thy fathers, whether the world

acknowledge thy worth or no.[92]_ A thirst after approbation does

not behove a knight, but steady reliance on his strength and his

intentions.... The present hatred of the aristocracy is a fever

which will soon be spent.... It remains for us, each in his own

circle, to maintain a lofty ideal and to spread it abroad—that is, a

true spirit of religion and that spirit of brave self-denial, of

earnest courage, and discreet worth which should mark the

aristocracy—and at the same time to encourage among ourselves a

desire not to be behindhand in such knowledge and in such strivings

as elevate the heart, adorn the mind, and make us fitter for the

callings that specially beseem us.”

Footnote 92:

The italics are ours.

It will be readily understood from the foregoing quotations that

Stolberg had not much sympathy with a scheme which some German noblemen

had started—that of a new knight-union or society. He deprecated the

publicity such a step would necessarily bring upon them, and saw in it

only a hollow, childish plan of defiance, a foolish revival of old

customs as powerless in practice as a return to the weapons of the

ancient knights, a protest against firearms and the altered arts of

warfare. His enthusiasm was always dignified and reasonable; it had no

touch of sentimentality and “playing at” things. To the last his

character remained the same. Forgiving and temperate as regarded any

wrong done personally to him, he could not brook the distortion of

truth, and was in the act of replying to a libellous pamphlet of Voss,

of Heidelberg, destined to spread among the public distrust of

Stolberg’s sincerity in his conversion, when his last sickness overtook

him. He had just finished the _Life of St. Vincent of Paul_, which he

had written instead of the autobiography that his friends strongly urged

him to write. He had objected that he felt no call from God to do so,

and that, unless one wrote with the view of God’s call, vanity and self

were too apt to become the leading motive in the work. He commended St.

Augustine’s _Confessions_ because they were evidently inspired by love

of God’s honor only, and a monument of thankfulness to the One who

called such a sinner to repentance. In St. Vincent he saw a man of

modern times whom one could hold up as a model not too exalted and

extraordinary, yet thoroughly humble, perfect, and holy, to men of his

and future generations.

Stolberg died December 5, 1819, at the age of seventy, at Sondermühlen,

a country-house for which he had, four years before, exchanged his

favorite Lütjenbeck, when French domination was in the ascendant and he

had become an object of suspicion to the French spies in Münster.