The late decline in emigration to the United States, and the present

lull, amounting almost to stagnation, which has taken place in it,

together with the fact that there is abundant reason to suppose that

this lull is but temporary and that emigration will again ere very long

pour in upon us, suggest some reflections respecting the changed

character which that emigration will probably assume, the changed

conditions under which it will be carried on, and the changed duty of

the Catholic body in the United States towards it. What was so

essentially necessary in the past will be necessary, under these new

conditions, no longer; what was so often impossible in the past will now

become generally easy of accomplishment. The Catholic Church in the

United States has passed through the stage of its infancy and

feebleness, and has entered upon the period of its manhood and strength.

Firmly planted throughout the land, it fears nothing and can watch over

and abundantly protect the faith and the education of its children. In

every State and Territory, save Alaska, at least one bishop; in seven

States two bishops; in five States three bishops; in one State six, in

another State eight bishops, and with more than 5,000 priests—surely

with this army of shepherds the sheep and the lambs of the flock can be

fed and guarded from the wolves of infidelity, sectarianism, and

bigotry. God has built up his church in the republic in the manner, and

chiefly through the agencies, which we have pointed out, and has thus

fitted her, armed her, and made her strong for the great work which

still lies before her. That work is the conversion of the non-Catholic

portion of our fellow-citizens; the nurture of Catholic children; and

the care, the protection, and, if need be, the conversion of the

emigrants who, in the future, are to come to us from the Old World. It

is only with this latter branch of her duty that we now deal. Emigrants

to the United States have hitherto arrived here chiefly as isolated

individuals, or at best as isolated families. There have been some

attempts at colonization—that is, in bringing in one company a large

number of individuals and of families, destined to migrate together to a

spot already selected for them, and which they are to occupy as a

community. Most frequently these attempts at colonization have been

successful. Where they have failed the failure has been due to some

incapacity or dishonesty on the part of the agents who had the matter in

charge, and not to any vice in the system itself. There is evidence to

show that emigration in future will be to a great extent, and may be

almost wholly, conducted on the colonization principle. We have already

said that emigration from Ireland in the future would most probably be

confined within small limits; but if anything could stimulate it, it

would be the development in Ireland of wise plans for colonization,

carried out by men of probity, experience, and practical wisdom. Our

chief sources of emigration, however, for some years to come, are likely

to be England, Scotland, Germany, France, Austria, Bohemia, Switzerland,

Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and Russia. There are causes at

work which even now are stimulating emigration from each of these

countries, and these causes may attain great strength. As an instance of

the curious manner in which apparently insignificant causes, originating

at a distance, produce large effects, we may mention the fact that the

shipping of fresh meat from this country to Great Britain—an enterprise

only in its infancy—has already so seriously unsettled the relations

existing between landlords and farmers in England and Scotland that the

latter are declaring their inability to make both ends meet, and are

turning their thoughts towards emigration. So general and so serious is

this feeling that the leading journal of Scotland has sent to this

country a trusted member of its permanent staff (the editor of its

agricultural department for many years), with instructions “to make the

fullest possible inquiry into everything connected with the

stock-raising department of agriculture” in the United States, extending

his researches to Texas, “where he proposes to examine thoroughly the

system of cattle and sheep breeding and raising carried on in that State

on so immense a scale, and to obtain all the information that is to be

had with respect to the breeds of cattle, the methods taken to improve

the quality of the stock, and Texan agricultural methods and

circumstances generally.” He is then to visit other States for the same

purpose, and “all along his route he will take note of all the phases

and conditions of agriculture, and of the suitability of the States for

advanced farming.” The results of his investigations, published in

Scotland and England, will enable the farmers there “to determine the

full significance of the competition of American cattle-growers in the

British dead-meat market,” and in all probability determine many of them

to emigrate to this country, with their capital and their skill, to

engage in this competition on the American side.

Farming in England and Scotland—especially in Scotland—has long been a

precarious and hazardous business; and now the reduction of four or six

cents a pound in the price of beef which has been caused by the

importation of about 1,000 tons of American beef and mutton every week

at Glasgow and Liverpool, threatens to be the last straw to break the

back of at least the Scotch farmer. Irish agriculturists likewise depend

to a great extent for their profits upon the money received for their

cattle, and they, too, will feel as severely as their Scottish friends

the ruinous consequences, to them, of a reduction of twenty-five per

cent. in the market value of their principal commodity. Thus the

emigration of the well-to-do farmers of the United Kingdom is likely to

be stimulated, and these agriculturists, most probably, would need but

little persuasion to induce them to emigrate, if they emigrated at all,

in colonies, and not as isolated families or individuals. So, also, as

respects the future emigration from the Continent of Europe. Different

causes are at work in each of the countries above named, but they all

tend to the same result.

We have already hinted that the emigration of the future will be of a

different class from the emigration of the past. At the present moment,

and probably for some time to come, it would be dishonest, cruel, and

unwise to encourage the emigration to this country of people without

capital—those who must earn daily wages in order to live. Hitherto the

great majority of our emigrants have been people of this class, and most

fortunate is it that they came in such vast numbers. The time will again

arrive, no doubt, when this class will be once more necessary and

welcome among us, and when they will come, as they have come before, in

thousands and tens of thousands. But at present they are not needed

here; to bring them hither would be cruel to us as well as to

themselves. The emigrants whom we need, and who are for some time most

likely to come, are those who possess considerable worldly wealth at

home, but who, like the English, Scotch, and Irish farmers of whom we

have spoken, find it difficult to provide sufficiently for their

increasing families, or wish to secure for them, in the New World,

better fortunes than they can hope for in the Old. On the European

Continent, and especially in Germany, other causes are at work which are

morally certain to promote emigration. The war in the East may be

localized—although all the probabilities point to a different

conclusion—but even now it has increased the burdens which oppress the

German people, and rendered the “blood-tax” that they are compelled to

pay heavier and harder to bear. There is probably no intelligent man in

Germany who does not look forward to a not distant day when that country

will be again engaged in a desperate conflict; and meanwhile the

military service exacted from every German citizen, and the cost of

maintaining the army, press with a crushing weight upon the country. A

thoughtful and experienced writer in one of our daily journals—a writer

who, if we mistake not, has himself had extensive experience in the

organization of emigration enterprises—thus treats of this subject:

“But it is in Germany that the fears awakened throughout Continental

Europe will contribute most powerfully to a renewal of interest in

the subject of emigration among classes to whom this country even

now presents all requisite advantages. The stern methods employed by

Bismarck to repress emigration movements—his interference with the

freedom of American citizens who dared to speak of the attractions

held out by the fertile West, and his suppression of whatever seemed

likely to facilitate emigration to the United States—were all called

forth by the anxious desire of people to escape the liability to

military service. The military glories of the empire had charms for

the cities, which acquired delusive appearances of prosperity. Among

the population of rural districts the situation was different. The

burdens and penalties of war, and of a system which exacts incessant

preparation for war as a condition of national safety, have among

these people stimulated the feeling in favor of emigration to a

degree which the action of the Imperial Government has imperfectly

controlled. The dread, vague before, will now be a reality. What, as

a mere contingency, has sufficed to foster the wish to leave the

Fatherland is now so near a certainty that the movement in favor of

emigration needs but a guiding hand to assume large proportions. And

the emigration available is of the description which, discreetly

operated upon, should be attracted rather than repelled by the

considerations which have driven wage-earners back to Europe. Those

who would gladly get out of Germany to save their sons from service

in the army look to the land for a livelihood, and would form

valuable accessions to the Western States. As far as Germany is

concerned, the difficulty is in reaching this class. Agencies that

might be freely used in England or Holland are in Germany

unavailable. All that seems possible there is to provide authentic

information through channels which would not conflict with local law

or incur the suspicion which, in view of recent experience,

interested representations are likely to excite. Might not our

consular agencies be utilized, not as emigration bureaux, but as

means of supplying to those who seek it information in reference to

lands and farms in the West and South, and to other matters

connected with the opening or purchase of farms, and stocking and

working them? The laborious head of the Statistical Bureau some

years ago compiled a volume of statistics which to the working-men

of the Old World was invaluable. The manual at present needed would

deal with the phases of the emigration question, and would be much

more than an accumulation of figures. It would be more legitimate

than half the matter which emanates from the department and is

printed at the public cost; and it would contribute to a revival and

increase of the only immigration which can be honestly encouraged in

the face of hard times.”

The French have never shown much anxiety for emigration; but the

arrivals of emigrants from that country have increased during late

years, and were slightly larger last year than in 1875. In France the

burdens which are felt in Germany are also a cause of suffering, if not

of complaint; and emigration from France, if the proper means for

stimulating and directing it were employed, might reach large

proportions. In Holland causes like those to which we have alluded as

potent in Great Britain exist. The emigration from Russia has hitherto

been of a peculiar character; it has consisted mainly of the Mennonites,

whose anti-war principles impelled them to escape from the military

service exacted from all Russian subjects, and from which only the

temporary and partial concessions of the czar exempted some of them. The

mission now undertaken by Russia is of a character which will compel her

ruler, ere he has finished his task, to press every one of his subjects

into the military service, directly or indirectly. The desire for

emigration from Russia may be expected to increase, although some time

will probably elapse before large results can be hoped for from it. The

emigration from Austria has thus far been small. The total arrivals of

emigrants from that country at the port of New York during the last 30

years have been only 21,677, of whom 1,210 came last year and 1,088 in

1875. But Austria is a country especially fit to emigrate from, and the

incentives which are powerful in Germany will ere long be felt in

Austria also. From Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, and

Poland emigration of the better class may with reason be anticipated;

and even from Italy, which has sent us 42,769 emigrants since 1847,

considerable accessions may be expected.[115]

Footnote 115:

During the year ended December 31, 1876, 157,440 immigrants arrived in

the United States, of whom 102,960 were males and 54,480 females.

Their ages were: under fifteen years, 26,608; fifteen and under forty,

111,764; forty years and upward, 19,068. The countries of last

permanent residence or citizenship of the immigrants were: England,

21,051; Ireland, 16,506; Scotland, 4,383; Wales, 294; Isle of Man, 8;

Guernsey, 1; Germany, 31,323; Austria, 6,047; Hungary, 475; Sweden,

5,204; Norway, 6,031; Denmark, 1,624; Netherlands, 709; Belgium, 454;

Switzerland, 1,572; France, 6,723; Italy, 2,980; Malta, 2; Greece, 24;

Spain, 597; Portugal, 816; Gibraltar, 16; Russia, 6,787; Poland, 854;

Finland, 22; Turkey, 59; Arabia, 13; India, 22; Burmah, 9; China,

16,879; Asiatic Russia, 83; Japan, 6; Asia, not specified, 14; Egypt,

3; Liberia, 14; Algeria, 9; Africa, not specified, 17; Quebec, 15,545;

Nova Scotia, 3,200; New Brunswick, 1,494; Prince Edward Island, 437;

Newfoundland, 58; British Columbia, 484; Mexico, 532; Central America,

14; U. S. of Colombia, 20; Venezuela, 37; Guiana, 3; Brazil, 28;

Argentine Republic, 6; Chili, 20; Peru, 11; South America, 10; Cuba,

880; Porto Rico, 17; Jamaica, 23; Bahamas, 559; Barbados, 32; other

West India Islands, 43; Curaçoa, 14; Azores, etc., 960; Bermudas, 29;

Iceland, 30; Mauritius, 3; Sandwich Islands, 20; Australasia, 1,261;

East Indies, 16; and born at sea, 23.

During the month ended April 30, 1877, there arrived at the port of

New York 7,353 immigrants, of whom 4,553 were males and 2,800 females.

The countries or islands of last permanent residence or citizenship of

the immigrants were as follows:

England, 1,500; Scotland, 191; Wales, 46; Ireland, 1,364; Germany,

2,184; Austria, 286; Sweden, 415; Norway, 67; Denmark, 171; France,

241; Switzerland, 183; Spain, 58; Italy, 350; Holland, 60; Belgium,

26; Russia, 35; Poland, 34; Hungary, 37; Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia,

and Newfoundland, 25; Cuba, 19; Sicily, 18; India, 14; Mexico, 8; U.

S. of Colombia, 4; Venezuela, Bermuda, and born at sea, 3 each;

Greece, China, and Peru, 2 each; Turkey and Iceland, 1 each.

We have before us a collection of documents relating to colonization in

the West and Northwest. One of them describes the admirable plan of the

Coadjutor-Bishop of St. Paul for Catholic colonization in Minnesota. In

a powerful letter addressed, on the 16th of September last, to the

President of the Board of Colonization of the Irish Catholic Benevolent

Union, the bishop dwells upon the evils which have followed the

settlement of our Irish emigrants in the large cities—evils which we

have no wish to belittle; but he also confesses that the misfortunes of

those who went into the rural districts were equally deplorable. He

remarks:

“Those who—exceptions to the rule—did move forward into the country,

in search of homes on the land, suffered in many instances from the

absence of proper and systematic direction no less than their

companions in cities. They lost their faith. They strayed away from

church and priest, from Catholic associations, and in certain States

to-day there are whole districts where you hear the purest of Celtic

names, and where, nevertheless, not one man proclaims himself a

Catholic or smiles at the mention of the old land.”

And then, after a charming picture of a certain little Irish Catholic

colony in the West, of which he says that, beginning in poverty and

hardship twenty years ago,

“To-day those families are prosperous—rich; their children are as

innocent and as true as if they had always breathed the atmosphere

of the most Catholic of lands; the number of families has doubled,

through mere natural increase; their district of country is for ever

secured to the church,”

Bishop Ireland goes on to say that the results of his own colonization

labors in Minnesota may be thus described:

“We began last February. Our first step was to secure the control of

117,000 acres of land, situated in Swift County, belonging to the

St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. There was at the time in the county

about as much more vacant government land open for settlement under

the pre-emption and homestead acts. The price of the railroad land

was fixed, so that during the time it was to remain under our

control the company could not advance its figures. We at once placed

a priest in the colony, whose duty it was to direct and advise the

immigrant as well as to minister to his spiritual wants. An office

was opened in St. Paul, where the immigrant would be received on his

arrival from the East, and where all letters of inquiry would be

answered. Two weeks after publication of our plans had been made in

the Catholic press, immigrants commenced to arrive, and up to the

date at which I am writing over eight hundred entries have been made

by our people on government land, and about 60,000 acres of railroad

land have been occupied. We permit no speculation, so that each

quarter section generally represents a family, persons, as a rule,

being allowed to take more land only when they have grown sons, who

soon will themselves need a home.”

He then gives a letter from the register of the Land Office, showing

that the number of land entries made in Swift County from January 1 to

June 1, 1876, was 1,317, and saying that over 800 of these were made by

“your people.” The register adds:

“In this connection allow me to bear testimony to the intelligence,

integrity, and good order always manifested by your colonists in all

their business relations with this office. I can now call to mind no

instance in which one under the influence of liquor has been in this

office. Cases of profanity are extremely rare; in no instance have

we had trouble or contention with any one. They are model colonists.

I know this opinion to be shared by all who come in contact with

them.”

The bishop adds:

“We have already in the colony two churches; one more will be built

in spring. Two promising towns have sprung up—De Graff and Randall.

In De Graff there are some forty houses, stores or residences, a

large brick-yard, a grist-mill; a grain elevator and a convent

school are to be put up during the winter. The settlers, whom I had

the pleasure of visiting a month ago, are full of hope and delighted

with their prospects. Last spring Swift County was a wild,

untenanted prairie; to-day on every side new houses and

freshly-broken ground meet the eye. Our expenses in organizing and

directing the colony were large; still, we were able to meet them by

direct revenue from the colony itself. Each settler paid a small

entrance fee, and we sold town lots. We have also reserved from sale

some choice sections of land, which can at any time, if there is

need, be disposed of at a high advance over the original price; so

that we are safe against all losses in our enterprise. As soon as a

settlement is formed the land advances at once in value; one farm

bought in Swift County last spring at two dollars per acre has been

sold since at nine dollars per acre, and a settlement that embraces

three or four hundred families always affords room for a valuable

town-site. The two excellences which I deem our Minnesota plan

possesses are the following: We had control of the land; this is

necessary to ward off speculation and preserve the land for our own

colonists. No sooner would twenty families be settled in a district

than the surrounding land would be bought up by speculators or

strangers, if you had not complete control over it in some manner.

Next, we began the colony with a priest on the spot; the presence of

a priest does more than any other agency to attract immigrants and

to encourage them in their difficulties. We have been so well

satisfied with our work in Swift County that our programme for next

year includes the opening of two new colonies.”

Our space does not permit us to summarize even the accounts of the other

Catholic colonization movements which have come under our notice. These

movements are serious and important, and those engaged in them should

take every possible precaution to prevent them from falling into the

hands of careless, incompetent, or dishonest persons. The work, it

appears, will have two chief departments—the home and foreign agencies.

The former will undertake and supervise the task of selecting and

securing proper localities for colonies, and of procuring as settlers

families and individuals already resident here, but whose interests

would be promoted by their translation to these new homes; the foreign

agencies would be employed in diffusing the necessary information among

the classes in Europe who would be most likely to emigrate, and who

would be the most desirable emigrants, and in inducing them to join new

colonies already established or to form others of their own. The

_Catholic Advocate_, of Louisville, Ky., in some well-considered remarks

on the subject, says:

“Now, it is our opinion that a great impetus could be given to this

good work if the directors of the colonization project could so

manage as to awaken the Irish people at home to the value of the

movement; if they could have their plans placed in all their

development before that class in Ireland from which emigration

recruits its numbers. This could be best and most efficiently done

by inducing the formation of corresponding organizations in the old

country. There are very many thousands of people in Ireland, with

farming-stock worth two and three and four hundred pounds sterling,

holding their lands by an insecure tenure and at a rack-rent, who

would come out to this country to-morrow, with all their valuables

converted into gold, if they knew or understood the advantages of

the colonization scheme. As it is now, they only hear about it. It

comes to them by newspapers, as a kind of far-off echo. It is not

brought forcibly to their notice. Its benefits are not urged upon

them personally. There is no persuasion about it, and it is as a

dead interest to the great majority of the people, who, if they only

knew and understood it thoroughly, would grasp at it. The British

government was very earnest in its efforts to colonize Australia and

New Zealand some years ago, and the advantages it had to offer were

far and far away from those offered by the Catholic colonization

movement amongst us. But how did the British government act? It sent

agents amongst the Irish and English and Scotch, prepared with maps

and pamphlets and lectures, to impress the value of their project

upon the people at home and put it immediately before their eyes.

What was the consequence? Numbers of emigrants came forward, and of

a class which had the means to colonize, and they settled in

Brisbane, Queensland, and New Zealand, where they are to-day

prosperous and promising. We do not say that paid agents should be

sent to Ireland for the purpose we indicate, but it would be very

easy to communicate with influential persons there to put before

them the value of forming organizations in connection with Bishop

Ireland’s scheme, with the St. Louis scheme, and any others that may

be started. What is required is emigrants with some capital, and

this is the way to get them.”

Bishop Ireland, in the letter from which we have already quoted, sets

forth at some length what such a body as the Irish Catholic Benevolent

Union could do in this work. It could constantly agitate the subject of

colonization, and it could establish a national bureau of information,

which would collect information, publish pamphlets, secure the

co-operation of bishops and priests, and open colonies of their own. But

the “crowning stone in the work of colonization,” in the bishop’s

opinion, would be “the formation of joint-stock colonization societies.”

He says:

“By no other means can the poor among our people—those most in need

of homes—be colonized. However successful our Minnesota plan may

seem to have been, it does not reach the poor. We have received

hundreds of letters from most deserving persons, to whom we were

obliged to answer that we had no place for them in our colony. How

many there are who have simply means to bring them West, but who can

neither pay for land nor maintain themselves while waiting for the

first crop! A joint-stock company would give them land on long time,

at reasonable rates of interest, and would also advance them small

sums to assist them in opening their farms. The plan might be

somewhat as follows: The executive power of the company should be in

the hands of most reliable business men. Stockholders would be

promised that their money would be paid back in five years, with

interest at six per cent. per annum, and, in order that men of all

classes might take part in the work, shares would be put at low

figures. The inducement to take shares is that good is done to our

fellow-countrymen without any loss to ourselves. The company

purchases a tract of land; cash in hand, the land would cost but

little. Immigrants, in purchasing it from the company, would give

back a mortgage, promising to pay the full price in four or five

years, with interest at eight per cent. per annum. An industrious

settler could not fail to meet such obligations. If he failed to do

so, the land reverts to the company, worth much more than it was

when first purchased. The company derives its expenses from the two

per cent., which it charges the settlers over what it pays its

shareholders; but to protect itself the better it could sell the

land at a slightly increased figure, especially a few choice pieces;

it could also lay out for its profit a town-site, and sell the lots.

“There should be colonies in every State where cheap lands are to be

found. The movement should be made general, our entire Irish

Catholic people entering into it: one class coming forward with

advice and money, the other profiting, for their own good and that

of their religion, of the assistance offered to them. What is to be

done must be done quickly. The time is fast passing when cheap lands

can be had in America. Already the tide of immigration—bearing,

alas! but a small number of our people—has crossed the Missouri,

leaving in its wake but inconsiderable portions of unoccupied land,

and reaching even now the limits of the arable lands of the

continent. Patriotism and religious zeal are two great incentives to

action for Irish Catholics. Colonization is a work upon which both

can be most easily brought to bear.”

Already one such joint-stock company has been formed—on the 10th of

April last—in St. Paul, in which the bishop and the coadjutor-bishop of

that see have taken shares.

It will henceforth be the duty of the church in America to see that no

Catholic family landing on our shores and seeking a new home in our

Western States and Territories shall be permitted to stray beyond her

control, but shall be conducted to localities where her priests are

already prepared to receive them, and where their fellow-citizens will

be bound to them by the ties of faith. Catholics in this land are

already about as one in six. We receive accessions every day from the

ranks of the Protestant sects; few, if any, of our own number fall away

from us; the emigration of the future, to a great extent, will be in our

hands. Thus will the church in America—where to-day, to use his own

words, our Holy Father “is more truly Pope than in any other land”—grow

in strength and beauty, and thus will she be prepared, when the hour

comes, to save the republic for which her sons, from the hour of her

birth until now, have shed their blood, and given their toil and their

prayers, in unstinted measure.

A THRUSH’S SONG.

Underneath a leafy cover,

Green with morning-wealth of June,

Wanting still, like gift of lover

Craving even greater boon,

Deeper chords of light to perfect summer’s fulness, love’s high

noon;

Just apart from all the glitter

Of a busy crystal world

Where, amid quick human twitter,

Pond’rous engine huge arms hurled,

Leaping shuttle wrought bright fancies, girded wheels obedient

whirled;

Just a little from the glimmer,

From the footfalls’ tuneless tread—

With the distance ever dimmer—

Rose, so calm o’ershadowèd,

Sound of lusty drum and hautboy, with clear flute voice interlaid,

Notes exultant loud outpouring

Chant of nations, lightly bound

With frail melody, up soaring

O’er the people gathered round,

Resting from the glare a little, from the wearing sight and sound.

Ears of loyal Briton tingling

Hark’ning there, “God save the Queen”;

Erin’s children’s tears commingling

At “The Wearing of the Green,”

Thinking of a loveless bondage, truer trust that might have been.

Sounds of wrathful people seeming

Storming through the “Marseillaise,”

Stirred a land, nigh dead in dreaming,

Through Hortense’s song of praise,

Through its wailing sadness tolling bells of old chivalric days.

Through sad France’s slumber breaking

Germany’s triumphant hymn,

Armed peoples, eager waking,

Watching Rhine-lights growing dim,

Hearing clear a weary nation struggling sore with spectres grim.

In the nations’ anthems swelling

Ever twanged some chord of wrong:

Broken notes in anguish welling

Even in our starlit song—

Shadowy notes from swamp and prairie mingling with the suffering

throng.

Stilled at last the music’s clamor,

Drum and hautboy laid to rest,

Softly through the silence’ glamour

Stole the light wind of the west,

Gently parted the green branches, tenderly each leaf caressed.

And a sudden thrill of sweetness,

Mellow, careless, glad, and clear,

Love’s noon-song in its completeness,

Poured in peaceful nature’s ear

From a thrush’s throat of silver—happy song without one tear—

Fell like precious, heav’n-dropped token

'Mid the elements of strife,

'Mid the melodies, grief-broken,

Blare of trumpet, shriek of fife—

Only with undarkened blessing was the thrush’s singing rife.

Where the ways were broad and ordered

England’s Indian blossoms flamed;

Here, where guarding thickets bordered,

Bloom of May June’s sunshine claimed,

Lifting, 'mid the throngs of people, glance, half-fearing,

half-ashamed;

Trembling at the cymbals’ crashing

Through the ancient solitude,

Till the thrush’s sweetness flashing,

With its wild-wood joy imbued,

Seemed a covenant from heaven, arc of promise, rainbow-hued.

In the upper silence singing,

Hidden minstrel, unafraid,

In the sunlit branches, swinging,

By the west wind, whispering, swayed,

All the lower tumult silenced in the clear, blue depths o’erhead;

Whence the peace of heav’n, descending,

Filled the bird’s song, true and clear,

Lightsome duty sweetness lending,

Joy o’erbrimming in its cheer,

Freedom on his pinions resting, sunshine soft, and heaven near.

Careless strength and free heart blending

In each note’s melodious mirth,

Calm within a pure soul bending

Praising for its heavenly birth,

For its gift of soaring pinions, lightening so the bonds of earth.

With that clear and sudden sweetness

Sober fancies swept along,

And its wild-wood, perfect meetness

Seemed our country’s truer song—

Sunshine soft, and heaven near it, and no undertone of wrong.

So, methought, her clear voice, ringing,

Should in strength of freedom rise,

With the sweetness of its singing

Every evil exorcise;

Blessing for her children winning through her nearness to the skies.

PHILADELPHIA, June, 1876.

THE CONGREGATION OF CLUNY.

TRANSLATED FROM SCHOEPPNER’S “CHARACTER-BILDER DER GESCHICHTE DES

MITTELALTERS.”

At the close of the ninth century the great wealth of the Benedictine

Order in France had produced a relaxation of discipline and a departure

from regular observance in many of its monasteries which brought it into

a state of decadence. One principal source of this degeneracy lay in the

want of all organic union binding together the distinct monasteries,

each one of which was exclusively subject to its own abbot. It is true

that in earlier times the bishops exercised a certain jurisdiction over

them; but this was seriously impeded by the fact that the abbot was

frequently equal to the bishop in power and in external consideration.

The pope was too distant; disorder could strike deep root before any

information would reach him, and even then he was ordinarily able to

employ only indirect methods of remedying the evil. This seems to have

been felt by all those who, from the tenth century onwards, endeavored,

by various additional statutes, explanations, and stricter applications

of the Rule of St. Benedict, to bring back those who were subject to it

to a more conscientious fulfilment of the obligations of their religious

profession. At the time when the Carlovingian dynasty, represented in

the person of Charles the Simple, was verging toward extinction, William

the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Auvergne, in concert with his

duchess, Ingeburga, formed the plan of founding a new monastery. He took

counsel respecting the carrying out of his design with Hugh, Abbot of

St. Martin’s at Autun.

In company with the duke and duchess Hugh made an exploration of their

domains in search of a suitable location, and selected a meadow on the

banks of the little river Grosne, near an agreeable cascade, where a

chapel in honor of the Blessed Virgin and St. Peter had been already

erected. The duke objected that this was his favorite hunting-ground,

and that the noise and tumult of deer-chasing would frequently disturb

the quiet of the monastery. “Well, then,” replied the abbot, “drive away

the hounds and bring in the monks; you well know which of the two will

bring you the most favor with God.” The duke cheerfully assented to this

proposition, and took measures for the erection of a monastery in honor

of the apostles SS. Peter and Paul upon this territory, of which he had

but recently acquired the possession.

At the recommendation of Hugh, Berno was invited from a neighboring

monastery to become the first abbot. He was succeeded by Odo, the son of

a Frankish knight, who had been brought up at the court of Duke William,

had afterwards devoted himself to the religious state, and was at the

time of his election in the maturity of his manhood. Odo saw that in

many monasteries the end of the religious vocation had been entirely

forgotten, and, in order that he might restore the primitive discipline

of St. Benedict, he determined to reform the monastic state in

accordance with its original spirit and intention, and to induce the

monasteries in his own vicinity to adopt his reformation. He was a man

well fitted to undertake such a task, by his personal austerity, his

self-devotion to the good of others, and his extraordinary charity,

which was so great that he was ready at any time to bestow all he had

upon the poor, without any thought of reserving on one day what might be

necessary for the next. The influence of his personal character, and the

effect of his active efforts during a prolonged life, were so great that

a number of monasteries became affiliated to the one over which he

immediately presided. He is, therefore, properly speaking, the founder

of the Cluniac Order.

His meek and humble successor, Aymard, won for himself by his amiable

virtues the confidence of all the brethren of the order, and the favor

of the great and powerful, who were profuse in conferring upon it

liberal gifts, charters of protection and privilege. His successors in

office, Majolus, Odilo, and Hugh I., were all equally eminent by their

able administration, their great influence in all the most important

ecclesiastical and political movements of their time, and their high

favor with emperors, kings, and princes. Emperors, kings, popes, and

bishops maintained intimate relations with the abbots of Cluny, and all

the great and powerful nobles of the country sought their advice in

matters of importance. Three Sovereign Pontiffs were taken from Cluny to

fill the chair of St. Peter. When the son of a king was obliged to

become a fugitive, he sought for a refuge at Cluny, and princes who were

weary of life and disturbed by remorse of conscience came there to do

penance among the brethren. The rulers of foreign countries were lavish

of their donations to the order, the popes were equally munificent in

conferring marks of their high favor, and bishops were eager for the

affiliation of the most important monasteries in their dioceses with

Cluny. The immense revenues which flowed into its coffers from all

countries in the world became at last proverbial.

The internal discipline and external splendor of Cluny were maintained

in an undisturbed permanence and stability for a period of two

centuries. At the end of that time both were grievously shattered by the

disastrous administration of the unworthy Abbot Pons, a man of worldly

levity in character and manners, haughty and ambitious in his

disposition, whose whole course of official conduct was such as to

threaten the complete downfall of the order. After a length of time he

was formally impeached and tried at the tribunal of Rome, by which he

was deposed from his office as abbot. Disregarding this sentence, he

seized anew on the possession of the monastery of Cluny by force of

arms, but was soon after overpowered and cast into a prison, where he

was carried off by a sudden attack of fever.

After a short period of only three months, during which the abbatial

chair was occupied by Hugh II., Peter the Venerable was placed over the

Cluniac Order, which he ruled for thirty-nine years, precisely during

the period of St. Bernard, who was his intimate friend, and whom he

survived about three years. His activity, prudence, and universal

reputation, the intellectual power, deep learning, and exalted virtue

which merited for him the appellation of Venerable by which he is

designated in history, sufficed not only to heal Cluny from the wounds

inflicted on it by the Abbot Pons, but to raise the whole order to its

highest summit of importance, and to make the monastery which was its

centre flourish in a state of unexampled spiritual and temporal

prosperity. If we consider the many journeys which this great abbot

undertook on affairs of the utmost importance connected with the public

interests of the day, it would seem that he was exclusively a statesman;

his vast correspondence seems sufficient to have employed the time of

one whose whole attention was given to counselling all sorts of persons

seeking his advice by letters; his theological works are like the

productions of one actively occupied in study; the strictness with which

he observed and enforced upon his subjects in the cloister the monastic

rule indicates a contemplative ascetic; his administration of the

temporalities of his monastery presents him in the light of an able

financier and man of business. The world was filled with his fame, and

his order attained the highest zenith of its glory during his

administration, which ended at his death, during the Christmas-tide of

the year 1156.

All the special rules of the Cluniac Order were based upon the Rule of

St. Benedict. The ecclesiastical chant and the service of the choir

employed much more time and attention, according to the customs of

Cluny, than in other Benedictine monasteries. As far as possible,

uniformity was enforced in the different houses after the model of the

mother-house. Besides the special prayers which each one said according

to his own devotion, one hundred and thirty-eight psalms were prescribed

to be recited daily, which was usually done while engaged in performing

the various tasks; and even in the great heats of summer, on the days

when talking was permitted, there was only time for a recreation of half

an hour. Every negligence or mistake in the choir-service received

instantly a reproof. This was regarded as a spiritual military service,

in which no individual caprice or negligence could be tolerated. Special

care was exacted on the greater festivals of the church, and their high

importance was recognized by the greater length of the choral song, the

reading of longer lessons, and a more fervent devotion. During High Mass

no Low Masses were allowed to be said, so that no one could in that way

consult his own convenience and escape from the public and solemn

celebration. The moment of the departure of one of the brethren from

this world was treated as a specially solemn occasion. As soon as he had

received Extreme Unction a wooden cross was put under his head in place

of a pillow. All who could possibly attend were obliged to assist at the

last agony of the dying man, and, although at other times running

through the corridors was strictly forbidden, it was specially ordered

whenever the passing-bell announced that one of the brethren was about

to depart this life. Special revenues were devoted to all charitable

purposes, and their conscientious expenditure strictly enjoined. There

was a particular endowment for eighteen poor men who were perpetually

supported by the mother-house. Six brothers were appointed for the

service of the poor, one of whom waited on them, another acted as porter

of their hospital, two others furnished the wood out of the forest for

their fires, and two had charge of ovens for baking bread, to be given

away in alms to the poor. Everything remaining on the tables of the

refectory after the meals was taken by the almoner for distribution

among the poor. A cover was laid for each one of the most distinguished

benefactors at every meal, even though they were living at a great

distance or had been long dead, and all their portions were taken for

the poor. Twelve loaves, each weighing three pounds, were prepared each

day for widows, orphans, feeble and aged persons. On Holy Thursday the

ceremony of foot-washing was performed for as many poor men as there

were brothers in the community, all of whom were afterwards served at

dinner. On certain special occasions, and on all the festivals when the

table of the brethren was better served than usual, more abundant alms

were distributed. The almoner was bound to make a weekly visitation of

the houses in the village near the monastery, that he might find out

every poor person who was sick, and furnish him with food, wine, and

medicines. The number of poor persons who regularly received aid was

estimated at seventeen thousand. The Abbot Odilo sold the ornaments of

the church and a crown presented by the German emperor Henry II. in

order to relieve the wants of the people during a famine. The

subordinate monasteries were required to imitate in this generous

alms-giving the example of Cluny, and a similar observance of

hospitality was also exacted. Precise rules were laid down for the

reception of visitors of different ranks and conditions, who were

continually arriving at the monastery on foot or on horseback. If they

were ecclesiastics, they were not only invited to partake of the

hospitality of the monastery, but also to participate in its religious

exercises. Every one who travelled on foot received a certain amount of

bread and wine on his arrival and at his departure. If the poverty of

the house did not permit anything more than a temporary shelter and a

friendly reception, this, at least, was to be cheerfully given to every

one. The prior was not to consider what was within his means, but to go

beyond them in providing for the wants of strangers. Frequently, when

they had consumed all the provisions of the larder, the monks had to

endure hunger until new supplies, which often came unexpectedly, were

furnished by royal and noble benefactors.

The life of the monastic brethren was austere. Besides the regular and

very long choir-service, which no one was dispensed from attending, the

fasts were frequent. The flesh of quadrupeds was never allowed, and on

the ferial days and the entire period from Septuagesima to Easter, not

even fat could be used in preparing the food. The principal article of

their daily diet was beans, with an occasional allowance of eggs and

cheese, and more rarely of fish. After night prayers no one could taste

food or drink anything without special necessity and permission. The

violation of these rules and of the law of strict poverty was considered

as a grievous transgression, exposing the offender to excommunication

and privation of Christian burial.

Obedience, the pivot of all the virtues of an ecclesiastic, was regarded

as having a higher and more extended obligation for religious. Its

disregard was esteemed worthy of the severest punishment, and the

incorrigible were subject to expulsion. Priors and other officials were

twice admonished, and afterwards deposed without any hope of

restitution. The observance of a strict rule of silence was regarded as

a specially efficacious help to the acquisition of perfect spiritual

virtues, and, in the opinion of the Abbot Odo, monastic life was utterly

worthless without it. Absolute silence was invariably observed during

meal-times, and during all times of the day throughout Lent and several

other penitential seasons. The Cluniac monks became so expert in the use

of the sign-language through their disuse of speech that they might have

dispensed with talking altogether without the least inconvenience. The

most perfect silence and stillness, undisturbed even by hasty and noisy

walking through the cloisters, reigned throughout the monastery.

Every fault must be expiated by penance, or at least an acknowledgment

before the abbot. Those who were late must remain standing or prostrate

until a sign was given to them to repair to their places. The tardy at

table received also a penance. Public offences received public penances,

in order that every one might have sensible evidence that the community

was vigilant in observing the behavior of each individual member.

Smaller offences were punished by solitary confinement, making a station

at the church-door, or exclusion from the common exercises. Those which

were more serious were punished by flagellation, and, if the offence had

been public, the penance was administered at the door of the church

while the people were assembling for Mass, and the cause of it announced

to them by an official of the monastery. For the gravest faults the

culprit was put in irons or imprisoned in a dark, underground dungeon.

St. Hugh’s maxim was that a monastery is not dishonored by the faults of

its members, but by their impunity. Several brothers were appointed to

make the rounds of the monastery at intervals, and to declare in chapter

every disorder which they observed, whereupon due penance was inflicted

on the delinquents. This duty devolved on the prior for the first hour

of the night, and at intervals during its progress, with a special

charge of watching that all the doors were properly closed and fastened.

Such a special care was observed in regard to cleanliness that the most

particular housekeeper could not be more thorough or exact in a

well-regulated private family than were these monks of Cluny in their

domestic arrangements. This care for cleanliness showed a deep

psychological insight into the close connection between this exterior

virtue and interior purity, which is often endangered and damaged by a

slovenly disregard of outward propriety. Articles of clothing and all

the bed and table furniture were regularly changed according to an

invariable rule. Careful supervision was observed towards the novices in

respect to their personal neatness in such minute particulars as

washing, combing their hair, etc., and conveniences for these purposes

were provided in abundance for all, that they might easily make use of

them when they came in from work to go to the choir or the refectory.

The clothing was very plain, in contrast to the worldly elegance and

vanity in dress which prevailed in many other religious communities, but

all the different articles of dress were provided in abundance, with two

complete outfits for each one. The winter clothing was made to suit the

season and the climate, warm and comfortable; for the men who made the

regulations of Cluny were not so narrow-minded as to adhere scrupulously

to purely exterior customs which were suitable to Italy but utterly

unfit for the ruder climate of the North.

The sick were cared for with the most tender solicitude, six brothers

were deputed to the service of the infirmary, and the best ass in the

stables was set apart to haul wood for the fire. The infirmarian was

always provided with spices and wholesome herbs to make the food of the

sick more appetizing and wholesome. Meat was provided for them every

day, and even on fasting-days. A certain part of the presents made to

the monastery was assigned to the purchase of comforts and delicacies

for the sick and weakly. They were dispensed from the rule of silence,

and only required to refrain from abusing the privilege of talking. The

abbot and grand-prior were required to make frequent visits to the sick,

and the cellarer was bound to see each one, in company with the

infirmarian, every day, and inquire what kind of food he wished for and

in what way it should be prepared. As soon as one was released from the

infirmary he came to the chapter, and, standing up, said to the prior:

“I have been in the infirmary and have not kept the rules of the order

according to our obligation.” The prior answered: “May God pardon you!”

whereupon the convalescent brother went to the place of the penitents

and recited the seven penitential psalms or seven _Pater Nosters_.

As for the interior legislation and administration of the order, a

general chapter was held at Cluny once a year, where all the abbots,

priors, and deans of the entire congregation were bound to appear under

pain of deposition, those only who lived in distant countries being

exempted from attendance oftener than once every two years. Every

question which related to the rules was submitted to this chapter, and

to the votes of all the brethren of the monastery of Cluny. Each one was

obliged to make known in the chapter, without any regard to personal

considerations, whatever he had noticed in any of the houses or in any

individual member of the order which was worthy of censure, and was

protected from any unpleasant consequences which might possibly ensue

afterwards to himself from his disclosures. All priors whose

administration or personal conduct was censurable were deposed by the

chapter; and, finally, they made an examination of all the novices of

the congregation.

As soon as the chapter was dissolved the supreme power reverted to the

abbot of Cluny. He appointed all the priors and confirmed all the

abbots-elect, being strictly forbidden to receive any presents or

perquisites in connection with any such official act. He could make such

regulations as he saw fit in all the houses; all his sentences upon

individual delinquents which were in conformity with the canons were

binding; and in the interval between the capitular assemblies he could

depose from all offices without appeal. He was bound to share as much as

possible in the common life of the other monks, to be with them in the

common dormitory and at the common table, and to use the same food, the

only mark of distinction being that he was served with wine of a better

quality and with two loaves at dinner.

Next in rank and authority came the grand-prior, appointed by the abbot

with the counsel of the elders of the monastery and the assent of the

chapter. Under the abbot’s supreme direction he presided over all the

spiritual and temporal offices of the monastery, with a special

oversight of those brothers who were charged with out-door employments

on the cloistral domains. Every year, after the vintage, he made an

inspection of all the farm-lands, examined the stores laid up in the

barns and cellars, and directed the division of the fruits of the

harvest for the use of those who resided in the outlying farm-houses,

and for the general use within the monastery.

The interior order of the house was under the oversight of the prior of

the community, who had several assistants, and in case of absence a

deputy. The rule prescribed that no account should be taken of birth or

other personal considerations of human respect in the choice of prelates

and officers, but only of moral virtue, experience, and prudence. No

abbot or prior, not even the abbot-general of the congregation, was

allowed to travel without some of the brethren in his company, as

witnesses of his conduct and associates in fulfilling the devotions

prescribed by the rule.

We can form some estimate of the extent of the monastic buildings of

Cluny from the circumstance related in history, that in the year 1245

Pope Innocent IV., with twelve cardinals and his entire suite; also two

patriarchs, three archbishops, eleven bishops, with their respective

suites; farther, the king of France, with his mother, wife, brother, and

sister, and the whole of their retinue; the emperor of Constantinople,

the crown-princes of Aragon and Castile, several dukes and counts, and a

crowd of knights, ecclesiastics, and monks, were accommodated within the

precincts of the monastery without encroaching on any part of it which

was ordinarily occupied by the community or incommoding any of the

brethren.

The fine arts were made to contribute to that which is their highest

end—the service of religion—in the Cluniac Order more than in any other

contemporary institute. They were all employed in harmony and unity with

each other to enhance the splendor of the divine service. The candles

and lamps by which the church was lighted were placed in costly hoops

beset with precious stones. Instead of candelabra, trees artistically

wrought in bronze stood near the altar, having the lighted candles

prescribed for the solemn ceremonies blazing among their branches.

Paintings covered the walls; the windows were richly ornamental and

filled with colored glass. Costly tapestry and hangings,

beautifully-carved stalls, a decorated pavement, chimes of bells of

unusual size, reliquaries of gold whose beauty of workmanship even

surpassed their costliness, chalices, ciboriums, and monstrances of

gold, sparkling with jewels, vestments heavy and stiff with cloth of

gold, and all else that was magnificent in sacred art and decoration,

made the church of Cluny a theme of praise and admiration throughout all

France. It was probably at the date of its erection the largest in the

world, and rested upon sixty-eight columns, each eight and one half feet

in diameter. Thirty-two of these pillars supported the vast dome, and

the whole edifice, which was built in the peculiar form of an

archiepiscopal cross, was regarded as one of the most splendid monuments

of the Roman style of architecture in France. Sculpture, carving, and

painting rivalled each other in the decoration of this magnificent

church, and there still remained at the beginning of the present century

a representation of the Eternal Father on a gold ground in the vaulting

of the apse, ten feet in height, which retained all its original

brilliancy of color. The choir-stalls, which were of a comparatively

late period, were two hundred and twenty-five in number at the time of

the suppression—showing how numerous the community had become—and the

towers were filled with a great many bells, the largest of which were

melted down to cast cannon during the religious wars. At present but

little remains of this grand structure in a state of ruin. During the

French Revolution the whole was sold for building material for the sum

of twenty thousand dollars, and thus rude force destroyed this grand

work of the spirit of Christianity.

The cultivation of science was fostered in the Cluniac Order with much

greater care and zeal than in some of the other monastic bodies. Its

founders were more solicitous for the promotion of intellectual labor

than for material industry. The Abbot Peter wrote: “In virtue of a

special privilege, the abbots of Cluny from ancient times promoted

literary occupations with zeal and energy. It is not the desire of

winning a high reputation which stimulates them to write books, but the

feeling that it would be shameful to neglect the imitation of their

predecessors, the holy Fathers of the church, and thus to prove

themselves degenerate sons.” Under such superiors the brethren were not

deterred by any ill-grounded scruple from applying themselves to the

study of the heathen classics, and in fact considered this study as a

valuable auxiliary to the investigation of the Sacred Scriptures. The

works of the great ecclesiastical writers were fully appreciated and

diligently perused, and the valuable manuscripts collected in the

library of Cluny were not considered as a mere assortment of curiosities

for the sake of show, but as useful implements for the cultivation of

science, and in a generous spirit of liberality were freely lent to

other monasteries for the sake of making copies or recensions. The books

used for the church service were written out in a beautiful, ornamental

text, richly adorned with initial letters executed in the most elaborate

style of art; and those who were engaged in this kind of work, if it

would not admit of interruption, were excused from choir for the time

being. The ability and industry of the Cluniac monks in collecting

manuscripts and preserving precious monuments of ancient history have

been recognized even in later times, and abundant documents of that zeal

for the promotion of science which was not damped by the earnestness

with which religious discipline was enforced have come down to our own

day.

The confraternity of Cluny, which had speedily risen to a high

consideration throughout France, attained to a higher and more

solidly-established reputation during the period extending through

nearly forty years of the administration of Peter the Venerable. The

renovation of the Benedictine Order in its original spirit which had

been effected by the Cluniac reform became renowned in other countries

as well as in France, and awoke the desire of attempting to accomplish

the same happy results elsewhere by the use of similar methods. Every

founder of a new monastery in France desired to introduce the rule and

submit to the supremacy of Cluny. Kings, princes, and bishops urged upon

the already existing monastic communities, especially when they had

fallen into disorder, incorporation with the Cluniac congregation.

During the rule of Peter the Venerable it was increased by the addition

of three hundred and fourteen monasteries, collegiate foundations, and

churches, and at its most flourishing period it embraced within its

limits more than two thousand distinct houses. At the time of the

Crusades it extended itself even beyond the sea. Cluniac houses were

founded in the valley of Josaphat and on Mt. Tabor, and in the time of

Abbot Peter a monastery in a suburb of Constantinople was united to the

mother-house, over which he presided.

Men of all conditions who desired to do penance for their sins, to seek

a refuge from the dangers of the world, or to find spiritual direction

and come under a holy influence for their own sanctification, sought to

make reparation and deserve the grace of God by rich gifts to Cluny, to

consecrate themselves to God in some house of the order by the religious

vows, or to secure for themselves by becoming affiliated to it a share

in the sacrifices and prayers perpetually offered within its sacred

enclosures. It is related that Count Guy of Macon, who had been a bitter

persecutor of the order, one day presented himself at the gates of Cluny

in company with his son, several grandsons, thirty knights, and the

wives of each one of the noble group respectively, all of whom demanded

permission to take the vows of religion. Under the sixth abbot, Hugh I.,

three thousand monks were present at one general chapter. The crowd of

applicants for admission became so great that Hugh VI. was once

compelled to issue an edict forbidding the reception of any new

candidates during a term of three years. Under Peter the Venerable the

number of monks resident at Cluny increased from two hundred to four

hundred and sixty, some of whom, however, led a solitary life as hermits

in the neighboring forests.

The popes were lavish in their grants of privileges to Cluny and the

monasteries connected with it. Alexander II. decreed that no bishop or

prelate should have the right of excommunication in respect to the

Cluniac congregation. Urban II. allowed the use of episcopal insignia to

the abbot, and Calixtus II. conceded to him the special privileges of a

cardinal. The brethren of the order were even permitted to have the

celebration of Mass continued for their own benefit during an interdict.

There is nothing which shows more clearly the high esteem in which Cluny

was held than the decree of Pope Innocent IV. in the third session of

the Council of Lyons: that accredited copies of all the official

documents relating to the diplomatic intercourse of emperors, kings, and

other princes with the Roman Church should be deposited in its archives.

This important and precious collection was still in existence at the

outbreak of the Revolution.

The history of Cluny has a very great importance in connection with the

general history of the mediæval period, but especially with the great

ecclesiastical reformation of Gregory VII., which was prepared by the

interior working of the order within the church. For many prudential

reasons the fact that the great ecclesiastical movement of the eleventh

century had its source in the monastery of Cluny was kept out of sight

as much as possible; but it is proved by abundant evidence, and Gregory

VII. himself, who was its prior when St. Leo IX. persuaded him to return

with him to Rome in 1049, speaks of the peculiar and intimate relations

between Cluny and the Holy See.

THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.

VII.

ST. AGATHA.

“She hath no breasts—is cruelly maimed withal:

What shall we do for her, when spoken for,

Our little sister? Sheathe her, if a door,

In boards of cedar; if she be a wall,

Build up a house of silver,[116] and instal

Her worship”—so the monks. O bleeding core

Of maidenhood, thy Spouse and King shall pour

Balm in thy wounds, the lilies’ growth recall!

When Etna belched forth Phlegethon, and rolled

Its molten flanks upon Catania,

The saint’s veil they did reverently unfold

And wave it in the face of fire—Behold!

Piled black against the convent’s wall to-day,

That Red Sea curdled by Saint Agatha!

Footnote 116:

Song of Solomon viii. 8, 9.

VIII.

ST. LUCIA.

“What’s this? Two human eyes upon a dish?

Wretch! what dost mean?” “Lucia sends thee these;

She greets thee: 'Be no longer ill at ease;

They are thine! When mine, a spirit devilish,

With them, with pink bloom and pale limbs, did fish

For men’s souls.’” Quick! to her—ere horror freeze.

Her wan lips smiled beneath the bandages:

“Thou hast languished for mine eyes—have, then, thy wish!”

She raised the fillet—the youth dropped as dead.

“Look up!” a sweet voice spake, “and praise the Lord!”

He obeyed trembling—O illumined head!

Low with an altered spirit he adored.

Thenceforth an angel’s eyes, her own instead,

Lighted her to her martyrdom’s reward.

IX.

ST. URSULA.

A bower of woven palms! In white arrayed,

Marshalled beneath that verdant canopy

By fair-haired Ursula of Brittany,

Eleven thousand martyrs, each a maid!

For England’s heir, Etherius, had obeyed

His bride’s will, honoring her virginity.

To Rome on pilgrimage, by river and sea,

They sailed, and prettily the bold mariner played.

Saint, dear to tender years! thou and thy doves

Fell pierced with many arrows, and the Rhine

With blood of innocents ran red as wine—

Still teach that to the pure Death’s kiss is Love’s!

Still teach it, though thy mortuary shrine

May moulder, while the stream to ocean moves!

THE UNKNOWN EROS.[117]

Footnote 117:

_The Unknown Eros, and Other Odes._ London: George Bell & Sons. 1877.

There seems a growing and lamentable tendency among English poets in

these days to divide themselves up into schools. We have the

Tennysonian, the Swinburnian, the Rossettian, as a little earlier we had

the Lake school, the Byronic, and so on. In these schools of poetry, as

in schools of painting, there are certain marked features peculiar to

each and forming, as it were, the common property of that one. Certain

tones and colors belong to this: subdued grays, royal purples, dim and

far-away lights on meadow and mere. Another is a lustier flesh-and-blood

school: its men and women are decidedly, though musically, improper. The

choice expressions and tender care that the other lavishes on the

beauties of nature this one devotes to a maiden’s hair, or her cheek, or

her nose, the droop of her lashes, or the arch of her brow. A third

affects the mystic in matter and form; the more incomprehensible it is,

the finer the poetry. It is like the “vague school” in painting. One is

sometimes puzzled to know whether the picture be a battle-piece, a

landscape, a portrait, or a nightmare on canvas. And so they go on.

This follow-my-leader tendency is unquestionably a mark of feebleness.

It would be so in any art; it is obviously so in an art that springs

from inspiration, and is thus necessarily original. A poet is

comprehensible; a school of poets is absurd. Imagine a school of Homers,

of Virgils, of Dantes, of Shaksperes, of Miltons, of Byrons! Why, the

world could not hold them.

Weak as our days may be in original poets, they are strong at least in

numbers. Probably, unless in the days of good Queen Anne, never before

did such a constant and voluminous stream of English verse roll through

the press. Most of it falls still-born on the market; yet nothing seems

to discourage the poets. From Tupper to Tennyson they publish and

publish and publish all the time. Yet there is not a living English poet

to-day—unless Aubrey de Vere, whose best work has been his latest—who

did not establish whatever fame he has almost a quarter of a century

ago, and whose poems since that period have not shown a marked and

steady decline.

In the author of _The Unknown Eros_ we find a man who has certainly

something new to say; who follows no leader; who has thoughts, and a

mode of expressing them, all his own; who cares less for how than for

what; whose work compels attention, and who depends in nowise on the

jingle of words, the tricks of adjective and rhyme—the ballet-dancing,

so to say, of the English language—for his attraction. Indeed, in

respect of form he is far behind the other poets of the time. He almost

disregards it. Yet, as will be seen, the strange dress that he has

chosen for his creation fits it admirably, and moulds itself at will to

the strenuous freedom of the combative athlete, the scorn of a man of

fine feelings and bright intelligence, the meditative mood of the

student, or the softer movements of a lover. His instrument is now a

clarion call to battle, now a lover’s lute, now a dirge. It has the

strength and simplicity of the Gregorian chant, which in a few notes and

changes expresses the heights of inspiration and exultation, the depths

of dread, the saddest sorrow of the human heart.

The volume is a collection of odes, written at various and long

intervals apparently, and in a style of metre resembling somewhat that

of the minor poems of Milton. It has often the regular irregularity of

the Greek chorus, with much of the latter’s elasticity, brightness,

flexibility, and crystalline texture. In all this it is novel—markedly

and successfully so. It is more novel, however, in subject-matter. It is

refreshing to come across a man, a poet especially, who can drop out of

the commonplace, and do it without affectation. So accustomed have we

grown, however, to the commonplace that we follow him at first with

difficulty. His “Eros” is indeed an unknown god to the run of readers.

He is no Cupid rosy-red, with flowery bow and fire-tipped dart to smite

and melt the hearts of sweet young lovers. He does not slumber in summer

meads, or rove listlessly by laughing streamlets, or roguishly haunt the

bosky dells, or float adown the slanting sunbeam to flame on the unwary

and capture their hearts and kindle them into passion while they

languish in the soft arms of Mother Nature. His God is not this pagan

deity. He is remote, obscure, harsh-seeming. The poet’s song is no

pleasing love-tune. It is martial, high, far away, up on crags remote

and to be reached only by thorny paths with bleeding feet and straining

eyes, and hearts that faint many times on the way. True love is banished

from the earth, the poet seems to think; and in place of him, high,

pure, serene, with his head lifted up and bathed in the clear light and

refulgence of heaven, and his feet only touching the earth, men have set

a toy, a plaything, a fair bestiality.

“What rumored heavens are these,” he asks,

“Which not a poet sings,

O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze

Of sudden wings

Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space

To fan my very face,

And gone as fleet,

_Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat_,

With ne’er a light plume dropp’d, nor any trace

To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?

* * * * *

O, Unknown Eros, sire of awful bliss,

What portent and what Delphic word,

Such as in form of snake forebodes the bird,

Is this?

In me life’s even flood

What eddies thus?

What in its ruddy orbit lifts the blood

Like a perturbed moon of Uranus

Reaching to some great world in ungauged darkness hid;

And whence

This rapture of the sense

Which, by thy whisper bid,

Reveres with obscure rite and sacramental sign

A bond I know not of nor dimly can divine;

This subject loyalty which longs

For chains and thongs

Woven of gossamer and adamant,

To bind me to my unguess’d want,

And so to lie,

Between those quivering plumes that thro’ fine ether pant,

For hopeless, sweet eternity?”

The hard questions here put the poet answers, to some degree at least,

in other odes. In the “Legem Tuam Dilexi” (p. 43) he sings:

“The 'Infinite.’ Word horrible! at feud

With life, and the braced mood

Of power and joy and love;

Forbidden, by wise heathen ev’n, to be

Spoken of Deity,

Whose Name, on popular altars, was '_The Unknown_,’

Because, or ere It was reveal’d as One

Confined in Three,

The people fear’d that it might prove

Infinity,

_The blazon which the devils desired to gain_;

And God, for their confusion, laugh’d consent;

Yet did so far relent,

That they might seek relief, and not in vain,

_In dashing of themselves against the shores of pain_.”

Was there ever a truer picture painted by man of the curse of lost souls

and the hopeless relief they find “in dashing of themselves against the

shores of pain”—that relief that the demented seek in beating their

weary brains out or letting out the stream of the tired and useless life

into the dark ocean of infinity, severing with maddened and sacrilegious

hand the little knot that separates Time from Eternity? And what

stronger picture of the prevalence of evil and the inherent tendency in

the fallen world to rebel than this:

“Nor bides alone in hell

The bond-disdaining spirit boiling to rebel.

But for compulsion of strong grace,

The pebble in the road

Would straight explode,

_And fill the ghastly boundlessness of space_.

The furious power,

To soft growth twice constrain’d in leaf and flower,

Protests, and longs to flash its faint self far

Beyond the dimmest star.

The same

Seditious flame,

Beat backward with reduplicated might,

Struggles alive within its stricter term,

And is the worm.”

And here follows the response to the search after the “Unknown Eros”:

And the just Man does on himself affirm

God’s limits, and is conscious of delight,

Freedom and right,

And so His Semblance is, Who, every hour,

By day and night,

Buildeth new bulwarks ’gainst the Infinite.

_For, ah, who can express

How full of bonds and simpleness

Is God,

How narrow is He_,

And how the wide waste field of possibility

Is only trod

Straight to His homestead in the human heart,

And all His art

Is as the babe’s, that wins his mother to repeat

Her little song so sweet!

* * * * *

Man,

Darling of God. Whose thoughts but live and move

Round him; Who woos his will

To wedlock with His own, and does distil

To that drop’s span

_The attar of all rose-fields of all love_!

Therefore the soul select assumes the stress

Of bonds unbid, which God’s own style express

Better than well,

And aye hath borne,

To the Clown’s scorn,

The fetters of the three-fold golden chain....”

What “the three-fold golden chain” is that binds “the soul select” to

God no Catholic needs to be told. Free and loyal self-sacrifice, in a

world where self-sacrifice, whether we like it or not, is necessary and

must be endured, brings us nearest and makes us likest to Him, the true

Eros who “emptied himself for us.” These lines will help us to read the

riddle of the “Unknown Eros,” “some note” of whose “renown and high

behest” the poet thinks might thus “in enigma be express’d”:

“There lies the crown

Which all thy longing cures.

Refuse it, Mortal, _that it may be yours_!

It is a spirit though it seems red gold;

And such may no man, but by shunning, hold.

Refuse it, though refusing be despair;

And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.”

This thought again is more fully wrought out in the conclusion of the

same ode, “Legem Tuam Dilexi”:

“... For to have naught

Is to have all things without care or thought!

* * * * *

And lastly bartering life’s dear bliss for pain;

But evermore in vain;

For joy (rejoice ye Few that tasted have!)

Is Love’s obedience

Against the genial laws of natural sense,

Whose wide self-dissipating wave,

Prison’d in artful dikes,

Trembling returns and strikes

Thence to its source again,

In backward billows fleet,

Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet;

Thrilling each vein,

Exploring every chasm and cove

Of the full heart with floods of honeyed love,

And every principal street

And obscure alley and lane

Of the intricate brain

With brimming rivers of light and breezes sweet

Of the primordial heat;

Till, unto view of me and thee,

Lost the intense life be,

Or ludicrously display’d, by force

Of distance, as a soaring eagle, or a horse

On far-off hillside shown,

May seem a gust-driv’n rag or a dead stone.”

To those who read these lines carefully it will not be necessary to say

that the author is a Catholic. His name, though modestly withheld from

the present volume, is not unknown. It is many years ago since Coventry

Patmore sang his sweet love-songs, _The Betrothal_ and _The Espousals_.

They were received favorably enough by the critics—far more favorably,

indeed, than have been many higher and greater poems on their first

appearance: Keats’ _Endymion_, for instance. Then a strange silence

struck the poet, and he was dumb.

If the present volume is the growth of all these silent years, Mr.

Patmore has not suffered by his solitude. Between his earlier work and

the present there is no comparison. Indeed, it takes a very careful

reading of the first to detect therein the germ of the strong growth and

most beautiful flower that compel admiration to-day. Those were nothing

more than the story, told with all the fond minuteness of a gentle,

ardent, intelligent, and chivalrous young lover, of his first true love;

of the flowery paths and pleasant ways that led up to it; of the

gracious nothings that make that time so sweet and ever memorable to the

lovers; the lone communings, the tremulous doubts, the bitter-sweet

emotions, the sun and shade, the laughing April showers that weave

Love’s many-colored web and make a brief paradise for the new Adam and

Eve, with no serpent lurking in the grass—all this is told delightfully

and with delight. The verse is sweet and pleasant and flowing as the

subject; but it is a song to while away a drowsy hour, not to cause us

to halt and listen in the busy march and fierce strife of life. We

glance over them with lazy pleasure as we watch the gambols of children

in the sun.

These later poems are of a far different and more solemn nature. The

poet has lived much, felt much, suffered much, joyed much, thought and

meditated much in this long interval. He has been lifted to the heights

of heaven; he has been dashed back to the gates of hell. He has been

tossed on the waves of Doubt and felt the brotherhood of Despair. He has

lost her who first taught him to sing; whose gentle glances thrilled the

tender chords of his nature and moved them to utter sweet music. Here is

her picture:

“But there danced she, who from the leaven

Of ill preserved my heart and wit

All unawares, for she was heaven,

Others at best but fit for it.

I mark’d her step, with peace elate,

Her brow more beautiful than morn,

Her sometime air of girlish state

Which sweetly waived its right to scorn;

The giddy crowd, she grave the while,

Although, as ’twere beyond her will,

About her mouth the baby smile

That she was born with linger’d still.

Her ball-dress seemed a breathing mist,

From the fair form exhaled and shed,

Raised in the dance with arm and wrist

All warmth and light, unbraceleted.

Her motion, feeling ’twas beloved,

The pensive soul of tune express’d,

And, oh, what perfume, as she moved,

Came from the flowers in her breast!”[118]

Footnote 118:

“The Angel in the House,” _The Espousals_, p. 61.

Here is she ten years later:

“Her sons pursue the butterflies,

Her baby daughter mocks the doves

With throbbing coo: in his fond eyes

She’s Venus with her little Loves;

Her step’s an honor to the earth,

Her form’s the native-land of grace,

And, lo, his coming lights with mirth

Beauty’s metropolis, her face!

Of such a lady proud’s the lord,

And that her happy bosom knows;

She takes his arm without a word,

In lanes of laurel and of rose.”[119]

Footnote 119:

_The Espousals_, p. 73.

And here at last is her “Departure,” as told in the latest volume:

“It was not like your great and gracious ways!

Do you, that have naught other to lament,

Never, my Love, repent

Of how, that July afternoon,

You went,

With sudden, unintelligible phrase,

And frighten’d eye,

Upon your journey of so many days,

Without a single kiss or a good-by?

I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;

And so we sate, within the sun’s low rays,

You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,

Your harrowing praise.

Well, it was well, my Wife,

To hear you such things speak,

And see your love

Make of your eyes a growing gloom of life,

As a warm south wind sombres a March grove.

And it was like your great and gracious ways

To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,

Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash

To let the laughter flash,

Whilst I drew near,

Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.

But all at once to leave me at the last,

More at the wonder than the loss aghast,

With huddled, unintelligible phrase,

And frighten’d eye,

And go your journey of all days

With not one kiss or a good-by,

And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d,

’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.”[120]

Footnote 120:

_The Unknown Eros_, pp. 63-65.

It goes without saying that such a loss must tell with incalculable

force on a man of intense sensibility. Trials of this kind best prove a

man. Some they crush; others they humiliate only to exalt. If we may

judge by the silent testimony of the book before us, his great loss made

this man greater. He felt, if not for the first time, more keenly than

ever before, how uncertain and passing is all merely human happiness.

The known Eros that had charmed his life suddenly passed away “with

sudden, unintelligible phrase,” and in the darkness that fell upon his

soul his humbled eyes were opened to the unknown Eros who was near him

all the while.

But, beyond and beside this, between the publication of his earlier

poems and the latest his conversion to the Catholic faith took place. So

we judge, at least, from internal evidence in the books. Here was a new

and most powerful agent introduced to act upon his nature. Moreover, the

world had moved in the interval. Many and mighty changes had taken place

in the world, and they did not pass unfelt or unobserved by the silent

poet. But before we come to these we will give one more response to his

questioning of the oracle before whom of all he burns his incense. In

the “Deliciæ Sapientiæ de Amore” he sings joyously:

“Love, light for me

Thy ruddiest blazing torch,

That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch

Of the glad Palace of Virginity,

May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see....

* * * * *

Bring, Love, anear,

And bid be not afraid

Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid,

And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought;

For I will sing of naught

Less sweet to hear

Than seems

A music in their half-remember’d dreams.

* * * * *

... The heavens themselves eternal are with fire

Of unapproach’d desire,

By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest,

In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess’d.

O, spousals high;

O, doctrine blest,

Unutterable in even the happiest sigh;

This know ye all

Who can recall

With what a welling of indignant tears

Love’s simpleness first hears

The meaning of his mortal covenant,

And from what pride comes down

To wear the crown

Of which ’twas very heaven to feel the want.

* * * * *

Therefore gaze bold,

That so in you be joyful hope increas’d,

Thorough the Palace portals, and behold

The dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast.

O, hear

Them singing clear

'Cor meum et caro mea’ round the 'I am,’

The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb

Whom they for ever follow there that kept,

Or, losing, never slept

Till they reconquer’d had in mortal fight

The standard white.

* * * * *

Gaze and be not afraid,

Young Lover true and love-foreboding Maid.

The full noon of deific vision bright

Abashes nor abates

No spark minute of Nature’s keen delight.

’Tis there your Hymen waits!

There where in courts afar all unconfused they crowd,

As fumes the starlight soft

In gulfs of cloud,

And each to the other, well-content,

Sighs oft,

'’Twas this we meant!'

Gaze without blame,

Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame.

There of pure Virgins none

Is fairer seen,

Save One,

Than Mary Magdalene.

* * * * *

Love makes the life to be

A fount perpetual of virginity;

For, lo, the Elect

Of generous Love, how named soe’er, _affect

Nothing but God,

Or mediate or direct_,

Nothing but God,

The Husband of the Heavens:

And who Him love, in potence great or small,

Are, one and all,

Heirs of the Palace glad

And only clad

With the bridal robes of ardor virginal.”

The Love that our poet has been seeking, has found, and here hymns in

strains that at times are truly little short of seraphic, will now be

known to the reader; and we leave this high, ethereal Court of Love that

is human indeed, yet more than human, to glance at other and more

ordinary, though still lofty, subjects which the poet has touched.

In a sense it is really refreshing to find that he is not always in the

skies; that he is very human and made of flesh and blood like ourselves.

Indeed, so human is he that he openly confesses, in a poem of matchless

beauty and delicacy, to having found a substitute for his dead wife.

Ordinary men, who are not poets, yet who nevertheless have hearts, will

give a rough reading to the exquisite ode, “Tired Memory” (p. 93),

wherein the poet, lamenting his wife, and confessing truthfully, albeit

sadly, that

“In our mortal air

None thrives for long upon the happiest dream,”

and seeking round “for some extreme of unconceived, interior sacrifice,

whereof the smoke might rise to God,” cries in agony:

“My Lord, if thy strange will be this,

That I should crucify my heart,

Because my love has also been my pride,

I do submit, if I saw how, to bliss,

Wherein She has no part.”

“And I was heard,” he adds, let us hope untruthfully; for the

“crucifixion of his heart” took the shape apparently of a second wife,

thus:

“My heart was dead,

Dead of devotion and tired memory,

When a strange grace of thee

_In a fair stranger_, as I take it, bred

To her some tender heed,

Most innocent

Of purpose therewith blent,

And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet such

That the pale reflex of an alien love,

So vaguely, sadly shown,

Did her heart touch

Above

All that, till then, had woo’d her for its own.

And so the fear, which is love’s chilly dawn,

Flush’d faintly upon lids that droop’d like thine,

And made me weak,

By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn,

And Nature’s long-suspended breath of flame,

Persuading soft, and whispering Duty’s name,

Awhile to smile and speak

With this thy Sister sweet, and therefore mine...”

But this is not so much the humanity to which we referred. We think that

three characteristics will strike the readers of these odes: 1, the high

spiritual nature of many; 2, the deep pathos and human love of others;

3, the lofty scorn and fierce sarcasm displayed, mistakenly sometimes,

in certain of the odes.

The poet is an Englishman of Englishmen, and, only for his Catholic

faith, it seems to us that he would be one among the prophets of

despair, whose name is legion and whose day is the present.

“O, season strange for song!”

he cries in the Proem;

“Is’t England’s parting soul that nerves my tongue

As other kingdoms, nearing their eclipse,

Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strong

The voice that was their voice in earlier days?

Is it her sudden, loud and piercing cry,

The note which those that seem too weak to sigh

Will sometimes utter just before they die?”

To speak frankly, we do not think it is. We do not think England’s soul

is parting yet. We think there is much good left in this world for

England to do; at the very least there is much atonement to be made for

the many and great evils and national crimes—among others that greatest

of all, apostasy—for which that soul has to answer. She can do much, she

has done something, toward making this atonement; and the time of grace

was never nearer to her than at present. Nevertheless, it is impossible

to deny the intense pathos and exquisite beauty of the following sad

lines:

“Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways,

There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard,

Her ancient beauty marr’d,

And, in her cold and aimless roving sight,

_Horror of light_....”

In the sixth ode, entitled “Peace,” he returns to this theme:

“O England, how hast thou forgot,

In dullard care for undisturbed increase

Of gold, which profits not,

The gain which once thou knew’st was for thy peace!

Honor is peace, the peace which does accord

Alone with God’s glad word:

'My peace I send you, and I send a sword.’

* * * * *

Beneath the heroic sun

Is there then none

Whose sinewy wings by choice do fly

In the fine mountain-air of public obloquy,

To tell the sleepy mongers of false ease

That war’s the ordained way of all alive,

And therein with good-will to dare and thrive

Is profit and heart’s peace?

* * * * *

Remnant of Honor, brooding in the dark

Over your bitter cark,

Staring, as Rispah stared, astonied seven days,

Upon the corpses of so many sons,

Who loved her once,

Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways,

Who could have dreamt

That times should come like these!”

We do not altogether go with Mr. Patmore in this invective, however much

we may admire its form. England has certainly acted meanly in many

important European questions of late years. She will probably so act in

many more in the future, if she finds it advisable or profitable. And it

is a poor excuse to ask what other European nation has not acted or

would not act, had it the chance, equally meanly with England. We may be

very wrathful about the matter; we may have some very hard things to say

against England for not drawing the sword in certain cases; yet between

the nation that is too ready to fight and the nation that guards

severely what are strictly its own primary interests without fighting,

we certainly prefer the latter. The bloody road is a sad road to glory,

and its end is never seen. While, then, we may for the moment side with

the passionate poet who sits down in his studio and hurls his wrath in

words of flame against the ministry for not leading the country into war

and reviving ancient glories, as they are called, on second thoughts,

while still, perhaps, thoroughly disgusted with the ministry and the

meanness of their ways, we become gradually reconciled to the situation,

and thank Heaven, though of course not the ministers, that we can sleep

quietly in our beds. It may be an ignoble sense—doubtless it is; yet if

it prevailed a little more generally throughout the world just now, the

world would not, in the long run, be the sufferer from it.

There is another peace against which Mr. Patmore declaims in no measured

terms in “The Standards.” This was written soon after the launching of

Mr. Gladstone’s first pamphlet, not so much against “the English

Catholics,” as the author states in a note—he would do well to remember

that the world is a little larger than England—but against _Catholics_:

against the Catholic Church and its chief.

“... That last,

Blown from our Zion of the Seven Hills,

Was no uncertain blast!

Listen: the warning all the champaign fills,

And minatory murmurs, answering, mar

The Night, both near and far,

Perplexing many a drowsy citadel

Beneath whose ill-watch’d walls the Powers of Hell,

With armed jar

And angry threat, surcease

Their long-kept compact of contemptuous peace!

Lo, yonder, where our little English band,

With peace in heart and wrath in hand,

Have dimly ta’en their stand,

Sweetly the light

Shines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,

Whence, o’er the dawning Land,

Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate

’Gainst the black flag of Hate.”

This call is most spirited and trenchant and bold. We can only find

space for the strong end:

“The sanction of the world’s undying hate

Means more than flaunted flags in windy air.

Be ye of gathering fate

Now gladly ware.

Now from the matrix, by God’s grinding wrought,

The brilliant shall be brought;

The white stone mystic set between the eyes

Of them that get the prize,

Yea, part and parcel of that mighty Stone

Which shall be thrown

Into the Sea, and Sea shall be no more.”

“1867” is a poem strongly written and of marked character, but with

which we cannot agree. It was called out apparently by the passage of

the bill extending the suffrage by the conservative ministry under the

leadership of Mr. Disraeli. It is—so we read it, and we see no

possibility of reading it otherwise—a direct and bitter attack on a

rational extension of the popular liberties, which we take to be

radically wrong in conception:

“_In the year of the great crime_,

When the false English Nobles _and their Jew_,

By God demented, slew

The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong,

One said, Take up thy Song,

That breathes the mild and almost mythic time

Of England’s prime!

But I, Ah, me,

The freedom of the few

That, in our free Land, were indeed the free,

Can song renew?”

* * * * *