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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
A
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
VOL. XIV.
OCTOBER, 1871, TO MARCH, 1872.
NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
9 Warren Street.
1872.
JOHN ROSS & COMPANY,
PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS,
27 ROSE ST., NEW YORK.
CONTENTS.
Affirmations, 682
Afternoon at St. Lazare, An, 683
Air, Travels in the, 757
American Catholic Bishops, Clarke’s Lives of the, 562
Arcueil, The Martyrs of, 613
Association, The International, 694
Authority in Matters of Faith, 145
Catholic Libraries, On, 707
Catholicity and Pantheism, 376, 830
Chateau Regnier, 520
Christianity and Positivism, 1
Civilization, Egyptian, According to the Most Recent
Discoveries, 63
Clarke’s Lives of the American Catholic Bishops, 562
Color--Its Poetry and Prose, 279
Cooper’s An Englishman in China, 322
Cosmic Philosophy, The, 633
Craven’s Fleurange, 651, 813
Döllinger Scandal, The, 248
Duties of the Rich in Christian Society, The, 577, 753
Egyptian Civilization According to the Most Recent Discoveries, 63
Elements of our Nationality, The, 91
Elinor’s Trial, 790
Englishman in China, An, 322
Executive Document No. 37; or, Several Calumnies Refuted, 665
Faber, Dr., The Princeton Review on, 400
Faith, Authority in Matters of, 145
Fleurange, 651, 813
Foxvilles of Foxville, The, 604
_Fraction du Centre_ in the German Parliament, The, 269
France, Recent Events in, 289
Gambetta, M., Letter of Mgr. Dupanloup to, 849
Ghost Story of the Revolution, A, 261
God is our Aid, 364
History, The New School of, 549
Holy Father, On the Present Condition of the, 777
House of Yorke, The, 16, 158, 305, 473, 582, 738
International Association, The, 694
Island of Saints, The, 335
Lake George, A Week at, 78
La Roquette, The Place Vendôme and, 127, 233, 347
Lasserre’s Our Lady of Lourdes, 100
Lateau, Louise, The Stigmata and Ecstasies of, 171
Late General Convention of the P. E. Church, 506
La Vendée, One Christmas Eve in, 447
Leper of the City of Aosta, The, 767
Letter of Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, to M. Gambetta, 849
Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius, The, 32, 200, 391, 526
Lourdes, Our Lady of, 100
Lucas Garcia, 49, 189
Maistre’s Leper of the City of Aosta, 767
Mammoth Cave, A Visit to, 621
Martyrs of Arcueil, The, 613
Modern Opera, 415
Nationality, The Elements of Our, 91
New School of History, The, 549
On Catholic Libraries, 707
On the Present Condition of the Holy Father, 777,
One Christmas Eve in La Vendée, 447
Opera, Modern, 415
Our Lady of Lourdes, 100
Owen on Spiritism, 803
Pantheism, Catholicity and, 376
Papal Infallibility, Popular Objections to, 597
Philosophy, The Cosmic, 633
Place Vendôme, The, and La Roquette, 127, 233, 347
Poetry and Prose of Color, 279
Popular Objections to Papal Infallibility, 597
Positivism, Christianity and, 1
Princeton Review on Dr. Faber, 400
Protestant Episcopal Church, Late General Convention of the, 506
Protestant Rule of Faith, The, 488
Recent Events in France, 289
Religious Movement in Germany, and the _Fraction du Centre_
in the German Parliament, 269
Revolution, A Ghost Story of the, 261
Rich, Duties of the, 577, 753
Riot of the Twelfth, The, 117
Rome, St. Cecilia’s Day in, 646
Rule of Faith, The Protestant, 488
St. Cecilia’s Day in Rome, 646
St. Januarius, Liquefaction of the Blood of, 32, 200, 391, 526
St. Lazare, An Afternoon at, 683
Saints, The Island of, 335
Several Calumnies Refuted, 665
Spiritism, Owen on, 803
Stigmata, The, and Ecstasies of Louise Lateau, 171
Study of Sacred History, 421
Thoughts for the Women of the Times, 467
Travels in the Air, 757
Uncivil Journal, An, 721
Valentine, 214
Venite Adoremus, 557
Visit to Mammoth Cave, A, 621
Week at Lake George, A, 78
Who is to Educate Our Children?, 433
Women of Our Times, Thoughts for the, 467
Yorke, The House of, 16, 158, 305, 473, 582, 738
POETRY.
Annunciation, The, 812
Bethlehem, 487
Broad School, The, 525
Convert, A, 30
Dante’s Purgatorio (New Translation), 503
Evening Clouds, 15
Ever, 472
Epiphany, Our, 632
Lamartine’s The Wayside Spring (Translation), 213
Last Days of Oisin, The Bard, 845
Legends of Oisin, The, 185, 343
Limitation, 414
Martyrdom of St. Agnes, The, 828
Memory, A, 304
Mountain, The, 278
New Outspoken Style, The, 596
Our Epiphany, 632
Purgatorio, Dante’s (New Translation), 503
St. Agnes, The Martyrdom of, 828
True Faith, 232
Uhland’s Evening Clouds (Translation), 15
Veiled, 620
Wayside Spring, The, 213
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
American Home Book of In-Door Games, Amusements, and
Occupations, 720
Antidote to “Gates Ajar,” 572
Arians of the Fourth Century, The, 857
Augustine, Aurelius, Works of, 281
Bayle’s Pearl of Antioch, 719
Benni’s Tradition of the Syriac Church of Antioch, 428
Beecher’s Life of Jesus the Christ, 428
Biographical Sketch of Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan, 143
Brightley’s Leading Cases on the Law of Elections, 431
Catholic Directory, Almanac, and Ordo, Sadliers’, 1872, 720
Catholic Choir, Peters’s, 283
Catholic Family Almanac, Illustrated, 284
Cineas; or, Rome under Nero, 429
Collection of Leading Cases on the Law of Elections in the
U. S., 431
Congregation of St. Paul, Sermons by the Fathers of, 576, 716
Critical Greek and English Concordance of the New Testament, 286
Curci’s Taking of Rome by the Italian Army, 718
Dahlgren, Ulric, Memoir of, 859
Doane’s Passion Play, 576
East and West Poems, 575
Essays Critical and Historical, 427
Florence O’Neill, 718
Formby’s Pictorial Bible and Church History Stories, 284
Fourfold Sovereignty of God, 427
Four Great Evils of the Day, 286
Gates Ajar, Antidote to, 572
Graduale de Tempore et de Sanctis, 287
Grand Demonstration in Honor of the XXVth Anniversary of the
Election of Pius IX., 287
Hallahan, Mother Margaret Mary, Biographical Sketch of, 143
Harte’s East and West Poems, 575
Harsha’s Life of John Bunyan, 287
Hastings and Hudson’s Greek and English Concordance of the
New Testament, 286
Hewit’s Light in Darkness, 282
Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits, 144
Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac, 284
Japan in Our Day, 720
Johonnot’s School Houses, 143
Julia, Life of Mother, 285
Lenten Sermons, 860
Letters of Mme. de Sévigné, 430
Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 430
Life of Card. Howard, 715
Life of Jesus the Christ, 428
Life of John Bunyan, 287
Life of Mother Julia, 285
Light in Darkness, 282
Lord’s Prophetic Imperialism, 574
Macaronic Poetry, 717
McCorry’s Mount Benedict, 144
Manning’s Fourfold Sovereignty of God, 42
Manning’s Four Great Evils of the Day, 286
Manual of Piety, 288
Martyrs of the Coliseum, 288
Memoir of Ireland, A, 719
Meehan’s Rise and Fall of the Irish Franciscan Monasteries, 719
Montagu’s Letters, 430
Montalembert’s Monks of the West, 283
Morgan’s Macaronic Poetry, 717
Mount Benedict; or, The Violated Tomb, 144
Newman’s Arians of the Fourth Century, 857
Newman’s Essays Critical and Historical, 427
Nieremberg’s Of Adoration in Spirit and Truth, 143
O’Connell’s Memoir of Ireland, 719
O’Reilly’s Martyrs of the Coliseum, 288
Of Adoration in Spirit and Truth, 143
Palmer’s Life of Card. Howard, 715
Pearl of Antioch, The, 719
Peters’s Catholic Choir, 283
Pictorial Bible and Church History Stories, 284
Pius IX., Grand Demonstration in Honor of the Election of, 287
Preston’s The Vicar of Christ, 571
Prisoners of St. Lazare, The, 573
Prophetic Imperialism, 574
Rise and Fall of the Irish Franciscan Monasteries, 719
Rose’s Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits, 144
Sadliers’ Catholic Directory, Almanac, and Ordo, 1872, 720
St. Lazare, The Prisoners of, 573
School-Houses, 143
Segneri’s Lenten Sermons, 860
Sermons by the Fathers of the Congregation of St. Paul, 576, 716
Sévigné’s Letters, 430
Smith’s American Home Book, 720
Spouse of Christ, The, 860
Stewart’s Florence O’Neill, 718
Taking of Rome by the Italian Army, 718
Taylor’s Japan in Our Day, 720
The Internationale--Communism, 859
Tissandier’s Wonders of Water, 720
To and From the Passion Play, 576
Tradition of the Syriac Church of Antioch, 428
Vessels of the Sanctuary, The, 860
Vicar of Christ, The, 571
Villefranch’s Cineas, 429
Wonders of Water, 720
Works of Aurelius Augustine, 281
THE 1
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XIV., No. 79.--OCTOBER, 1871.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.
CHRISTIANITY AND POSITIVISM.[1]
Dr. McCosh had acquired a considerable reputation among Presbyterians
in his own country and ours, by several philosophico-theological works
he had published, before he was invited to become the president of the
New Jersey College at Princeton, one of the most distinguished
literary institutions of the Union. It had an able president, also a
Scotsman, in Dr. Witherspoon, one of the signers of the Declaration,
and a devoted champion of American independence, and, though a
Presbyterian, a sturdy defender of civil and religious liberty. Dr.
McCosh comes to the presidency of the college with a high literary and
philosophical reputation, and comes under many advantages, and its
friends expect him to contribute much to raise still higher its
character, and place it on a level with Harvard and Yale, perhaps even
above them.
There is some ability and considerable knowledge displayed in the
volume of lectures before us, though not much originality. The author
professes to take the side of Christianity against the false and
mischievous theories of such men as Sir William Hamilton, of
Edinburgh, J. Stuart Mill, Huxley, Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and
others, whom he classes as belonging to the Positivist school. We have
every disposition in the world to think and speak well of the volume,
and to give it full credit for every merit it may claim. It is
directed against our enemy even more than against his. Positivism is
the most open, frank, honest, and respectable antagonist Christianity
or Catholicity has had in modern times, and, we may add, the ablest
and the most logical, especially as represented by avowed Positivists.
In fighting against us, positivism fights against our Presbyterian
doctor, so far as he retains any element of Catholic truth, and there
is no good reason why his war against it should not tend as far as it
goes to the same end as ours. Positivism can be opposed and 2
Christianity defended only on Catholic ground; and so far as Dr.
McCosh really does either, he must assume our ground and serve in our
ranks, or at any rate be on our side; and it would be churlish in us
to reject or underrate his services because in certain other matters
he is against us, or is not enrolled in our ranks.
It is certain that in these lectures, which show marks of much hard
mental labor, the author has said many good things, and used some good
arguments; but having truth only in a mutilated form, and only his
private judgment to oppose to the private judgment of Positivists, he
has been unable to give a full and conclusive refutation of
positivism. As a Protestant trained in Protestant schools, he has no
clear, well-defined catholic principles to which he can refer the
particular truths he advances, and the special arguments he urges for
their unity and support. His book lacks unity, lacks the mental grasp
that comprehends in its unity and universality the whole subject,
under all its various aspects, or in its principle, on which it
depends, and which explains and justifies it. His book is a book of
particulars, of details, of general conclusions drawn from particular
facts and statements, like all Protestant books. This is not so much
the fault of the author perhaps as of his Protestantism, which, since
it rejects catholicity and has nothing universal, is essentially
illogical, and can deal only in particulars or with individual things.
The contents of the book are referred to no general principle, and the
particular conclusions drawn are of little value, because isolated,
each standing by itself instead of being reduced to its principle and
co-ordinated under its law. The author lacks the conception of unity
and universality; he has particulars, but no universals--variety, but
no identity--multiplicity, but no unity, except in words. This is a
great defect, and renders his work inconclusive as an argument, and
exceedingly tedious to the reader as well as the reviewer. This defect
runs all through the author’s philosophy. In his _Intuitions of the
Mind_, there is no unity of intuition, but a variety of isolated
intuitions--no intuition of principle, of the universal, but simply
intellectual apprehension of supersensible particulars, as in _The
Human Intellect_ of Prof. Porter, who is a far abler man than Dr.
McCosh.
We are utterly unable to analyze these lectures, reduce their
deliverances to a universal principle, which, if accepted, is decisive
of the whole controversy they attempt to settle, or if rejected proves
the whole worthless. Then we complain of the author for the indignity
he offers to Christianity by suffering the Positivists to put it on
the defensive, and in attempting to prove it against positivism.
Christianity is in possession, and is not called upon to defend her
right till strong reasons are adduced for ousting her. Consequently,
it is for those who would oust her to prove their case, to make good
their cause. The Christian controversialist at this late day does not
begin with an apology or defence of Christianity, but attacks those
who assail her, and puts them on their defence. It is for the
scientists, or Positivists, who oppose the Christian religion, to
prove their positivism or science. It is enough for the Christian to
show that the positivism or alleged science is not itself proven, or,
if proven, that it proves nothing against Christ and his church. Dr.
McCosh seems to have some suspicion of this, and occasionally attempts
to put positivism on its defence, but he does it without laying down 3
the principle which justifies it; and in doing it he renders it
useless, by immediately running away after some pet speculation of his
own, which gives his opponent ample opportunity to resume the
offensive.
Dr. McCosh, also, more than half agrees with the Positivists, and
concedes that the religious society, as such, has no right to judge of
the bearings of the conclusions of the scientists on religion. “All
this shows,” he says, pp. 5, 6, “that religious men _qua_
religious men are not to be allowed to decide for us the truths of
science. Conceive an Œcumenical Council at Rome, or an Assembly of
Divines at Westminster, or an Episcopal Convocation at Lambeth, or a
Congregational Council at Plymouth, or a Methodist Conference in
Connecticut (why not say Baltimore?) taking upon it to decide for or
against the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, or the grand doctrine
established in our day of the conservation of force and the
correlation of all the physical forces, on the ground of their being
favorable or unfavorable to religion!” This concedes to the
Positivists that science is independent of religion, and that religion
is to be accepted or rejected as it does or does not accord with
science, and wholly overlooks the fact that religion is the first
science, and that nothing can be true, scientifically or otherwise,
that is contrary or unfavorable to religion. Religion is the word of
God, and every religious man says with the inspired apostle, “Let God
be true, and every man a liar.”
Dr. McCosh, of course, cannot say this, for, having no infallible
authority to define what is or is not religious truth or the word of
God, he is obliged to place religion in the category of opinions which
may or may not be true, and therefore to deny it as the law for all
intelligences. Supposing God has appointed an authority, infallible
through his gracious assistance, to teach all men and nations his
religion, or the truth he has revealed, and the law he commands all to
obey, this authority must be competent to decide whether any alleged
scientific discoveries are or are not favorable to religion, and must
necessarily have the right to decide prior to all scientific
investigation. If this authority decides that this or that theory is
unfavorable to religion, we as religious men must pronounce it false,
and refuse to entertain it. Dr. McCosh, as a Presbyterian or
Protestant, would have no right to say so, but the Catholic would have
the right, and it is his duty to say so; because religion is
absolutely true, and the supreme law for reason as well as for
conscience, and what is or is not religion, the authority unerringly
decides for him. Nothing that is not in accordance with the teachings
of religion can be true in science any more than in religion itself,
though many things may be true that are not in accordance with the
opinions and theories held by religious men.
The moment the Christian allows that the authority is not catholic;
that it is limited and covers only one part of truth; and that there
is by its side another and an independent authority, another and
independent order of truth, he ceases to be able to meet successfully
the Positivists; for truth is one, and can never be in opposition to
truth--that is, in opposition to itself. Religion, we concede, does
not teach the sciences, or the various facts with which they are
constructed, but it does judge and pronounce authoritatively on the
inferences or conclusions scientific men draw from these facts, or the
explanations they give of them, and to decide whether they are or are 4
not consistent with her own teachings. If they are inconsistent with
the revealed word, or with what that word implies, she pronounces them
false; and, if warranted by the alleged facts, she pronounces the
alleged facts themselves to be misinterpreted, misapprehended,
misstated, or to be no facts. Her authority is higher than any
reasonings of men, than the authority even of the senses, if it comes
to that, for nothing is or can be more certain than that religion is
true. We cannot as Catholics, as Christians, make the concession to
the Positivists the Presbyterian doctor does, that their science is an
authority independent of religion, and not amenable to it.
Dr. McCosh, we think, is unwise, in a controversy with Positivists, in
separating natural theology, as he calls it, from revealed theology.
The two are only parts of one whole, and, in point of fact, although
distinguishable, have never existed separately at any epoch of
history. The existence of God, the immateriality of the soul, and the
liberty of man or free-will, are provable with certainty by reason,
and are therefore truths of philosophy, but they were not discovered
by unassisted reason or the unassisted exercise of our natural powers
before they were taught to our first parents by the Creator himself,
and have never been held as simple natural truths, unconnected with
supernatural instruction or some reminiscences of such instruction.
Natural theology, or philosophy, and revealed theology form one
indissoluble whole, and Christianity includes both in their unity and
catholicity. In defending Christianity against positivism, which
denies both, we should defend both as a whole; because the natural is
incomplete and unable of itself alone to satisfy the demands of
reason, which is never sufficient for itself; and the truths necessary
to complete it and to solve the objections to the being and providence
of God are not obtainable by reason alone or without the light of
revelation. We may assert and prove miracles as a fact, but the
objections of Positivists to them cannot be scientifically answered
till we have proved that they have their law in the supernatural
order. The inferences we draw from miracles will not be appreciated or
allowed by men who deny the supernatural and reduce God to nature.
The author in reality has no method, but he begins by attempting to
prove the being of God, then the existence of mind in man, and the
reality of knowledge, and finally, in the second part, that the life
of Christ was the life of a real personage, and proves the reality of
his religion. He offers only one argument to prove that God is, and
that is the well-known argument from design, which he bases on the
principle that every effect has its cause. He does not develop this
argument, which has been so fully done by Paley and the _Bridgewater
Treatises_, but simply asserts its sufficiency. There are marks of
design in adapting one thing to another throughout the universe, which
can be only the effect of the action of an intelligent designer.
Giving this argument all possible force, it does not carry the author
in his conclusion beyond Plato or Aristotle, neither of whom was
properly a theist. Plato and Aristotle both believed in an intelligent
mind in the universe, operating on an eternal uncreated matter,
forming all things from pre-existing materials, and arranging them in
an artistic order. The argument from design can go no farther, and
this is all that is proved by Paley’s illustration of the watch, which 5
would be no illustration at all to a mind that had no intuition or
conception of a designer. Neither Plato nor Aristotle had any
conception of a creator or supermundane God. Whether the intelligent
mind has created all things from nothing, or has only formed and
disposed all things from pre-existing matter, as the soul of the
world, _anima mundi_, is what can never be determined by any
induction from the alleged marks of design discoverable in the
universe.
We therefore hold, and have always held, that this famous argument,
the only one the Baconian philosophy admits, however valuable it may
be in proving or illustrating the attributes or perfections of God,
when God is once known to exist, is inconclusive when relied on alone
to prove that God is, or is that by which the mind first obtains the
idea. It may serve as a corroborative argument, but of itself alone it
cannot originate the idea in the mind, or carry one beyond an
intelligent soul of the world, or the pantheism of Plato and
Aristotle, and of all Gentile philosophy, except the school of
Leucippus and Democritus, followed as to physics by Epicurus--unless
we must also except the sceptics, Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. We
think, therefore, the author has damaged the cause of Christianity,
instead of serving it, by risking it on a single argument, by no means
conclusive to his purpose. A weak and inadequate defence is worse than
no defence at all.
The principle that every effect has a cause, on which the author bases
his argument, is no doubt true; but we must know that the fact is an
_effect_ before we can infer from it that it has or has had a cause.
Cause and effect are correlative terms, which connote one another;
but this is no proof that this or that fact is an _effect_; and
we cannot pronounce it an effect unless we know that it has begun to
exist; nor even then, unless we have the intuition of cause; and no
intuition even of a particular cause suffices, unless we have
intuition of a universal cause. It is not so simple a thing, then, to
pronounce a given fact an _effect_, and to conclude that there is
between it and something else, the relation of cause and effect. It is
precisely this relation that Hume, Kant, Thomas Browne, Sir William
Hamilton, Dr. Mansel, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Herbert
Spencer, and all the so-called Positivists deny or relegate to the
region of the unknowable. Dr. McCosh does not refute them, by assuming
and arguing from the principle; he simply begs the question.
Now, we venture to tell our learned and philosophic author that his
whole argument for natural theology falls to the ground before a mind
that has no intuition of the relation of cause and effect, that is not
previously furnished with the knowledge of design and of a designing
cause. Hence, from the alleged marks of design and adaptation of means
to ends, it is impossible to infer a designer. When the watch was
presented for the first time to the untutored savage, he looked upon
it as a living thing, not as a piece of artificial mechanism
constructed by a watchmaker. He must know that it is a piece of
artificial mechanism before he can conclude man has made it. There
falls under our observation no more perfect adaptation of means to
ends than the octagonal cell of the bee. Does the bee work by design
in constructing it? Does the beaver work by design, by intelligent
design, in building its dam and constructing its house? It is generally 6
held that the bee as well as the beaver works by instinct, or by a law
of its nature, as does the swallow in building its nest. This proves
that a designer cannot be inferred from the simple facts observed in
nature, as the Positivists maintain. This is the condemnation of the
so-called inductive philosophy. The induction, to be valid, must be by
virtue of a principle already held by the mind, intuitively or
otherwise, and therefore can never of itself supply or give its
principle, or by itself alone obtain its principle. God is not an
induction from the facts observed in nature; and the Positivists have
shown, demonstrated so much, and have therefore shown that observation
and induction alone can give no principle, and, therefore, end in
nescience--the termination of the so-called _philosophie positive_.
Dr. McCosh is not wholly insensible to this conclusion, and seeks to
escape it by proving that there is a mind in man endowed with the
capacity of knowing things as they are. But if the existence of the
mind needs to be proved, with what can we prove it? By consciousness,
the author answers; but that is a sheer paralogism, for consciousness
is simply an act of the mind, and presupposes it. God can no more be
an induction from the facts of consciousness than from the facts of
nature. In either case, the God induced is a generalization; in the
one case, the generalization of nature, and, in the other, the
generalization of consciousness. The former usually goes by the name
of atheism, the latter by the name of egoism.
Dr. McCosh very properly rejects Hamilton’s and Mansel’s doctrine of
the pure relativity of all knowledge, and Herbert Spencer’s doctrine
that all knowledge is restricted to the knowledge of phenomena or
appearances, though conceding that appearances are unthinkable without
a reality beyond them, but that the reality beyond them, and which
appears in them, is itself unknowable; and maintains truly that we
know things themselves, both sensibles and supersensibles. We know
them, he contends, by intuition, or a direct looking on or beholding
them by the simple intellectual force of our minds. Of this we are not
so certain, for we do not ourselves know by intuition why salt is
bitter and sugar sweet, and we think the doctor knows things
themselves only in so far as he excepts their essence or substance,
and confounds the thing with its properties, or its accidents, as say
the schoolmen, in which case he makes no appreciable advance on Mr.
Herbert Spencer. I know the appearances and the sensible properties of
bread, but I do not know its essence or substance. Has the
Presbyterian doctor, who seems to have a holy horror of Catholicity,
invented a philosophy for the express purpose of combating with
apparent reason the mystery of transubstantiation, by making it
conflict with the positive testimony of the senses and the human
intellect?
But let that pass. The intuition the doctor recognizes is empirical
intuition, and intuition of particular or individual things, not of
principles, causes, relations. And from the knowledge of those
individual things, he holds that man rises by generalization and
abstraction--that is, induction--from one degree of knowledge to
another, till he finally attains to the knowledge of God distinct from
the world, and clothes him with infinite perfections. Yet the good
doctor claims to be a philosopher, and enjoys a high reputation as
such. None of these individual things, nor all of them together, are
God, or contain him; how, then, from them, supposing you know them, 7
rise scientifically to him? and what by abstraction and generalization
is that to which the mind attains? Only their generalization or
abstraction, which as a creation of the mind is a nullity. He, like
Hamilton, in this would make philosophy end in nescience.
We, of course, hold that we apprehend and know things themselves, not
phenomena merely, and as they are, not as they are not--that is, in
their real relations, not to us only, but in the objective world. But
to know things as they are, in their real objective relations, or to
know them at all, demands intuition of them, in their contingency or
in their character of creatures or effects--that is to say, as
existences, not as independent, self-existent beings, which they are
not. And this is not possible without the intuition of the necessary,
of real being, on which they depend and from which they are derived.
When I say a thing is an effect, I say it has been caused, and
therefore, in order to say it, I must have intuition of cause; and if
I say of a thing that it is a particular cause, I deny that it is a
universal cause, which I could not do without the intuition of
universal cause. So when I say of a thing it is contingent, I simply
deny it to be necessary being, and I could not deny a thing to be
necessary being if I had no intuition of necessary being. If the
author means by abstracting and generalizing our knowledge of things
or individual existence, distinguishing this ideal intuition, or the
intuition of real necessary and universal being--what philosophers
sometimes call necessary ideas--from the intuition of things or
contingent existences, along with which it is presented in thought, and
as the necessary condition of our apprehending them, and by reflection
and contemplation ascertaining that this ideal, necessary and
universal, is really God, though not intuitively known to be God, we
do not object to the assertion that we rise from our knowledge of
things to the knowledge of God himself. What we deny is that God can
be concluded from the intuition or apprehension of things. We rise to
him from the ideal intuition, or intuition of the real and necessary,
which enters the mind with the intuition of the things, and without
which we never do or could have intuition of them, any more than they
could exist without the creative act of real and necessary being
creating them from nothing and sustaining them in existence; but it
needs to be disengaged by a mental process from the empirical
intuition with which it is presented.
This ideal intuition is not immediate and direct intuition of God, as
the pseudo-ontologists contend, and which the church has condemned;
but is intuition under the form of necessary, universal, eternal, and
immutable ideas--of that which the mind, by reasoning, reflection, and
contemplation, proves really is God. What misleads the author and so
many others who use the argument he uses, is that the intuition of
real and necessary being, and the intuition of contingencies, are
given both in the same thought, the one along with the other, and most
minds fail to distinguish them--which is done, according to St.
Thomas, by the _intellectus agens_, in distinction from the
passive or receptive intellect--and hence they suppose that they
conclude the ideal intuition from the empirical intuition. This is
decidedly the case with Dr. McCosh. The learned doctor admits
intuitions, but only intuitions of individual existences--what we
call empirical intuitions--whether causes or effects, not intuition of 8
the ideal; and hence his argument for the existence of God proves
nothing, for the universal is not derivable from the particular, the
necessary from the contingent, nor being from existences. Had he
recognized that along with, as its necessary condition, the intuition
of the particular there always is the intuition of the universal,
etc., he would have placed theology against positivism on an
impregnable foundation. The necessary ideas, the universal, the
eternal, the immutable, the necessary, connoted in all our thoughts,
cannot be simply abstractions, for abstractions have no existence _a
parte rei_, and are formed by the mind operating on the concrete
object of empirical intuition. As these ideas are objects of
intuition, they are real; and if real, they are either being or
existences. But no existences are or can be necessary, universal,
eternal, immutable, for they depend to be on another, as is implied in
the very word existence, from _ex-stare_. Then they must be being,
and identifiable in the one universal, eternal, real, and necessary
being, and distinguishable from existences or things, as the creator
from his creatures, the actor from the act.
We have said that the ideal intuition is not intuition of God, but of
that which is God; we say now that the ideal intuition is not formally
intuition of _ens_ or being, as erroneously supposed by some to
be maintained by Gioberti and Dr. Brownson, but of that which is
_ens_. The process of demonstrating that God is consists in
identifying, by reflection and reasoning, the necessary ideas or ideal
intuition with real, necessary, universal, eternal, and immutable
being, and real and necessary being in which they are all identified
with God. This process is demonstration, not intuition. When I say, in
the syllogism, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, I
have intuition of the necessary, else I could not say it; but I have
not intuition of the fact that the necessary is being, far less that
it is God. This is known only by reflection and reasoning, disengaging
the ideal from the empirical. The idea must be real, or there could be
no intuition of it, but if real, it must be being; if being, it must
be real and necessary being; and real and necessary being is God. So
of all the other necessary ideas. As the intuition is of both the
ideal or necessary and the contingent in its principle, and in their
real relation, it gives the principles of a complete demonstration of
the being of God as creator, and of the universe as the effect of his
creative act, and therefore of the complete refutation of pantheism.
The vice of Dr. McCosh’s argument is that it proceeds on the denial of
ideal intuition, and the assumption that being, God, is obtainable by
generalization and abstraction from the individual things given in
empirical intuition. It is not obtained by reflection from them, but
from the ideal intuition, never separable from the empirical.
This process of proving that God is may be called the ideal process,
or the argument from universal and necessary ideas intuitively given.
It is not _a priori_, because the ideal is held by intuition; nor
is it an argument from innate ideas, as Descartes held; nor--since
really objective, and present to the mind--is it an argument from the
primitive beliefs or constituent principles of human nature, as Dr.
Reid and the Scottish school maintained, and which is only another
form of the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas; or an argument drawn
from our own _fonds_, as Leibnitz imagined, or from the _a priori_ 9
cognitions or necessary forms of the intellect, as Kant held, and
which is only the doctrine of the Scottish school of Reid and Stewart
differently stated; but from principles or data really presented in
intuition, and along with the empirical intuition of things. It
places, therefore, the being of God on as firm a basis and renders it
as certain to the understanding as our own existence, or as any fact
whatever of which the human mind has cognizance; indeed, renders it
absolutely certain and undeniable. But while we say this, and while we
maintain that the ideal intuition is given along with the empirical
intuition, with which our author confounds it, and from which
philosophy or natural theology disengages it, we by no means believe
that the race is indebted to this ideal or metaphysical process--which
is too difficult not only for the Positivists, but for their great
opponent, Dr. McCosh--for the origin of their belief in God. All ages
and nations, even the most barbarous and savage tribes, have some sort
of belief in God, some religious notions which imply his existence;
and, hovering above the various Eastern and Western mythologies, we
find the belief in one God or the divine unity, though neglected or
rejected for the worship of inferior gods or demons, or the
elements--that is, the worship of creatures, which is idolatry, since
worshipped as God. The ignorant savage, but a grade above the beasts,
has never risen to the conception of God or of the Great Spirit from
the contemplation of nature, nor has he attained to religious
conceptions by a law of his nature or by instinct, as the bee
constructs its cell or the beaver its dam.
It is very true, nothing more true than that “the heavens show forth
the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands,”
but to him only who has the idea of God or already believes that he
is. Nothing more true than God can be traced in all his works, or that
“the invisible things of him, even his eternal power and divinity, are
clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the
things that are made,” but only by those who have already learned that
he is, are intent on answering the question, _Quid est Deus?_ not
the question, _An sit Deus?_ Hence we so far agree with the
traditionalist, not indeed that the existence of God cannot be proved
by reason prior to faith, but that, as a fact, God revealed himself to
man before his expulsion from the garden; and the belief, clear and
distinct or dim and confused, in the divine being, universally
diffused among all races and conditions of men, originated in
revelation and is due to the tradition, pure or impure, in its
integrity or mutilated and corrupted, of the primitive revelation made
by God himself to man. In this way the fact of the universality of the
belief in some form is a valid argument for the truth of the belief,
and we thus obtain a historical argument to corroborate the already
conclusive ideal or metaphysical argument, the principles of which we
have given.
We bear willing testimony to the good-will and laudable intention of
our author, but we cannot regard him as able, with his mutilated
theology and his imperfect and rather superficial philosophy--though
less superficial than the philosophy generally in vogue among British
and American Protestants--to carry on a successful war against the
Positivists. We are almost tempted to say to him:
Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis
Tempus eget.
He is too near of kin to the Positivists themselves, and adopts too 10
many of their principles and conclusions, to be able to battle
effectively against them. No doubt he urges much that is true against
them, but his arguments, as far as effective, are inconsistent with
his position as a Protestant, and are borrowed from Catholicity, or
from what he has retained from Catholic instruction and Catholic
tradition, not from his Protestantism. Having no authority but his own
private interpretation of the Scriptures to define what is or is not
Christianity, he knows not how much or how little he must defend
against the Positivists, or how much or how little he is free to
concede to them. He practically concedes to them the Creator. He
defends God as the efficient cause, indeed, but not as Creator,
producing all things by his word from nothing. He would seem to hold
it enough to defend him as the organizer and disposer of materials
already furnished to his hand. God does not seem to him to be his own
_causa materialis_. He works on a pre-existing matter. He constructs,
the author concedes, the existing worlds out of “star-dust,” or
disintegrated stars, without telling us who made the stars that have
dissolved and turned to dust, and without bearing in mind, or without
knowing, that Christianity teaches us that “in the beginning God
_created_ the heavens and the earth,” and therefore could not have
formed them out of “star-dust” or any other material.
The Protestant divine accepts and defends Darwin’s theory of the
origin of species by “natural selection,” though he does not believe
that it applies universally, or that man has been developed from the
ape or the tadpole. He denies that Huxley’s protoplasm can be
developed from protein, or life from dead matter; maintains that all
life proceeds from a living organism, that the plant can spring only
from a seed, and the animal only from a living cell or germ; and yet
concedes that some of the lower forms of organic life may spring or
may have sprung from spontaneous generation, and even goes so far as
to tell us that some of the most eminent of the fathers held or
conceded as much. What becomes, then, of the assertion that life
cannot be evolved from dead matter? He would seem to hold or to
concede that man lived, for an indefinite time, a purely animal life,
before the Almighty breathed into his nostrils and he became a
spiritual man, and quotes to prove it St. Paul’s assertion that “not
first that which is spiritual, but that which is animal; afterwards
that which is spiritual” (1 Cor. xv. 46). He seems, in fact, ready to
concede any and everything except the intelligent Mind recognized by
Plato and Aristotle, that has arranged all things according to a
preconceived plan, and throughout the whole adapted means to ends. He
insists on efficient causes and final causes, but hardly on God as the
_causa causarum_ or as the _causa finalis_ of all particular final
causes.
Throughout, as we have already remarked, there is a want of unity and
universality in his philosophy, as there necessarily must be in his
Protestant theology, and a sad lack of logical consistency and order,
or co-ordination. His world is a chaos, as is and must be the
Protestant world. Herbert Spencer undertakes to explain the universe
without God, or, what is the same thing, with an absolutely unknowable
God, which is of course an impossibility; but he has a far profounder
intellect and a far more logical mind than Dr. McCosh. He is
heaven-wide from the truth, yet nearer to it than his Presbyterian
critic. His logic is good; his principles being granted, his 11
conclusions, though absurd, cannot be denied. His error lies in his
premises, and, if you correct them, your work is done. He will correct
all details, and arrive at just conclusions without further
assistance. But Dr. McCosh is one who, however much he may talk about
them, never reduces his doctrines to their generic principles, or
reasons from principles. He is a genuine Protestant, and cannot be
refuted in refuting his principles, which vary with the exigencies of
his argument, and are really no principles at all, but must be refuted
in detail; and when you have convinced him twice three are six, you
have still to prove that three times two are also six.
Now, such a man--and he is, perhaps, above the average of Presbyterian
divines--is the last man in the world to attempt the refutation of
positivism. No Protestant can do it. Indeed, all the avowed
Positivists we have known regard Protestant Christianity as too
insignificant a matter to be counted. It is too vague and fluctuating,
too uncertain and indefinite, too unsubstantial and intangible, too
unsystematic and illogical, to command the least respect from them.
They see at a glance that it is too little to be a religion and too
much to be no-religion. It cannot, with its half affirmations and its
whole denials, stand a moment before an intelligent Positivist who has
a scientific cast of mind. The Positivist rejects the church, of
course, but he respects Catholicity as a logical system, consistent
with itself, coherent in all its parts, and for him there is no _via
media_ between it and positivism. If he were not a Positivist, he
says openly, he would be a Catholic, by no means a Protestant, which
he looks upon as neither one thing nor another; and we respond that,
could we cease to be a Catholic, we should be a Positivist, for to a
logical mind there is no medium between the church and atheism. The
middle systems, as Protestantism, Rationalism, Deism, etc., are
divided against themselves, and cannot stand, any more than a house
divided against itself. Their denials vitiate their affirmations and
their affirmations vitiate their denials. They are all too much or too
little.
The Positivists reject for what they call the scientific age both
theology and metaphysics. They believe in the progress of the race,
and indeed in all races, as does Dr. McCosh. They distinguish in the
history of the human race or of human progress three epochs or
stages--first, the theological; second, the metaphysical; and third,
the scientific. Theology and metaphysics each in its epoch were true
and good, and served the progress of man and society. They have now
passed away, and the race is now entering the scientific age, which is
the final stage, though not to last forever; for when the field of
science is exhausted, and all it yields is harvested, the race will
expire, and the world come to an end, as having no more work to do. It
will be seen there is here a remarkable difference between the real
Positivists, or believers in Auguste Comte, and our author and his
Protestant brethren. The Positivists never calumniate the past, but
seek to appreciate its services to humanity, to acknowledge the good
it did, and to bury it with honor, as the children of the New
Dispensation did the Old, when it had lived its day. One of the finest
appreciations from the point of view of humanity of the services of
the mediæval monks we have ever read is from the pen of M. E. Littré,
the chief of the French Positivists, and one of the most learned men
of France. It said not all a Catholic would say, but scarcely a word 12
that could grate on a Catholic ear. Dr. McCosh also believes in
progress, in the progress of our species, and, for aught we know, in
the progress of all species and genera, and that we outgrow the past;
but he takes pleasure only in calumniating it, and like a bad son
curses the mother that bore him. Because he has outgrown his nurse, he
contends the nurse was of no use in his childhood, was a great injury,
and it would have been much better to leave him to himself, to toddle
about at will, and toddle into the fire or the cistern, as he saw
proper.
Now, we think, if one believes in the progress of the species or the
perfectibility of man by development or by natural agencies, the
Positivist doctrine is much the most reasonable as well as far the
most amiable. Its effect, too, is far better. We--we speak
personally--owed much to the doctrine, which we borrowed not from
Comte, but from Comte’s master, Saint-Simon, the influence of which,
under the grace of God, disposed us to return to the old church. It
softened the animosity, the bitter hatred, toward the past which we
had inherited from our Protestant education, and enabled us to study
it with calm and gentle feelings, even with gratitude and respect, and
disposed us to view it with impartiality and to appreciate it with
justice. Studying the past, and especially the old church which we had
complacently supposed the race had outgrown as the man has outgrown
the bib and tucker of his childhood, in this new and better mood, we
soon discovered that there was much more in the past than we had ever
dreamed of, and that it was abundantly able to teach us much more than
we or any of our Protestant contemporaries supposed; and we were not
long in beginning to doubt if we had really outgrown it, nor in
becoming convinced that, instead of outgrowing it, we had fallen below
it; that the old church, the central institution of the world, was as
needful to us now as in the beginning; and that, in comparison with
the full noonday light which beamed from her divine countenance, the
light in which we had hitherto walked, or stumbled, rather, was but a
fading twilight, nay, midnight darkness.
Of course we differ far more from positivism than does Dr. McCosh, but
we can as Catholics better discriminate than he what is true and just
in them, and better understand and refute their errors or false
principles, because we have the whole truth to oppose to them, not
merely certain fragments or disfigured aspects of truth. It is only
Catholics who can really set right the class of men Dr. McCosh wars
against. Protestants cannot do it. When Theodore Parker published his
_Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion_, we had not--we speak
personally again--outgrown the Protestantism in which we had been
trained. We set about refuting him, and we saw at once we could not do
it on Protestant grounds, and we planted ourselves on Catholic ground,
as far as we then knew it, and our refutation was a total failure
except so far as we opposed to the _Discourse_ the principles of the
Catholic Church. Dr. McCosh has tried his hand in the volume before us
against Theodore Parker and the Free Religionists, and with no success
save so far as he abandons his Protestantism and quietly appropriates
the arguments of Catholics, to which he has no more right than he has
to his neighbor’s horse. It was hardly generous in the learned doctor,
while using their arguments--and they were the only arguments that
availed him anything--to turn upon Catholics and twit them of 13
“ignorance and superstition.” Was he afraid that people might discover
the source whence he drew the small stock of wisdom and truth he
displayed?
We might have made Dr. McCosh’s lectures the occasion of presenting a
formal refutation of positivism, but we had already taken up from time
to time the false principles, the errors and untenable theories and
hypotheses, which his lectures treat, and refuted them, so far as they
are hostile to Christianity, far more effectively, in our judgment,
than he has done or could do. He may be more deeply versed in the
errors and absurd hypotheses of the false scientists of the day, who
are laboring to explain and account for the universe without creation
and Providence, than we are; but we have not found in his volume
anything of any value which we have not ourselves already said, and
said too, perhaps, in a style more easily understood than his, and in
better English than he ordinarily uses. Our readers could learn
nothing of positivism from him, and just as little of the principles
and reasonings that Christianity is able to oppose to it. He writes as
a man who measures the known by what he himself knows, and is now and
then out in his measurement.
Dr. McCosh, also, adopts rather too depreciatory a tone in speaking of
our countrymen, especially considering that he has but just come among
us, and knows us at best only imperfectly. We own it was no striking
indication of American intelligence and judgment the importation of
him to preside over one of the best Protestant American institutions
of learning and science; but men often loom up larger at a distance
than they are when seen close by, and there is no country in which
bubble reputations from abroad more speedily collapse than our own.
The doctor will find, when he has lived longer among us, and becomes
better acquainted with us, that if England is nearer Germany, German
speculations are known to Americans and appreciated by them at least
as soon as they are by Englishmen or Scotsmen. Kant, Fichte,
Schelling, Hegel, were known to American scholars before there was
much knowledge of them in England or Scotland. The English and Scotch
are now just becoming acquainted with and are carried away by theories
and speculations in philosophy which had been examined here, and
exploded more than thirty years ago by Americans. The doctor
underrates the scholarship and intelligence even of his American
Presbyterian friends, and there are scholars, men of thought, of
science, general intelligence, in the country many degrees above
Presbyterians, respectable as they are. Presbyterians are not by any
means the whole American people, nor the most advanced portion of
them. They are really behind the Congregationalists, to say nothing of
“the ignorant and superstitious” Catholics, whose scholars are in
science and learning, philosophy, theology, especially in the history
of the church, it is no boast to say, superior to either, and know and
understand better the movements of the age, intellectual, moral,
social, and political theories, crotchets, and tendencies of the
present, than any other class of American citizens. It takes more than
a Dr. McCosh, although for a time a professor in Belfast, Ireland, to
teach them more than they already know.
We pass over the second part of the lectures, devoted to Apologetics,
as of no importance. One needs to know what Christianity is, and to
have clearly in his mind the entire Christian plan, before one can
successfully defend it against the class of persons the author calls 14
Positivists. This is more than the author knows, or as a Protestant
can know. His Christianity is an indefinite, vague, variable, and
uncertain opinion, and he has no conception at all of the Christian
plan, or what St. Paul calls “the new creation.” No doubt the miracles
are provable by simple historical testimony by and to one who knows
nothing of the Christian plan, or of its supernatural character; but
to the unbelievers of our time it is necessary to set forth, in its
unity and catholicity, the Christian _schema_, if we may be allowed
the term, and to show that miracles themselves have their reason or
law in the divine plan or decree, and are no more anomalies, in
relation to that plan or decree, or _ex parte Dei_, than are earthquakes
and volcanoes. It is only in this way we can satisfy the demand for
order and regularity. The unbeliever may not be able to resist the
testimony which proves the miracle a fact, but till we show him that
in a miracle the natural laws are not violated, or that nature does
not go out of her course, as he imagines, we cannot satisfy him that
he can yield to the miracle without surrendering his natural reason,
and the law and order of the universe.
Now, this the Protestant cannot do; and though he might adduce the
historical evidences of Christianity satisfactory to a simpler age, or
to minds, though steeped in error, yet retaining from tradition a full
belief in the reality of a supernatural order, he cannot as a
Protestant do it to minds that deny that there is or can be anything
above nature, and that refuse utterly to admit the supernatural order,
which the miracles manifest, or that reject miracles, not because the
testimony is insufficient, but because they cannot be admitted without
admitting the reality of the supernatural. The prejudice against the
supernatural must be removed as the preliminary work, and this can be
done only by presenting Christianity as a whole in its unity and
catholicity, and showing that, according to it, the supernatural or
Christian order enters into the original decree of God, and is
necessary to complete what is initial in the cosmos, or to perfect the
natural order and to enable it to fulfil the purpose for which it
exists, or realize its destiny or final cause, in which is its
beatitude or supreme good. This done, the prejudice against the
supernatural is removed, miracles are seen to be in the order, not
indeed of nature, as Carlyle pretends, but in the order of the
supernatural, and demanding only ordinary historical testimony to be
proved, and consequently Hume’s famous argument against miracles,
refuted by no Protestant that has protested against it, shown to have
no force.
Now, this requires a profound knowledge of Christianity, which is not
attainable by private judgment from the Scriptures, or outside of the
infallible authority of the church with which the revelation of God,
the revealed word, is deposited as its guardian and interpreter. M.
Migne, indeed, admits some treatises written by Protestants into his
collection of works he has published under the title of _Evangelical
Demonstration_, which are not without their merit, but are valuable
only on certain points, and on those only so far as they rest on
Catholic principles and use Catholic arguments. Christianity being
supernatural, a revelation of the supernatural, it, of course, while
addressed to natural reason, cannot be determined or defined by
natural reason, and can be determined or defined, preserved or 15
presented, in its purity and integrity, only by an authority
supernaturally instituted and assisted for that very purpose. Even
what the author calls natural theology, since it is only initial, like
the cosmos, is incomplete, and, though not above natural reason, needs
the supernatural to fulfil it, and therefore the supervision and
control of the same supernaturally instituted and assisted authority
to preserve it from error, from a false development, or from assuming
a false direction, as we see continually occurring with those who have
not such an authority for guide and monitor. Hence, even in matters
not above the province of natural reason, natural reason is not a
sufficient guide, or else whence come those errors of the Positivists
in the purely scientific order the learned doctor combats with so many
words, if not thoughts--with so many assertions, if not arguments?
Hence, since Protestants have no such authority, and make it their
capital point to deny that anybody has it, it follows that they are
unable to present any authoritative statement, or any statement at
all which an unbeliever is bound to respect, of what Christianity
really is, or what is the authentic meaning of the term. They can give
only their private views or opinions of what it is, and these the
unbeliever is not bound to place in any respect above his own,
especially since they vary with every Protestant sect, and, we may
almost say, with every individual Protestant who thinks enough to have
an opinion of any sort. Even if they borrow Catholic traditions,
Catholic principles, and Catholic doctrines and definitions, these in
their hands lose their authoritative character, and become simply
opinions resting on private reason. They can present as Christianity
nothing authentic to be defended by the Christian, or to be accepted
or rejected by the unbeliever. Clearly, then, Protestants are in no
condition to manage apologetics with acute, scientific, and logical
unbelievers; and if we wanted any proof of it we could find it, and in
abundance, in the volume before us.
[1] _Christianity and Positivism._ A Series of Lectures to
the Times, on Natural Theology and Apologetics, delivered in
New York, January 16 to March 20, 1871, on the “Ely
Foundation” of the Union Theological Seminary. By James
McCosh, D.D., LL.D., President of the College of New Jersey,
Princeton. New York. Carter & Brothers. 1871. 16mo, pp. 369.
----------
EVENING CLOUDS.
A TRANSLATION OF UHLAND’s “ABENDWETTER.”
I see the clouds at eventide
All in the sunset floating wide,
Clouds now in gold and purple dyed
That hung so dark and hoary:
And my dreaming heart says, Wait!
A sunset comes, though come it late,
That shall life’s shadows dissipate,
Light up its clouds in glory.
----------
THE HOUSE OF YORKE. 16
CHAPTER XIV.
BREAKING THE ICE.
Shortly after Mr. Rowan’s baptism, a miniature avalanche of letters
reached the Yorke family. Mrs. Rowan-Williams wrote to Edith, in a
very scrawly hand, in lines that sloped down, in a depressing manner,
toward the southeastern corner of the page: “Do come and make me a
visit, now that Dick is at home. You have no idea how handsome, and
good, and smart he is. Mr. Williams thinks the world of him; and as to
Ellen--well, it wouldn’t become me to say what I think. But it’s of no
use for her to try. Now, do come. This is the twentieth time I have
asked you. We will go everywhere, see all that is worth seeing, and
you shall be waited on like a lady, as you are.
“So the old clay bank has slipped down again, and the bushes have
tumbled into the mud, and the men have piled their lumber over the
ashes of my poor home. O Edith! my heart is buried under those boards.
Thank you, dear, for going to see it for me.”
Dick wrote: “Which is Mohammed, and which is the mountain? I must see
you, and if you cannot come here, I shall go to Seaton, though that
would not be easy for me to do now. Besides, I want you to see your
namesake. I have not long to stay, for the ship is about ready to
start, and we take our cargo in at New York. It would be almost like a
soldier deserting his army on the eve of battle for me to go away now.
Do come if you can. It seems to me that you must wish to.”
This young man, we may remark, has got quite beyond the model
letter-writer and the practice of penmanship. He writes quite in his
own way, and is a very creditable writer, too. He has also a fair
education, and can converse more intelligently on most subjects of
general interest than many a young man for whom education has done its
best. When Dick Rowan spoke, he said something, and one never heard
from his lips inanities, meanness, nor malice. Neither did he say much
of such things, even in condemnation. He looked on them with a sort of
wonder, a flitting expression of disgust, then forgot all about them.
His time had been too much occupied, his mind too busy for trifling.
He had studied constantly and methodically, and the little library in
his cabin on board ship was a treasury of science, art, and
_belles-lettres_. So far as it went, it was the library of a man
of cultivated mind. His life, too, had educated him, and been a
perpetual commentary on, or illustration or refutation of, his books.
The phenomena of the sea he had studied not merely as a sailor, but as
a student of natural history. Whatever culture can be derived from the
intelligent visiting of foreign countries, without going into society
there, that he had. He had not spent his time about wharves, and
ships, and sailors’ boarding-houses. Aside from his own tastes, he
never forgot that he was aspiring toward a girl who, if she should
visit these lands, would walk in palaces. Therefore, whatever was 17
famous in nature or art in those places, he sought and examined. Many
a traveller who fancied himself perfectly cultivated brought away less
pleasant and valuable information than this sailor from the cities
they had both visited. Moreover, Dick had studied hard to acquire
something of the language of every port he stopped at, and was already
able to speak French and Italian with ease, if not with elegance. The
elegance he did his best to improve by reading the best authors in
those languages, and by a few lessons in pronunciation, when he could
find time. Therefore, Miss Edith Yorke’s friend and correspondent was
by no means one whom she had reason to be ashamed of.
But the Rowans were not the only ones who insisted on Edith’s visiting
Boston at this time. Miss Clinton dictated a letter to Mr. Yorke, and
Carl, suppressing his laughter, wrote it: “I have sent three times for
that girl, and this is my last invitation to her. Why is she not
allowed to come? Has she nothing to wear? I enclose a check for a gown
and a pair of shoes. When she reaches here, I will give her what she
may need to make her decent. Or is it that Amy Yorke is jealous
because her own daughters are not invited? If one of them must come as
company for Edith, I will pay her passage up, but I don’t want her
here. She can go to Hester’s or Alice Mills’s. Melicent has too
ridiculous an idea of her own consequence, and Clara is too sharp and
impudent. Bird has read me her book, and I think it a very
disagreeable book. She had better learn to cook and mend her
stockings, and let writing alone.”
“Have you finished?” the old lady asked, as Carl, with pen suspended,
looked up from his writing.
“Yes!”
“Then sign my name.”
“Shall I write ‘yours respectfully’ or ‘yours affectionately’?” Carl
asked, with perfect gravity.
“Neither!” she replied curtly. “Sign my name without any compliment.”
“May I add a few lines for myself?” the young man asked, when he had
signed the name as directed. “There is a whole page left.”
“Yes.” The answer was given very softly, and a smile of singular
sweetness flitted across the old lady’s face as she looked at the
writer. Miss Clinton was very fond of Carl, in a tyrannical,
tormenting, selfish way, and liked nothing so much as to have him ask
favors of her.
He wrote rapidly a few minutes, and was about closing the letter, when
she stopped him. “Read me what you have written,” she said.
Carl blushed slightly, and hesitated. “It was not written to read to
you,” he answered.
“No matter, it will be all the more interesting,” she persisted. “Read
it! You read mine.”
Carl hesitated yet a moment longer, then, casting his eyes up to the
ceiling, read, as if he saw it written, in the painting there, a
preposterous eulogy of Miss Clinton, with a minute account of her
cat’s health.
“I won’t have it!” she cried out. “Read what you have written there,
or give it to me, and Bird shall come and read it. If you were a
decent writer, I should have eyes enough left to read it myself.”
Carl dropped his laughing manner. “Miss Bird will write a letter for
you,” he said, and was about holding the one he had in the flame of a
taper, when she stopped him. “Oh! send it as it is, since you are so
stubborn; though I haven’t a doubt that you have written the most 18
dreadful things of me.”
The Yorkes were highly amused by this letter. “You see, Edith, she is
a dragon,” her uncle said. “You will have to carry yourself very
gingerly.”
“I am not sure that is the best way to keep the peace with her,” Mrs.
Yorke remarked. “It would do with some, but she grows more overbearing
with indulgence. If she were touched by sweetness and submission, it
would be different. I have thought of late years that such persons are
benefited by a firm resistance.”
Clara also wrote: “Let mamma come with Edith, and stay at my house, of
course. It is really a shame that she has never visited me in the city
yet. Come right away, and we will all go back to Seaton together. You
should come for poor Carl’s sake, to cheer him up a little, if for
nothing else, for he must lead a miserable life with that awful old
woman. You would not have believed he could be so patient. Indeed, he
would have left long ago, if it had not been for the hope of bringing
you all back here again. If he were the only one in question, he would
not stay a day.”
Miss Mills also wrote in the same strain, and the result of it all was
that the invitations were accepted, with a difference. “I will stop at
Miss Clinton’s, since you think it better,” Edith said to her aunt.
“But I must see a good deal of the Rowans.”
“Certainly, dear,” Mrs. Yorke replied. “But say as little as possible
of the Rowans to Miss Clinton. It will only make her disagreeable.
Hester will be happy to see the young man and his mother, and since he
is a Catholic, I should think that Alice might be civil to him.”
Her invitation accepted, Miss Clinton began to look at the dark side.
“Are you sure that the girl is not very green, Carl,” she asked. “I
detest country manners.”
“Oh! she is very green--very!” was the reply.
Carl sat looking out into the garden, unconscious that his companion
was observing him curiously.
“Are you in love with that girl?” she asked after a moment.
Bold and hardened as she was, she started and shrank at the glance he
gave her. No words could have been more haughty and repelling.
“Well,” she said pettishly, “you need not look daggers at me, if the
question is not to your liking. You are not obliged to answer it.”
He looked out the window again, and said nothing. “She shall learn to
keep her claws off me,” he thought.
No one but himself knew what a price Carl Yorke was paying for his
expected inheritance. The ceaseless irritation and annoyance, the
enforced giving up of his studies, and those literary labors which now
seemed to him his vocation, and the constant confinement, were almost
more than he could bear. But one thought supported him, and that was
that he should some day be able to restore his family to their lost
home, and to pursue those plans of his own which their reverses had
interrupted.
He was also, not quite unconsciously, gaining something better than
gold. He was seeing all the deformity of selfishness, and the
unloveliness of that wit whose chief power is to wound. In asking the
bitter questions, What is this woman living for? what good does her
life do the world? echo had repeated the same questions in his own
soul--What are you living for? what good does the world derive from 19
your being in it? What in him and in others had been vices or faults,
veiled with a certain decorum so as to look almost like virtues, in
this woman’s character were stripped of the veil, and showed in all
their native hatefulness. Here, too, were free-thinking and atheism
_au naturel_, without the crown on their brows, the lustre he had
fancied their faces radiated, and without their airy grace. He saw a
scoffer, and it was as though he saw a devil. He had not the
consolation of thinking her really worse than himself, for he could
not shut his eyes to the fact that the difference between them had
been in manner, not in essence. He had shown more good taste and
delicacy, that was all.
“After all,” he thought, as he sat there that day, looking out the
window, “however it may be with men, women need religion. I would not
trust a woman without it. I will not retract my saying that religion
is a strait-jacket, and intended only for those who cannot stand
straight without it, but I begin to think that we are all of us
partial lunatics.”
“I have heard say that parlor means a place to parle in,” remarked
Miss Clinton presently.
“The orioles are building in this tree,” Carl said, quite as though
nothing unpleasant had happened.
She tossed her head. What did she care about orioles?
“How blood will show, both good blood and bad,” she said with the air
of one who has just discovered a great truth. “Wealth, associates,
travel, occupations, education, neither will efface the signature. The
original stamp remains in spite of circumstances.”
At the beginning, Carl scented battle, but he assumed an air of great
cheerfulness. “You are quite right,” he said. “That great _parvenu_,
Adam, and that still more frightfully new person, his wife, have left
an indelible stain upon their progeny. We can see it to this day,
faintly in some, more strongly marked in others. And, on the other
hand, that prince of the _ancien régime_, Lucifer--”
“Nonsense!” interrupted Miss Clinton. “I was going to say, if you can
stop your most disagreeable and disrespectful mocking--I was going to
say that you have some of the Bohemian lounging ways of your father,
though you never saw him, and though you have been under the training
of Charles Yorke since your babyhood.”
“Do you think I have my father’s ways?” Carl asked, with an air of
delight. “How glad I am! No one else ever told me so, and I was afraid
I might be all Arnold. My mother is, of course, an angelic lady; but
some of her family have had traits which--really--well, I should a
little rather not inherit. And so you think me like my father? Thank
you!”
“The Arnolds and the Clintons, sir, are families from whom you may be
proud to inherit anything!” the old lady cried, beating the table with
her fan. “They were among the _élite_ of Boston and New York when
this country was a British province. We had colonial governors and
judges, sir, when your father’s people were painting signs and
door-steps. It is rather late in the day, young man, for you to have
to be told what my descent is!”
She stopped, choking with anger.
The young man seemed to be much interested in this recital. “Indeed!”
he said, “this is very delightful to know, and it makes such a
difference! Though I had always understood that your descent had been
very--precipitous!”
Miss Clinton glared at him, unable to utter a word, and seemed only 20
just able to restrain herself from throwing her snuff-box at him.
He rose wearily, and went out of the room, having half a mind to run
away altogether.
But ah! who met him at the door, bringing sunshine and peace in her
fair face, holding out two dear little hands, and scattering with a
word all his annoyance?
“Dear Carl,” Edith said, “are you really glad to see me--really glad?”
“How could you imagine such a thing?” he replied.
“Then I will go back to Seaton again. Good-by!”
She took a step toward the street-door, only a step, both her hands
being strongly held.
“You forget, then, silvern speech and golden silence,” the young man
said.
“No,” she replied. “But solid silver is better than airy gold. If
people say kind things to you, then you are sure, and have something
to remember; but looks fade, and you can think that you mistake, or
mistook. Oh! I like silence, Carl, but it must be a silence that
follows after speech. That is the sole golden silence.”
“I am glad to see your face and hear your voice once more, Edith,” he
said seriously. “I have many a time longed for both.”
“Dear Carl!” she exclaimed. “But what is that I hear? Is it a parrot?”
Carl laughed. “Hush! It is Miss Clinton. She is calling out to know
who has come. We will go in and see her.”
Miss Clinton had one pleasant expression, and that was a smile, when
she was so delighted by something out of herself as to forget herself.
This smile brightened her face as she watched the young couple
approach her, hand in hand. She leaned back in her chair, and
contemplated Edith, without thinking of returning her greeting.
“I’m sure that is a golden silence,” Carl said, laughing. “But what do
you think of her, aunt? She likes to have people speak first, and look
afterward.”
“You are welcome, dear!” the old lady said softly, and extended her
hand, but without leaning forward. To take it, therefore, Edith had to
come very near, and was drawn gently down to the footstool by Miss
Clinton’s chair.
The old lady took off the girl’s hat, and dropped it on to the carpet,
then studied her face with delight. She loosened one of the braids of
hair wound around her head, and held it out to a sunbeam to see the
sparkle of it. She pushed it back from the face. “Did you ever see
such ears?” she said to Carl. “They are rose-leaves! There must be a
large pearl hung in each. She drew her finger along the smooth curve
of the brows. “A great artist and physiognomist once told me that such
brows show a fine nature. Broken brows, he said, indicate
eccentricities of character, brows bent toward the nose a tyrannical
disposition, heavy brows reserve and silence, but this long, smooth
brow versatility and grace. Read Lavater if you want to know all about
eyebrows.” She took the cheek, now glowing with blushes, in the hollow
of her hand, and held the eyelids down to admire the lashes. “They
make the eyes look three shades darker than they really are. But what
color are the eyes? They are no color. Did you ever see a shaded
forest spring, Carl? These eyes are as limpid.”
“Oh! please don’t!” the girl begged, trying to hide her face. 21
“My dear, I shall call you Eugénie, and shall adore you,” Miss Clinton
continued. “I hope they have not told you horrible stories about me,
or that, if they have, you will not believe them. People are fond of
saying that I am sharp, but I quote Victor Hugo to them, ‘_La rose
du Bengale, pour être sans épines, est aussi sans parfum._’ A
character without any sharpness would be like an ocean without salt.
Temper sweetens. When any person is recommended to me as of a very
mild and placid position, never getting angry, I always say, Keep that
person out of my sight! Yes, I shall call you Eugénie. I dislike the
Edith on account of old Mrs. Yorke. She and I always quarrelled, dear.
We were what some one has called ‘intimate enemies.’ But I don’t mean
to quarrel with her grand-daughter. You have your father’s eyes and
hair, Eugénie, but your mother’s features. I hope you have not her
disposition. She was too positive, and, besides, she ran away with
another woman’s beau.”
Edith drew back, and stood up, turning to Carl.
“There! she is angry the first thing,” the old lady cried. “No danger
of anybody’s thinking her _sans épines_. Take her down to get
some breakfast, Carl.”
“Dick Rowan is here,” Edith said, as the two went down-stairs; “and he
is a Catholic; and he has a new ship which he has named for me.”
There was no reply. They were going through the shady entry, and, if
the young man frowned at the news, the frown was not seen.
“Aunt Amy has gone to Hester’s,” Edith went on. “She got over the
journey nicely, and wants to see you very soon. She will send Hester
up to see me presently. I am too tired to go out to-day, would you
believe it? You see, travel was so new to me that I could not sleep. I
stayed on deck as long as I could, then I listened all night. It
seemed so strange to be on the water, out of sight of land.”
Later, while the young traveller was resting in the chamber assigned
her, a visitor entered gently, unannounced. “I thought I might come,
dear,” Miss Mills said.
Edith raised herself, and eagerly held out her arms. The lady embraced
her tenderly, then dropped, rather than sat down, in a chair by the
bed. She looked with a strange mingling of feelings on this child of
her lost lover. When she recognized the tint of his hair and eyes in
Edith’s, she bent toward her with yearning love; but then appeared
some trait of the mother--a turn of the head, a smile unconsciously
proud, an exquisitely fine outline of feature; and, at sight of it,
that wounded heart shrank back as from a deadly enemy. The interview
was friendly, and even tender, and engagements were made for future
meetings; but the lady was glad to get away. The sight of Robert
Yorke’s child had wakened all the sleeping past, and for a time the
years that had intervened since her parting with him faded like a
mist. Since that day, more than one power, at first pride, later
religion, had strengthened her, had raised up new hopes and new joys;
but they were not the sweet human hopes and joys that every man and
woman looks naturally for; they were those born of struggle and
self-denial. She had lived truly and nobly, but she was human; and
to-day her humanity rose, and swept over her like a flood.
Miss Mills locked herself into her room, and for once gave herself up 22
to regret. It was no ordinary affection which she mourned. It had
entered her heart silently, and been welcomed like an angel visitant;
it had been held sacred. She had watched it with awe and delight as it
grew, that strange, beautiful, terrible power! How complex it had
become, entering into every feeling, every interest! How it had
changed and given a new meaning to life, and a new idea and
comprehension of herself!
Then, when it had got to seem that she alone was not a complete being,
but only about to become perfect--then destruction came.
“Jove strikes the Titans down,
Not when they set about their mountain-piling,
But when another rock would crown their work.”
If the foundation merely of an edifice be overthrown, there is hope
that it may be rebuilt; but destruction overtaking when the topmost
height is almost attained is destruction indeed.
In the evening a knock was heard at the chamber door, which she had
all day refused to open, a note was pushed under the door, and a
servant waited outside for her to read it. She rose wearily, lighted
the gas, and glanced over the lines. “I am sorry you have headache,
sorry for you and for me. Edith is talking with Mr. Rowan, and I am,
consequently, _de trop_. There is no one I care to see to-night
but you. Send me word if you are better.”
“Tell him to wait,” she ordered, and, hastily dressing for a walk,
went down. The front parlor was not lighted, but she saw him sitting
by a window there. “Come out!” she said. “I wanted to go to the
chapel, and you are just in time.”
Scarcely a word was spoken as they went through the streets together.
They entered the chapel, and turned aside into a shady corner. Carl
sat, and his companion, too exhausted to kneel, sat beside him. In a
room near by, a choir was singing that most beautiful of hymns--
“Jesus, lover of my soul.”
“Alice,” Carl whispered, “that is enough to break one’s heart!”
Her tears broke forth afresh. “No, Carl, it is enough to heal a heart
already broken.” She listened, and looking toward the altar, repeated
over and over,
“Other refuge have I none.”
The solitude and quiet were soothing to both--the sense of a divine
presence more than soothing to her who had faith in it.
They had not been there long when a gentleman came up the aisle with a
firm, but light step, passed by without noticing them, and knelt down
just before them. Carl sat and gazed at him in astonishment. That Dick
Rowan should outwardly and publicly conform to the church, for Edith’s
sake, was not surprising, but that he should come privately to the
chapel to pray was inexplicable. Could it be that a brave, manly
fellow like this could sincerely believe?
Utterly unconscious of observation, the sailor knelt there motionless,
with his face hidden in his hands, and when Carl’s companion whispered
to him, and they both went out, that figure had not stirred.
Edith Yorke’s friend began at once to show her what was notable in the
city; but, as often happens, what they considered worth seeing
disappointed the neophyte, and what they passed without notice she
would fain have paused to look at. Inexperienced persons who have read
much usually overestimate the magnitude of the wonders they have not
seen. What young traveller, entering for the first time a city, ever
found its houses as palatial, its streets as superb, its monuments as 23
grand, as fancy had pictured them?
“Everything looks so much smaller and more shabby,” Edith confessed
privately to Dick Rowan. “Trees and waters are finer than any pictures
of them that I have seen, and faces that speak and smile are more
beautiful than any painted ones. Only some pictures of Italian scenes
delight me. Now, Dick, please do not be shocked when I tell you that I
quite long to stop and look at the organ-grinders and their monkeys,
and to gaze in at the shop windows. But I can’t, you know, for that
would make Carl and Hester and Miss Mills ashamed of me.”
The result of this confidence was that, dressed to attract as little
attention as possible, these two friends set the others aside, and
went on long tramps together. They paid not much attention to the
finer sights, but dived into all sorts of byways. They looked in at
shop windows, at birds and shells and jewels, and more than one
shopkeeper was smilingly pleased to display his best wares at the
young lady’s shy request, though informed beforehand that she did not
mean to buy. They watched the organ-grinders and their monkeys to
their hearts’ content; they amused themselves with the _gamins_,
and held various conversations with them; they were bountiful to
street-beggars. Ragged urchins were astonished by showers of candy
that seemed to descend from heaven on their heads, poor little weeping
outcasts were asked to tell their griefs, and listened to with tender
sympathy, tears perhaps rising into one pair of eyes that looked at
them. Sometimes a wretched pauper, walking with downcast face through
the street, felt something touch his hand and leave a bit of money
there, and looked up to see a lady and gentleman just passing, and one
sweet face glance momentarily back with a smile at once arch and
pitying. “Shall I ruin you, Dick?” Edith asks gleefully. “I have
ruined myself; but that didn’t take long. My poor little money is all
gone. Are you very rich?”
“Oh! immensely!” Dick replies. “I have chests of gold. Give away as
much as you wish to.”
One blind man gone astray long remembered how a soft hand took one of
his, and a firm hand the other, and his two guides led him home,
inquiring into his misfortune by the way, and commiserating him more
tenderly than brother or sister ever had.
“It is so sad to have all the beautiful world shut out,” said the
sweet voice out of the dark. “But one might, I think, see heavenly
things the more plainly.”
The poor man never lost himself afterward, but he looked blindly, and
listened to hear once more those two voices, and to feel the clasp of
those two hands, one soft as charity, the other strong as faith. And
since they never came to him again, to his imprisoned soul it seemed
as though heavenly visitants had led him, and spoken sacred words for
him to remember. These two young creatures, out of the happy world of
the rich and prosperous, were not afraid of soiling their hands or
their clothes, and did not look on the poor as they did on the
paving-stones.
“O Dick!” Edith said in one of those walks, “I do not wonder that the
Lord could not stay in heaven when he saw the misery of earth, and
knew that there was no comfort even in another world for it. What a
trial it must have been for him to sit above there, and hear all the
cries of pain that went up, and see all the weeping faces that were
raised. Why, Dick, it seems to me that if I could see and know at 24
once all the suffering there is to-day in this one city, it would kill
me. I wish we could do something besides play, as we do. Perhaps we
ought to work all our lives for the wretched, you and I; who can
tell?”
“Yes!” the young man replied slowly, and was silent a moment,
thinking. “That idea comes into my mind sometimes,” he added. “I
always fancy that the poor and the wicked look at me in an asking way,
differently from what they do to others, as if they expected me to do
something for them. It may be only because they see how I look at
them. I never see one but I think, How should I feel if that were my
father or my mother? But I don’t know what great work I could do. My
life seems mapped out.”
Sometimes their expeditions were merrier. They went to the Back Bay
lands, then not filled in, and stood so close to the railroad tracks
that the passing trains blew in their faces. “I like strength and
force,” Edith said; “and I like the wind in my face. It would be
pleasant to ride in a car with an open front, and the engine on
behind. Does it not seem like that in a ship at sea, Dick?”
“Better than that,” he answered, his eyes brightening. “For at sea you
have a clear track, and can fly on without stopping or turning out for
anything.”
“Now, let’s go and see that large building,” the girl said. “Isn’t it
fine to go about in this way? You are Haroun-al-Raschid, and I am
anybody, and we are exploring our capital. We are, perhaps, invisible.
Stop a minute. There are fishes in this ditch. I am going to catch one
with a crooked pin.”
They looked at the large building, Chickering’s piano-forte factory,
and Dick described foreign buildings to his companion, and described
so vividly and so simply that the structures seemed to rise before her.
He was remarkably gifted in this respect. His clear eyes took in the
general effect, and caught here and there a salient point to give it
character and sharpness, and his descriptions were never blurred by
superfluous words, or by imagination, which often destroys the
outlines of tangible things by its perceptions of their intangible
meaning.
One morning they went to Mass to receive communion together. The
morning was lovely, the spring green all freshness, the birds singing,
the sun stealing goldenly through a faint mist. Edith rose happy, and
everything added to her happiness. It was delightful to have some one
to go to Mass with. It only now occurred to her that she had been
lonely in her religion.
“I hope that I shall make a good communion,” she said to herself, as
she began to dress. “What should I do? Let me think! If I had a house
of my own, rather a poor little place, and some one I loved and
honored were coming to visit me, I should first make my house clean.
Then I should adorn it all I could, and prepare a little feast. I have
no servant, I will say, and must do everything myself. I am rather
glad of that, for I can show my good-will so. I will not mind getting
on my knees to scrub out the darkest corners. But I must let in light
to see where to cleanse. Come, Holy Spirit! enlighten my soul, and let
no darkness remain where a sin can hide itself. Then comes my
confession; but what poor things confessions are! I wish I could say,
I accuse myself of having broken all the ten commandments of God, and
the six commandments of the church, and of having committed the seven
deadly sins, and every sin that could be committed, and each a 25
thousand times over. Then I should be sure to get them all in. But
Father Rasle says that, if our dispositions are good, the sins we
forget, or do not understand, are included and forgiven with those we
confess. As when a woman sweeps her room, she sweeps out, perhaps,
some things she does not see. Well, say that my house is clean, what
have I to adorn it with?” She paused with the brush half-drawn through
her hair, and the first sunbeams, shining in her face, shone on
gathering tears. She recollected herself, and went on with her
dressing. “Such a bare reception! Nothing to offer! How about faith,
hope, and charity? I believe everything, I could believe a thousand
times more; but even the devils believe, Father Rasle says. I don’t
know whether I hope in the right way. Hope is a hard virtue to manage.
Do I love him? Yes! Even though I do wrong, still I love him. It is no
sign that you do not love a person, even if you do things to vex him.
What good work can I do to-day? I will read Miss Clinton to sleep, and
let Bird go out. That will be something, because I would rather go out
myself. And I will ask Miss Clinton if I may read a paper to her. That
will be awfully hard, for she will stare at me, and then laugh in that
way that makes me want to run out of the room. And I will--yes--no--will
I? Yes, I will try to kiss her, if I possibly can. She would be
pleased; but I shouldn’t be. Those will be like little daisies at the
doorstep when he comes in. But my house is bare yet. If only I had
some pain to offer!”
Her eyes chanced to fall on a coil of picture-cord, and the sight of
it gave her a new and startling thought. She paused a moment, then,
rising, pulled her curtains close, opened the door to assure herself
that there was no one in the corridor outside, then shut the door and
locked it. This done, she looped and knotted the cord into a
discipline--ah! not in vain had she once asked Father Rasle what that
was. Her hands trembled with eagerness while she fastened the five
lashes together. Then, with one glowing upward glance, she knelt, and
brought the discipline, with the full force of her arm, round across
her shoulders. A faint cry followed the first blow, and the blood
rushed crimson over her face and neck. “O Lord! I did not mean to cry
out!” she whispered, and listened, and struck again, and yet again.
“One for each of the five wounds, one for each of the times he prayed
in the garden.” She paused, and dropped forward with her face on the
floor, writhing in silent pain. “Now, one for each station of the way
of the cross.” Tears ran down her cheeks, but her strong young arm and
heart did not falter. “Now, a decade of the rosary.”
Sobbing, half-fainting, she rose after a while, and hid the precious
pencil, with which she had painted a picture for the wall of her
little reception-room.
“I must put on something extra, so that the blood shall not show
through my dress,” she said; but, looking to wipe away the blood,
behold! not a drop was there, but only long welts of red and white
crossing her fair shoulders.
Edith hid her face, with a _feeling_ of utter humiliation and
grief. She had been agonizing under the blows which had produced only
a few marks, and yet fancying that she imitated him whose flesh had
been torn by the lash, and whose blood had flowed in streams. “I can
do nothing, nothing! I am silly and presumptuous,” were the thoughts
with which she finished her preparation to go out. 26
But, trivial as her penance had been, it brought humility, and a
deeper sense of the sufferings of our Lord.
A servant who was washing the steps as Edith went out, smiled
gratefully to the pleasant greeting of the young lady, and looked
after her as she went down the street. The servants, all Catholics,
were very proud and fond of this young Catholic in their Protestant
household.
“Since I cannot do anything,” Edith pursued, as she walked on toward
the church, “I will ask the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph to come
first, and be in my house when the Lord shall enter. He will be
pleased to find them there. Then, when the time comes, I will go and
meet him at the door; but how dreadfully ashamed I shall be! I shall
not dare to look up, but I shall say, ‘Welcome, Lord!’ and kneel down,
and kiss his feet. Then, if there is anything more to be done, he will
do it, for I can do nothing. How odd it is that I should feel so
ashamed at having him come to me, and yet should want him to come! I
wouldn’t put it off for anything.”
Dick was waiting inside the chapel-door for her. He pointed her to a
confessional, then took his place near the altar. When it came time
for communion, they knelt side by side, but retired again to different
seats.
How long Edith knelt there she did not know. She had covered her face
with her hands, shutting out the sight of all about her, and her soul
had entered a new scene. There was a simple, small room, bare save for
two vague, luminous presences, one at either side, lighting the place.
There was an open door, with vines swinging about it, and a half-seen
picture of verdure, and deep blue heavens outside. Up through that
pure, intense color stretched two lines of motionless winged forms, as
if they bowed at either side of a path down which one had come. Within
the door, under the vines, stood the Lord, and she was prostrate on
the floor, with her arms clasped around, and her lips pressed to, his
feet. She did not look up, and he did not speak nor stir, but his
smile shone down through all her being. Let it last so for ever!
The tinkling of a bell awoke her as from a sound sleep--a flicker, as
of flames in the wind, moved those heavenly lines of receding faces,
and Edith lifted her head, and recollected where she was, seeming to
be suddenly transported back there from a distance. The priest was
carrying the host away from the altar of the chapel up to the church.
He held the sacred burden clasped closely to his breast, and bent his
head slightly toward it. He looked at it as he walked, yet chose his
steps with care. He wrapped around it the golden veil, of which the
fringe glistened like fire as he moved. No mother could carry a
sleeping infant more tenderly.
Edith stretched out her hands, with a momentary feeling of
bereavement, for the Lord was going away. “Oh! take my heart with
thee!” she prayed.
The lights disappeared, the sound of the bell grew fainter up the
stairs, and ceased. She sighed, then smiled again, and became aware of
Dick sitting at the furthest end of the bench, and waiting for her.
They went out by separate aisles, and met at the door.
“I would like to have followed up into the church, and waited till he
was at rest again, and seen where they lay him,” Edith said after a 27
while.
Dick smiled quietly, and said nothing. He was looking quite pale, but
bright. She made no comment on his looks, thinking that the communion
was the cause of his emotion.
They went to the public gardens before going home. It was very lovely
there. The mists of the morning had slowly gathered themselves into
detached clouds, and they scarcely moved, the air was so still. The
trees and the many pink flowers about glistened with dew.
Edith began to love her quietude, and grow merry, but with an angelic
merriment. “Do you think that the Lord came down to the garden only at
evening?” she asked. “I think he came at early morning, unless he
stayed all night--morning is so beautiful! How alive everything is!
You can almost see eyes in the flowers. See the swans on the water.
They float like clouds in the sky. Fancy a pink swan in a large blue
lake, throwing up sprays as white as snow over his bosom! Do you think
that the earth was any more beautiful when it was first made? Is it
not lovely now?”
There was no answer in words, but the young man’s eyes, glancing
about, were eloquent, and his smile was one of peaceful delight.
“Come,” the girl said, “let’s play that this is really the Garden of
Eden, and that you and I are just taking our first walk in it,
wondering over everything. Let us look at ourselves in the water, and
see if we are as beautiful as all the rest.”
He smiled at the childish fancy, took the hand she offered him, and
went with her over the water. The swans passed by, and sent ripples
over their mirror, but it was clear enough to give back the image of a
sweet oval face with bright eyes and lips, and of another face more
richly tinted, peach-colored with sun and wind, with eyes that
sparkled, and white teeth that laughed through a chestnut beard.
“Adam,” said the woman, “thou art more stately than the palm, and
thine eyes have beams like the sun. Let us praise the Creator who hath
formed thee in his own image!”
Dick’s hand and voice trembled, his face grew red in the water, then
grew pale. “Eve,” he said, “thou art whiter and more graceful than the
swan, and, while thou art speaking, the birds listen. I praise him who
has given thee to me to be mine alone and for ever--my mate in this
world and in the next.”
Speaking, his light clasp grew tight on her hand.
The face and throat that had shown swan-white in the water grew
rose-red, then disappeared as Edith started back.
“How could I look forward to anything else, Edith?” the young man
exclaimed desperately. “I have never dreamed of any other life. I have
worked, and studied, and hoped for you. What! will you turn away from
me now, for the first time? God have mercy on me!”
She did not utter a word at first. She was too much confounded. It was
to her as though the friend she had so long known had been suddenly
snatched from her side, and a stranger like, and yet unlike, him put
in his place. This man with the pallid face and trembling voice was
not Dick Rowan. She wanted to get away from him. But after a step or
two she turned back again.
“Who would have thought it?” she said, looking at him anxiously, as
though half hoping that the whole was a jest.
“Who would have thought anything else?” he replied, taking courage. 28
She turned away again, but he walked on beside her. It was too late to
withdraw. Having spoken, he must say all.
“I think you were the only person who did not see what I lived for,”
he said.
“But it is nonsense!” she exclaimed.
“We have always known each other. We are like brother and sister. Is
it only strangers who marry?” he asked.
“Marry! Fie! I never thought of such a thing!” she said angrily.
“Won’t you please think of it now, Edith?” he asked, in a voice so
gentle and controlled that it recalled her own self-possession. “This
has been the great thought of my life. It made me ambitious, for your
sake. I am a Catholic, thank God! and a sincere one, but it was love
of you that led me to study and think on that subject. When my life
hangs in the balance, I am sure you will at least stop to think,
dear.”
She looked at him, but he did not return her glance. His eyes were
fixed on the ground, and it really seemed as though his life did hang
in the balance.
“I’d like to stop and talk about it a little while, Dick,” she said.
“Sit here. Now, be reasonable, and I will not be cross again. Forgive
me! I was so surprised, you know; for I have been studying all my
life, and never thought about this. Now, it seems to me, Dick, that I
shall never want to be married to any one whatever. I shall live with
Aunt Amy, and, when she is dead, I will go into a convent, or, if I
should have money, will do something for the poor, perhaps. If you
want to have me with you, some time I can go on a voyage in your ship,
and you can always come to see me when you come home. Won’t that do?”
He smiled faintly.
“Oh! thank you!” she said, greatly relieved.
“Has any one else ever spoken to you in this way, Edith?” he asked,
looking at her searchingly.
“Oh! no,” she answered with decision. “I am not at all engaged, or
anything like it. No one ever cared anything about me. And I hope you
are satisfied now, Dick. It is very well for people to marry who are
afraid of losing each other; but we can live close by when we grow
old, or perhaps in the same house.”
“I have disturbed and troubled you, Edith,” the young man said after
awhile, “but I could not help it. There must be a beginning to
everything, and I had to make a beginning of this. I don’t expect you
to treat it seriously now, but I want you to think of it. It seemed
right that I should speak, or some one else might speak while I am
gone, and take you away from me.”
“But I should never think of having any one else, if you want me,” she
replied with perfect conviction. “I may not ever marry at all, but, if
I do, you will have the first chance.”
Dick Rowan’s whole face caught fire. “Why, darling!” he exclaimed
joyfully, “do you mean that?”
She was astonished and pleased at the effect of her words, “Truly,”
she answered. “You know very little of me if you do not know that I
have always considered myself to belong more to you than to any one
else.”
They had now reached Miss Clinton’s door, and there they parted
without more words.
But Edith’s indecision was of shorter duration than either she or her
friend had anticipated. The subject was so foreign to her thoughts 29
that at first she had comprehended nothing, and had received Dick
Rowan’s avowal in a most childish manner. But a few hours’
consideration had set the whole in a different light. She went down to
Hester’s as soon as dinner was over, and asked for her aunt. Mrs.
Yorke was in her own room, writing a letter, and she only glanced up
with a smile as her niece entered.
“All well at Miss Clinton’s?” she asked, folding the letter.
“Yes, very well.”
“Anything new?”
“Miss Clinton told me last night that her will is made, leaving
everything to Carl, and that, if I marry to suit her, I am to have her
jewels, shawls, and laces. I do not want them, though I would rather
have fresh new things for myself, if they are not so rich.”
“Whom does she wish you to marry?” Mrs. Yorke asked, directing her
letter.
“She did not say,” Edith replied in a constrained voice, looking down.
Mrs. Yorke glanced at her niece, then put her arm out and drew her
close. “You have something to tell me, dear,” she said.
Edith began to tremble. “Yes, Aunt Amy. Dick Rowan has been talking to
me this morning, and, if you and Uncle Charles are willing, and if I
should ever marry any one, I am going to marry him.”
Mrs. Yorke’s brows contracted slightly, rather with anxiety than
displeasure. “Dear child, are you sure of yourself?” she asked. “One
may have a very great affection for a person, and not be willing to
marry him. Don’t be hasty. Take time to think of it till he shall come
back again. If you promise, you may regret it. I must say, dear, I
think it selfish of him to speak so when you have seen nothing but
birds and books, and do not know your own mind.”
Edith raised her head from her aunt’s shoulder. “Oh! Dick isn’t
selfish, and he only asked me to think of it, and to know that he
wanted me.”
It was useless to oppose. After a little more talk, Mrs. Yorke
promised to consent if both were of the same mind after a year. “And
now, Edith, I have concluded to start for home to-morrow, and I want
to see Carl right away.”
She did not say that she had only come to this conclusion since Edith
had entered her room.
“And I also wish to see Mr. Rowan,” she added. “Did he not mean to
consult me?”
“Oh! yes,” Edith said eagerly. “He is coming up this evening; and,
Aunt Amy”--very hesitatingly--“don’t let me be married for a great
while, till I am twenty-five, at least. Of course,” looking up
quickly, as if some doubt had been expressed--“of course, I think the
world of him, and don’t wish to marry any one else; but I cannot,
_cannot_ hurry.”
Mrs. Yorke had a long conversation with her niece’s lover, that
evening, and laid down the law rather severely to him. No one but
Edith, herself, and Mr. Yorke were to know of his proposal. “I do not
wish her to be talked about, and assigned to any one, when nothing is
decided,” she said. “It is for that purpose that I am taking her away
so soon, to prevent talk. If, when you come home next year, she wishes
it, and nothing has happened to raise any new objection, I shall not
oppose you.”
He sat a moment silent. He asked nothing better than he had got; but
his proud spirit rebelled at the manner in which the promise was
given. He was tolerated because they could not help themselves. 30
“Do you agree to that?” she asked, after waiting a moment.
“Certainly!” he replied. “I forgot to say so, and to thank you,
because, excuse me! I was thinking how much poorer an offering is a
man’s whole heart and faithful allegiance than a full purse.”
“If you had millions, it would make no difference, Mr. Rowan,” Mrs.
Yorke said hastily, her color rising. “If I am not cordial in
welcoming you into this relation, my reasons are not mercenary, nor--”
her manner softened--“nor because I do not respect and like you.”
She held her hand out to him. He bent gallantly over it, murmured a
word of thanks, and took leave without saying any more.
He was willing, almost glad, that Edith should go home. He welcomed
any stir and progress in events which would seem to pass the time more
quickly along. Let him get over his year of probation, and, during it,
be separated from her, if they chose. Her doubt and trouble in their
new relations troubled him. When he should come again, all would be
settled. He was full of hope and triumph, and far removed from
jealousy. She had said that she should not think of marrying any one
but him; and what Edith said was as sure as sunrise.
TO BE CONTINUED.
----------
(IN MEMORIAM.)
A CONVERT.
1856.
(These lines express the feelings of one, now at rest, who was loved
and honored by all who knew him--including, probably, those who cast
him off.)
I.
Ah me! my alienated friends,
Whose friendship, like a branch half-broke,
With all its mildewed blossoms bends,
And piecemeal rots;--how kind the stroke
That bond--your bondage--sent to sever!
Yet, can I wish it? Never, never!
II.
I hear them tread your festal floors:
When now the lights no longer burn,
Alone I haunt your darkened doors:
The guests are gone; yet I return:
In dreamless sleep outstretched you lie:
I dream of all the days gone by.
III. 31
Against myself your part I take:
“I was of those whose spring is fair;
Whom men but love in hope, and wake
To find (youth flown) the worse for wear:
’Gainst the defaulter judgment goes:
I lived on trust, and they foreclose.”
IV.
And many times I say: “They feel
In me the faults they spare to name;
Nor flies unjust the barbèd steel,
Though loosened with a random aim.”
Officious zeal! for them I plead
Who neither seek such aid, nor need.
V.
Give up thy summer wealth at last,
Sad tree; and praise the frost that bares
Thy boughs, ere comes that wintry blast
Which fells the grove that autumn spares.
There where thou lov’st thou liv’st! Bequeath,
Except thy bones, no spoils to death!
VI.
To others sovereign Faith exalts
Her voice from temple and from shrine:
For me she rears from funeral vaults
A cross that bleeds with drops divine;
And Hope--above a tombstone--lifts
Her latest, yet her best of gifts.
AUBREY DE VERE.
----------
THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS. 32
NO. II.
When was this liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius first seen by
men? It is not easy to answer the question. Some Neapolitan writers
have maintained that it occurred probably on the very day when the
remains of the sainted bishop were first solemnly transferred to
Naples. For then, naturally and as a matter of course, the vials of
the blood must have been brought into close proximity with the relics
of the head. And this proximity, now intentionally brought about at
each exposition, seems to be ordinarily the necessary and sufficient
condition for the occurrence of the liquefaction. Others, however,
prefer to be guided by positive historical evidence, and have come to
a different conclusion. There is in existence a life of the saint
written in or near Naples, about the year 920. It combines historical
accounts and later legends, and evidently omits nothing which the
writer thought would promote veneration toward the saint. It is
diffuse on the subject of miracles. There is also in existence a
panegyric of the saint, written perhaps half a century earlier still.
No mention whatever is made in either of them of this Liquefaction. We
may, therefore, conclude that in the year 920 it was not known. Four
hundred and fifty years later, it was known, and had been known so
long as to be reputed of ancient standing. About 1380, Lupus dello
Specchio wrote the life of St. Peregrine of Scotland, who came to
Naples about the year 1100, and died there probably about 1130. In
that life it is stated that St. Peregrine came to witness this
celebrated and continual miracle--_quotidianum et insigne miraculum_.
Now, it may well be that the author, writing about two hundred and
fifty years after the death of St. Peregrine, had access to documents
and evidences clearly establishing this fact, although such documents
do not now exist, five hundred years later, or, at least, have not as
yet been exhumed from some dusty library, where they may be lying
unnoticed. Or, on the contrary, it may possibly be that in 1380 Lupus
believed that the miracle, so regular in its occurrence at his day,
had regularly occurred since the year of the translation of the body,
and took it as a matter of course that St. Peregrine had witnessed it;
and so put that down among the facts of his life. But this, even
though a harsh criticism, and one we think unwarranted, if not
excluded, by the words of the life, would imply at least that, in
1380, the Liquefaction had occurred for so long a time that men had
ordinarily lost the memory of its commencement.
Maraldus the Carthusian, who accompanied his abbot Rudolph to the
coronation of Roger, King of Sicily, as historiographer, tells us in
his _Chronicon_--or perhaps his continuator--how, in 1140, Roger
visited Naples, and how there he venerated the relics of the head and
of the blood of St. Januarius. The Liquefaction is not mentioned in so
many words. But these relics would not have been singled out from all
others in the city, and made so prominent, without some special 33
reason--a reason, perhaps, so well known and so obvious that it did
not occur to the writer to state it explicitly, any more than to say
that the king venerated the relics in the daytime and not at night.
The learned and critical Bollandists, who have carefully weighed all
that can be said on this question, incline to hold that the
Liquefaction commenced somewhere between the years 900 and 1000. Prior
to the century between those years, St. Januarius had been ranked
among the minor patrons of the church of Naples. After that century,
he holds the most prominent place and rank in their calendar. This
change is unusual and important, and must have been based on some
sufficient reason. The most probable one under the circumstances--if
not the only one that can be assigned--is that during that century the
Liquefactions became known. The contemporary records of Naples for
that time were very few; for it was a period of incessant warrings,
devastations, and tumults. Those that did exist probably perished in
the not unfrequent destruction of the monastic libraries. Still, some
venerable manuscript may even yet come to light, telling us how on
some festival day, or day of supplication, the relics were all on the
altar, the vials of the blood near to the head; how some of the crowd
that prayed before the altar saw that the blood in the vial had become
liquid; how the wonderful thing was spoken of and seen by many; how,
on other occasions, it occurred again and again; until at last it came
to be regularly looked for, as a part, and the most wonderful part, of
the celebration.
After 1400, the notices of the Liquefaction are more frequent. Æneas
Sylvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius II.) gives an account of it.
Robert Gaguin, the old French historian, narrating the journey of
Charles VIII. into Italy, mentions his visiting Naples in 1495, and
his witnessing and examining this miracle of the Liquefaction.
In 1470, Angelo Catone, a physician of Salerno, who devoted the later
years of his life to literature and to travelling, has written a brief
but clear account of it. Picus de la Mirandola, the wonder of his age,
has also left his testimony as an eye-witness.
It is needless to say that, since the invention of printing and the
multiplication of books, we have numberless accounts of it from
travellers and authors, in Latin, Italian, German, Polish, English,
French, Spanish, and every language of Europe.
Ever since September, 1659--ten years after the opening of the new
_Tesoro_ chapel--an official diary has been kept in it, recording
day by day the expositions of the relics; in what state and condition
the blood was found when extracted from the _armoire_, or closet;
after the lapse of what length of time the change, if any, occurred;
what was its course and character; in what condition the blood was,
when safely replaced in its closet in the evening; and, generally, any
other facts of the day which the officers charged with this duty
deemed worthy of note.
There are also printed forms in blank to the same effect, which one of
them fills out and signs in the sacristy attached to the
_Tesoro_, and distributes each day of exposition to those who desire
them. We have several in our possession.
Another diary is kept in the archiepiscopal archives. It was commenced
long before that of the _Tesoro_. We had an opportunity of looking
over it. Down to the year 1526, it seems to be made up from previous
documents and extracts from various authors. In 1526, it assumes the 34
character of an original diary. Here and there come intervals during
which it appears not to have been regularly kept on. These omissions
would be supplied from other sources, when, after a time, the diary
would be resumed. From 1632 it is complete. We have before us a
manuscript abstract of it, from which we will quote hereafter.
The church of Naples celebrates three festivals of St. Januarius each
year; the feast proper of the saint, commemorating his martyrdom; the
feast of the translation, commemorating the transfer of his body from
Marcian to Naples; and the feast of the patronage, a votive one of
thanksgiving. We take them up in the order of time as they occur each
year.
I. The first Sunday of May is the feast of the translation. On the
preceding Saturday--the vigil, as it is termed--a solemn procession,
during the forenoon, bears the bust containing the relics of the head
of the saint from the cathedral to the church of Santa Chiara, or St.
Clare. In the afternoon, another more imposing procession conveys the
reliquary of the blood to the same church, in which the liquefaction
is then looked for. About sunset, both relics are borne back in
procession to the cathedral and _Tesoro_ chapel, and at the proper
hour are duly locked up. On the next day, Sunday, they are brought
out, first to the altar of the _Tesoro_ chapel, and thence, after a
couple of hours, to the high altar of the cathedral. In the afternoon,
at the appointed hour, they are again brought back to the _Tesoro_
chapel, and are duly replaced in their closet, or _armoire_. The same
is repeated on Monday, and on each succeeding day of the octave up to
the following Sunday, inclusive. Thus, for this festival in May there
are _nine_ successive days of exposition. And, inasmuch as in the mind
of the church the vigil, the feast, and the octave are all united
together, as the celebration of one festival in a more solemn form, so
we naturally look on those nine expositions not as isolated and
distinct, one from the other, but as in some way connected together
and united to compose a single group.
The feast and its vigil are found in ancient calendars of the church
of Naples. The octave was added about the year 1646, on the occasion
of completing and consecrating the new _Tesoro_ chapel, the work and
the pride of the city. The processions on the vigil were at first
directed to such churches as the ecclesiastical authorities might from
time to time select, to meet the convenience or the wishes of the
faithful. In 1337, eight special churches were designated to which in
an established order of succession the processions would thereafter go
in turn each year. In 1526, it was stipulated between the city
authorities and the archbishop that they should instead go in turn to
six municipal halls, or _seggie_, as the Neapolitans styled them,
belonging to as many civic bodies or corporations, which united, in
some complex and ancient way, in the municipal government of the city:
that is, to the chapels or churches attached to these _seggie_. This
regulation was strictly followed until the year 1800. The old mediæval
usages and liberties had by that time become weakened or had died out
under the influence of modern centralization. The several old civic
corporations of Naples, if they existed at all, existed only in name.
The halls or _seggie_ had lost their original importance and standing.
A new regulation seemed necessary. From 1800 down, the procession of 35
the vigil has gone each year to the church of Santa Chiara.
II. On the 19th of September occurs the Feast of St. Januarius, the
chief or proper festival of the saint, commemorating his life of
virtue and his glorious death by martyrdom under Diocletian. It is
traced back to the earliest martyrologies and calendars of the church;
even those of the Greek schismatic church have preserved it. In
Naples, St. Januarius being the patron saint of the city, this
festival is, of course, one of high rank, and has an octave. Opening
on the nineteenth, and closing on the twenty-sixth of September, it
gives each year _eight_ days more, on each one of which the relics are
brought forth about 9 A.M., and are placed on the main altar of
the _Tesoro_ chapel, and, about 11 A.M., are carried thence out to
the high altar of the cathedral, whence again in the evening they are
regularly brought back to the _Tesoro_ chapel, to be replaced for the
night in their proper closets. On each day, the liquefaction is looked
for. The reason already given in the case of the May octave applies
here also. These eight days of exposition are not eight isolated or
distinct days, without any connection. They should rather be looked on
as forming a second group.
III. On the 16th of December is celebrated the feast of the Patronage
of St. Januarius. This is a single day festival in annual thanksgiving
for many favors received, and especially for the preservation of
Naples, two centuries and a half ago, from the fate of Herculaneum and
Pompeii.
Naples lies almost under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, that terrible
volcano which, after slumbering peacefully for an unknown number of
ages, renewed its fearful and destructive eruptions in A.D. 79,
203, 462, 512, and more than fifty times since. The burning gas or the
smoke from its crater has risen miles into the air, and has spread
like a dark cloud scores of miles on one side or the other. It has
thrown up stones, which fell in showers of lapilli ten miles away. Its
ashes have been borne to Tunis and Algiers in Africa, and to Tuscany,
to Illyria, and to Greece in other directions. Once they clouded the
sky and filled the air even in Constantinople. Streams of molten lava
have flowed down its sides, filling valleys that were broad and deep,
and sending in advance a sulphurous atmosphere and a glowing heat
which destroyed all animal and vegetable life, even before the fiery
stream itself touched plant, tree, or animal. They roll on slowly, but
so inflexible and irresistible that no work or art of man can stay the
movement or control its course. Everything in its path is doomed to
utter destruction. _Resina_, between Naples and the mountain, has been
destroyed and rebuilt, it is said, seven times; _Torre del Greco_,
near by, nine times. Other places have perished as did Herculaneum and
Pompeii. On every side of the mountain, so fair to look on when
peaceful, so terrible in its wrath, one may follow for miles on miles
these ancient currents, radiating from the centre. Here the hard, dark
rock rings, as iron would, under your horse’s hoof. There, what was
once a death-bearing stream of lava has been covered by time with a
rich soil, on which vines and olives flourish. By the shore, you may
see where they reached the water, and have added leagues of rough
volcanic rock to the land.
Naples has often been violently shaken, and sometimes seriously
injured; has often been in imminent peril, but never was utterly 36
destroyed. This brilliant capital, uniting in herself all that Italian
taste admires of beauty and luxury--“_Vedi Napoli, e muori_”--lives
with a sword of Damocles ever suspended over her. Each night as they
retire the Neapolitans may shudder if they cast a thought on the
possible horrors of the night they have entered on or what the morrow
may bring them.
But men become callous even to such dangers as these, when often
threatened and seldom felt. We can conceive how thoroughly all thought
of them had died out in 1631, when Vesuvius, in a long unbroken sleep
of one hundred and ninety-four years, had allowed six generations of
Neapolitans to grow up and pass to their graves without any experience
of its power. Earthquakes, explosions, flames, smoke, and streams of
fire were all forgotten. Towns and villages, and gardens and
vineyards, were dotting the base of the mountain or climbing its
pleasant and fertile slopes. And among the many charming scenes in the
neighborhood of Naples, there were then none more sweet and charming
than those of the narrow tract between the city and Mount Vesuvius.
So it was on the morning of Tuesday, the 16th of December, 1631. Yet
fair as was the scene on which the sun rose that day, it was to be
greatly changed ere night. Early in the morning, the citizens were
startled and somewhat alarmed by a very perceptible tremulousness of
the earth under their feet. It increased in violence as the hours
rolled on, and the atmosphere too, December though it was, became
sultry and close. The inhabitants of the beautiful villas and the
farmers and country laborers, who had felt the trembling of the earth
and the closeness of the atmosphere more sensibly than the citizens,
and who saw at once that it was caused by the mountain, commenced to
flee with their families for safety into the city. About 9
A.M. a cry of affright went up from the city and the country, as
suddenly the mountain shook and roared as if in agony. All eyes turned
to the summit of Vesuvius, only yesterday so fair and green. A huge
turbid column of smoke was seen swiftly springing upward from its cone
toward the sky. High up, it spread out like the top of a mighty pine
or palm. The lightning flashed through this rolling, surging,
ever-increasing mass as it rapidly expanded on every side. By 11
A.M., Naples lay under the dark and fearful cloud which shut out
the heavens and darkened the day. The incessant trembling of the earth
was perceptibly increasing in violence. Men felt that they were at the
beginning of they knew not what terrible tragedy, before which they
felt themselves utterly powerless.
The ever-open churches were soon crowded with fear-stricken
suppliants. The cardinal archbishop at once directed religious
services to be commenced in them all, and to be continued without
intermission. In the hours of the afternoon there would be a
procession through the streets near the cathedral, in which the relics
of St. Januarius would be borne. Men prayed to be spared from the
impending doom. The trembling earth might open to swallow them; the
tottering houses might fall and crush them; or the mountain, whose
sullen roar, like that of an angry monster, they heard amid and above
all other sounds, might destroy them in some other more fearful way.
They prayed and did penance, like the Ninivites of old. They sought to
prepare their souls for the death which might come to many of them. 37
To the gloom and horrors of the dark cloud of smoke, spread as a
funeral pall over the city, was added, later in the day, a pouring
rain. The water came down heated and charged with volcanic ashes.
Night arrived, more terrible than the day. The continuous trembling of
the earth had indeed ceased; but, instead, there came sharp, quick
shocks of earthquake, four or five of them every hour, vastly
increasing the danger of those who remained in their houses.
Out-of-doors was the pouring rain and the intense darkness, rendered
more fearful by the intermittent electric flashings of the cloud
overhead. The few oil-lamps in the streets gave little light; some had
not been lighted, others had been extinguished. The narrow streets
sounded with shrieks of alarm and prayers for mercy. They were filled
with those who chose rather the darkness, the rain, and the mud under
foot, than the danger within their own chambers. And all through the
city might be descried entire families grouped together, and, by the
light of torches or lanterns, making their way to some church--for,
all through the terrible hours of that long night, the churches still
remained open and thronged, and the services still continued. Day came
at length, if the dim, misty light could be called day. It brought no
relief beyond its saddening twilight. All hearts were depressed and
filled with gloomy forebodings. All felt that only by the mercy of God
could they be rescued.
At 10 A.M. there came two shocks of earthquake severer than any
that had preceded them. The waters of the bay twice receded, leaving a
portion of the harbor bare, and twice rolled back furiously, rushing
over the piers and quays, and passing into the lower streets of the
city. A hoarse and violent roar was heard from the mountain. It was
soon known that the sea of lava within its bowels had burst for itself
a channel-way out through the northern side, and was pouring down in a
rapid stream, widening its front as it spread into seven branches, and
advancing directly towards the city. _Portici_ and _Resina_, near the
mountain, or, rather, on its lower slope, were seen quickly to perish.
Portions of Torre del Greco and of Torre dell’Annunziata shared the
same fate. It seemed to the affrighted Neapolitans, as they looked on
the fiery streams pouring onward, resistless and inflexible, in their
course of destruction, that death was coming to them by fire, more
terrible far than death by water or by earthquake.
Meanwhile, the hour at last arrived fixed for this day’s procession.
The archbishop was to take part in it, and would himself bear the
reliquary of the blood of St. Januarius. The clergy of the city would
precede and accompany him, and the municipal authorities would walk in
procession behind. Thousands were in the cathedral and would follow
after, and tens of thousands crowded the streets through which its
route lay. A common feeling filled all hearts alike; they prayed
earnestly, if ever they did--for their lives, and their homes, their
all was at stake.
The rain had ceased, but the dark cloud still hung overhead, and the
ashes were still falling, and the air was close and sulphurous. As the
procession issued from the cathedral, and while the archbishop stood
yet in the square in front of it, a blaze of sunlight beamed around.
The sun itself they did not see, but his beams found some rift in the
mass of smoke surging overhead, and struggled through, throwing, for a
few moments, a glow of golden effulgence down on the cathedral and the 38
square, and the groups that stood or knelt within it. The effect was
electric. “It is a miracle! our prayers are heard!” was the cry that
burst from the multitude. In a few moments the light was gone; but,
with cheered and hopeful hearts, the procession moved on through the
crowded streets to the gate of the city, looking directly towards
Vesuvius and the advancing streams of lava. Here an altar had been
prepared in the open air, psalms were chanted, prayers and litanies
succeeded, and the archbishop, ascending the steps of the altar, stood
on the platform, and, holding aloft the reliquary of the blood, made
with it the sign of the cross towards the blazing mountain, and all
prayed that God, through the intercession of their great patron saint,
would avert the dreaded and dreadful calamity.
Ere the archbishop descended from the altar, all were aware that an
east wind had sprung up, and that the smoke and cinders and ashes were
being blown away over the sea. The mountain grew calmer, and at once
ceased to pour forth such immense supplies of molten lava. The dreaded
stream, no longer fed from the copious fount, soon slackened its
movement--ceased to advance towards them--and, before their eyes, was
seen to grow cold, and solid, and dark. When that procession, on its
return, reached the cathedral, the sun was shining brightly and
cheerfully. Well might they close with a solemn _Te Deum_, for Naples
was saved. Outside of the city, five thousand men, women, and children
had perished, and ruin was spread everywhere; within the city, not one
building had fallen, not one life had been lost.
The eruption continued for some months after, but in a moderated form.
The danger to the city was not renewed.
Therefore, in 1632, and in each year since, the sixteenth of December
has been a memorable and a sacred day for Naples. It became the
festival of the _Patrocinio_, or Patronage of St. Januarius. For a
century and a half, it was kept as a religious holy-day of strictest
obligation. But the sense of gratitude dies out equally with the sense
of dangers from which we escaped in the distant past. Whether this was
the cause, or whether it was deemed proper to yield to the so-called
industrial notions that have prevailed in more modern times, we cannot
say; but, for three-quarters of a century back, if we err not, this
festival in Naples ranks only as one of devotion. For a number of
years, its celebration was even transferred to the Sunday following.
In 1858, it was transferred back to the day itself, and is now
celebrated invariably on the sixteenth of December. On that day, the
relics are taken from their closet and borne to the altar of the
_Tesoro_, and thence to the high altar of the cathedral. After Mass,
and the recitation of a portion of the divine office, they are borne
in solemn procession through several streets in the vicinity of the
cathedral, and, on the return, are brought again to the high altar,
where there is the exposition of the relics with the usual prayers;
and the liquefaction is looked for for the _eighteenth_ regular time
each year.
If the weather be rainy, the procession goes merely through the aisles
and nave of the large cathedral and back to the high altar.
This feast has taken the place of another single-day festival,
formerly celebrated on the fourteenth of January, and now merged in 39
this votive feast a month earlier.
Beyond these ordinary and regularly established expositions, other
special or extraordinary ones have been occasionally allowed,
sometimes at the request of distinguished strangers, who visited
Naples mostly in winter, and could not wait for the recurrence of the
regular festival; sometimes to allow learned and scientific men,
earnest in the cause of religion, to examine the liquefaction more
closely and quietly than they could do amid the concourse of so many
thousands on the regular days; and, sometimes, for special and urgent
reasons of devotion or public need, as was that of December 16, 1631,
of which we have just given the account. These extraordinary
expositions were more frequent and more easily allowed two or three
centuries ago than in later years. In fact, the latest one of which we
can find any record occurred in 1702. Pope Pius IX. himself, during
his exile in Gaeta, near Naples, waited for a regular day--September
20, 1849--to witness the liquefaction.
On a number of religious festivals during the year, it is customary to
take out the bust of St. Januarius, containing the relics of his head,
and to place it, with other relics of the saints kept in the
cathedral, on the altar. To do this, it is, of course, necessary that
the city delegate with his keys should be in attendance, and should
co-operate with the canon or clergyman sent by the archbishop with his
keys. Together they open the closet in which, under two locks, is kept
the bust, and which, our readers will remember, is built in the
massive masonry wall of the _Tesoro_ chapel, immediately behind its
main altar, and adjoining the similar closet in which is preserved the
reliquary with the ampullæ, or vials, of the blood. As this reliquary
of the blood is not to be taken out on these occasions, its closet is
ordinarily left untouched. But, in some rare instances, it has been
opened, and due record made of the state in which the blood was then
seen to be. At some other times, also, the door has been opened by
special favor, that strangers might at least take a similar view, if
they could not be present at an exposition. We have the record of
nineteen times altogether since 1648, when the door was opened for one
or the other of these reasons, the last time being June 11, 1775, when
the blood was seen _hard_. However, as to the number of such minor
examinations, we apprehend that we should speak with some hesitation.
There may have been many more of which we have not just now at hand
sufficient information.
We have spoken of the official diary of the _Tesoro_ chapel,
commencing in 1659, and of the archiepiscopal diary, commencing as a
diary in 1526, and both continuing, the latter with some _lacunæ_ in
its earlier portions, down to the present time. Of course, different
hands have penned its pages as years rolled on; and it is curious and
amusing to note their differences of character as shown in their
styles. Even in so plain a matter as recording, day after day and year
after year, the state and condition of the blood when extracted from
its closet, the occurrence and character of the liquefaction, the
prominent or important facts of each day, and in what condition the
blood was when replaced at night in its closet--points which it was
the duty of all to record--personal traits are unwittingly manifested.
One writer evidently was fond of ecclesiastical ceremonies, and he is 40
exact in recording the character of the High Mass and of the
processions: who and how many walked in them, how many altars were
erected on the route through the streets, etc. Another was more of a
courtier, and he carefully mentions the presence of cardinals,
viceroys, ambassadors, princes, and eminent personages. A third was
devoted to prayer, and his entries breathe his spirit of devotion in
many a pious ejaculation. One tells you of a new musical _Te Deum_
that was sung. Another had a painter’s eye, and never fails to name,
with minute precision, the varying shades of color seen in the blood.
Another still, with more of a mathematical turn, is equally exact in
setting forth to the very minute the times of the liquefactions which
he records; while others, again, performed their duty in a more
perfunctory style.
On the whole, these diaries are to us most interesting and unique, as
well for the length of time they cover, and the evident sincerity and
earnestness of the writers in stating faithfully what they
saw--sometimes to their own astonishment or sorrow, sometimes with
joy--as also for the wonderful character of the facts themselves which
are recorded.
Of the archiepiscopal diary, we possess a manuscript abstract, kindly
written out for us. From its pages we have made a summary of all the
expositions of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples from the year 1648
to 1860, which we present to our readers in tabular form. We group
them together in octaves, for the reasons already given, and because
in that form several peculiarities are clearly seen which, perhaps,
otherwise would disappear.
We give, first, three tables for the vigil, feast, and octave in May.
The first one shows the state of the blood when taken out from its
closet, giving to each day a column, and recording in each column the
various conditions of the blood, distinguishing them as: 1. Very hard;
2. Hard; 3. Soft; 4. Liquid, with a hard lump in the liquid; 5. Hard
and full; 6. Full, when, on account of that fulness, it could not be
known whether the dark mass of blood within was solid or fluid; 7.
Liquid. A second table will set forth, under a similar arrangement,
the various lengths of time which elapsed from the taking out of the
reliquary of the _ampulla_ from its closet until the liquefaction
was seen to commence. After enumerating the instances in which the
time is clearly determinable, another line indicates the times when
the liquefaction is set down as gradual, sometimes because the time
was not clearly seen, sometimes, perhaps, because the recording was
perfunctory. We add another line, embracing the various occasions when
the diary either omits recording or indicating the time, or does so,
vaguely or in such terms as “_regular_, _very regular_,
_promptly_, _punctually_, _most punctually_, _without unusual delay_,
_without anything new_.” We subjoin to this table other lines, showing
on what days and how often the blood remained always fluid; or always
fluid with a hard floating lump; or always hard; or always full, and
so full that liquefaction was not detected. A third table, similarly
arranged, will show in what condition the blood was when locked up at
night in its closet. We also give three similar tables for the feast
and octave of September, and similar accounts for the December
festival and for the extraordinary expositions.
_May, 1648, to May, 1860, inclusive--213 Years._ 41
TABLE I.
STATE OF BLOOD AT THE OPENING OF THE CLOSET.
---------------------+------+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+------+----
MAY. |Satur.|Sun.|Mon.|Tues.|Wed.|Thur.|Fri.|Satur.|Sun.
---------------------+------+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+------+----
Very hard | 2 | -- | 1 | 1 | 2 | -- | 2 | 2 | 2
Hard | 156 |119 |207 | 203 |168 | 139 |123 | 113 | 113
Soft | 4 | 8 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 6
Liquid, with hard lump| 40 | 74 | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | --
Hard and full | 3 | -- | -- | 1 | 6 | 9 | 13 | 15 | 17
Full | -- | -- | -- | 4 | 33 | 56 | 68 | 75 | 73
Liquid | 8 | 12 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 1 | --
---------------------+------+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+------+----
TABLE II.
TIMES OF THE LIQUEFACTIONS.
-------------------+------+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+------+----
MAY. |Satur.|Sun.|Mon.|Tues.|Wed.|Thur.|Fri.|Satur.|Sun.
-------------------+------+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+------+----
Under 10 minutes | 88 | 67 | 85 | 44 | 27 | 23 | 18 | 16 | 16
Under 30 ” | 49 | 28 | 63 | 73 | 46 | 46 | 44 | 35 | 37
Under 60 ” | 18 | 9 | 8 | 36 | 42 | 25 | 19 | 17 | 13
Under 2 hours | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 11 | 7
Under 5 ” | 1 | 7 | -- | -- | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3
Over 5 ” | 1 | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | 2 | 2 | 4
Gradual | 1 | 40 | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | --
Vague or omitted | 26 | 45 | 54 | 55 | 54 | 52 | 51 | 53 | 56
Always liquid, | | | | | | | | |
with hard lump | 17 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | --
Always full | -- | -- | -- | 4 | 33 | 56 | 68 | 75 | 73
Always hard | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | --
Always liquid | 6 | 12 | -- | -- | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2
-------------------+------+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+------+----
TABLE III.
STATE OF THE BLOOD WHEN LOCKED UP AT NIGHT.
----------------------+-----+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+------+----
MAY. |Satur.|Sun.|Mon.|Tues.|Wed.|Thur.|Fri.|Satur.|Sun.
----------------------+-----+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+------+----
Liquid | 131 |203 |204 | 174 |145 | 130 |122 | 121 |130
Liquid, with hard lump| 77 | 10 | 4 | -- |-- | -- | -- | -- | --
Liquid and full | -- | -- | 5 | 35 | 33 | 25 | 21 | 14 | 8
Full | -- | -- | -- | 4 | 33 | 56 | 68 | 75 | 73
Soft | 3 | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | 1 | --
Hard | 2 | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1
Hard and full | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 1
----------------------+-----+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+------+----
These tables present the course of the expositions for two hundred and
thirteen times each of the nine days, in all, 1,917 expositions. They
do not set forth the changes in color, in frothing and ebullition, in
minor increases or diminutions of volume, and in occasional
hardenings, of all which we shall treat further on.
_From September, 1648, to September, 1860--212 Years._ 42
TABLE I.
STATE OF THE BLOOD ON OPENING THE CLOSET.
---------------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
SEPTEMBER. | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26
---------------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
Hard | 117| 191| 190| 191| 187| 189| 191| 195
Hard and full, (_probable_)| 24| --| --| --| --| --| --| --
Hard and full | 58| --| --| --| --| 2| 1| 1
Soft | 1| --| 1| --| --| 1| 1| --
Full | --| --| 1| 1| 2| 2| 2| 2
Liquid | 12| 21| 20| 20| 23| 18| 17| 14
---------------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
TABLE II.
TIMES OF THE LIQUEFACTIONS.
----------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
SEPTEMBER. | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26
----------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
Under 10 minutes| 35 | 32 | 62 | 59 | 59 | 51 | 51 | 55
Under 30 ” | 64 |101 | 78 | 76 | 78 | 83 | 79 | 84
Under 60 ” | 19 | 24 | 17 | 21 | 10 | 18 | 21 | 15
Under 2 hours | 19 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 7
Under 5 ” | 27 | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | --
Over 5 ” | 13 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | --
Vague or omitted| 23 | 30 | 28 | 30 | 32 | 35 | 33 | 35
Always liquid | 12 | 21 | 21 | 20 | 22 | 18 | 17 | 14
Always full | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2
----------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
TABLE III.
STATE OF THE BLOOD WHEN LOCKED UP AT NIGHT.
---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
SEPTEMBER. | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26
---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
Liquid | 212 | 211 | 211 | 210 | 206 | 208 | 209 | 202
Liquid and full| -- | 1 | -- | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 8
Always full | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2
Hard | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | --
---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------
These tables give two hundred and twelve expositions for each day, and
thus for the whole group a second aggregate of 1,696 expositions. They
do not, any more than the preceding ones, give an account of the
changes to which the blood is subject, in color, frothing, or minor
increase or decrease of volume. These points will be considered in
their proper place.
The festival of the patronage on the 16th of December, established in
1632, has been celebrated 228 times down to 1860.
I. On opening the closet or safe the blood was found as follows:
Very hard, 2
Hard, 214
Soft, 1
Hard and full, 10
Liquid, 1-228
II. The variations as to times of liquefaction were as follows:
Immediately or under half-hour, 26
Under 1 hour, 29
” 2 ” 41
” 5 ” 42
Over 5 hours, 26
Always hard, 43
” full, 3
” liquid, 1
Vague or omitted, 17-228
III. The condition of the blood, when put up, was as follows: 43
Liquid, 131
” with lump, 46
Soft, 5
Hard as found, 43
Full, 3-228
The extraordinary expositions were 43 in number. Of these 20 may be
grouped with the December exposition, having occurred in the months of
November, December, January, and February.
The blood was found: Very hard, 1; hard, 13; soft, 5; and liquid, 1.
The times of liquefaction were: Under 10 minutes, 15 times; under 30
minutes, 1; under 5 hours, 1; remaining liquid, 1. Of course, on all
the 20 days it was put up liquid.
Nineteen days may be in the same way connected with the May
celebration, as they are distributed through the months of March,
April, May, and June.
The blood was found: Very hard, 1; hard, 13; soft, 4; liquid, 1. The
times of the liquefaction were: Under 10 minutes, 10 times; under 30
minutes, 3; under 60 minutes, 1; under 2 hours, 1; under 5 hours, 1;
time not indicated in the diary, 2; and it remained liquid, 1. On
every occasion it was put up in a liquid condition.
Four other times there were extraordinary expositions in July and
September. Twice the blood was found hard and liquefied within half an
hour each time, and twice it was found liquid.
Nineteen instances are recorded in which for various reasons the
closet was opened and the reliquary seen in its place. Four times the
blood was found very hard; six times it was hard; twice it was soft;
four times it was liquid, and three times the condition is not
recorded.
These tables present an aggregate of no less than 3,884 expositions
within a little more than two centuries, of which number no less than
3,331 were marked by a complete or partial liquefaction. The
exceptions are of various classes. The most numerous one comprises 320
cases, in which the ampulla, or vial, was found in the morning and
continued during the entire exposition of that day so completely full,
that it was impossible for an ordinary observer to say whether the
blood liquefied or not.
The writer of the diary says on this point, A.D. 1773: “When the
vial is full, some signs are at times observed indicative of a
liquefaction, chiefly a wave-like motion when the vial is moved. But
as this can only be seen from the rear (that is, as the light shines
on it or through it from the opposite side), and only on close
inspection and by practised eyes, and is not visible to ordinary
observers standing in front, it is not here noted down as a
liquefaction.” In the diary of the _Tesoro_ chapel, which we cannot
now consult, they are probably recorded as liquefactions.
The next largest class of exceptions consists of the 171 cases in
which the blood was found liquid in the morning, and was replaced in
the closet in the evening still in a liquid condition. We should
observe that not unfrequently in such cases the fluid mass became
congealed or even hard during the day and liquefied again. Even when
this does not happen, there are so many other and frequent changes as
to color, to frothing, or to ebullition, and to change of volume by
increase or decrease, that, even without the occurrence of
liquefaction, the fluid blood presents many wonderful characteristics.
Thus in our synopsis we have counted the octave of September, 1659, as
presenting seven days during which the blood was found and remained
liquid. The diary, taking up that octave day by day, states, that on 44
the 19th of September the blood was found liquid, and, the reliquary
being placed near the bust, there commenced an ebullition of the blood
marked with froth. This continued, off and on, during the day. On the
20th the blood was again found liquid, and the ebullition and the
frothing were repeatedly renewed as on the preceding day. On the 21st
the blood was a third time found liquid, and on this day the
ebullition was more continuous and violent. The 22d and the 23d and
the 24th were marked by the same phases. The blood was always found
liquid, and each day the ebullition was repeatedly resumed and
sometimes was violent. On the 26th the blood was found in a soft or
jelly-like state. It soon liquefied entirely, and during the day
became covered with froth. The 26th--the eighth and last day--was like
the first. The blood was again found liquid, and the ebullition was
resumed, yet more moderately.
The two remaining classes, which our tables present as exceptions,
will also suffer diminution if accurately examined. There are 44
instances in which the blood was found _hard_, and continued hard to
the end of the exposition. Yet the diary records on several occasions
the presence of one or more fluid drops, sometimes of yellowish serum,
sometimes of reddish blood, which could be made to run to and fro on
the surface of the hardened mass, and continued to be seen for hours,
or sometimes even until the close of the day.
As for the 18 other instances in which the blood was found partly
liquid and partly solid, the solid part floating as a globe in the
fluid portion, and in which the same state of things was seen during
the day and lasted until the closing, it must be observed that
generally, if not always, this floating solid mass gradually
diminishes by a partial liquefaction or increases in bulk by a partial
hardening. Sometimes both these changes succeed each other during the
day. In view of these facts, it would seem that these 18 cases, so far
from being looked on as exceptions, should on the contrary be rather
set down as special forms of the liquefaction.
No mere tabular summaries, like those presented above, can give the
salience which they demand to certain unusual facts and to many
ordinary but striking characteristics which should not be overlooked.
For this it is necessary to go back to the diaries themselves, and to
trustworthy historical notices of the miracle.
On Saturday, May 5, 1526, the vigil of the feast of the translation,
the liquefaction is recorded to have taken place as usual in the
_Seggia Capuana_, to which the processions were directed that day. On
the next day, the feast, the blood was found hard, and it continued
hard during the entire exposition. The octave had not yet been
established. It continued hard all through the octave of the
succeeding September, as also in January, May, and September of 1527,
and again in January, May, and September of 1528, and in January,
1529. The liquefactions were resumed on Saturday, May 1, and continued
on the next day, the feast, and regularly during the September
celebration. Thus, for nearly three years the blood remained hard and
solid, without liquefying at any time.
The Neapolitans connect this unusual fact with the anger of God and
his judgments, as manifested in the terrible pestilence which broke
out in their city in 1526, and came to an end only in the early months
of 1529, after causing 60,000 deaths in the single year 1527, and, 45
together with the war then raging, as many more in the ensuing year
1528.
Again, in 1551, in 1558, and in 1569, there was no liquefaction. On
the contrary, for the two years 1556 and 1557, and again for the two
years 1599 and 1600, and a third time for the single year 1631, the
blood was always found liquid when brought forth for exposition, and
never at any time was seen to become solid. Since the last-named year,
it has occurred, in ten different years, that the blood was found and
continued liquid during the whole of a single octave in a year; but
never in both octaves. It never continued hard for an entire octave at
any time, although at some few times the liquefaction occurred only on
the second, the third, or the fourth day of the celebration; or, on
the contrary, it was found and continued liquid for one, two, or three
days at the commencement, and was found hard only on the second,
third, or fourth morning. At the votive festival of December 16, it
has repeatedly remained hard. The table numbers 44 such cases. Of
these only 5 occurred in the first 150 years after the institution of
the feast; the remaining 39 all occur in the last 78 years. This the
Neapolitans explain by the special character of the festival. The
other festivals have been instituted in honor of the saint; this one,
to show their gratitude as a city for favors received repeatedly
through his intercession. Hence, when vice is rife in the city, and
especially when sins against religion abound, their professions of
gratitude are wanting in the most necessary quality to make them
acceptable; and the displeasure of heaven is marked by the withholding
of the miraculous liquefaction.
Departures like these from the ordinary course, or any extraordinary
delay in the liquefaction, or certain appearances of color in the
blood, which they traditionally dread, fill the people with alarm and
sorrow. From the many instances in the diary we give two, as showing
this practical connection between the liquefaction and the religious
feelings of the Neapolitans.
“1732, Dec. 16.--The blood was taken out, hard. Hard it continued
until after compline (the afternoon service). The people were waiting
for the miracle with great anxiety. Wherefore, instead of taking back
the relics (to the _Tesoro_ chapel) at the usual hour, they remained
on the high altar (of the cathedral) until after 21 o’clock (2.30 P.M.);
and the church being crowded with people, they recited the litanies
several times. Rosaries were said, and sermons were preached. But the
saint did not yield, which caused great terror; and everybody was
weeping. So things were up to 24 o’clock (5.30 P.M.) At that hour, a
Capuchin father in the church again stirred up the people to sincere
contrition for their sins, and to acts of penance. While they were
doing this, all saw that the blood was of a sudden entirely
liquefied--a great consolation to all. The _Te Deum_ was sung; and
then, only at half-past one of the night (7 P.M.), the relics were
taken to the _Tesoro_ chapel.”
“1748, May 7, Tuesday.--The blood was brought out hard. After 16
minutes, it liquefied. During the day it rose so high as to fill the
vial completely. From the 8th to the 12th, the vial was always full,
and the blood was seen to be one-half black, the other half
ash-colored, for which reasons his majesty came a second time to see
it, on Sunday afternoon (12th). When the king had left the
_Tesoro_, his eminence returned to pray to the saint to vouchsafe some
sign of the miracle before the closing up (it was the last day of 46
the octave). In the meantime the vast crowd strove to melt him by
their cries and their tears. His eminence, having made his way out of
the chapel with great difficulty, sent for a noble Capuchin, called
Father Gregorio of Naples, who, in a most fervent sermon, exhorted the
people to acts of faith and of sorrow for their sins. He then
commenced reciting with them the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. During
the recitation thereof, the blood was seen to sink half a finger, and
to commence to move. Who can describe the weeping and the fervor? The
_Te Deum_ was sung; and the blood was put up, being at nearly its
normal level, of its natural color, and with some froth.”
No wonder the Neapolitans love St. Januarius as _their_ patron saint
when he thus yields to their fervent entreaties and prayers what was
not granted to the pious curiosity of the king; nor, for this occasion
at least, to the prayers of his eminence the cardinal archbishop.
The following briefer entries of our diary breathe the same spirit:
“1714, May 5, Saturday.--The miracle took place at once. On Sunday,
after an hour and a half. During this octave, the blood showed a
thousand changes, liquefying, hardening, and increasing in volume many
times a day, in an unusual manner. God knows what will happen!”
“1718, Sept. 19.--The blood was taken out hard. After a quarter of an
hour, it completely liquefied. During all this octave the miracle
never delayed as much as an hour. This was truly a happy octave. There
were no great changes; only a slight increase in volume.”
It is tantalizing to pore over the diary. At times you almost fancy
that you have seized the very process of liquefaction. Thus on one day
you read: “The blood was brought out, being hard and at its ordinary
level. After fifteen minutes, a drop of serous humor, of a
light-yellow color, was seen to move about on the hard mass. At the
expiration of an hour and fifty-six minutes, the blood became liquid,
with a large spherical lump floating in it. There was the usual
procession through the streets, his eminence joining in. At 21½
o’clock (about 3 P.M.) the lump liquefied. The blood was put up,
entirely liquid and at its ordinary level.” (Dec., 1771.) You think
you see the steps of the process. First the drop of yellowish serum;
then a partial liquefaction, leaving a lump of solid matter; this
gradually decreasing for three hours and a half, until it entirely
disappears, and the whole mass is fluid. If you read the following,
you may feel surer that you are on the right track: “The blood came
out hard and at its ordinary level. At the end of half an hour, there
was seen to run about on the hard mass a particle of serous matter,
inclining to a yellowish color. So it stood during the procession,
which was outside, through the streets, his eminence the cardinal
archbishop taking his place in it. So it was when the reliquary was
brought back to the _Tesoro_. At 23½ o’clock (about 5 P.M.) this
serous matter changed into blood. But the mass still remained hard.
Words cannot tell with what earnestness and fervor the ecclesiastics
and the people continued at prayer. Finally, at 24¼ o’clock (5.45 P.M.)
the mass loosened in the vial; and half an hour later, that is, after
eight hours and fifty minutes of waiting, the liquefaction took place,
a small lump remaining solid and floating. So it was put up.” (Dec., 47
1768.) Notwithstanding the change of the character of the yellowish
serous drop in the last cited instance into red blood, and the great
difference of the times when the liquefaction took place, there is a
certain degree of correspondence between the two cases--enough perhaps
to arrest the attention and excite expectations. But all to no
purpose. Such a drop was seen on seven or eight other days, lasting a
couple of hours or for the entire day, without any liquefaction
following. And in three thousand three hundred and odd cases of
liquefaction, we have failed to find a third one in which such a drop
is noted to have preceded the liquefaction.
In fact, the modes of liquefaction are as various as we can imagine,
and as remarkable as the fact itself. Sometimes the liquefaction
occurs or commences at once, with little or no delay. At other times,
it is delayed for a quarter or for half an hour, for one, two, or
three hours or more. Sometimes, though very rarely, it has been
delayed nine or ten hours. All this is clearly seen in the tables.
Not unfrequently the change from solidity to fluidity, whether
occurring early or late, has been instantaneous, and for the whole
mass at once--_in un colpo d’occhio_. Sometimes it is gradual, lasting
before its completion over many hours; nay, sometimes the ampulla is
replaced in the closet for the night before its entire completion, a
greater or a smaller portion still remaining solid.
Sometimes the entire mass liquefies; at other times, only a portion.
When this is the case, the unliquefied portion generally floats as a
solid lump or globe in the liquid part. Sometimes, however, one side
of the mass was liquefied; while the other remained solid, and firmly
attached to the glass. Sometimes again, as in May, 1710, the portion
next to the glass all around remained solid, thus forming, as it were,
an inner cup, inside of which the other portion moved about in quite a
fluid condition. Sometimes, during the process of gradual
liquefaction, the upper part is quite liquid, while the lower part
remains for a time hard and immovable in the bottom of the vial; or,
again, the lower part liquefies first, and the upper portion,
remaining hard, is seen either as a floating globe or as a lump
attached for a time to the sides of the ampulla. And once, at least,
the upper portion and the lower portion both remained solid and
attached to the vial, while the middle portion was quite fluid.
We have already said something of the various degrees of liquefaction.
Sometimes the blood is as fluid as water, flowing readily and leaving
no coating after it on the glass. And, at other times, it may be
somewhat viscous; and, if the reliquary be inclined from side to side,
may leave behind a dark or a vermilion film on the inner sides of the
ampulla.
There are likewise degrees of hardness. Sometimes the blood is only
very viscous and grumous, or jelly-like. In the tables we call it
_soft_. At other times, the diary notes it as hard, _duro_; very hard,
_durissimo_; or even hard as iron, _duro come ferro_. When hard, it is
attached firmly to the glass ampulla. Yet on two occasions, at least,
the hard lump could move within, showing that it was then detached.
After having become liquid, or even when the blood was found liquid in
the morning, it has often hardened during the ceremonial of the day,
and then liquefied anew. One of the extracts we have quoted above
refers to the frequent occurrence of this variation in 1714. But 48
throughout the diary we find similar instances, where it hardened and
remained hard for a few moments only or for one or two hours, during
the public ceremony. This was sometimes repeated two or three times in
a single day.
There is a special case, in which the mass hardens so frequently, and
with such regularity, that it must not be omitted. We refer to the
custom of suspending the ceremony for a few hours during the middle of
the day. The Italians are very fond of a _siesta_ in the early
afternoon of a hot and oppressive summer day. Accordingly, unless
there be something unusual to excite them, they are accustomed, on the
later days of the octave in May, and sometimes of September, to yield
to their beloved habit. The church grows very thin soon after mid-day.
A few dozen pious souls may perhaps remain for their private
devotions--about the number one would almost always find in the
ever-open churches of an Italian city. Under these circumstances, the
exposition is suspended. The reliquary, if on the high altar of the
cathedral, is carried back to the _Tesoro_ chapel, and is placed on an
ornamental stand or tabernacle on the altar; and a silk veil is thrown
over the whole. The door in the metal-work railing under the arch
leading out into the cathedral is locked; and the clergy may retire,
one or two remaining on watch. The reliquary continues on the stand,
unapproached, but still visible, through the railing, to those in the
cathedral. At 3½ or 4 P.M. the clergy return to resume the exposition;
and the church is again full. The blood is very frequently found hard
at that hour, and liquefies anew, as in the morning. This intermission
and the attendant hardening and liquefaction seem to the Neapolitans
so much a matter of course that we find no mention whatever of it in
the diary, save the single notice that, on one day, although the veil
had been omitted, the hardening nevertheless took place. The
scientific men from Italy and from France and Belgium who have studied
the liquefaction at various dates, all unite in commenting on this
fact of the hardening of the blood during these mid-day intermissions,
and in considering it, under a physical point of view, as a fact of
the highest importance in deciding the character of the liquefaction.
There are other special circumstances under which the blood has not
liquefied, or, having liquefied, has suddenly hardened again. The
presence of open scoffers, or of declared enemies of the church, has
sometimes seemed to have this effect. In 1719, Count Ulric Daun was
viceroy in Naples. On Saturday, May 6, he came with many German
officers lately arrived in Naples to witness the liquefaction, in one
of the churches to which the procession went, as we have already
explained, and in which the liquefaction was first expected. The
viceroy with his personal staff was of course in his official
_loggia_ or gallery. The foreign officers were clustered together
within the sanctuary. Some of them were Catholics, some Protestants.
The blood was hard when brought to the altar, and remained hard and
unliquefied for a long time. The viceroy at length sent an aid, with a
command to all the officers to withdraw and stand outside the
sanctuary. They obeyed, of course. “Scarcely was this done--the
heretic officers thus withdrawing--when, in an instant, the entire
mass became perfectly liquid, to the great joy of all. It was a
miracle of miracles!” Some of the Protestants became Catholics 49
immediately.
_Putignani_ and _Celano_ mention another fact. We quote from the
former, who was a canon of the cathedral and present at the time on
service. “While the relics were out at the high altar of the
cathedral, there came many nobles from beyond the Alps, who wished to
do homage to the saint and to witness the liquefaction. The blood was
extremely fluid just then, and the reliquary was being presented to
those around, in turn, to be kissed. In an instant the blood became
hard and dry in the hands of the canon. Those near by, stupefied by
this new prodigy, stood, as it were, nailed to the floor. Then the
canon, moved by an interior impulse, raised his voice, and said aloud:
‘Gentlemen, if there be any heretic among you, let him retire.’
Immediately, one of the strangers quietly withdrew. Scarcely had he
withdrawn, when the blood was liquid again, and was bubbling.”
Putignani adds: “The same thing is said to have happened on other
occasions.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
----------
LUCAS GARCIA.
FROM THE SPANISH OF FERNAN CABALLERO.
II.
Seven years passed in this manner. Lucia was fifteen, and had
blossomed into one of those exquisite and fragile creatures that, in
hot climates, appear so rarely and vanish so soon. Lucas, who was
twenty, had developed admirably. He was a youth of manly appearance,
and so judicious and industrious that farmers and managers of
haciendas employed him in preference to others. Both inherited their
mother’s type--the oval face, fine aquiline nose, large and expressive
black eyes, small mouth, adorned with perfect teeth, broad high
forehead, and the bearing of mingled grace and nobility that
distinguish the Andalusian.
Their father had yielded completely to the influence of _La Leona_,
who absorbed his living, and had made him a drunkard in order to rule
him the more effectually. Too enervated and lazy to enter upon a new
path, he went on selling his possessions to satisfy the woman’s
exactions, as an exhausted stream continues to flow in the channel it
made when it was full and strong, without either the will or the force
to open another. From the time that Lucas was able to work, he had
maintained the house alone, with that mysterious day’s wages of the
laborer which God seems to bless, as he did the loaves and fishes
destined to feed so many poor people. Else, how the _peseta_,
sometimes two reals[2] a day can support husband, wife, generally half
a dozen robust children; an old father or mother, or widowed
mother-in-law, clothe them all and the head of the family in a very
expensive manner,[3] pay house-rent and the costs of child-birth, 50
sickness, and unemployed days; and still yield the copper they never
refuse to _God’s-namers_,[4] is a thing past comprehension, and
belongs to the list of those in which, if we see not the finger of God
or his immediate intervention, is because we are very thoughtless or
voluntarily blind.
Lucas, who loved his sister above all things, seeing her entirely
neglected by her father, had assumed over her the sort of tutelage,
recognized and incontestable among the people, which belongs to the
eldest brother--a tutelage which is annexed to the obligation of
maintaining younger brothers and sisters if they are fatherless. This
obligation and right instinctive do not constitute a law, nor are they
laid down in any code, but are impressed by tradition on the heart,
and have, no doubt, given rise to the institution of entails.[5] Lucas
presented, also, the uncultivated type of those chivalrous and
poetical brothers that Calderon, Lope, and other contemporary writers
have given us in their delightful pictures of Spanish manners as
models of nobility, delicacy, and punctilious honor.
As for Lucia, she was, as her mother had been, loving, impressible,
and yielding. She regarded her brother with the deepest affection, in
which respect mingled, without lessening its tenderness.
One evening, when several neighbors, who tenanted Juan Garcia’s house,
were met together in the yard, one of them--it was the kinswoman of
the departed Ana--said:
“Have you heard the news? It is reported that _La Leona’s_ husband is
dead. What do you say to it?”
“That _La Leona_ is just now singing:
‘My spouse is dead, and to heaven has flown,
Wearing the thorns of a martyr’s crown,’”
replied one of the neighbors.
“There will be talk enough, woman, if it is true,” replied the first
speaker.
“Well, what do you want me to say? I feel it for one.”
“I feel it for _two_,” added a third, laughing.
“That is what I feel most,” continued the kinswoman. “It is reported
already that Juan Garcia is going to marry with the rag of a widow.”
Woman! will you hold your tongue?”
“No; and I say more: I say that I don’t doubt it; for the wretch has
him down, and holds him from beneath, so that she can put him to the
torture with “thou must swallow this, or I will lay on thee with
that.’”
“True enough,” observed the other, “she has made a fool of him with
drink; and, not satisfied with giving him wine, which is natural and 51
the legitimate child of the soil, she poisons him with bad brandy.”
“The kite will get everything away from him by degrees, till she
leaves him stuck, like a star lizard, to the bare wall,” added
another; “for she is more covetous than greediness, that ‘walks one
hand along the ground, and the other in the sky, and, with its mouth
wide open, that nothing may go by.’”
“She’ll be Juan’s third wife, and may die like the other two, and the
four children he has under the sod. He must have some deadly
exhalation about him, like a snake.”
“Kill _La Leona_! As if that would be possible! It’s my opinion that
Death himself couldn’t do it, with a century to help him. There was
the cholera, that carried off so many good people; it never approached
her door.”
“The she-rake has no end of luck.”
At this moment Lucas entered. It was Saturday evening, and he had come
to spend the Sunday at home.
“Lucas,” asked his kinswoman, “do you know that _La Leona_ is a widow,
and they say that your father is going to marry her?”
A thunder-bolt could not have hurt Lucas more suddenly than did these
words; nevertheless, he maintained his composure while he answered:
“Either you are dreaming awake, Aunt Manuela, or age is getting the
better of your understanding.”
“Don’t fling my age into my face, _Luquecillo_,”[6] said the good
woman, who was jocose. “I would rather you called me sly fox; it is
permitted to say _old_ only in the company of wines and parchments.”
“Well, then, why were you born so long ago? But don’t come to me with
your troubles.”
“Publish your decrees in time, my son, for this one is in everybody’s
mouth.”
“They may say what they please behind my back. Regiments can’t capture
tongues and thoughts, but no one is going to speak against my father
when I am present.”
“I’ll lay you something, Lucas, that he’ll marry!”
“That will do, Aunt Manuela; you know the saying, ‘Stop jesting while
jesting is pleasant.’”
Like all men of stem nature, Lucas, when in earnest, had in him a
something that imposed respect: the women were silent, and he went
into his own dwelling.
He did not speak to his sister of the matter that occupied his
thoughts so painfully, but, after giving her the money he had brought,
remained a while talking cheerfully and affectionately with her, and
then went in search of his neighbor, Uncle Bartolo.
He knew that the guerilla, on account of his age and good judgment,
and because he had been his grandfather’s friend, exercised great
influence over his father, and could think of no one so suitable to
confide in, and implore to interfere in the matter, and dissuade Juan
Garcia, if, indeed, he entertained it, from such an outrageous
project.
“Hola! What brings _Luquillo_ with the step of a Catalan and face of a
blacksmith?” exclaimed the old man, as Lucas entered.
The youth told his errand.
Uncle Bartolo, having heard him to the end, shook his head, as he
remarked: “Lucas, the proverb says, ‘Between two millstones one had
best not put his thumbs;’ but--well, for your sake and Lucia’s, the
pretty dove! I will do what you ask, even if I lose--and I shall, for
certain--your father’s friendship. I tell you though, beforehand 52
that interference will do no good.”
“But, uncle, that which is never attempted is never done.”
“Have I not told you I would try? You shall never say that you sought
me and did not find me. I only want to remind you that counsels are
thrown away upon the foolhardy, and perfumes upon swine. And to tell
the truth, I would rather tackle one of those highwaymen of last year
than your father; notwithstanding that the she-bandit has taken and
done for him as easily as a spider would vanquish a fly.”
Our old warrior went, the next day, to see Juan Garcia, whom he found
indisposed.
“Hola! Juan,” he cried, as he entered, how are you?”
“Not so well as I might be, uncle,” responded the invalid. “And you?”
“As well as can be, since I am a man of the old times, and not sorry
for it: better suited beneath white hairs than white sheets. But,”
continued the guerilla, who in his long career had never studied
diplomacy nor learned the art of preambling, “let us come to the
point; for one needn’t go by the bush where there’s a high-road; they
tell me, though I don’t want to believe it, that you are going to
marry.”
Juan contracted his brows, and replied:
“And if I have never told any one so, how could they tell it to you?”
“Answer one question with another, to avoid committing thyself,” is a
rule of rustic grammar that the people have at their fingers’ ends.
Uncle Bartolo proceeded:
“It’s easy to see how; you are thinking of it; and people nowadays are
so sharp that they divine the thoughts. So that we may as well be
plain--it is what you mean to do. Tell the truth, now.”
“The truth!” responded Juan, availing himself of another subterfuge.
“Then, though--because I was not prepared to tell it--I have not
complied with the church this year, I am to tell it to you! No, sir!
‘He that reveals his secret, remains without it.’”
“It is plain enough from your crafty answer that your mind is made up.
So you needn’t deny it, nor put me off with palaver.”
“The thing is yet in the blade, and to be nibbled at,” replied Juan.
“Do you know, Christian, what you are about? For the beginning of a
cure is a knowledge of the sickness.”
“Yes, sir, I have my five senses counted.”
“Yes, Juan, four of them useless, and one empty. But, my son, you know
me well, is it not so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are sure that I am your friend?”
“I don’t say no to that, Uncle Bartolo.”
“And you know the proverb says, ‘An old ox draws a straight furrow’?”
“Agreed, Uncle Bartolo; we know that kind of wisdom years give, for we
are told that the devil is knowing not because of his devilship, but
because he is the _old one_.”
“Well, that being so, you will heed what I say.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“And you will consider my advice?”
“What is the meaning of all this advanced guard, Uncle Bartolo? Why do
you sift and sift without falling through the sieve?”
“To fall with all my weight in saying this, and no more: ‘Don’t you
marry, Juan Garcia!’”
“Why not? if you would please tell me.” 53
“Don’t marry, Juan Garcia!”
“Uncle Bartolo, don’t leave your counsels like foundlings in the
hospital, without father or mother. I must not marry-the reason?”
“Juan, ‘where there has been familiarity, let there be no contract.’”
“If it were as you intimate, I ought to marry; for, if this woman has
lost respect through me--”
“Stop, Juan; that’ll do! Don’t come to me with your ‘_mea culpas_.’
There is always a pretext for wrong-doing. But you know very well that
the woman has not lost respect through you. Nobody loses what he never
had.”
“Uncle Bartolo, by what I shave off, but that you comb gray hairs, and
were my father’s friend--_Vive Dios!_--”
“Tut, tut, man! Don’t get excited, and talk nonsense! I did not come
here to poke you up, nor to pick a quarrel, but with a very good
intention; and, as the friend I am to you, to prevent your making an
atrocious fool of yourself. Have you considered your children, and the
kind of step-mother you are going to give them?”
“If she will be a wife good enough for their father, it appears to me
that she will be a good enough step-mother for them; especially as,
where they are concerned, what I do is right.”
“Right! Now you are like the Englishman, Don ‘Turo, that killed an
urraca for a partridge, and then said ‘all right.’ Take notice, Juan,
that they are not likely to be willing to live under that woman’s
flag. You are going to alienate them from you, and, ‘withdraw thyself
from thine own, God will leave thee alone.’”
“They will not be willing to live under her! What are you saying, sir?
We shall see, however. ‘Where the sea goes, the waves go.’”
“Well, Juan, we shall see that Lucas, who is high-minded, will not
consent to let his sister live with a woman of evil note.”
“The note I have put upon her, I will take from her. Do you
comprehend? And Lucas will be very careful not to set himself up to
crow while I live. There cannot be two heads, and, ‘in sight of the
public stocks, street-criers keep their mouths shut.’”
“Think, Juan, that your son should be the staff of your old age. You
may provoke him so far that he will leave you some day without
warning.”
“Let him go; I have the means to maintain myself, and my wife and
daughter.”
“Ah! Juan, what have you left? Juice don’t run out of a sucked orange.
As if that woman had not swallowed your slice of field and olive-yard,
leaving you nothing but the house; and that will go the same way the
field and orchard went. As for making a living--you have thrown
yourself away; your back is getting stiff already, and ‘to old age
comes no fairy godmother.’ Where, then, are those ‘means’ to come
from? What you are going to do is get entangled in debts; and, let a
man be as honest as he will, ‘if he owes and doesn’t pay, all his
credit flies away.’”
“_La Leona_ has a gossip at the port that is a contrabandist; he is
going to take me for a partner.”
“_Only this was wanting!_” exclaimed the old man indignantly. “_You!
you take to the path!_[7] Does Barabbas tempt you, Juan Garcia? Have
you lost your senses entirely, or are you fooling me? Sure enough, 54
‘he that goes with wolves will learn to howl.’ Don’t you know that the
devil takes honest gains and dishonest, and the gainer with them? But
let us keep to the matter in hand. Juan, the woman has a bad name that
neither you nor the king, if he tried, could take from her. She is bad
of herself; and neither you nor the bishop, if he set his heart on
doing it, could make her good. Moreover, ‘a rotten apple spoils its
company.’”
“Go on with the bad! ‘Against evil-speaking there’s nothing strong’;
but, if she appears good to me, we are all paid.”
“Juan, ‘look before you leap.’ You have not the excuse of youth for
your indiscretion; you are more than forty years old.”
“And have more than forty _arrobas_[8] of patience, Uncle Bartolo.
_Candela!_ I have long sought and never found a friend that would
offer me a sixpence, and have found, without seeking, one that gives
me advice.”
“Well, my son, your soul is in your palm,” said Uncle Bartolo, rising.
“Remember that there was not wanting a friend to give you good
advice--a man of ripe brain, who warned you of the future--for this
marriage is going to be the perdition of your house. And, remember
what I tell you now, a day is coming when you will have eyes left you
only that you may weep.” With these words, Uncle Bartolo went his way.
“Son,” said he to Lucas, who had waited for him in his house, “it was
lost labor, as I foretold. But go, now, and mind what I say. Submit to
what can’t be helped, and don’t be stiff-necked, for you’ll surely
come out loser. The rope breaks where it is slenderest. You are his
son, and the authority belongs to him. You will only be kicking
against the goad.”
Lucas went back to the country and to work with a heavy heart. When he
returned home on the following Saturday, he learned that the bans of
his father’s marriage were to be published the next morning for the
first time. Grief made him desperate, and he resolved, as a last
recourse, to speak himself.
We have already hinted at the cool and formal relation that existed
between these two--thanks to the neglect the abandoned man had shown
his children. For some time past, the excellent character of Lucas and
the good name it had gained him had inspired Juan Garcia with that
bitter sentiment which rises in the heart of a man who possesses the
legal and material superiority, against the subordinate to whom he
feels himself morally inferior--a sentiment of hostility that is apt
to manifest itself in despotism.
“Sir,” said the son, speaking with firm moderation, “they have been
telling me that you are going to marry.”
“They have been telling you what is quite true.”
“I hoped that it was not true.”
“And why? if I might ask.”
“On account of the woman they say you are going to have.”
“She is not, then, to your taste; and you think, perhaps, that I ought
to have advised with you?”
“No, sir, not with me--I am of small account; but with some one that
has more knowledge and judgment than I.”
“So, then, it appears to you,” said Juan, with repressed ire, “that
your father needs counsel?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Lucas calmly, “when he has a young daughter, and
is going to give her a step-mother.”
“For fear he might give her one that would eat her up, like the 55
_Cancon_?”[9]
“No, sir, no; we understand now that people are not swallowed like
sugared anises.”
“Or make her work, being herself industrious, and not willing to sit
hand upon hand like a notary’s wife?”
“It is not that, sir; Lucia is not afraid of work. She knows that work
is the honor of the poor.”
“Or, perhaps, keep her at home like a chained dog?”
“No, sir; I am not thinking of that; for my sister, though brought up
without a mother, is modest, and not a girl to be seen at the street
door or with a hole in her stocking. She is used to the shade, but--”
“But what? Have done!”
“That which this woman will give her is evil, and may be her ruin.”
Juan Garcia, who had with difficulty restrained himself, rushed upon
his son, as the latter uttered these words, with his hand uplifted to
strike. Lucas, perceiving the action, quickly inclined his head, and
received upon it the blow that had been aimed at his face.
“God help me, father! what have I done to be chastised? Have I said
anything wrong? Have I been wanting in respect to you? Father, just
before my mother--heaven rest her!--died, she said to me, ‘Lucas,
watch over your sister.’ I promised her that I would, and have kept my
promise.”
“She meant,” replied Juan, somewhat softened by the memory of the
mother evoked by her son, “she meant in case Lucia should be left
without me. But, while I live, which is it that has the authority over
my daughter?”
“Father, for the love of the Blessed Virgin, leave her to me! I will
support her.”
“Are you in your senses?”
“For God’s sake, don’t separate us! I will work with all my might to
maintain us both.”
“Separate you! Nobody has thought of doing it. You will come with her
to my house.”
“No, sir.”
“How is that? What do you mean by ‘no, sir’? Do you think you have a
right to call your father to account? Is it not enough for you to know
what his hands decide? Perhaps you would like to have another proof of
what they are able to do?”
“My father may kill me, and I shall neither open my lips nor forget my
duty; but--make me live with that woman--never!”
“We shall see about that, insolent upstart!”
“Yes, we shall see,” said Lucas, as he went sorrowfully out.
Lucas was gifted with one of those noble and delicate natures that
humble themselves in victory and grow firm in defeat; that is alike
incapable of noisy elation in triumph, or pusillanimous abjection when
prostrate. But the determination of his character was degenerating
into stubbornness, as it always happens when will forsakes the
guidance of reason to follow the promptings of pride. Therefore,
though he had not, in the slightest degree, failed in the strict
respect that morality enforces, neither the threats of his father nor
love for his sister could shake the resolution he had taken in that
decisive interview. On leaving his father’s presence, he went in
search of Lucia, whom he found weeping. For a long while neither
spoke: brother and sister mutually comprehending the cause of the
profound depression of the one and the tears of the other. 56
“If mother could open her eyes!” at last exclaimed Lucia.
“They whose eyes God has closed have no wish to open them again in the
world,” replied Lucas; “but remember, that from heaven she always has
hers fixed upon her daughter. I cannot help you; for, though I have
tried my best to keep you under my flag, I have not succeeded:
because, heart’s dearest, there is no power in the world that can
oppose a father’s.”
“But I am to do only what you tell me, Lucas, for my mother left me to
you,” sobbed the girl.
“Well, then, pay attention to what I am going to say.
“Bear your cross with patience; for that is the only way to make it
lighter. Be a reed to all storms, but an oak to temptation. Never turn
from the right path, though it be steep and sown with thorns. Always
look straight before you, for he that does not do this never knows
where he will stop. As for this woman who is going to be your father’s
wife, give her the wall; but remember that she is bad, and neither
join yourself to her nor talk with her, except with reserve and when
you must.”
“Shall you do the same, Lucas?”
“I--I shall act as God gives me understanding.”
Nothing was seen of Lucas on the day of Juan’s marriage, and it was in
vain that they looked for him: he had disappeared. Juan, who left no
means untried to ascertain his son’s whereabouts, learned some days
later, from a muleteer who come from Tevilla, that he had enlisted.
The father felt indignant at the contempt thus shown for his
authority, and sorry to lose an assistant in his son: but found
consolation in freedom from the immediate presence of an interested
witness whose censure like the fog, without form, voice, or action,
penetrated him with an uncomfortableness from which there was no
escape.
Lucia went to live with her stepmother, and it is hardly necessary to
relate what she had to endure; in particular from the daughters of the
latter, who, being both foolish and ugly, naturally disliked one who
was beautiful and wise; for she had commenced by playing with
sweetness the role of Cinderella that her brother had recommended.
But, little by little, the continual friction was wasting her
patience, and indignation, repressed discontent, and rancor were
beginning to find place in her heart. She wished, sometimes, to
humiliate, by her advantages, those who were continually humiliating
her, and grew presuming and fond of admiration. So it is that evil
seeds spread and multiply with prodigious rapidity: one suffices to
open the way and prepare the ground for the rest.
While these things were passing, a regiment of cavalry, commanded by
one Colonel Gallardo, came, and took up its quarters in Arcos.
Gallardo was rich, well-born, had been good-looking, and a great
coxcomb. He was still the latter; with the kind of conceit that is
often the result of living in the atmosphere of adulation that
surrounds the possessors of money and command--an atmosphere that
intoxicates many, making them overbearing and insolent, and apt to do,
with great impertinence, things that would not be tolerated in others.
While authority is thus misunderstood, it is hardly to be wondered at
that it has lost its ancient prestige, and is hated and set at naught.
Authority should be consecrated to its mission, and, with its
advantages, accept its responsibilities, the first of which is to give 57
good example. Do those in place really think they owe the masses
nothing?--that these are, at once, mothers to nourish, and incensories
to deify them? Shall we ever go back, morally, to those remote times
when men were both worthy and self-respecting, and neither admitted
flattery nor refused to rule its reverence; for the latter was never
so despised as it is at present; the former never so cringing.
But to return to Colonel Gallardo, who has given margin to those
reflections.
This admirable person added to his other pretensions that of youth in
its flower. His own having already gone to seed, the result was that,
instead of appearing the young cock, he suggested the idea of a very
old chicken. By grace of the peruke-maker, which, as everybody knows,
consists in creating ringlets where there is no hair, he wore curled
locks. He encased himself in a French corset, which gave him a
slenderness a sylph might have envied. It was an article of his belief
that amorous conquests were as creditable to a soldier as military
ones; and he considered a little hare-brainedness in a man and a spice
of coquetry in a woman the proper seasoning, for each respectively.
These things, united with vanity enough to fill the space left vacant
in his heart and brain by the absence of other qualities, made of
Colonel Gallardo one of those characters that are detestable, without
being malevolent and ridiculous, though they do not provoke mirth.
This cavalier, a bachelor, of course, like all of his stamp, had
lodgings opposite the house of _La Leona_, whose daughters were
not long in becoming acquainted with his attendants.
The preludes to acquaintanceship were couplets worded and sung with
the evident intention of opening a flirtation. The soldiers took the
initiative, singing to the music of their _guitarillos_:[10]
“If your person can be won
By valor in the field,
Here’s a man with sword in hand
Will sooner die than yield.”
Another followed:
“If for a rustic’s love
You slight a soldier bold,
Base metal you will have
Instead of shining gold.”
To which the girls replied in a similar strain, declaring that they
found it difficult to have patience with “these men of the fields,”
whom they describe as “persecutors of the ground” and “sepulchres of
_gazpacho_.”
Neither was the colonel behindhand in becoming enamored of the beauty
of Lucia; nor was he the man to dissimulate his sentiments. And, alas!
Lucia herself had ceased to be the discreet and modest maiden, who
would once have shrunk offended from demonstrations that could not
fail to give occasion for scandal.
The hopes of our decorated aspirant, who soon learned the interior
circumstances of this family, rose high in view of the antecedents of
the step-mother and the unhappy lot of the young girl. But he deceived
himself. For, though vanity had led Lucia beyond the limits of
prudence, she receded from corruption with all the energy of the
honorable blood she had inherited from her mother. This resistance
exasperated the step-sisters, who, wishing both to be rid of Lucia and
to see her undone, hoped that the colonel would take her away with
him, and laid a plan to accomplish the result they desired. Having 58
previously concerted with the lover, they carried out their project in
the following manner: One night, when Lucia had gone to her room, and
sat combing down her beautiful hair, the door opened suddenly, and
admitted the colonel, hidden to the eyes in cloak and slouched hat,
and accompanied by the daughters of _La Leona_ in giggling triumph.
They had hardly introduced him into the chamber, when, with jests and
bursts of laughter, they turned and ran out, closing the door behind
them and drawing the bolt.
Too much overwhelmed with indignation, terror, and shame to think of
any means of escape, the unfortunate girl covered her face with her
hands and remained silent. The colonel, also, who had been led by
_La Leona_ to think that it would not be difficult to propitiate Lucia
by tender and gallant speeches, found himself without words in the
presence of grief so real and so mute. For, unless a man is totally
base, no amount of daring will enable him wholly to overcome the
respect that innocence inspires.
“Am I, then, so disagreeable to you,” said Gallardo at last, drawing
nearer to Lucia--“I who have no wish but to please you?”
“Lucas! Lucas! O my brother!” cried the girl, bursting into sobs.
“I will go! I am going!” said the colonel, half-offended,
half-compassionate; and he approached the door, but it was locked.
“You see that I cannot get out,” said he, turning again toward Lucia.
“I know it,” she exclaimed. “They wanted to ruin me, and they have
done it! Have locked me in here alone with you! How can I ever bear to
have any one look me in the face again! What will Lucas say? Ah, my
heart’s brother!”
“You are not ruined, child!” said the colonel, irritated. “I am no
friend to tragedies; heroic Lucretias frighten me. Believe me, I
desire to go, and, to prove it, since I cannot leave by the door, I
will get out by this window.” With these words, the colonel wrapped
himself again in his cloak, and, mounting the window-seat, sprang into
the yard, which was enclosed only by a low paling.
Hardly had his feet touched the ground when he felt himself attacked
by an infuriated man, who apostrophized him with the most violent
insults. At the same moment, _La Leona_ and her daughters ran
shrieking from the house, while the unhappy Lucia called from the
window in a voice of anguish: “Don’t hurt him! It is my father!”
The man had drawn a knife but Gallardo, who was vigorous and wished to
escape from the adventure without hurting Lucia’s father and without
being recognized, pushed the assailant from him with such force as to
throw him upon his back; ran to the paling, leaped it, and
disappeared.
Juan Garcia rose from the ground in that state of blind rage in which
men of his uncultivated nature stop at no obstacle and hesitate at no
crime. Violently repulsing his wife and step-daughters, who, alarmed
at the result of their work, would have detained him, he hastened to
the house, and was making directly for Lucia’s room.
“Lucia! Lucia! jump from the window!” screamed _La Leona_,
foreseeing a catastrophe. “Your father is going to kill you!”
Wild with terror, Lucia, who heard the enraged and drunken voice of
her father approaching her chamber, precipitated herself into the
yard.
“Run to the colonel’s!” urged the step-mother, with no intention then
but that of saving her life. “He is the last one your father will 59
suspect. It is the nearest house, and you can be hidden there better
than anywhere else.”
Lucia obeyed mechanically, guided by the instinct of
self-preservation, the only motive that rules weak natures in moments
of supreme peril.
Gallardo was excitedly pacing his room when she rushed in, pale as
death, covered with her long black hair, cold and helpless with fear
and desperation, and, sinking upon a chair, exclaimed:
“You have been my ruin! At least save my life!”
It is to be supposed that even the dry and sterile heart of this man
would find, in such circumstances, sentiments and words to soothe the
wretched creature thus forced to seek his protection. It is certain
that, at the vision of her youthful and innocent beauty, seen through
the prism of her tears, he became more enamored than ever, and took
advantage of the distress, of which he was the cause, to advance his
suit.
And the poor child, bereft of affection and support, having nowhere to
lay her head, lacking firmness to resist and energy to act,
unsustained by principle duly and constantly inculcated, which would
have made her prefer misery to shame, allowed herself to be persuaded
and retained, drawn by a love that began with the promise and
conviction that it was to be unchanging and eternal.
The colonel soon left, taking with him, secretly, Lucia, who had
already begun to feel contented in the atmosphere of tenderness and
luxury that surrounded her.
The fit of passion that Juan Garcia had experienced, united with
grief, shame, and remorse, so affected his constitution, already spent
and worn by the life he had been leading, that he fell into an
inflammatory fever, from which he never recovered. A little while
before he died, he said to his old friend: “Uncle Bartolo, you hit the
mark when you told me that the day would come when I should have eyes
left only to weep. It has come, and--well, better to close them for
ever.”
* * * * *
Two years had passed since the events last narrated, and five since
Lucas left home. His regiment was in Cordova, where a general recently
arrived from Madrid was going to review the troops of the garrison.
The evening before the parade, Lucas was in the quarters with several
other soldiers from Arcos, one of whom, with the careless and constant
gayety which characterizes the Spanish soldier, and proves, to the
extreme scandal and disgust of the votaries of utility, the
non-material genius of the nation, was alternately touching his
guitar, and singing:
“Oh! ‘tis gay to be a soldier.
Standing guard with tired feet,
And head erect, in stiff cravat,
And nothing at all to eat.
“And, for the bread of munition,
He gets from the King of Spain,
To be ‘Alert there, sentinel!’
All night, and never complain.
“This is the life of a soldier.
To march wherever he’s led,
To sleep under alien shelter,
And die in a hospital bed.”
At this moment the picket-guard, which had just been relieved from
duty at the general’s quarters, came up.
“Oh!” said one of the newly-arrived, “if the general’s wife isn’t a
fine one! In all my travels I have never seen her equal.”
“She is not his wife,” replied another, “so drop the ‘fine.’”
“And why should I drop it? Good words neither add to beauty nor take
from it; but what do you know?”
“What they tell me; and, besides, if she was his wife, he wouldn’t 60
keep her so grand; for that is the way with the _You-Sirs_, they spend
more money upon their dears than they do upon their wives.”
“Because they are afraid their mistresses will leave them for other
lovers. What do you say, Lucas?”
“That it’s like keeping a lead knife in a golden sheath,” answered
Lucas.
“The soul of this one may be of lead, or something cheaper, but her
person--by the Moors of Barbary!”
“We hear enough,” replied Lucas; “dress up a block, and it will look
like a shopman. I tell you, these good-for-nothing she vagabonds
appear to me more like bedraggled rags than women.”
“Get away! If this Lucas hasn’t always the rod of justice lifted! He
has entered the uniform, but the uniform hasn’t entered him. If you
had been born king, they would have called you the _Justiciero_.”[11]
The next morning the troops were drawn up in splendid array, the bands
were playing, and the general, magnificently mounted, came galloping
upon the field, followed, at a little distance, by an elegant open
carriage, in which was seated a beautiful and richly dressed woman.
The carriage stopped near where Lucas and his townsmen were formed at
the end of a line.
“That is the general’s mistress,” said the man at Lucas’s right in a
low tone. “Did I not tell you she was a sun?”
Lucas raised his eyes, and fixed them upon the woman, at the same
instant starting so perceptibly as to attract the notice of his
companions.
“What ails you, Lucas?”
“Nothing,” he answered calmly.
But the glances of the occupant of the carriage had fallen upon the
gallant-looking soldier who stood so near her, and a cry of delighted
surprise burst from her lips.
“Lucas,” said his other neighbor in line, “that lady is looking this
way, and making signs to you.”
Lucas, pale but perfectly composed, neither looked up nor replied.
“Lucas, who can it be? She knows you; she is waving her handkerchief,
and seems as if she would spring out of the carriage. Look at her!
Say! who is she?”
“I do not know her,” answered Lucas.
“By the very cats!” exclaimed the first who had spoken, in an ecstasy,
“may my end be a bad one if it isn’t your sister Lucia! Look at her,
man! it is she!”
“I have looked at her, and I tell you that I do not know her,”
responded Lucas.
“Look, now, look! the poor little thing is crying. She is not much
changed, only handsomer. You must be blind not to see that it is your
sister!”
“I do not know her,” repeated the young man, with the same composure.
There are men who feel profoundly, but exercise such self-control that
they succeed in covering with a mantle of indifference the most
violent and agonizing emotions--moral Scævolas, who astonish without
attracting us. We like neither the motive nor the effects of a
stoicism that parades itself so disdainfully. For, if in order to
judge of all things human, it is necessary to compare them with the
example of the ideal of humanity--the God-Man--we cannot fail to be
repelled by such arrogance when we reflect that the most holy passion
would have lacked its tender and sublime sanctity, if in it bravado
had taken the place of meekness.
The voice of the commanding officer was now heard prescribing the 61
evolutions. When these were concluded, the troops marched to their
quarters, where, gathered in groups, they made their comments upon the
beautiful lady of the carriage, some of the soldiers from Arcos
declaring that it was Lucia, others, who had not seen her so near,
maintaining the contrary.
“Her brother will know,” they exclaimed, running to find him.
“Lucas, is that grand, fine _You-Madam_ your sister Lucia?”
“I don’t know the woman. And now, comrades, no more questions; for I
am not a repeating-clock, and am tired of answering.”
Before half an hour had passed, an orderly arrived from the general in
search of a soldier named Lucas Garcia.
Interiorly shaken by the indignation which he would not allow his face
to betray, Lucas followed the messenger to a house of good appearance,
and was shown into an elegant and luxuriously furnished cabinet. As he
entered, a fair young girl robed in silk rose from a sofa, and ran
towards him with open arms.
“I do not know you, my lady,” said Lucas, quickly repulsing her with
his right hand.
“Lucas, my brother!” she exclaimed, bursting into tears.
“I have no sister,” he replied, in the same tone as before.
“Lucas, my own brother, listen, and I will tell you what happened!”
At this moment, the colonel--that had been, and was now
general--entered.
“Ah! Lucia,” said he, with ostentatious condescension, “so, then, you
have already seen your brother.”
“He will not know me,” sobbed the girl.
“How is that?” asked the general, turning toward the soldier. “And
why?”
“Because it would be a deceit, my general,” answered Lucas, lifting
his open hand to his temple. “I am the only one left of my house, and
have no sister.”
“I sent for you,” proceeded the general, “to make you one of my
orderlies, to keep you near me, have you taught to write, and fit you
for a career. You will mount rapidly. I know already that you are
intelligent and brave.”
“I do not wish to learn to write, my general.”
“And why?” asked the general, repressing his ill-humor, “since without
knowing how to write, you cannot rise?”
“I do not want to rise, my general.”
“The reason is evident,” said the general, with a mocking laugh. “It
is not strange that the heir of such a house should disdain the
service of the king.”
“He that sees not the king is king to himself,” answered Lucas.
“What is there that you want, brother?” asked Lucia.
“I desire nothing but to serve my time out and return home.”
“But who calls you there, if, as you say, you have no one?” questioned
she.
“Love for my native place,” he answered. “God give me rest in the soil
that gave me birth!”
“Valiant goose!” exclaimed the general.
Lucas neither opened his lips nor moved an eyelid.
“Dearest brother! by our mother’s memory, don’t make as if you did not
know me! You break my heart! Stay here.”
“It would not suit me to be a stranger anywhere, madam.”
“Enough!” said the general. “Let the clown go, he will think better 62
of it.”
“I do not think twice of things,” replied Lucas, saluting as he went
out.
Lucia ran after him into the anteroom, caught his arm, and, pressing
it against her bosom, cried in a voice of passionate and tender
entreaty:
“Lucas! my brother! for God’s sake stay! The general has promised me
that he will do all he can for you; and he can do a great deal.”
“The sack is not big enough to hold both honor and profit,” responded
Lucas, hurling his sister from him with all the loftiness of a proud
nature and the brute force of an angry churl.
Lucia fell overwhelmed upon the nearest chair, and her brother went
his way to the quarters with clinched fists and lips compressed--pale
with lividness that ire stamps upon the faces of children of the
south. Ire was suffocating him; for he could neither express it nor
follow its vengeful impulses, which would not have been satisfied
short of the commission of a crime; and of this he was incapable.
But, oh! for a war. The private soldier would have given in it a
hundred lives if he had had them for a pair of epaulets that would
lift him to the rank required, in order to enable him to demand
satisfaction of the villain who, after having seduced his sister, had
insulted him so impudently--epaulets that he would have thrown away
the next hour, like flattened orange skins; for Lucas was not
aspiring; neither fortune nor show attracted him. He clung to his
condition, loved the labors of the field; was attached to his town and
its customs, and would not have renounced the things that suited his
taste, and in which he excelled, for the sake of hoisting himself upon
a platform where he must always have been an unwelcome stranger and
intruder. The very words were antipathetic to his innate devotion, to
his country, his province, the place where he was born, his lares, and
his class.--And the effort of the age is to destroy this beautiful
instinct of the heart, by continually saying to the poor, “Rise, rise!
the summit is your goal: the heights are common to all,” thus infusing
a vain arrogance into the wholesome minds of those who are so worthy
and respectable in the place they occupy.
CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT.
[2] From 10_d._ to 10½_d._ sterling.
[3] We have thought it worth while to give the exact
cost of the simplest dress--such a one as the poorest laborer
is never without--of an Andalusian peasant:
Cloak, 260 reals.
Cloth jacket, 60 ”
Cloth breeches, 60 ”
Set of buttons (silver), 60 ”
Idem for jacket, 36 ”
Woollen sash, 50 ”
Vest, 30 ”
Linen shirt, 20 ”
Linen drawers, 15 ”
Calf-skin shoes, 22 ”
Gaiters, 40 ”
Stockings, 14 ”
Handkerchief, 4 ”
Hat, 3 ”
-------
Total, 606 ”
--without the making, which is done by the men of the household.
What will be said to this by those who are all for utility,
economy, and savings-banks, when the Andalusian rustic might,
without inconvenience, go clad in a frieze sack, a pair of
hempen sandals, and a rush hat?--_Authoress._
[4] _Pordioseros_, those who ask in God’s name--that is to
say, beggars. For this and other delicate and tender
epithets that the Spanish poor apply to the unfortunate, our
stern language has no equivalents.
[5] The actual organization of the family
throughout the kingdom of Aragon, the Basque provinces, and
the mountains of Santander. It is this that makes the mania
for codification that at present exists in Spain so much to
be dreaded.--_Spanish Ed._
[6] Big Lucas.
[7] _Tomar la vereda_--Take another than the high
or legalized way. Said of contrabandists.
[8] An arroba is twenty-five pounds.
[9] A monster they frighten children with.
[10] Small guitars.
[11] The doer of justice.
----------
EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT DISCOVERIES. 63
FROM THE CORRESPONDANT.
II.
THE SACERDOTAL CLASS.
Egyptian civilization had its source in the priesthood. There is
reason to believe that at first they exercised sovereign authority.
“After the reign of the demigods and the Manes,” says Manethon, “came
the first dynasty, consisting of eight kings, who reigned for the
space of two hundred and fifty-two years. Menes was the first of these
kings. He carried war into foreign lands, and made himself renowned.”
Menes, the chief of the military forces, effected a revolution which
substituted a civil government for a theocracy. He was the first to
assume the title of king, and he founded the hereditary monarchy of
Egypt.
The separation of the sovereign power from the priesthood was
maintained for a long time, for it is not till the twenty-second
dynasty that we meet Pahôr-Amonsé, high-priest of Amon-Ra, whose name
is still to be seen in the inscriptions at Thebes on a royal
cartouche. Pihmé, another high-priest, also figures in the royal
_legendes_ among the historical representations with which the pronaos
of the temple of Khons at Thebes is decorated. This sacerdotal
revolution doubtless took place at the end of the seven generations of
sluggish kings of whom Diodorus speaks. The twenty-second dynasty in
fact left no traces in history. It is only known by its downfall.
“And this leads us to remark,” says Champollion-Figeac, “that there
was perhaps some admirable conception, or profound combination, or
happy inspiration in the monarchical establishment of a powerful
nation in which the loss of the crown was the inevitable effect of the
incapacity or the negligence of the family that had received it by the
will of the nation. A Theban family preserved it for thirteen
consecutive centuries, and furnished six dynasties of more than fifty
kings. The first suffered from foreign invasion, and achieved the
arduous labor of sustaining the government, finally restoring all the
branches of public administration, and re-establishing the temples and
the public works. They rebuilt Thebes, Memphis, and the principal
cities, Lake Moeris, and the canals of Lower Egypt. They and their
successors bore their victorious arms over distant lands and seas. The
arts developed under the wing of victory. Public prosperity seemed to
keep pace with these heroic achievements, and the reigning family to
become more powerful and more firmly established by such great
undertakings. Inaction succeeded to so much zeal. Ten inglorious kings
ascended the throne, the last of whom were deposed by the priests.
The constitution of the country, favored by the state of affairs, 64
provided for this disorder. A new family was called to reign.”
Modern historians have represented the ancient monarchy of Egypt as
subjected to the despotism of the sacerdotal caste. This assertion
seems difficult to reconcile with the numerous inscriptions attesting
that the principal functions of the priesthood were constantly assumed
by the sons of the Pharaohs. An inscription in relief on the façade of
the tomb of Koufou Schaf, whom M. Mariette believes to be the oldest
son of Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid, depicts that prince
wearing a panther’s skin--a distinctive sign of high sacerdotal
functions--and among his titles is found that of priest of Apis.
According to a papyrus published by Baron Denon, the sons of the two
Pharaohs must have filled the office of the high-priest of Ammon.
It is true these last-named princes belonged to the twenty-second
dynasty, and at that epoch they had not had time to forget the
usurpation by the high-priests Pahôr-Amonsé and Pihmé. It is probable
that the king in causing this high function to be assumed by his
nearest relatives wished to take precautions against the reaction of
the sacerdotal class, always so powerful. But the monuments almost
always show the priesthood living in strict and intimate alliance with
the royal authority. Thus, while the younger sons of the Pharaohs
performed the priestly functions, the children of the high-priests
attended the royal children, and were employed in the highest offices
in the king’s palace. The office of high-priest of Ammon at Thebes,
the sacerdotal city, was hereditary, as Herodotus attests in the
following passage: “As Hecatæus, the historian, gave his genealogy at
Thebes, and made himself to be a descendant of a god, through sixteen
generations, the priests of Jupiter (Ammon) treated him as they did
me, except that I did not give my genealogy. After conducting me into
a vast interior apartment, they counted, as they showed them to me,
the large wooden statues of the high-priests, each of whom, while
alive, placed his image there. Commencing with that of the last
deceased and going back, the priests made me remark that each of the
high-priests was the son of his predecessor.... Each one of these
statues represented, they said, a piromis, the son of a piromis. They
showed me three hundred and forty-five, and invariably a piromis was
the son of a piromis.”
It is not necessary to remark to what degree the priests of Ammon took
advantage of the credulity of Herodotus. Doubtless, the office of
high-priest in Egypt was hereditary as well as the throne, but it was
no less subject to the influence of dynastic revolutions. We have just
seen, for example, the two sons of the king filling the office of the
high-priest of Amon-Ra, king of the gods.
The sacerdotal class was truly the soul of the Egyptian nation. It so
completely embodied the genius, character, and traditions of the
people that they may be said to have lived by their priests. They
formed the most powerful body of men that ever existed in the world
before the Catholic clergy.
As we have seen in a preceding chapter, the independence of this
corporation was ensured by a large territorial endowment. According to
Diodorus, “the largest part of the land belonged to the college of
priests.... They transmit their profession to their descendants and 65
are exempt from taxation.”[12]
“Thus secure in the possession of their lands,” says
Champollion-Figeac, “the entire sacerdotal class was like a family
with a vast heritage transmissible, according to known conditions,
from generation to generation. It was this right of inheriting the
lands that necessarily rendered their office hereditary, because the
nature of their functions determined the part of the land inherited by
each member of the family, and on this fundamental principle the whole
constitution of the sacerdotal caste of Egypt depended.”
The hereditary transmission of each sacerdotal function, and the part
of the landed property attached to this function, could only take
effect in favor of one of the children, and probably the oldest, as in
the royal family. The other children remained to be supported by the
head of the family, or easily found a means of subsistence in the
perquisites of the numerous sacred or civil employments. The number of
the temples, their rich endowments and rents, spoken of in the Rosetta
inscription, explains how so large a number of priests could live at
their ease. To this income must be added the subsidies from the royal
treasury, and the fees of the numerous salaried functions which
embraced every part of the public administration, apart from the
military sphere. But in Egypt, as elsewhere, families sometimes became
extinct for want of descendants, and thus a new path was opened for
capacity without employment.
To form an exact idea of the influence exercised by the priesthood
over Egyptian society, it is necessary to enter into some details upon
their manners and kind of life, the duties which occupied them, and
the extent of their knowledge of all kinds which they made use of to
promote the civilization of their country.
Plutarch relates that the Egyptian priests abstained from mutton and
pork, and on days of purification they ordered their meat to be served
without salt, because, among other reasons, it whetted the appetite,
inciting them to eat and drink more. He says: “They have a well apart,
where they water their bull Apis, and carefully abstain from drinking
the Nile water, not that they regard it as unclean, on account of the
crocodiles, as some suppose--on the contrary, there is nothing the
Egyptians reverence so much as the Nile--but they think its effect is
to render them more corpulent. They are unwilling for Apis to become
too fat, or to become so themselves, but wish their souls to be
sustained by slight, active, nimble bodies, and that the divine part
within may not be oppressed and weighed down by the burden of what is
mortal.
“In the city of Heliopolis, or the City of the Sun, those who worship
the divinity never carry any wine into the temple, because it is not
suitable to drink in the presence of their lord and king. The priests
take it in small quantities, but they have several days of
purification and sanctification, during which they abstain entirely
from wine, and do nothing but study and teach holy things.”
Who would have expected to find among the priests of a pagan nation
the rules of abstinence now practised by the Catholic Church?--“that 66
the soul may be sustained by slight, active, nimble bodies, that the
divine part within may not be oppressed and weighed down by the burden
of what is mortal.” Was it not in these temperate habits, so in
accordance with their spiritualistic doctrines, that lay, to a great
degree, the secret of the moral influence of the priests, the real
aristocracy of the country?
The prestige of the sacerdotal class was partly due to their costume
and appearance. “In other places,” says Herodotus, “the priests of the
gods wear their hair long; in Egypt they shave.... Every three days
the priests shave the whole body, that no vermin may defile them while
ministering to the gods. They wear only garments of linen and slippers
of the papyrus. They are not allowed to wear other kinds. They wash
themselves in fresh water twice a day and twice by night. Their rites
are almost innumerable.” On the Egyptian monuments of every age the
priests of various ranks are easily recognized by their heads entirely
shaven. They could only wear linen garments; woollen were forbidden.
Besides the religious motives that induced them to adopt linen
tissues, this preference was justified by its advantages. From linen
could be made light robes of dazzling whiteness, which would reflect
the sun’s rays and engender nothing unclean.
All the ancient authors testify to the effect produced upon the
popular mind by the imposing exterior of the Egyptian priests; their
gleaming white robes, the habitual gravity of their deportment, their
exquisite neatness, and the images of the gods worn on rich
collars--all conspired to excite respect and veneration.
The most important duty of the priests, next to the functions of their
office, was that of giving advice to the king. “The priests,” says
Diodorus, in a passage already cited, “are the chief counsellors of
the king. They aid him by their labors, advice, and knowledge.” In
alluding to the regulations for the education of the king, and
facilitating the accomplishment of their duties, we have shown how
their application, so important to the happiness of the people, was
confided to the wisdom and patriotism of the chief priests. But did
they not render this task impossible by allowing the kings to receive
divine honors, exalting their pride by the ceremonies of actual
worship, as attested by all the monuments, and officially recognized,
as we shall presently see, by the sacerdotal body itself, in the
Rosetta inscription?
In subjecting the Egyptians to the humiliation of this worship, and to
superstitions still more shameful, did not the priests degrade them,
and facilitate the despotism of the king? The more enlightened and
powerful the sacerdotal class, the more responsible before history for
the destiny of a nation which was the first-born of civilization.
“In Greece,” says Champollion-Figeac, “the service of the temple was
the sole occupation of the priests; in Egypt, they were statesmen
governing, so to speak, kings and people in the name of the gods, and
monopolizing the administration of justice, the culture of the
sciences and their diffusion. We, therefore, find members of this
caste everywhere, in all ranks of Egyptian society, and we see by the
grants to the lowest grades that they were attached by their titles or
office to religion and its ministrants. We find in ancient writings
the proper qualifications for the different classes of the priesthood. 67
The monuments show that this class, with its infinite ramifications,
was of every grade, the lowest of which was not despised. It was
everywhere present by means of a vast hierarchy, which had every
gradation from the all-powerful chief pontiff down to the humble
porter of the temple and palace, and, perhaps, even their servant.[13]
In addition to their religious duties, the learned priests taught in
the schools of the temples the arts and sciences, writing, drawing,
music, literature, cosmogony, natural and moral philosophy, natural
history, and the requirements of religion. The priest had charge of
the finances, the assessment and collection of the taxes; priests
administered justice, interpreted the laws, and in the king’s name
decided all civil and criminal cases. Another sacerdotal division
practised medicine and surgery. It is known that the Egyptians were
the first to make medicine an art founded on the data of experience
and observation.[14]
One of the most numerous and most important of the sacerdotal
divisions was the scribes, who transcribed the sacred books, the
national annals, the documents of all kinds relating to the civil
condition of families, property, justice, the administration, and,
finally, the ritual of the dead, more or less extended, which piety
deposited in the coffins of deceased relatives. Writing in Egypt dates
from extreme antiquity. There are inscriptions still to be seen,
perfectly legible, in the sepulchral chambers of the great pyramid,
constructed by one of the first kings of the fourth dynasty.
Champollion-Figeac says the three kinds of writing, hieroglyphic,
hieratic, and demotic, were in general use. He adds that “the
hieroglyphic alone was used on the public monuments. The humblest
workman could make use of it for the most common purposes, as may be
seen by the utensils and instruments of the most common kinds, which,
it may be observed, contradicts the incorrect assertions respecting
the pretended mystery of this writing, which the Egyptian priests,
according to them, made use of as a means of oppressing the common
people and keeping them in ignorance.”
No learned body ever understood the wants of its country as well as
the Egyptian priesthood. And never was a public administration more
solicitous of availing themselves of this knowledge for the general
benefit. It is true, the annual uniformity of physical phenomena
singularly facilitated the study and application of the laws necessary
for the well-being of the people. The great and wonderful inundation
of the Nile, occurring every year at the same time, covering the land
with water for the same length of time, then subsiding to give a new
face to the country and a fresh stimulus to the activity of the
inhabitants, naturally imprinted on the nation habits of order and
foresight which made it easy to govern.
The members of the sacerdotal class, then, were most intimately
connected with the individual interests of the nation; they were the
necessary intermediaries between the gods and man, and between the
king and his subjects. Their concurrence in all public business was
not less constant or less necessary. The religious nature of the
inhabitants led them to offer invocations to the gods amid all their
occupations, in peace and war, in public and private duties, at the
ebb of inundating waters, the preparation of the land for the seed,
and the harvesting of the fruits of the earth. The gods, manifesting 68
themselves through the priests, directed the most important decisions,
and sanctified by the expression of their satisfaction the possession
of the harvest, the first-fruits of which were received as
offerings.[15]
But that which gives a more just idea of the sublime _rôle_
played by the Egyptian priests is the Rosetta inscription.[16] It is
well known that this famous inscription is the reproduction of a
decree made in 196 B.C. by the representatives of the sacerdotal
body gathered at Memphis for the coronation and enthronement of
Ptolemy Epiphanes. On account of its importance, we think ourselves
justified in giving it almost entirely: “In the year IX.,[17] the
tenth of the month of Mechir, the pontiffs and prophets, those who
enter the sanctuary to clothe the gods, the pterophores, the
hierogrammatists, and all the other priests, who from all the temples
in the country have assembled before the king at Memphis for the
solemnity of taking possession of that crown which Ptolemy, still
living, the well-beloved of Pthah, the divine Epiphanes, a most
gracious prince, has inherited from his father, being assembled in the
temple of Memphis, have pronounced this same day the following decree:
“Considering that King Ptolemy, still living, the well-beloved of
Pthah, the divine Epiphanes, son of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoë,
gods philopatores, has conferred all kinds of benefits on the temples
as well as those who dwell in them, and in general on all those who
are under his dominion: that being a god, the offspring of a god and
goddess, like Horus the son of Isis and Osiris, the avenger of Osiris,
his father, and, eager to manifest his zeal for the things that
pertain to the gods, he has consecrated great revenues to the service
of the temple, in money as well as grain, and expended large sums in
restoring tranquillity to Egypt, and constructing temples therein:
“That he has neglected no means in his power of performing humane
deeds; that in order that in his kingdom the people and all the
citizens generally might possess an abundance, he has repealed some of
the tributes and taxes established in Egypt, and diminished the weight
of the remainder; that he has, besides, remitted all that was due him
from the rents of the crown, either from his subjects, the people of
Egypt, or those of his other kingdoms, though these rents were of
considerable amount; that he has released all those who were
imprisoned and condemned for a long time;
“That he has ordered that the revenues of the temples, and the rents
paid them annually in grain, as well as in money, together with the
portions reserved for the gods from the vineyards, the orchards, and
all other places to which they had a right from the time of his
father, should continue to be collected in the country;
“That he has dispensed those who belong to the sacerdotal tribes from
making an annual journey to Alexandria (the seat of royalty after the 69
accession of the Lagides);
“That he has bestowed many gifts on Apis, Mnevis, and other sacred
animals of Egypt;...
“It has, therefore, pleased the priests of all the temples of the land
to decree that all the honors due King Ptolemy, still living, the
well-beloved of Pthah, the divine Epiphanes, most gracious, as well as
those which are due to his father and mother, gods, philopatores, and
those which are due to his ancestors, should be considerably
augmented; that the statue of King Ptolemy, still living, be erected
in every temple and placed in the most conspicuous spot, which shall
be called the statue of Ptolemy, the avenger of Egypt. This statue
shall be placed near the principal god of the temple, who shall
present him with the arms of victory, and all things shall be arranged
in the most appropriate manner; that the priests shall perform three
times a day religious service before these statues; that they adorn
them with sacred ornaments; and that they have care to render them, in
the great solemnities, all the honors which, according to usage,
should be paid the other gods....
“And in order that it may be known why in Egypt we glorify and honor,
as is just, the god Epiphanes, most gracious monarch, the present
decree shall be engraved on a stela of hard stone, in sacred
characters and in Greek characters, and this stela shall be placed in
every temple of the first, second, and third classes existing in all
the kingdom.”[18]
When we remember that the rule of the Greek conquerors had already
been established in Egypt one hundred and thirty-six years, we judge,
from the manner the Egyptian priests expressed themselves, of the
persistent strength of this social organization imposed on the
successors of Alexander in spite of all their power.
Therefore, says Champollion-Figeac, “the monuments of the times of the
Ptolemies may be considered a key to the times of the Pharaohs, and
the account of the ceremonies celebrated at the coronation of these
Greek kings may very suitably be applied, by changing the names, to
the kings of the ancient dynasties.”
III.
THE MILITARY CLASS.
As we have already seen (Book I., chap. ii.), the profession of arms,
as well as all other pursuits, was hereditary in Egypt, and those who
followed it formed a distinct body still more numerous than that of
the priests. They owned a part of the land, but were forbidden to
cultivate it or to pursue any industrial labor. The fertile land
assigned to every head of a family in the division which, according to
Herodotus, was made under the first kings, was tilled by the laborers.
It is easy to perceive the evils of this system, which for ever
withheld from agriculture a multitude of young and vigorous arms.
Herodotus estimates the number of the calasiries and hermotybies (the
names of the warriors) at 410,000. We should doubtless modify the
information given Herodotus by the priests, who had motives for
exaggerating before a stranger the military forces of the country. But
it is no less true that the number of able men withheld from
agriculture by the Egyptian system must have been considerable. On the
other hand, notwithstanding the numerous gymnastic exercises to which
they were subjected, these exercises could not have been as 70
efficacious as agricultural pursuits in developing strength.
Wishing to elevate the noble profession of arms, they disparaged
manual labor, and gradually left to slaves not only the trades, but
even the agricultural pursuits so necessary to the existence and
prosperity of a nation. Thanks to the salutary rule of hereditary
professions, agriculture and other labor could not be entirely left to
slaves, but labor alone attaches man to the soil; and there came a day
when the military class was rooted out and transplanted beyond Egypt,
which was left defenceless to its enemies. This is an important point
in the history of the country which has not been sufficiently
remarked.
Psammetichus, the head of the Saïte dynasty, was, it is said, the
first king of Egypt who dared shake off the yoke of the laws imposed
from time immemorial on royalty.[19] Relying on an army of foreign
mercenaries, Arabians, Carians, and Ionian Greeks, he was not afraid
of violating the privileges of the military class, and thus a
revolution was effected in Egypt which became fatal to the country.
“Two hundred and forty thousand Egyptian warriors revolted.... They
therefore conferred together, and with one accord abandoned
Psammetichus to go among the Ethiopians. Psammetichus, hearing of it,
pursued them. When he overtook them, he implored them for a long time
not to abandon their gods, their wives, and their children. Then one
of them replied that everywhere ... they could find wives and
children.”[20]
There are such bold colors in the picture of Herodotus that modesty
requires us to efface them, but we may say that he depicts to the life
the brutal cynicism into which idleness had caused the military class
to fall. Whatever their wrongs on the part of the king, it is
difficult to allow they were right in carrying their resentment so far
as to abandon their religion, their families, and their country. When,
less than a century after, the Persians, led by Cambyses, invaded the
land, the unarmed nation could offer no resistance, and Egypt was
devastated. It had not recovered from this disaster when it fell into
the power of Alexander.
The military system of ancient Egypt possessed, nevertheless, several
advantages which should be noticed.
First: Exemption from military service ensured the tillers of the soil
complete stability to their occupation, so that war did not, as among
modern nations, hinder the cultivation of the land by enrolling the
ablest part of the population and endangering the subsistence of the
country.
On the other hand, the possession of landed property guaranteed the
patriotism of the soldiers, who, as Diodorus justly remarks, defended
their country with all the more ardor that they were at the same time
the safeguards of their own property. Finally, the perpetuity of the
military service in the same families must have singularly favored 71
the development of the art of war, respect for discipline, and the
maintenance of an _esprit de corps_ in the army. After the
expulsion of the Hyksos, the Egyptians, inured to war by their long
struggles against these foreign invaders, obtained great victories in
Asia, under their kings, Ahmes (Amosis), Thothmes III., and Rameses
II., called the great Sesostris by the Greeks. The military
pre-eminence of Egypt is attested by the Holy Scriptures in the
prophecies of Isaiah respecting her downfall.
It was by war and the public works that the Pharaohs shed so brilliant
a glory over Egypt, but we know how dearly this glory cost the nation,
whose traditional characteristic was eminently pacific. Nevertheless,
it would be unjust to make the king solely responsible for the ruinous
wars that ended in the conquest of Egypt. The defect we have referred
to in the constitution of the military class must have greatly
contributed to this fatal result. The forced inactivity of its
families made them a ready instrument for the ambition of the kings,
who found a benefit in turning their attention from internal affairs
and directing the activity of so powerful a body to distant
expeditions.
Under the eighteenth dynasty, and particularly under the reign of
Thothmes III., Egypt extended the power of its arms to a great
distance. We see this prince, according to a contemporary inscription,
“establishing his frontiers where he pleased.” The pictures graven on
the walls of two chambers recently discovered in the temple of
Deir-el-Bahari, at Thebes, a monument erected by the regent Hatasou,
sister of Thothmes III. (the eighteenth dynasty), show the conquered
people putting on board the Egyptian fleet the booty taken after
battle. Here are giraffes, monkeys, leopards, arms, ingots of copper,
rings of gold. There are entire trees, probably of a rare species, the
roots of which are enclosed in large boxes filled with earth. The
vessels themselves merit our attention. They are large, solidly built,
and impelled either by sails or oars. A numerous crew covers the deck.
Thanks to the care which the Egyptian artist took to indicate the
disposition of the masts, sails, and even the knots of the complicated
cordage which bound together the different parts of the vessel, we
have a clear idea what a vessel belonging to the Egyptian navy was
four thousand years ago.
“In another chamber of the same temple are scenes of as great an
interest. The Egyptian regiments are advancing with gymnastic steps
and entering Thebes triumphantly. Each soldier has a palm in his left
hand; in his right is a spear or battle-axe. Before them sound the
trumpets. Officers are bearing the standards, surmounted by the name
of the victorious regiment.”[21]
It was from the military class, according to Manethon, that sprang the
first dynasty, which commences with Menes, the leader of the armies.
From this king to Psammetichus, the founder of the twenty-sixth
dynasty--that is, for more than two thousand years--a strict alliance
existed between the army and the throne. This makes the following
passage from Herodotus worthy of attention: “They (the warriors) enjoy
by turns the following advantages: Every year a thousand calasiries
and as many hermotybies form the king’s guard. They daily receive,
besides their lands, five mines of baked bread, two mines of beef, and
four cups of wine. This is what the guards receive.” 72
By this truly monarchical system, to which we venture to call the
attention of the sovereigns who wish to retain their crowns, the whole
army corps, and all the members of the military class, were
successively admitted to the honor of guarding the sacred person of
the king, which must have singularly augmented their devotedness and
fidelity. This system had the great advantage of dissipating all
feelings of envy with which privileged corps are regarded.
The Egyptian monarch doubtless found a solid support in this intimate
union with the military class from which it sprang. King Psammetichus,
the founder of the Saïte dynasty, was guilty of the capital fault of
employing foreign troops, and violating the civil rights of the native
soldiers. He thus caused the emigration of the entire national forces
which we have already signalized as one of the principal causes of the
downfall of Egypt.
From the time of the Persian conquest, the glorious _rôle_ of the
great Egyptian army was ended. History only mentions after this the
exploits of the navy. Herodotus relates that Egypt furnished two
hundred vessels for the fleet assembled by Xerxes for the subjugation
of Greece. “The Egyptians,” says he, “had barred helmets, convex
bucklers with a wide bordure, spears for naval combats, and great
battle-axes. Most of them wore cuirasses and long swords. Such was
their equipment.”
This fleet valiantly sustained the national honor, for the same
historian adds a little further on: “In this combat (that of
Artemisium, which preceded the great naval battle of Salamis) the
Egyptians made themselves conspicuous among the troops of Xerxes; they
did great things, and took five Greek vessels with their equipages.”
IV.
LEGISLATION--ADMINISTRATIVE AND JUDICIAL INSTITUTIONS.
The wisdom of the Egyptian laws was everywhere admired in ancient
times. “I would remind the reader, accustomed, perhaps, to regard the
early history of Egypt as fabulous or somewhat uncertain, that
obscurity rests on some points of its chronology, and the name and
succession of some of the kings, but not on its legislation, the
wisdom of which was admired by antiquity; and its effect on the power
and genius of the Egyptian nation is attested by the monuments still
in existence.[22] Holy Scripture itself seems to ratify this eulogium
in saying that “Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, and he was powerful in his words and in his deeds.”[23]
Unfortunately, all the Egyptian laws have not come down to us, and we
have to resort to the incomplete testimony of Herodotus and Diodorus.
But, as M. de Bonald states, it is easy to recognize the general
spirit of this legislation, which constantly contributed to stability
by the maintenance of ancient customs, evidently borrowed from
patriarchal traditions, and by the widest application of the
hereditary principle extending to every grade of society. The details
we have given concerning the constitution of the family and about
property, the distinction between the sacerdotal, military,
agricultural, and working classes, as well as concerning royalty,
appear sufficient to give the reader an approximate idea of the 73
civil and political laws of the ancient Egyptian monarchy.
No trace has yet been found of the municipal rights in ancient Egypt,
but there is reason to believe that cities as powerful as Thebes,
Memphis, Elephantine, Tanis, etc., had institutions suited to the
genius of their inhabitants.
Each dynasty took for its capital the city from which it sprang. Thus
the two first dynasties established the seat of government at Thinis
and Memphis; the fifth at Elephantine; and the sixth at Memphis.
Thebes only became the capital from the time of the eleventh
dynasty.[24] Owing to this excellent custom, no city, under the
ancient monarchy, could preserve its ascendency and attract all the
sources of power in the country. Thinis, Memphis, Elephantine, Thebes,
Tanis, Saïs, etc., were by turns the capitals of the kingdom, the
centres of national activity, and the seats of sovereign power.
As to the financial laws, history has transmitted several the wisdom
of which makes us regret the more those that have not come down to us.
The object of the first was to proscribe idleness, which the Egyptians
rightly regarded as a social evil. “Amasis,” says Herodotus, “is the
author of the law which obliges every Egyptian to show annually to the
governor of his _nome_ (province) his means of subsistence, and
they who did not obey, or did not appear to live on legitimate
resources, were punished with death. Solon, the Athenian, having
borrowed this law from the Egyptians, imposed it on his
fellow-citizens, who still observe it and think it faultless.”
The Egyptians, then, recognized this fundamental law--that man should
live by the fruit of his labor, and we see with what rigor they
enforced it.[25] In a well-regulated nation, where there is work for
every one, no one, indeed, should be allowed to live at the expense of
the community. The protection afforded human life in Egypt allows us
to suppose that capital punishment was reserved for those who
obstinately refused to gain their livelihood by labor or other honest
means. We know from Herodotus that woman, as well as man, was
subjected to the great law of labor. “The women go to market and
traffic, the men remain at home and weave. Everywhere else the woof is
brought up, the Egyptians carry it under. The men carry burdens on
their heads, the women on their shoulders.”[26]
The weaker sex was better protected from the violence of human
passions than among other nations. “The laws concerning women were
very severe. Those who violated a free woman were mutilated, for this
crime was considered inclusive of three great evils, insult,
corruption of morals, and confusion of children. For adultery without
violence, the man was condemned to receive a thousand stripes, and the
woman to have her nose cut off--the lawgiver wishing her to be
deprived of the attractions she had availed herself of to allure.”[27]
We see the powerful protection assured to the family by the Egyptian
laws in making woman respected and obliging her to respect herself.
Human life was equally protected. “He who saw on the way a man
struggling with an assassin, or enduring violent treatment, and did
not aid him when in his power, was condemned to death.” “He who had 74
wilfully murdered a free man or a slave was punished with death, for
the laws wished to punish not according to the degree of rank, but the
intention of the evil-doer. At the same time, their care in the
management of the slaves kept them from ever offending a free man.[28]
The law respecting loans was no less remarkable. It was forbidden
those who lent by contract to allow the principal to more than double
by the accumulation of the interest. Creditors who demanded pay could
only seize the goods of the debtor. Bodily restraint was never
allowed. For the legislator considered goods as belonging to those who
acquired them by labor, by transmission, or by gift, but the
individual belonged to the state, which, at any moment, might claim
his services in war or in peace. It would, indeed, be absurd if a
warrior, at the moment of battle, could be carried off by his
creditor, and the safety of all endangered by the cupidity of one. It
appears that Solon introduced this law at Athens, giving it the name
of _seisactheia_,[29] and remitted all debts contracted under
restraint. Most of the Greek legislators are blamed, and not without
reason, for forbidding the seizure of arms, ploughs, and other
necessary utensils, as pledges of debts, and for permitting, on the
other hand, the privation of the liberty of those who made use of
these instruments.
It is evident that civilized nations, from the earliest times, sought
to oppose and repress the dangerous evil of usury, which inevitably
leads to the oppression of the laborer and the degradation of labor.
But the Egyptians had an efficacious means of ensuring the
payment of debts--in depriving those of sepulture who died without
satisfying their creditors. In such a case the body, after being
embalmed, was simply deposited in the house of the deceased and left
to the children. “It sometimes happens,” says Diodorus, “that, owing
to the prevailing respect for the memory of parents, the
grandchildren, becoming wealthier, paid the debts of their ancestor,
had the decree of condemnation revoked, and gave him a magnificent
funeral.” The same author adds, “It is common to give the body of a
deceased parent as the guarantee of a debt. The greatest infamy and
privation of sepulture awaited those who did not redeem such a
pledge.”
“Under the reign of Asychis,” says Herodotus, “the Egyptians made a
law allowing a person to borrow by giving in pledge the body of his
father. An additional clause allowed the lender to dispose of the
sepulchral chamber of the borrower, and, in case of refusal to pay the
debt, he who had given such a pledge incurred the following
punishment: in case of death, the impossibility of obtaining burial
either in the paternal sepulchre or in any other, and the interdiction
of burying any one belonging to him.”
This singular custom of pledging a dead body could only exist in
Egypt, where it was a religious obligation to preserve the body, and
an infamy not to give funeral honors to deceased parents.
The administration of justice in Egypt excited the admiration of the
philosophers and legislators of antiquity. Diodorus, who studied their
system, found it superior to that of other countries. To enable the
reader to judge for himself, we shall give the essential details
concerning it. “The Egyptians,” says he, “have carefully considered 75
the judicial power, persuaded that the acts of a tribunal have a
twofold influence upon social life. It is evident that the punishment
of the guilty and the protection of the injured are the best means of
repressing crime. They knew, if the fear of justice could be done away
with by bribes and corruption, it would lead to the ruin of society.
They therefore chose judges from the chief inhabitants of the most
celebrated cities, Heliopolis, Thebes, and Memphis. Each of these
cities furnished ten, who composed the tribunal, which might be
compared to the Areopagus of Athens or the Senate of Lacedæmon. These
thirty judges chose a president from their number, and the city to
which he belonged sent another judge to replace him. These judges were
supported at the expense of the king, and their salary was very
considerable....”
The plaintiff in person stated his grievances, and the accused
defended himself. There were no counsellors, “the Egyptians being of
the opinion that they only obscure a cause by their pleadings.... In
fact, it is not rare,” adds Diodorus, “to see the most experienced
magistrates swayed by the power of a deceitful tongue, aiming at
effect, and seeking only to excite compassion.”
This organization seems adapted to secure the equity and impartiality
desirable in the administration of justice. The selection of the
judges from the principal citizens of the country, and their large
salaries, guaranteed their ability and independence. At the same time,
the restricted number of judges shows how rare lawsuits were in Egypt.
It must have been so in a nation so wisely governed, in which order
and peace reigned among all classes and in all families, and where
the interests of every one were guaranteed and protected.
The study of the inscriptions shows that the civil offices were filled
by citizens belonging to the sacerdotal and military classes.[30] Were
these functions hereditary? The stability of the Egyptian institutions
allows us to believe the transmission of the public duties must have
been generally by inheritance.
A monument in the museum of Leyden shows us a family of the beginning
of the twelfth dynasty, which for many successive generations was
employed in the distribution of water in the district of Abydos.[31]
But more important duties, requiring greater personal capacity or a
special commission from public authority, must have been at the
nomination of the kings or the governors of the nomes.
“A great number of administrative reports and fragments of registers
of the public accounts are found in the papyri still preserved.
“The services employing the greatest number, and the most able men,
were those of the public works, the army, and the administration of
the revenues of the kingdom. Coined money was unknown,[32] all the
taxes were collected in kind. There were three divisions on the land
according to the nature of the rents: the canal (maou) paid its
tribute in fish, the arable land (ouou) in cereals, and the marshes
(pehou) in heads of cattle. A register was carefully kept, with an
account of the changes, a statement of all the kinds of land in each
district, and the names of the owners.
“... Many contracts of sales and rents of land and houses, drawn up 76
on papyrus, have been found among the family papers of the dead. They
show with what guarantees and careful formalities property was
protected in ancient Egypt.”[33]
By this sketch, however incomplete, of the laws and institutions of
ancient Egypt, we see they were, as Bossuet says,[34] “simple, full of
justice, and of a kind to unite the nation. The best thing among all
these excellent laws was--that every one was trained to observe them.
A new custom was a wonder in Egypt. Everything was done in the same
manner, and their exactness in little things made them exact in great
ones. Therefore, there never was a people that preserved its laws and
customs a longer time.”
V.
A SUMMARY OF PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.
We shall now give a brief review of the social and political
institutions of ancient Egypt.
The priesthood, the guardian of religion and the laws, and the
promoter of morality, was rendered perpetual by hereditary
transmission in the sacerdotal families.
The army, the guardian of civil and political life, and the maintainer
of order, was rendered perpetual by hereditary transmission in the
military families.
Labor, the source of national and individual vigor, was rendered
perpetual by the hereditary transmission of the agricultural or
industrial pursuits in the families of the agriculturists and artisans.
Authority, the organ of the national will, was maintained in its unity
and perpetuity, by hereditary transmission in the royal family.
And all these classes, all these families, were guaranteed in their
independence by the unchangeableness of their members, and the
proprietorship of the soil and the trades.
Such were the foundations of the social constitution of Egypt.
With such fine order, to borrow the language of Bossuet, there was no
place for anarchy or oppression. In fact, society was preserved from
the abuse of power by the fundamental law of hereditary professions,
which, ensuring to each family a fixed employment and an independent
existence, prevented the arbitrary changes of men and property, so
that opposition was not, as M. de Bonald happily says, in men, but in
the institutions.[35]
It was by this combined action of the different social grades, that
is, of royalty, the priesthood, the army, and the corporations devoted
to manual labor, that Egypt attained such a degree of civilization,
which left so great an impress on the ancient world, and the vestiges
of which still appear so worthy of attention.
In consequence of this wise and powerful organization, peace and
harmony seemed to have a long and unbroken reign in Egypt. The first
symptoms of disorder and tyranny only appear under the kings of the
fourth dynasty. When the knowledge of the true God was almost effaced
from the memory of man, the kings, regarded with religious veneration,
set themselves up for gods, and pride, the source of despotism, 77
entered their hearts. After overthrowing, or at least changing, the
nature of the national religion, they favored with all their might the
introduction of polytheism, which placed them on the altars, and gave
a divine authority to their power. “The priests informed me,” says
Herodotus, “that, until Rhamsinite, equity prevailed in Egypt, and the
prosperity of the country was great. But after him Cheops (Khoufou,
the builder of the great pyramid) reigned, and the people suffered all
kinds of miseries. First, he closed the temples and forbade the
offering of sacrifices; then he forced the Egyptians to labor for
him.” This tradition of the impiety of the first designer of the
pyramids is found in the extracts from Manethon, but with an important
addition: “Suphis, who built the largest pyramid, attributed by
Herodotus to Cheops, was at first a despiser of the gods, but he
afterward repented and wrote a sacred book, greatly esteemed by the
Egyptians.”[36]
This assertion of the national historian is confirmed by the
discoveries of modern science. A stone found near the great pyramids
contains a valuable inscription respecting the ancient history of
Egypt. “It appears from this inscription,” says Mariette, “that Cheops
restored a temple already standing (dedicated to Isis), assigning
revenues to it in sacred offerings, and replaced the statues of gold,
silver, bronze, and wood, which adorned the sanctuary....
“We see by this,” adds the learned archæologist, “that, even at that
extremely remote period, Egyptian civilization shone forth with the
greatest brilliancy.”[37]
We also see that the royal despotism could not long prevail against
the powerful social organization of which we have given a sketch, for,
in re-establishing the worship of Isis, Cheops doubtless restored at
the same time the national institutions, the violation of which has
left so marked a trace in the historic traditions of Egypt.
To show our impartiality, we ought to state that many modern
historians have judged Egyptian royalty much more severely than we.
Among them, M. François Lenormant may be particularly mentioned.
“From the time of the oldest dynasties,” says he, “we see existing
this boundless respect for royalty, which became a genuine worship,
and made Pharaoh the visible god of his subjects. The Egyptian
monarchs were more than sovereign pontiffs, they were real
divinities.... They identified themselves with the great divinity
Horus because, as an inscription says: ‘The king is the image of Ra
(the sun-god) among the living.’
“It is easily understood what a prestige was given to the sovereign
power in Egypt by such an explanation of royalty. This power, already
so great among the Asiatic nations adjoining that country, assumed the
character of genuine idolatry. The Egyptians were, with respect to
their king, only trembling slaves, obliged by religion even to blindly
execute his orders. The highest and most powerful functionaries were
only the humble servants of Pharaoh.... For this _régime_ to last so
many ages with no notable modification, the Egyptians must have been
profoundly convinced that the government they were under emanated from
the divine will.[38]
Egyptian society stood on so firm a basis that it could be oppressed, 78
but not overthrown, by the despotism of its kings. Property was so
well secured by the general law of inheritance, the sacerdotal and
military aristocracy was so firmly established in its independence,
that the first excess of power only affected the laboring classes.
Unable to dispose of the property of their subjects, the kings
appropriated, as J. J. Rousseau justly remarks, “rather men’s arms
than their purse.” It was thus they effected the gigantic work of
erecting the pyramids by the enforced labors of a whole nation.
Property was spared, but humanity was oppressed.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[12] Diodorus. History thus confirms the Scriptures:
“From that time unto this day, in the whole land of Egypt,
the fifth part is paid to the king, and it is become as a
law, except the land of the priests, which was free from
this covenant” (Gen. xlvii. 26). This privilege was not
always preserved. The Rosetta inscription informs us that
the sacred lands paid annually into the royal treasury an
_artabe_ for each _aroure_ of land, and an amphora
of wine for every aroure of vineyard.
[13] _Egypte ancienne_, p. 111.
[14] Chemistry comes from Chemi--which means
Egypt.--TR.
[15] We have borrowed from Champollion most of this
account of the services rendered by the priesthood to the
Egyptian nation. It is true, it only gives the favorable
side of that class, but, in speaking of the religion of the
country, we shall endeavor to complete the picture and
present it in its true light.
[16] The Rosetta Stone was among the valuable antiquities
collected by the French expedition into Egypt, and given up
to the English at the surrender at Alexandria. It was of
black basalt, about three feet by two. The inscription on it
was in three kinds of writing: the hieroglyphic, the demotic
or enchorial, and the Greek. The upper and lower portions of
the stone were broken and injured, but the demotic
inscription was perfect. The Greek inscription was a key to
the others, from which a complete hieroglyphic alphabet was
composed.--TR.
[17] Of the reign of Ptolemy.--TR.
[18] From Champollion-Figeac’s translation.
[19] “The priests represented Psammetichus as the first
Egyptian king to violate the sacerdotal rule limiting
the king’s ration of wine.”--Strabo, _Geogr._ xvii.
[20] _Herodotus_, ii. Diodorus confirms this account, but
its authenticity has been disputed by declaring that “the
garrison of Elephantine, comprising only some hundreds or
thousands of warriors, was the only one that could escape
into Ethiopia.” It was doubtless easier for this garrison to
cross the frontier which it was appointed to guard; but,
supposing the Egyptian soldiers, dissatisfied with the
violation of their privileges, had concerted among
themselves, as Herodotus declares, we do not see how King
Psammetichus could have hindered the departure of so
formidable an army. Besides, Herodotus adds that he saw in
Ethiopia a people known under the name of _Automoles_
(deserters), descendants of these Egyptian warriors. This
testimony is the more credible because Herodotus made the
journey not more than 150 or 160 years after the death of
Psammetichus.
[21] Mariette.
[22] De Bonald, _Théorie du Pouvoir_, i. 170.
[23] Acts of the Apostles, vii. 22.
[24] Mariette: _Aperçu de l’Histoire d’Egypte_, pp. 10 and 19.
[25] St. Paul says: “_Qui non laborat non manducet_.”
[26] _Herodotus_, lib. ii.
[27] _Diodorus_, lib. i.
[28] _Diodorus_, lib. i.
[29] From σείω, _I shake off_, and ἄχθος, _burden_. See
Plutarch, _Life of Solon_, xiv.
[30] Ampère, _Des Castes, etc., dans l’ancienne
Egypte_.
[31] Letter from M. de Rougé à M. Leemans, _Revue
Archéol._, vol. xii.
[32] We have seen by the law respecting loans, attributed
to King Bocchoris, that coined money was known to the
Egyptians at least eight centuries B.C.
[33] F. Lenormant, _Manuel d’Hist. ancienne_.
[34] _Discours sur l’Hist. univ._: “The Egyptians observe
the customs of their fathers, and adopt no new ones,” says
Herodotus.
[35] _Théorie du Pouvoir_, vol. i. book 1. From this work,
now consulted so little, but nevertheless full of remarkable
views respecting the different systems of social
organization, we have taken the plan of this _étude_ of the
political institutions of ancient Egypt.
[36] Eusebius, _apud Sync._ vol.
[37] _Notice du Musée de Boulaq_, p. 185.
[38] F. Lenormant, _Manuel d’Hist. anc._, vol. i. p. 334.
----------
A WEEK AT LAKE GEORGE.
Most of our merchant readers will be able to recall a thousand
pleasant reminiscences or anecdotes of the firm of Hawkins & Smith,
wholesale cloth dealers, of our great metropolis. Mr. Hawkins is the
dapper, fluent, old English gentleman, who meets all callers upon the
house. He appears to be the very life of the firm, and sells the
counters and shelves as clean as his own smoothly shaved, fair little
face. He is fond of boasting that he never kept a piece of goods
through two whole seasons. He is the only member of the firm with whom
our agents and correspondents are acquainted. Rarely, indeed, does it
enter anybody’s head to inquire for Mr. Smith. But a silent,
squarely-built, gray-eyed man, never to be seen in the salesroom, and
only in the office at the earliest hours, looks as if he might be
called Smith, or any other practically-sounding name; and on closer
inspection this same individual appears to possess those qualities
which would fit one to do and endure the grinding, screwing, and
pounding, the stern refusing and energetic demanding, connected with
the business of such a distinguished firm. Smith never boasts. He has
a disagreeable way of chuckling, when he observes, before dismissing
an idle employee, that _he_ (Smith) came here (to New York) in his own
schooner from home (Rhode Island) and, in six months, bought his share
in the present business. Mr. Hawkins never alludes to him in
conversation, but always greets him with marked respect, and, when
late to business, with a nervous flush quite unpleasant to witness. It
has been said by enemies of the firm that Hawkins is a first-class
salesman because Smith does all the buying; and many quaint
expressions have arisen regarding the fate of the American eagle
whenever a certain coin passes between old Smith’s thumb and
forefinger.
Any one who has so far penetrated the nether gloom of our first story
salesroom as to peep behind the little railing on the high desk, has
seen a tall, pale, blue-eyed young man, with closely-trimmed whiskers,
bending over the gas-lit figures and folios, the mysteries of Hawkins
& Smith. Five years in this Hades, wearing and puzzling over the 79
perpetual riddle before him, have worked a slight wrinkle just between
his brows, and bent his thin figure, and even blanched his delicate
hands and hollow cheeks; but he is no more a demon or ghost than you
or I, or even Mr. Hawkins himself, but the jolliest and best of jolly
good fellows. If you have long known Jack Peters, and acknowledged
this, be civil to me, dear reader, henceforth, for his sake, for I am
this book-keeper’s first cousin, George Peters.
Ask the boys in the first floor whom old Smith watches most. They will
tell you, with a laugh, the new clerk at the first counter. Ask Mr.
Hawkins whom he put at the first counter because he likes Jack Peters.
He will answer, George Peters, his cousin. Ask Mr. Smith who the clerk
at the first counter is. He will answer, “An infernal fool that
Hawkins picked up, because he always wants a good-looking
figure-head.”
This last remark is historical, and I quote it to illustrate many
subjects which vanity, modesty, and respect for my employers alike
render delicate to me, George Peters.
On a certain Monday evening in July last, Jack and I stood in the
dread presence of Hawkins and Smith, in the inner circle of the gloom.
“Mr. Peters,” said Hawkins, looking at both of us as blandly as man
could look in such a place, “we have both concluded that we can better
spare you this week than next. Nothing will be going on, and so you
had better be going off. Ah! ha! And you, my young friend, although it
is not customary to grant vacation to such recent employees, had
better go off, too, on account of your cousin--entirely on his
account!” added the little gentleman, dexterously, glancing the last
part of his speech from me to his partner.
Jack nodded his thanks, and I endeavored to thaw the cold stare of the
junior partner by a warm burst of gratitude, not altogether feigned.
His glance, indeed, altered, but only to a sneer, and the labials of
the word “puppy” were so distinctly formed that I could scarcely keep
from disarranging them by a hearty slap.
Feeling checked and snubbed, I walked with Jack out of the store, but
soon these feelings gave place to the excitement of our vacation.
“Jack, are the ‘traps’ all packed?”
“Everything is ready; all we have to do is to get aboard the boat.
Hawkins told me on Saturday that I might get ready, but that it was
necessary to stay over Monday in order to get you off with me. So I
left word at home to have everything sent down by the boy.”
We turned the corner, and, in a few minutes, were wandering through
the cabins and gangways of the Albany boat. The “boy” on whom Jack had
relied so confidently did not make his appearance until the last
moment, and then professed utter ignorance of any lunch-basket. Jack
was certain that he had put it with the trunk and satchels, and was
but partially convinced when he found it, on our return, in the
wardrobe of his bedroom. But we were on board of the _St. John_, and
it only made a difference of two dollars in the cost of our supper.
Yes, dear reader, we were on board of the _St. John_, and moving up
the Hudson; and, if you are pleased at finding us on our way at last,
judge with what feelings we turned from the brick and stone of the
great Babylon behind us to the towering palisades, the groves, and
hills, and happy rural sights about us. Jack and I were unable to 80
get a state-room; all had been secured before the boat left the wharf.
This, however, afforded little matter for regret, as we sailed through
moonlight and a warm breeze beneath the gloomy Highlands, and watched
the lights of the barges and tow-boats, like floating cities on the
inky river. Scraps of history and romance were suggested at almost
every turn of the winding channel, and as we passed old Cro’ Nest, the
opening lines of the _Culprit Fay_ were forcibly recalled:
“’Tis the middle watch of a summer night,
Earth is dark, but the heavens are bright,
And naught is seen in the vault on high
But the moon and stars, and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue,
As a river of light, o’er the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Cro’ Nest;
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast;
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below.”
The white schooners went through their ghostly parts in a way that
would have shamed Wallack himself. We thought the performance of the
sturgeons fully equal, from an artistic point of view, and, certainly,
less objectionable from every point of view, when compared with
anything we ever saw at the ballet; and, yet, we remembered that men
and women were sitting wide awake through these late hours in the hot
and crowded theatres of the city. Thus we were consoled for the loss
of a state-room. But even in this peaceful enjoyment of nature we were
not without drawbacks, and in the chapter of accidents must be
recorded how and why we lost our places on the forward deck.
Scarcely had the steamer left her dock, when we were startled by a
voice inquiring “if there would be any intrusion in case a party of
ladies and gentlemen desired to while away time by singing a few
hymns?”
Jack and I turned in our seats. The inquiry had proceeded
from an elderly individual, of general clerical appearance, and
certain marks strongly indicating the specific character of the
“Evangelical” school. A pair of “sisters” hung upon either arm, and
all three settled into chairs in the middle of the deck. His question
had been addressed to about two hundred ladies and gentlemen who
crowded the forward deck. There were evident marks of dissatisfaction,
but, as nobody spoke, our “Evangelical” friend thought proper to
conclude that nobody was offended, and the hymn-singing commenced.
Gradually congenial spirits, drawn by the sound, were to be seen
approaching from various parts of the boat, and when Jack and I
returned from supper, we found about twenty or thirty in various
stages of excitement, and our clerical friend wrought up to a high
pitch. Another minister, with a strong but wheezy bass voice,
announced and intoned the hymns. At intervals in the singing, our
friend arose and addressed the spectators. At one time he informed
them that the feeling which animated the present assembly was love to
the Saviour. At another, he thought that perhaps there might be some
present who knew nothing about the Saviour; to such he would apply the
words of the apostle, “Be ye followers of me, as I am of Christ.” He
said that he had been a child of God for thirty years, and knew by a
certain assurance that he was a saved man. Hallelujah!
“Evangelical” blood was up, and our friend turned from the
contemplation of his own happy lot to worry something or somebody.
Jack’s cigar caught his eye. It was the red rag to the bull.
“Young man! there ain’t no smokin’-car in heaven. There ain’t no 81
for’ard deck where you can puff that stinkin’ weed of your’n!”
Jack expressed a forcible denial in an undertone, and, before I could
nudge him, broke out with:
“I’d like to know what the Bible says against smoking?”
“You would, young man, would ye? Well, I’m glad you would. I’m glad
you have asked that question. Well, sir, the Bible says, ‘Let no
filthy communication proceed out of thy mouth’; and if that ar smoke
ain’t a ‘filthy communication,’ I’d like to know what is.”
There was a general roar. “Come along, Jack,” said I, “you are a
Papist, and can’t argue against a ‘free Bible.’” So, retiring to the
after-deck, which was covered, and concealed much of the landscape, we
left our Methodist friends triumphantly shouting and keeping folks
awake up to a late hour.
As the night passed, and our fellow-travellers dropped off one by one
to doze in their state-rooms or on the sofas of the cabins, we were
left alone. Gradually we retired within ourselves, and shut the doors
of our senses.
“Wake up, old fellow, we are nearly in!”
I opened my eyes, and saw Jack’s pale face smiling over my shoulders.
We landed at Albany, and after breakfast found ourselves settled in
the Rensselaer and Saratoga cars, and, changing trains at Fort Edward,
arrived at Glenn’s Falls in about three hours.
Jack, who had often made the trip before, had set me reading _The
Leather Stocking Series_, and I positively refused to budge from
the town of Glenn’s Falls until we had visited the rapids and
descended into the cave which Cooper has immortalized in the first
chapters of his most interesting romance, _The Last of the Mohicans_.
The falling in of the rock at different periods, and the low stage of
the water in the summer season, prevented us from recognizing the old
shelter of Hawkeye and his party.
But there is the cave, and there are the rapids--both are shrines of
American legend; and we felt better pleased with ourselves for our
pilgrimage. Of course we had missed the stage which takes passengers
from the station to Caldwell at the head of Lake George. We wandered a
short time about town, found out that there were a number of Catholics
in it, and that its president, Mr. Keenan, was a well-known Irish
Catholic. We also visited a beautiful church, the finest in the town,
recently completed by Father McDermott, the pastor of the
English-speaking Catholic congregation, there being also a
French-Canadian parish in the place.
As may be easily imagined, we had no mind to walk over to the lake, or
to pay ten dollars for a vehicle to carry us as many miles, and Jack
was beginning to grumble at my curiosity when we met a farmer’s
wagon--with a farmer in it, of course. The latter offered to take us
over for fifty cents a head, as he was going in the same direction.
Never was there a better piece of good luck. There are several Scotch
families settled on French Mountain, at the head of the lake; our
driver was one of their patriarchs. He literally poured out funny
stories of the “kirk” and “dominie”; and although some of the jokes
were very nearly as broad as they were long, Jack and I were forced to
hold our sides while the “gudeman” sparkled and foamed, like a certain
brown export from his native country.
During a momentary lull in the conversation, I took occasion to
inquire with respect to a black woolly-coated dog, who followed the 82
wagon, if he were a good hunter. “Yes,” said Jack, with a contemptuous
smile at the subject of my inquiry. “He is what is called a
beef-hound.”
“Hoot, mon,” said his owner, “that dog would tree a grasshopper up a
mullen-stalk.”
It was in no sad or poetical mood that we passed by “Williams’s
Monument” and the scene of Hendrick’s death and Dieskau’s defeat, or
saw at “Bloody Pond” the lilies bending over the sedge and ooze which
served of old as the last resting-place of many a brave young son of
France. We did not think of the fierce struggle which had here
confirmed our Anglo-Saxon forefathers in possession of this soil. All
this comes up now as I write; for, certainly no sober thought entered
our brains until, as we turned round a mountain-side, I saw Jack take
off his hat. I looked in the direction of his respectful nod, and--oh!
what a vision!--the deep blue lake sank from view in the embrace of
the distant mountains. Its winding shores and secret bays, curtained
with veils of mist hanging in festoons from boughs of cedar, birch,
maple, and chestnut, were like enchantment in their endless variety of
form and shade. No less the work of magic were the islands. These,
owing to the reflection of the water, appeared to hang over its
surface as the clouds seemed to hang over the peaks above. To stand
suddenly in view of such a sight might have startled and awed even
lighter souls than ours. Here, indeed, our hearts were lifted up and
thrilled as we thought of the gray-haired apostle and martyr, the
first European who sailed upon the water before us--the Jesuit Father
Jogues, who also gave it on the eve of Corpus Christi its original
name--Lac du Saint-Sacrament. Our Protestant tradition, following the
courtier taste of Sir William Johnson, has handed down the name of
Lake George, but we trust that the hope of every lover of American
antiquity who has visited its shores may not prove vain, and that
time, in doing justice to all, will restore to the lake its first true
and lovely title.
A few small sails on the water, and the smoke from the village at our
feet, broke the spell and reminded us that we were still among the
haunts of man.
Caldwell is made up of a courthouse, several churches, stores, hotels,
and shops, a saw-mill, and a few streets of separated dwelling-houses.
The grand hotel is near the site once occupied by Fort William Henry,
and is called by that name, and looks towards Ticonderoga, although
the view is cut off midway by the windings of the lake. Old Fort
George is overgrown with cedars and shrubs, and only a few feet of
ruined bastion remain. The scene of the massacre of Fort William Henry
is now, as nearly as we could reckon from Mr. Cooper’s description, a
swamp. Time, however, is said to have greatly altered the topography
of the shore at this point, and certainly it is hard to locate
Montcalm’s old camping-ground during the siege described in _The
Last of the Mohicans_.
Leaving such questions to the antiquarian, perhaps, dear reader, you
will ask one with a practical regard for the present and future,
namely, How do they provide for their guests at the Fort William
Henry? Alas! that were indeed an ill-timed question for us. Perhaps,
if I had asked the proprietor to allow me to report upon his fare in
the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, he would have done so in a manner
satisfactory to all parties; but, as no such brilliant idea occurred
at that time, I am forced to confess that I was afraid that it was 83
too good. Be it said to our shame, we did not promenade upon the
magnificent piazza, nor did we stop to taste the alluring fare of the
Fort William Henry. What else did we come for? Why, to see Lake
George, of course, and to have a good time; and we did both, although
we went without lunch for some hours that day.
Scarcely had I claimed our baggage at the stage-office, when Jack came
up from the beach with a radiant countenance. “It’s all right!” said
he, “I’ve got just the boat we want. Five dollars for the rest of the
week. Take hold of that trunk, and we’ll get under way as soon as
possible.”
Perhaps, dear reader, in your wanderings through life it has never
been your happy lot to be absolute master of the craft on which you
are sailing. Do you think that you have fathomed the mystery of such
lives as those of Captain Kidd and Admiral Semmes?
Do you imagine that life on the ocean wave means sleeping in a berth
and pacing a quarter-deck? Ah! that was truly independence day to us.
The wind blew fresh and strong. We hoisted our india-rubber blanket on
an oar. Coats and collars were packed away in the satchel, our “worst”
straw hats were pulled down over our eyes, and, as we sat with
loosened flannel in the bottom of our heavy skiff, and listened to the
rippling water, we quite forgot that it was past lunch-time. The warm
south breeze, and that peculiar fragrance which popular fancy has
associated with the name of cavendish, brought us in full sympathy
with the naval adventurers of other days, and we blessed the memory of
Sir Walter Raleigh, “as we sailed.”
The upper portion of the lake, through which we are now passing, though
surrounded by hills, has enough farming land and farm-houses on their
slopes to give it that placid, tranquil beauty which is always
associated with views on the English waters. As it widened from
three-quarters to as many full miles, we passed several beautiful
residences, two of them belonging to Messrs. Price and Hayden of New
York City. Opposite these, on the eastern shore, is a handsome
property belonging to Charles O’Conor, Esq., one of the most
distinguished members of the New York bar, and well known throughout
the United States. Just abreast Diamond Island is the residence of Mr.
Cramer, president of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad, and while
sailing past the lovely group of islands known as the “Three Sisters,”
the property of Judge Edmonds, we saw beyond them the white walls of
his cottage peeping out from the green foliage of the western shore,
about three miles and a half from Caldwell.
As the sun sank below Mount Cathead, back of the pretty little village
of Bolton, we landed on a little islet in the Narrows near Fourteen
Mile Island.
I was quite curious to find out what preparations Jack had made, and
lent a willing hand at the long narrow trunk. In the tray was a small
cotton tent, made according to Jack’s own order, and slightly larger
than the soldier’s “dog-house.” A keen little axe in Jack’s quick hand
soon provided a pair of forked uprights and four little pins, an oar
served for a ridge-pole, and our shelter was up before the sun was
fairly below the real horizon. Out of the same tray came a quilt and
two pairs of blankets, which I was ordered to spread on the
india-rubber. My task accomplished, the smell of something very much 84
like ham and eggs recalled me to the beach. We supped, that night, by
the light of our camp-fire, and it was only after a night’s heavy
sleep that I was able to examine the rest of Jack’s outfit. A small
mess-chest, which bore marks of his own clever fingers, occupied one
division of the bottom of the trunk. The rest of it was shared by
apartments for clothing, provisions, and a humble assortment of
fishing-tackle and shooting material. The gun lay strapped to one side
of the trunk, and a couple of rods on the other.
“Very neat, Jack,” said I.
“You are right; I built it myself, all except the walls and roof,
seven years ago.”
I am sorry to confess that I did not get up that morning until
breakfast was ready. Jack did not complain, but I saw by his quiet
smile that some kind of an apology was necessary.
“Jack, I’m as stiff as a clotheshorse, and sore from head to foot.”
“Why,” he asked, “didn’t you dig holes for your hips and shoulders, as
the Indians do?”
“The holes were all made, only they were in the wrong places.”
After breakfast, we broke up our camp and rowed over to Fourteen Mile
Island. On the way we had another view of Bolton, behind us, and the
countless islands in the Narrows, through which we were shortly to
sail. The little village of Bolton lies on the western shore opposite
Fourteen Mile Island. It contains a hotel, several boarding-houses, a
pretty little P. E. church, and a forest of flags, every house seeming
to have its own staff. One of the islands, near Bolton, was shown us
as the point of view from which Kensett’s picture of the Narrows was
painted. At Fourteen Mile Island we found a quiet little hotel, which
serves as a dining-place for excursionists from Caldwell. A few
regular boarders seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I noticed an
artist’s easel and umbrella on the porch.
We soon left with a good supply of butter, eggs, milk, and fresh
bread. After rowing a few miles through the maze of islands in the
Narrows, one of which is occupied by a hermit artist named Hill, a
“transcendentalist,” the wind arose, and we sailed under the shadow of
Black Mountain through the wildest portion of the lake. On the western
shore, savage cliffs were piled in utter confusion, now rising, like
the Hudson River Palisades, in solid walls above a mass of
_débris_, now hanging in gigantic masses over the crystal abyss below.
On the eastern shore, Black Mountain rises above any other height on
the lake, and the view which we beheld as we passed from Fourteen Mile
Island down the Narrows is one of the finest in the world. Now we were
drifting under the cliffs at the base of the mountain, and, looking up
its abrupt sides--a series of rocky spurs covered principally with
hemlocks and cedar--we saw two eagles soaring above the thin clouds
which floated half-way up. Throughout this portion the lake varies
from one to two miles in width.
Oh! what a cozy little nest in the hills at the northern end of Black
Mountain! A few farms, and a sleepy old mill that looks as if it never
was made to run, lie on the sunny slope retiring into the hills which
forms a pass over to Whitehall. No wonder they call it the “Bosom!”
Here, in a little graveyard, we saw the tombstone of a Revolutionary
soldier, and the old farm-house, at which we stopped for dinner, with
its loom and spindle and bustling old housewife, formed a good
specimen of that phase of American life which is rapidly passing 85
away for ever.
While our meal was being cooked, Jack disappeared with his rod. I had
a long talk with the mistress of the house. She was a “Free-will
Baptist” and very much opposed to the Irish and Catholics generally.
Her objections to the former were thus curtly summed up, “The critters
get rich off a rock, and have sich litters of children.”
During the ensuing conversation she remarked, “I have four sons, and
every one of them professors.”
“Ah!” said I, in all simplicity, “they must be doing very well; but
what do they teach?”
“Teach?--they don’t teach nothing. I said they were professors.”
“Well, then,” I asked, “what do they profess?”
“Why, professors of religion, of course,” answered the good
dame--“every one of ‘em baptized in yon lake. Oh! it was a glor’ous
sight!”
The good old lady--for she was past eighty--showed me her dairy, and
apartments of the house which she said were usually occupied by
boarders at this time of the year. She had woven all the carpets,
quilts, towels, napkins, and table-cloths of the whole establishment,
and everything looked very neat and old-fashioned.
“I’m mighty sorry you have to hurry off,” said she, “I could make you
the nicest chowder you ever tasted. My man knows just where to get the
fish. A few years ago we sent off, at once, one hundred and fifty
pounds of clean lake trout.”
I, too, was sorry that we were obliged to hasten on our journey, as I
thought, for the first time since we started, of Hawkins & Smith and a
long year in the gloomy salesroom.
Jack came late for dinner with five small brook-trout in his hand.
“Hulloa, old fellow, where did you get those?”
“Oh! there’s a little pool on the hillside up yonder,” answered Jack,
pointing as he spoke, “I always find two or three there.”
After paying for our dinner, visiting an Indian family who claim to be
the genuine “Last of the Mohicans,” we bade farewell to our hostess
and one of the “professors,” who had appeared in the meanwhile, and
were again afloat. We passed Sabbath Day Point, about two miles above
“The Bosom” on the opposite shore. The former derived its name from
having served as a resting-place to Abercrombie’s expedition; it was
the scene of several bloody skirmishes during the French and Indian
war and also during the Revolution.
The lake now widens somewhat, and the mountains decrease in height.
Two points of land overlapping from opposite sides close up the
northern view and form a large circular basin opposite the little
village of Hague, situated on the western shore about six or seven
miles from the lower end of the lake. One of the points alluded to is
a craggy spur which seems to spring directly out of the depths of the
water; it is on the eastern shore, and is called Anthony’s Nose. The
western point is a well-shaded lawn of about one hundred and fifty
acres, with a winding irregular shore, and containing a number of
large hickory and chestnut trees.
The robins were hopping about the lawn as we landed; the thrush,
singing his vesper, made a special commemoration of the faithful newly
arrived; the greedy cat-bird, a sleek-coated sharper, approached to
see what was to be made off the strangers; while the politic
red-squirrels, scampering off at sight of our tent to discuss the
object and intent of this invasion, remained at a respectful distance
while Jack’s trout were frying over the little camp-fire now gleaming 86
in the twilight.
Supper having been despatched, I heard Jack approaching, while engaged
in washing the dishes on the beach--an occupation which time and place
can often rob of all its offensiveness, wherefore, most delicate of
readers, I am bold enough to mention it.
I looked at Jack from my towel and tin plates, and great was my
astonishment to behold him in complete hunting-dress, gun in hand, and
all accoutred for the chase.
“Why, Jack! what’s afoot?”
“No game yet,” he answered, smiling; “but I’m to leave you to-night.”
“What! to sleep here all by myself?”
“Why, yes--you are not afraid, are you?”
“No, not afraid exactly.”
“The fact is,” said Jack, “a fellow over at Hague promised me a
deer-hunt last year, and if I can find him to-night I shall go out
with him to-morrow. You can’t shoot, have no gun, and are not much of
a walker, so I am sure you would be bored to death.” (I nodded.) Jack
continued, “I will walk over to-night, and if I do not meet the hunter
will be back bright and early to-morrow morning. If I do not come
then, please row over for me to-morrow evening.”
“All right, _mon capitaine_.” And, with a wave of the hand, Jack
departed, and I was alone.
The embers of the camp-fire began to brighten as the darkness fell.
The birds and squirrels disappeared. The trunk was stowed safely
together with its mess-chest and provisions, and the blankets were
spread in the little tent; the milk-jug and butter-bowl were secured
by stones in the water, in order to keep them cool. I began my rosary
for night prayers, and roamed through the grove over to the northern
side of the point, in full view of the steep promontory on the
opposite shore. Beyond our own smooth camping-ground the western shore
surged up again in all its former wildness. The beads passed slowly
through my fingers, and it seemed as if the beauty and loneliness of
the scene were absorbing all my faculties, and withdrawing me from
instead of raising my thoughts to God and heaven.
Finally the moon arose. A thousand scattered beams shot through the
dark foliage, and lit up patches of the lawn over which I had just
passed. The wind had died away, and the light fell in unbroken
splendor upon the broad mirror before me. The few thin clouds, veiling
small groups of stars, the frowning cliffs and sombre woods--all were
reduplicated in the unruffled water. Far to the south, Black Mountain
closed up the view, which sank in the east behind the low ranges of
hills, all dark below the rising moon. The last bead fell from my
fingers, and praying God to forgive anything inordinate in my
enjoyment of his creatures, I gave up to the intoxication of the
scene. The hours passed rapidly while I dreamed of the days of
Montcalm and Abercrombie, and saw in fancy the fleets of canoes and
batteaux passing and repassing in victory and defeat the rocks upon
which I was sitting. Had my mind ever reverted to the possibility of
being obliged to give a public account of itself, I might have
composed some lines, had some “thoughts,” or done something worth
recording. Alas, dear reader, do not consider me rude if I confess
that I did not think of you at that time. For, indeed, I did not think
of anything, but left my fancy to be sported with by impressions past 87
and present of the lovely region in which I found myself a happy
visitor. The cool night air brought the blood to my sunburnt cheeks.
The landscape swam before me, the past mingled with the present;
finally, the mist seemed to shroud everything. My watch was run down
past midnght when I awoke, finding myself stretched at full length on
the rock. I started--where was I? what had disturbed my slumber? Was
it the war-whoop of the Mingoes, or the friendly greeting of Uncas and
Chingacgook; but if so, where were the canoes? I raised myself slowly
on my elbow, all wet with dew, dazed by sleep and the strange scene
about me--when suddenly, under the shadow of the trees, and not one
hundred feet distant, there rose from the water a shrill, fierce,
devilish laugh, so wild and startling that I bounded to my feet and
fairly screamed with fright. The next instant, a large bird appeared
fluttering on the moonlit water beyond. “Pshaw!” said I, “didn’t you
ever hear a loon before?” Thus addressing myself, I returned to the
tent, and, stripping off my wet clothes, fell asleep in the blankets.
I do not know exactly what time of the day it was when I awoke the
next morning. The sun was high, and my clothes and the tent perfectly
dry; but I saw through its open door the steamer which leaves Caldwell
at eight o’clock, and hence concluded that it was now between ten and
eleven. I was glad enough that Jack did not appear to rebuke my
laziness until I came to try my hand at cooking breakfast. The fire
would smoke, and I could not hinder it; the ham would not broil, and I
could not force it. The eggs, of course, were scorched, and so was my
tongue when I tasted the coffee, which resembled a decoction of
shavings and bitter almonds. Quietly emptying the coffee-pot on the
grass, I contented myself with a cup of milk, which, however, showed
strong premonitory symptoms of sourness; and after bolting a huge
stock of raw ham and scorched eggs, made up my mind that this was to
be the last meal without Jack.
It was very warm in the tent, so, taking the quilt and a certain small
pouch of buckskin decked with wampum, I sought the shelter of the
grove. Chestnut-burrs did not prevent me from choosing the shadiest
spot, for my quilt afforded ample protection.
Here, with my back to the tree, I fell into a state which might easily
have proved a continuation of my already protracted nap. It was not
so, however. The bag of the medicine-man contains an antidote for
prosiness after meals. Blue clouds of the inspiring fragrance curled
in the still air, and the brain which might have succumbed to the
vulgar humors of digesting pork maintained itself in a gentle,
subdued, intellectual state. Had I some favorite author in my hand,
some volume of pithy sentences furnishing themes for my morning
meditation, or somebody’s “confessions”? Alas, dear reader, I am
forced to make a confession myself, to wit, that there was not a line
of printed matter in all our luggage.
Day-dreams and night-dreams are pretty much alike with me unless there
be a trifle of brilliant imagination in favor of the latter. Still, if
any stray thoughts wandered through my brain at this time, they must
have been something like these: Why was it that the law of rest had to
be superadded to the law of labor, if not because man has turned his
wholesome penance into a debauchery? Avarice and ambition have
gradually mastered the human race, and he who would eat or hold his 88
own must sweat and fight, or others will snatch it from him. By
degrees, the struggle has grown and deepened. First, we were shepherds
and tillers of the soil. Childhood passed in plenty and obedience.
Ploughing and reaping came only in their seasons, and, while kings and
princes tended flocks, labor was worship and life was not all
drudgery--there was some time for happiness and God. Then came the
curse of cunning and trade and cities. Here began a fiercer strife,
and, instead of the accidental miseries of drought and famine, men
learned to fear beggary. And, now that craft and commerce are supreme,
slavery is universal. No more days of festival, no more years of
jubilee! You, George Peters, wretch that you are, are the bond-slave
of Hawkins & Smith. What! will you rebel? Well, it is only a choice of
masters--serve you must. This pitiful vacation is only a device of old
Smith to make you feel your real bondage. If, dear reader, you should
perceive any other explanation of the facts which I so loosely jumbled
together, remember that this was the reverie of a lazy youth, escaped
from the thraldom of his counter, and basking in the fresh air and
beauty of Lake George. If, branching off from the great labor
question, I thought of anything else, it was to compare that beauty
with what I had seen in pictures or read in books of other lakes. I
have before alluded to the placid and tranquil English character of
the scenery between Caldwell and Fourteen Mile Island. The farms and
villas, and the town of Bolton, although lying on the western shore,
add much to this effect, and serve to rob the eastern bank almost
entirely of its natural air of uninhabited wildness. The sail-boats
and skiffs and three little steamers continually plying about this
portion of the lake, complete the impression that it is a place of
pleasure, ease, and holiday. The Narrows, completely filled with
islands, where every stroke of the oar reveals new vistas and endless
changes of scene, I can compare with nothing, and, indeed, it would
seem as if they were a unique creation. These extend for two or three
miles to where Black Mountain begins. And as for the rest, my
ignorance is also at a loss for a comparison, and I can only think of
what Lake Como might have been if adorned with islands, if its peaks
were lower and covered with foliage, and if the hand of man had never
wrought upon its native beauty.
That evening I rowed over for Jack. He had not yet arrived, although
the sun had set when I arrived, as agreed, at the little hotel at
Hague. Something unusual was going on, and I made various guesses as
to the reason why so many well-dressed maids and shaven yeomen were
gathered on the porch. Seven o’clock came, and yet no Jack. I eagerly
inquired after supper, resolved not to risk the chance of being
obliged to depend upon myself for a cook. The dining-room had been
cleared of every table save the one which I occupied, and shortly
after I had come out from supper I saw the young people crowding into
it. I had now begun to suspect what was the matter, when an
honest-looking young gentleman, fresh and fragrant from a process to
which he shortly afterwards urged and invited me, approached and said:
“Stranger, you’re camping on the p’int?” To this piece of information
I nodded a genial assent.
“Lookin’ for your pardner?” asked the pleasant young man. I nodded
again. “Well, he’ll be in soon. He’s gone out with a fellow that 89
never misses this sort of thing.” I had previously formed my own
notion of Jack’s companion, and a jolly flourish on a neighboring
violin forestalled the necessity of inquiring as to the nature of the
“thing” which exercised such an influence over him. The pleasant young
man, however, became confidential, and added with an ingenuous air:
“The fact is, we are going to shuffle the hoof a little to-night, and
he never misses anything like that. You’d better come in and try it
yourself.”
Then, becoming confidential in turn and glancing at my unpolished
extremities, I suggested that perhaps the articles in question were
not in a condition to be shuffled. Here it was that our sympathy
culminated, and my friend, in a burst of intimacy, proffered the
invitation before alluded to, with the words: “Come along and slick
up.” I do not know into what folly I might have been seduced if my
good angel Jack had not just then appeared and rescued me.
“How many deer, Jack?”
“Oh! we did not so much as start one,” he answered. And then asked,
“Have you had anything to eat?”
On my reply, Jack said that he was glad, for he had just had his own
supper in the kitchen. As we rowed back to camp, Jack fell asleep in
the stern of the boat, while telling me how he had tramped in vain
from early dawn till night.
Oh! how proud I felt next morning, when, after kindling the fire and
putting on the kettle, I came back and found Jack still sleeping in
the tent.
Dear old nervous Jack! who ever saw you asleep in daytime before?
Quick as the thought in my mind, he bounded up as freshly as one of
the deer of which he had been dreaming.
“Caught!” he said, the old quiet smile lighting up his face as he came
out and fell to work getting breakfast.
When we had finished our meal and laughed over the adventures of the
precious day, Jack set me to catching grasshoppers, while he prepared
the fishing tackle.
I found my occupation quite lively for a sultry morning, and not
without a certain amount of adventure, as I also discovered, for one
ignorant of the precise difference between a grasshopper and a hornet.
Finally, enough were caught and imprisoned in an empty wine-bottle to
serve for bait, and Jack was sure we were going to catch a load of
fish. My confidence in fishing was only in proportion to my
experience, very meagre, and after several hours fruitlessly spent in
trying various places, great was my astonishment when the lance-wood
rod bent double in my hands, and the next instant a large fish
appeared struggling on the surface of the water.
“Don’t lose him!” shouted Jack as he came forward, and snatched the
rod out of my hands and landed the fish.
“A fool for luck!” said my cousin. “I beg your pardon, old boy, but
there won’t be a better fish caught here this summer.” It proved to be
a splendid specimen of black bass, and weighed, according to Jack’s
estimate, every ounce of six pounds. Several smaller fish of the same
species, together with a few small perch, were the result of our day’s
sport. The big bass made a sufficiently large Friday dinner and
supper; the other fish we saved for our last breakfast.
Alas! for some episode, before we row down to Ticonderoga and take the
steamer on Lake Champlain to Whitehall, and the cars thence to Albany 90
and New York. Our tent did not blow away that night; and, although the
storm beat fiercely, not a drop of water touched us, thanks to the
little furrow which Jack had traced with a sharp stick, to carry off
the drippings from the tent-cloth.
Starting bright and early next morning, we rowed past a steep smooth
cliff running almost perpendicularly for about four hundred feet and
then down into the lake.
“That’s ‘Rogers’s Slide,’” said Jack.
“The deuce it is! He must have worn a stout pair of pantaloons!”
“Oh! but he didn’t actually slide, you know!” replied Jack, and then
proceeded to recount the famous escape of Major Rogers in 1758, who
here eluded the pursuit of the Indians, and, having thrown his
knapsack over the precipice, turned his snow-shoes and made off by
another route.
In a few hours, we had left our little boat attached to the steamer to
be taken back to Caldwell. A stage ride of several miles brought us to
Ticonderoga and Lake Champlain. That same evening, at ten o’clock, we
snuffed the hot and fetid breath of the great metropolis, and Monday
morning saw us re-entering the shades of Hawkins & Smith. A word to
Jack and a stare at me were the only greetings of the junior partner,
as he passed through the salesroom.
“Ah, boys!” said the cheery Hawkins, “glad to see you; look as if
you’ve been having a good time. Plenty of bone, muscle, and brown
skin, eh? I guess Mr. Smith will think that it pays to give you such a
_rest_. You haven’t been wasting your money at Long Branch or
Saratoga, I’ll bet.”
Thus ended our summer vacation; and if we did not have enough
adventure to pass for heroes, or bag enough game for sportsmen, or see
enough sights for artists, or recall enough of the past for
antiquarians, or measure miles and heights enough for the
scientific--in short, if we appear as two vulgar and thoroughly
commonplace clerks, smoking and boating through our holiday--take
note, dear reader, that even such as we can take delight in Lake
George; then, go and make the trip after your own fashion, and see if
you can enjoy it more or better.
----------
THE ELEMENTS OF OUR NATIONALITY. 91
The diversity of race to be found in this republic, like its rapid and
stupendous physical and mental development, is unparalleled in
history. Great nations, such as Austria, Prussia, and Russia, it is
true, have been called into existence in times comparatively modern,
but they have been aggregations of smaller kindred states already
established, attracted towards each other by mutual interests and
tastes, or coerced into union by force of arms. With us, growth and
greatness, originating at different times and at places widely
separated, have been the result in the first instance of the
establishment of a wise and comprehensive system of government, the
benefits of which we were willing to share generously with the people
of all nations; and next, to the alacrity and sincerity with which
those people, acting on an impulse common to humanity, have accepted
the advantages thus presented.
Looking back to the history of the migration of mankind from the
cradle of the human race, we find that colonies, afterwards to become
nations and the _nuclei_ of distinct families, thrown off from
the centre, presented each a unity of language and affinity of which
the originators of our country had not the advantage. Even Greece, the
graceful daughter of dusky Egypt, soon ceased to be Hellenic, and
became, notwithstanding her many subdivisions, thoroughly Greek, and
her colonies in Europe and Asia, when they ceased their connection
with the mother country, were quickly absorbed in the surrounding
peoples. The Roman Empire had no nationality, being simply the
creature of force, and no matter how widely its boundaries were
spread, all authority was lodged in Rome, and its subjects outside the
walls of that city were comparatively or positively slaves, without
any voice in the management of their own affairs, or a nationality to
which they could lay claim. As the legions were withdrawn to the
capital, the empire crumbled, and the disintegrated parts gradually
resumed their original character. So with the splendid but short-lived
empire of Charlemagne, The Goths, Vandals, Huns, and other European
and Asiatic conquerors who from time to time overran different parts
of Europe and founded dynasties, were simply waves of conquest
overcoming and enslaving the previous inhabitants, subjecting them to
the yoke of their own crude customs and laws, and building upon the
ruins of one nation the greatness of another.
Far different was the origin of our republic. At the beginning, we had
on our shores voluntary immigrants from the then four great maritime
nations of Europe--Spain, France, Holland, and England. The colonists
of each, from fortuitous circumstances, or led by peculiar
predilections, selected for settlement certain portions of the
continent, established themselves therein, and, while adhering to
their parent country and following its laws, speaking its
language, and practising its religion, early assumed a state of
semi-independence.
These representatives of distinct nationalities, though few in
numbers, grew prosperous each in its own territory, for the reason 92
that there was no idea of nationality, and consequently no unity of
action, among the aborigines in their resistance to the new-comers.
Supported by their home governments respectively, they grew from mere
settlements to be important colonies, at peace with each other as far
as their own individual relation was concerned, but always liable to
be embroiled in the incessant quarrels of their countrymen at home.
The sturdy Hollanders were the first to succumb to what might be
called foreign influence; then the French settlers, deserted by
France, laid down their arms before their English conquerors, who, in
their turn, by the Revolution of ‘76, yielded their dominion to the
Thirteen Colonies, which embraced within their limits much of the
territory and most of the descendants of the original colonists of at
least three of the nationalities which first effected settlements on
the Atlantic coast. From this period we may date the origin of
American nationality. In its infancy, it included nearly four millions
of men of various races, creeds, opinions, and sentiments. For the
first time in history was proclaimed the perfect equality before the
law of all persons of European origin, as has since been extended that
grand principle of human equality to men from every part of the earth.
In forming a code for itself, it rejected what was contrary to this
dogma, and adopted everything that was beneficial in all other forms
of government. From Holland, it took the Declaration of Independence,
that great manifesto of popular rights; from England, the writ of
habeas corpus and trial by jury; from France and Spain, many of those
equitable constructions of the civil law which regulate the rights of
property and the domestic status of individuals. To all these were
added the beneficent constitution under which we have the good
fortune to live, and the many excellent laws, local and national,
which, in conformity with that instrument, have been enacted from time
to time.
But custom is said to be stronger even than law, and hence we can
understand that the vivifying principle of the government itself was
generated from the peculiar circumstances amid which the first
settlers of America and their children found themselves, without local
monarchical traditions, an hereditary aristocracy, or laws of
primogeniture. With, as a general rule, little private fortune or
means of subsistence other than that derived from manual labor and
individual enterprise, the American colonist, no matter of what
nation, was naturally disposed towards popular government, and to
proclaim and admit general equality. It is undoubtedly to the
existence of these robust social and economical habits in the early
settlers--which, finding expression in their new-found political
power, were embodied in the fundamental laws of the new nation by the
fathers of the republic--that we are primarily indebted for the wise
and moderate scheme of government we enjoy, and which it is our duty
to preserve and perpetuate unimpaired to posterity.
It was thus by a combination of circumstances hitherto unknown that
our country became clothed with all the attributes of nationality
peculiar to itself--its subsequent progress, as we may presume its
future greatness, having no parallel in the annals of other lands.
That we are a nation, possessing an appropriate autonomy, capable of
sustaining all the relations of war and peace with other countries,
and exercising supreme authority over all our integral parts and
individual members, no sane man uninfluenced by the quibbles of mere 93
lawyers or unswayed by the political passions of the day, will deny.
Who would so deny, and maintain that this republic is a bundle of
petty sovereignties in which the power of one is coequal to that of
all the others combined, would reject the axiom of Euclid, that the
whole is greater than its part. The true American, then, is he who
keeps this principle of unity always in view. It gives dignity and
strength to his country abroad, and assures peace, concord, and
security at home. While allowing all possible latitude to subordinate
members in the management of their domestic affairs, it reconciles and
harmonizes the conflicting and sometimes antagonistic interests of
different sections, concentrates on works of vast commercial and
national importance the collective powers of all, directs the foreign
policy of the government for the general good, and arrays the power of
the people for the common protection and defence. True, some years
ago, many persons held contrary opinions, and in the attempt to carry
them out unhappily caused one of the most calamitous civil wars of
modern times; but, like the tempest which sweeps over the gigantic
oak, swaying its trunk and loosening the ground around it only that
its roots may strike deeper and firmer into the earth, our country has
passed through the storm unscathed and now rests on a basis firmer
than ever. The past and its errors, however, we can easily forget; the
future is ours; and who shall hold us harmless if we profit not by our
dearly-bought experience and the lessons which every day teaches us?
One, and not the least potent, of the causes which led to that
fratricidal struggle was the advocacy of what was called “manifest
destiny,” which is simply a delusive, dangerous, and, in its
application, very often a dishonest doctrine. It is not unnatural that
in a young and sanguine republic, whose short history is so full of
successes, many ardent propagandists of freedom should be found, who
without calculating consequences would like to extend the benefits of
our political system not only to the utmost confines of this
continent, but over all Christendom; but this feeling, though
creditable, is hardly one to be encouraged. It leads, as we have often
seen, to a national lust for the acquisition of our neighbor’s
territory, to the undue extension of our boundaries, disproportionate
to even our ever-increasing population, and to the weakening of the
bonds that hold together the comparatively settled states of the
Union, by the bodily introduction of foreign elements into our polity
at variance with our real interests. The annexation of Texas and the
acquisition of our Pacific territory, though productive of many
tangible advantages, were undoubtedly some of the remote, but,
nevertheless, very important, influences which, operating on the
public mind, tended to unfix our loyalty to the whole country, and to
induce us to view the recent forcible attempt on its integrity with
feelings somewhat akin to indifference. That enlargement of the
national domain was so sudden and immense that men’s minds, accustomed
to defined limits, failed to realize it. Patriotism is not a mere
sentiment, but a love of something of which we have some accurate
knowledge, whether associated with a particular race, locality, or
historical record, or all together; and hence, when we could not
understand how in one moment what we had thought was our country, the
object of our affection and source of our pride, was extended
thousands of miles and millions of acres, our imaginations could not 94
keep pace with the monstrous growth of the country, and we fell back
on our native or adopted states, and felt prouder of being known as
Virginians or Vermonters than of being United States citizens.
It is not at all improbable that posterity will see the whole of North
America united under one government, but this consummation, so
devoutly to be wished, to be permanent and salutary, must be the
result of time and the observance of the laws of right and justice,
for nations as well as individuals flourish or fade in proportion as
they follow or despise virtue. It must also be when our population is
not forty millions, as it now is, but quadruple that number, and when
our sparsely settled territories are well filled with citizens, their
resources in full process of development, and their varied interests
assimilated with those of other portions of the country. Steam and
electricity may do much to bring about such results, foreign
immigration more, but a proper administration of our own laws, and a
judicious, liberal, and conciliatory policy towards our American
neighbors, most of all.
Happily for us, we are at present on terms of friendship with all
nations, and, remote from Europe and Asia, we are not likely to become
involved in the complications and disputes of the Old World. Still, no
human penetration can foresee how long such a desirable state of
accord will exist. The monarchical states of Europe are not very
sincere friends of republicanism, and, should war occur between us and
them, our greatest difficulty would be to defend our already too
extensive frontiers from their attacks. Why, then, should we increase
our danger by enlarging them? A good general never lengthens his lines
unless he has proportionate reinforcements to maintain them.
As to becoming propagandists of republicanism in Europe, we think the
attempt, in this century at least, would be both injudicious and
useless. The impious atrocities and dark designs of the secret
societies there, who profane the word _liberty_ and blaspheme against
all religion, have put so far back the cause of true freedom in the
old countries that they who sincerely desire a more liberal system of
laws are glad to seek under the shadow of despotism protection and
security even at the sacrifice of their political liberties. If we
truly wish for the spread of free institutions, let us use example
rather than precept, and prove, by the honest administration of our
own concerns, respect for the doctrines of Christianity, and, by
proper regard for the rules laid down by the church, that
republicanism has ceased to be an experiment, and has become a
practical and glorious reality. Such a result would be an argument so
cogent that no sophistry could refute it and no force could combat its
logic. We must remember, also, that the greatest enemies of free
government are not, after all, kings and nobles, but those deluded men
who have banded themselves in every part of Europe, ostensibly as
republicans, but secretly as the destroyers of all law and order.
These men, it is well known, mock the inspired word of God and deny
his very existence, contemn truth, ignore the first principles of
justice, and scoff at the beautiful domestic virtues which bind the
wife in affectionate duty to the husband, and the child in love and
gratitude to the parent. Empires are governed mainly by force,
republics through obedience, and yet those pretended apostles of
freedom acknowledge no law except their own and that of their passions.
Human laws, no matter by whom made, or how just they may be in letter 95
and spirit, are mere pieces of paper or parchment if the people are
not disposed to obey them, and this disposition can only come through
religion. For, as man is constituted, he becomes amenable to the
operation of the divine law of obedience before he comes under the
edicts of human legislation; in other words, he is a Christian or the
reverse before he is a lawyer or responsible to the temporal law. “The
characteristics of a democracy,” says Blackstone, “are public virtue
and goodness as to its intentions;” and Napoleon I., though by no
means as good a Christian as he was a far-seeing statesman, when about
to reduce chaotic France to order and decency, found it necessary
first to restore religion and recall her exiled priesthood.
Unfortunately for us, this spirit of irreligion is not confined to the
other side of the Atlantic. We find it already making its way into
American society, though as yet it assumes more the character of
indifferentism. We call ourselves a Christian people, yet less than
one-half of the entire community ever enter a church for devotional
purposes from one year’s end to another. Recently, too, we notice, in
our larger cities particularly, exhibitions of the same wicked spirit
which animated the Carbonari and Socialists of Europe, and which
reveals itself in many expressions of sympathy for the infamous
Communists of Paris in the columns of some of our newspapers and the
speeches of more than one prominent politician. This insidious danger
to our venerated institutions ought to be closely watched and sternly
repressed. It is opposed alike to private virtue and public morals,
and, if ever allowed a controlling influence in the state, would
sweep away every safeguard that stands between the citizen and the
passions of the mob. No person who values the blessings of domestic
peace or venerates the memories of our ancestors, no true American,
can tolerate for a moment these communistic and socialistic designs
which are creeping in amongst us, utterly foreign as they are to our
soil and the genius of our people and government.
While thus excluding vicious principles from our shores, we ought to,
as we have ever done, continue to welcome the oppressed and
impoverished people of the Old World, and, as far as is consistent
with the public safety, to extend to them every facility to a
participation in the political as well as the material prosperity of
the country. They are our relations. Very few of us, going back two or
three generations, but will find that his ancestors were also
immigrants, like those who to-day seek our protection and hospitality.
Since the formation of our government, eight millions of them have
made their homes in the young republic, helping to develop our
resources, commerce, and manufactures, and always proving faithful to
their obligations of allegiance in peace as well as in war. An
enlightened and tolerant treatment of our immigrants is both
charitable and wise; and the best evidence that we have profited by
our superior political and educational advantages, is our readiness to
make allowance for the intellectual defects and antiquated habits of
those who have left home and country to join their lot with ours. The
exclusion of any class of citizens from a participation in the
benefits of our government, on account of religion or previous
nationality, never has had, and is never likely to have, the
countenance of the people of this country. The spasmodic efforts of
those fanatics, vulgarly but not inappropriately called Know-nothings, 96
which have been made occasionally, were directed against Catholics,
but they never reached the dignity of national movements, and, being
the offspring of disappointed ambition and blind prejudice, withered
before the scorn and contempt of all good men. Politically, there can
be little possible danger arising from the exercise of the elective
franchise by all citizens of foreign birth, even conceding their
inferiority in some respects to the native-born, as the former number
less than one-eighth of our entire population, and these, in the
natural course of events, will disappear from among us, their children
born here growing up thoroughly imbued with the spirit and liberality
of our institutions. Even to-day the immediate descendants of adopted
citizens hold, under both the great parties that divide the country,
many high places of honor and trust, and perform their duties with an
ability and patriotism that reflect credit on the American name. The
nationality that would deal harshly or jealously with friends or
neighbors because they were born in a foreign land, or are poor in the
world’s goods, is not American, and is more fitted for the latitude of
London or Peking than of New York or Washington.
We are well aware that there are many things in the conduct of some of
our adopted citizens that we find difficulty in understanding, and
which require all our good-nature to overlook or palliate. A great
famine, we might say a succession of famines, the misgovernment of
England, and the oppression of the worst class of alien landlords with
which a people ever were afflicted, have driven among us, within a
quarter of a century, over two millions of the inhabitants of Ireland.
Having been denied practically all participation in the government of
their own country, they never have had an opportunity of acquiring
that steady habit of thought and reflection necessary to qualify them
to judge of the relative merits or demerits of the manifold political
measures which the exigencies of a free nation are, from time to time,
presenting for popular endorsement; and having unlimited confidence in
those who profess to be their friends in their new homes, they fall an
easy prey to the demagogue and the political charlatan. The victims of
long, cruel, and unrelenting tyranny, and ardent lovers of their
fatherland, their hatred of England is, if possible, stronger than
their love for Ireland. In fact, those two engrossing passions
sometimes so absorb their minds that prudence, toleration, and even
self-interest are forgotten. This circumstance, while it may be
creditable to themselves, cannot but be regretted by us for many
reasons, but more particularly because it renders their assimilation
with the vast majority of our people more slow and difficult, and
operates against their material advancement, and consequently against
the welfare of their children. In the abstract, we do not blame our
Irish immigrants for this fond devotion to their natal country, nor
for their hatred of her oppressor; on the contrary, we admire it as
long as it works no injustice to them or to the country they have
selected as their future home; but we do most emphatically deprecate
the conduct of those among them who, trading on such natural and
generous feelings for selfish purposes, turn them aside from their
duty as parents and citizens, and, assuming to be their leaders, have
swayed them in the interest of this or that faction, wholly neglecting
at the same time the performance of duties to the execution of which 97
any one might be proud to devote his life.
Let us illustrate what we mean. There are, at least, two and a half
millions of Irish in the United States, the great majority of whom,
for very sufficient, if not obvious, reasons occupy socially and
pecuniarily a very inferior position to that which their natural
abilities would entitle them, yet we see how little effort is being
made by their countrymen, of more education or larger wealth, to
assist them. The Catholic Church has done much, but the church,
necessarily, can only attend to their spiritual wants and to the
education of their children; the temperance and benevolent societies
are good in their way, but their power is limited, and their sphere of
action very restricted; but we look in vain for an organization that
will take by the hand the bewildered and uncertain stranger as he
lands at Castle Garden or in the harbor of Boston, shield him from the
temptations and villany which mark him out as a victim from the moment
his foot touches the firm earth and his battle of life commences, find
him employment in the great centres of trade and commerce, or conduct
him safely to the broad spreading fields of the free and fruitful
West. If he be a farmer or agricultural laborer, as the majority of
Irish immigrants are, what society of his countrymen is prepared to
defray his expenses to the rural districts, where labor is always in
demand, and wages high, or help him to locate on the Western lands,
which can be had almost for the asking, and where he can bring up his
family in comfort and happiness? If half the money and one-quarter the
time and labor which were recently so foolishly expended in futile
efforts to free Ireland and invade the British dependencies had been
used for the benefit of the poorer class of our Irish immigrants, how
many thousands of them might now be enjoying happy homes in our
fertile Western states and territories, instead of infesting the
purlieus of New York, underbidding each other for precarious and
unhealthy employment. How many victims of disappointed hope or
mistaken confidence might have been rescued from the slough of
despondency and degradation into which they have fallen, and placed in
a position of at least comparative independence. The liberation of
Ireland through the instrumentality of her exiled children is an old
and a splendid dream, but it is only a dream so long as the present
relations exist between this country and England. We yield to no one
in appreciation of all that is noble in that pious and gallant nation,
and would, perhaps, sacrifice as much as the most enthusiastic of her
sons to see her not only independent, but in the enjoyment of the
fullest liberty; but no person who has ever casually studied the
relative strength and resources of England and Ireland, and who has
had any practical experience of the enormous expenditure of life and
money so unsuccessfully incurred by the people of the South, even when
military training and available population were so evenly balanced,
can for a moment believe in the success of any attempt of the people
themselves to separate forcibly one from the other.
But whatever the people in Ireland may see fit to do or dare, the
organization of armed men in this country to assist in that purpose is
most reprehensible and fraught with the greatest mischiefs. For any
person within our limits to attempt to levy war on a country at peace
with the United States is clearly illegal. If he be a stranger, it is
a criminal abuse of our hospitality; if a citizen, he disregards his 98
oath of allegiance. Such a movement gives color to the assertions of
the worst enemies of all foreigners, the Know-nothings, who accuse
Irishmen of not becoming citizens in the true spirit of their oath,
but merely pretended ones, whose object is to use this country as
their _point d’appui_ for ulterior objects. Besides, such
societies have a tendency to unsettle the minds of the people, and
divert them from the main objects of their self-expatriation--free
homes and altars. But even if Ireland were to-day independent, not
one-tenth of the Irish in America could or would return. The mass of
them are permanently attached to America by affection, association, or
interest; their children are growing up around them, naturally imbued
with a love for this, the country of their birth; their property and
business are here; some are too old to be retransplanted, and others
young enough to prefer seeking fortunes in our stupendous and but yet
only partially developed commonwealth, to spending a lifetime in the
necessarily limited sphere of enterprise presented by so small a
country as Ireland under the most favorable auspices. True patriotism
should, therefore, dictate to the Irish-American the wisdom of
promoting the welfare of this large majority of his countrymen who,
for good or evil, must pass their lives with us. And what a vast and
enticing field is thus presented to the successful merchant and ardent
Irish nationalist! If they cannot free Ireland, they can by their
money and their intelligence free tens of thousands of their
countrymen from the slavery of poverty and dependence, from the vices
of the cities and the degradation of the factories and the coal-mines.
Such an effort, judiciously made, apart from the benefits it would
confer on so many poor and deserving citizens, and the unanswerable
argument it would present of practical, disinterested sympathy, would,
if the occasion should ever present itself, enable the persons so
benefited to assist in their turn the cause of true Irish nationality.
There is nothing so successful, it is said, as success, and while the
sympathies of most nations, particularly of our own, are easily
enlisted in favor of an oppressed nation like Ireland, there is
generally observable an implied doubt that she is misgoverned because
her people have not the capacity to properly govern themselves. At
home, they certainly have not been allowed to try the experiment, but
here, with free institutions already firmly established, vast mineral,
agricultural, and commercial industries to invite their labor and
excite their ambition, and with an area of unoccupied land almost
beyond conception, a people incapable of profiting by these
advantages, either as individuals or by mutual co-operation, expose
themselves to the suspicion of being deficient in that organizing
faculty and mental grasp which create and sustain independent
governments.
Without intending to draw an invidious distinction between one class
of citizens and another, we may point to the German immigration to
this country as an admirable example of the benefits arising from
organization and mutual support. It is this harmony of purpose that
has given to the Teutonic element, though by no means the strongest in
our population, a preponderating influence in several of the Western
states, and the proprietorship of innumerable farms on both sides of
the Mississippi River. Coming from a self-governing country, and
leaving behind an extensive trading and manufacturing connection,
the German immigrant has of course many advantages over his Irish 99
fellow-voyager, but those who have closely watched the progress of
both races in America assert that it is to the admirable system of
mutual help and protection enjoyed by the former that his great
industrial progress is mainly due.
We are satisfied that there are many wealthy citizens of Irish birth
in this city and elsewhere who would gladly contribute of their
super-abundant means to assist their less fortunate fellow-countrymen,
were any feasible project inaugurated by which they could do so
practically and efficiently, and we trust that there are among us
adopted citizens themselves--persons who, abandoning chimerical
schemes of conquest and invasion, would devote their time and ability
to assist those of their helpless countrymen who have come and are
coming among us. Every intelligent agriculturist that can be planted
on the virgin soil of our now waste public lands, every ingenious
mechanic that is furnished with employment in our workshops, and, we
may say, every stalwart laborer that is removed from the overstocked
labor market of the East and assisted to the towns and smaller cities
of the South and West, adds to the general wealth of the community,
increases the strength and glory of our republic, and conduces to its
growing intelligence and morality.
The pursuit of wealth, however important, is not of course the primary
duty of man, considered either as an individual responsible being or
as a citizen. Religion, in its proper practical sense, is not only the
source of happiness for mankind in this world and the next, but is
absolutely necessary for the preservation of all well-regulated
society, and it is on this account among others that so many admirers
of American institutions have seen with regret that a large portion of
our immigrants from the continental countries of Europe evince a
complete disregard for the plainest forms of Christianity. Now, the
founders of this government were essentially a religious people. The
Catholics of Maryland and the Puritans of New England; the Virginia
Episcopalians and the Pennsylvania Quakers, feared God and revered his
laws, as far at least as they understood them; and the excellent
institutions which those men of diverse opinions, but honest
intentions, originated and transmitted to us, are but the reflex of
that reverential and devotional spirit. We admire the thrift and
enterprise of our German fellow-citizens, we admit their general good
order, taste, and proficiency in art, particularly the beautiful one
of music, and we know how many fine churches and hospitals they have
built and are sustaining, but it cannot be denied that there is a
great deal of indifferentism, and even worse, among the anti-Catholic
portion of them, the outward evidence of which may be found in the
complete disregard that is so generally manifested for the holiness of
the Sunday. We are not of those who would deny to the hard-working and
hard-faring classes their proper share of innocent and healthful
amusement on the only day in the week that they can escape from labor,
but this recreation should be preceded by some act of devotion, some
solemn and open recognition of our dependence on the great Giver of
life and happiness. Still, whoever visits our saloons and pleasure
gardens on a Sunday will find them thronged with persons of all ages
and both sexes from early morning till midnight, while churches that
would gladly receive them are comparatively deserted. Luther’s revolt
against the church has much of this to answer for, but Kant, Fichte, 100
and other so-called philosophers of more modern times have much more;
for while the “Reformers” only unsettled the religious mind of
Germany, and partially succeeded in alienating it from the Catholic
Church, the schoolmen succeeded in making atheism fashionable among
the intelligent classes by covering it with a thin veil of learned
mysticism. This want of proper deference for the day set apart by the
church, and by all Christian sects, for special reverence, and the
observance of which is even enjoined by our common and statute law,
is, we maintain, not only un-American, but is likely to produce a
general contempt for all law, and lead to a weakening of the sense of
that obedience which every individual citizen owes to the public
authority.
In thus alluding to the characteristics of some of our adopted
citizens, we have touched only on those of the two most numerous
representatives of European nationalities, not because there are not
others whose deficiencies, from an American point of view, are not as
apparent, but from the fact that we consider, from their numerical
strength and intrinsic qualities, they are destined to exercise a
marked and extensive influence on the future character of the country.
In feeling or temperament, they are not opposed to us nor to each
other. The vivacity and even excitability of one race find their
complement in the solidity and matter-of-fact disposition of the
other--a union of qualities which, governed and properly managed by
the practical genius of Americans, will in all human probability lead
to results in the distant future of the magnitude of which we scarcely
dare to dream. No people ever possessed the advantages that we, native
and adopted, enjoy. Let us avail ourselves of them in such manner that
posterity may look back to us, as we to the Revolutionary fathers,
with unmingled feelings of gratitude and admiration.
----------
OUR LADY OF LOURDES.
FROM THE FRENCH OF HENRI LASSERRE.
(_Concluded._)
PART X.
II.
Another episode.
There are, in civil life, men whose appearance is precisely that of a
soldier. Though they have never seen service, every one who meets them
and does not know them takes them without hesitation for veterans.
They have the rather stiff carriage, firm step, disciplined
appearance, and concealed good-fellowship belonging to the profession.
They are specially common in the mixed services, such as the customs,
the waters and forests, which, though purely civil in their nature,
borrow their degrees of rank and their methods from the system adopted 101
for the army. On the one hand, these men have, like private citizens,
a family and a domestic life; on the other, they are bound in a
thousand ways by the manifold requirements of an entirely military
rule. To this is due the peculiar appearance of which I speak, and
with which every one is familiar.
If, then, you have ever seen a brave cavalry officer in citizen’s
dress, with his short hair and his bristly moustache beginning to turn
gray; if you have noticed in his energetic features those straight and
vertical lines which are hardly as yet wrinkles, and which seem
peculiar to these military faces; if you have gazed upon that
forehead, rebellious to the hat, and which seems made expressly for
the kepi or tricorne, upon those firm eyes which by day are accustomed
to brave danger, but by night become gentle at the fireside as they
rest upon the children’s heads; if you remember this characteristic
type, I have no need to introduce you to M. Roger Lacassagne, officer
in the custom-house at Bordeaux--you know him as well as I.
When, about two years ago, I had the honor of visiting him at his
house, Rue du Chai des Farines, No. 6, at Bordeaux, I was struck at
first by his severe appearance and his air of reserve.
He asked me, with the somewhat brusque politeness habitual to men of
discipline, what was the object of my visit.
“Monsieur,” said I, “I have heard the story of your journey to the
Grotto of Lourdes, and for the profit of some inquiries I am just now
making, I have come to have it from your own mouth.”
At the words “the Grotto of Lourdes,” this stern countenance became
tender, and a dear remembrance softened its rigid lines.
“Be seated,” said he, “and excuse the disorder of our establishment.
My family leaves to-day for Arcachou, and everything is topsy-turvy.”
“Do not mention it. Tell me all about these interesting events of
which I have already heard, but only confusedly.”
“For my part,” said he in a voice choked by emotion, “I shall never in
my life forget their smallest details.
“Monsieur,” he continued after a moment of silence, “I have only two
sons. The youngest, about whom I am going to tell you, is called
Jules. He will come in before long. You will see how sweet, pure, and
good he is.”
M. Lacassagne did not tell me all his affection for this youngest son.
But the accent of his voice, which became gentle and as it were
caressing in speaking of this child, showed me all the depth of his
paternal love. I understood that in that strong and tender feeling was
concentrated all the force of this manly soul.
“His health,” continued he, “was excellent until the age of ten.
“At that period there came on unexpectedly, and without apparent
physical cause, a disease the importance of which I did not at first
appreciate. On the 25th of January, 1865, when we were sitting down to
supper, Jules complained of a trouble in his throat which prevented
him from swallowing any solid food. He had to limit himself to a
little soup.
“This state of things continuing next day, I called in Dr. Noguès, one
of the most distinguished physicians of Toulouse.
“‘The difficulty comes from the nerves,’ said he--which gave me hopes
of a speedy cure.
“In fact, a few days afterwards, the boy was able to eat, and I
thought all was over, when the trouble returned, and continued with 102
occasional intermissions till the end of April. It then became fixed.
The poor child had to live entirely on liquids; on milk, the juice of
meat, and broth. Even the broth had to be very clear, for such was the
narrowness of the orifice that it was absolutely impossible for him to
swallow anything solid, even tapioca.
“The poor boy, reduced to such miserable diet, was becoming visibly
emaciated, and was dying slowly.
“The physicians, for there were two--as I had from the outset
requested a celebrated practitioner, Dr. Roques, to consult with Dr.
Noguès--the physicians, I say, astonished by the peculiarity and the
persistence of this difficulty, tried vainly to discover its precise
nature, that they might apply a remedy. One day, it was the tenth of
May--for I suffered so much, sir, and thought so much about this
illness that I remembered every date--one day, I saw Jules in the
garden running with unusual haste, and as it were precipitately. Now I
dreaded the least agitation for him.
“‘Stop, Jules!’ cried I, going to him and taking his hand.
“He broke away immediately.
“‘Father, I cannot,’ said he. ‘I must run. It is stronger than I.’
“I took him in my lap, but his legs moved convulsively. Soon after the
movement passed to his head and face.
“The true character of his disease had at last declared itself. My
poor child was attacked by chorea. You are no doubt aware, sir, by
what horrible contortions this disease is usually marked.”
“No,” said I, interrupting him, “I do not even know what it is.”
“It is what is often called _St. Vitus’s dance_.”
“Yes, I have heard of that. Go on.”
“The principal seat of the disease was in the œsophagus. The
convulsions which I had just witnessed, and which were continued at
all hours from that time, put an end to the perplexities of the
physicians.
“But though they now understood the difficulty, they could not
overcome it. After fifteen months of treatment, the most they could do
was control these violent external symptoms; or really, in my own
opinion, these disappeared of themselves by the efforts of nature
alone. But as to the contraction of the throat, it had become chronic
and resisted all appliances. Remedies of every kind, the country, the
baths of Luchon, were successively and uselessly employed for about
two years. All the treatment seemed only to increase the disease.
“Our last trial had been one season at the sea-side. My wife had taken
our poor child to St. Jean-de-Luz. I need hardly say that in the state
in which he was, the care of his body was everything. Our only object
was to keep him alive. We had from the first suspended his studies and
stopped all labor on his part, whether of body or mind; we treated him
like a plant. Now, his mind was naturally active and inquiring, and
this privation of intellectual occupation gave him much _ennui_.
The poor boy was also ashamed of his trouble; he saw other children in
good health, and he felt himself as it were disgraced and under a ban;
so he kept apart.”
The father, deeply moved by these memories, stopped a moment to check
a rising sob, and continued:
“He kept apart. He was sad. When he found some interesting book, he
would read it to distract his mind. At St. Jean-de-Luz, he saw one day
on the table of a lady who lived in the neighborhood a little notice
of the apparition at Lourdes. He read it, and seems to have been very 103
much impressed by it. He said that evening to his mother that the
Blessed Virgin could very easily cure him; but she paid no attention
to his proposal, considering it as only a childish whim.
“On our return to Bordeaux--for a little while before this my station
had been changed, and we had come to live here--on our return to
Bordeaux the child was absolutely in the same condition.
“That was last August.
“So many vain efforts, so much science employed without success by the
best physicians, so much lost trouble, had by this time, as you will
easily imagine, discouraged us most completely. Disheartened by the
failure of all our endeavors, we gave up all kinds of remedies,
letting nature act alone, and resigning ourselves to the inevitable
evil which God was pleased to send us. It seemed to us that so much
suffering had in a certain way redoubled our love for this child. Our
poor Jules was tended by his mother and myself with equal tenderness
and solicitude continually. Grief added many years to our lives. You
would hardly believe it, sir, but I am only forty-six years old.”
I looked at the poor father; and at the sight of his manly face, upon
which grief had left such visible traces, my heart was moved. I took
his hand and pressed it with cordial sympathy and real compassion.
“Meanwhile,” said he, “the strength of the child decreased
perceptibly. For two years he had taken no solid food. It was only at
great expense, by means of a liquid nourishment in preparing which all
our ingenuity had been taxed that it might be substantial, and by most
extraordinary care, that we had been able to prolong his life. He had
become frightfully thin. His pallor was extreme; he had no blood
showing under his skin; you would have said he was a statue of wax. It
was evident that death was coming on apace. It was not only certain,
but imminent. And, though the uselessness of medical science in the
case had certainly been clearly shown, I could not help knocking once
again at its door. I knew of no other in this world.
“I applied to the most eminent physician in Bordeaux, Dr. Gintrac. Dr.
Gintrac examined his throat, sounded it, and found, besides the mere
contraction which had almost entirely closed the alimentary canal,
some most threatening roughnesses or small swellings.
“He shook his head, and gave me little hope. He saw my terrible
anxiety.
“‘I do not say that his cure is impossible,’ said he; ‘_but he is
very ill_.’
“These were his exact words.
“He considered it absolutely necessary to employ local remedies; first
injections, then the application of a cloth soaked in ether. But this
treatment prostrated the child; in view of the result, the surgeon
himself, M. Sentex, employed in the hospital, advised us to
discontinue it.
“In one of my visits to Dr. Gintrac, I communicated to him an idea
which had occurred to me.
“‘It seems to me,’ said I, ‘that if Jules _had the will_, he
could swallow. Does not this difficulty perhaps come from fear? Is it
not perhaps that he does not swallow to-day merely because he did not
yesterday? If so, it is a mental malady, which can only be cured by
moral means.’
“But the doctor dispelled this my last illusion.
“‘You are mistaken,’ said he. ‘The disease is in the organs
themselves, which are only too really and seriously affected. I have 104
not contented myself with looking at them, for the eye may easily be
deceived; but I have sounded them with an instrument, and felt of them
carefully with my fingers. The œsophagus is covered with little
swellings, and the passage has become so small that it is
_materially impossible_ for the boy to take any food whatever,
except liquids, which can accommodate themselves to the size of the
opening, and pass through the pin-hole, as I may call it, which still
remains. If the enlargement of the tissues proceeds a few millimetres
further, the patient cannot live. The beginning of the trouble, the
alternations which characterized it, and its occasional interruptions
also bear out the result of my examination. Your child, having once
recovered, would have continued well if the difficulty had been in his
imagination. Unfortunately, it is organic.’
“These remarks, which had been already made to me at Toulouse, but
which I had gladly forgotten, were too conclusive not to convince me.
I returned home, with death in my soul.
“What could now be done? We had applied to the most distinguished
physicians both of Toulouse and Bordeaux, and all had been unavailing.
The fatal evidence was before my eyes; our poor child was condemned,
and that without appeal.
“But, monsieur, such cruel conclusions cannot easily remain in a
father’s heart. I still tried to deceive myself; my wife and I
continued to consult; I was thinking of hydropathy.
“It was in this desperate state of things that Jules said to his
mother, with an air of confidence and absolute certitude which
strongly impressed her:
“‘Mamma, neither Dr. Gintrac nor any other
doctor can do anything for my trouble. It is the Holy Virgin who will
cure me. Send me to the Grotto of Lourdes, and you will see that I
shall be cured. I am sure of it.’
“My wife reported this proposal to me.
“‘We must not hesitate!’ cried I. ‘He must go to Lourdes. And that as
soon as possible.’
“It was not, sir, that I was full of faith. I did not believe in
miracles, and I hardly considered such extraordinary interventions of
divine power as possible. But I was a father, and any chance, no
matter how insignificant, seemed to me not to be slighted. Besides, I
hoped that, without any supernatural occurrence, the possibility of
which I did not wish to admit, this journey might have a salutary
moral effect on the child. As for a complete cure, I did not entertain
the slightest idea of such a thing.
“It was in winter, at the beginning of February; the weather was bad,
and I wished to wait for a fine day, on Jules’s account.
“Since he had read the little notice, eight months before, at St.
Jean-de-Luz, the idea which he had just expressed to us had never left
him. Having expressed it once without any attention being paid to it,
he had not introduced the subject again; but the thought had remained
in him, and worked there while he was undergoing all the medical
treatment with a patience that had to be seen to be appreciated.
“This faith, so full and complete, was the more extraordinary because
we had not brought up the child to any unusual practices of piety. My
wife attended to her religious duties, but that was all; and, as for
myself, I had, as you have just heard, philosophic ideas tending 105
quite the other way.
“On the 12th of February, the weather promised to be magnificent. We
took the train for Tarbes.
“During the whole journey, Jules was gay, and full of the most
positive faith that he would be cured; his faith was overpowering.
“As for myself, I encouraged, but did not share, this confidence; it
was so great that I should call it exaggerated, did I not fear to be
wanting in respect for the God who inspired it.
“At Tarbes, at the Hôtel Dupont, where we put up, every one noticed
the poor child, so pale and wasted, and yet with such a sweet and
attractive expression. I mentioned at the hotel the object of our
journey, and in the good wishes and prayers which these good people
made for us there seemed to be a presentiment of success. And when we
set out, I saw plainly that they would await our return with
impatience.
“Notwithstanding my doubts, I took with me a small box of biscuits.
“When we arrived at the crypt above the Grotto, Mass was being said.
Jules prayed with a faith which shone out in all his features, with a
truly celestial ardor.
“The priest noticed his fervor, and when he had left the altar, he
came out of the sacristy almost immediately, and approached us. A good
idea had occurred to him on seeing the poor little one. He proposed it
to me, and, turning to Jules, who was still on his knees, said:
“‘My child, would you like to have me consecrate you to the Blessed
Virgin?’
“‘Indeed I would,’ answered he.
“The priest immediately proceeded with the very simple ceremony, and
recited over my child the sacred formulas.
“‘Now,’ said Jules, in a tone which impressed me by its perfect
confidence, ‘I am going to be cured.’
“We went to the Grotto. Jules knelt before the statue and prayed. I
looked at him, and can still see the expression of his face, his
attitude, and his joined hands.
“He rose, and we went to the fountain.
“It was a terrible moment.
“He bathed his neck and chest. Then he took the glass and drank
several mouthfuls of the miraculous water.
“He was calm and happy, gay in fact, and radiant with confidence.
“For my part, I trembled and almost fainted at this last trial. But I
restrained my emotion, though with difficulty. I did not want to let
him see my doubt.
“‘Try now to eat,’ said I, handing him a biscuit.
“He took it, and I turned away my head, not feeling able to look at
him. It was, in fact, the question of the life or death of my child
which was to be decided. In putting this question, such a fearful one
for a father’s heart, I was playing, as it were, my last card. If I
failed, my dear boy would have to die. This test was a decisive one,
and I could not see it tried.
“But I was soon relieved of my agony.
“Jules’s voice, joyous and sweet, called me:
“‘Papa! I have swallowed it. I can eat, I knew I could--I had faith!’
“What a surprise it was! My child, who had been at death’s door, was
saved, and that instantly. And I, his father, was a witness to this
astonishing resurrection.
“But, that I might not disturb the faith of my son, I checked any
appearance of astonishment.
“‘Yes, Jules, it was certain, and could not have been otherwise,’ said 106
I, in a voice which I made calm by great effort.
“There was in my breast, however, a whirlwind of excitement. If it
could have been opened, it would have been found burning as if full of
fire.
“We repeated our experiment. He ate some more biscuits, not only
without difficulty, but with an increasing appetite. I was obliged to
restrain him.
“But I could not refrain from proclaiming my happiness, and thanking
God.
“‘Wait for me,’ said I to Jules, ‘and pray to the Blessed Virgin. I am
going to the chapel.’
“And leaving him for a moment kneeling at the Grotto, I ran to tell
the priest the wonderful news. I was quite bewildered. Besides my
happiness, so unexpected and sudden that it was terrible, besides the
confusion of my heart, I felt in my soul and mind an inexpressible
disturbance. A revolution was going on in my agitated and tumultuous
thoughts. All my ‘philosophical’ ideas were tottering and crumbling
away.
“The priest came down immediately and saw Jules finishing his last
biscuit. The Bishop of Tarbes happened to be that day at the chapel,
and he wished to see my son. I told him of the cruel illness which had
just had such a happy end. Every one caressed the child, and rejoiced
with him.
“But I meanwhile was thinking of his mother, and of the joy in store
for her. Before going to the hotel, I ran to the telegraph office. My
despatch contained only one word: ‘Cured!’
“Hardly had it gone before I wanted to recall it.
“‘Perhaps,’ said I, ‘I have been too hasty. Who knows if he will not
have a relapse?’
“I did not dare to believe in the blessing I had received; and when I
did believe in it, it seemed that it was going to escape from me.
“As for the child, he was happy without the least mixture of
disquietude. He was exuberant in his joy and perfect security.
“‘You see now, papa,’ said he to me every moment, ‘it was only the
Blessed Virgin who could cure me. When I told you so before, I was
sure of it.’
“At the hotel, he ate with an excellent appetite; and how I enjoyed
watching him!
“He wanted to return on foot to the Grotto to give thanks for his
deliverance, and actually did so.
“‘You will be very grateful to the Holy Virgin, will you not?’ said a
priest to him.
“‘Ah! I shall never forget,’ said he.
“At Tarbes, we stopped at the hotel where we had put up the day
before. They were on the lookout for us. They seem to have had (as I
think I told you) a feeling that we would be successful. There was a
great rejoicing. People gathered around us to see him eat with a
relish everything that was served upon the table; to see him eat
heartily who the day before could only swallow a few spoonfuls of
liquid. That time seemed to me long gone by.
“This illness, against which the science of the most able physicians
had failed, and which had just been so miraculously cured, had lasted
two years and nineteen days.
“We were in haste to return to his mother, and took the express train
for Bordeaux. The child was overcome with fatigue by the journey, and
I should also say by his emotions, were it not for his peaceable and 107
constant calmness in spite of his sudden cure, which overwhelmed him
with joy, but did not astonish him. He wanted to go to bed on reaching
home. He was extremely sleepy, and took no supper. His mother, who had
nearly died of joy before our return, when she saw him so exhausted
and refusing to eat, was seized by a horrible doubt. She told me that
I had deceived her, and I had the greatest difficulty in making myself
believed. But how she rejoiced when, the next morning, Jules sat down
at our table, and breakfasted with a better appetite than ourselves.
It was not till then that she became reassured.”
“And since then,” I asked him, “has there been no relapse?”
“No, sir, absolutely none. I may say that the cure progressed, or
rather consolidated itself, considering that it had been as complete
as it was instantaneous. The transition from a disease so fixed and
obstinate to a perfect cure was made without the least gradation,
though it was without apparent disturbance. But his general health
improved visibly, under the influence of a restorative regimen, the
salutary effects of which it was full time for him to experience.”
“And the physicians? Have they testified to Jules’s previous
condition? Certainly they should have done so.”
“I thought so too, sir, and mentioned the subject to the Bordeaux
doctor who had been the last to attend my child; but he maintained a
reserve which prevented me from insisting. As for Dr. Roques of
Toulouse, to whom I wrote immediately, he hastened to recognize in the
clearest terms the miraculous nature of the fact which had occurred,
and which was entirely beyond the powers of medicine. ‘In view of
this cure, so long desired and so promptly effected,’ he said to me,
‘why not quit the narrow sphere of scientific explanations, and open
one’s mind to gratitude for so strange an event, in which Providence
seems to obey the voice of a child?’ He rejected most decidedly, as a
physician, the theories which are always produced on such occasions of
‘moral excitement,’ ‘the effect of the imagination,’ etc., and
confessed frankly in this event the clear and positive action of a
superior Being revealing himself and imposing himself on the
conscience. Such, sir, was the opinion of M. Roques, physician of
Toulouse, who knew as well as myself the previous condition and the
illness of my son. There is his own letter, dated February 24.
“But the facts which I have just related are also so well known that
no one would care to contest them. It is superabundantly proved that
science was absolutely powerless against the strange disease by which
Jules had been attacked. As for the cause of his cure, every one can
place it differently, according to the point of view which he chooses
to assume. I, who had previously believed only in purely natural
phenomena, saw clearly that its explanation must be sought in a higher
order of things; and every day I gave thanks to God, who, putting an
end to my long and cruel trial in such an unexpected way, had
approached me in the way most adapted to make me bow before him.”
“I understand you, and it seems also to me that such was the divine
plan.”
After these words, I remained some time silent and absorbed in my
reflections.
The conversation returned to the boy so wonderfully cured. The father’s
heart came back to him, as the needle does to the pole. 108
“Since that time,” said he, “his piety is angelic. You will see him
soon. The nobleness of his feelings is visible in his face. He is
well-born, his character is honest and dignified. He is incapable of
lies or meanness. And his piety has not been at the expense of his
natural qualities. He is studying in a school close by, kept by M.
Conangle, in the Rue du Mirail. The poor child has quickly made up for
his lost time. He loves his studies. He is the first in his class. At
the last examination, he took the highest prize. But, above all, he is
the best and most amiable. He is the favorite of his teachers and
schoolmates. He is our joy, our consolation, and--”
At this moment the door opened, and Jules came with his mother into
the room where we were sitting. I embraced him affectionately. The
glow of health was on his face. His forehead is large, high, and
magnificent; his attitude has a modesty and gentle firmness which
inspires a secret respect. His eyes, large and bright, show a rare
intelligence, and absolute purity and a beautiful soul.
“You are happy to have such a son,” said I to M. Lacassagne.
“Yes, sir, I am happy. But my poor wife and I have suffered a great
deal.”
“Do not be sorry for that,” said I, going a little away from Jules.
“This path of grief was the way which led you from darkness to light,
from death to life, from yourself to God. The Blessed Virgin has shown
herself twice in this event as the mother of life. She has given your
son his temporal life in order to give you the true life which knows
no end.”
I left this family, so greatly blessed by our Lord, and, still under
the impression of what I had heard and seen, I wrote, with my heart
full of the feelings produced, what you have just read.