What you add concerning the motion of matter has no importance. I might

admit with you that, prescinding from miracles (which you are blind enough

to deny), “at no time and nowhere, even in the most distant space reached

by our telescope, could a single fact be established which would render

the assumption of a force external, and independent of matter, necessary.”

This, however, regards only the stability of the laws of motion; and it

would be absurd to infer that therefore the existence of matter and its

conservation need not be accounted for by an external cause. But you again

give a proof of your ignorance by adding that “the motion of matter obeys

only those laws which are inherently active.” What does this mean? Try to

understand the term “law,” and you will see that to call law “inherently

active” is an unpardonable nonsense. And hoping that this suffices to show

the absolute worthlessness of your pretended argument, I will let you go

on with your other allegations.

_Büchner._ You do not reflect, sir, that in your theory the creative power

must have been idle for an eternity; and this cannot be admitted. For “to

consider the power in eternal rest, and sunk in self‐contemplation, is an

empty arbitrary abstraction without any empirical basis” (p. 6).

_Reader._ Not at all, doctor. To consider God in eternal rest is not an

empty arbitrary abstraction; it is a real and necessary conclusion from

incontrovertible premises. Is it philosophical to assume, as you do, that

creation would likely put an end to God’s eternal rest? God always rests

unchangeably in himself, whether he actually exercises his creative power

or not. He has in himself his happiness, and in himself he rests for ever

independently of creation. This we say without thinking for a moment of

your “empirical basis.” For we know that it is a silly thought, that of

endeavoring to find an empirical basis for a purely intellectual truth.

But if by the want of an empirical basis you mean a want of known facts

from which to show God’s existence and infinite perfection, then your duty

would have been to substantiate your assertion by showing that such facts

are not real facts, or have no connection with the existence of a supreme

being. This you have omitted to do, and thus all your argument consists of

bold assertions, not only without proofs, but without the possibility of

proof.

Is it not strange, then, that you fancy to have cornered your readers, and

compelled them to resort to the most absurd fictions to uphold the

existence of a creative power? You say, in fact, that they have no other

resource but to admit “the singular notion that the creative power had

suddenly and without any occasion arisen out of nothing, had created the

world (out of what?), and had again, in the moment of completion,

collapsed within itself, and, so to say, dissolved itself in the universe”

(p. 7). Indeed, were we as stupid as any creature can be, we would still

find it impossible to dream of such a foolish assumption. You add that

“philosophers and others have ever cherished this latter notion, believing

that they could, by this mode of reasoning, reconcile the indisputable

fact of a fixed and unchangeable law in the economy of the universe with

the belief in an individual creative power” (_ibid._) I do not hesitate to

tell you, doctor, that nothing but hatred of truth could prompt you to

utter such a gross lie.

_Büchner._ Yet “all religious conceptions lean more or less towards this

idea” (p. 7).

_Reader._ This I deny.

_Büchner._ Let me explain. Philosophers admit the idea, “with this

difference: that they conceive the spirit of the world reposing after the

creation, but yet, as an individual, capable of again suspending his own

laws” (p. 7).

_Reader._ This explanation is not to the point. Your assertion implied

that philosophers and others ever cherished the notion that the creative

power had suddenly arisen out of nothing, and that all religious

conceptions lean more or less towards this idea. This is what I challenged

you to show. Does your explanation show it? On the contrary, it shows that

the idea towards which religious conceptions lean is quite different.

_Büchner._ Be this as it may, “conceptions of this kind cannot concern us,

not being the result of philosophical reasoning. Individual human

qualities and imperfections are transferred to philosophical notions, and

belief is made to occupy the place of actual knowledge” (p. 7).

_Reader._ I perceive, doctor, that you are persistently wrong. It seems as

though you could not open your mouth without uttering some false or

incongruent assertion. What are those conceptions which “cannot concern

us”? Are they not the dreams you have just imagined? How, then, do you

insinuate that the existence of a creative power does not concern us,

because your dreams are not the result of philosophical reasoning? And

pray, who ever “transferred individual human qualities and imperfections

to philosophical notions”? Has this phrase any intelligible meaning?

Lastly, it is evidently false that, in order to admit a creative power,

“belief is made to occupy the place of actual knowledge.” The existence of

God is a philosophical truth; now, philosophy is a method of knowledge,

not of belief.

I trust I have sufficiently exposed your “intellectual jugglery” to let

you see that you are at best a charlatan, not a philosopher.

To Be Continued.

Dante’s Purgatorio. Canto Fourteenth.

NOTE.—This canto, like the preceding (XIII.), illustrates the sin of envy,

which Dante deems a special vice of the Florentines, against whom and the

other inhabitants of Valdarno he inveighs with a bitterness that savors

more of the style of the Inferno than of “the milder shade of Purgatory.”

In the Thirteenth Canto, Envy has been rebuked by voices of love and

gentleness; as, for instance, the kindly comment of the Virgin at the

marriage feast of Cana, “_They have no wine_.” These and similar words are

the _scourge_ which the envious have to endure. But the _bridle_, Dante

says, are tones of a contrary import, such as the terrific voice of Cain,

who passes by in a peal of thunder, but invisible, followed by the

dreadful cry of Aglauros, described in the concluding paragraph of this

canto.

“What man is this who round our mountain goes,

Before that death has let his pinions free,

Who doth at will his eyelids ope and close?”

“I know not; but am sure not sole is he:

Demand _thou_ of him who the nearest art,

And gently ask, that he may deign reply.”

Thus to the right two spirits there, apart,

Bent each toward each, conferred as I came nigh;

Then turning up their faces as to speak,

One said: “O soul! that still in mortal hold

Art on the way thy home in heaven to seek,

For charity console us, and unfold

Whence comest, and who art thou? for the grace

Accorded thee in us the wonder wakes

Due unto things which ne’er before had place.”

And I: “Through middle Tuscany there flows

A brook whose founts in Falterona spring,

Nor do an hundred miles its current close:

From that stream’s banks this body of mine I bring:

’Twere vain to tell you how my title goes;

For yet my name hath not much heralding.”

“If well I probe the sense thou hast conveyed

With intellect,” the first who spake replied:

“Thou meanest Arno!”—and the other shade

Said to the former: “Wherefore did he hide

That river’s name as men are wont to do

Of things most horrible?”—and then the one

Whom that inquiry was directed to,

Discharged him thus:

Guido Del Duca.

“Why he that name doth shun

I cannot tell: but meet it is the name

Of such a valley perish from the earth!

Since from its head (where so abounds the same

Great alpine chain which cast Pelorus forth,

With springs that few spots are impregnate more)

To where it seeks, arriving at the main,

What the sky sucks from ocean to restore

(Whence rivers have what waters they contain),

Virtue by all is hunted for a foe

As ’twere a snake;—whether from fault of place

Or evil custom goading nature so:

Wherefore that miserable valley’s race

Have changed their kind to that degree ’twould seem

Circe had pastured them. Among brute swine,

More fit for mast than human food, the stream

Winds its poor way; then, lower down its line,

Finds curs that snarl beyond their power to bite,

And turns from them his nostril as in scorn.

Falling it goes, and more it grows in might,

The curst ditch finds that of those dogs are born

A pack of wolves. Through many a whirlpool then

He comes to foxes in deceit so deep

They fear no catching by more crafty men.

What though o’erheard, no silence will I keep!

And well for this man, if in mind he bear

What my true spirit unfolds. One of thy blood

Shall hunt those wolves. I see thy grandson there

Harrowing the borders of that savage flood;

All fly before him, all are in despair:

He makes a market of their living flesh,

Then, like old beasts for slaughter, lays them low:

Staining his fame with many a murder fresh;

He comes all bloody from that wood of woe,

Leaving such wreck that in a thousand years

To its primeval state it shall not grow.”

Like one whose visage alters when he hears

Ill hap foretold, as ’twere in dread which way

The blow may strike, I saw that other soul

Stand turned to hear, disturbed and in dismay,

Soon of those words as he had grasped the whole.

His troubled air, and what the other said,

To know their names wrought in me such a thirst

That I with prayers direct inquiry made.

Wherefore the shade who had addrest me first

Began again: “Thou wouldest that I deign

Do thee a grace I did in vain beseech;

But since the will of God in thee so plain

Doth favor show, I will not stint my speech;

Therefore know this: Guido del Duca am I.

My blood with envy was so burnt, so bad,

Thou mightst have seen me livid grow and dry

Had I but seen another’s face look glad.

Such of my sowing is the straw I reap!

O human race! why bring your wishes down

To pleasures that exclude all partnership?

This is Rinieri; this the prize and crown

Of Casa Calboli, whereof no child

Hath made himself an heir of his renown.

Nor yet alone hath his blood been despoiled,

’Twixt Po, the Pennine, Reno and the shore,

Of what best needs for truth and happiness;

For through those borders there be plenty more

Of stock so bad, to make their venom less

By cultivation ’twere but vain to try.

Where is good Lizio? and Mainardi? Where

Pier Traversaro and Carpigna’s Guy?

O Romagnuoles! what bastard shoots ye bear,

When sprouts a Fabbro in Bologna, when

Bernardin Fosco makes Faenza heir

From coarse grass to a growth of gentlemen!

No wonder, Tuscan, at my weeping thus

While I recall, remembering them so well,

Guido of Prata when himself with us,

And Ugolin of Azzo, used to dwell:

Frederic Tignoso and his goodly troop;

The Traversara, Anastagi race;

Now disinherited both houses droop!

Ladies and knights, the toils repose and grace

They wrapt us in of courtesy and love

There where the best blood such bad hearts debase!

“O Brettinoro! why dost thou not move

From thy proud seat, thy family wholly gone,

And many more, to shun corruption’s course?

Bagnacaval does well to have no son,

And Castrocaro ill, and Conio worse

To breed such Counties taking further pains:

And well enough too, when their devil is dead,

May the Pagani do, though some remains

Bear witness ’gainst them of impureness fled.

O Ugolin de’ Fantoli! most sure

Is thy good name, since no degenerate head

Is looked for now its brightness to obscure.

But go thy ways now, Tuscan! more delight

I find in weeping than in words—too stirred

By this talk of our country.” We were quite

Sure those dear souls our way’s direction heard,

And from their silence knew that we went right.

Soon as proceeding we became alone,

A voice, like lightning when it strikes, did say,

Rushing on tow’rds us with its thunderous tone,

“_Whoever findeth me the same shall slay!_”(97)

Then fled as thunder, when the bolt is thrown

From the torn cloud, in rumbling dies away.

When on our ears a moment’s truce there fell,

Another crash came of like rattling shock

As of a rapid thunder, peal on peal:

“_I am Aglauros, who became a rock!_”

On this, I drew back from my forward pace

To cling for shelter close behind the bard,

And when the air was hushed in all its space,

He said to me: “That was the bit(98) full hard

Which should each man within his limit stay.

_You_ take the bait so fondly that the small

Hook of th’ old enemy makes you his prey,

And bridle boots you naught, nor warning call.

Heaven calleth to you, and the eternal round

Shows you of beauties that about you roll,

And still your eye is grovelling on the ground;

Wherefore He smites you who discerns the whole.”

The Veil Withdrawn.

Translated, By Permission, From The French Of Madame Craven, Author Of “A

Sister’s Story,” “Fleurange,” Etc.

VII.

Lorenzo, Duca di Valenzano, belonged to one of the noblest families of

upper Italy; but his mother was a native of Sicily, and it was from her he

inherited his title as well as the fortune already in his possession,

which would be considerably increased if an important lawsuit (the usual

accompaniment of a Sicilian inheritance), which brought a great part of it

into litigation, should terminate successfully. His object in coming to

see my father was to place this business in his hands; and, after his

first visit, he usually came once or twice a week. At first he merely

bowed to me as he passed, or, at most, addressed me a few words on leaving

the room. The remainder of the time was spent in looking over voluminous

documents with my father. Nevertheless, these visits soon became a little

incident in my monotonous life, and I began to look forward to them with a

certain impatience.

The duke, at this time, was scarcely more than thirty years of age; but he

by no means seemed young in my eyes. A few premature wrinkles and an

observant, thoughtful look imparted a gravity to his face which was not,

however, its prevailing expression; for it was frequently ironical and

sarcastic to the last degree, and so mobile that it was not always easy to

decide on the impression it left. His general appearance, however, was

noble and striking, as well as the tone of his voice, which involuntarily

commanded attention to all he said.

Several weeks elapsed without any other variety than the few moments, more

or less prolonged, which he passed at my table at the end of each visit.

He generally made some unimportant remarks respecting my lessons, my bird,

or my flowers, which he noticed I cultivated with a care somewhat unusual

in our clime. In fact, he only spoke to me as he would to a child. I

replied in a corresponding tone, and, very soon, not only without

embarrassment, but with a pleasure I made no attempt to conceal. I had

begun to be devoured by _ennui_ in so inactive and solitary a life, and I

eagerly welcomed any diversion that came in my way. My father, at such

times, remained silent and grave, and seemed somewhat impatient when these

brief conversations were prolonged a little more than usual.

One day, when the duke approached my table as usual, I had a large atlas

open before me, and he noticed that I was examining the map of Asia. I was

studying without any effort, and yet with a certain interest resulting

from curiosity which, added to an excellent memory, made me an unusually

good scholar. The duke looked at the map a moment, and, after some

observations that excited my interest, he pointed to a place near the

Himalaya mountains, and remarked: “One year ago to‐day I was there.” I

knew his extensive travels had rendered him celebrated, as well as his

success as a sculptor, doubly surprising in a man of his rank and so

enterprising an explorer. I had acquired this information from

conversations respecting the duke since his arrival at Messina, where his

presence had caused a sensation.

On this occasion, seeing my interest strongly excited, he seemed to take

pleasure in giving an account of that remote region, which I sometimes

interrupted by questions that appeared to surprise him. The facility with

which I was endowed made me really superior in many respects to most girls

of my age; and as for information, I might have been considered a

phenomenon in my own country.

The conversation that day might have been indefinitely prolonged had not

my father found a pretext for abridging it by suddenly proposing to take

the duke to the further end of the garden, in order to examine some ruins

and a Greek portico on a height from which there was an admirable view.

The duke looked at me, as if he wished I could join in the walk; but my

father not seconding this mute suggestion, he was forced to accompany him,

not, however, without giving me, as he left the room, a look that seemed

to express compassion, interest, and respect.

As soon as I was alone, I abruptly closed my atlas, rose from my seat, and

abandoned myself to a violent fit of irritation and grief, as I hurried

with long steps through the extensive gallery, exclaiming aloud against

the undue sternness and severity of my father.... He did not see that he

was thus rendering the seclusion he had imposed upon me beyond my strength

to bear—a seclusion that would have been transformed by one word of

affection, sympathy, or even kindness. Instead of this, did he not even

appear to be annoyed that I should receive any from this stranger?

It was impossible for me to resume my studies. I had an hour to wait

before Ottavia would come, as she did every day, to accompany me to the

garden—as if I were a mere child, instead of being allowed to wander at my

own pleasure till sunset. Hitherto I had endured everything humbly; but my

patience was now exhausted, and I felt a disposition to revolt which I

only repressed with difficulty. Was this merely against a _régime_ of such

excessive severity, or was it the result of a slight return of confidence

in myself inspired by the interest, and almost deference, which this

stranger had just manifested? It was doubtless both; and the consequence

was, I felt an agitation I could not subdue, and an irrepressible longing

for any change whatever in a mode of life that had become insupportable.

Tired of walking up and down, I at last took a seat by the window, where I

could, at a distance, see my father and his client. I watched them with an

attention that soon diverted my thoughts and ended by wholly absorbing me.

I at once noticed that, instead of proceeding to the end of the garden to

see the ruin my father had spoken of, they had stopped in a broad alley

leading from the house to a white marble basin, in the form of a vase,

which stood in the centre. This alley, bordered with a clipped hedge of

box, extended beyond the basin to a small grove of olive‐trees leading to

the hill it was necessary to ascend in order to see the ruin. They seemed

to have wholly lost sight of the proposed object of their walk; for when I

first saw them, they had scarcely reached the basin, and were now slowly

returning towards the house. The duke appeared to be listening to my

father, every now and then striking the hedge they were passing with a

stick he held in his hand. All at once he stopped, and, passing his arm

through my father’s, he led him to a bench, on which they both sat down. I

could see them distinctly, and, without hearing what they said, could

distinguish the sound of their voices. It was the duke’s I now heard. At

first he spoke with his head bent down, as if with some hesitation, but by

degrees with more animation and fire, and finally with clasped hands, as

if pleading some cause or asking some favor.... Once he raised his eyes

towards the window where I was, though he could not see me. Was he

speaking of me?... Had he ventured to intercede in my behalf?... I looked

at my father anxiously. His face expressed the greatest surprise as well

as extreme dissatisfaction, but it gradually changed. He became very

attentive; and when at last the duke extended his hand, he took it in his,

and seemed to be making some promise. Then they rose and resumed the way

to the house, but by a shady path where my eyes could no longer follow

them.

That day our dinner was less gloomy than usual. My father conversed with

Mario as he had not done for a long time, and the latter, with

satisfaction, attributed to himself this change (which, to do him justice,

had been the object of persevering effort). But Livia, who had more

penetration, saw there was some other reason; for she speedily observed

that this change was especially evident towards me. In fact, for the first

time since the fatal day that seemed like a dividing line in my young

life, I once more saw in my father’s eyes the fond look I was formerly

accustomed to; and this paternal and almost forgotten expression gave me

new life and a sensation of joy and happiness that made me raise my head

as a flower beaten down by the storm looks up at the first return of the

sun.

The explanation was not long delayed. The next day my father sent for me

at an earlier hour than I generally went to him, and after a preamble

which I scarcely comprehended, and which by no means served to prepare me

for what I was about to hear, he informed me that the Duca di Valenzano

had asked for my hand. I remained stupefied with astonishment, and my

father continued: “It was impossible to expect a proposal like this for

one of my daughters; but however brilliant it may be, I should

unhesitatingly decline it were not the duke personally worthy of love and

esteem. As to this I am satisfied from all I hear respecting him. But it

is for you to decide about accepting his hand. I will not impose my will

on you. Consider the subject, Ginevra. The Duca di Valenzano will come

this evening to receive your reply.”

My father might have said much more without my thinking of interrupting

him. I was in such a state of utter amazement that I could hardly realize

what he said, and the perspective thus suddenly opened before me conveyed

no definite idea to my mind. It was easier to believe he was jesting with

me than to suppose such a man as the duke would propose for me to become

his wife!...

I returned to my chamber extremely agitated, and this feeling was not

diminished by witnessing my sister’s emotion and Ottavia’s noisy

demonstrations of joy when I told them of the proposal that had just been

communicated to me. The Duca di Valenzano was not only a person of high

rank, but he was thought to possess every accomplishment, and it was

evident that every one looked upon my consent as a matter of course.

_Un homme accompli!_ Before going any further, I cannot help stopping to

remark here to what a degree the world, generally so severe, shows itself

indulgent in certain cases; and how often this indulgence is shared even

by those who try to think they are not influenced by external

circumstances! Assuredly neither my father, nor my sister, nor the simple

Ottavia attributed the favorable impression produced on their minds to the

brilliant position of this unexpected suitor, or the special merit he had

acquired in their eyes, to the mere fact of his having thought of sharing

his lot with me.

It would have been difficult for me to express my own feelings, for I

hardly understood their nature. I was flattered; I was touched; I was even

very grateful, for it was evident that the duke had begun by pleading my

cause with my father, and hitherto he had been by no means unpleasing to

me. Why, then, could I not think of him now without a kind of repugnance,

fear, and aversion? And why did I feel as if I should prefer never to see

him again? I asked myself these questions, at first silently, and then

aloud, as was often my habit when with Livia and Ottavia, who, though so

different from each other, were nevertheless so alike in their affection

for me.

“That is quite natural, _carina_,” replied Livia. “You scarcely know the

Duca di Valenzano, and the very word _marriage_ is one of serious import,

and even fearful, when it falls for the first time on the ears of a young

girl. But this will pass away.”

“Do you think so?”

“Oh! yes. I am sure of it. When you know him better, and especially when

he, in his turn, comprehends the qualities of your mind, and heart, and

soul, he will conceive such an affection for my dear Ginevra that she will

soon love him in return, and not a little, I imagine.”

“I think so, too,” said Ottavia, laughing. “They say he is very

captivating, to say nothing of his being one of the greatest and

wealthiest noblemen of Italy. Ah! ah! what a different tone those wicked

people will assume who say....”

Livia looked at Ottavia, who stopped short.

“Livia! do not stop her,” I exclaimed. “Go on, Ottavia; I insist upon it.

I wish to know what wicked people you refer to, and what they say.”

Ottavia once more regretted her precipitation, and would rather have

remained silent; but I continued to question her till she acknowledged

some people had taken the liberty of saying I should never marry on

account of “what had taken place.”

“What a vague, cruel way of speaking!” exclaimed Livia indignantly.

“Everybody knows now there was nothing, absolutely nothing at all, in that

gossip; that it was all a mere falsehood.”

“Everybody?” ... I said with sudden emotion. “But has not my father

continued to treat me as if I were culpable?” Then after a moment’s

silence, I added: “Do you think these falsehoods have come to the ears of

the Duca di Valenzano?”

“How can I tell?” replied Livia. “And of what consequence is it? His

proposal shows that he is sure, as well as we, that you have nothing at

all to reproach yourself for.”

I made no reply. A new thought struck me, and I felt the necessity of

being alone, in order to reflect on what had been suggested by her words.

I therefore left my two companions abruptly, and took a seat at the end of

the terrace on a little parapet that looked on the sea, and there I

remained nearly an hour.

That night, when the Duca di Valenzano returned, my father, at my

solicitation, told him that, before coming to any decision, I wished to

have some private conversation with him. It was not without difficulty I

induced my father to convey this message; but the duke immediately

assented, and with so much eagerness that it might have been supposed my

request had only anticipated a wish of his own.

VIII.

I was in my usual place in the gallery, and alone, when the duke entered

at the appointed hour. I rose, and extended my hand. He was astonished, I

think, to find me so calm, and perhaps so grave, and looked at me a moment

in silence, as if he would divine what I was going to say to him. Seeing

that I remained silent, he at length said:

“Donna Ginevra, I thought myself skilled in reading the expression of your

eyes; but in looking at you now, I cannot tell whether the word that is

about to fall from your lips is yes or no.”

I found it difficult to reply; but overcoming my embarrassment at last, I

succeeded in saying:

“Yes or no?.... If I only had that to say, M. le Duc, I could have charged

my father with it.... But before speaking of the reply I am to make, I

must make one request. You must tell me sincerely what you think of me,

and I will afterwards tell you with the utmost frankness wherein you are

mistaken.”

He looked at me with an attentive air, and then smiled, as he said:

“Tell you what I think of you?... That might lead me to say more than I

have yet the right to say. But I will tell you, Donna Ginevra, what I do

not think, and, in so doing, I shall, I imagine, comply with your request.

Let me fully assure you I attach no importance whatever to the words of a

coxcomb; and I would call any one a liar, and treat him as such, who would

dare to repeat them!...”

He saw, by the expression of joy that flashed from my eyes, that he had

guessed aright.

“Poor child! ... poor angel!” he continued, “it would be strange indeed if

I took any other attitude than this before you.” And he was about to kneel

at my feet, when I eagerly prevented him.

“Do not do that, I beg of you!” I exclaimed. “And say, if you like, that I

am a child, but do not call me an angel.... Oh! no, never say anything so

far from the truth! Listen to me, for I requested this interview only that

you might know all—what is true as well as what is false.”

“What is true?” he said in a slight tone of surprise.

“Yes. Listen to me. I thank you for not having believed what ... what was

said concerning me, for that, indeed, was false. I am, however, culpable,

and it is right you should know it. Perhaps you will then change your

mind, and think no more about me.”

He looked at me again, as if he would read the depths of my soul.

“Is it with this design,” he said, “that you speak so frankly?”

I knew not what reply to make, for I no longer knew what I wished. I found

a charm in the mingled tenderness and respect of which I so suddenly felt

myself the object. Besides, I had suffered greatly from my long seclusion,

and my heart involuntarily turned towards him who was trying to deliver me

from it.... My fear and repugnance vanished beneath his sympathetic look.

“No,” I said at last, “it is not for that reason.”

“Then speak frankly,” he said, “and let me hear this important revelation,

whatever it may be.”

“And will you promise solemnly never to reveal my secret?”

“Yes, I solemnly promise.”

In spite of the solemnity of his words, I saw it was with difficulty he

repressed a smile. But when he saw the agitation produced by the

recollections thus awakened, his expression became serious. For a moment a

cloud came over his face; but in proportion as I entered into the details

of that last night of my mother’s life—my thoughtlessness, my shock, and,

finally, my despair and repentance—he became affected, and listened with

so much emotion that his look inspired me with confidence, and I finished

without fear the account I had begun with a trembling voice.

As has been seen, I thought myself more guilty than I should have been had

there been any truth in the vague, unmerited reproaches I had endured; for

the slight fault I had really committed seemed indissolubly connected with

the fearful calamity that followed!... That was why I thought myself

unpardonable, and why I preferred to endure the most unfounded suspicions

concerning me rather than reveal the truth to any one in the world—above

all, to my father. But it seemed to me I ought not, for the same reason,

to conceal it from him who had so generously offered me his hand, whatever

might be the result. I therefore continued, and he listened without

interrupting me. When I had ended, he spoke in his turn, and what he said

decided the fate of my life.

I already felt relieved by the complete revelation of a secret I had

hitherto kept with an obstinacy that was perhaps a little childish. And in

listening to the soft accents of his sonorous, penetrating voice, my heart

was more and more comforted, and soon allowed itself to be persuaded into

what it was sweet and consoling to believe—that, as he said, I exaggerated

the consequence of my thoughtlessness; that if I had afflicted my mother,

I had time to ask and obtain her forgiveness; that I was ignorant of her

dangerous condition, and, when I became aware of it, I supposed I had been

the cause; ... but all this was unreasonable.... And as to the flower....

Here he stopped, and his brow darkened for a moment. “Answer me frankly,”

he said slowly; “if Flavio Aldini were still alive, if he were here under

this window to‐day, and implored you to give him that little sprig of

jasmine I see in your belt....”

He had not time to finish.

“Is it possible,” I exclaimed, “you, who say you understand me, who

pretend to have read my heart, can mention a name that has become so

odious to me?...”

Then I continued, I imagine to his great surprise:

“You are the first to whom I have acknowledged the fault he made me

commit, for I do not consider the ear of the priest to whom I confessed it

as that of man. There I experienced the indulgence of heaven, and was

forgiven by God as well as my mother.... But would you know what cost me

the most that day? Not, certainly, my sorrow for the past; not my firm

resolutions as to the future; nor even the humble acceptation of all the

humiliations that have been inflicted on me.... No, what cost me the most

was to promise to overcome my resentment, to subdue the bitterness

awakened by the very name of Flavio, and to utter it every day in prayer

for the repose of his soul!...”

I was, in speaking thus, very remote from the regions familiar to Lorenzo.

While I was uttering these words, my face was lit up with an expression

very different from any he had ever seen there. He gazed at me without

seeming to hear what I said, and at length replied with evident emotion:

“I thank you for telling me this, though one look at you is sufficient to

efface all doubt, as darkness vanishes before the approach of day.”

After a moment’s silence, he resumed: “And now, Ginevra, I implore you to

delay no longer the reply I have come to receive.”

The recollections of the past had made me forget for a few moments the

present; but these words recalled it, and I looked at him as if

confounded. There was a moment’s silence. My heart beat loudly. At length

I silently took from my belt the little sprig of jasmine he had just

spoken of, and gave it to him.

He understood the reply, and his eyes lit up with gratitude and joy. I

felt happier than I had anticipated. Was not this, in fact, what I had

dreamed of, what I had longed for—to be loved? And would it not be easy to

love in return such a man as this?

As these thoughts were crossing my mind, and I lowered my eyes before his,

he suddenly said:

“Do you know how beautiful you are, Ginevra?”

At these words I frowned, and a blush rose to my forehead which once might

have been caused by gratified vanity, but now was only occasioned by

sincere, heart‐felt displeasure. “Never speak to me of my face, I beg of

you,” I said to him, “unless you wish to annoy or displease me.”

He looked at me with the greatest astonishment, though he felt no doubt as

to my perfect sincerity, and, taking my hand in his, said:

“You are a being apart, Ginevra, and resemble no one else in any respect.

It will be difficult sometimes to obey your request, but I will do so.”

Had I been able to read Lorenzo’s heart, I should, in my turn, have been

astonished, and perhaps frightened, at the motives that had induced him to

link so suddenly his life with mine.

The beauty of which I was no longer vain; the talents I possessed without

being aware of it; the strangeness of finding me in a kind of captivity,

and the somewhat romantic satisfaction of delivering me from it and

changing my condition by a stroke of a wand—such were the elements of the

attraction to which he yielded; and if it had occurred to any one to

remind him that the girl who was about to become his wife had a soul, he

would very probably have replied by a glance of surprise, a sarcastic

smile, or a slight shrug of his shoulders, as if to say: “Perhaps so, but

it does not concern me.”

It happened in this case, as often happens in many other circumstances,

that a word, a look, or the tone of a voice impresses, persuades, and

influences, and yet (perhaps for the happiness of the human race) does not

reveal the inner secrets of the soul.

My engagement was announced the next day, and the last of May appointed

for the marriage. There was a month before the time—a month the

remembrance of which still stands out in my life like a season of

enchantment. The restored confidence of my father, joined to the thought

of our approaching separation, had revived all the fondness of his former

affection. Lorenzo had succeeded in making him regret the excess of his

severity towards me. Indebted to him, therefore, for the return of my

father’s love as well as the gift of his own, he seemed like some

beneficent _genie_ who had dispersed every cloud, and restored to my youth

the warm, golden light of the sun. I thanked him for this without any

circumlocution, and sometimes in so warm a manner that he must have been

the most unpresuming of men to suppose me indifferent to the sentiments he

so often expressed, though not so ardently as to disturb me. He respected

the request I made the first day. He suffered me to remain the child I

still was, in spite of having experienced such varied emotions. Perhaps

the strong contrast he thus found in me formed a study not devoid of

interest to a man _blasé_ by all he had seen and encountered in the world.

The preparations for so brilliant a marriage completely filled up the time

of the busy Ottavia, who was charged by my father to omit nothing in the

way of dress requisite for the _fiancée_ of the Duca di Valenzano. Mario,

prouder than he was willing to acknowledge of an alliance that reflected

lustre on the whole family, showed himself friendly and satisfied.

Besides, the transformation that had taken place in my whole appearance

within a few months, as well as in my way of life, had softened his manner

towards me; and the more because he attributed the merit of it to himself,

and often repeated that, had it not been for him, my father would not have

had the courage to persevere in a severity that had had so salutary a

result. He loved me, however, as I have had occasion in the course of my

life to know; but as there are people in the world who are kind, and yet

are not sympathetic, so there are also many who on certain occasions

manifest some feeling, and yet are not kind. Mario was of the latter

class. At certain times, on great occasions, he seemed to have a heart

capable of affection and devotedness; but, as a general thing, it was

rather evil than good he discovered in everything and everybody, without

excepting even those with whom he was most intimately connected, and

perhaps in them _above all_.

Livia alone, after the first few days, seemed to have a shade of

thoughtfulness and anxiety mingled with her joy, and Mario, who observed

it, unhesitatingly declared it was caused by the prospect of remaining an

old maid, doubly vexatious now her younger sister was about to ascend

before her very eyes to the pinnacle of rank and fortune. But I knew Livia

better than he, and, though unable to read all that was passing in her

soul at that time, I was sure that no comparison of that kind, or any

dissatisfied consideration of herself, had ever crossed her mind.

But I did not suspect that her pure, transparent nature, as well as the

instinct of clear‐sighted affection, enabled her to see some threatening

signs in the heavens above me that seemed to every one else so brilliant

with its sun and cloudless azure. But the die was cast, and it would have

been useless to warn as well as dangerous to disturb me. She therefore

confined herself to reminding me of all my mother’s pious counsels. She

made me promise never to forget them, and she, too, promised to pray for

me. But when I told her she must continue to aid me with her advice, and

remain true to her _rôle_ of my guardian angel, she shook her head, and

remained silent.

One day, when I spoke in this way, she replied: “Do not be under any

illusion, Ginevra. Marriage is like death. One may prepare for it, one may

be aided by the counsels, the prayers, and the encouragement of friends

till the last moment; but once the line is crossed, as the soul after

death finds itself alone in the presence of its God, its heavenly

bridegroom, to be eternally blessed by his love or cursed by its

privation, so the wife finds herself alone in the world with her husband.

There is no happiness for her but in their mutual affection. If this

exists, she possesses the greatest happiness this world can afford. If

deprived of it, she lacks everything. The world will be only a void, and

she may still consider herself fortunate, if this void is filled by

sorrow, and not by sin!...”

“What you say is frightful.”

“Yes, it is frightful; therefore I have never been able to covet so

terrible a bondage. O my dear Gina! may God watch over you....”

“You terrify me, Livia. I assure you I should never have regarded marriage

under so serious an aspect, from the way in which people around us enter

into it.”

Livia blushed, and her eyes, generally so soft, assumed an expression of

thoughtfulness and severity.

“I am nearly twenty‐six years old,” she said, “and am therefore no longer

a girl, as you still are. But in a few days you will assume the duties of

womanhood. You will place your hand in Lorenzo’s, and pronounce the most

fearful vow there is in the world. Let me therefore say one thing to you,

which I am sure is the faithful echo of your mother’s sentiments, and what

she would certainly tell you likewise. Ginevra, rather than imitate any of

those to whom you refer, rather than seek away from your own fireside a

happiness similar to theirs, it would be better for God to call you to

himself this very hour. Yes,” she continued with unwonted energy, “sooner

than behold this, I would rather—I who love you so much—I would far rather

see those beautiful eyes, now looking at me with so much surprise, close

this very instant never to open again!”

I was, indeed, surprised. For were not these words, or at least the idea

they conveyed, what I had found written in the little book Livia had never

read, and was it not my mother herself who actually spoke to me now

through the voice of my sister?...

IX.

This conversation left a profound and painful impression on me, but it was

counteracted by the increasing attachment Lorenzo inspired. During this

phase of my life I only perceived his charming, noble qualities, the

unusual variety of his tastes, his mental endowments, and, above all, his

love for me, which it seemed impossible to return too fully. It would have

required a degree of penetration not to be expected of one of my age to

lift the brilliant veil and look beyond. Therefore the natural liveliness

of my disposition, which had been prematurely extinguished by successive

trials of too great a severity, gradually revived. It was no unusual thing

now to hear me laugh and sing as I used to. The influence of this new

cheerful life counteracted the effects of the factitious life I had led

the previous year. Under Lorenzo’s protection, and escorted by Mario, I

was allowed to take long rides on horseback, which restored freshness to

my cheeks, and inspired that youthful feeling which may be called the

pleasure of living—a feeling that till now I had been a stranger to. My

mind was developed by intercourse with one so superior to myself, and who

endeavored to interest and instruct me. In a word, my whole nature

developed and expanded in every way, and for awhile I believed in the

realization here below of perfectly unclouded happiness.

A sad accident, however, occurred, which cast a shadow over the brief

duration of those delightful days. It was now the last day but one before

our marriage, and for the last time we were to make an excursion on

horseback, which was also to be an adieu to the mountains, the sea, and

the beautiful shore that had been familiar to me from my infancy. For,

immediately after, we were to leave Messina; and though it was to go to

Naples, I thought more of what I was about to leave than what I was to

find, and the melancholy of approaching separation seemed diffused over

all nature around me. Our horses were waiting at a gate at the end of the

garden, which, on that side, opened into the country. Mario and Lorenzo

had gone before, and I was walking slowly along to join them, holding my

skirt up with one hand, and leaning with the other on Livia, who was going

to see our cavalcade set off.

Mario had already mounted his horse, but Lorenzo, on foot beside Prima, my

pretty pony, was waiting to help me mount. He held out his hand. I placed

my foot on it, and sprang gaily up. As soon as I was seated, he stepped

back to mount his own horse, while Livia remained beside me to arrange the

folds of my long habit. Just then the wind blew off her light straw hat,

to which was attached a long, blue veil, and both passing suddenly across

my horse’s eyes before I had fairly gathered up the bridle, he took

fright. I was unable to check him. He sprang madly away, bearing me along

the narrow alley leading from the garden to the highway. I heard the

screams of those who remained motionless behind, but nothing afterwards

except a hum in my ears. A flash seemed to pass before my eyes, but I

retained my consciousness. I realized that I was lost. The alley, like

that in the garden, was bordered with a thick hedge of box extending to

the road, which was here at an immense height along a cliff overlooking

the sea and protected by a low parapet. My ungovernable horse was

evidently about to leap over it and precipitate me below.... I recommended

myself to God, dropped the bridle, gathered up the folds of my habit with

both hands, and, murmuring the words, _Madonna santa, aiutate mi!_(99) I

allowed myself to fall on the hedge which bordered the alley. I might have

been killed in this way no less surely than the other; but I escaped. The

thick, elastic box yielded to my weight without breaking, which prevented

me from receiving any harm from the fall. I remained stunned and

motionless, but did not lose my senses. I know not how many seconds

elapsed before I heard Lorenzo’s voice. I opened my eyes, and smiled as I

met his gaze. I shall never forget the passionate expression of love and

joy that flashed from his pale, terrified face, which was bending over me!

He raised me from the verdant couch where I lay, and pressed me in his

arms with mute transport. I, too, was happy. I felt an infinite joy that I

had been saved and was still alive. I leaned my head against his shoulder,

and closed my eyes. My hat had been thrown off, and my hair, completely

loosened, fell almost to the ground. In this way he carried me back amid

cries of joy from those who had followed us. Nothing was heard but

exclamations of thanksgiving to God and the Virgin when, escorted by a

crowd swelled by all on the road or in the neighboring fields, who had

perceived the accident, we arrived at the principal entrance to the house.

There they made me sit down, and in a few moments I was sufficiently

restored to realize completely all that had happened.

Lorenzo continued to support me, and poured forth his joy in tender,

incoherent words. My father embraced me. Ottavia wept, as she kissed my

hands. Mario himself was affected. In the first moment of confusion I did

not notice that my sister alone was wanting. But this absence soon struck

me, and I eagerly asked for her, calling her by name as I looked around

me. There was a moment’s hesitation, and I saw two of the servants near me

making the odious sign of which I have already explained the

signification. And—must it be said?—Lorenzo’s hand that held mine

contracted also, and I saw that he, likewise, was so absurd as to wish to

protect me in this way. I rose.... I no longer felt the effects of the

fall I had just had. I pushed them all aside, and him the first. The

circle around me opened, and I saw my sister, pale and motionless, leaning

against one of the pillars of the vestibule! I forgot everything that had

occurred. I thought of nothing but her, and threw myself on her neck.

“Do not be alarmed, my dear Livia,” I said loud enough for every one to

hear. “I assure you I have received no injury. I thought you were more

courageous. It does not seem like you to be so frightened. The Madonna,

you see, has protected me. I know you said a fervent _Ave Maria_ for me

when you saw me so swiftly carried away, and your prayer was heard....”

Livia pressed me in her arms without speaking, and tears began to flow

from her eyes. Leaning on her arm, and refusing assistance from any one

else, I started to go to my chamber. But just as I was leaving the porch a

thought occurred.

“And my poor Prima,” I said. “What has become of her?”

The reply to this question made me shudder. The poor animal had sprung

over the parapet, and fallen down the precipice into the sea!... Our

delightful excursions had ended in a sinister manner, and more than one

painful feeling mingled with my joy at having escaped so great a peril. My

heart felt heavy and oppressed, and my first act on entering my chamber

with Livia was to fall on my knees before a statue of the Madonna, which,

in honor of the month of May, was brilliant with lights and flowers....

Livia knelt beside me, but her prayer was longer than mine, and I saw that

she continued to weep as she prayed.

“Come, Livia,” I said to her at last, not wishing her to suppose I thought

her sadness could have any other cause than my accident, “your distress

concerning me is unreasonable. You weep as if I had been carried by my

poor Prima to the bottom of the sea, instead of being here alive with

you.”

Livia rose, wiped her eyes, and smiled.

“You are right, Gina,” she said in a calm tone. “I ought to profit by the

few moments we have together, for we shall not be left alone long. I have

something to tell you, dear child—something that will surprise you,

perhaps—not about you, but myself.”

I looked up in astonishment.

“Let me first put up your long, thick hair, and take off your habit, so

soiled and torn. Then you shall sit quietly down there, and I will tell

you what I have to say.”

I allowed her to do as she wished, and obeyed her without reply or

question. She appeared thoughtful and agitated, and I saw there was

something extraordinary on her mind.

When I had, according to her injunction, taken the only arm‐chair there

was in my chamber, Livia seated herself on a stool near me.

“Listen to me, Gina,” she said. “It will not take long for what I have to

say. Do not interrupt me. You are really here before me,” continued she,

passing her hand over my hair in a caressing manner, and looking at me

affectionately. “God has protected you, and I bless him a thousand times

for it. But say if, instead of this, the horror of seeing you disappear

for ever had been reserved for me an hour ago—me who love you more than my

own life—do you know to what the witnesses of this catastrophe would have

attributed it? Do you know what, perhaps, they think now?...”

I blushed in spite of myself, but made a negative sign, as if I did not

comprehend her.

“You shake your head, but you know very well what Lorenzo and Mario would

have thought, and who knows but my father himself, and everybody else?...

Was I not beside you this time also? Did I not bring you ill‐luck?... Did

not every one around you just now have this idea in their minds, and were

they not ready to exclaim, ‘Jettatrice’—‘_Jettatrice_,’ ” repeated she in

a stifled voice—“a name harder to bear than an injury, more difficult to

defy than calumny, it is really on her to whom it is applied, and not

those she approaches, this fatal influence falls!”

“Livia!” I exclaimed, turning red once more, but trying to laugh, “is it

really you, my pious, reasonable sister, who uses such language? The folly

to which you allude has more than once vexed me to tears, and I must

confess I cannot now bear that you should seriously speak to me in such a

way.”

Livia smiled, as she embraced me, and I saw it pleased her to hear me

reply in this manner. But she soon resumed more gravely:

“You know very well, Ginevra, what I think of this myself. Therefore for a

long time I despised this folly, and endeavored to overcome the cruel

impression it left upon me; for,” continued she, her voice trembling with

emotion in spite of herself, “it is a peculiarly hard trial, you may

suppose, to feel your heart full of tenderness, sympathy, and pity for

others, and yet seemingly to bring them danger and misfortune.... For

instance, to extend your arms to a child and see its mother hesitate to

allow you to take it, or even to look at it. But let us change the

subject. I have never alluded to this trial, and, if I speak of it now, it

is not to excite your sympathy, but, on the contrary, to tell you I am no

longer to be pitied. The hour that has just passed was horrible, it is

true, but it put an end to my hesitation and doubt. I see my way clearly

now, and peace has returned to my soul.”

Her eyes, though still full of tears, wore an expression of celestial joy.

I looked at her with astonishment, but did not try to interrupt her. She

continued:

“Gina, my darling sister, you have found your sphere, and I have found

mine. May God grant you all the happiness, yes, all the joy, to be found

in this world! But it will not equal mine. Pity me no longer, I repeat. It

is to me he has given the better part.”

Her voice, her accent, and her looks expressed more than her words. I

understood her, and was seized with strange emotion. Yes, very strange!

and a feeling very different from what might have been supposed.

I loved Livia, and my approaching separation from her filled me with so

much sorrow as to dim my happiness. Now I felt that a barrier even more

insurmountable than distance was to come between us. It was not, however,

affliction on my part, or pity for her, that I experienced. It was—shall I

say it?—an inexplicable feeling of respect and _envy_—a vague,

unreasonable wish to follow her; a mysterious aspiration for something

higher, nobler, and more perfect than wealth, position, rank, and the

_éclat_ so soon to surround me, and more precious than the love itself

that had fallen to my lot!

I remained a long time incapable of making my sister any reply, my eyes,

like hers, fastened on the far‐off horizon, now tinged with the softest

evening hues.

O my God! a ray of the same light fell on us both at that moment; but for

her it was the pure, calm light of the dawn; for me it was like a flash of

lightning which gives one glimpse of the shore, but does not diminish the

darkness of the coming night or the danger of the threatening storm.

To Be Continued.

Anglican Orders.(100) I.

Canon Estcourt’s book is, in all respects, a most remarkable one, and can

hardly fail to make an era in the controversy. It is a monument, not

merely of successful research, but of that intimate acquaintance with a

very complicated and difficult subject which nothing but the assiduous

labor of years can give. It is perfectly calm and judicial both in its

tone and in its conclusions; for learning, like charity, is long‐

suffering. It does not contain, we believe all parties will admit, a

single instance of overstrained or _ad captandum_ argument, whilst moving

with measured pace to its unassailable conclusions. So studiously gentle

has Canon Estcourt been throughout in his language, and so scrupulous in

his choice of weapons, that we can hardly wonder if some of his Catholic

readers are startled as though the trumpet had given an uncertain sound,

and if Anglicans, like the executioner’s victim in the story, hardly know

at first that the fatal blow has been struck.

The scope which Canon Estcourt proposes to himself (p. 3) is to ascertain

the value of Anglican pretensions to orders as judged by the standard of

Catholic theology. Anglicans have professed themselves anxious that the

Holy See should reconsider their case. They insist that the practice of

ordaining converts from the Anglican ministry who aspire to the priesthood

is, upon Catholic principles, inconsistent with any real knowledge of the

history of Anglican ordinations.

Few things, we suppose, would surprise a Catholic more than to find that

the authorities of the church had been pursuing a course in regard to

Anglican orders which, though morally justified by a host of suspicious

circumstances, yet was not in accordance with the real facts of the case.

Still, such a misfortune, however improbable, is not inconceivable. There

is nothing incompatible with the principles of the Catholic faith in the

supposition that the Holy See may have been practically misled in a matter

of historical evidence, where such misleading could involve no

misrepresentation of truth and no fatal mischief. It would have been

otherwise had a formal decision been given upon any point of doctrine, as,

for instance, the validity of this or that form; or, again, if the

decision, though merely practical in its form, yet, like the admission of

Greek orders at Florence, had held an integral portion of church life

dependent upon its correctness.

We think Canon Estcourt has proved that Anglican orders, regarded in the

light of the latest research into their documentary history, are

thoroughly untrustworthy; and that any reconsideration of their case by

the authorities of the church could only result in a confirmation of the

ancient practice. He shows, 1st, that the consecration, under any form, of

Parker’s consecrator, Barlow, is doubtful, and that it is exceedingly

doubtful if the assistance of Bishop Hodgkin at Parker’s consecration

would make up for the inefficiency of the consecrator. 2d. That, although

certain deficiencies in the Anglican form for the priesthood, upon which

various Catholic controversialists have laid stress, are not _in se_

invalidating, yet that, regard being had to the genesis and context of the

form, and to the theology of those who framed and first used it, it cannot

be regarded as an implicit signification of the Catholic doctrines of the

priesthood and the sacrifice—such as a form consisting of the same words

might be, amongst Greeks or Abyssinians—but as an implicit denial of the

same. Thus the Anglican form is substantially different from any form

which the church has accounted as even probable, and is quite

inappropriate for conferring the “_potentiam ordinis_.”

Before proceeding to examine Canon Estcourt’s treatment of the two main

points of the question, the status of Parker’s consecrator, and the value

of the Edwardine form, it will be well to consider an objection that may

be brought against him from the Catholic side. It may be urged that, in

his anxiety to do justice to his opponents, he has allowed them to assume

a better position than they have any right to occupy. Anglicans owe the

assumed assistance of a duly consecrated bishop at Parker’s consecration,

and the assumed use of a form as Catholic as the Edwardine, to the assumed

correctness of the Lambeth _Register_. This document records that on the

17th of December, 1559, Parker was consecrated at Lambeth, according to

the rite of Edward VI., by Barlow, Coverdale, Scory, and Hodgkin. Of

these, Coverdale and Scory had been consecrated by undoubted bishops,

using the Edwardine rite; Hodgkin by an undoubted bishop, using the

Catholic rite. This _Register_ was first produced by Francis Mason in

1616; and even Canon Estcourt, whilst granting the truth of its main

statements, denies that it can be accepted as “an authentic and

contemporaneous account of the facts as they occurred.” On the other hand,

there is a time‐honored account which has long passed current amongst

Catholics, and which still finds able and zealous defenders amongst their

number.(101) According to this account, at a meeting held at the Nag’s

Head inn in Chepeside, Scory alone performed the ceremony upon Parker and

sundry other ordinandi, by laying the Bible upon their head or shoulders,

and saying, “Take thou authority to preach the word of God.” Here,

whatever may be said of the consecrator, the form is confessedly

insufficient.

Canon Estcourt, following Lingard and Tiernay, simply rejects the Nag’s

Head account as controversially worthless, and accepts that given by the

Lambeth _Register_ as substantially correct. We think that he is amply

justified in so doing. Of course, however, each account must stand upon

its own basis, and the rejection of the one does not involve the admission

of the other.

The Nag’s Head Story.

As Canon Estcourt, in his enumeration of sources of evidence (p. 11),

remarks, “A story that has passed from person to person merely by verbal

tradition, even if names are quoted as authority, but without written

testimony, cannot be accepted as evidence, nor allowed to have weight as

an argument, even it considered probable as an historical fact.” Now, it

is notorious that the Nag’s Head story depends merely upon hearsay

testimony, without a particle of documentary evidence. Whatever vague

rumors may have been current, there is no proof that the story ever

assumed a “questionable shape” until F. Holiwood (Sacrobosco) published it

in 1604. Stapleton, one of our most learned and vigorous

controversialists, in a work published only five years after the date

assigned to the Nag’s Head consecration, does not mention it; and,

moreover, says in so many words that the Anglican bishops were consecrated

according to the rite of Edward VI. Neither has Saunders a word of it

among all his well‐merited vituperation of the “Parliament bishops,” in

his _Clavis Davidica_; nor Rischton, the continuator of his _De

Schismate_. These writers certainly lacked neither information nor

courage. It is true that when once the Nag’s Head story was brought out,

controversialists on either side were apt to interpret the expressions of

the earlier Catholic writers as referring to this particular charge; but

when we turn to them, we find nothing more than the general charge of

invalidity.(102)

Dr. Champneys, who wrote in 1616, relates the story upon the authority of

F. Bluett, a prisoner in Wisbech Castle, who said he had it from Mr.

Neale, the eye‐witness. This last‐named person, being at the time Bishop

Bonner’s chaplain, was sent by him, so the story runs, to inhibit Kitchen

of Llandaff from consecrating, and thus witnessed the whole irregular

proceeding. All the threads of tradition—with one exception, which we

shall notice further on—appear to centre in F. Bluett. He told Dr.

Champneys; he told, so says Dr. Champneys, F. Holiwood, who printed the

story, in a condensed form, in 1604. Dr. Kenrick thought he had discovered

from Pitts(103) another mouth‐piece of Neale’s in Neale’s friend, Mr.

Orton; but it is not so. Pitts, in his biographical notice of Neale, after

stating that various particulars, which he gives, are upon the authority

of Orton, proceeds to say of Neale: “This was the very same man who was

sent by Bonner,” etc., emphatically marking off the Nag’s Head story as

not being one of the things he had heard from Orton, though otherwise

sufficiently notorious.

Of Bluett nothing is known, except that he was for a long while prisoner

for the faith, which of course speaks volumes for his honesty. But a

lengthened imprisonment is not unfavorable for delusions, especially of a

religious character. When we come to consider the character of the reputed

first‐hand in the line of tradition, Mr. Thomas Neale, we find ourselves

upon very different ground. If F. Bluett’s lengthy imprisonment is

deservedly reckoned in his favor, what shall we say of a man who was able,

on the accession of Elizabeth, after having been Bishop Bonner’s chaplain,

to take a public professorship in Oxford, and who, on his giving this up,

was in a position to build himself a house opposite Hertford College, long

known by the name of Neale’s Buildings? These facts, admitted on all

hands, sufficiently bear out Anthony à Wood’s account of him: that his

religion “was _more_ Catholic than Protestant,” that he dreaded being

called in question “for his _seldom_ frequenting the church and receiving

the sacrament.” À Wood is certainly not writing with a controversial

purpose, and this is hardly the line that a Protestant depreciation of a

hostile witness would take. The defenders of the Nag’s Head story have had

to meet the objection that Bonner dared not, whilst a prisoner, have taken

the bold step ascribed to him, by an appeal to his notorious fearlessness.

On the other hand, every one admits that Neale was an arrant coward; “of a

timorous nature,” says à Wood; “of a nature marvellously fearful,” says

Pitts. Now, if Bonner showed his courage by inhibiting, what must have

been the courage of the man who ventured into the lion’s den to execute

the inhibition, and stood doggedly by to see how far it was obeyed? Surely

we should have reason to be surprised if, after such an exhibition of

courage, Neale had been afraid to put the matter on paper, or to breathe a

word of it except to F. Bluett.

It has been attempted to establish the Nag’s Head story upon another line

of tradition, independent, not only of Bluett, but of Neale. Mr. Ward, in

his _Nullity of the Protestant Clergy_, when mentioning the well‐known

examination of the Lambeth _Register_, in 1614, by certain Catholic

priests then in confinement, at the request of Archbishop Abbot,

continues: “But Mr. Plowden, yet living, does depose that he had it from

F. Faircloth’s own mouth, with whom he lived many years an intimate

friend, this ensuing answer of F. Faircloth’s to Abbot: My lord, said he,

my father was a Protestant, and kept a shop in Chepeside, and assured me

that himself was present at Parker’s and the four Protestant bishops’

consecration at the Nag’s Head in Chepeside,” etc. This is mere hearsay,

but we confess that we see no grounds for doubting that F. Faircloth made

just the answer attributed to him. He was doubtless a firm believer in the

Nag’s Head story as related by Bluett, and his father, who had been a

shopkeeper in Chepeside, was able to tell him that the Nag’s Head Inn was

no myth; nay, that there had been a meeting of bishops there; that he,

Faircloth senior, had seen them. Who does not know how often and how

honestly ocular evidence for an unimportant item is accepted as evidence

of the whole? If old Faircloth had been able to give any real confirmation

of the story, surely more would have been made of him.

Even if it be admitted that a consecration of some sort did take place at

the Nag’s Head, there is an important discrepancy in the versions given by

Holiwood and Champneys of the Neale and Bluett story, which is fatal to it

as an accurate account of what took place. Holiwood says that Scory

“caused John Jewell to rise up Bishop of Salisbury, and him that was

Robert Horn before to rise up Bishop of Winchester, and so forth with all

the rest.” If this is to be taken as an exact account of what took place,

no specific form at all was used; and F. Fitzsimon follows to precisely

the same effect: “Scory orders them all to kneel down; then, taking the

hand of Parker, says, ‘Rise, Lord Bishop of Canterbury’; in like manner to

Grindal, ‘Rise, Lord Bishop of London,’ ” etc. But, according to Dr.

Champneys, “Having the Bible in his hand, they all kneeling before him, he

laid it upon every one of their heads or shoulders, saying, ‘Take thou

authority to preach the word of God sincerely’ ”—a very distinct form

indeed, however invalid.

We reject, then, the Nag’s Head story, 1st, as lacking all but hearsay

evidence, and hearsay evidence is at the command of any cause; 2d, as

exhibiting various notes of intrinsic improbability; 3d, as wholly

irrelevant, in the present aspect of the controversy, to the question of

Anglican orders. It is irrelevant, because, whatever was or was not done

at the Nag’s Head, it is quite clear that the parties concerned, the

government, and the bishops were no more satisfied with it than Catholics

would have been, but continued to move for Parker’s consecration precisely

as if nothing had been done. At the same time, we protest against the

notion that the Nag’s Head story was a gratuitous lie. For, first, it is

admitted that the bishops did meet at this identical inn for purposes

convivial or otherwise, and to such meeting—viz., the confirmation

dinner—both Fuller and Heylin, Strype and Collier, trace the story.(104)

Secondly, the well‐known disbelief in orders prevailing amongst the

Protestant party; their repeatedly shrinking from the Catholic challenge

to produce their proofs; their insistence, when speaking of their

episcopacy, that ordination by a priest was valid, when taken together,

justified Catholics in the growing suspicion that there was a terrible

flaw somewhere, an irregularity which even an Elizabethan conscience

stickled at. No one who reflects upon the genuine horror and contempt

which the sight of the hen‐pecked bishops of England, with their woman‐

pope, excited throughout Christendom, can regard the Nag’s Head story as

an extravagant or gratuitous outcome of Catholic imagination.

The principal interest of the fable lies in the fact that it fairly got

through the Anglican skin, and forced the production of the Lambeth

_Register_. All the denials of their orders by controversialists like the

Jesuit Harding, all Saunders’s taunts about petticoat government, affected

them no whit. Orthodoxy and honesty might go to the winds, but one virtue

they did set store by, and that was Christian gravity; and this tavern‐

story so stung them that they could keep their counsel no longer.

The Lambeth Register.

We shall now proceed, taking Canon Estcourt as our guide, to examine, in

chronological order, the various documents connected with Parker’s

consecration.

On the 19th of July, 1559, Elizabeth issued the _congé d’elire_ to the

Chapter of Canterbury, that see having been just seven months vacant after

the death of Cardinal Pole. On the 9th of August the election took place.

September 9, a royal commission was issued for the confirmation and

consecration of Parker, to whom letters‐patent of the same date were

addressed. The commission was addressed to Tonstall of Durham, Bourne of

Bath and Wells, Pole of Peterborough, and Kitchen of Llandaff, being four

out of the five remaining Catholic bishops, Turberville of Exeter being

the only one omitted. But joined with the above four were the returned

refugees, Barlow and Scory. Of the four Catholic bishops, the first three

positively refused to consecrate, and were shortly after deprived. Kitchen

of Llandaff, unfaithful though he was, somehow managed to get out of it;

perhaps on the score of his weak sight—the excuse attributed to him in the

Nag’s Head story.

Next in order comes a paper yet remaining in the State Paper Office, which

may be called the programme of the consecration. Canon Estcourt gives a

fac‐simile. It details the various steps to be taken for the consecration

of Parker, and contains marginal notes in the handwritings of Cecil and

Parker. Cecil’s notes are significant. Upon the direction in the text, in

accordance with a statute of Henry VIII., that application should be made

for consecration to some other archbishop within the king’s dominions, or,

in default of him, to four other bishops, he remarks: “There is no archb.

nor iiij bishopps to be had; wherefore _quærendum_, etc.” Upon the

direction that King Edward’s ordinal be used, he remarks: “This booke is

not established by parlement.”

The second commission, December 6, 1559, was addressed to Kitchen, Barlow,

Scory, Coverdale; Hodgkin, the Suffragan of Bedford; Salisbury, Suffragan

of Thetford; and Bale, who had been Bishop of Ossory. It concludes with

the following dispensing clause: “Natheless supplying by our supreme royal

authority of our proper motion and assured knowledge, if there be or shall

be aught wanting (in those things which, according to our aforegiven

mandate, shall be done by you, or any of you, for performing the

aforesaid) of what is requisite or necessary, whether according to the

statutes of this our realm or the laws of the church, the quality of the

times and the pressure of circumstances demanding it.” Canon Estcourt

produces a fac‐simile, “taken from the original draft extant in the Public

Record Office, with the autograph signatures of the civilians giving their

opinion that the commission ‘in the form pennyd’ may be lawfully acted

on.”

The Lambeth _Register_ testifies that, in accordance with the commission,

“four of those named—viz., Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkin—did, on

the 9th of December, confirm Parker in Bow Church, the elect appearing by

his proxy, Nicholas Bullingham; and that, on the 17th, the same four

bishops performed the ceremony of consecration in accordance, save in one

particular, with the ritual of Edward VI. We thus summarize Canon

Estcourt’s summary of the reasons for giving credence to the above facts

recorded by the _Register_: 1. The official minute with Cecil’s and

Parker’s notes. It was never used in the controversy until referred to by

Lingard. It can be no forgery, for the forger would not have been such a

fool as to forge Cecil’s remarks as to the illegality of the proceeding.

This document shows the intention of the parties concerned to proceed as

the _Register_ says they did proceed. 2. The letters‐patent issuing the

commission of December 6, 1559, are enrolled in Chancery on the patent‐

rolls, the highest official test of genuineness. The original draft of the

commission is still preserved in the State Paper Office, with Cecil’s

writing on it, and the autograph signatures of the civilians. This paper

has never been produced in the controversy, and no forger would have taken

such useless trouble. 3. In the recently discovered diary of Henry Machyn,

a merchant tailor in London, we find the following entries: The xxiii day

of June [1559] were elected vi new Byshopes com from beyond the sea,

master Parker Bysshope of Canturbere, master Gryndalle Bysshope of London,

docthur Score Bysshope of Harfford, Barlow [of] Chechastur, doctur Bylle

of Salysbere, doctor Cokes of Norwyche.”

... Upper part of page burnt away.

“Parker electyd bishope of Canterbere.”

“The xvii day of Desember was the new byshope of [Canterbury] doctur

Parker, was mad ther at Lambeth.”

“The xx day of Desember afornon, was Sant Thomas evyn, my lord of

Canturbere whent to Bow Chyrche, and ther wher v nuw byshopes mad.”

The genuineness of these entries is beyond all suspicion. Had they been

made for a controversial purpose, they would have been used earlier in the

controversy. Although the diary contains various inaccuracies—_e.g._, the

date assigned to Parker’s election, which is before the real date of his

_congé d’elire_, and the loose use of the term “mad,” which, in regard to

the bishops at Bow Church, should stand for confirmation, and in Parker’s

case for consecration—still, it is evidence that on the date given in the

_Register_ something was done to Parker which could be described as “being

made bishop.” Bow Church was the regular place for confirmation, Lambeth

for consecration. The fact that the five, or rather six, bishops were

consecrated on S. Thomas’s day, on the eve of which they had been

confirmed, although this last was at Lambeth, and not at Bow Church, makes

the confusion in their case not unnatural.

4. There is a detailed memorandum of the consecration, in a contemporary

hand, preserved among the MSS. of Foxe, who died in 1587, “probably nearly

of the same age as the _Register_ itself, perhaps even older”—_i.e._,

older than the _Register_ in the condition in which we now possess it.

This document has been but recently introduced into the controversy, and

will be again appealed to when the actual condition of the _Register_ is

under consideration.

5. Stapleton’s assertion that “the Bishoppes were ordered, not according

to the acte 28 (25) H. VIII., but according to an acte of Edw. VI.,

repealed by Queen Mary, and not revived in the first year of Q. Eliz.”

6. Act 8 Eliz., cap. 1, not only lays down the law for the future, but

enacts that all acts done “about a confirmation or consecration, in virtue

of the queen’s letters‐patent, _were_ good and perfect; and that all

persons consecrated bishops according to the order of 5 and 6 Edward VI.

_were_ rightly made and consecrated.” This is equivalent to an assertion

that such consecration had actually taken place.

In addition to these proofs, there are various incidental references to

Parker’s consecration on the 17th in contemporary works and letters, which

have been carefully collected by Mr. Bailey in his _Defensio_, p. 19.

Altogether, there is no gainsaying the evidence for the substantial

correctness of the Lambeth _Register_. At the same time, Canon Estcourt

shows, we think, conclusively that the existing Lambeth MS., as we have

it, is not the original record of what took place, but rather a glossed

version thereof, in which certain important and awkward facts are, without

being denied, carefully suppressed. Besides the Lambeth MS., there are two

others; one in the State Paper Office, the other in Corpus Christi

College, Cambridge. The former, to judge by its corrections, would seem to

have been a rough draft, and was probably submitted to Cecil for approval

before the registration. Canon Estcourt thinks that the Cambridge MS. was

a transcript from that in the State Paper Office, inasmuch as they agree

in giving the form, “_Accipe Spiritum Sanctum_,” in Latin, whereas that of

Lambeth has it in English. Because of this and other variations, neither

of these MSS. can be regarded as a transcript from that of Lambeth, or as

tending to authenticate its present condition.

Canon Estcourt prints the Foxe MS., of which we have spoken, side by side

with the Lambeth _Register_; and we see that, whilst in the former Barlow

is distinctly stated to have been the consecrator, and the rite used that

of Edward VI., the latter makes no distinction between Barlow and the

other three, and makes no reference whatever to the ordinal of Edward VI.

Whether the Foxe MS. is a commentary upon the _Register_ or upon the rough

draft, or, as Canon Estcourt is inclined to think, is taken from the

_Register_ as it originally stood, it is, anyhow, the testimony of a

contemporary ally of the parties concerned to the existence of important

circumstances which the existing _Register_ carefully suppresses.

It is difficult for us—as, indeed, it was for Catholics of the generation

immediately succeeding that of Elizabeth’s accession—to understand the

nervous anxiety that possessed the Protestant party lest they should give

their enemies the slightest legal pretext against them. The completeness

of Elizabeth’s triumph naturally tended to obliterate, in the minds of her

victims, the precarious condition of parties in the beginning of her

reign. There is, however, ample testimony that this nervousness did exist.

When Horne, the Elizabethan Bishop of Winchester, tendered Bonner, a

prisoner in the Marshalsea, the oath of supremacy, the latter demurred, on

the ground that Horne was no bishop in the eye of the law, forasmuch as he

had been consecrated according to the ordinal of Edward VI.—which had

never been legalized after its proscription, 1 Mary, sess. 2, c. 2—and had

also contravened the statute 25 Henry VIII., c. 20, requiring as

consecrators either an archbishop and two bishops or four bishops. As it

was notorious that Horne was consecrated by Parker and two other bishops,

this last count was understood as tantamount to saying that Parker was not

legally archbishop, on the ground that, of the bishops concerned in that

ceremony, three had been deprived and the fourth deposed. This bold plea

that, to use the words of one of Cecil’s correspondents, quoted by Canon

Estcourt, p. 119, “there was never a lawful bishop in England, so

astonished a great number of the best learned that yet they knew not what

to answer him; and when it was determined he should have suffered, he is

remitted to the place from whence he came, and no more said unto him.”

After this we can understand the persistency with which controversialists

like Jewel, who were in the secret, shirked the challenge, so frequently

addressed them by Catholics, to show the steps of their succession.

It is highly probable that the Protestant party, in the anxiety caused by

Bonner’s onslaught, so far tampered with the _Register_ as to gloss over

the vulnerable points. It is noteworthy that this same paper of Foxe’s

contains a summary upon Bonner’s case, showing the connection in the

author’s mind. It would be unreasonable to admit the mere implication of

the _Register_, that there was no distinction of consecrator and

assistants, against the explicit statement of the Foxe MS.

The one point in which Parker’s consecration, according both to the

Lambeth _Register_ and to the Foxe MS., deflected from the Edwardine

ordinal was this: that whilst the latter prescribes that the consecrator

alone should hold his hands upon the elect’s head during the prayer of

consecration, all four bishops are said to have held their hands upon

Parker’s head.

But, as Canon Estcourt observes, we are not to suppose that, in acting as

they did, Barlow and the others had devised something new and unknown

before, and which therefore requires exceptional treatment. On the

contrary, they were following the rubric of the Exeter Pontifical, which

in this point agrees with the Roman rite.

Supposing, then, Barlow and his companions to stand in the relation of

consecrator and assistants, would the incapacity, from want of

consecration, of the consecrator be supplied by the capacity of an

assistant? Mr. Haddan appeals triumphantly to Martène’s dictum that “the

bishops who assist are for certain not merely witnesses but co‐

operators.”(105) But this goes but a little way. It is admitted on all

hands that the assistants are something more than mere witnesses, although

they emphatically fulfil that office. They are at least co‐operators by

the official signification of their approval and support. Those who held

up the arms of Moses did something more than witness to the marvels

wrought by those up‐lifted hands. The comparatively small number of

theologians who maintain the necessity of three bishops for a valid

consecration are the only ones who maintain that the assistants are,

properly speaking, consecrators. Anyhow, the action must be regarded as

taking place _per modum unius_, for the _opus_ is one, not manifold; but

once annihilate the principal consecrator, and the _ratio_ by which the

assistants coalesce _in unum opus_ is gone. If we may be forgiven a homely

phrase in connection with a solemn subject, Tom is doing nothing;

therefore those who are merely operative in virtue of their assistance of

him are merely helping him to do nothing. We do not know any theologian

who has said in so many words, or whose theory requires, that the

assistant should be held as compensating for the inefficiency of the

consecrator. Canon Estcourt, with characteristic moderation, urges that it

is at least probable that no such compensation could take place, and

therefore, according to Catholic principles, the safer side would have to

be taken, and the ceremony repeated.

It is, then, of vital importance to the Anglican cause that there should

be no doubt whatever about Barlow’s consecration. Canon Estcourt does not

deny that it is probable he may have been consecrated. He does not pretend

to do more than show that there are the gravest reasons for doubting the

fact of his consecration. We wish to examine fairly the _momenta_ on both

sides.

Barlow’s Status.

William Barlow had been professed as an Augustinian Canon of S. Osith’s

Priory, in Essex. He had been early distinguished as the _protégé_ and

obsequious servant of Anne Boleyn. “In October, 1534, he was sent as

ambassador into Scotland, in conjunction with Thomas Holcroft, in order to

persuade King James to renounce the Pope.”(106) In the early part of the

next year, he was again in Scotland, “in company with Lord William Howard,

who conveyed the garter to King James”; and January 22, 1536, for the

third time went to Scotland, “on a joint embassy, again with Lord William

Howard.” He had been elected to the bishopric of S. Asaph on the 16th, six

days before. He was confirmed by proxy either on the 22d or the 23d of

February. He remained in Scotland during February and March, and seems to

have left in the beginning of April. On the 10th of April, Barlow was

elected Bishop of S. David’s, and on the 21st was confirmed in person in

Bow Church. “The archbishop’s certificate of the confirmation is dated on

the same day, but makes no mention of consecration, nor is the fact

recited, as usual, in the grant of temporalities which was issued on the

26th.” On the 27th, a summons to Parliament is sent: “Reverendo in Christo

Patri W. Menevensi Episcopo.” On the 1st of May, he is installed at S.

David’s, and before the 13th is writing a joint letter, with Lord William

Howard, from Edinborough, addressed to the king and Cromwell, in which he

signs himself Willmŭs Menev, the style of Bishop of S. David’s. He calls

himself and is called Bishop of S. David’s on and after April 25, but not

before. On this account, several of the defenders of his consecration have

plausibly conjectured that he was consecrated on April 25, “which,” Mr.

Haddan tells us, “was a Sunday, and when he was certainly in London.” Mr.

Haddan himself, however, prefers to follow the order of precedence in the

House of Lords and in the Upper House of Convocation, which places Barlow

_after_ the Bishops of Chichester and Norwich, who were consecrated, the

latter certainly, the former probably, upon June 11, 1536. He assigns June

11 as the date of Barlow’s consecration. Lord William Howard left

Edinburgh for England on or before May 23, and Barlow writes to Cromwell

on that same day that he “has protracted his taryaunce somewhat after my

lord’s departure,” “for a daye or twayne,” at the request of the Queen of

Scots. From this Mr. Haddan concludes that on June 11, when a consecration

was known to have taken place, he was in London. Canon Estcourt, however,

has brought to light a warrant of Cromwell’s to the Garter king‐at‐arms,

who had accompanied the embassy, and did not return until June 12, on

which day he presented himself to Cromwell. The warrant is dated June 12.

The king‐at‐arms would doubtless have returned, when the embassy was at an

end, with Lord William Howard, and therefore before Barlow. But we are not

left to conjecture; the warrant speaks of Barlow as “the bishopp then

elect of S. Asaph, now elect of S. David’s.” Therefore, on the 12th, he

was still unconsecrated.

Barlow’s episcopal register is wanting both at S. David’s, and at Bath and

Wells (to which last he was translated in 1541); and at S. Asaph’s no

register at all exists for the period when he nominally held the see.(107)

The next consecration of which we have any record—after the 12th of June,

when we know Barlow was unconsecrated—took place on July 2; but on June

30, Barlow took his seat in the House of Lords, and from that time acts

and is treated as though he lacked nothing of the episcopal status.

We are now in a position to collect and estimate the momenta for and

against Barlow’s consecration. On behalf of his consecration, it is urged,

1st, that it “must be regarded as certain until it can be disproved”;(108)

for no adequate motive can be assigned for the omission of a ceremony

which could not be omitted without incurring severe penalties, to which

the archbishop who neglected to consecrate would be also subject. 2d. That

he was acknowledged, both by Parliament and by his brother bishops, to be

in all respects a bishop after June 30, 1530, when he took his seat in the

House of Lords; and that no syllable was breathed against his

consecration, either by friend or foe, from that date until Dr. Champneys

first questioned it in 1614, forty‐eight years after his death, and eighty

from the commencement of his episcopate. 3d. The fact that his

consecration is not recorded in the archiepiscopal register is not much to

the purpose, since out of thirty‐six consecrations, in Cranmer’s time

eight exclusive of Barlow’s, in his predecessor, Warham’s, time, six out

of twenty‐six are not entered.(109) 4th. His episcopal acts respecting the

property of his sees would have been legally invalid in default of

consecration; but although these acts were legally disputed, no one

suggested the flaw of non‐consecration.

On the other hand, it must be remembered that the question is really not

whether Barlow’s consecration can be “disproved,” but whether, in spite of

what may be legitimately urged in its behalf, there are not sufficient

grounds for suspecting that it never took place. 1. Neither Barlow nor

Cranmer believed in consecration. In their answers to the “questions on

the sacraments” which were submitted to the king, they say that, for

making a bishop, “election or appointing thereto is sufficient.” Barlow,

in a sermon delivered by him at S. David’s, November 12, 1536, is charged

with having said: “If the king’s gr., being supreme head of the Church of

England, did chuse, denominate, and elect any layman, being learned, to be

a bishop, that he so chosen, without mention being made of any orders,

should be as good a bishop as he is or the best in England.” 2. This

doctrine was undoubtedly favored by the king; for in another part of this

same paper on the sacraments, where the bishops are attempting to take a

rather more Catholic line, we have notes in the king’s handwriting to this

effect. The bishops having answered, “Making of bishopes hath twoo partes,

appointment and ordering,” his remark is, “Where is this distinction

fonde?” and they continuing, “Appoyntament, whiche the appostels by

necessyte made by common election, and sometimes by their owne several

assignment, could not then be doon by Christen princes, bicause at that

time they were not; and nowe at these days appertayneth to Christen

princes and rulers;” the king’s note is: “Now sins you confesse that the

appostylles did occupate the won part, whych now you confesse belongyth to

princes, how can you prove that orderyng is wonly committed to you

bysshopes?”

3. Canon Estcourt (p. 69) shows that the other side has no right to assume

that Barlow and Cranmer would have incurred any penalties by the _mere

pretermission_ of consecration; for the act 25 Henry VIII., cap. 20,

declares: “If any archbishop shall _refuse_ or do not confirm, invest, and

consecrate, he shall incur a præmunire”; and there is no special mention

of the bishop elect among the persons liable to penalties, the clause

running in general words: if “any person admit or execute any censures,

etc., or other process or act to the contrary or let of due execution of

the act.”

The notion that the leases and other episcopal acts connected with

diocesan property would not be legally valid in default of consecration is

a gratuitous assumption. Certainly neither Mr. Haddan nor Mr. Bailey has

attempted to produce any evidence. What the law really takes cognizance of

in such questions is the possession of the temporalities, an indisputable

right to which is given by the writ of restitution.

The recognition of Parliament, upon which so much stress has been laid,

cannot be regarded as any proof of consecration, since it naturally and

inevitably ensued upon the issue of this same writ. This is sufficiently

proved by the fact that Parliament summoned Barlow to take his seat, and

gave him his full episcopal title, when, as has been shown above, he

certainly was not consecrated. Doubtless some of the more zealous of the

Catholic party might have made a disturbance had they realized the

omission; but, as Canon Estcourt observes (p. 78), Gardiner was absent as

ambassador in Paris during the whole of 1536 and 1537.

As to Cranmer’s register, it is true that it was very carelessly kept; but

of the nine unrecorded consecrations, Barlow’s would be the only one for

which no collateral evidence whatever can be furnished. No document

recites it, and every date that has been as yet conjectured for it has

been exploded. Barlow’s contemporary, Foxe, in his record of the Lambeth

consecration, whilst specifying accurately the dates of the consecration

of the other bishops engaged, is only able to say of Barlow that he was

consecrated “tempore Henrici VIII.”

Canon Estcourt points out that although there was no regular register kept

at S. David’s—and we know that the breviaries and martyrologies which

contained records of episcopal succession were burnt in the next reign as

superstitious—yet that it is sufficiently odd that all the chapter books

have been lost, and that the _Liber Computi_, still extant, has a break in

it for several years before 1539.

But this is not all. Canon Estcourt has found out, on examining the

original document first printed by Mason as the restitution to Barlow of

the temporalities of S. David’s “out of the Rolls Chapel in Chancery,”

that the enrolment had really been made in the office of the exchequer, as

though the matter were purely secular, instead of on the patent rolls in

chancery. Then, on examining the original form—which Mason reproduced

imperfectly, so as to conceal its real character—and comparing it with the

normal writ of restitution, it turns out to be, no writ of restitution,

but “a grant of the custody of temporalities on account of the vacancy of

the see,” with the extraordinary addition of “to hold to him and his

assigns during his life.” These grants of the custody of the temporalities

of a diocese which had accrued during a vacancy were common enough. The

peculiarity of Barlow’s grant is that it is a grant of custody made to do

duty for a writ of restitution. The grant of custody was ordinarily made

as a preliminary to the writ of restitution. No limit was assigned to it,

but it naturally and necessarily merged in the restitution, of which it

was a gracious foretaste. In the case of Cranmer, indeed, as Canon

Estcourt points out, the grant of custody was made after he had received

the restitution of the temporalities in the usual form; but the grant is

carefully limited to the profits accruing from the commencement of the

vacancy to the date of restitution. Barlow’s grant is for life, and, by

anticipating in its completeness all that the writ of restitution could

give, it would preclude the crown from making restitution in the proper

form without a surrender of the grant of custody. Before consecration, a

bishop cannot sue out a writ of restitution, as the act requires, but the

king sometimes _ex gratia_ allowed it; the form, however, of such

indulgence is well known, and is very different from that of the document

in question.(110)

The form actually chosen “may be supposed to have saved the necessity of

obtaining either the archbishop’s mandate or the archdeacon’s commission”;

in fact, to have made Barlow free of his see at once without any official

formalities, and to “secure him in the enjoyment of the temporalities of

the see, whether his character of bishop was perfected spiritually or

not.”

“The effect of the grant, both in Barlow’s own mind and in official

quarters, may be seen from what followed. The next day a writ of summons

to the House of Lords was issued, and Barlow himself immediately assumed

the style and title of bishop.” “It seems highly probable that this

special and novel form was deliberately adopted as suiting the views of

all parties, and being highly favorable to any ulterior designs which the

king might have upon the temporalities of the church at large.”

It must be remembered, too, that many of the arguments tending to show the

unlikelihood of the omission, such as its unprecedented character, the

want of apparent motive, or, again, the exceedingly imperfect character of

the registration, tend to diminish the chances of detection. True, Barlow

was not a man inclined to sacrifice much to his convictions; but he had a

hearty hatred for sacerdotalism, a strong sense of humor, and, if we judge

from his sermon quoted above, the impudence, if not the courage, of his

opinions. A competitor for a tyrant’s favor must always risk something to

keep a front place, and on this point he knew how the king was minded.

Altogether, he would seem to be by no means an unlikely man to have played

the part assigned to him.

We conceive that these momenta do amply justify grave suspicions of

Barlow’s consecration, and consequently the repetition of any rites

depending for their validity upon his consecration.

Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XIII.

By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”

F. Chevreuse had no time to linger in the house of mourning; for it was

his duty to inform Mr. Schöninger at once of his deliverance. But that it

was necessary to guard the unhappy mother from any chance of hearing the

news too abruptly, even the claims of a supreme misfortune like hers could

not have been allowed to take precedence of a wrong so deep as that from

which he had suffered. After he was informed, silence would, of course, be

impossible; for when Mr. Schöninger knew, the whole world must know.

Until the evening before, the priest had not permitted himself even to

guess what might be the contents of the package entrusted to his charge.

Humanly speaking, he knew nothing. Whatever he might have learned by

virtue of his sacred office was hidden in the bosom of God; not even in

his most secret thoughts did he suffer his mind to dwell upon it. The only

action he had taken in the matter was such as might have seemed necessary

to one who had no more than a faint suspicion of what was about to take

place; he had requested F. O’Donovan to be with him that day, and he had

made sure that Mrs. Gerald should have the only preparation possible for

whatever might threaten her, in a well‐made communion.

For her sake he had opened the package the evening before, in order to be

able to put Honora Pembroke on her guard. He did not read the confession

to her, nor did he read it himself, but glanced over the letter which

Annette had enclosed to him.

“A great misfortune is about to fall upon our dear friend,” he said, “and

I trust to your piety and discretion to do what you can for her. Her son

will not return home. He has fled from the country, and she may never see

him again. To‐morrow she will know all, and the world will know all. Mr.

Schöninger, who has been unjustly accused and condemned, will be released.

You must be strong and watchful. See that nothing disturbs her tonight, or

interferes with her making a good communion. Do not think of yourself, but

of her. There is not much to do; perhaps there will be nothing to do, but

simply to stand guard and see that nothing comes near to trouble her mind,

and to have her at home in the morning at ten o’clock, and without

visitors.”

“It will kill her!” said Honora when she could speak. “It will kill her!”

F. Chevreuse sighed. “I think it will; but there is no help for it.

Justice must be done.”

It had indeed killed her, and more quickly, therefore more mercifully,

than they had anticipated. And now F. Chevreuse, having been the messenger

of disgrace and desolation, had to be the messenger of joy.

He wiped away resolutely the tears that started at sight of that pitiful

victim of maternal love. “To‐day, at least,” he said, “I must have no

feeling. I must do my duty faithfully, and only my duty. I cannot allow

myself to sympathize with the slayer and the slain in the same hour.”

It was very hard for such a man not to sympathize with a true joy or

sorrow whenever it came within his ken—him to whose lips, even in moments

of care or sadness, the frank laugh of a child would bring a smile, and to

whose eyes, even in moments of joy, the sorrow of a stranger would call

the sudden moisture. But the very excess, and, still more, the contrast,

of these contending emotions enabled him to hold himself in a sort of

equilibrium. Like one who walks a rough path carrying a cup filled to the

brim, and looks not to right nor left, lest he should lose its contents,

so F. Chevreuse carried his full heart, and would not yield to any emotion

till his work was done.

When he entered the corridor leading to Mr. Schöninger’s cell, he was

somewhat surprised at meeting Mr. Schöninger’s lawyer coming out. The

surprise was mutual, but they merely saluted each other, and passed on.

“He doesn’t give up yet,” remarked the turnkey confidentially. “His lawyer

comes every little while, and the warden has given orders that they shall

talk without a guard. He, the lawyer, is the only person who can talk

alone with a convict, except the chaplain, and, of course, you, sir!”

F. Chevreuse had self‐possession enough to bow his acknowledgments. “But I

wish to enter the cell this morning,” he said; “I don’t want to talk

through the bars; and I wish to enter alone.”

The man looked embarrassed.

There was a limit even to the privileges of F. Chevreuse.

“You can lock me in with him, and go away,” the priest said, impatient of

delay. “I will be responsible for you this time. I looked for the warden,

but he is not about the house. Let me go in, and, as soon as the warden

returns, say I wish to see him.”

The guard yielded, though unwillingly. There was something imperative in

the priest’s manner which he did not venture to resist. Moreover, F.

Chevreuse was so well known as a man who scrupulously upheld legitimate

authority, and obeyed to the letter the regulations of any establishment

he might enter, that it was evident there must be some urgent reason when

he would set a rule aside.

The bolts were drawn back, the door grated on its hinges, and the priest

stepped into the cell. He scarcely took any notice of the prisoner, who

sat looking at him something as a newly‐caged lion may look when first his

keeper ventures into the cage, but watched the guard while he locked the

door again, and listened to the sound of his retreating steps as they

echoed along the corridor.

The prisoner’s voice, deep and harsh, demanded his attention before he

turned to him. “May I ask, sir, the meaning of this intrusion?”

F. Chevreuse almost started at the sound. His mind had been so occupied by

sorrowful and pathetic images, and he had, moreover, so associated Mr.

Schöninger with thoughts of joy and freedom, that the concentrated

bitterness of those tones smote him discordantly. He had for the time

forgotten that the prisoner could not even suspect that his visitor was

one who brought good tidings. His surprise was so great, therefore, at

this repelling question, that for a moment he looked at the speaker

attentively without replying, and the look itself held him yet a moment

longer silent.

Mr. Schöninger had changed terribly. It was as though you should take some

marble statue of a superb heathen deity, and carve down the contours,

sharpen the lines without changing them, carefully, with mallet and

chisel, gnaw away the flesh from muscle and bone, and cut in the lines of

anger, impatience, and hatred, and of an intense and corroding bitterness.

Then, if the statue could be made hollow, and filled with a fire which

should glow through the thin casing till it seemed at times on the point

of melting it quite, and bursting out in a destroying flame, you would

have some semblance of what this man had become after seven months of

imprisonment.

F. Chevreuse was terrified. “Mr. Schöninger!” he exclaimed, “I have come

to bring you liberty. Do not look so at me! Try to forgive the wrong that

has been done you. All shall be righted. The criminal has confessed, and

you are to go free as soon as the necessary steps shall be taken.”

Not a gleam of pleasure softened the prisoner’s face. Only his brows

darkened over the piercing eyes he fixed on his visitor. “So Mr. Benton

has betrayed me!” he said in a low voice that expressed more of rage and

threatening than any outcry could have done.

“I do not know anything of your lawyer, nor have any communication with

him,” the priest replied. “I do not know what you mean by betrayal. I

repeat, I have come to bring you good news. Do not you understand?” He

began to fear that Mr. Schöninger had lost his reason. “Your innocence is

established. You are known, or will at once be known, to have been greatly

wronged.”

“It is a trick!” the prisoner exclaimed passionately. “Benton has either

betrayed me or bungled, and you think to offer me as a gift—for which I am

to be grateful, and merciful too—what I have won for myself. I will not

take liberty from your hands!” He started up, and, with a gesture of the

hand, seemed to fling the priest’s offer from him. “Do you fancy, sir,

that I have been idle here? Does a man sleep in hell? Did you fancy that I

was going to wait for justice to come to me? No! I was shut into a cage;

but I am not the sort of animal who can be tamed and made to play tricks

for my keeper. I have been busy while the world forgot me.”

“I did not forget you,” hastily interposed the priest. “And others also

have tried.”

“Tried!” echoed the prisoner scornfully. “Sir, when a clay‐bank falls on a

poor workman, everybody runs to the rescue. Not a minute is lost. People

rush in haste to dig him out before he is dead. That you call humanity.

You do not even dignify it by the name of charity. A man would be a brute

to do otherwise than help in such a case. But here am I, overwhelmed with

a mountain of wrong and disgrace, shut in a cage that is changing me into

a madman, and people pause to consider; they are politic, they are careful

not to soil their fingers or inconvenience their friends in giving me

liberty. I am a Jew, and, therefore, out of the pale of your charity. But,

Jew though I am, priest, I take the side of the Christ you pretend to

adore against your accursed and hypocritical Christians. If your doctrines

were true, still I am a better Christian than any of those who have

believed me guilty.”

He seemed to have quite forgotten the priest’s errand, or not to have

understood what it meant.

“What you say may be all true,” F. Chevreuse replied calmly. “But that can

be thought of another time. You have something more pleasant to dwell on

now. Have you understood my errand here?”

In spite of the deep and wearing excitement under which he labored, Mr.

Schöninger perceived that his visitor was trying to soothe him, and was

somewhat alarmed at his violence. He controlled himself, therefore, and,

as much from physical weakness as from a desire to appear self‐possessed,

resumed his seat, motioning his visitor to another.

“From the time when Annette Ferrier came here and begged me to fly, I have

known whose place I was occupying,” he said in measured tones, his gaze

fixed steadily upon the priest’s face. “I sent for my lawyer the next

morning, and put him on the track. I had not enough proof to prevent the

fellow going away; but his every step has been followed. I know where he

stopped in London and in Paris; and a despatch from Rome has come saying

he is there. To‐morrow morning an answer will be sent to that telegram,

ordering his arrest.”

F. Chevreuse was confounded. For a moment he knew not what to say.

“I think you will perceive that I do not need your assistance, sir,” Mr.

Schöninger continued haughtily. “The power is in my hands, and I shall use

it as seems to me best.”

“And so,” said the priest, recovering his speech, “you are willing, from

pride and a desire for revenge, to stay here weeks, perhaps months,

longer, and await the result of another trial, rather than accept the

tardy justice which that unhappy man offers you, not knowing that you

suspected him, and rather than permit me to be the medium of his

reparation! I can make great allowances for the effect which your terrible

wrongs and sufferings must necessarily have produced on your mind; but I

did not expect to see you show a needless acrimony. I did not think that

you would wish to strike down a man, even one who had injured you, in

order to take violently what he offers you with an open hand, not knowing,

remember, that you have the power to compel him.”

Mr. Schöninger still looked steadfastly at his companion, but with a

changed expression. He looked no longer suspicious, but uncomprehending.

Indeed, his mind was so preoccupied and excited that he had only half

listened to the priest’s communication, and the only impression he had

received was that Lawrence Gerald’s friends, knowing his danger, were

trying to temporize, and that, while securing his escape, they would

obtain the release of his substitute by some quibble of the law. He was

not sufficiently recollected to perceive, what he would at any other time

have acknowledged, that F. Chevreuse was not the man to lend himself to

such a plot in any case, still less in this.

“Four weeks ago,” the priest resumed, “Lawrence Gerald and his wife gave

me a packet which was to be opened and acted on to‐day. They were going

away for a little journey, they said. I did not know where they were

going, and I do not know, nor wish to know, where they are. I will not

interfere with the course of the law, nor shield any offender from

justice, especially at the cost of the innocent. But since, in this case,

I have been the sufferer by that crime, I claim the right to forgive, and

to wish, at least, that the criminal, whoever he may be, should be left to

the stings of his own conscience. I would have said the same for you had I

ever believed you guilty. That packet contains Lawrence Gerald’s

confession. Only two persons have been allowed to know it before you,

besides the two who had to prepare them for the reception of such news.

The mothers had a right prior even to yours, and I needed two assistants.

Now, whatever you may do, my duty is the same. I have to place that

confession in the hands of the authorities, and testify that I received it

from Lawrence Gerald and his wife, and that I signed without reading it.

Then my work will be done. I do not know much of the technicalities of the

law, nor what delays may be necessary; but I presume your further

detention will be short and merely nominal.”

He paused, but Mr. Schöninger made no reply: he only sat and listened, and

looked attentively at the speaker.

“If I could rejoice at anything, I should rejoice at your release from

this wretched place, and from the still more wretched charge that was laid

on you,” F. Chevreuse continued; “but I have witnessed too much sorrow to

be able to say more than God speed you.”

Mr. Schöninger did not appear to have heard the last words. He stood up

and drew in a strong breath, and shivered all through. The thought that it

was to be for him no slow fight for liberty, but that liberty was at the

threshold, had at length entered his mind.

“Let me out of here!” he exclaimed, almost gasping. “I cannot breathe!

Open the door. You cannot hold me any longer. Open the door, sir!” he

cried to the warden, who stood outside, looking at him in astonishment.

F. Chevreuse began a hasty explanation to the officer; but the prisoner

seized the bars of the door in his delirious impatience, and tried to

wring them from their places.

“Seven months in a cage!” he exclaimed. “I cannot bear it another hour.

Open the door, I say! Why do you stand there talking?”

“With all my heart, Mr. Schöninger!” the warden said. “But you must try to

be calm. You have borne confinement patiently for seven months; try to

bear it a little longer till the formalities of the law shall have been

complied with. We cannot dispense with them. There shall be no delay, I

assure you, sir.”

Mr. Schöninger was too proud to need a second exhortation to control

himself; was, perhaps, annoyed that he should have incurred one. He

immediately drew back, and seated himself. “Allow me to say, sir,” he

remarked coldly, “that I have not borne imprisonment patiently. I have

merely endured it because I was obliged to submit to force. And now will

you please to open the door? I will not go out till I may; but set the

door wide. Do not keep me any longer under lock and key.”

The warden called to his guard, who were not far away. Indeed, several of

them, curious to know what was going on, had gathered in the corridor,

only just out of sight of those in the cell.

“Unlock the door of Mr. Schöninger’s cell,” he said in a loud voice. “He

is no longer a prisoner.”

The bolts shot back, and the door clanged open against the stone casing.

“Let me be the first one to congratulate you, sir,” the officer added.

Mr. Schöninger did not see the hand offered him, though he replied to the

words. He was looking past the officer, past the wondering faces of the

guard who peeped in at the door, and his glance flashed along the

corridor, through which a ray of sunlight shone from the guard‐room, and

fresh breezes blew. A slight quiver passed through his frame, and he

seemed to be resisting an impulse to rush out of the prison.