“_Petite_,” he said, “I have taken you by surprise. Do not give me your

answer now. Let me take home to‐night but a hope and your promise to

reconsider your hasty decision, and I will try to be content. But you are

so cold, so calm, Assunta. Can it be that I have entirely deceived myself,

that perhaps some other”—He paused.

“I am calm, my friend,” she answered, “because there is no struggle of

indecision in my mind. There is very great regret that I must give you

pain, and it costs me more than you know to do so. I entreat you to be

generous—more generous than I have been to you—and end this trying

conversation.”

“I cannot end it without one question more; pardon me if I am wrong in

asking it. Assunta, there is something that I do not understand. You do

not say that you could not love me, but that you cannot marry me. Who or

what is it, then, that comes between us?”

“God!” And she spoke the word so reverently that for one moment Mr.

Carlisle was subdued and silent. Then the bitterness which was always

latent in his nature gained the ascendency, as he replied:

“Some interference of your church, I suppose.”

Assunta was not a saint, and her previous emotion had weakened her powers

of self‐control, for she spoke with unusual spirit.

“Yes, the church does interfere, thank God, to save her children, else

were she no true mother.” Then, a little ashamed of her warmth of defence,

she continued, without seeming to notice Mr. Carlisle’s ironical

repetition of her words “_save_ her children”:

“You will no doubt consider me fanatical, but you have a right to know why

I refuse the love which I value so much, and which, at the same time, I

must beg you to forget. I can never marry one who is not of my faith. I

believe that, in a true marriage, there must be more than the tie of human

love—there must be the union of soul and the blessing of the church. And

more than this, there is the insuperable barrier of a solemn promise made

to God in consequence of my dying mother’s last request. Need I say more?

And must I lose my best friend because I can only respect and love him ‘as

friends love’? I had not looked for so great a sacrifice.” And for the

first time the tears stood in her eyes and her voice trembled.

She waited for a few minutes, but no reply came. Then, noticing that the

moon had risen above arch and wall, and, pouring its light full upon the

open arena, had sent the shadows back to their hiding‐places, she said

gently:

“Mr. Carlisle, it is getting late. Shall we go home?”

He started from his moody silence, and, taking in his the hand that rested

on the cross, he said:

“Assunta, you are a noble girl; but,” he added with a faint smile, “this

conclusion does not make your words easier to bear. But you are shivering.

Is it so cold? Come, we will go at once.” And as he led the way towards

the carriage, he wrapped her shawl closer about her, saying, “My poor

child, how thoughtless I have been!”

Once seated, there was again silence until they reached the entrance of

the villa. As they ascended the long stair‐case, Mr. Carlisle paused. His

old tenderness of manner had all returned, and he was her guardian, and

nothing more, as he said:

“Assunta, I have not been generous. I have taken an unfair advantage of my

position, and have told you what I had not intended you should know until

you were released from all obligation to me. My child, will you trust your

friend and guardian to be only that until next August shall make you free?

I cannot promise to give up all hope, but I will not repeat what I have

said to‐night. Can you forgive me so far as to go back to our old

relations? Will you trust me?”

“Most gladly,” said Assunta. “I feel as if my friend, whom I had mourned

as lost, has been restored to me. And, Mr. Carlisle, the day will come

when we will both look back without regret upon the decision which was

made to‐night under the shadow of the cross.”

“I hope so, even while I doubt, fair prophetess.”

But his thought was of the time when he might even yet win that stern

conscience to his views, and then indeed he could afford to think without

regret of a past disappointment; while she was thinking of that sweet

providence of God which, in compensation for sacrifice, always lets us see

in the end that all things are for the best to those who can wait and

trust.

Mr. Carlisle opened the drawing‐room door, and entered an apartment which

had the rare combination of elegance and comfort, of art and home. Mrs.

Grey, his pretty, widowed sister, was fond of what she called the “dim

religious,” and therefore the candles were not lighted; but a blazing

wood‐fire contributed light as well as warmth, while the silver urn upon

the side table hissed out an impatient welcome.

Mrs. Grey herself was lying upon the sofa in the most charmingly artistic

costume and attitude; and the injured manner she assumed rather added to

her fascination. She idolized her only brother; and when, after a short

wedded happiness of two years, he had offered the childless widow a home

with him, she had gladly accepted; and after a few months of becoming

weeds and retirement, she was so far consoled as to mitigate her crape,

and allow her brother’s visitors to gaze from a distance upon her charms.

The mitigating process had gone on until she was now the gayest of the

gay, except when an occasional headache reminded her that she was mortal,

and others that amiability is not to be found in perfection in this world

any more than any other virtue. She was too frivolous to satisfy her

brother’s deeper nature, but he was as fond of her as her affection for

him deserved. She had taken the orphan Assunta into her heart as if she

had been a sister; though she insisted that the position of matron to a

beautiful young girl was no sinecure.

“Really, Severn,” she exclaimed, as he seated himself beside the sofa,

“you must have thought it very entertaining for me to stay alone five

mortal hours with only my poor head for company.”

“Dear Clara, if I had dreamed you would be doomed to such a dearth of

companionship, I should not have gone at all.”

“Hush! No impertinence,” she said. “Where have you left Assunta?”

“Here I am,” said the young girl, entering the room at the same moment,

and answering for herself. “And how is your head, Clara? I hope you have

not been suffering all this time.”

“Your sympathy is very pretty and pleasing, Assunta; but, indeed, it is of

too mushroom a growth to be very consoling. Confess that this is the first

time I have been in your thoughts since you left the house. But,” she

exclaimed, suddenly recollecting herself, “you have been out alone all

this time. Dear me! I hope you did not meet any one you knew, for what

would they think? Where have you been?” And as she spoke, she rose from

the couch, and went about the womanly occupation of making tea.

“We went to the Colosseum,” replied her brother; “and truly the night was

so lovely that if it had not been for you and your head, who knows but we

might have wandered about until the Roman police lighted upon us, and

committed us to the care of the Holy Office as vagabonds?”

“Nonsense! I would risk you with Assunta anywhere, as far as that is

concerned. She is Papal protection in herself. She is wrapped about in the

yellow and white, metaphorically speaking. Besides, I believe it is not

exactly the province of the Holy Office to deal with vagabonds, but with

heretics.”

“And what am I?”

“Oh! I don’t know anything about religion. Has Assunta been calling you a

heretic?”

“Assunta never calls me hard names,” he answered, and he could not forbear

adding under his breath: “But she has made me count the cost of unbelief.”

“Has she been trying to convert you?” asked his persistent sister.

“She has offered me every inducement,” was his reply.

“Assunta, here is your tea,” called Mrs. Grey; for the young girl had been

arranging her music in another part of the large drawing‐room during the

conversation.

“Yes; and she needs it very much, poor child,” said Mr. Carlisle, placing

a chair for her. “I was so selfish that I did not even notice it was cold

until she was quite chilled through. You find your own head such poor

company that you must go with us next time, Clara, and take better care of

us.”

And then they relapsed into a quiet tea‐drinking; after which, and the

removal of the various articles which constitute the tea service, Mrs.

Grey returned to her sofa, while Assunta went to the piano, and played

some of Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words,” and Mr. Carlisle sat in deep

thought before the fire.

It was a state of things which Clara could not endure long. Anything like

constraint gave her the sensation of a caged bird, and she began at once

to beat her wings against imaginary bars.

“I never knew such stupid people. Severn, do please light my candle. I am

sure I trust my dreams will be more agreeable, or I shall die of _ennui_.

Good‐night, dear Assunta. Do not fatigue me by your efforts to rival the

larks in early rising, if you have any mercy.” And looking the very

picture of lovely discontent—if so paradoxical an expression may be

allowed—she retired to her own room.

Assunta extended her hand as usual to her guardian. He held it a moment,

and then said: “Good‐night, _petite_; we will begin anew to‐morrow”; and

then he returned to his arm‐chair, which he did not leave for many hours.

Assunta was very tired; but it was rather with the weight of the cross she

had lifted upon her shoulders than from any physical fatigue. She soon

dismissed her maid, and, like a victorious soldier wearied with the

conflict, she fell into a dreamless sleep, not, however, until she had

returned thanks for the victory to the God of battles.

II. Cor Cordium.

It was an established custom of the household of Villa Moroni to be quite

independent of each other until the twelve o’clock breakfast afforded

occasion for an agreeable reunion. However pleasant an early family

gathering may be in many home circles, where the habits and pursuits of

all are entirely dissimilar and incongruous we escape much of the

roughness of life by not attempting too early an interchange of forced

courtesy. Indeed, in Mr. Carlisle’s family it would have been difficult to

effect an earlier meeting than the one which suited all parties so well.

Mrs. Grey declared that the morning hours with Morpheus were absolutely

necessary to her peace of mind. And certainly the drowsy god must have

been lavish of bright visions during those hours when the sun was so

carefully excluded from the apartment of the fair sleeper; for when at

last he permitted the pretty lady to awake from her dreams, she came from

the hands of her maid into the outer world the very quintessence of

amiability and freshness. Who would feel assured of such a result had she

seen the sun rise? True, it might occur to some persons who take severe

views of life to wonder what her soul was doing all that time; but it

never did to her. The supernatural was to her a _terra incognita_. She had

skimmed over her sorrow as sea‐birds over the waves of the ocean, scarcely

bearing away a drop on their spread wings. The waters had never gone over

her soul and forced her to cry from out of the depths to the God whom she

acknowledged in theory, but persistently ignored in practice. Yet she was

so lovely and affectionate, and besides, when she chose to exert herself,

she had so much good sense withal, by all means let her enjoy life’s

sunshine, and pluck its sweetest roses, carefully guarding her dainty

fingers from contact with the hidden thorns. But why waste our time in

moralizing over one who would smile in unconsciousness of our meaning if

we uttered our thoughts aloud, and charm the frown from our brow by some

pretty petulance?

Mr. Carlisle understood as little of the supernatural as his frivolous

sister. But he had a deep, earnest nature, which could not be satisfied

with the mere outside of life. Mental food he must have, though it may be

a question whether the mind is ever fully nourished when the soul is

starving. He therefore, after taking his coffee and smoking his cigar,

devoted his morning hours to reading or writing in the cosey little room

he used as a library.

The carriage was thus left at Assunta’s disposal; and she usually availed

herself of it to assist at Mass, accompanied by her maid; and often an

errand of mercy or charitable visit was accomplished before her return. It

was her guardian’s wish that she should never walk about the city, unless

accompanied by himself, else she would many times have preferred to show

her American independence by taking a morning stroll with her faithful

Marie.

The morning after the eventful visit to the Colosseum was Friday, and on

that day Assunta was accustomed to make her confession and receive Holy

Communion. She awoke with a stunned feeling, as if recovering from a blow.

It was still very early, but, remembering the duties before her, she arose

quickly. She was so glad that it was Friday; for good F. Joseph would

certainly be in the confessional; as he always expected her, and she felt

the need of his counsel. It was the same F. Joseph du Pont who had placed

her beside her dying mother, but who had shortly afterwards returned to

Rome. When, a few weeks since, she had arrived in the Eternal City, he had

welcomed her as a dear child, and she loved and respected him as a true

spiritual father. The sun was just rising when she entered the carriage

and drove to the Gesù. Her confession was soon made, and after the

Precious Blood had poured its healing drops upon her soul through the

words of the absolution, she said: “Father, can you spare me a few minutes

more this morning? I want your advice.”

“Certainly, my child,” answered the good priest. “It is nearly an hour

before my Mass. How can I help you?”

“Last evening,” said Assunta in a low voice, “I did what I believed to be

right; but the morning light has only confused my mind, and I see nothing

clearly. Father, Mr. Carlisle, my guardian, asked me to marry him.”

“And you, my child?” questioned the priest somewhat anxiously.

“I had been prepared somewhat to expect it. I had thought of my mother’s

request, and remembered that it was in accordance with the teaching of the

church, and I was impelled to fortify myself by a promise to Almighty God

to fulfil to the letter my dear mother’s wish. Therefore, when the

question came, I could only refuse.”

“It cost you something to do this, I can see, my poor child, and this

morning you are suffering from the revenge our human nature takes upon us

when we have done it violence. Let us look at the matter calmly before

God. I believe that you are right, but it will help you to look at both

sides of the question. It is a reasonable service that God requires of us;

and, be very sure, he never leads us to the altar of sacrifice without

bestowing upon us the strength and generosity we need to place our

offering upon it. Perhaps you were a little too impulsive in binding

yourself by anything like a vow. We must always be very careful not to

mistake impulse for inspiration. However, as I understand you, your mind

was already decided, and the promise to God was to act as a protection to

yourself against your own human weakness. Am I right?”

“Partly, father,” replied Assunta, “and yet, as I knelt before the Blessed

Sacrament, I felt that the sacrifice was required of me in a way I thought

I could not mistake.”

“Then, my child, doubtless the Holy Spirit has inspired it for some end

that we do not now see. But, aside from that, without that additional and

conclusive obstacle in the way of such a marriage, I think you acted

rightly. Our holy mother, the church, is very wise, as well as very

lenient; and it is with great reluctance that she risks the soul of one of

her precious children by placing it under the constant influence of one

without faith. It is very true that while there is wisdom in knowing how

to keep a rule, there is still greater wisdom in knowing when judiciously

to make the exception. And I confess that, from a human point of view,

yours would seem to be an exceptional case. You are quite alone in the

world; and your guardian has been, and no doubt would always be, a

faithful friend. As a man, I esteem him highly for his many noble

qualities. The world will unquestionably look upon such a marriage as

eminently fitting; and so it would be, but for the one thing which is so

important. We, however, cannot act upon human principles, as if this world

were all. It was not without reason, my child, that your poor mother said

those last words to you. When she was married, her faith was as strong,

her life as true and pure, as yours. But your father’s intellect was

powerful, and her love for him so great that she yielded to him until she

nearly lost her soul. God be blessed for his mercy, she had the grace to

die as a saint, and is now, as I hope, in heaven. But I have seen her in

an agony of remorse such as I should grieve indeed to witness in this dear

child of hers. The last two years of her life after her return to her

faith were truly years of martyrdom, passed in the struggle to reconcile

those duties which never should conflict—her love of God and duty to her

husband. It was from the very depths of her own sad experience that she

pleaded with her little girl. My child, that mother is praying for you

now.”

“I believe it, father,” said Assunta, deeply moved by this story of her

beloved mother, which she heard for the first time.

“So, my child, the past is all as it should be; and now for the future.

May God grant you the grace to be always as good and brave as you were

last night! I would not discourage you, and yet I must remind you that the

sacrifice is only begun. It is not likely that your guardian, with only

human motives to urge him, will give up so easily where his heart is

engaged. He will, of course, do all he can to turn you from your purpose,

and no doubt your own heart will sometimes plead on his side. Here lies

your further trial. And yet I cannot, as under other circumstances I

should do, advise you to shun the temptation. You cannot leave your

guardian’s care until you are of age; therefore you must face the trial.

But I trust you entirely, my child—that is, I trust to the purity of your

heart and the power of grace that is in you to guide your actions, even

your very thoughts. You must try to be as you have been before; try to

forget the lover in the guardian. Avoid coldness of manner as a safeguard;

for it would only place you in an unnatural position, and would inevitably

strengthen in the end the feelings you would conquer. It is not easy to

give an exact rule of conduct. Your own good sense will teach you, and God

will be with you. And, my child, you must pray for your guardian, and at

the same time it must be without any future reference to yourself in

connection with him. Is this too hard for you? Do your best, and grace

will do the rest. By remembering him before God you will learn lo purify

your feelings towards him—to supernaturalize them; and by committing your

future unreservedly to the loving providence of God, your prayer will be a

constant renewal of the act of sacrifice you have made. Make it heroic by

perseverance. Do I explain myself clearly, my child?”

“Yes, father, perfectly so; and I feel so much comforted and

strengthened.”

“Well, these are but the words of your father, spoken out of his love for

you. Go now, child, and prepare to receive your divine Lord, and listen

for the words of peace and comfort he will speak to your soul. To him I

commend you with all confidence. One thing more—remember that there is

nothing which helps us so much in such a trial as acts of charity towards

the poor and the suffering. I know that you never fail in this respect;

but now especially I would urge you to forget yourself in sympathy for

others as occasion offers, though you must always recognize those claims

which your position in society entails upon you. Come to me freely

whenever you feel that I can help you. God bless you! I shall remember you

in the Holy Sacrifice.”

The good priest went to vest himself for Mass, while the young girl

returned to the place before the altar where Marie was patiently awaiting

her. She was herself a pious woman, and time spent in church never seemed

long to her.

When the Mass was over and her thanksgiving ended, Assunta returned home

with her heart lightened of its burden. She dressed herself for breakfast

with her usual care and taste, and, finding that it still wanted half an

hour or more before the great gun of Sant’ Angelo would boom out the mid‐

day signal, she seated herself at the piano, and song and ballad followed

each other in quick succession. Her voice and manner were in harmony with

herself. Her music soothed, but never excited. It had not the dangerous

power to quicken the pulse and thrill the heart with passionate emotion,

but it roused the better feelings, while it conveyed to the listener a

restful, satisfied impression which ambitious, brilliant performers rarely

impart. She was just beginning Cherubini’s beautiful Ave Maria when Mr.

Carlisle entered the room.

“Here is our early bird welcoming us in true songster fashion. Do not stop

yet, _petite_,

“My soul in an enchanted boat,

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float

Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.”

But as Assunta had already left the piano to greet her guardian and his

sister, he continued:

“By the way, Clara, my quotation has suggested to me an answer to your

question. Assunta, my fickle sister, who a week ago was ready to live and

die in a picture‐gallery, has just now assured me that the very mention of

a picture or statue is a fatigue to her; and she has mercilessly compelled

me to find some new and original bit of sight‐seeing for to‐day. We

cannot, of course, visit any church, since the Holy Father is,

unfortunately for her, not an iconoclast. But, Clara, what do you say to

making a Shelley day of it? We will take _Prometheus Unbound_ with us to

the Baths of Caracalla, and there, on the very spot which inspired the

poem, we can read parts of it. And when we are tired, we can prolong our

drive to the cemetery, and visit Shelley’s grave, as a proper conclusion.

How do you like the plan?”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Grey, “it will be deliciously sentimental; only breakfast

is announced, and I am in a famished condition. I was up so early this

morning. It must have been before eleven when that stupid girl called me,

and it is an hour since I took my coffee.”

“Poor Clara!” said Mr. Carlisle, “your condition is truly pitiable. I

should think you might find the almshouse a pleasant change.” Mrs. Grey

seemed only amused at her brother’s sarcasm, when suddenly she checked her

silvery laugh, and, springing from the table, at which she had just seated

herself, she went towards Assunta with such a pretty, penitential air that

she was quite irresistible.

“My dear child,” she exclaimed, “speaking of almshouses reminds me of

something you will never forgive. Promise me not to scold, and I will

devote myself henceforth to the cultivation of my memory.”

“What is it?” asked Assunta, smiling at her earnestness. “I am sure such a

pleading look would force forgiveness from a stone.”

“Well, then, for my confession, since you absolve me beforehand. While you

were out yesterday morning that miserable woman of yours sent word that

she was sick, and something about not having a mouthful of bread in the

house. I forget the whole message. My maid saw the girl who came, and I

promised to tell you. But you remember my wretched headache. You forgave

me, you know.”

Assunta looked both grieved and vexed for a moment, and then she

controlled herself enough to say:

“I must attach a condition to my forgiveness, Clara. Will you let me drive

to the house on our way to the baths? I will only detain you a few

minutes.”

“Heavens! Assunta, you will not go there yourself?” exclaimed the

astonished Clara. “I dare say it is some filthy hole, and perhaps the

woman may have fever. Send a messenger with some money. I’ll give her five

dollars.”

“Thank you. I will take the five dollars to her willingly,” replied the

young girl; “but I will take myself too. I can easily walk,” she added,

looking for permission to her guardian, as the occasion was exceptional.

Displeasure at his sister’s thoughtlessness was evident in Mr. Carlisle’s

tone, as he said:

“You will go in the carriage, Assunta, and I will accompany you. We will

return for Clara after the visit. Giovanni, order a basket of provisions

to be put up before one o’clock, and be ready yourself to go with us and

take charge of it; and now that the matter is settled, we will have some

breakfast.”

Poor Mrs. Grey looked disconcerted; but she thought it her duty to make a

further protest.

“You surely will not wear that dress, Assunta? It will never be fit to put

on again.”

Mr. Carlisle laughed outright at this new objection, while Assunta said

with a smile:

“Why, Clara, have you so soon forgotten your admiration of Mrs. Browning’s

_Court Lady_, who put on her silks and jewels, and went to the hospital as

to the court of the king? On the same principle I should be arrayed in

purple and fine linen, for I am going to the court of the King of kings;

and if I am not very much mistaken, this same poor woman, whose contact

you fear so much, will find her place very near to the throne in the ranks

of the celestial nobility. However, I should be sorry to ruin my new

dress, as you predict, and I will be very careful.”

The breakfast was soon despatched, the carriage came punctually to the

door, and Mr. Carlisle and his ward drove rapidly towards the miserable

home of the poor woman, who, in the midst of her poverty, possessed a

faith at which Assunta often wondered.

“You are very kind, Mr. Carlisle,” she said. “I am sorry I have given you

so much trouble.”

“In this case,” he replied, “the trouble is not altogether disinterested.

I must myself find out what the sickness is before I can allow you to

enter the house. I cannot let you run the risk of fever or any other

malignant disease. You see I came as a sort of police.”

“But,” said Assunta, touched by his thoughtful care of her, at the same

time anxious not to be prevented making what amends she could, “I am so

accustomed to visiting the sick, I do not think there can be any danger.”

“My child,” he said, “as long as your life can be guarded by me, it shall

be done. You are under obedience still, you know.” She dared not insist;

and, indeed, at the same moment they reached the wretched dwelling. After

exacting from her the promise to remain in the carriage, Mr. Carlisle

ascended the broken stair‐case. In a few moments he returned, and, without

saying a word, he took the basket from Giovanni, and again went up the

stairs. As he reappeared, he said to the coachman:

“Drive on slowly. I will walk a little. You must not go in, Assunta.”

He continued to follow the carriage at a quick pace for a quarter of a

mile; then he hailed the driver, and took his seat beside the wondering

girl, saying:

“I thought it would be best to give myself an airing after leaving that

room. _Petite_, the poor woman died two hours since of a terrible fever.

You could have done nothing, and, as usual, Clara was mistaken in the

message. They sent word to their ‘guardian angel,’ as they are pleased to

call a certain little friend of mine, of their suffering and need, but

with the particular warning that she should on no account direct her

flight that way, lest she should expose the unangelic part of her nature

to contagion. I left the basket, and money enough to supply all the

temporary wants of the children; but it was a dreadful scene,” he added

with a shudder.

He had striven to speak lightly at first, because he saw the distress in

Assunta’s anxious face and tearful eyes. But his own feelings were

strangely stirred, and he forgot his self‐control, as he continued, in a

voice low and husky from the very intensity of emotion:

“Child, I am in an agony of terror at the bare thought of what might have

been the result had you been exposed to that atmosphere, whose every

breath was poison. My God! when I think of the danger you have so narrowly

escaped. Oh! if I might always shield this dear life at any risk to mine.”

“My life is in God’s hands,” said Assunta coldly, as she gently disengaged

the hand which her guardian had clasped in his, as if he would show, by

the action, the power of his love to avert any and every evil which might

threaten her.

Poor child! she longed to ask more about the woman’s death, and especially

to express her gratitude to Mr. Carlisle for his kindness; but she dared

not face his present mood. However, as they again reached the villa, she

said hurriedly and in a tone full of anxiety:

“Mr. Carlisle, you have exposed yourself to great danger, and I do not

forget that it was for my sake. I shall not be satisfied unless you

promise me that you will take every possible precaution to avoid any

future evil consequences. I should never forgive myself if any harm came

to you.”

Her eyes lowered beneath the look he for one moment fixed upon her

appealing face; then, with the exclamation, “An unblessed life is of

little consequence,” he sprang from the carriage, and, saying to Giovanni,

“I will summon Mrs. Grey,” he dashed up the stone staircase.

Assunta sank back with a feeling almost of despair at the task before her.

Even if she had not to struggle with her own heart, it would have been

hard enough to steer the right, straight course between these

contradictory moods in her guardian; one moment so tender and thoughtful,

the next so full of bitterness. How could she reconcile them? How should

she ever be able to bear her burden, if this weight were added to it day

by day?

Assunta possessed the gift—which, advanced to a higher degree, might be

termed the natural science of the saints—of receiving religious

impressions and suggestions from the natural objects about her. Now, as in

a listless manner she looked around, her eyes fell upon the snow‐crowned

hills which bound the Roman horizon, and rested there. She had no thought

of the classic associations which throng those mountain‐sides and nestle

in the valleys. She needed strength, and instantly the words were present

to her mind: “I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence help

shall come to me.” And following out the consoling train of thought, she

passed from those peaceful Roman hills to Jerusalem and the mountains

which surround it, even “as the Lord is round about his people.” Then, by

a natural transition, she turned her thoughts to the poor woman who had

just left behind her poverty, privation, and suffering, and, accompanied

only by that hope and love which had endured and survived them all, had

entered, so she confidently hoped, into the possession of God—the Beatific

Vision. What a contrast between the temporal and eternal!

Her silent requiem for the departed soul was interrupted by Mrs. Grey’s

bright presence and merry voice.

“I cannot imagine what you have been doing to Severn,” she said; “but he

is in one of his unaccountable conditions of mind, and declares that he

will not go to drive—pressing business, etc. I am sure we can do without

him very well, all but the reading part, which had been assigned to him.

It is so late, at any rate, that perhaps we had better give up the baths,

and drive at once to the cemetery. You see I have secured an excellent

substitute for our recreant cavalier,” she added, as a gentleman emerged

from the massive doorway. “Come, Mr. Sinclair, we are waiting for you.”

There was just a shade of stateliness in Assunta’s manner as she greeted

the somewhat elegant man of the world, who seated himself opposite to her.

She would gladly have been dispensed from the drive altogether, feeling as

she did then; nevertheless, she submitted to the necessity which could

hardly be avoided.

“Truly, Miss Howard,” said Mr. Sinclair, as they drove away, “I begin to

believe the ancient goddesses no myths. Flora herself would find in you a

worthy rival. It is not often that I have the happiness to be placed

opposite two such lovely ladies.”

“Very good for a _finale_, Mr. Sinclair,” replied Mrs. Grey; “but if you

were to speak your mind, you would be calling me Ceres, or something else

suggestive of the ‘sere and yellow leaf.’ ”

“That is a gross injustice, not only to me, but to yourself,” answered Mr.

Sinclair in his most gallant tone. “Have not the poets ever vied with each

other in disputes as to the respective merits of spring, with its

freshness, and the rich bloom of early summer? And permit me to add that

neither has yet been able to claim a victory. In such a presence it would

be rash indeed for me to constitute myself a judge.”

“Unwise, certainly,” rejoined Mrs. Grey, “to take into your hand such an

apple of discord. Women and goddesses are pretty much alike, and the fate

of Paris might be yours. Remember the ten years’ siege.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Sinclair, “there you do not frighten me. Welcome the ten

years’ siege, if during that time the fair Helen were safe within the

walls. After ten years one might perhaps be reconciled to a surrender and

a change of scene, since even the lovely Trojan’s beauty must have lost

the freshness of its charms by that time.”

“O faithless men!” said Mrs. Grey, very much as if she were pronouncing an

eulogy.

“Miss Howard,” said Mr. Sinclair, “you are silent. Does our classic lore

fail to enlist your interest, or are you studying antiquities?”

“Pardon me,” replied Assunta; “it was rude in me to be so abstracted. I

must excuse myself on the ground of sympathy for suffering which I have

been unable to alleviate.”

“By the way, Assunta,” exclaimed Mrs. Grey, “how did you find your

_protégée_?”

“She is dead,” replied the young girl, softly.

“Oh! I am so sorry. How very sudden! Mr. Sinclair, you were telling me

about the Braschi ball when Severn interrupted us. When did you say it is

to be?”

“In about three weeks,” replied the gentleman. “I hope that you ladies

will be there. Our American blondes are greatly in demand among so many

black eyes. You are going, are you not?”

“Most certainly we shall,” answered Mrs. Grey with ready confidence, the

future being to her but a continuation of to‐day. The cloud that might

appear on her horizon must be much larger than a man’s hand to turn her

attention to it from the sunshine immediately about her.

And so, between pleasantry and gossip, the time passed until the carriage

stopped at the gate of the cemetery.

“You have chosen a very serious termination to your afternoon’s drive,

Mrs. Grey,” said Mr. Sinclair, as he assisted the ladies to alight. “I

always carefully avoid whatever reminds me of my latter end.”

“Let me play Egyptian coffin, then, for once,” replied Mrs. Grey, but with

a merry laugh that belied her words. “I will lead you to a contemplation

of the fate of genius. I dote on Shelley, and so we have made a pilgrimage

to his grave.”

“You have every appearance of a pilgrim about to visit some sacred

shrine,” said Mr. Sinclair with an echo of her bright laugh. “Lead on,

fair pilgrim princess; we humble votaries will follow wherever your

illustrious steps may guide.”

A small, horizontal slab, almost hidden beneath the pyramid of Caius

Cestus—itself a tomb—is all that marks the resting‐place of the gifted,

ill‐fated Shelley.

“Here is your shrine, my lady pilgrim,” said Mr. Sinclair, as he removed

some of the green overgrowth from off the inscription.

“Somebody make a suitable quotation,” said Mrs. Grey. “You know we ought

to be sentimental now.”

Assunta at once rejoined:

“ ‘How wonderful is Death—

Death and his brother, Sleep!’

Poor Shelley! But I do not like the inscription, Clara; or rather, I do

not like such an expression on such a grave.

“What do you mean, dear Assunta?” said Mrs. Grey, looking at her as if she

were talking Sanscrit. “I think it is lovely. _Cor cordium_—the heart of

hearts, is it not? I am sure nothing could be more appropriate.”

“It does not seem to me appropriate,” answered Assunta; “but then you know

I always do have strange ideas—so you say. Why should _Cor cordium_ be

written over the ashes of one who was burned in true pagan fashion, and

who, as I think, should rather be pitied for what he did not do, with his

marvellous gifts, than loved for anything he has done?”

As she paused, a voice beside her exclaimed, “I am sure I cannot be

mistaken. Is not this Miss Howard?”

Assunta turned and welcomed with a pleased surprise the young man who

appeared so unexpectedly, then she presented him to her companions as Mr.

Percival, of Baltimore, the brother of her only intimate school friend. He

was tall and slender, not handsome, but with a manly and at the same time

spiritual face. His eyes were his finest feature, but their beauty was

rather that of the soul speaking through them. Assunta had not seen him

since her school days at the convent, and then she had known him but

slightly; so she was herself surprised at her ready recognition of him.

“And what has brought you so far away from my dear Mary?” she asked after

the first greetings were over.

“I am on that most unenviable of expeditions—health‐seeking,” was his

reply. “After graduating at college, the physician doomed me to a year of

travel; and so we meet again at Shelley’s grave!”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Grey, “and Assunta and I were in the midst of an amiable

quarrel when you found us out. I engage you on my side, Mr. Percival. It

is about the inscription, which I like and Assunta does not, for reasons

which are Greek to me.”

“I was just going to say,” said Assunta, “that _Cor cordium_ seemed to me

a sacred phrase wholly misapplied, though I have no doubt the irreverence

was unintentional.” And turning to Mr. Percival with that sort of

spiritual instinct which teaches us where to look for sympathy even in a

crowd, she continued:

“I hope that I am not guilty of the same want of reverence in thinking

that if those words are to be inscribed on any grave, they should be

written upon that stone which was rolled against the opening of the new

sepulchre in the garden, and sealed with the Roman seal; for there the

true _Cor cordium_ was enclosed.”

“Mr. Percival, I see that you have gone over to the ranks of the enemy,”

said Mrs. Grey; “and if Mr. Sinclair deserts me, I shall never be able to

stand my ground against two such devotees.”

“I am yours to command, Mrs. Grey,” replied Mr. Sinclair with an

expression of contempt in his tone. “But perhaps it might be well to

transfer our operations to another battle‐field. Allow me to offer you a

souvenir of the occasion.” And he handed to each of the ladies a sprig of

green from beside the marble tablet.

Assunta quite simply shared hers with Mr. Percival at his request, and

then they retraced their steps. As they approached the carriage, Mrs. Grey

very cordially begged Mr. Percival to occupy the fourth seat, which he

reluctantly declined, as also the invitation to visit them.

“For,” said he, “to‐morrow I start for Jerusalem; and, Miss Howard, when I

am kneeling, as I hope to do, in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, I shall

remember you and those suggestive words of yours.”

“You could not do me a greater kindness,” replied Assunta, “than to

remember me there. And when you return, what do you intend to do in the

way of a profession? You see I am interested for Mary’s sake. I know what

her desire is.”

An hour before, if this question had been proposed to him, Augustine

Percival would have been able to give a probable answer. Though he had not

yet decided, his few days’ sojourn in Rome had stirred up within him a

feeling which had been latent even in his boyhood, and from the depths of

the Catacombs and beneath the lofty domes he had thought he heard an

interior voice which whispered to him, “Follow me.” And now a fair young

face had made him hesitate, though, in justice to him, it must be added

that no mere charm of beauty would have touched him for a moment. It was

the purity and beauty of mind and soul, which he read and appreciated,

that caused him to reply to Assunta’s question:

“The matter of my future vocation will be left, I think, until my return.”

Then, with many pleasant farewell words, they parted; and, except to

mention the meeting to her friend in her next letter, Assunta thought no

more of the thread of another life which had for a moment crossed hers.

That evening there were guests at the villa; and, as usual, Assunta’s

amiability was taxed by the repeated demands for music. As she sat

absently turning over the leaves before her in one of the intervals, Mr.

Carlisle came and stood beside her.

“_Petite_,” he said, “I have been to see the authorities about the family

of that poor woman who died to‐day, and everything will be arranged

comfortably for them; so you need feel no further anxiety!”

“How good you are, dear friend!” she replied. “God bless you for it!”

“It is your blessing that I want,” said he. “It was for you that I took

the little trouble you are pleased to magnify into something deserving of

gratitude.”

“Please do not say so, Mr. Carlisle,” said Assunta earnestly. “You do such

noble acts, and then you spoil them by your want of faith.”

The word was unfortunately chosen.

“If by faith,” Mr. Carlisle replied, “you mean your Catholic faith, I

cannot force myself to accept what does not appeal to my reason. I can

respect an honest conviction in others when I am in turn treated with

equal liberality; but,” he added in a low tone, “I could hate the faith,

so called, which comes between me and the fulfilment of my dearest wish.”

There was a call for more music, and so there was no opportunity, even had

there been inclination, for a reply. But as Assunta was passing wearily to

her room after the last guest had departed, Mr. Carlisle stopped her, and,

after his usual good‐night, he said: “Forgive me, child. I have not been

myself to‐day.”

Two weeks afterwards, when her guardian lay prostrate on his bed in the

delirium of fever, Assunta remembered those few words, which at the time

had given her pain, with that agony of sorrow which can only be aroused by

the knowledge that the soul of one beloved may at any moment be launched

upon the immeasurable ocean of eternity, rudderless and anchorless.

To Be Continued.

Church Music. Concluded.(167)

II. (Continued.)

Having settled that plain chant should have a part, and indeed a large

part, in our choral service, but that figured music should not be

excluded, it remains for us to say what figured music is to be used in

alternation with plain chant, or substituted when plain chant is

completely set aside.

Some seem to imagine that no figured music is suitable for the church but

that which is termed _alla Palestrina_. They urge the great fitness of

this species of music for church purposes; for, like the plain chant, it

is ancient, can boast a long and exclusive connection with the Catholic

ceremonial, admits of no personal display, is dissimilar from the music of

the world, never alters the words or does violence to them, is not only

distinctly ecclesiastical but papal, and quite as solemn and grave as

plain chant, while it is of wider range and of far more pleasing effect.

Though written in strict measure, it follows the tonality of plain chant.

Its origin is holy, since S. Charles and S. Philip were intimately

associated with Palestrina. Then, again, it has the best possible

authorization—that of having been used for the last three hundred years by

the popes, to the edification of the whole world, non‐Catholic as well as

Catholic.

We admit all these claims. But against the use of this species of music

amongst us there is a fatal objection.

It was written to be sung without instrumental accompaniment, which, when

used in conjunction with it, always mars its effect; and hence, though

nothing more suitable can be imagined for Lent and Advent, when, according

to the rubrics (too often slighted), the sound of the organ should not be

heard, we cannot be expected to sing it at other times; for we absolutely

need the organ to make amends for our scanty numbers, our lack of

proficiency in execution, to support the voices, and to give variety to

the service.

The organ is regarded by us as essentially a church instrument by its

nature and the associations we connect with it; indeed it never fails to

arouse in us deeper feelings of reverence and devotion, and we cannot do

without it.

An attempt was made in several of the German cathedrals some years ago to

revive music of the Palestrina style, to the exclusion of the more modern;

but circumstances, we think, have already led to some modifications of the

strict rules first proposed.

III.

Practically, we can hardly hope ever to exclude from our churches modern

figured music—as Benedict XIV. says, that would be an extreme measure; but

we can exclude, and are bound, he says, to exclude, such compositions of

it as are unsuitable for church purposes.

But how shall we determine what is suitable and what is not?

Music, it will be said, is a mere matter of taste, and the adage has it,

_De gustibus non est disputandum_.

But there is bad taste as well as good taste. Moreover, church music is a

matter of principle as well as of taste, and good taste in this case is

closely allied to principle.

Taste is the instinct or habit, or rather the instinct following habit,

and perfected by it, whereby we are enabled to discern and detect what is

most proper and congruous in each province of art.

Now, the reason for employing music in the service of the church is

religious or it is none. Unless the musical sounds, therefore, subserve

the meaning of the text, they are better away. “Where the religious song

is accompanied by musical instruments,” says Benedict XIV., “these must

serve solely for adding to its force, so that the sense of the words

penetrate deeper into the hearts of the faithful, and their spirit, being

roused to the contemplation of spiritual things, be elevated towards God

and the love of divine objects.” That style of music, then, will be the

most religious which deals most reverently with its subject, and gives the

least scope to the play of irreligious dispositions. Being the most

suitable to its subject, it will also be in the truest taste.

Hence that music will be the most suitable and the best which in its

construction will correspond most perfectly with the peculiar spirit of

each festival and with the special character of each service; which will

most naturally and reverently render the sense of the words without

changing, inverting, or abridging them, or marring their sense by useless

and tiresome repetitions,—which, in other words, will speak as distinctly

and as religiously to the ear as the altar, the vestments of the priest,

and the ceremonies speak to the eye. Music and ceremonies, and everything

connected with them, should be in the most perfect harmony, reminding all

that they are in the house of God, and assembled in his presence to pay

him homage on earth like that rendered him by the members of the church

triumphant in heaven.

Hence, 1, church music should not in any way recall the world, its

temptations or its pleasures; and the prohibition made by popes and

councils against the introduction into the church of compositions written

originally for the theatre or the concert‐room, but with other words, or

of compositions written for the church, but in a style suggestive of the

stage, is so evidently just and proper that any one who objects to it must

be wanting in common sense.

“Humana nefas miscere divinis” finds its application here. To carry the

minds of worshippers in the church back to the theatre by the music is a

crime, for it is a desecration.(168)

Hence, 2, not even the feelings of the congregation should ever tempt the

director of the music of the church to admit what is not in every respect

most suitable to the place, the time, and the occasion. Fortunately, we

have no difficulty here in the United States with our own people. The only

trouble is when we go out of our way to satisfy the expectations of non‐

Catholics who occasionally are present at our services, or of a few

musicians not otherwise interested in the services.

Hence, 3, undue prominence should never be given to individual singers. It

is, to say the least, very distracting.

Hence, 4, the director of the music should never be willing to sacrifice

the liturgy, even the least part of it, to the exigencies of the music,

whatever they may happen to be; but, on the contrary, he should be ever

ready, if need be, to sacrifice even the most admirable musical numbers to

the exigencies of the ceremonial.

In other words, he should never forget that music is one of the many

accessories to our public worship—never the essential—and is never to be

heard merely for its own sake.

This is brought out clearly and distinctly in two decrees that have for us

in this section of country the full force of law—a decree of the Second

Plenary Council of Baltimore, and another decree of the Third Provincial

Council of New York:

“That all may be done according to prescribed order, and that the solemn

rites of the church may be preserved in their integrity, we admonish

pastors of churches to labor earnestly to remove those abuses which in our

country have crept into the church chant. Let them therefore provide _that

the music be subservient to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the other

offices_, and not _the divine offices to the music_. Let them also bear in

mind that, according to the ritual of the church, it is not lawful to sing

hymns in the vernacular languages at High Mass and at solemn

Vespers.”(169)

“At solemn Masses singers are prohibited from so protracting the

Offertory, the _Sanctus_, and the _Benedictus_ that the celebrant is

obliged to delay till they have made an end of singing.”(170)

The general principles we have laid down will be still better understood

if we examine the declarations made by the church through several of the

popes.

The most notable and the most precious of these are the brief of Benedict

XIV. already mentioned, and the rules for composers given by Pius IX.

Pope Benedict XIV., in his Constitution _Annus_ 19, February, 1749, begins

by laying down the general principle that the music of the church must be

so ordered that nothing profane, nothing worldly, and especially nothing

theatrical, be heard in it. He repeats this principle again and again, and

says that there is no one who does not detest operatic music in the

church, and who does not look for and desire a difference between the

music of the church and the music of the stage.

He then reminds us of the Constitution of Pope Innocent XII., by which it

is forbidden to sing at solemn Mass and Vespers motets or hymns that are

not a part of the Mass or the Vespers of the day; that is, at solemn Mass,

the only pieces allowed to be sung besides the _Kyrie_, _Gloria_, _Credo_,

_Sanctus_, _Benedictus_, and _Agnus Dei_ are the Introit, Gradual,

Offertory, and Communion of the Mass of the day (a single exception being

made for Corpus Christi, when the _O Salutaris!_ or other hymn of the

office of the Blessed Sacrament may be sung at the Offertory), and at

solemn Vespers only the Antiphons and the proper hymn with the Psalms.

He then proceeds to condemn frequent repetitions of the same words, and

places the chief distinction between theatrical music and church music in

this: that in the former the words are made quite subservient to the

singing and the accompaniment; whereas in the latter the words are

rendered intelligibly, and the music is made subservient to them.

He next instructs bishops to banish from the church absolutely all

instruments except the organ; but with the organ he allows the use of

violins, violas, violoncellos, contrabassos, and bassoons, because these

add, he says, to the force of its tones; but he prohibits cymbals, horns,

trombones, oboes, flutes—in general, all wind‐instruments, as also harps

and guitars, because all these, he says, recall the theatre.

He directs that while the singing is going on the instruments must merely

accompany, never take the place of, the voices.

He allows suitable symphonies when these are dissociated from the office

proper—probably meaning the pieces played at the beginning and the end of

service, and to fill up pauses when the choir is silent.

He closes by urging the Italian bishops to comply with these instructions

faithfully, that foreign bishops coming to Rome may see in Italian, and

especially in Roman, churches the public offices properly carried out, and

thus be induced to imitate them.

The present vicar‐general of Pius IX., Cardinal Patrizzi, by order of the

Pope, wrote two letters to composers of church music in Rome, on the 18th

and 20th of November, 1856, and in them he so far supplements the

directions of Benedict XIV. that we have wherewith to determine without

much difficulty what music is, and what music is not, admissible in

Catholic choirs.

In his first letter he says:

“The most sustained gravity is to be observed, and nothing introduced

suggestive of theatrical pieces, either by the arrangement or by the

melody; too many repetitions, and all changes and arbitrary inversions of

the words are to be avoided.

“At Mass, Exposition, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and other

sacred ceremonies, organists are forbidden to execute the whole or parts

of theatrical pieces, or to play in a too florid or distracting style; and

their music ought to be such as to promote the recollection and devotion

of the faithful.

“As we consider an interruption between the various parts of the words of

the liturgy very unbecoming, even when any verse is finished, as being an

occasion of distraction and noise among the musicians and hearers, we

order that every part of the offices, especially at Mass, shall be sung

through continuously, so that the _Kyrie_, _Gloria_, and other parts may

each have a unity of structure.”

In his second letter he teaches composers the necessity of their having

for their object the praise of God and the devotion of the faithful, and

shows how church music in its whole construction ought to differ from that

of the stage.

“If all composers,” he says, “drew their inspirations from piety and

religion, as some of them have the good spirit to do; if they always kept

before their minds that their music ought to tend to praise God in his

holy temple, and to excite the devotion of the faithful, there would have

been but little need to make rules for musical composition. But it is only

too true that, in some instances, to the great surprise of the truly

religious among the faithful, there has been heard in the churches certain

music unworthy of the house of God, and showing that the composer, far

from having in view the service of the divine Majesty and the edification

of his hearers, has only aimed at displaying his own imagination, and that

he has forgotten the church and written for the theatre, not only by

borrowing its style of melody, but also by introducing portions of

theatrical music, to which he has sometimes violently adapted the words of

the sacred liturgy. In order that so great a scandal may not be renewed,

and that those who write music for the church may have a rule to keep them

within due bounds, we prescribe as follows:

“1. Music destined for execution in the churches ought to be

distinguishable from profane and theatrical music, not only in its

_melodies_, but also in its whole character; hence

“2. Those movements are forbidden which would not be naturally inspired by

the sacred character of the words, and which would be suggestive of the

theatre.

“3. We forbid too lively or exciting movements; if the words require

cheerfulness and joy, let it be expressed by the sweetness of religious

mirth, and not by the unbridled liveliness of the dance.

“4. In all movements, whether slow or quick, the words of the sacred text

must be pronounced clearly, and never more quickly than in ordinary

discourse.

“5. The words must be put to music in the order which they occupy in the

sacred text. When the sense has been entirely expressed, it will be

allowable to repeat some word of it, or some phrase of it, as may be

necessary, without inversion, without confusion of the sense, and with the

required moderation.

“6. All the words must be sung, and none added nor any omitted. It is not

allowed for one syllable of them to be changed.

“7. We forbid ariettas, duets, and trios in imitation of theatrical

pieces. Recitative and everything approaching to it is forbidden; as also

operatic finales, such as are known by the term _cabaletta_.

“8. As regards instruments, long introductions and long preludes are to be

avoided, whether with full orchestra or with solos.

“9. Without depriving instrumental music of the grace and coloring which

art and good taste suggest, an effeminate softness is to be avoided, as

well as immoderate noise, which is always tiring and unbecoming in the

house of God.

“10. The composer must not forget that _the use of instrumental music in

the churches is in a state of simple toleration_; the object of it must be

to sustain and enrich the singing, to be far from overpowering it, or from

enfeebling and deadening it, or reducing it to a mere accessory.”

These rules, if adhered to, would give us music which would meet the

requirements both of devotion and of art; nor do they exclude such variety

as the diversity of our feelings calls for. It could, by its placid,

quiet, and smooth‐flowing measures, soothe and subdue us into that mood

which best fits us to offer to God reverential homage, and to make acts of

resignation when we feel the hand of affliction bearing heavily upon us;

but also, by more joyous and inspiriting strains, dispose us to praise God

according to the immensity of his greatness, in joy and gladness, on loud‐

sounding cymbals (_in cymbalis jubilationis_), and send us back to the

battle of life with renewed courage and strength.

IV.

But, it will be asked, can this style of music which we have just sketched

be had? Most certainly.

It is true our organists do not know it; for they are lamentably ill‐read

in musical lore. They seem to imagine that whatever is published as music

for the service of the Catholic Church is to be regarded as “Catholic

music,” and perfectly proper, and they scarcely dream of looking further

than to the publications or importations of Ditson, Peters, and Novello,

or of critically examining these to test their fitness for the purposes of

divine worship. To take the two best composers of their class, how few

organists have taken the trouble to study critically the Masses of Haydn

and Mozart. Of the sixteen Masses composed by Haydn, there are only four

in which the words are all correct. These are Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 9. All the

others are consequently defective.

In Nos. 7, 8, and 11, although all the words are to be found in one or

other of the voice parts, yet each voice is often singing different words

at the same time.

In Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 16 the words _Qui ex patre filioque procedit_ are

altogether omitted. In Nos. 3 and 16 the words _et in unum Dominum Jesum

Christum, filium Dei unigenitum_, are wanting. In No. 2 the words _Qui cum

Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur_ are omitted. In No. 10

the words _Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi

miserere nobis_, are omitted. In the _Credo_ all the words from _et in

unum Dominum_ as far as _per quem omnia facta sunt_ (inclusive), and again

all the last part of the _Credo_ from _et in Spiritum_ to the end, are

altogether omitted.

In No. 12 the words _Qui tollis peccata mundi_ (_secundo_) are omitted.

In No. 13 the words _Jesu Christe, Domine Deus_, are omitted. The words

_Filius Patris_ are immediately followed by _miserere nobis, quoniam tu

solus_, etc.

Again, in the _Credo_ of this same Mass, after the words _et invisibilium_

we find the text read thus: _credo per quem omnia_, etc., with all the

intermediate part left out. No. 14 consists of a _Kyrie_ and _Gloria_

only. In the _Gloria_ the words _Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe_, etc.,

_qui sedes_, etc., are omitted. In No. 15 the words _Qui tollis peccata

mundi_ (_secundo_) are omitted. In the _Credo_ of this Mass, beginning

with _Et resurrexit_, different words are sung simultaneously by each

part, as remarked above of Nos. 7, 8, and 11.

While it cannot be denied that much of the Mass music of Haydn is the most

beautiful in the world, some of it is trivial and undevotional, and it

would seem as if, by some of his movements, he wished to

“Make the soul dance a jig to heaven.”

Concerning the sacred compositions of Mozart, a recent French author, M.

Felix Clement,(171) makes the following startling assertion:

“The religious musical compositions of Mozart are much less numerous than

is generally believed, and the catalogues of music publishers and the

repertories of _maîtres de chapelle_ are not to be trusted. Many of these

musicians frequently take the liberty of stealing from Mozart’s operas,

and even from his compositions for instruments, and of adapting them to a

Latin text, let the adaptations be worth what they may.... The only

authentic religious compositions of Mozart are the following:

“A _Stabat mater_ for four voices, without instruments, and very short.

“A _Veni Sancte Spiritus_ for four voices, two violins, two hautboys, two

horns, a clarinet, tympanum, alto, and violoncello.

“A solemn Mass for four voices, two violins, two hautboys, two altos, four

clarinets, and tympanum, 1768.

“A short Mass for four voices and the same accompaniment, 1768.

“A Grand Offertory for four voices and similar accompaniment, 1768.

“An _Ave Verum Corpus_, 1791.

“The Mass of Requiem.

“Two solemn Masses in C major.”

There are adaptations in many of Peters’ publications that are simply

shocking, and even our most worthy Anthony Werner forgot himself while he

was compiling the _Memorare_ and the _Cantate_, and inserted a few

compositions that are out of rule, and therefore out of taste.

Again, few organists amongst us have a sufficient knowledge of Latin, of

the structure of the ritual, and of the traditions of the church to judge

of the appropriateness of compositions; and the evil is aggravated to the

last degree by the custom of making the organist the director of the music

as well. Hardly any of them know either the theory or the practice of

plain chant.

Music of the kind we have described as fit for church use abounds in

Italy, but mostly in the condition of MS. The works of the Augustan age of

Italian music, from the time of Carissimi to that of Jommelli, including

those of Durante, Leo, Clari, Steffani, Martini, and Pergolesi, and even

of later masters, like Terziani, afford inexhaustible treasures almost

entirely neglected.

The new order of things in Italy has wrought and is working mischief there

in more ways than one. Thus it has already been the occasion of the loss

of a great number of valuable musical manuscripts, and unfortunately the

end is not yet. The revolution of 1848 caused a great deal of wanton

destruction, the result of that spirit of vandalism which seems to possess

all revolutionists; and the recent suppression of so many churches by the

Italian government has brought about the dispersion and consequent loss of

the manuscripts of as many musical libraries—a loss that can never be

repaired.

If we do not resume the execution of the compositions of the older

masters, we must at least recur to them for the purposes of study. In no

other way can we shake off the influence of the drama.

We have learned from the instructions of Benedict XIV. and the cardinal

vicar of Pius IX. that there is a distinction between the music of the

stage and that of the church, and that this distinction is based on the

fact that in the latter the music must be written to suit the words of the

sacred text, and that the music, whilst having that serious and chastened

expression which befits the language of devotion, should be distinctively

vocal and choral; whereas in the former the tendency is to make the words

suit the modulations of the music, to subordinate the voices to the rich

and powerful instrumental symphony which accompanies them, to flatter the

popular ear by light and taking airs, and to display to the best advantage

the voices of individual singers and their wonderful execution.

These characteristics of secular music, due to the influence first of

Mozart and afterwards of Rossini more than to that of any other composers,

have been too long felt in the music of the church, and to be rid of them

we must lean more towards the past, and return to the study of those grave

and solemn forms which existed prior to their day, and in which the

instrumental accompaniment contained no suggestion of levity, and was used

to support and enrich the vocal harmony without drawing attention from it.

The celebrated Robert Franz is now editing some of the works of Durante,

who flourished not long after the departure from Palestrina was made, and

whose piety and exclusive devotedness to church music have given a more

ecclesiastical character to his compositions than to those of any other

composer of his day.

In France the war between those who advocate the exclusive use of plain

chant and those who plead that music may have some share in the divine

service is waged fiercely, and the consequence is that both parties go to

extremes, and both assert principles with regard to the respective merits

of the two styles that are utterly untenable. There is no country in the

world where plain chant is so much sung, and none where so much wretched

stuff is palmed off as sacred music. Nevertheless, France has composers of

merit, who might achieve great results if they had a public of broader

views to write for, chief among whom is Gounod, who, in his _Messe

Solennelle_ and his _Ave Verum_, has struck the right chord, and proved

himself able to write sacred music for great occasions, in which all the

resources of modern art may be combined with a solemnity and an expression

of piety not less remarkable than that which we find in the compositions

of Palestrina.

In England the advocates of what we may call the canonical style of church

music are not inactive.

The late Cardinal Wiseman had an excellent collection of Palestrina music,

published in the most elegant style by Burns.

Years ago Monsignor Newsham, at the cardinal’s suggestion, composed for

smaller choirs four chorus Masses, to be sung in unison or in parts _ad

libitum_. They are easy, flowing, and very devotional, and strictly in

rule. They are published by Novello.

Mr. Richardson, an excellent musician, has revised some of the Masses of

Haydn and Mozart, and, without altering substantially the music of these

two great composers, reset the words with rare skill; so that we have all

the beauty of the music, while the text of the Mass does not suffer. They

are published by Burns & Oates.

Of late years Archbishop Manning has had a series of six Masses composed

by excellent musicians, chiefly for unison singing, but they may also be

sung alternately in parts. They have a full and artistic organ

accompaniment, and are so arranged that the effect produced by them is

scarcely inferior to that of vocal part music, while they are not hard to

learn, and do not overtax the voices.

He has also had other Masses published _for four voices_ in the highest

style of art. These are by eminent composers, and have organ _obbligato_

accompaniment. They are full without being of inconvenient length.

In these, as in the preceding Masses, the _Sanctus_ and _Benedictus_ in no

case exceed the proper limits.

They are published by Burns & Oates.

Other compositions of the same class are promised.

Of what is being done in Belgium we cannot speak so confidently; but at

the last Catholic Congress of Mechlin the subject of church music received

due attention; prizes were offered for compositions that would meet the

requirements of devotion as well as art, and a _concursus_ actually took

place, and the works of the contestants published.

It is in Germany that the movement in favor of the reform of church music

has been the most active and has made the most progress.

We have already mentioned the introduction of the Palestrina style of

music into some of the German cathedrals, and four immense volumes of

music of that class have been published by Pustet, of Munich; and, as we

have just said, Franz is publishing and drawing attention to the works of

Durante, who represents the style that came into vogue when Palestrina was

first departed from.

But they have a large and able society, called the Cecilia, extending all

over Germany, which last year numbered 7,000, and is ever increasing. They

have at their head F. Francis Witt, an exemplary priest of Spire, whom the

Germans call “the modern Palestrina.” He is trying to achieve in our day

the success that Palestrina met in his.

The number of compositions for the church published by this society or

under its own influence is immense.

A writer in the London _Tablet_ stated recently that by means of S.

Cecilia’s Society a thorough reform had been effected in the church music

of Germany, and that frivolous compositions in the secular style have at

last been banished from the churches.

The writer of this paper remembers hearing in the autumn of 1869, in the

Cathedral of Munich, two Masses of this school, which contained no

passages for _soli_, and in which the words were treated as respectfully

as in the compositions of Palestrina and his school, none being repeated

or inverted. The accompaniment of the organ and the orchestra, in which no

wind instruments were heard—except, perhaps, the bassoon—was so fully

subordinated to the voices and so perfect otherwise that his ear has been

spoiled, as it were, and every similar performance heard since in other

places has been a grievous disappointment. He never heard any music more

pleasing artistically, and at the same time more devotional and proper. It

showed that composers can give us the best music which modern art can

furnish, and yet keep strictly within the limits marked by ecclesiastical

authority.

The Cecilia Society of Germany has a branch in this country, which has

recently begun to publish select music, and to issue a musical journal

called the _Cecilia_. The editor is F. Singinberger, and the publishers

Fisher & Brother, Dayton, Ohio.

The publications of sacred music amongst us have not been very numerous or

very remarkable for excellence. Among the very best we feel bound to

notice the publications,(172) and especially the elegant compositions(173)

of Mr. Falkestein, who has shown that he knows how to unite in his

skilfully‐constructed and charming yet devout compositions the depth and

severity of the old ecclesiastical masters with the graceful and flowing

melody and orchestral effects of the modern school.

There is no lack of good‐will and talent amongst our musicians, but the

trouble is that they have not the models by the study of which they may

form a true ecclesiastical style. A library is as necessary to the student

of music who hopes to be a composer as it is to the student of literature

who has the ambition of becoming an author. Our directors of church choirs

need a larger acquaintance with the great masters, especially the older

ones. Above all, they need to have a better knowledge of Gregorian chant.

For this chant should not only form a part of our service, as was already

stated in the first part of this paper, but it should also be the source

of inspiration to those who wish to compose for the church, as it was to

Palestrina and his followers, as it is to‐day to Gounod. The language of

Mr. Ritter may be exaggerated, but it conveys a truth to be

remembered:(174) “The Gregorian chant,” he says, “runs like a red thread

through the musical part of the service of the Catholic Church; this

really sacred song creates in Catholic countries the first impressions

which touch the soul of the young Christian on his entrance into the

church, and is, as such, the indestructible echo of his first sacred

associations. As Holy Writ forms the invariable foundation of the

religious and moral principles of the true Christian, so the Gregorian

chant ought to form the ground and invariable theme of the true church

composer; and as long as composers understood and valued this inestimable,

noble, and really sacred practice their works composed for the church

truthfully and appropriately fulfilled their solemn office; these works

were thus imbued with the sacred character derived from the themes of the

sacred songs; then necessarily a distinct line of demarcation was drawn

between secular and sacred music.”

A Week In Wordsworth’s Haunts.

We had only a week to spare, but we were not long in choosing where to

spend our holiday. At that time the Lake Country was accessible, but not

yet crossed through and through, by railroads. The cars took us from

London almost through to Windermere, but, that being the gate of the

sanctuary, they went no further. We had to cross the “Black Country,” a

weird region of coal‐mines and furnaces, where scarcely a blade of grass

meets the eye; interminable plains, strewn with gaunt machinery and

bristling with tall brick chimneys or low, wide, oven‐like buildings,

stretch from the track of the railroad as far as the horizon; a muffled

noise, rumbling and crackling, is the only sound besides the shrill

whistle of the engine; the sky is black as with the promise of ten

thousand thunder‐storms, the murky air hangs like a pall over the earth,

and tongues of flame shoot up now and then from the mouths of the

furnaces. At night the scene is gloomily splendid; everywhere lurid

flashes leap up from these openings, for the work is incessant here; half‐

naked forms stalk from chimney to pit, wheeling giant barrows or pushing

forward heavy trucks on tramways; no sound but the never‐ceasing rumble of

wheels and crackle of flames—apparently a silent Pandemonium or Dantesque

city of Dis; at any rate, a sight that one does not easily forget.

Windermere is the largest, the most fashionable, and the best known of the

English lakes. It was Saturday night when we reached it and went to an inn

overlooking the calm sheet of water. The moon was up, and streaked the

shadows of the great mountains that lay across the lake with her

shimmering silver pathway; the little boats moored by the various landings

rocked to and fro in the gentle breeze, and the wavelets came with a

“swish” against the pebbly shore. Next morning, on inquiring for the

Catholic church, we were told that there was a private chapel in the house

of a Catholic gentleman who lived on an island in the lake, and allowed

any respectable tourist to come on Sunday. We rowed over to the island,

and found it all a garden: smooth lawns to the water’s edge, broad gravel‐

paths through groves of elm and chestnut, a glowing parterre, rustic

seats, fountains and marble balustrades, and by the boat‐house a little

group of gay skiffs dancing up and down on the blue water. The chapel was

up‐stairs, and there was an outside stair‐case leading to it, down which

we saw a familiar figure coming slowly towards us. It was that of a London

priest whom we knew, and who, like us, was spending a brief holiday among

the lakes. He had come over to say an early Mass; the master of the house

was not at home, he said, but the chaplain would be glad to welcome all

Catholics, many of whom came during the touring season. After Mass we

strolled for an hour about the garden, admiring the vistas contrived

between the trees, at the end of which glimpses of the blue sky and

sparkling water, with some gray or purple peak cleaving the line of the

horizon, could be seen. From every point of the lake itself these

mountains strike the eye; for the most part bare of trees, their lower

ledges covered with green pasture‐land, and seamed here and there with the

foamy streak of a beck or stream; their summits sheer rock. Their names

all have a grand, free sound that suits their craggy, majestic beauty—Helm

Crag, Hammar Scar, Silver How, Skiddaw. This one is the monarch of the

lake country. Great How is a single, conspicuous peak rising at the foot

of Lake Thirlmere, to the west of the lovely vale of Legberthwaite, near

the high‐road between Ambleside and Keswick. Ambleside is a favorite

resort of students; young men from the two universities often come to

spend the long vacation here, where reading, walking, and boating can be

combined. The scenery is very beautiful; the valleys are broken up into a

thousand nooks where fern and heather grow, and some tiny rivulet trickles

beneath the broad‐arched fronds of the bracken; every old wall wears a

golden crown of celandine, or, in native dialect, pilewort; the

“ghyll”—_i.e._, a short, steep, narrow gorge, a miniature cañon—is

traversed by the foamy brook, leaping to the waterfall called in

Cumberland a “force”; the birch, the rowan, the oak, cling to the rocky

ledges that jut out over the little cataract, and everywhere above the

greenery lies the shadow of the great lonely hills. Black Comb in

Cumberland Wordsworth calls a spot fit for a “ministering angel” to

choose, for from its summit, on a tolerably clear day, England, Scotland,

and Ireland are all three visible. Many of the mountains, both in

Cumberland and Westmoreland, have traces of inscriptions on the native

rock which have by some learned men been supposed to be Runic, but which

it is now generally agreed to call Roman. They are very rude, and much

effaced by time and the action of the weather; hence the uncertainty.

It was by the shores of Windermere that a party of young men, all

enthusiastic Tractarians, spent a vacation in one of the first years of

that movement now called Puseyite and ritualistic, but then known as the

Young England movement. In those days ladies washed and ironed the church

linen, and wore their dainty fingers to the bone sewing surplices and

embroidering altar‐cloths; while others would take it by turn to sweep the

churches and dust the pews; and others again, intent on doing penance,

would kneel for hours on stone floors, and even use the _discipline_

unsparingly, until the doctor’s verdict put an end to their misguided

zeal. Blindly they were beating about for the truth, and thought they had

found it in practices of self‐denial. It was a touching blindness—one that

God often and often enlightened during those fruitful years. Young men

made a point of exercising bodily mortification, even in vacation time,

and, when thrown by circumstances amid unsympathizing companions, would

carry their zeal into the commonest actions, and make a silent boast of

their new‐found faith. One Friday, for instance, a few young members of

Parliament, assembled in the lobby of the House of Commons, called for

“tea and toast” instead of the unfailing mutton‐chop of tradition, and the

mild protest created quite a sensation. On going home they were received

by their several households as champions of a holy cause who, from humble

beginnings, were going to bring about a mighty revolution, a national

awakening. It was very beautiful, this child‐like faith in their own

ideal—so beautiful that God rewarded many of those who held it by leading

them into the everlasting reality of the great universal, apostolic

church. The athletic young hermits of Ambleside were not left out of the

reckoning. One day one of them strayed out alone over the hills, with some

old volume of the fathers under his arm, and his questioning young soul

eager for the knowledge which the wonderful serenity of this mountain

region seemed at the time to typify so well. He was out a long time, and,

when he came home to his companions, he seemed to them transfigured. A new

peace and yet a more ardent enthusiasm had come to him, and he spoke in

words almost incomprehensible to them:

“I have found the man who has the idea!”

What had happened to him was this: In his walk he had met a young

stranger, and spoken to him. Kindred thoughts and aspirations had led them

into a long and eager conversation, wherein it soon appeared that the

stranger, with his fair, girlish face and dreamy blue eyes, was the

master, and his new friend only the humble disciple. They had talked on

into the twilight, and the latter, entranced, at last asked the name of

him who in a few short hours had taught him to see things in a clearer,

diviner light than all the patristic reading had been able to do during

his college course. The young man opened the book he had with him, and

showed him his name written on the fly‐leaf. It was Frederick William

Faber.

From Windermere we started on our real tour. The native conveyances are

called “cars,” and hold four people sitting opposite each other, but

sideways and parallel with the horses. From a rough, square box, painted

dark blue or green, up to a real town‐made carriage in the same shape,

this conveyance is universally in use over the north. Everywhere the same

beautiful scenery—moist nooks, a natural fernery, tumbling waterfalls,

walls covered with wild flowers; here and there an old‐fashioned inn with

an old‐fashioned landlord, waiting himself on his customers, and sitting

down to tell them at his ease all the gossip and the guide‐book lore of

the neighborhood, the best time to go up the mountain, when it was safe to

take a boat out on the mere, the accident in the lead‐mine last year,

etc., etc. At such an inn, “The Swan,” we passed one night, and had an

excellent and abundant rustic supper, not a hundred yards from the brand‐

new tourist hotel, “The Prince of Wales,” gas‐lighted and high‐priced,

with saucy waiters and London upholstery, and each floor exactly the

counterpart of the other, like a penitentiary.

Ullswater is a stormy lake, a sort of caldron enclosed in steep,

forbidding rocks rising perpendicularly from the water. Above them is a

wooded table‐land, with old houses hidden up the slopes beyond, one a

ruined monastery, with a modern home fashioned out of a few available

fragments of strong mediæval masonry, and a sort of museum or armory

contrived among the standing arches of a less useful portion of the

building. It was a steep climb to get to it, and for miles on either side

of the pathway, that was half a natural staircase, there was no other road

to it. The view over the dark lake was impressive; the waters, calm enough

now, lay beneath us like a floor of black marble, with a fringe of heavy

shadows along the edge where the cliffs overhung it.

Now and then we would pass detached hamlets with their sturdy, grave

population all astir, the women fine specimens of their sex, with that

frank expression and grand physical development which are bred of mountain

training and open‐air life. Together with all the people of the north,

they have many peculiar customs, and altogether form a race apart from the

inhabitants of other English counties. The accents of their nervous,

expressive dialect, the names of their mountains and lakes, the flavor of

quaintness and individuality that hangs about their life, somehow suggest

the old times of early Christianity when S. Wilfrid ruled in York, or

struggled inch by inch for his invaded territory and ignored rights.

Stopping to water your horses in one of these hamlets, you may see a knot

of men standing silently and expectantly round the door of a clean, home‐

like cottage, and just outside, laid on the porch seat, a basin filled

with sprigs of box‐wood. The men are waiting for a coffin to be borne out,

and, when it comes, they will all fall into line behind it, and each,

taking a sprig from the basin, will throw it into the grave after the

prayers have been said. Of course this is a Catholic reminiscence of the

days when the box sprigs were used to sprinkle the coffin with holy water,

as they are now in most countries on the Continent; but, besides this,

box‐wood is an evergreen, and therefore a symbol of the immortality of the

soul.

Sometimes we would come to a little mountain tarn, across which we were

ferried, car, horses, and all. The regular travelling in these regions is

done by stage‐coaches, of which we availed ourselves for sending forward

our slender baggage, so as to be quite independent and unencumbered in our

movements. The mountain lakelets, that are never mentioned in guide‐books,

are very beautiful with their fringe of rushes and boggy earth starred

with white and golden flowers, and their flocks of teal and wild duck

dwelling in peace in these undisturbed wildernesses.

Grasmere, a village on one of the larger lakes bearing the same name, was

Wordsworth’s home for eight years, the first eight of this century. He was

born in Cumberland, and the home‐passion that has gained him his title of

Lake Poet never left him. Fortunate in his worldly circumstances, he went

to Cambridge, and, though a desultory reader, took a fairly creditable

degree after four years’ study. He made tours on foot through Wales and

Germany, and published his poetical reminiscences, though with little

success; but through their medium he gained the friendship of Coleridge,

his fellow‐poet and life‐long companion. He settled at Grasmere in 1799

with his sister, who was throughout his life, even after his marriage, his

guiding star—the kindred spirit whose approval and sympathy were the

secret sources of his intellectual life. Of her he says, speaking of a

peak which they could see from their “orchard‐seat”:

“There is an eminence, of these our hills,

The last that parleys with the setting sun.

The meteors make of it a favorite haunt;

The star of Jove, so beautiful and large

In the mid‐heavens, is never half so fair

As when he shines above it. ’Tis, in truth,

The loneliest place we have among the clouds.

_And she who dwells with me, whom I have loved_

_With such communion that no place on earth_

_Can ever be a solitude to me_,

Hath to this lonely summit given my name.”

Of his wife he wrote, after three years of marriage, words contrasting his

first impressions as a lover with the sweet, solemn experience of a

husband. Then “a phantom of delight, ... a lovely apparition, ... a

dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay,” but now

“A being breathing thoughtful breath,

A traveller betwixt life and death;

The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;

A perfect woman, nobly plann’d,

To warn, to comfort and command;

And yet a spirit still, and bright

With something of angelic light.”

Song seemed to gush from Wordsworth’s soul as naturally and copiously as

water from a mountain spring. Some of his verses were written with a

slate‐pencil on stones in lonely places; for instance, in a deserted

quarry on one of the islands at Rydal, on a stone half way up the grim

mountain of Black Comb, in Cumberland, or with a common pencil on a stone

in an outhouse on the island at Grasmere. He _lived_ poetry. Everything

with him was a pretext for verse; neither the commonest household

occurrence nor the sublimest spectacle of nature up there among those

rocky fells and green valleys lying under awful shadows of coming storms,

was a stranger to his ready pen. He says of himself that

“The sounding cataract

_Haunted me like a passion_; the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colors and their forms were then to me

_An appetite, a feeling, and a love_.”

There are few places so thoroughly fitted for a poet’s home as the lake

country of Cumberland and Westmoreland, yet more so then than now, when it

has become the fashion to make a tour among the lakes, even as one does

down the Rhine. England has wakened to the consciousness of her own beauty

within the last forty years, and a home‐tour often takes the place of a

foreign one; yet to those who first visited these Eden‐spots the rare

charm is gone, for sight‐seers have taken the place of the “wanderer,” and

regular guides usurp the simple escort of a stray shepherd whom in old

times you might have happened to meet by some _force_, on the cool banks

of which he would have told you, in his racy dialect, the old traditions

and legends of the neighborhood—the legend of the horn of Egremont Castle,

for instance, a Cumberland tale, telling how Sir Eustace Lucie and his

brother Hubert rode away to the Holy Land, and the former, pointing to the

“horn of the inheritance” that hung by the gate‐way, and which none could

sound,

“Save he who came as rightful heir

To Egremont’s domains and castle fair,”

said to his brother: “If I fall, and Christ our Saviour demand my sinful

soul, do thou come back straight‐way, and sound the horn, that we may have

a living house in thee.” And Hubert promised. But out in Palestine Sir

Eustace disappeared, and, when the news was brought to Hubert that his

elder brother lay “deep in Jordan flood,” he said darkly to the

messengers: “Take your _earnings_. Oh! that I could have _seen_ my brother

die.” He went home, and whether he sounded the horn or not none knew; it

was never heard, but Sir Hubert lived in glee for years, with wife and

sons and daughters, until one day

“A blast was uttered from the horn

Where by the castle gate it hung forlorn,”

and Sir Eustace came back safe and unsuspecting. Hubert rose up and fled

in silence, and it was years before he was again heard of; then he came

and asked forgiveness, and obtained it, and ended his penitent life in the

cloister; so that Eustace’s “heirs of heirs, through a long posterity,

sounded the horn which they alone could sound.” The same legend is told of

the Hall of Hutton John, an old house of the Huddlestones in a lonely

valley on the river Dacor, also in these parts.

Or it might be the tradition of Henry, Lord Clifford, the shepherd‐boy,

whose father lost his title and estates during the wars of the Roses.

Henry was restored, after twenty‐four years of shepherd life, in the first

year of the reign of Henry VII., and it is recorded that, when called to

Parliament, he behaved nobly and wisely, but otherwise came seldom to

London or the court, and rather delighted to live in the country, where he

repaired several of his castles, which had gone to decay during the late

troubles. “There is a tradition,” says Wordsworth himself, “current in the

village of Threlkeld (in Cumberland, where lay the estate of his father‐

in‐law, Sir Lancelot Threlkeld), that in the course of his shepherd life

he had acquired great astronomical knowledge.” The poet clothed this

incident (as he did every other that struck his fancy in that poetic land

of the north) in verse, singing a lay of the Red Rose, revived at last,

the flower of Lancaster, and weaving in the tale of the boy’s wanderings

on “Carrock’s side,” in “Rosedale’s groves,” and “Blencathara’s rugged

coves.” The common name of this last‐mentioned mountain is Saddle‐Back.

Near Threlkeld, hidden in the gorges of the purple hills, lies Bowscale

Tarn, where the people of the country still believe two immortal fish to

dwell. Tarn signifies, in north‐country dialect, a small mountain mere, or

lake. Wordsworth’s descriptions of scenery are exquisite; everywhere you

find the traces of that personal love of the places he paints, that

patient, detailed minuteness of touch which only comes of long gazing on a

favorite scene, and of familiarity with its every aspect, in winter and

summer, in storm and sunshine, in mist and rainbow. Every place has some

tender associations in his memory; the stately fir‐grove whither he was

wont

“To hasten, for I found beneath the roof

Of that perennial shade a cloistral place

Of refuge, with an unencumbered floor,”

reminds him of a dear friend, “a silent poet” but a sailor by profession,

after whom he called the pathway to the grove, whence

“The steep

Of Silver How, and Grasmere’s placid lake

And one green island”

could be distinctly seen. That friend never returned, but perished by

shipwreck in the discharge of his duty. Here, too, in this beautiful lake

country, both at Grasmere and at his later and more celebrated home, Rydal

Mount, in Westmoreland, Wordsworth lost others dearer yet—two of his

children, who died young, and Dora, his favorite daughter, who died six

years after her marriage. When on his own death‐bed, three years later,

his wife, brave and self‐forgetting to the last, comforted him by

whispering: “William, you are going to Dora.” His poems are so complete a

guide‐book to the lake country, as well as a series of living sketches of

the people of the north, that it is almost unavoidable to treat them as

tourists in Scotland do _The Lady of the Lake_, or tourists at Rome

_Childe Harold_. In his day, however, many popular traits were in full

vigor which now have almost disappeared. For instance, he says himself

that “the class of beggars to which the old man here described belongs

will probably soon be extinct. It consisted of poor and mostly old and

infirm persons, who confined themselves to a stated round in their

neighborhood, and had certain fixed days, on which, at different houses,

they regularly received alms, sometimes in money, but mostly in

provisions.” In his verse he describes the “Old Cumberland Beggar” thus:

“Him from my childhood have I known; and then

He was so old, he seems not older now.

He travels on, a solitary man—

His age has no companion.”

The passing horseman does not throw him a careless alms, but stops,

lingers, and drops a coin safely into the old man’s hat; the toll‐bar

keeper sees him from a distance, and leaves her work to lift the latch for

him; the post‐boy slackens his horse’s speed, and turns with less noisy

wheels out of his path; the very dogs do not bark at him.

“But deem not this man useless. Statesmen! ye

Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye

Who have a broom still ready in your hands

To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud

Heart‐swoln, while in your heart ye contemplate

Your talents, power, and wisdom, deem him not

A burden of the earth.”

No; he is “a record binding together past deeds and offices of charity”;

“a silent monitor” to those who sit sheltered “in a little grove of their

own kindred”; an object to call forth that blessed feeling that you have,

though “poorest poor,” been “the fathers and dealers‐out of some small

blessings”; a prompter to “tender offices and pensive thoughts.” See this

picture:

“Such pleasure is to one kind being known,

My neighbor, when with punctual care, each week,

Duly as Friday comes, though press’d herself

By her own wants, she from her chest of meal

Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip

Of this old mendicant, and from her door,

_Returning with exhilarated heart,_

_Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven_.”

And the poet, the lover of nature, the child of the mountain, ends by a

warning and a prayer:

“Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness

Gives the last human interest to his heart.

May never House, misnamed b‘of Industry,’

Make him a captive! For that pent‐up din,

Those life‐consuming sounds that clog the air,

Be his the natural silence of old age!”

Though we have quoted Wordsworth’s poetry, it is not as a poet but as a

man that we speak of him here, not desiring to criticise his verse or to

enter into discussions concerning the judgment given of it by critics of

his own time. In the Lake Country his personality strikes you with the

same sense of reality and continued presence as do the everlasting hills

and the changeless lakes themselves. He died only a quarter of a century

ago, though his principal poems all belonged to the first and second

decades of this century. In 1814 _The Excursion_ was published, and the

poem which has made his chief fame was so severely criticised at the time

that one of the reviewers boasted that he had _crushed_ it. A brother

poet, Southey, exclaimed: “He crush _The Excursion_! He might as well

fancy he could crush Skiddaw!” If his verse was coldly received at first,

it was chiefly because emotional, passionate poetry, such as Byron’s,

Moore’s, Scott’s, and Campbell’s, was the fashion then. Wordsworth’s was

calm as nature herself, and concerned itself little with man’s history,

past or present. When he _did_ mingle the deeds of men with the loving

touches of his scenery descriptions, he would choose pure, white lives,

such as would not jar with the calmness of lake and fell, of opal sky and

shimmering water. Here is what the legend of the ruined hermitage on S.

Herbert’s Island, on Lake Derwentwater, suggested to him. The story of the

holy friends is told also in Montalembert’s _Monks of the West_.

“This island, guarded from profane approach

By mountains high and waters widely spread,

Is that recess to which S. Herbert came

In life’s decline, a self‐secluded man,

After long exercise in social cares

And offices humane, intent t’ adore

The Deity with undistracted mind,

And meditate on everlasting things.

But he had left

A fellow‐laborer whom the good man loved

As his own soul; and when within his cave

Alone he knelt before the crucifix,

While o’er the lake the cataract of Lodore

Peal’d to his orisons, and when he paced

Along the beach of this small isle, and thought

Of his companion, he would pray that both

(Now that their earthly duties were fulfilled)

Might die in the same moment. Nor in vain

So prayed he; as our chronicles report,

Though here the hermit number’d his last day,

Far from S. Cuthbert, his beloved friend:

Those holy men both died in the same hour.”

Derwentwater is the most picturesque of all the lakes in point of smiling

landscape. It has several little wooded islands dotting its surface; its

waters are clear and more blue than those of the other lakes, and the

mountains round the shore are less abrupt and naked. Lodore _Force_

tumbles almost perpendicularly into it from the steep, shelving rocks that

jut out from the dense forest growth, like the backbone of a huge black

snake wriggling through the underbrush. These are the same waters whose

sound swept over the lake and smote the ears of the hermit‐saint twelve

centuries ago. It is, except one, the most romantic waterfall in the Lake

Country. Below this wooded hill, and on the very margin of Derwentwater,

stands a little old‐time inn, as clean as a Dutch house, with a rustic

porch and a little lawn before it, ringed in with chains hung in festoons

from four or five low posts. In the middle is a miniature gun, which is

fired off every now and then for the amusement of the tourists. The echoes

thus awakened among the surrounding hills are almost endless.

This beautiful North Country has another interest not so romantic—that of

its mines, which are mostly of lead. Just across Derwentwater there is a

fine mine, which, from its convenient position, is often visited. We rowed

across the lake to see it; but if you have seen one mine, you will

scarcely care to see a second—at least if you have no better motive than

curiosity. To us on that first expedition it was simply _fun_. Luckily,

there was no proposition made to don male attire for the only woman of the

party; a huge oilskin coat with an ample hood quite wrapped her up and

protected her for the downward journey. We got into a rough box or

“basket,” preferring this quicker and more adventurous mode of descent to

the species of chair contrived for the visitors to the mine, and were shot

down in an incredibly short space of time to the second “level” of what we

saw there is really very little to tell. The lodes or veins of metal

looked like irregular lines of shining moisture drawn on the rocky walls;

there was a tramway occupying the whole of the narrow gallery that formed

the level, and up and down this tramway, at a tremendous rate, and with a

noise like thunder, came the trucks loaded with ore. We had to squeeze up

against the wall as they passed. The path was more than half submerged; we

splashed into pools and puddles at every third or fourth step, and the

moisture dropped persistently from the glistening roof. We should have

gone to the third and lowest “level” had it not been so thoroughly under

water that the miners had to wear long waterproof boots mid‐way up their

thighs when they worked there. On going up again we stopped at the first

level, which looked exactly like the other. We did not gain much

information by our excursion, but it was a rare frolic, and we were

greatly excited. Our clothes came out of the “basket” in a soaked and

streaky condition; but nobody cared, the achievement was enough to make up

for anything. Some years later we tried the same sort of experiment, and

did not find it nearly so exciting. It was at an iron‐mine in

Monmouthshire, near the river Wye, famed in the legends of the Round

Table; we were let down the shaft in a kind of iron cage (the miners’

regular conveyance), which swung unpleasantly to and fro, grinding against

the sides of the narrow opening, and bumping us roughly down at the

bottom, where, as their time was nearly out, the men were gathering, ready

to go up. Here there was literally nothing to see. The work was done a

long way off, and there was no time to go there; besides, the place was

several inches under water. The interest of this expedition consisted

simply in going down and coming up again, and in the feeling that we could

“say we had done it.” What was really interesting on this same occasion

was the sight of the iron‐works and furnaces at nightfall. The metal was

put into the furnaces at one end, and came out at the other in a

continuous stream of intensest light; blindingly white it poured out,

running slowly and spreading itself into a network of grooves all parallel

with each other, ready fitted for its reception, where it was left to

cool. Few things so truly realize one’s idea of _light_ as molten metal.

There seemed no color in this beautiful stream, and one could fancy just

such an intense glow as that to be the very radiance round the throne of

God. It was impossible to stand near it for more than a second, the heat

was so fierce, and we had to watch the calm, uninterrupted lustre from a

respectful distance. This work was going on in a kind of open shed,

sheltered above to protect the furnaces and machinery, but open at the

sides, where in the darkness all kinds of strange groups and forms

succeeded one another. The commonest circumstances took on solemnity and

mystery in this half‐light, the red flashes from inside darting like

tongues into the fading light, and making of it all a wonderful, living

Rembrandt.