Saying this, Roreen buckled the sword to his side, bade a ceremonious

farewell to the polite Fieryfoot and his workmen, left the house, and

proceeded on his adventures. He took the west and broader road that

led by the forge, and travelled on gaily till night. For seven days he

travelled thus, meeting various small adventures by the way, and

getting through them with his usual light-heartedness, till at length

he saw a huge dark castle before him, standing on a rock over a

solitary lake. He accosted an old man by the way-side, who told him

that a huge giant of unusual size, strength, and ferocity dwelt there,

and that he had kept there in thrall, for the past year and a day, a

beautiful princess, expecting that in the end she'd give her consent

to marry him. The old peasant told him also that the giant had two

brothers, who dwelt far away in their castles, and that they were the

strangest objects ever seen by mortal eyes; one being a valiant dwarf

as broad as he was long, and the other longer than he was broad, for

he was tall as the giant, but so slightly formed that he was

designated by the inhabitants of the country round Snohad na Dhial, or

the Devil's Needle. Roreen thanked the old man with great urbanity,

and proceeded on his way toward the castle. When he came to the gate,

he knocked as bold as brass, and demanded admittance. He was quickly

answered by a tremendous voice from the inside, which demanded what he

wanted.

"Let me in, ould steeple," said Roreen; "I'm a poor disthressed boy

that's grown wary o' the worldt on account o' my fatness, an' I'm come

to offer myself as a volunthary male for your voracious stomach!"

At this the gate flew open with a loud clang, and Roreen found himself

in the great court-yard of the castle, confronting the giant. The

giant was licking his lips expectantly while opening the gate, but

seemed now not a little disappointed as he looked upon the spare, wiry

form standing before him.

"If you're engaged, ould cannibal," said Roreen again, "in calkalatin'

a gasthernomical ploberm, as I'm aweer you are, by the way you're

lookin' at me, allow me perlitely to help you in hallucidatin' it. In

the first place, if {234} you intend to put me in a pie, I must tell

you that you'll not get much gravy from my carkiss, an' in the next,

if you intend to ate me on the spot, raw, I must inform you that

you'll find me as hard as a Kerry dimon, an' stickin' in your throat,

before you're half acquainted with the politics of your abdominal

kingdom!"

As an answer to this the giant did precisely what Roreen Shouragh

expected he would do. He stooped down, caught him up with his

monstrous hand, intending to chop off his head with the first bite;

but Roreen, the moment he approached his broad, hairy chest, pulled

suddenly out the sword presented to him by Fiery foot, and drew it

across the giant's windpipe, with as scientific a cut as ever was

given by any champion at the battle of Gaura, Clontarf, or of any

other place on the face of the earth. The giant did not give the usual

roar given by a giant in the act of being killed. How could he, when

his windpipe was cut? He only fell down simply by the gate of his own

castle, and died without a groan. Roreen, by way of triumph, leaped

upon his carcass, and with a light heart cut a few nimble capers

thereon, and then proceeded on his explorations into the castle. There

he found the beautiful princess sad and forlorn, whom he soon relieved

from her apprehensions of further thraldom. She told him that she was

not the only lady whose wrongs were unredressed in that strange

country, for that the two remaining brothers of the giant, to wit, the

dwarf and the Devil's Needle, had kept, during her time of thrall, her

two younger sisters in an equally cruel bondage.

"An' now, my onrivalled daisy," said Roreen, after some conversation

had passed between them, "allow me, while I'm in the humor for

performin' deeds o' valior, to thramp off an' set them free!"

"But," said the princess, "am I to be left behind pining in this

forlorn dungeon of a castle?"

"Refulgint leedy," answered Roreen, "a pair of eyes like yours, when

purferrin' a request, are arrisistible, but this Kerry-dimon' heart o'

mine is at present onmovable; and in ferlosophy, when an arrisistible

affeer conglomerates against an onmovable one, nothin' occurs, an' so

I must have the exthrame bowldness of asking you to stay where you are

till I come back, for 'tis always the maxim of an exparienced an'

renowned gineral not to oncumber himself with too much baggage when

settin' out on his advinthures!"

And so the young princess consented to stay, and Roreen, with many

bows and compliments, took his leave. For three days he travelled,

till at length he espied the castle of the dwarf towering on the

summit of a great hill. He climbed the hill as fast as his nimble legs

could carry him, blew the horn at the gate, and defied the dwarf to

single combat. To work they went. The skin of the dwarf was as hard

and tough as that of a rhinoceros, but at length Roreen's sword found

a passage through it, and the dwarf fell dead by his own gate. Roreen

went in, brought the good news of her sister's liberation to the lady,

and after directing her to remain where she was till his return, set

forward again. For three days more he travelled, till he came to the

shore of a sea, where he saw the castle of Snohad na Dhial towering

high above the waves. He climbed up the rock on which the castle

stood, found the gate open, and whistling the romantic pastoral of

"The piper in the meadow straying," he jovially entered the first door

he met. On he went, through room after room, and saw no one, till at

last he came before an exceedingly lofty door, with a narrow and

perpendicular slit in it, extending almost from threshold to lintel.

He peeped in through the open slit, and beheld inside the most

beautiful young lady his eyes ever rested upon. She was weeping, and

seemed sorely troubled. Roreen opened the door, presented himself

before her, and told her how he had liberated her {235} sisters. In

return she told him how that very day she was to be married to Snohad

na Dhial, and wept, as she further related that it was out of the

question to think of vanquishing him, for that he was as tall as the

giant, yet so slight that the slit in the door served him always for

an entrance, but then he was beyond all heroes strong, and usually

killed his antagonist by knotting his long limbs around him and

squeezing him to death.

"No matther," said Roreen. "I'll sing a song afther my victory, as the

gamecock said to the piper. An' now, most delightful an' bloomin'

darlint o' the worldt, this purriliginious heart o' mine is melted at

last with the conshumin' flame o' love. Say, then, the

heart-sootherin' an' merlifluous word that you'll have me, an' your

thrubbles are over in the twinklin'--"

"Not over so soon!" interrupted a loud, shrill voice behind them, and

Roreen, turning round, beheld Snohad na Dhial entering at the slit,

with deadly rage and jealousy in his fiery eyes. Snohad, however, in

his haste to get in and fall upon Roreen, got his middle in some way

or other entangled in the slit, and in his struggles to free himself,

his feet lilted upward, and there he hung for a few moments, inward

and outward, like the swaying beam of a balance. For a few moments

only; for Roreen, running over, with one blow of his faithful sword on

the waist cut him in two, and down fell both halves of Snohad na Dhial

as dead as a door-nail. After this Roreen got the heart-sootherin'

answer he so gallantly implored. He then bethought himself of

returning. After a few weeks he found himself with the three sisters,

and with a cavalcade of horses laden with the most precious diamonds,

pearls, and other treasures belonging to the three castles, in front

of the forge where he had met Fieryfoot, and talking merrily to that

worthy.

"An' now," said Fieryfoot, after he had complimented the ladies on

their beauty, and Roreen on his success and bravery, "I am about to

give my three workmen lave of absence. But they must work seven days

for you first. Then they may go on their peregrinations about ould

Ireland. Farewell. Give my ondeniable love to the ladle, and remember

me to your brothers balligerently!"

With that the two friends embraced, on which Fieryfoot drew out a

small whistle and blew a tune, which set Roreen Shouragh and the three

princesses into a pleasant sleep; on awakening from which they found

themselves by the side of the little hut on the knoll, with the three

workmen beneath them, holding the horses and guarding their loads of

treasure. Roreen's two brothers had just returned from the chase, and

were standing near them in mute wonderment at the spectacle. After

some brief explanations, the whole cavalcade set out on their journey

home, and travelled on till they came to the hut of the lonely widow

on the banks of the Clydagh. It was nightfall when they reached the

place. Roreen told the three workmen that he wanted to have a castle

built on the meadow beside the hut, and then went in and embraced his

mother. The workmen went to the meadow, and when the next morning

dawned, had a castle of unexampled strength and beauty built for

Roreen and his intended bride. The two succeeding mornings saw two

equally splendid castles built for the two brothers and their brides

elect, for they were about to be married to the two elder princesses.

By the next morning after that they had a castle finished for Roreen's

mother. On the second morning afterward they had a town built, and at

length, on the seventh morning, when Roreen went out, he found both

castles and town' enclosed by a strong wall, with ramparts, gateways,

and every other necessary appliance of defence. The three workmen

then took their leave, and by the loud smacking of their lips as they

departed, Roreen knew that they were going off to the west in search

of the "say" of whiskey. After this the three {236} brothers were

married to the three lovely princesses, mercenary soldiers flocked in

from every quarter, and took service under their banners; the

inhabitants of the surrounding country removed into the town, and

matters went on gaily and prosperously. The name of Roreen's wife was

Mourne Blanaid, or the Blooming, and on a great festival day got up

for the purpose, he called the town Mourne, in honor of her. In a

pitched battle they defeated and killed the slayer of their father,

and drove his followers out of their patrimony, and after that they

lived in glory and renown till their death.

For centuries after the town of Mourne flourished, still remaining in

possession of the race of the Mac Carthys. At length the Normans came

and laid their mail-clad hands upon it. In the reign of King John,

Alexander de St. Helena founded a preceptory for Knights Templars near

it, the ruins of which stand yet in forlorn and solitary grandeur

beside the little river. Still the town flourished and throve, though

many a battle was fought within it, and around its gray walls, till at

length, according to Spenser, Murrogh na Ranagh, prince of Thomond,

burst out like a fiery flame from his fastnesses in Clare, overran all

Munster, burnt almost every town in it that had fallen into the

possession of the English, and among the rest Mourne, whose woeful

burning did not content him, for he destroyed it altogether, scarcely

leaving one stone standing there upon another. And now only a few

mounds remain to show the spot where Roreen Shouragh got his town

built, and where he ruled so jovially.

And so, gentle reader, if you look with me to the history of Troy,

Rome, the battle of Ventry Harbor, the Pyramids, or Tadmor in the

Desert, I think you will say that there is none of them so clear, so

circumstantial, and so trustworthy as the early history of the old

town of Mourne.

----

{237}

HANS EULER.

FROM THE GERMAN OF J. G. SEIDL.

"Hark, child--again that knocking! Go, fling wide the door, I pray;

Perchance 'tis some poor pilgrim who has wandered from his way.

Now save thee, gallant stranger! Sit thou down and share our cheer:

Our bread is white and wholesome see! our drink is fresh and clear."

"I come not here your bread to share, nor of your drink to speak.

Your name?"--"Hans Euler."--"So! 'tis well: it is your blood I seek.

Know that through many a weary year I've sought you for a foe:

I had a goodly brother once: 'twas you who laid him low.

"And as he bit the dust, I vowed that soon or late on you

His death should be avenged; and mark! that oath I will keep true."

"I slew him; but in quarrel just. I fought him hand to hand:

Yet, since you would avenge his fall,--I'm ready; take your stand.

"But I war not in my homestead, by this hearth whereon I tread;

Not in sight of these--my dear ones--for whose safety I have bled.

My daughter, reach me down yon sword,--the same that laid him low;

And if I ne'er come back again, Tyrol has sons enow."

So forth they fared together, up the glorious Alpine way,

Where newly now the kindling east led on the golden day.

The sun that mounted with them, as he rose in all his pride,

Still saw the stranger toiling on, Hans Euler for his guide.

They climbed the mountain summit; and behold! the Alpine world

Showed clear and bright before them, 'neath the mists that upward curled.

Below them, calm and happy, lay the valley in her rest,

With the chalets in her arms, and with their dwellers on her breast.

Amidst were sparkling waters; giant chasms, scarred and riven;

Vast, crowning woods; and over all, the pure, blest air of heaven:

And, sacred in the sight of God, where peace her treasures spread,

On every hearth, on every home, the soul of freedom shed!

Both gazed in solemn silence down. The stranger stayed his hand.

Hans Euler gently pointed to his own beloved land:

"'Twas this thy brother threatened; such a wrong might move me well.

'Twas in such a cause I struggled:--'twas for such a fault he fell."

The stranger paused: then, turning, looked Hans Euler in the face;

The arm that would have raised the sword fell powerless in its place.

"You slew him. Was it, then, for this--for home and fatherland?

Forgive me! 'Twas a righteous cause. Hans Euler, there's my hand!"

ELEANORA L. HERVEY.

{238}

From All the Year Round.

THE MODERN GENIUS OF THE STREAMS.

Water to raise corn from the seed, to clothe the meadow with its

grass, and to fill the land with fruit and flowers; water to lie

heaped in fantastic clouds, to make the fairy-land of sunset, and to

spread the arch of mercy in the rainbow; water that kindles our

imagination to a sense of beauty; water that gives us our meat, and is

our drink, and cleans us of dirt and disease, and is our servant in a

thousand great and little ways--it is the very juice and essence of

man's civilization. And so, whether we shall drag over cold water, or

let hot water drag us, is one way of putting the question between

canal and steam communication for conveyance of our heavy traffic. The

canal-boat uses its water cold without, the steam-engine requires it

hot within. Before hot water appeared in its industrial character to

hiss off the cold, canals had all the glory to themselves. They are

not yet hissed off their old stages and cat-called into contempt by

the whistle of the steam-engine, for canal communication still has

advantages of its own, and canal shares are powers in the money

market.

Little more than a century ago, not only were there neither canals nor

railroads in this country, but the common high-roads were about the

worst in Europe. Corn and wool were sent to market over those bad

roads on horses' or bullocks' backs, and the only coal used in the

inland southern counties was carried on horseback in sacks for the

supply of the blacksmiths' forges. Water gave us our over-sea

commerce, that came in and went out by way of our tidal rivers; and

the step proposed toward the fostering of our home industries was a

great one when it occurred to somebody to imitate nature, by erecting

artificial rivers that should flow whereever we wished them to flow,

and should be navigable along their whole course for capacious,

flat-bottomed carrying-boats.

The first English canal, indeed, was constructed as long as three

hundred years ago, at Exeter, by John Trew, a native of

Glamorganshire, who enabled the traders of Exeter to cancel the legacy

of the spite of an angry Countess of Devon, who had, nearly three

hundred years before that time, stopped the ascent of sea-going

vessels to Exeter by forming a weir across the Exe at Topham. Trew

contrived, to avoid the obstruction, a canal from Exeter to Topham,

three miles long, with a lock to it. John Trew ruined himself in the

service of an ungrateful corporation.

After this time, improvements went no further than the clearing out of

some channels of natural water-communication, until the time of James

Brindley, the father of the English canal system.

James Brindley was born in the year 1716, the third of the reign of

George the First, in a cottage in the parish of Wormhill, midway

between the remote hamlets of the High Peak of Derby. There his

father, more devoted to shooting, hunting, and bull-running, than to

his work as a cottier, cultivated the little croft he rented, got into

bad company and poverty, and left his children neglected and untaught.

The idle man had an industrious wife, who taught the children, of whom

James was the eldest, what little she knew; but they must all help to

earn as soon as they were able, and James Brindley earned wages at any

ordinary laborer's work that he could get until he was seventeen years

old. {239} He was a lad clever with his knife, who made little models

of mills, and set them to work in mill-streams of his own contrivance.

The machinery of a neighboring grist-mill was his especial delight,

and had given the first impulse to his modellings. He and his mother

agreed that he should bind himself, whenever he could, to a

millwright; and at the age of seventeen he did, after a few weeks'

trial, become apprentice for seven years to Abraham Bennett,

wheelwright and millwright, at the village of Sutton, near

Macclesfield, which was the market-town of Brindley's district.

The millwrights were then the only engineers; they worked by turns at

the foot-lathe, the carpenter's bench, and the anvil; and, in country

places where there was little support for division of labor, they had

to find skill or invention to meet any demand on mechanical skill.

Bennett was not a sober man, his journeymen were a rough set, and much

of the young apprentice's time was at first occupied in running for

beer. He was taught little, and had to find out everything for

himself, which he did but slowly; so that, during some time, he passed

with his master for a stupid bungler, only fit for the farm-work from

which he had been taken. But, after two years of this sort of

pupilage, a fire having injured some machinery in a small silk-mill at

Macclesfield, Brindley was sent to bring away the damaged pieces; and,

by his suggestions on that occasion, he showed to Mr. Milner, the mill

superintendent, an intelligence that caused his master to be applied

to for Brindley's aid in a certain part of the repairs. He was

unwillingly sent, worked under the encouragement of the friendly

superintendent with remarkable ability, and was surprised that his

master and the other workmen seemed to be dissatisfied with his

success. When they chaffed him, at the supper celebrating the

completion of the work, his friend Milner offered to wager a gallon of

the best ale that, before the lad's apprenticeship was out, he would

be a cleverer workman than any of them there present, master or man.

This was a joke against Brindley among his fellow-workmen; but in

another year they found "the young man Brindley" specially asked for

when the neighboring millers needed repairs of machinery, and

sometimes he was chosen in preference to the master himself. Bennett

asked "the young man Briudley" where he had learnt his skill in

mill-work, but he could tell no more than that it "came natural like."

He even suggested and carried out improvements, especially in the

application of the water-power, and worked so substantially well, that

his master said to him one day, "Jem, if thou goes on i' this foolish

way o' workin', there will be very little trade left to be done when

thou comes oot o' thy time: thou knaws firmness o' wark's h' ruin o'

trade."

But presently Jem's "firmness o' wark" was the saving of his master.

Bennett got a contract to set up a paper-mill on the river Dane, upon

the model of a mill near Manchester. Bennett went to examine the

Manchester mill, brought back a confused and beery notion of it, and,

proceeding with the job, got into the most hopeless bewilderment. An

old hand, who had looked in on the work, reported, over his drink at

the nearest public-house, that the job was a farce, and that Abraham

Bennett was only throwing away his employer's money. Next Saturday,

after his work, young Jem Brindley disappeared. He was just of age,

and it was supposed he had taken it into his head to leave his master

and begin life on his own account. But on Monday morning, there he was

at his work, with his coat off, and the whole duty to be done clear in

his head. He had taken on Saturday night a twenty-five mile walk to

the pattern mill, near Manchester. On Sunday morning he had asked

leave of its proprietor to go in and examine it. He had spent {240}

some hours on Sunday in the study of its machinery, and then had

walked the twenty-five miles back, to resume his work and save his

master from a failure that would have been disastrous to his credit.

The conduct of the work was left to him; he undid what was amiss, and

proceeded with the rest so accurately, that the contract was completed

within the appointed time, to the complete satisfaction of all persons

concerned. After that piece of good service, Bennett left to James

Brindley the chief care over his business. When Bennett died, Brindley

carried on to completion all work then in hand, and wound up the

accounts for the benefit of his old master's family. That done, he set

up in business on his own account at the town of Leek, in

Staffordshire; he was then twenty-six years old, having served seven

years as an apprentice and two years as journeyman.

Leek was then but a small market-town, with a few grist-mills, and

Brindley had no capital; but he made himself known beyond Leek as a

reliable man, whose work was good and durable, who had invention at

the service of his employers, and who always finished a job within the

stipulated time. He did not confine himself to mill-work, but was

ready to undertake all sorts of machinery connected with the draining

of mines, the pumping of water, the smelting of iron and copper, for

which a demand was then rising, and became honorably known to his

neighbors as "the Schemer." At first he had no journeyman or

apprentice, and he cut the tree for his own timber. While working as

an apprentice, he had taught himself to write in a clumsy,

half-illegible way--he never learnt to spell--and when he had been

thirteen years in business, he would still charge an employer his

day's work at two shillings for cutting a big tree, for a mill-shaft

or for other use. When he was called to exercise his skill at a

distance upon some machinery, he added a charge of sixpence a day for

extra expenses.

When the brothers John and Thomas Wedgwood, potters in a small way at

the outset of their famous career, desired to increase the supply of

flint-powder, they called "the Schemer" to their aid, and the success

of the flint-mill Brindley then erected brought him business in the

potteries from that time forward.

About this time, also, a Manchester man was being married to a young

lady of mark in the potteries, and, during the wedding festivities,

conversation once turned on the cleverness of the young millwright of

Leek. The Manchester man wondered whether he was clever enough to get

the water out of some hopelessly drowned coal mines of his, and

thought he should like to see him. Brindley was sent for, told the

case and its hitherto insuperable difficulties, went into a brown

study, then suddenly brightened up, and told in what way he thought

that, without great expense, the difficulty might be conquered. The

gist of his plan was to use the fall of the river Irwell, that formed

one boundary of the estate, and pump the water from the pits by means

of the greater power of the water in the river. His suggestion was

thought good, and, being set to work upon this job, he drove a tunnel

through six hundred yards of solid rock, and by the tunnel brought the

river down upon the breast of an immense water-wheel, fixed in a

chamber thirty feet below the surface of the ground; the water, when

it had turned the wheel, was carried on into the lower level of the

Irwell. That wheel, with its pumps, working night and day, soon

cleared the drowned outworkings of the mine; and for the invention and

direction of this valuable engineering work, he seems only to have

charged his workman's wages of two shillings a day.

An engineer from London had been brought down to superintend the

building of a new silk-mill at {241} Congleton, and Brindley was

employed under him to make the water-wheel and do the common work of

his trade. The engineer from London got his work into a mess, and at

last was obliged to confess his inability to carry out his plan. "The

Schemer" Brindley was applied to by the perplexed proprietor. Could he

put the confusion straight? James Brindley asked to see the plans; but

the great engineer refused to show them to a common millwright. "Well,

then," said Brindley to the proprietor of the mill, "tell me exactly

what you want the machinery to do, and I will try to contrive what

will do it. But you must leave me free to work in my own way." He was

told the results desired, and not only achieved them, but achieved

much more, adding new contrivances, which afterward proved of the

greatest value.

After this achievement, Brindley was employed by the now prospering

potters to build flint-mills of more power upon a new plan of his own.

One of the largest was that built for Mr. Baddely, of which work there

is record in such trade entries of his as "March 15, 1757. With Mr.

Baddely to Matherso about a now" (new) "flint-mill upon a windey day 1

day 3s. 6d. March 19 draing a plann 1 day 2s. 6d. March 23 draing a

plann and to sat out the wheelrace 1 day 4s."

At this time Brindley is also exercising his wit on an attempt at an

improved steam-engine; but though his ideas are good, it is hard to

bring them into continuously good working order, and after the close

of entries about it in his memorandum-book, when it seems to have

broken down for a second time, he underlines the item "to Run about a

Drinking Is. 6d." But he confined his despair to the loss of a day and

the expenditure of eighteen pence. Not long afterward he had developed

a patent of his own, and erected, in 1763, for the Walker Colliery at

Newcastle, a steam-engine wholly of iron, which was pronounced the

most "complete and noble piece of iron-work" that had up to that time

been produced. But the perfecting of the steam-engine was then safe in

the hands of Watt, and Brindley had already turned into his own path

as the author of our English canal system.

The young Duke of Bridgewater, vexed in love by the frailty of fair

woman, had abjured interest in their sex, had gone down to his estate

of Worsley, on the borders of Chat Moss, and, to give himself

something more wholesome to think about than the sisters Gunning and

their fortunes, conferred with John Gilbert, his land steward, as to

the possibility of cutting a canal by which the coals found upon his

Worsley estate might be readily taken to market at Manchester.

Manchester then was a rising town, of which the manufacturers were yet

unaided by the steam-engine, and there was no coal smoke but that

which arose from household fires. The roads out of Manchester were so

bad as to be actually closed in winter, and in summer the coal, sold

at the pit mouth by the horse-load, was conveyed on horses' backs at

an addition to its cost of nine or ten shillings a ton.

When the duke discussed with Gilbert old abandoned and new possible

schemes of water conveyance for his Worsley coal, Gilbert advised the

calling in of the ingenious James Brindley of Leek, "the Schemer."

When the duke came into contact with Brindley, he at once put trust in

him, and gave him the direction of the proposed work; whereupon he was

requested to base his advice upon what he enters in his

memorandum-book of jobs done, as an "ochilor," (ocular) "servey or a

ricconitering."

Brindley examined the ground, and formed his own plan. He was against

carrying the canal down into Irwell by a flight of locks, and so up

again on the other side to the proposed level, but counselled carrying

the canal by solid embankments and a stone aqueduct right over the

river upon one {242} level throughout. The duke accepted his opinion,

and had plans prepared for a new application to parliament, Brindley

often staying with him at work and in consultation for weeks together,

while still travelling to and fro in full employment upon mills,

water-wheels, cranes, fire-engines, and other mechanical work. Small

as his pay was, he lived frugally. He had by this time even saved a

little money, and gained credit enough to be able, by borrowing from a

friend at Leek, to pay between five and six hundred pounds for a

fourth share of an estate at Turnhurst, in Staffordshire, supposed by

him to be full of minerals.

The Duke of Bridgewater obtained his act in the year 1760, but the

bold and original part of Brindley's scheme, which many ridiculed as

madness, caused the duke much anxiety. In England there had never been

so great an aqueduct, but the scheme was not only for the carrying of

water in a water-tight trunk of earth over an embankment, but also for

the carrying of ships on a bridge of water over water. Brindley had no

misgivings. To allay the duke's fears, he suggested calling in and

questioning another engineer, who surprised the man of genius by

ending an adverse report thus: "I have often heard of castles an the

air; but never before saw where any of them were to be erected."

The duke, however, with all his hesitation, had most faith in the head

of James Brindley, bade him go on in his own way, and resolved to run

the risk of failure. And so, on a bridge of three arches, the canal

was carried over the Irwell by the Barton aqueduct, thirty-nine feet

above the river. The water was confined within a puddled channel, to

prevent leakage, and the work is at this day as sound as it was when

first constructed. For the safe carrying of water along the top of an

earthen embankment, Brindley had relied upon the retaining powers of

clay puddle. It was by help also of clay puddle that he carried the

weight of the embankment safe over the ooze of Trafford Moss.

With great ingenuity, also, Brindley provided for the crossing of his

canal by streams intercepting its course, without breach of his rule

that it is unsafe to let such waters freely mix with the canal stream.

Thus, to provide for the free passage of the Medlock without causing a

rush into the canal, an ingenious form of weir was contrived, over

which its waters flowed into a lower level, and thence down a well

several yards deep, leading to a subterranean passage by which the

stream was passed into the Irwell, near at hand. Arthur Young, who saw

Brindley's canal soon after it was opened, said that "the whole plan

of these works shows a capacity and extent of mind which foresees

difficulties, and invents remedies in anticipation of possible evils.

The connection and dependence of the parts upon each other are happily

imagined; and all are exerted in concert, to command by every means

the wished-for success." At the Worsley end Brindley constructed a

basin, into which coal was brought from different workings of the mine

by a subterranean water channel. Brindley also invented cranes for the

more ready loading of the boats, laid down within the mines a system

of underground railways leading from the face of the coal where the

miners worked, to the wells that he had made at different points in

the tunnels for shooting the coal down into the boats waiting below.

He drained and ventilated with a water-bellows the lower parts of the

mine. He improved the barges, invented water-weights, raising dams,

riddles to wash the coal for the forges. At the Manchester end

Brindley made equally ingenious arrangements for the easy delivery of

the coal at the top of Castle Hill. At every turn in the work his

inventive genius was felt. When the want of lime for the masonry was a

serious impediment, Brindley discovered how to make, of a useless,

unadhesive lime-marl, by tempering it and casting it in {243} moulds

before burning, an excellent lime, a contrivance that alone saved the

duke several thousands of pounds cost. When the water was let in, and

the works everywhere stood firm, people of fashion flocked to see

Brindley's canal, as "perhaps the greatest artificial curiosity in the

world:" and writers spoke in glowing terms of the surprise with which

they saw several barges of great burden drawn by a single mule or

horse along a "river hung in the air," over another river flowing

beneath.

As for Manchester, with the price of coal reduced one half, it was

ready to make the best use of the steam-engine when it was established

as the motive-power in our factories.

Within two months of the day, seventeenth of July, 1761, when the

first boat-load of coals travelled over the Barton viaduct, Brindley's

notes testify that he was at Liverpool "recconitoring" and by the end

of September he was levelling for a proposed extension of his canal

from Manchester to Liverpool, by joining it with the Mersey, eight

miles below Warrington Bridge, whence there is a natural tideway to

Liverpool, about fifteen miles distant. At that time there was not

even a coach communication over the bad roads between Manchester and

Liverpool, the first stage-coach having been started six years later,

when it required six, and sometimes eight horses to pull it the thirty

miles along the ruts and through the sloughs. The coach started from

Liverpool early in the morning, breakfasted at Prescot, dined at

Warrington, and reached Manchester by supper-time. From Manchester to

Liverpool it made the return journey next day. The Duke of

Bridgewater's proposed canal was strongly opposed as an antagonist

interest by the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company. The canal

promised to take freights at half the price charged by the Navigation

Company. A son of the Earl of Derby took the part of the "Old

Navigators," and as the Duke of Bridgewater was a Whig, Brindley had

to enter in his note-book that "the Toores" (Tories) had "mad had"

(made head) "agane ye Duk." But at last his entry was: "ad a grate

Division of 127 fort Duk 98 nos for t e Duke 29 Me Jorete," and the

Duke's cause prospered during the rest of the contest.

Brindley bought a new suit of clothes to grace his part as principal

engineering witness for the canal, and having upset his mind for some

days by going to see Garrick play Richard the Third, (wherefore he

declared against all further indulgence in that sort of excitement),

he went to the committee-room duly provided with a bit of chalk in his

pocket, and made good the saying that originated from his clear way of

showing what he meant, upon the floor of the committee-room, that

"Brindley and chalk would go through the world." When asked to produce

a drawing of a proposed bridge, he said he had none, but could

immediately get a model. Whereupon he went out and bought a large

cheese, which he brought into the committee-room and cut into two

equal parts, saying, "Here is my model." The two halves of the cheese

represented the two arches of his bridge, the rest of the work

connected with them he built with paper, with books, or with whatever

he found ready to hand. Once when he had repeatedly talked about

"puddling," some of the members wished to know what puddling was.

Brindley sent out for a lump of clay, hollowed it into a trough,

poured water in, and showed that it leaked out. Then he worked up the

clay with water, going through the process of puddling in miniature,

again made a trough of the puddled clay, filled it with water, and

showed that it was water-tight. "Thus it is," he said, "that I form a

water-tight trunk to carry water over rivers and valleys, wherever

they cross the path of the canal."

And so the battle was fought, and the canal works completed at a total

{244} cost of two hundred and twenty thousand pounds, of which

Brindley was content to take as his share a rate of pay below that of

an ordinary mechanic at the present day. The canal yielded an income

which eventually reached eighty thousand pounds a year; but three and

sixpence a day, and for a greater part of the time half a crown a day,

was the salary of the man of genius by whom it was planned and

executed. Yet Brindley was then able to get a guinea a day for

services to others, though from the Duke of Bridgewater he never took

more than a guinea a week, and had not always that. The duke was

investing all the money he could raise, and sometimes at his wit's end

for means to go on with the work. Brindley gave his soul to the work

for its own sake, and if he had a few pence to buy himself his dinner

with--one day he enters only "ating and drinking 6d."--he could live,

content with having added not a straw's weight of impediment to the

great enterprise he was bent with all the force of his great genius

upon achieving. It gave him the advantage, also, of being able, as was

most convenient, to treat with the duke on equal terms. He was invited

as a canal maker to Hesse by offers of any payment he chose to demand,

but stuck to the duke, who is said even to have been in debt to him

for travelling and other expenses, which he had left unpaid with the

answer, "I am much more distressed for money than you; however, as

soon as I can recover myself, your services shall not go unrewarded."

After Brindley's sudden death his widow applied in vain for sums which

she said were due to her late husband.

The Staffordshire Grand Trunk Canal, Brindley's other great work,

started from the duke's canal, near Runcorn, passed through the

salt-making districts of Cheshire and the Pottery district, to unite

the Severn with the Mersey by one hundred and forty miles of

water-way. This canal went through five tunnels, one of them, that at

Harecastle, being nearly three thousand yards long, a feature in the

scheme accounted by many to be as preposterous as they had called his

former "castle in the air." The work was done; bringing with it

traffic, population, and prosperity into many half-savage midland

districts. It gave comfort and ample employment in the Pottery

district, while trebling the numbers of those whom it converted, from

a half-employed and ill-paid set of savages, into a thriving

community.

Once, when Brindley was demonstrating to a committee of the House of

Commons the superior reliableness and convenience of equable canals as

compared with rivers, liable to every mischance of flood and drought,

he was asked by a member, "What, then, he took to be the use of

navigable rivers?" and replied, "To make canal navigations, to be

sure!" From the Grand Trunk, other canals branched, and yet others

were laid out by Brindley before he died. He found time when at the

age of fifty to marry a girl of nineteen, and the house then falling

vacant on the estate of Turnhurst, of which he had, for the sake of

its minerals, bought a fourth share, and by that time had a colliery

at work, he took his wife home as the mistress of that old, roomy

dwelling. He was receiving better pay then as the engineer of the

Grand Trunk Canal, and his new home was conveniently near to the

workings of its great Harecastle Tunnel, into which he and his

partners sent a short branch canal--of a mile and a half long--from

their coal mine, which was only a few fields distant from his house.

Water, that made his greatness, was at last the death of Brindley. He

got drenched one day while surveying a canal, went about in his wet

clothes, and when he went to bed at the inn was put between damp

sheets. This produced the illness of which he died, at the age of

fifty-six. It was not the first time that he had taken to his bed.

Scarcely able to read, and if he could have read, engaged on work so

new that no book precedents could have {245} helped him, whenever

Brindley had some difficulty to overcome that seemed for a time

insuperable, he went to bed upon it, and is known to have stopped in

bed two or three days, till he had quietly thought it all over, and

worked his way to the solution. It is said that when he lay on his

death-bed some eager canal undertakers urged to see him and seek from

him the solution of a problem. They had met with a serious difficulty

in the course of their canal, and must see Mr. Brindley and get his

advice. They were admitted, and told him how at a certain place they

had labored in vain to prevent their canal from leaking. "Then puddle

it," murmured Brindley. "Sir, but we have puddled it." "Then"--and

they were almost his last words in life--"puddle it again--and

again." As he had wisely invested his savings in Grand Trunk shares,

they and his share in the colliery enabled him to leave ample

provision for his widow and two daughters.

As for the canal system that he established, it has not been made

obsolete by its strong younger brother, the railway system. The duke's

canal is as busy as ever. Not less than twenty million tons of traffic

are at this date carried yearly upon the canals of England alone, and

this quantity is steadily increasing.

We have taken the facts in this account of Brindley, from a delightful

popular edition of that part of Mr. Smiles's Lives of the Engineers

which tells of him and of the earlier water engineers. Of Mr. Smiles's

Lives of George and Robert Stephenson there is a popular edition as a

companion volume, and therein all may read, worthily told, the tale of

the foundation and of the chief triumphs of that new form of

engineering which dealt with water, not by the riverful, but by the

bucketful, and made a few buckets of water strong as a river to sweep

men and their goods and their cattle in a mighty torrent from one

corner of the country to another.

----

From Chambers's Journal.

A LIE.

A thistle grew in a sluggard's croft,

Rough and rank with a thorny growth,

With its spotted leaves, and its purple flowers

(Blossoms of Sin, and bloom of Sloth);

Slowly it ripened its baneful seeds,

And away they went in swift gray showers.

But every seed was cobweb winged,

And they spread o'er a hundred miles of land.

'Tis centuries now since they first took flight,

In that careless, gay, and mischievous band,

Yet still they are blooming and ripening fast,

And spreading their evil by day and night.

{246}

From The Dublin Review.

CHRISTIAN ART.

_The History of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art;_ with that of

the Types, St. John the Baptist and other persons of the Old and New

Testament. Commenced by the late Mrs. JAMESON; continued and completed

by Lady EASTLAKE. 2 vols. London: Longman. 1864.

The series of works on Christian Art brought out by the late Mrs.

Jameson, and which earned for her so high a reputation as an art

critic, was conceived upon a plan of progressive interest and

importance. From "Sacred and Legendary Art," published in 1848, she

passed to the special legends connected with Monastic Orders, and in

1852 gave to the public her most charming volume, entitled "Legends of

the Madonna." The series was to have closed with the subject of the

volume now before us, and some progress had been made by Mrs. Jameson

in collecting notes on various pictures, when, in the spring of 1860,

death cut her labors short. The work, however, has passed into hands

well able to complete it worthily. We may miss some of the freshness

and genuine simplicity with which Mrs. Jameson was wont to transfer to

paper rare impression made on her mind and heart; but Lady Eastlake,

while bringing to her task the essential qualification of earnestness

and exhibiting considerable grace and force of style, is possessed of

a far wider and more critical acquaintance with the history of art

than her amiable predecessor either had or pretended to have. It is

pleasant to find in these pages, as in those which preceded them, the

evidence of a desire to avoid controversial matter; and that, without

compromise of personal conviction, care has been generally taken not

to wound the feelings of those who differ from the writer in religious

belief. The primary object of the work is aesthetic and artistic, not

religious; and it is seldom that the laws of good taste are

transgressed in its pages by gratuitous attacks upon the tenets of the

great body of artists who are the immediate subject of criticism.

Indeed, considering that these volumes are the production of a

Protestant, we think that less of Protestant animus could hardly be

shown, at all consistently with honesty of purpose and frankness of

speech. That no traces of the Protestant spirit should appear, would

be next to an impossibility; and the affectation of Catholic feeling,

where it did not exist, would be offensive from its very unreality. So

much self-control in traversing a vast extent of delicate and

dangerous ground deserves all the more hearty acknowledgment, as it

must have been peculiarly difficult to a person of Lady Eastlake's

ardent temperament and evident strength of conviction. If, therefore,

in the course of our remarks, we feel bound to point out the evil

influence which Lady Eastlake's religious views seem to us to have

exercised on her critical appreciations, it will be understood that

theories, not persons, are the object of our animadversions. It is at

all times an ungrateful task to expose the weak points of an author;

it would be especially ungenerous to be hard upon the shortcomings of

one who has done such good service to the cause of truth, in proving,

however unconsciously, by the mere exercise of persistent candor, the

identity of Christian and Catholic art. Catholics, indeed, do not

ordinarily stand in need of such proof. If they know anything of art,

the fact of this identity must be with them an early discovery; but it

is gratifying, especially in a time and country in which scant justice

on such matters is too often dealt out to us, to be able to adduce a

{247} testimony the more valuable because given in despite of an

adverse bias. It is quite possible, indeed, that the writer has not

perceived the full import of her work; but no one, we think, can study

her examples or weigh the force of her criticism with out coming to

the true conclusion upon this subject.

But, before establishing the correctness of this assertion, we must

draw attention to one point upon which we are at issue with Lady

Eastlake: a point, moreover, of no small importance, as it vitally

affects the value of a large part of her criticisms. A question arises

at the outset, what standard or test of Christian art is to be set up;

and Lady Eastlake makes an excellent start in the investigation. There

is, perhaps, no principle so steadily kept in view throughout the

work, or so often and earnestly insisted on, as this: that genuine

Christian art and true Christian doctrine are intimately and

essentially connected. Art is bound to depict only the truth in fact

or doctrine (vol. ii., p. 266, note). Departure from sound theology

involves heresy in art. Now, no principle can be more true than this,

or of greater importance toward forming a correct judgment upon works

professing to belong to Christian art. Beauty and truth are

objectively identical, for beauty is only truth lighted up and

harmonized by the reason; and to supernatural beauty, which Christian

art essentially aims at expressing, supernatural truth must

necessarily correspond. For here we have nothing to do with mere

material beauty, "the glories of color, the feats of anatomical skill,

the charms of chiaroscuro, the revels of free handling." Admirable as

these are in themselves, and by no means, theoretically at least,

injurious to Christian art, they belong properly to art as art, and

are more or less separable from art as Christian. Christian art is

never perfect as art, unless material beauty enters into the

composition; but as Christianity is above art, and the soul superior

to the body, so material beauty must never forget its place, never

strive to obtain the mastery, or constitute itself the chief aim of

the artist, upon pain of total destruction of the Christian element.

The soul of Christian art is in the idea--the shadowing out by symbol

or representation, under material forms and conditions, of immaterial,

supernatural, even uncreated beauty, the beauty of heavenly virtue, or

heavenly mystery or divinity itself. But how are these objects, in all

their harmony, proportion, and splendor, to be realized--how is

supernatural beauty to be conceived--except by a soul gifted with

supernatural perceptions? Faith, at least, is indispensably requisite

to the truthfulness of any artistic work intended to represent the

supernatural. Without faith, distortion and caricature are inevitable.

With faith--the foundation of all knowledge of the supernatural in

this life--much, very much, may be accomplished. But it is when faith,

enlivened and perfected by supernatural love, exercises itself in

contemplation, that the spiritual sight becomes keen, and the soul,

from having simply a just appreciation, passes to a vision of

exquisite beauty, sublimity, and tenderness, which a higher perception

of divine mysteries has laid open to its gaze. The hand may falter,

and be faithless to the mental conception, so as to produce imperfect

execution and inadequate artistic result. Faith and love do not make a

man an artist. But, amidst deformity or poverty of art in the material

element, if there is any, however slight, artistic power employed, the

outward defects will be qualified, and almost transformed, to the eye

of an appreciating spectator, through the inner power which speaks

from the painter's soul to his own: just as we learn to overlook, or

even to admire, plain features, and anything short of positive

ugliness of outline, in those whose mental greatness and moral beauty

we have learned to venerate and to love. On the other hand, any amount

of material perfection in contour and color is insipid as a doll,

{248} a mere mask of nothingness, incapable of arresting attention or

captivating the heart, unless within there be a soul of beauty--that

inward excellence which subordinates to itself, while it gives life

and meaning to, the outward form. On the side of the object, truth; on

the part of the spectator, faith and love--these are the palmary

conditions of Christian art and its appreciation. For it must ever be

remembered that supernatural truth lies beyond the ken of any but

souls elevated by faith; and, what is of equal importance, that faith

can have no other object than the truth. Its object is infallible

truth, or it is not faith. No wonder, then, that, when we see a

prodigality of manual skill and grace of form, and even moral beauty

of the natural order, devoid of the inspiration of supernatural faith

and love, we are forced to exclaim with St. Gregory, as he gazed on

the fair Saxon youths, _Heit proh dolor! quod tam lucidi vultus

homines tenebrarum auctor possideret, tantaque gratia frontis

conspicui mentem ab aeterna gratia vacuam gestarent._ [Footnote 51]

Alas! that so much physical beauty should embody nothing but a pagan

idea! It were as unreasonable to look for Christian art as the product

of an heretical imagination, as to demand Christian eloquence or

Christian poetry from an heretical preacher or a free-thinking poet.

The vision is wanting, the appreciation is not there--how, then, is

the expression possible?

[Footnote 51: "Alas! what pain it is to think that men of such

bright countenance should be the possession of the Prince of

Darkness; and that though conspicuous for surprising grace of

feature, they should bear a soul within untenanted by everlasting

grace."]

Nor is this a mere abstract theory, erected on _a priori_

principles. It would be easy to verify our position by a large

induction from the history of art. Is there a picture whose mute

eloquence fills the soul with reverential awe, or holy joy, or

supernatural calm, or deep, deep sympathy with the sufferings of our

Lord, or the sorrows of his Immaculate Mother, we may be sure the

painter was some humble soul, ascetical and pious, who, like Juan de

Joanes, or Zurbaran, spent his days in lifelong seclusion, given up to

the grave and holy thoughts which their pictures utter to us; or that

other Spaniard, Luis de Vargas, famed alike for his austerity and

amiable Christian gaiety; or a Sassoferrato, or a Van Eyck, seeking

in, holy communion the peace of soul which can alone reflect the

calmness of sanctity, or the bliss of celestial scenes; or the holy

friar, John of Fiesoli, known to all as the Angelic whose heroic

humility and Christian simplicity, learned in a life of prayer and

contemplation, invest his pictures with an unearthly charm. These, and

many another pious painter, known or unknown by name to men, looked on

their vocation as a holy trust, and sought to keep themselves

unspotted from the world. Theirs was the practical maxim so dear to

the blessed Angelico, that "those who work for Christ must dwell in

Christ." On the other hand, does a picture, albeit Christian in

subject and in name, offend us by false sentiment, or cold

conventionalism, or sensuality, or affectation, or strain after

theatrical effect, or any of the hundred forms which degraded art

exhibits when it has wandered from the Christian type--we know that we

are looking on the handiwork of some schismatic Greek, or modern

Protestant; or that, if the painter be a Catholic, he lived in the

days or wrought under the influence of the Renaissance, when paganism

made its deadly inroads upon art, substituting the spirit of

voluptuousness for the sweet and austere graces that spring of divine

charity; or under the blighting influence of Jansenism, which killed

alike that queenly virtue and her sister humility by false asceticism

and pharisaic rigor. We might even trust the decision as to the

truthfulness of our view to an inspection of the examples with which

Lady Eastlake has so abundantly illustrated her volumes. Indeed,

hitherto her principle and ours are one.

{249}

But unfortunately, though the _major_ premise of the art-syllogism is

granted on both sides, Lady Eastlake adopts a _minor_, from which we

utterly dissent. It is implied in one and all of the following

statements, and is more or less interwoven with the whole staple of

her work. She tells us that "the materials for this history in art are

only properly derivable from Scripture, and therefore referable back

to the same source for verification" (vol. i., p. 3). And again: "It

may be at once laid down as a principle, that the interests of art and

the integrity of Scripture [by integrity is meant literal adherence to

the text of Scripture] are indissolubly united. Where superstition

mingles, the quality of Christian art suffers; where doubt enters,

Christian art has nothing to do. It may even be averred that, if a

person could be imagined, deeply imbued with aesthetic instincts and

knowledge, and utterly ignorant of Scripture, he would yet intuitively

prefer, as art, all those conceptions of our Lord's history which

adhere to the simple text. . . . All preference for the simple

narrative of Scripture he would arrive at through art--all

condemnation of the embroideries of legend through the same channel"

(vol. i., p. 6). And again: "The simplicity of art and of the Gospel

stand or fall together. The literal narrative of the agony in the

garden lost sight of, all became confusion and error" (vol. ii., p.

30).

Now, whatever obscurity and confusion these passages contain--and they

do contain a great deal--one thing is unmistakably clear, that the

orthodoxy of the ultra-Protestant maxim, "The Bible and the Bible

only," is a fixed principle with Lady Eastlake. And the consequence

is, that, whenever she looks at a religious picture, she refers to the

Gospel narrative for its verification. If it does not stand this test,

it is nowhere in her esteem. What is not in Scripture is legendary and

unartistic, because necessarily at variance with scriptural truth.

Thus whole provinces of art in connection with our Lord are banished

from her pages. Surely such a canon of taste is not only narrow, but

arbitrary: narrow, as excluding whatever comes down to us hallowed by

tradition, considered apart from or beyond the limits of scriptural

statement; arbitrary, because it leaves art at the mercy of the sects,

with their manifold dissensions as to the extent of Scripture, or its

true interpretation. Thus, Lady Eastlake, being herself no believer in

the doctrine of the real presence, does not recognize its enunciation

in the sacred pages, and loses, apparently, all interest in the great

pictures which symbolize or relate to the most holy sacrament of the

altar. So, too, most of the special devotions to the person of our

Lord, which have sprung out of the living faith of the church, and

have furnished subjects for pictures incontestably of a high order,

are totally omitted from her classification of devotional

compositions. We can hardly imagine it possible for her to adhere

consistently to her rule in other departments of Christian art. The

Immaculate Conception, for instance, the Assumption, the Coronation of

our Lady, the marriage of St. Catherine, the stigmata of St. Francis,

the vision of St. Dominic, the miracles of the saints--subjects, many

of which have inspired some of the noblest productions of her favorite

Fra Angelico, or of Raphael, or Murillo, or Velasquez--undoubtedly do

violence to her criteria of artistic merit, though we cannot believe

that she would contest their universally acknowledged claim to the

highest honors in Christian art. Indeed, fidelity to this narrow

Protestant maxim would have rendered these two volumes an

impossibility. Strange, then, that it should not have occurred to the

mind of the authoress that by far the larger part, and, on her own

showing, the most glorious part, of the fraternity of Christian

artists have been men full to overflowing of the spirit of a church

which has never adopted her standard of orthodoxy.

{250}

The Catholic Church is at once the parent, historically, of all

Christian art and the upholder of that grand principle of tradition

which gives to art, no less than to doctrine, a range far wider and

more ample than the mere letter of the biblical records. Of course,

contradiction of Scripture, or "alterations of the text, which,

however slight, affect the revealed character of our Lord," must give

offence to every judicious critic; but it is tradition and the voice

of the living Church--together with that instinctive sense of the

faithful which, so long as they live in submission to their

divinely-appointed teachers, is so marvellously true and

unerring--that must be the criteria of orthodoxy, and determine when

the artist's conceptions or mode of treatment are contrary to, or in

accordance with, the spirit of the sacred text.

Lady Eastlake does not like the notion of our Lord's falling under the

cross. It is not in the Bible, and she pronounces it to be counter to

the spirit and purport of the Gospel narrative. She grows positively

angry with some painters for having represented an angel holding the

chalice, surmounted by a cross or host, before the eyes of our blessed

Redeemer in his agony. She has her own standard of feeling, abstract

and arbitrary, to which she refers the decision of such points. But

where is the guarantee for the correctness of that standard, or the

security for its general acceptance? The Bible does not tell us what

its own spirit and purport are, and outside the Bible Lady Eastlake,

at least, cannot point to any infallible authority. She is, therefore,

imposing her own judgment, unsupported by any assigned reason, upon

the world, as a rule to be followed. So, too, St. Veronica to her is

always _de trop_, morally and pictorially, in the Way of the Cross;

and scholastic interpretations, seemingly because they are scholastic,

of the types of the Old Testament, are invariably pronounced by her to

be strained, unreal, and superstitious. So effectually does

Protestantism interfere with the capacity of a critic to appreciate

the higher developments and fuller expression of Christian art.

Not that a Protestant or a free-thinker can have no sense at all of

the supernaturally beautiful. If they are trained to a high degree of

moral and intellectual cultivation in the natural order, and in

proportion to the height of their attainments in that order, they will

not fail to be affected by beauty of a superior order. For there is no

contradiction between the truth of nature and the truth which is above

nature. The Protestant, indeed, as sincerely holding large fragments

of Christian truth, will necessarily have much sympathy with many

exhibitions of supernatural beauty. But he lacks the clue to it as a

whole; and if he can often admire, rarely, if ever, can he create.

Both Protestant and unbeliever must therefore labor under much

vagueness and uncertainty of judgment, inasmuch as they can have no

fixity of principle. Often they will not know what they want; they

will praise in one page what they condemn in the next; or, when moved,

will be at a loss to account for their emotion. They will exhibit

phenomena not unlike those so often presented in this country by

unbelievers, who, entering our churches, are one while overawed by a

presence they cannot define, and which bewilders their intellect,

whilst it captivates their imagination; and another while, as

unaccountably, are moved to disgust and derision by what to them is an

insoluble riddle, a perplexity, and an annoyance. To such critics some

phases of the supernatural will never be welcome. The tortures of the

martyrs, the self-inflicted macerations of ascetics, the sublime

self-abandonment of heroic charity--whatever, in a word, embodies and

brings home the grand, sacred, but, to the natural man, repugnant idea

of the cross, will always be offensive, and produce a sense of

irritation, such as even Lady Eastlake, with all her {251}

self-mastery and good taste, cannot wholly suppress or conceal. So

true is it in the sphere of Christian art, as in that of Christian

doctrine and devotion, _Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis_. Casual

excitement, transient enthusiasm, unmeaning admiration, are at best

the pitiful substitutes for an intelligent and abiding appreciation of

excellence, in those who are not possessed of supernatural ideas in

common with the subjects and authors of the works of genuine Christian

art.

It would be unfair, however, not to mention that Lady Eastlake admits

many important modifications of this rigid principle of adherence to

the letter of Scripture. The following secondary canons go far to

soften down the asperity of her Protestantism. They shall be stated in

her own words:

"On the other hand, additions to Scripture given in positive images,

if neither prejudicial to art nor inconsistent with our Lord's

character, are not in themselves necessarily objectionable; but will,

according to their merits, be looked upon with indulgence or

admiration. The pictures, for instance, representing the disrobing of

our Lord--a fact not told in Scripture, yet which must have

happened--will be regarded with pathetic interest. The same will be

felt of Paul Delaroche's exquisite little picture, where St. John is

leading the Virgin home; for such works legitimately refresh and carry

on the narrative in a scriptural spirit. Nay, episodes which are more

purely invention--such as the ancient tradition of the Mother of Christ

wrapping the cloth round her son, previous to his crucifixion; or,

again, the picture by Paul Delaroche, of the agony of her and of the

disciples, represented as gathered together in a room while Christ

passes with his cross--even such imaginary episodes will silence the

most arrant Protestant criticism, by their overpowering appeal to the

feelings; since in neither case is the great duty of art to itself or

to its divine object tampered with.

"The same holds good where symbolical forms, as in Christian art of

classic descent, are given, which embody the idea rather than the

fact. For instance, where the Jordan is represented as a river god,

with his urn under his arm, at the baptism of our Lord; or when,

later, the same event is accompanied by the presence of angels, who

hold the Saviour's garments. Such paraphrases and poetical imaginings

in no way affect the truth of the facts they set forth, but rather, to

mortal fancy, swell their pomp and dignity.

"Still less need the lover of art and adorer of Christ care about

inconsistencies in minor matters. As, for example, that the entombment

takes place in a renaissance monument, in the centre of a beautiful

Italian landscape, and not in a cave in a rock in the arid scenery of

Judea. On the contrary, it is right that art should exercise the

utmost possible freedom in such circumstances, which are the signs and

handwriting of different schools and times, and enrich a picture with

sources of interest to the historian and the archaeologist. It is the

moral expression which touches the heart and adorns the tale, not the

architecture or costume; and whether our Lord be in the garb of a

Roman citizen or of a German burgher (though his dress is usually

conventional in color and form), it matters not, if he be but God in

all."

The arbitrariness of the principles set forth in the earlier portion

of this passage, and the quiet assumption that all ancient traditions

are pure inventions, may well be excused by the reader for the sake of

the inconsistency which saves from condemnation not a few glorious

pictures, which could never otherwise have been made to square with

the rule of literal adherence to the Gospel narrative.

Another principle essential to the right appreciation of art is

admirably stated by Lady Eastlake:

"All will agree that the duty of the Christian artist is to give not

only the {252} temporary fact, but the permanent truth. Yet this

entails a discrepancy to which something must be sacrificed. For, in

the scenes from our Lord's life, fact and truth are frequently at

variance. That the Magdalen took our Lord for a gardener, was the

fact; that he was Christ, is the truth. That the Roman soldiers

believed him to be a criminal, and therefore mocked and buffeted him

without scruple, is the fact; that we know him through all these

scenes to be the Christ, is the truth. Nay, the very cruciform nimbus

that encircles Christ's head is an assertion of this principle. As

visible to us, it is true; as visible even to his disciples, it is

false. There are, however, educated people so little versed in the

conditions of art, as to object even to the nimbus, as a departure

from fact, and, therefore, an offence to truth; preferring, they say,

to see our Lord represented as he walked upon earth. But this is a

fallacy in more than one sense. Our Lord, as he walked upon earth, was

not known to be the Messiah. To give him as he was seen by men who

knew him not, would be to give him not as the Christ. It may be urged

that the cruciform nimbus is a mere arbitrary sign, nothing in itself

more than a combination of lines. This is true; but there _must_ be

something arbitrary in all human imaginings (we should prefer to say

symbolizings) of the supernatural. Art, for ages, assumed this sign as

that of the Godhead of Christ, and the world for ages granted it. It

served various purposes; it hedged the rudest representations of

Christ round with a divinity, which kept them distinct from all

others. It pointed him out to the most ignorant spectator, and it

identified the sacred head, even at a distance."

This principle may, indeed, be legitimately extended much further. The

purpose of Christian art is instruction, either in morals or in dogma,

or in both. It is not, therefore, a sin in art to sacrifice upon

occasion some portion of historical truth, in subservience to this

end. Nor in fact, in Catholic ages, was there danger of the people

being led into error on the fundamental facts of religion. The Gospel

narrative was too familiar to them for that. They seem, as is well

remarked by Father Cahier, to have had hearts more elevated than ours,

and more attuned by meditation and habitual catholicity of spirit to

mystery, and its sublimer lessons; and therefore, whenever we find in

early paintings what seems to us anomalous in an historic point of

view, we may conclude with safety that there was a dogmatic intention.

There are, however, limits to liberties of this kind, which may not be

transgressed without incurring censure. Overbold speculation has ere

now betrayed even orthodox theologians into accidental error. And a

Catholic artist may depict, as a Catholic schoolman may enunciate,

views which deserve to be stigmatized as rash, offensive, erroneous,

scandalous, or even, in themselves, heretical. There have been

occasions in which the Church has felt herself bound to interfere with

wanderings of the artistic imagination, as injurious, morally or

doctrinally, to the faithful committed to her charge. Nor have

theologians failed to protest from time to time against similar

abuses. Bellarmine frowned upon the muse in Christian art. Savonarola,

in his best days, made open war upon the pagan corruptions which in

his time had begun to abound in Florentine paintings. Father Canisius

denounces those painters as inexcusable who, in the face of Scripture,

represent our Lady as swooning at the foot of the cross; and Father de

Ligny reprobates, on the same grounds, the introduction of St. Joseph

into pictures of the meeting between the Blessed Virgin and St.

Elizabeth. For--whatever we may think as to his having accompanied our

Lady on the journey--had he been present at the interview, he would

have been enlightened upon the mystery, his ignorance of which

afterward threw him into such perplexity.

{253}

As to the order of the work, Lady Eastlake gives ample explanation in

the preface:

"In the short programme left by Mrs. Jameson, the ideal and devotional

subjects, such as the Good Shepherd, the Lamb, the Second Person of

the Trinity, were placed first; the scriptural history of our Lord's

life on earth next; and, lastly, the types from the Old Testament.

There is reason, however, to believe, from the evidence of what she

had already written, that she would have departed from this

arrangement. After much deliberation, I have ventured to do so, and to

place the subjects chronologically. The work commences, therefore,

with that which heads most systems of Christian art--The Fall of

Lucifer and Creation of the World--followed by the types and prophets

of the Old Testament. Next comes the history of the Innocents and of

John the Baptist, written by her own hand, and leading to the Life and

Passion of our Lord. The abstract and devotional subjects, as growing

out of these materials, then follow, and the work terminates with the

Last Judgment."

Mrs. Jameson's own share in the work is confined mainly to some of the

types, the histories specified above, and familiar scenes in the

earlier portions of the Gospel narrative, including a few of the

miracles and parables of our Lord. The notes are fragmentary, but

written in her usual interesting and lively style. How refreshing, for

instance, and characteristic are the following comments upon some

pictures representing the dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael at the

imperious request of Sarah:

"I believe the most celebrated example is the picture by Guercino, in

the Brera; but I do not think it deserves its celebrity--the pathetic

is there alloyed with vulgarity of character. I remember that, when I

first saw this picture, I could only think of the praises lavished on

it by Byron and others, as the finest expression of deep, natural

pathos to be found in the whole range of art. I fancied, as many do,

that I could see in it the beauties so poetically described. Some

years later, when I saw it again, with a more cultivated eye and

taste, my disappointment was great. In fact, Abraham is much more like

an unfeeling old beggar than a majestic patriarch, resigned to the

divine will, yet struck to the heart by the cruel necessity under

which he was acting. Hagar cries like a housemaid turned off without

wages or warning, and Ishmael is merely a blubbering boy. For

expression, the picture by Govaert Hiricke (Berlin Gallery, 815) seems

to me much superior; the look of appealing anguish in the face of

Hagar as she turns to Abraham, and points to her weeping boy, reaches

to the tragic in point of conception, but Ishmael, if very natural,

with his fist in his eye, is also rather vulgar. Rembrandt's

composition is quite dramatic, and, in his manner, as fine as

possible. Hagar, lingering on the step of the dwelling whence she is

rejected, weeps reproachfully; Ishmael, in a rich Oriental costume,

steps on before, with the boyish courage of one destined to become an

archer and a hunter in the wilderness, and the father of a great and

even yet unconquered nation; in the background Sarah is seen looking

out of the window at her departing rival, with exultation in her

face."

Those who are acquainted with Italian paintings of the 15th century

must have remarked the frequency with which the great masters of the

Tuscan school in that era treat the subject of "The Massacre of the

Innocents." Though our Lord is not an actor in the scene, it is

intimately connected with his history. The Innocents were the first

martyrs in his cause, and from the earliest times attracted the

veneration and tender affection of Christians. Painful as the subject

is, it affords scope for the exercise of the highest tragic power. The

mere fact that Herod's sword swept the nurseries of Bethlehem, though

necessarily entering into the picture, becomes subordinate to the

{254} sorrow which then started into life in so many mothers' hearts.

That is the point made most prominent in the Gospel by the citation of

the pathetic words of Jeremias in the prophecy: "In Rama was there a

voice heard, lamentations, and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel

weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are

not." The mind is carried back to the time when the very sound of

those tottering feet sufficed to waken the pulses of love in the

mother's bosom; when those confiding hands were ever locked in hers.

How dear had been the pretty prattle of those little ones, the first

stammerings of the tongue, the silvery laughter, even the cries of

passion or of pain! Hitherto all had bsen sunshine, or once and again

the shadow of some light cloud had drifted across the face of heaven;

but now agony comes on the wings of the whirlwind--a pitiless storm

that leaves nothing but blank, broken hearts behind. Here we see a

bereaved mother, wildly passionate, tossing her frantic arms

heavenward; we almost fancy we hear her rave and moan. There we mark

the wandering footsteps, no longer obedient to the helm of reason.

Another, with clasped hands, kneels, gazing on the purple stains which

dye the ivory limbs of her slaughtered darling. Or the eye rests with

awful compassion on a standing figure, another speechless Niobe, pale

and unconscious as a statue, still pressing her dead infant to her

breast. Upon one or two upturned faces a light has broken; the grand

thought seems just to have flashed upon their souls--that the purple

stains are the dye of martyrdom, destined by a loving Providence to

adorn a robe of unfading glory. And so sorrow passes almost into joy,

and the imagination reaches forward to another sorrowful Mother

--Mother of sorrows--who is to sit in desolation, yet mastering her

deep woe, and, with a sacrificing love that transcends resignation,

entering into and uniting herself with the mysterious designs of God.

In spite, however, of the interest of the subject, for ages it was

rarely depicted. Mrs. Jameson gives the following account of its

sudden rise into general favor:

"All at once, however, in the latter half of the 15th century--that

is, after 1450--we find the subject of the Holy Innocents assuming an

extraordinary degree of popularity and importance. Then, for the first

time, we find chapels dedicated to them, and groups of martyred

children in altar-pieces round the throne of Christ or the Virgin.

From this period we have innumerable examples of the terrible scene of

the massacre at Bethlehem, treated as a separate subject in pictures

and prints, while the best artists vied with each other in varying and

elaborating the details of circumstantial cruelty and frantic despair.

"For a long time, I could not comprehend how this came about, nor how

it happened that through all Italy, especially in the Tuscan schools,

a subject so ghastly and so painful should have assumed this sort of

prominence. The cause, as it gradually revealed itself, rendered every

picture more and more interesting; connecting them with each other,

and showing how intimately the history of art is mixed up with the

life of a people.

"There had existed at Florence, from the 13th century, a hospital for

foundlings, the first institution of the kind in Europe. It was

attached to the Benedictine monastery of San Gallo, near one of the

gates of the city still bearing the name. In the 15th century, when

the population and extent of the city had greatly increased, it was

found that this hospital was too small, and the funds of the monastery

quite inadequate to the purpose. Then Lionardo Buruni, of Arezzo, who

was twice chancellor of Florence--the same Lionardo who gave to

Ghiberti the subjects of his famous gates--filled with compassion for

the orphans and neglected children, addressed the senate on the

subject, and made such an affecting appeal in their behalf, that not

the senate only, but the whole people of {255} Florence, responded

with enthusiasm, frequently interrupting him with cries of 'Viva

Messer Lionardo d'Arezzo!' 'And,' adds the historian, 'never was a

question of importance carried with such [more] quickness and

unanimity' (_mai con maggior celerita e pienezza de' voti fu vinto

partito di cosa grave come questa_). Large sums were voted, offerings

flowed in, a superb hospital was founded, and Brunelleschi was

appointed architect. When finished, which was not till 1444, it was

solemnly dedicated to the '_Holy Innocents_.' The first child

consigned to the new institution was a poor little female infant, on

whose breast was pinned the name 'Agata,' in remembrance of which an

altar in the chapel was dedicated to St. Agatha. We have proof that

the foundation, progress, and consecration of this refuge for

destitute children excited the greatest interest and sympathy, not

only in Florence, but in the neighboring states, and that it was

imitated in Pisa, Arezzo, and Siena. The union of the two hospitals of

San Gallo and the 'Innocenti' took place in 1463. Churches and chapels

were appended to the hospitals, and, as a matter of course, the

painters and sculptors were called upon to decorate them. Such are the

circumstances which explain, as I think, the popularity of the story

of the Innocents in the 15th century, and the manner in which it

occupied the minds of the great cotemporary artists of the Tuscan

school, and others after them."

We cannot pretend to decide upon the truth of this supposed connection

between the establishment of an institution to minister to the wants

of the forsaken and the development of a special branch of Christian

art. Whether true or not, this much is certain, that it is in keeping

with a multitude of instances which go to prove how favorable the

practice of Catholic charity is to the progress of the arts. Love ever

pours itself around in streams of radiance, lighting up whole regions

which lie beyond its immediate object. It copies the creative

liberality of God, who, in providing us with what is necessary for

subsistence, surrounds us at the same time with a thousand superfluous

manifestations of beauty.

But it is time to pass on to the second volume of this history, which

we owe almost entirely to the pen of Lady Eastlake. It is mainly

occupied with the Passion of our Lord; and certainly the diligent

attention paid by the authoress to this subject, and the judgment

displayed in the arrangement of the narrative and the selection of

examples, cannot be too highly commended. The style is generally

clear, simple, and earnest. Always dignified, it sometimes rises to

eloquence, as in the description of Rembrandt's etching of the "Ecce

Homo," and in the following criticism of Leonardo da Vinci's

celebrated "Last Supper." After a clever disquisition on the

difficulties of the subject, and the conditions essential to its

effective treatment, she thus proceeds:

"We need not say who did fulfil these conditions, nor whose Last

Supper it is--all ruined and defaced as it may be--which alone arouses

the heart of the spectator as effectually as that incomparable shadow

in the centre has roused the feelings of the dim forms on each side of

him. Leonardo da Vinci's _Cena_, to all who consider this grand

subject through the medium of art, is _the_ Last Supper--there is no

other. Various representations exist, and by the highest names in art,

but they do not touch the subtle spring. Compared with this _chef

d'oeuvre_, their Last Suppers are mere exhibitions of well-drawn,

draped, or colored figures, in studiously varied attitudes, which

excite no emotion beyond the admiration due to these qualities. It is

no wonder that Leonardo should have done little or nothing more after

the execution, in his forty-sixth year, of that stupendous picture. It

was not in man not to be fastidious, who had such an unapproachable

standard of his own {256} powers perpetually standing in his path.

"Let us now consider this figure of Christ more closely.

"It is not sufficient to say that our Lord has just uttered this

sentence, viz., 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, one of you shall

betray me;' we must endeavor to define in what, in his own person, the

visible proof of his having spoken consists. The painter has cast the

eyes down--an action which generally detracts from the expression of a

face. Here, however, no such loss is felt. The outward sight, it is

true, is in abeyance, but the intensest sense of inward vision has

taken its place. Our Lord is looking into himself--that self which

knew 'all things,' and therefore needed not to lift his mortal lids to

ascertain what effect his words had produced. The honest indignation

of the apostles, the visible perturbation of the traitor, are each

right in their place, and for the looker-on, but they are nothing to

him. Thus here at once the highest power and refinement of art is

shown, by the conversion of what in most hands would have been an

insipidity into the means of expression best suited to the moment. The

inclination of the head, and the expression of every feature, all

contribute to the same intention. This is not the heaviness or even

the repose of previous silence. On the contrary, the head has not yet

risen, nor the muscles of the face subsided from the act of mournful

speech. It is just that evanescent moment which all true painters

yearn to catch, and which few but painters are wont to observe--when

the tones have ceased, but the lips are not sealed--when, for an

instant, the face repeats to the eye what the voice has said to the

ear. No one who has studied that head can doubt that our Lord has just

spoken: the sounds are not there, but they have not travelled far into

space.

"Much, too, in the general speech of this head is owing to the skill

with which, while conveying one particular idea, the painter has

suggested no other. Beautiful as the face is, there is no other beauty

but that which ministers to this end. We know not whether the head be

handsome or picturesque, masculine or feminine in type--whether the

eye be liquid, the cheek ruddy, the hair smooth, or the beard

curling--as we know with such painful certainty in other

representations. All we feel is, that the wave of one intense meaning

has passed over the whole countenance, and left its impress alike on

every part. Sorrow is the predominant expression--that sorrow which,

as we have said in our Introduction, distinguishes the Christian's

God, and which binds him, by a sympathy no fabled deity ever claimed,

with the fallen and suffering race of Adam. His very words have given

himself more pain than they have to his hearers, and a pain he cannot

expend in protestations as they do, for this, as for every other act

of his life, came he into the world.

"But we must not linger with the face alone; no hands ever did such

intellectual service as those which lie spread on that table. They,

too, have just fallen into that position--one so full of meaning to

us, and so unconsciously assumed by him--and they will retain it no

longer than the eye which is down and the head which is sunk. A

special intention on the painter's part may be surmised in the

opposite action of each hand: the palm of the one so graciously and

bountifully open to all who are weary and heavy-laden; the other

averted, yet not closed, as if deprecating its own symbolic office. Or

we may consider their position as applicable to this particular scene

only; the one hand saying, 'Of those that thou hast given me none is

lost,' and the other, which lies near Judas, 'except the son of

perdition.' Or, again, we may give a still narrower definition, and

interpret this averted hand as directing the eye, in some sort, to the

hand of Judas, which lies nearest it, 'Behold, the hand of him that

{257} betrayeth me is with me on the table.' Not that the science of

Christian iconography has been adopted here, for the welcoming and

condemning functions of the respective hands have been reversed--in

reference, probably, to Judas, who sits on our Lord's right. Or we may

give up attributing symbolic intentions of any kind to the painter--a

source of pleasure to the spectator more often justifiable than

justified--and simply give him credit for having, by his own exquisite

feeling alone, so placed the hands as to make them thus minister to a

variety of suggestions. Either way, these grand and pathetic members

stand as preeminent as the head in the pictorial history of our Lord,

having seldom been equalled in beauty of form, and never in power of

speech.

"Thus much has been said upon this figure of our Lord, because no

other representation approaches so near the ideal of his person. Time,

ignorance, and violence have done their worst upon it; but it may be

doubted whether it ever suggested more overpowering feelings than in

its present battered and defaced condition, scarcely now to be called

a picture, but a fitter emblem of him who was 'despised and rejected

of men.'"

Perhaps there is no other passage in the work so lovingly elaborated

as this. Rivalling in energy, it surpasses in delicate discrimination

even such brilliant criticisms as that of the eloquent Count de

Montalembert on Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment"--a criticism which must

have struck all readers of "Vandalism and Catholicism in Art" as

worthy of the painting it describes. But the mention of the blessed

friar of Fiesoli reminds us that he is a special favorite with Lady

Eastlake also. The spell of his tender and reverent contemplations has

told upon her with considerable power, to an extent, indeed, which

makes her scarcely just toward Raphael himself. Several graphic pages

are devoted to a description of Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment." His

"Adoration of the Cross" also is dwelt upon with much affection, and

in great detail. But our readers will be enabled, we hope, to form

some idea of the feelings with which Lady Eastlake regards this most

Christian of all artists, from the shorter extracts which we subjoin.

After criticizing a fine fresco by Giotto of "Christ washing the

Disciples' feet," she thus comments upon Fra Angelico's treatment of

the same subject:

"Of all painters who expressed the condescension of the Lord by the

impression it produced upon those to whom it was sent, Fra Angelico

stands foremost in beauty of feeling. Not only the hands, but the feet

of poor shocked Peter protest against his Master's condescension. It

is a contest for humility between the two; but our Lord is more than

humble, he is lovely and mighty too. He is on his knees; but his two

outstretched hands, so lovingly offered, begging to be accepted, go

beyond the mere incident, as art and poetry of this class always do,

and link themselves typically with the whole gracious scheme of

redemption. True Christian art, even if theology were silent, would,

like the very stones, cry out and proclaim how every act of our Lord's

course refers to one supreme idea."

And, once more, speaking of the same artist's picture of the "Descent

from the Cross," she thus contrasts his conception with those of Luca

Signorelli, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Razzi, Da Volterra, and other

Italian versions of the 15th and 16th centuries:

"After contemplating these conceptions of the deposition in which a

certain parade of idle sorrow, vehement action, and pendent

impossibilities are conspicuous, it is a relief to turn to one who

here, as ever, stands alone in his mild glory. Fra Angelico's Descent,

painted for the Sta. Trinita at Florence, now in the Accademia there,

is the perfect realization of the most pious idea. No more Christian

conception of the subject, and no more probable {258} setting forth,

of the scene, can perhaps be attained. All is holy sorrow, calm and

still; the figures move gently, and speak in whispers. No one is too

excited to help, or not to hinder. Joseph and Nicodemus, known by

their glories, are highest in the scale of reverential beings who

people the ladder, and make it almost look as if it lost itself, like

Jacob's, in heaven. They each hold an arm close to the shoulder.

Another disciple sustains the body as he sits on the ladder, a fourth

receives it under the knees; and St. John, a figure of the highest

beauty of expression, lifts his hands and offers his shoulder to the

precious burden, where in another moment it will safely and tenderly

repose. The figure itself is ineffably graceful with pathetic

helplessness, but _Corona gloriae_, victory over the old enemy,

surrounds a head of divine peace. He is restored to his own, and rests

among them with a security as if he knew the loving hands so quietly

and mournfully busied about him. And his peace is with them already:

'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.' In this picture it

is as if the pious artist had sought first the kingdom of God, and all

things, even in art, had been added unto him. . . . We have taken only

the centre group (the size forbidding more), leaving out the sorrowing

women on the right, with the Mother piously kneeling with folded

hands, as if so alone she could worthily take back that sacred form."

Such a picture might have been supposed to be the source of Father

Faber's most pathetic description of the same scene in his "Foot of

the Cross," did we not know that there is sure to be a strong family

likeness between the conceptions of two gentle, humble souls, deriving

their inspiration from the same exercise of prayerful and

compassionate contemplation.

It would be a pity to mar the impression made upon our readers by

passages such as we have quoted, and of which there are many kindred

examples scattered throughout Lady Eastlake's volume, by the painful

contrast of a sad passage upon the Agony in the Garden (vol. ii., p.

30). Though not the sole, it is the most serious, blot upon her work.

Misconceiving altogether the symbolic intention of Catholic artists in

placing the chalice and host in the hand of the ministering angel,

Lady Eastlake for once allows the Protestant spirit within to break

through all bounds of decorum. In what sense the eucharistic chalice,

introduce it where you will, can be a _profane_ representation, it is

impossible to conceive. Good taste, not to say reverence, should have

proscribed the employment of such an epithet. A little patient

reflection, or the still easier and surer method of inquiry at some

Catholic source, would, we venture to think, have overcome her

repugnance, and have saved her Catholic readers some unnecessary pain.

But we are willing to let this offence pass, and to leave the logic of

the accompanying strictures, bad as it is, unchallenged, in

consideration of the eminent service rendered by the work, as a whole,

to the cause of Christian art. Few could have brought together a

larger amount of instructive and interesting matter. Few, perhaps no

one, at least among Protestants, could have undertaken the task with

so much to qualify, so little to disqualify, them for the office of

historian and critic of the glorious series of monuments which

Christian artists have bequeathed to us.

One lesson, above all, every unprejudiced reader ought to derive from

these volumes--that Christian art and Catholic art are identical. Not

to every Catholic artist is it given to produce true Christian art;

but he, _caeteris paribus_, is most certain of attaining the true

standard who is most deeply imbued with true Catholic principles, most

highly gifted with the Catholic virtues of supernatural faith and

love. Looking at the whole range of Christian art, it may be safely

averred that whatever shortcomings there have been within the Church

have been owing to {259} the influence of principles foreign to her

spirit; and that, outside the Church (we say it in spite of Lady

Eastlake's admiration of Rembrandt), there has simply never existed

any Christian art at all. In our own days the rule is not reversed.

Whom have Protestants to set against Overbeck, Cornelius, Deger,

Molitor, and we are proud to add our own illustrious countryman,

Herbert? Not surely the Pre-Raphaelite school in England, though it is

the only one that has the least pretensions to the cultivation of

Christian art. No, it is the Catholic Church alone that can stamp upon

the painter's productions the supernatural impress of those notes by

which she herself is recognizable as true.

There is a unity of intention, scope, and spirit in Catholic art of

every age and clime. Like the doctrines and devotions of the Church,

Catholic art, in all its various forms--symbolical, historical,

devotional, ideal--ever revolves round one centre, and is referable to

one exemplar. Divine beauty "manifest in the flesh"--the image of the

Father clothed in human form and living in the Church--he is the

inspirer of Christian art. _Deum nemo vidit unquam: unigenitus Filius,

qui est in sinu Patris, ipse narravit_. [Footnote 52] The God-man is

the primary object of artistic contemplation. As in doctrine, so in

aestheticism, every truly Catholic artist may exclaim, _Verbum caro

factum est, et habitavit in nobis; et vidimus gloriam ejus, gloriam

quasi unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratia et veritatis_. [Footnote 53]

[Footnote 52: "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten

Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."--John

i. 18.]

[Footnote 53: "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we

saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the

father, full of grace and truth."--John i. 14.]

But this unity, how exuberant in its fertility! The unity of the

Church is the source of her catholicity. The two stand or fall

together. And, so, too, the oneness of Catholic art is the secret of

its universality. It admits of no partial view, excludes no variety or

difference. Unity of spirit binds all together in perfect harmony,

just as diversity of race and multiplicity of individual gifts, in her

members, are fitted together, organized, and held in balance by the

unity of the Church. Unity is the basis and safeguard of catholicity;

catholicity the glory and crown of unity.

Nor is the note of apostolicity wanting. For the Bible, and the Bible

only, as the rule and standard of art, substitute Catholic tradition

handed down from the apostles, inclusive of all that is in Scripture,

but reaching beyond the limits of the written word, and ever

interpreted to the artist, no less than to the rest of the faithful,

by the living voice of the teaching Church, and then the principle

which identifies orthodoxy with Christian art may safely be applied as

a test to religious painting.

Lastly--we had almost said above all--the beauty of holiness is

stamped exclusively upon all art created after the mind of the Church.

For Catholic art is nothing else than the product of contemplation in

souls gifted with artistic capacities; and contemplation is only

another word for the gaze of supernatural faith, quickened and

perfected by supernatural love, upon one or other of those mysteries

which the Church sets before the minds of her children. So at least we

have learned from the Angelic Doctor; who tells us [Footnote 54] that

beauty is found primarily and essentially in the contemplative life.

For, although St. Gregory teaches that contemplation consists in the

love of God, we are to understand this rather of the motive than of

the precise act. The will inflamed with love desires to behold the

beauty of the beloved object, either for its own sake--the heart

always being where the treasure is--or for the sake of the knowledge

itself which results from the act of vision. Sometimes it is the

senses which are thus compelled to act, sometimes the intellect which

is prompted to this gaze, according as the object is material or

spiritual. But how is the beauty of the object {260} perceived? What

is the faculty whose office it is to light up and reduce to order and

due proportion what is seen? Evidently, the reason. For reason is

light, and where there is reason there is harmony and proportion. And

so beauty, whose essence is brightness and due proportion, is, as we

have said, primarily and necessarily found in the contemplative life;

or, which is the same thing, in the exercise of the reason--its

natural exercise, if the beauty contemplated be in the natural order;

its supernatural exercise, if revealed mystery be that which attracts

and occupies the soul.

[Footnote 54: 2. 2. Q. clxxx. a. 1, and a. 2. ad 3.]

----

From Chambers's Journal.

POUCETTE.

Nearly seven years ago, I was walking hurriedly along the boulevards

of Paris one winter's evening; it was Christmas-eve, and had been

ushered in by thick fog and miserable drizzling rain, which provoked

the inhabitants of the gay capital to complain loudly of the change

which they fancied had taken place in the seasons of late years,

whereby the detested _brouillards de Londres_ had been introduced into

their once clear, pure atmosphere. The weather was certainly most

unseasonable, and took away almost entirely the small remnant of

Christmas-like feeling, which an Englishman, with all his efforts, can

manage to keep up in a foreign land. I had sat chatting with a friend

over a cosey fire until dusk; and, on leaving his house, neither a

_remise_ nor a _fiacre_ was to be met with empty; so I made up my mind

to a wet walk, and amused myself, as I went on, by observing the

various groups of passengers, some of them suddenly benighted like

myself, as they sped on their way along the crowded thoroughfare. The

brilliant lamps hung from the shops threw a glare over each face as it

flitted past, or paused to look in at the windows; and the noise of

hammers resounded incessantly from the edge of the pavement, where

workmen were busy erecting small wooden booths for the annual

New-Year's fair. Some were already completed, and their owners hovered

about, ever and anon darting forth from behind their small counters,

to pounce upon a likely customer, to whom they extolled the beauty and

cheapness of their wares in tempting terms.

"Tenez, monsieur!" cries an old woman, whose entire stock-in-trade

consists of a few pairs of doll's shoes of chocolate, displayed upon a

tin tray, over which she carefully holds a weather-beaten umbrella.

"Two sous the pair, two sous!" "Voila, mesdames," bawls a youth of

ten, who, in London, would probably execute an unlimited number of

Catherine-wheels under the feet of paterfamilias, as he crosses a

crowded street; here he is carefully watching a basinful of water, in

which float a number of glass ducks of the most brilliant and

unnatural colors. "Pour un sou!" and he holds up one tiny image

between his finger and thumb, with a business-like air. "Fi done!"

answers a sharp-visaged elderly woman, as she withdraws six of the

ducks from their watery bed, and places them gently in a corner of her

capacious basket, offering the owner at the same time four sous, {261}

which he accepts with the invariable "Merci, madame," and the polite

Parisian bow; and depositing the coins in some deep recess of his huge

trouser-pockets, he resumes his cry of "Un sou, mesdames, pour un

sou," with unblushing mendacity. Just at the corner of the boulevard,

where the Rue de la Paix joins it, stood a lively, wiry-looking little

man, whose bows and cries were incessant, holding something in his

outstretched hands carefully wrapped in wet grass, which he entreats

the bystanders to purchase. As I approach him, he uncovers it, and

discloses a small tortoise, who waves his thin neck from side to side

deprecatingly, and looks appealingly out of his dark eyes. "Buy him,

monsieur," cries the little owner: "he is my last; he will be your

best friend for many years, and afterward he will make an excellent

soup!" A laugh from some of the passers-by rewarded this very naive

definition of a pet; and leaving the lively bustle of the boulevard, I

turned down the Rue de la Paix, and into the dark-looking Rue Neuve

St. Augustin; a little way down which, I perceived a small knot of

people gathered under the arched entrance to a _hotel_.

There were not many--a few bloused workmen returning from their daily

toil, two or three women, and the usual amount of active _gamins_

darting about the outskirts; within, I could perceive the cocked-hat

of the ever-watchful _sergent de ville_. Prompted by that gregarious

instinct which leads most men toward crowds, I went up to it; and, by

the help of a tolerably tall figure, I looked over the heads of the

people into the centre, at a group, the first sight of whom I shall

not soon forget. There, before me, on the cold pavement, now wet with

wintry rain, lay a little, a very little girl, fainting. Her face,

which was deadly pale, looked worn and pinched by want into that aged,

hard look so touching to see in the very young, because it tells of a

premature exposure to trial and care, if not of a struggle literally

for life. Her jet-black hair, of which she had a profusion, lay

unbound over her shoulders like a mantle. Her dress was an old black

velvet frock, covered with spangles, with a piece of something red

sewn on the skirt, and a scarlet bodice. Her neck and arms were bare;

and the gay dress, where it had been opened in front, showed nothing

underneath it but the poor thin body. Her legs were blue and mottled

with cold; and the tiny feet were thrust into wooden _sabots_, one of

which had dropped off, a world too wide for the little foot it was

meant to protect. A kind-looking elderly woman knelt on the pavement,

and supported the child's head in her arms, chafing her cold hands,

and trying, by every means in her power, to restore animation; and

wandering uneasily up and down beside them, was a curious-looking

non-descript figure, such as one can rarely meet with out of Paris. It

was a poodle--at least so its restless, bead-like, black eyes and

muzzle betokened, and also a suspicious-looking tuft of hair, now

visible, waving above its garments--but the animal presented a most

ludicrous appearance, from being dressed up in a very exact imitation

of the costume of a fine lady during the century of Louis le Grand.

The brilliant eyes were surmounted by a cleverly contrived wig,

frizzed, powdered, and sparkling with mock jewels; the body decked out

in a cherry-colored satin bodice, with a long peaked stomacher,

trimmed with lace, and a stiff hoop, bell-like in shape, but, in

proportion, far within the dimensions of a modern crinoline; even the

high-heeled shoes of scarlet leather were not forgotten; and the

strange anomaly between the animal and its disguise was irresistibly

ludicrous. The dog was perfectly aware that something was going

on--something strange, pitiful, and, what was more to the purpose,

nearly concerning himself; and clever as he was, he could not yet see

a way through his difficulties.

His misery was extreme; he pattered piteously up and down the space

{262} round the fainting child, and raised himself up anxiously on his

hind-legs to peer into her little wan face, presenting thus a still

more ludicrous aspect than before. With his wise doggish face peeping

out curiously from the ridiculous human head-dress, he sniffed all

over the various feet which encircled his precious mistress,

suspiciously; and finally placing himself, still on his hind-legs,

close by her side, he laid his head lovingly to her cheek, and uttered

a low dismal howl, followed, after an instant's pause, by an impatient

bark. The child stirred--roused apparently by the familiar

sound--gasped for breath once or twice; and presently opening her

eyes, she cried feebly, "Mouton, ou es tu done?" He leaped up in an

ecstacy, trying, in the height of his joy, to lick her face; but this

was not to be: she pushed him away as roughly as the little feeble

hand had strength to do.

"Ah, wicked dog, go away; you do mischief," she said, fixing a pair of

eyes as round and almost as black as his own upon the unfortunate

animal. He dropped instantly, and with a subdued, sorrowful air, lay

down, licking diligently, in his humility, the little foot from which

the sabot had fallen: he had evidently proved that submission was the

only plan to pursue with his imperious mistress. The girl was stronger

now, and able to sit up with the help of the good woman's knee, and

she drank off a cup of milk which the compassionate wife of the

_concierge_ handed to her. "Thanks, madame," said the child, with native

politeness; "I am better now. You are a good Christian," she added,

turning her head so as to look in the face of the woman who supported

her.

"What are you called, my child?" asked her friend. "Where do you

live?"

"Antoinette Elizabeth is my baptismal name," answered the child, with

odd gravity; "but I am generally called _Poucette_, because, you see,

I am small;" and a faint tinge of color came into her pale cheeks.

No wonder the name was bestowed upon her, for we could see that she

was small, very small; and, from the diminutive size of her limbs, she

seemed likely to remain so till the end of her days.

"Will you go home now?" asked the woman, after a moment's pause.

"No, not just yet," said the tiny being. "I have had no supper. I

shall go to Emile, but Mouton may go home. Go!" she cried,

imperiously, to the dog, as she swiftly slid off the marvellous dress

and wig, out of which casing Mouton came forth an ordinary looking and

decidedly dirty poodle. He hesitated for an instant, when she raised

her little clenched fist, and shook it fiercely at him, repeating

"Go!" in louder tones. He wagged his tail deprecatingly, licked his

black lips, looked imploringly at her out of his loving eyes, and

seemed to beg permission to remain with her; but in vain; then, seeing

her endeavor to rise, he turned, fled up the street with the swiftness

of a bird, and disappeared round the corner. His mistress, in the

meantime, folded up the dog's finery carefully, and deposited it

inside her own poor garments; then, after an instant's pause, she rose

to her feet, and looked round at us. She was well named Poucette: in

stature she did not exceed a child of four years old; but she was

perfectly made, and the limbs were in excellent proportion with the

stature, only her face showed age. There was a keen, worldly look

about the mouth, with its thin scarlet lips; and a vindictive

expression shining in the bold, black eyes--altogether a hard-looking

face, not at all attractive in its character; and yet I felt myself

drawn to the poor child.

She was evidently half-starved, fighting her own hard battle with the

world, and keeping her struggle as much to herself as she could; and

when, scanning curiously over the faces surrounding her, her eyes

rested on mine, I stepped forward, and offered her a five-franc piece.

To my surprise, she threw the money on the pavement {263} with the

bitterest scorn. "I don't want money," she shrieked, passionately--"I

want my supper. Go away, _canaille!_" I stooped down toward her, and

took her hand. "Come with me," I said to her, "and you shall have some

supper. I live close by." She stood on tiptoe even then, and peered

into my face with her sharp eyes. Apparently, however, a short

inspection satisfied her, for she said softly, "Thank you," and tried

to hold my hand. Finding it too much for her small grasp, she clung to

my trousers with one hand, and with the other she waved off the

wondering bystanders with a most majestic air. I offered payment for

the milk, which the good woman civilly refused; and then I sent for a

_fiacre_ in which to get to my lodgings in the Rue Rivoli, shrinking,

I must confess, from the idea of the ridiculous figure I should cut

walking along the streets with this absurd though unfortunate

creature. Presently the concierge arrived with one, and we stepped in,

Poucette entering majestically first. I gave the word, and we started.

Hardly had we turned out of the street, when the impulsive child

beside me seized me with both hands, and in an ecstacy of gratitude

thanked me with streaming eyes for what I was doing for her. "I am

starving," she sobbed--"I fainted from hunger. I have been dancing on

the boulevards all day with Mouton, who is hungry, too, poor fellow,

for he only ate a small bit of bread which a good little gentleman

gave him this morning."

"Why did you not take the money, then?" I asked. "You might have

bought food for yourself and Mouton."

"I did not want money," said the girl proudly--"I don't beg."

"But you say you are hungry."

"That is nothing. I never beg; I dance; and tonight, when I have had

some supper, I shall dance for you, and you shall see," drawing

herself up.

At this speech I hesitated. What in the world had I to do with a

dancing-girl in my quiet bachelor rooms? Did she intend taking them by

storm, and quartering herself upon me, whether I liked it or not? The

question was a difficult one; but yet, when I looked down at the tiny

figure, with its poor, woe-begone face, so thin and weary-looking, its

utter weakness and dependence, I felt that, come what might, I could

not act otherwise than I was doing. "There, go up stairs, _au

troisieme_" said I to my charge, as the fiacre stopped, and we got

out; when lo! from behind a large stone close by the entrance to the

_porte-co-chere_, the black round eyes of Mouton glanced furtively out

upon us. His behavior was exceedingly reserved; he durst not even wag

his tail for fear of giving offence, but he glanced at me in the

meekest, humblest entreaty ever dog did. "Don't send him away," I said

to Poucette: "take him up stairs with you; I wish him to remain."

She made no reply, but snapped her fingers encouragingly at him, and

he followed her closely, as she walked up stairs. I paused a moment

with the concierge, to ask her to provide some dinner for my

unexpected guests; and then mounted the stairs after them. I found

Antoinette Elizabeth and her faithful follower seated at my door,

gravely awaiting my arrival. Mouton recognized me as a friend, and

faintly wagged his tail; evidently he was careful, in the presence of

his mistress, upon whom he bestowed his favors. We entered my room,

all three of us; and presently the dinner arrived, and was done ample

justice to. Poucette ate heartily, but not ravenously; and after the

meal was over, we drew our chairs round the fire, and sat eating

walnuts. She asked then, with more timidity than she had yet shown:

"When shall we have the honor of dancing for monsieur?" raising her

large black eyes, which had lost their fierce look, to my face.