Polly did point out to us the aforesaid noblemen and gentlemen, and

also Dr. Cheney, the bishop of Gloucester, who had accompanied her

majesty, and M. de la Motte, the French ambassador, whom she did seem

greatly to favor; but none that day so much as my Lord Surrey, on whom

she let fall many gracious smiles, and used playful fashions with him,

such as nipping him once or twice on the forehead, and shaking her

fan, as if to reprove him for his answers to her questions, which

nevertheless, if her countenance might be judged of, did greatly

content her; albeit I once observed her to frown (and methought, then,

what a terror doth lie in a sovereign's frown) and speak sharply to

him; at the which a high color came into his cheek, and rose up even

to his temples, which her majesty perceiving, she did again use the

same blandishments as before; and when the collation was ended, and

the concert began, which had been provided for her grace's

entertainment, she would have him sit at her feet, and gave him so

many tokens of good-will, that I heard Sir Ralph Ingoldby, who was

standing behind me, say to another gentleman:

"If that young nobleman's father is like to be shorter by the head,

his father's son is like to have his own raised higher than ever his

father's was, so he doth keep clear of papistry and overmuch fondness

for his wife, which be the two things her {606}majesty doth most abhor

in her courtiers."

My heart moving me to curiosity, I could not forbear to ask:

"I pray you, sir, wherefore doth not her majesty like her courtiers to

love their wives?"

At the which question he laughed, and said:

"By reason, Mistress Constance, that when they be in that case they do

become stayers at home, and wait not on her majesty with a like

diligence as when they are unmarried, or leastways love not their

ladies. The Bible saith a man cannot serve God and mammon. Now her

grace doth opine men cannot serve the queen and their wives also."

"Then," I warmly cried, "I hope my Lord Surrey shall never serve the

queen!"

"I' faith, say it not so loud, young Mistress Papist," said Sir Ralph,

laughing, "or we shall have you committed for high treason. Some are

in the Tower, I warrant you, for no worse offence than the uttering of

such like rash words. How should you fancy to have your pretty ears

bored with a rougher instrument than Master Anselm's the jeweller?"

And so he; but Polly, who methinks was not well pleased that he should

notice mine ears, which were little and well-shaped, whereas hers were

somewhat larger than did accord with her small face, did stop his

further speech with me by asking him if he were an enemy to papists;

for if so, she would have naught to say to him, and he might become a

courtier to the queen, or any one else's husband, for anything she did

care, yea, if she were to lose her ears for it.

And he answered, he did very much love some papists, albeit he hated

papistry when it proved not conformable to reason and the laws of the

country.

And so they fell to whispering and suchlike discourses as lovers hold

together; and I, being seated betwixt this enamored gentleman and the

wall on the other side, had no one then to talk with. But if my tongue

and mine ears also, save for the music below, were idle, not so mine

eyes; for they did stray from one point to another of the fair

spectacle which the garden did then present, now resting on the queen

and those near unto her, and anon on my Lady Surrey, who sat on a

couch to the left of her majesty's raised canopy, together with Lady

Southwell, Lady Arundell (Sir Robert's wife), and other ladies of the

queen, and on one side of her the bishop of Gloucester, whom, by

reason of his assiduous talking with her, I took more special note of

than I should otherwise have done; albeit he was a man which did

attract the eye, even at the first sight, by a most amiable suavity of

countenance, and a sweet and dignified behavior both in speech and

action such as I have seldom observed greater in any one. His manners

were free and unconstrained; and only to look at him converse, it was

easy to perceive he had a most ready wit tempered with benevolence. He

seemed vastly taken with my Lady Surrey; and either had not noticed

how others kept aloof from her, or was rather moved thereby to show

her civility; for they soon did fall into such eager, and in some sort

familiar, discourse, as it should seem to run on some subject of like

interest to both. Her color went and came as the conversation

advanced; and when she spoke, he listened with such grave suavity,

and, when she stayed her speech, answered in so obliging a manner, and

seemed so loth to break off, that I could not but admire how two

persons, hitherto strangers to each other, and of such various ages

and standing, should be so companionable on a first acquaintanceship.

When the queen rose to depart, in the same order in which she came,

every one kneeling as she passed, I did keenly watch to see what

visage she would show to my Lady Surrey, whom she did indeed this time

salute; but in no gracious manner, as one who looks without looking,

notices without {607} heeding, and in tendering of thanks thanketh

not. As my lord walked by her majesty's side through the cloisters to

the door, he suddenly dropped on one knee, and drawing a paper from

his bosom, did present it to her highness, who started as if

surprised, and shook her head in a playful manner--(oh, what a cruel

playfulness methought it was, who knew, as her majesty must needs also

have done, what that paper did contain)--as if she would not be at that

time troubled with such grave matters, and did hand it to my Lord

Burleigh; then gave again her hand to my lord to kiss, who did kneel

with a like reverence as before; but with a shade of melancholy in his

fair young face, which methought became it better than the smiles it

had worn that day.

After the queen had left, and all the guests were gone save such few

as my lord had willed to stay to supper in his private apartments, I

went unto my lady's chamber, where I found Mistress Milicent, who said

she was with my lord, and prayed me to await her return; for that she

was urgent I should not depart without speaking with her, which was

also what I greatly desired. So I took a book and read for the space

of an hour or more, whilst she tarried with my lord. When she came in,

I could see she had been weeping. But her women being present, and

likewise Mistress Bess, she tried to smile, and pressed my hand,

bidding me to stay till she was rid of her trappings, as she did term

them; and, sitting down before her mirror,--though I ween she never

looked at her own face, which that evening had in it more of the

whiteness of a lily than the color of the rose,--she desired her women

to unbraid her hair, and remove from her head the diamond circlet, and

from her neck the heavy gold chain with a pearl cross, which had

belonged to her husband's mother. Then stepping out of her robe, she

put on a silk wrapper, and so dismissed them, and likewise little

Bess, who before she went whispered in her ear:

"Nan, methinks the queen is foul and red-haired, and I should not care

to kiss her hand for all the fine jewels she doth wear."

And so hugged her round the neck and stopped her mouth with kisses.

When they were gone,

"Constance," quoth she, "we be full young, I ween, for the burden laid

upon us, my lord and me."

"Ay, sweet one," I cried; "and God defend thou shouldst have to carry

it alone;" for my heart was sore that she had had so little favor

shown to her and my lord so much. A faint color tinged her cheek as

she replied:

"God knows I should be well cotent that Phil should stand so well in

her majesty's good graces as should be convenient to his honor and the

furtherance of his fortunes, if so be his father was out of prison;

and 'tis little I should reck of such slights as her highness should

choose to put upon me, if I saw him not so covetous of her favor that

he shall think less well of his poor Nan hereafter by reason of the

lack of her majesty's good opinion of her, which was so plainly showed

to-day. For, good Constance, bethink thee what a galling thing it is

to a young nobleman to see his wife so meanly entreated; and for her

majesty to ask him, as she did, if the pale-faced chit by his side,

when she arrived, was his sister or his cousin. And when he said it

was his wife who had knelt with him to greet her majesty"--"Wife!"

quoth the queen; "i' faith, I had forgotten thou wast married--if

indeed that is to be called a marriage which children do contract

before they come to the age of reason; and said she would take

measures for that a law should be passed which should make such

foolish marriages unlawful. And when my lord tried to tell her we had

been married a second time a few months since, she pretended not to

hear, and asked M. de la Motte if, in his country, children were made

to marry in their infancy. To which he gave answer, that the like

practice did sometimes take place {608} in France; and that he had

himself been present at a wedding where the bridegroom was whipped

because he did refuse to open the ball with the bride. At the which

her majesty very much laughed, and said she hoped my lord had not been

so used on his wedding-day. I promise you Phil was very angry; but the

wound these jests made was so salved over with compliments, which

pleasantly tickle the ears when uttered by so great a queen, and marks

of favor more numerous than can be thought of, in the matter of

inviting him to hunt with her in Marylebone and Greenwich park, and

telling him he deserved better treatment than he had, as to his

household and setting forward in the world, that methinks the scar was

not long in healing; albeit in the relating of these passages the pain

somewhat revived. But what doth afflict me the most is the refusal her

highness made to read my lord's letter, lamenting the unhappy position

of the duke his father, and hoping the queen, by his means and those

of other friends, should mitigate her anger. I would have had Phil not

only go down on his knees as he did, but lie on the threshold of the

door, so that she should have walked over the son's body if she

refused to show mercy to the father; but he yet doth greatly hope from

the favor showed him that he may sue her majesty with better effect

some other time; and I pray God he may be right."

Here did the dear lady break off her speech, and, hiding her face in

her hands, remained silent for a short space; and I, seeing her so

deeply moved, with the intent to draw away her thoughts from painful

musings, inquired of her if the good entertainment she had found in

conversing with the bishop had been attributable to his witty

discourse, or to the subjects therein treated of.

"Ah, good Constance," she answered, "our talk was of one whom you have

often heard me speak of--Mr. Martin's friend, Master Campion,

[Footnote 122] who is now beyond seas at Douay, and whom this bishop

once did hold to be more dear to him than the apple of his eye. He

says his qualifications were so excellent, and he so beloved by all

persons in and outside of his college at Oxford, that none more so;

and that he did himself see in him so great a present merit and

promise of future excellence, that it had caused him more grief than

anything else which had happened to him, and been the occasion of his

shedding more tears than he had ever thought to have done, when he who

had received from him deacon's orders, and whom he had hoped should

have been an honor and a prop to the Church of England, did forsake it

and fly in the face of his queen and his country: first, by going into

Ireland; and then, as he understood, beyond seas, to serve the bishop

of Rome, against the laws of God and man. But that he did yet so

dearly affection him that, understanding we had sometimes tidings of

Mr. Martin, by whose means he had mostly been moved to this lamentable

defection, he should be contented to hear somewhat of his whilom son,

still dear to him, albeit estranged. I told him we did often see

Master Campion when Mr. Martin was here; and that, from what I had

heard, both were like to be at Douay, but that no letters passed

between Mr. Martin and ourselves; for that his grace did not allow of

such correspondence since he had been reconciled and gone beyond seas.

Which the bishop said was a commendable prudence in his grace, and the

part of a careful father; and added, that then maybe he knew more of

what had befallen Master Campion than I did; for that he had a long

epistle from him, so full of moving arguments and pithy remonstrances

as might have shaken one not well grounded and settled in his

religion, and which also contained a recital of his near arrest in

Dublin, where the queen's officers would have arrested him, if a

friend had not privately warned him of his danger. And I do know, good

{609} Constance, who that friend was; for albeit I would not tell the

bishop we had seen Master Campion since he was reconciled, he, in

truth, was here some months ago: my lord met him in the street,

disguised as a common travelling man, and brought him into the garden,

whither he also called me; and we heard then from him how he would

have been taken in Ireland, if the viceroy himself, Sir Henry Sydney,

who did greatly favor him,--as indeed all who know him incline to do,

for his great parts, and nobleness of mind and heart, and withal most

attractive manners,--had not sent him a message, in the middle of the

night, to the effect that he should instantly leave the city, and take

measures for to escape abroad. So, under the name of Patrick, and

wearing the livery of the Earl of Kildare, he travelled to a port

twenty miles from Dublin, and there embarked for England. The queen's

officers, coming on board the ship whereon he had taken his passage,

before it sailed, searched it all over; but through God's mercy, he

said, and St. Patrick's prayers, whose name he had taken, no one did

recognize him, and he passed to London; and the day after, my lord

sent him over to Flanders. So much as the bishop did know thereon, he

related unto me, and stinted not in his praise of his great merits,

and lamentations for what he called his perversion; and hence he took

occasion to speak of religion. And when I said I had been brought up

in the Catholic religion, albeit I now conformed to the times, he said

he would show me the way to be Catholic and still obey the laws, and

that I might yet believe for the most part what I had learnt from my

teachers, so be I renounced the Pope, and commended my saying the

prayers I had been used to; which, he doubted not, were more pleasing

to God than such as some ministers do recite out of their own heads,

whom he did grieve to hear frequented our house, and were no better

than heretics, such as Mr. Fox and Mr. Fulke and Mr. Charke, and the

like of them. But what did much content me was, that he mislikes the

cruel usage recusants do meet with; and he said, not as if boasting of

it, but to declare his mind thereon, that he had often sent them alms

who suffered for their conscience' sake, as many do at this time. But

that I was to remember many Protestants were burnt in the late queen's

time, and that if Papists were not kept under by strict laws, the like

might happen again."

[Footnote 122: State Papers.]

"You should have told him," I cried, who had been silent longer than I

liked, "that Protestants are burnt also in this reign, by the same

token that some Anabaptists did so suffer a short time back, to your

Mr. Fox's no small disgust, who should will none but Catholics to be

put to death."

"Content thee, good Constance," my lady answered; "I be not so

furnished with arguments as thou in a like case wouldst be. So I only

said, I would to God none were burnt, or hanged, or tortured any more

in this country, or in the world at all, for religion; and my lord of

Gloucester declared he was of the same mind, and would have none so

dealt with, if he could mend it, here or abroad. Then the queen rising

to go, our discourse came to an end; but this good bishop says he will

visit me when he next doth come to London, and make that matter plain

to me how I can remain Catholic, and obey the queen, and content his

grace."

"Then he will show you," I cried, "how to serve God and the world,

which the gospel saith is a thing not to be thought of, and full of

peril to the soul."

My Lady Surrey burst into tears, and I was angered with myself that I

had spoken peradventure over sharply to her who had too much trouble

already; but it did make me mad to see her so beset that the faith

which had been once so rooted in her, and should be her sure and only

stay in the dangerous path she had entered on, should be in such wise

shaken as her words did indicate. {610} But she was not angered, the

sweet soul; and drawing me to herself, laid her head on my bosom, and

said:

"Thou art a true friend, though a bold one; and I pray God I may never

lack the benefit of such friendship as thine, for he knoweth I have

great need thereof."

And so we parted with many tender embraces, and our hearts more

strictly linked together than heretofore.

CHAPTER X.

In the month of November of the same year in which the queen did visit

Lord and Lady Surrey at the Charter House, a person, who mentioned not

his name, delivered into the porter's hands at our gate a letter for

me, which I found to be from my good father, and which I do here

transcribe, as a memorial of his great piety toward God, and tender

love for me his unworthy child.

"MY DEARLY BELOVED DAUGHTER (so he),--Your comfortable letter has

not a little cheered me; and the more so that this present one is

like to be the last I shall be able to write on this side of the

sea, if it so happen that it shall please God to prosper my intent,

which is to pass over into Flanders at the first convenient

opportunity: for the stress of the times, and mine own earnest

desire to live within the compass of a religious life, have moved me

to forsake for a while this realm, and betake myself to a place

which shall afford opportunity and a sufficiency of leisure for the

prosecution of my design. The comfortable report Edmund made of thy

health, increased height, and good condition, as also of thy

exceeding pleasant and affectionate behavior to him, as deputed from

thy poor father to convey to thee his paternal blessing, together

with such tokens as a third person may exhibit of that most natural

and tender affection which he bears to thee, his sole child, whom

next to God he doth most entirely value and love,--of which charge

this good youth assured me he did acquit himself as my true son in

Christ, which indeed he now is,--and my good brother's letter and

thine, which both do give proof of the exceeding great favor shown

toward thee in his house, wherein he doth reckon my Constance not so

much a niece (for such be his words) as a most cherished daughter,

whose good qualities and lively parts have so endeared her to his

family, that the greatest sorrow which could befal them should be to

lose her company; which I do not here recite for to awaken in thee

motions of pride or a vain conceit of thine own deserts, but rather

gratitude to those whose goodness is so great as to overlook thy

defects and magnify thy merits;--Edmund's report, I say, coupled with

these letters, have yielded me all the contentment I desire at this

time, when I am about to embark on a perilous voyage, of which none

can foresee the course or the end; one in which I take the cross of

Christ as my only staff; his words, "Follow me," for my motto; and

his promise to all such as do confess him before men, as the assured

anchor of my hope.

"Our ingenuous youth informed thee (albeit I doubt not in such wise

as to conceal, if it had been possible, his own ability, which, with

his devotedness, do exceed praise) how he acquitted both me and

others of much trouble and imminent danger by his fortunate despatch

with that close prisoner. I had determined to place him with some of

my acquaintance, lest perhaps he should return, not without some

danger of his soul, to his own friends; but when he understood my

resolution, he cried out with like words to those of St. Lawrence,

'Whither goeth my master without his servant? Whither goeth my

father without his son?' and with tears distilling from his eyes, he

humbly entreated he might go together with me, saying, as it were

with St. Peter, 'Master, I am {611} ready to go with you to prison,

yea to death;' but, forecasting his future ability, as also to try

his spirit a little further, I made him answer it was impossible; to

which our Edmund replied, 'Alas! and is it impossible? Shall my

native soil restrain free will? or home-made laws alter devout

resolutions? Am I not young? Can I not study? May I not in time get

what you now have got--learning for a scholar? yea, virtue for a

priest, perhaps; and so at length obtain that for which you now are

ready? Direct me the way, I beseech you; and let me, if you please,

be your precursor. Tell me what I shall do, or whither I must go;

and for the rest, God, who knows my desire, will provide and supply

the want. Can it be possible that he who clothes the lilies of the

field, and feeds the fowls of the air, will forsake him who forsakes

all to fulfil his divine precept, "Seek first the kingdom of God and

his justice, and all other things shall be given to you?"' Finally,

he ended, to my no small admiration, by reciting the words of our

Saviour, 'Whosoever shall forsake home, or brethren, or sisters, or

father, or mother, for my sake and the gospel's, shall receive a

hundredfold and possess life everlasting.'

"By these impulses, often repeated with great fervor of spirit, I

perceived God Almighty's calling in him, and therefore at last

condescended to let him take his adventures, procuring him

commendations to such friends beyond seas as should assist him in

his purpose, and furnishing him with money sufficient for such a

journey; not judging it to be prudent to keep him with me, who have

not ability to warrant mine own passage; and so noted a recusant,

that I run a greater risk to be arrested in any port where I embark.

And so, in all love and affection, we did part; and I have since had

intelligence, for the which I do return most humble and hearty

thanks to God, that he hath safely crossed the seas, and has now

reached a sure harbor, where his religious desires may take effect.

And now, daughter Constance, mine own good child, fare thee well!

Pray for thy poor father, who would fain give thee the blessing of

the elder as of the younger son--Jacob's portion and Esau's also.

But methinks the blessings of this world be not at the present time

for the Catholics of this land; and so we must needs be content, for

our children as for ourselves (and a covetous man he is which should

not therewith be satisfied), with the blessings our Lord did utter

on the mountain, and mostly with that in which he doth say, 'Blessed

are ye when men shall persecute you, and revile you, and say all

manner of evil against you falsely, for my name's sake; for great is

your reward in heaven.'

"Your loving father in natural affection and ten thousand times more

in the love of Christ, H. S."

Oh, what a gulf of tenfold separation did those words "beyond seas"

suggest betwixt that sole parent and his poor child! Thoughts travel

not with ease beyond the limits which nature hath set to this isle;

and what lies beyond the watery waste wherewith Providence hath

engirdled our shores offers no apt images to the mind picturing the

invisible from the visible, as it is wont to do with home-scenes,

where one city or one landscape beareth a close resemblance to

another. And if, in the forsaking of this realm, so much danger did

lie, yea, in the very ports whence he might sail, so that I, who

should otherwise have prayed that the winds might detain him, and the

waves force him back on his native soil, was constrained to supplicate

that they should assist him to abandon it,--how much greater,

methought, should be the perils of his return, when, as he indeed

hoped, a mark should be set on him which in our country dooms men to a

cruel death! Many natural tears I shed at this parting, which until

then had not seemed so desperate and final; {612} and for a while

would not listen to the consolations which were offered by the good

friends who were so tender to me, but continued to wander about in a

disconsolate manner in the garden, or passionately to weep in my own

chamber, until Muriel, the sovereign mistress of comfort to others,

albeit ever ailing in her body, and contemned by such as dived not

through exterior deformity into the interior excellences of her soul,

with sweet compulsion and authoritative arguments drawn from her

admirable faith and simple devotion, rekindled in mine the more noble

sentiments sorrow had obscured, not so much through diverting, as by

elevating and sweetening, my thoughts to a greater sense of the

goodness of God in calling my father, and peradventure Edmund also, to

so great an honor as the priesthood, and never more honorable than in

these days, wherein it oftentimes doth prove the road to martyrdom.

In December of that year my Lord and my Lady Surrey, by the Duke of

Norfolk's desire, removed for some weeks to Kenninghall for change of

air, and also Lady Lumley, his grace judging them to be as yet too

young to keep house alone. My lord's brothers and Mistress Bess, with

her governess, were likewise carried there. Lady Surrey wrote from

that seat, that, were it not for the duke's imprisonment and constant

fears touching his life, she should have had great contentment in that

retirement, and been most glad to have tarried there, if it had

pleased God, so long as she lived, my lord taking so much pleasure in

field-sports, and otherwise so companionable, that he often offered to

ride with her; and in the evenings they did entertain themselves with

books, chiefly poetry, and sometimes played at cards. They had but few

visitors, by reason of the disgrace and trouble his grace was in at

that time; only such of their neighbors as did hunt and shoot with the

earl her husband; mostly Sir Henry Stafford and Mr. Rookwood's two

sons, whom she commended; the one for his good qualities and honest

carriage, and the other for wit and learning; as also Sir Hammond

l'Estrange, a gentleman who stayed no longer away from Kenninghall,

she observed, than thereunto compelled by lack of an excuse for

tarrying if present, or returning when absent. He often procured to be

invited by my lord, who used to meet him out of doors, and frequently

carried him back with him to dine or to sup, and often both.

"And albeit" (so my lady wrote) "I doubt not but he doth set a

reasonable value on my lord's society,--who, although young enough to

be his son, is exceedingly conversable and pleasant, as every one who

knows him doth testify,--and mislikes not, I ween, the good cheer, or

the wine from his grace's cellar; yet I warrant thee, good Constance,

'tis not for the sake only of our poor company or hospitable table

that this good knight doth haunt us, but rather from the passion I

plainly see he hath conceived for our Milicent since a day when he

hurt his arm by a fall not far from hence, and I procured she should

dress it with that rare ointment of thine, which verily doth prove of

great efficacy in cases where the skin is rubbed off. Methinks the

wound in his arm was then transplanted into his heart, and the good

man so bewitched with the blue eyes and dove-like countenance of his

chirurgeon, that he has fallen head-over-ears in love, and is, as I

hope, minded to address her in a lawful manner. His wound did take an

exceeding long time in healing, to the no small discredit of thy

ointment; for he came several days to have it dressed, and I could not

choose but smile when at last our sweet practitioner did ask him, in

an innocent manner, if the wound did yet smart, for indeed she could

see no appearance in it but what betokened it to be healed. He

answered, 'There be wounds, Mistress Milicent, which smart, albeit no

outward marks of such suffering do show themselves.' {613} 'Ay,' quoth

Milicent, 'but for such I be of opinion further dressing is needless;

and with my lady's licence, I will furnish you, sir, with a liquid

which shall strengthen the skin, and so relieve the aching, if so you

be careful to apply it night and morning to the injured part, and to

cork the bottle after using it.' 'My memory is so bad, fair

physician,' quoth the knight, 'that I am like to forget the

prescription.' She answered, he should stand the bottle so as it

should meet his eyes when he rose, and then he must needs remember it.

"And so broke off the discourse. But when he is here I notice how his

eyes do follow her when she sets the table for primero, or works at

the tambour-frame, or plays with Bess, to whom he often talks as she

sits on _her_ knees, who, if I mistake not, shall be, one of these

days, Lady l'Estrange, and is as worthy to be so well married as any

girl in the kingdom, both as touching her birth and her exceeding

great virtue and good disposition. He is an extreme Protestant, and

very bitter against Catholics; but as she, albeit mild in temper, is

as firmly settled in the new religion as he is, no difference will

exist between them on a point in which 'tis most of all to be desired

husbands and wives should be agreed. Thou mayst think that I have been

over apt to note the signs of this good knight's passion, and to draw

deductions from such tokens as have appeared of it, visible maybe to

no other eyes than mine; but, trust me, Constance, those who do

themselves know what 'tis to love with an engrossing affection are

quick to mark the same effects in others. When Phil is in the room, I

find it a hard matter at times to restrain mine eyes from gazing on

that dear husband, whom I do so entirely love that I have no other

pleasure in life but in his company. And not to seem to him or to

others too fond, which is not a beseeming thing even in a wife, I

study to conceal my constant thinking on him by such devices as

cunningly to provoke others to speak of my lord, and so appear only to

follow whereunto my own desire doth point, or to propose questions,--a

pastime wherein he doth excel,--and so minister to mine own pride in

him without direct flattery, or in an unbecoming manner setting forth

his praise. And thus I do grow learned in the tricks of true

affection, and to perceive in such as are in love what mine own heart

doth teach me to be the signals of that passion."

So far my lady; and not long after, on the first day of February, I

had a note from her, written in great distraction of mind at the

Charter House, where she and all his grace's children had returned in

a sudden manner on the hearing that the queen had issued a warrant for

the duke's execution on the next Monday. Preparations were made with

the expectation of all London, and a concourse of many thousands to

witness it, the tread of whose feet was heard at night, like to the

roll of muffled drums, along the streets; but on the Sunday, late in

the night, the queen's majesty entered into a great misliking that the

duke should die the next day, and sent an order to the sheriffs to

forbear until they should hear further. His grace's mother, the

dowager countess, and my Lady Berkeley his sister (now indeed lowering

her pride to most humble supplication), and my Lord Arundel from his

sick-bed, and the French ambassador, together with many others, sued

with singular earnestness to her majesty for his life, who, albeit she

had stayed the execution of his sentence, would by no means recall it.

I hasted to the Charter House, Mistress Ward going with me, and both

were admitted into her ladyship's chamber, with whom did sit that day

the fairest picture of grief I ever beheld--the Lady Margaret Howard,

who for some months had resided with the Countess of Sussex, who was a

very good lady to her and all these afflicted children. Albeit Lady

Surrey had often greatly commended this young lady, and styled her so

rare a piece of perfection that no one {614} could know and not admire

her, the loveliness of her face, nobility of her figure, and

attractiveness of her manners exceeded my expectations. The sight of

these sisters minded me then of what Lady Surrey had written when they

were yet children, touching my Lord Surrey, styling them "two twin

cherries on one stalk;" and methought, now that the lovely pair had

ripened into early maturity, their likeness in beauty (though

differing in complexion) justified the saying. Lady Margaret greeted

us as though we had not been strangers, and in the midst of her great

and natural sorrow showed a grateful sense of the share we did take in

a grief which methinks was deeper in her than in any other of these

mourners.

Oh, what a period of anxious suspense did follow that first reprieve!

what alternations of hope and fear! what affectionate letters were

exchanged between that loving father and good master and his sorrowful

children and servants; now writing to Mr. Dyx, his faithful steward:

"Farewell, good Dyx! your service hath been so faithful unto me, as

I am sorry that I cannot make proof of my good-will to recompense

it. I trust my death shall make no change in you toward mine, but

that you will faithfully perform the trust that I have reposed in

you. Forget me, and remember me in mine. Forget not to counsel and

advise Philip and Nan's unexperienced years; the rest of their

brothers' and sisters' well-doing resteth much upon their virtuous

and considerate dealings. God grant them his grace, which is able to

work better in them than my natural well-meaning heart can wish unto

them. Amen. And so, hoping of your honesty and faithfulness when I

am dead, I bid you this my last farewell. T. H."

Now to another trusty friend and honest dependent:

"Good friend George, farewell. I have no other tokens to send my

friends but my books; and I know how sorrowful you are, amongst the

rest, for my hard hap, whereof I thank God; because I hope his

merciful chastisement will prepare me for a better world. Look well

throughout this book, and you shall find the name of duke very

unhappy. I pray God it may end with me, and that others may speed

better hereafter. But if I might have my wish, and were in as good a

state as ever you knew me, yet I would wish for a lower degree. Be a

friend, I pray you, to mine; and do my hearty commendations to your

good wife and to gentle Mr. Dennye. I die in the faith that you have

ever known me to be of. Farewell, good friend.

"Yours dying, as he was living,

"NORFOLK."

These letters and some others did pass from hand to hand in that

afflicted house; and sometimes hope and sometimes despair prevailed in

the hearts of the great store of relatives and friends which often

assembled there to confer on the means of softening the queen's anger

and moving her to mercy; one time through letters from the king of

France and other princes, which was an ill shot, for to be so

entreated by foreign potentates did but inflame her majesty's anger

against the duke; at others, by my Lord Sussex and my Lord Arundel, or

such persons in her court as nearly approached her highness and could

deal with her when she was merry and chose to condescend to their

discourse. But the wind shifts not oftener than did the queen's mind

at that time, so diverse were her dispositions toward this nobleman,

and always opposed to such as appeared in those who spoke on this

topic, whether as pressing for his execution, or suing for mercy to be

extended to him. I heard much talk at that time touching his grace's

good qualities: how noble had been his spirit; how moderate his

disposition; how plain his attire; how bountiful his alms.

{615}

As the fates of many do in these days hang on the doom of one, much

eagerness was shown amongst those who haunted my uncle's house to

learn the news afloat concerning the issue of the duke's affair. Some

Catholics of note were lying in prison at that time in Norwich, most

of them friends of these gentlemen; of which four were condemned to

death at that time, and one to perpetual imprisonment and loss of all

his property for reconcilement; but whilst the Duke of Norfolk was yet

alive, they held the hope he should, if once out of prison, recover

the queen's favor and drive from their seats his and their mortal

enemies, my Lords Burleigh and Leicester. And verily the axe was held

suspended on the head of that duke for four months and more, to the

unspeakable anguish of many; and, amongst others, his aged and

afflicted mother, the Dowager Countess of Surrey, who came to London

from the country to be near her son in this extremity. Three times did

the queen issue a warrant for his death and then recalled it; so that

those trembling relatives and well-wishers in and out of his house did

look each day to hear the fatal issue had been compassed, In the month

of March, when her majesty was sick with a severe inflammation and

agonizing pain, occasioned, some said, by poison administered by

papists, but by her own physicians declared to arise from her contempt

of their prescriptions, there was a strange turmoil, I ween, in some

men's breasts, albeit silent as a storm brewing on a sultry day. Under

their breath, and with faces shaped to conceal the wish which bred the

inquiry, they asked of the queen's health; whilst others tore their

hair and beat their breasts with no affected grief, and the most part

of the people lamented her danger. Oh, what five days were those when

the shadow of death did hover over that royal couch, and men's hearts

failed them for fear, or else wildly whispered hopes such as they

durst not utter aloud,--not so much as to a close friend,--lest the

walls should have ears, or the pavement open under their feet! My God,

in thy hands lie the issues of life and death. Thou dost assign to

each one his space of existence, his length of days. Thy ways are not

as our ways, nor thy thoughts as our thoughts. She lived who was yet

to doom so many princely heads to the block, so many saintly forms to

the dungeon and the rack. She lived whose first act was to stretch

forth a hand yet weakened by sickness to sign, a fourth time, a

warrant for a kinsman's death, and once again recalled it. Each day

some one should come in with various reports touching the queen's

dispositions. Sometimes she had been heard to opine that her dangers

from her enemies were so great that justice must be done. At others

she vehemently spoke of the nearness of blood to herself, of the

superiority in honor of this duke; and once she wrote to Lord Burleigh

(a copy of this letter Lord Surrey saw in Lord Oxford's hands), "that

she was more beholden to the hinder part of her head than she dared

trust the forward part of the same;" and expressed great fear lest an

irrevocable deed should be committed. But she would not see Lord

Surrey, or suffer him to plead in person for his father's life. Yet

there were good hopes amongst his friends he should yet be released,

till one day--I mind it well, for I was sitting with Lady Surrey,

reading out loud to her, as I was often used to do--my Lord Berkeley

burst into the chamber, and cried, throwing his gloves on the table

and swearing a terrible oath:

"That woman has undone us!"

"What, the queen?" said my lady, white as a smock.

"Verily a queen," he answered gloomily. "I warrant you the Queen of

Scots hath ended as she did begin, and dragged his grace into a pit

from whence I promise you he will never now rise. A letter writ in her

cipher to the Duke of Alva hath been intercepted, in which that

luckless royal {616} wight, ever fatal to her friends as to herself,

doth say, 'that she hath a strong party in England, and lords who

favor her cause; some of whom, albeit prisoners, so powerful, that the

Queen of England should not dare to touch their lives.' Alack! those

words, 'should not dare,' shall prove the death-warrant of my noble

brother. Cursed be the day when he did get entangled in that popish

siren's plots!"

"Speak not harshly of her, good my lord," quoth Lady Surrey, in her

gentle voice. "Her sorrows do bear too great a semblance to our own

not to bespeak from us patience in this mishap."

"Nan," said Lord Berkeley, "thou art of too mild a disposition. 'Tis

the only fault I do find with thee. Beshrew me, if my wife and thee

could not make exchange of some portion of her spirit and thy meekness

to the advantage of both. I warrant thee Phil's wife should hold a

tight hand over him."

"I read not that precept in the Bible, my lord," quoth she, smiling.

"It speaketh roundly of the duty of wives to obey, but not so much as

one word of their ruling."

"Thou hadst best preach thy theology to my Lady Berkeley," he

answered; "and then she--"

"But I pray you, my lord, is it indeed your opinion that the queen

will have his grace's life?"

"I should not give so much as a brass pin, Nan, for his present chance

of mercy at her hands," he replied sadly. And his words were justified

in the event.

Those relentless enemies of the duke, my Lords Burleigh and Leicester,

--who, at the time of the queen's illness, had stood three days and

three nights without stirring from her bedside in so great terror lest

she should die and he should compass the throne through a marriage

with the Queen of Scots, that they vowed to have his blood at any cost

if her majesty did recover,--so dealt with parliament as to move it to

send a petition praying that, for the safety of her highness and the

quieting of her realm, he should be forthwith executed. And from that

day to the mournful one of his death, albeit from the great reluctance

her majesty had evinced to have him despatched, his friends, yea unto

the last moment, lived in expectancy of a reprieve; he himself made up

his mind to die with extraordinary fortitude, not choosing to

entertain so much as the least hope of life.

One day at that time I saw my Lady Margaret mending some hose, and at

each stitch she made with her needle tears fell from her eyes. I

offered to assist her ladyship; but she said, pressing the hose to her

heart, "I thank thee, good Constance; but no other hands than mine

shall put a stitch in these hose, for they be my father's, who hath

worn them with these holes for many months, till poor Master Dyx

bethought himself to bring them here to be patched and mended, which

task I would have none perform but myself. My father would not suffer

him to procure a new pair, lest it should be misconstrued as a sign of

his hope or desire of a longer life, and with the same intent he

refuseth to eat flesh as often as the physicians do order; 'for,'

quoth he, 'why should I care to nourish a body doomed to such near

decay?'" Then, after a pause, she said, "He will not wear clothes

which have any velvet on them, being, he saith, a condemned person."

Lady Surrey took one of the hose in her hand, but Lady Margeret, with

a filial jealousy, sadly smiling, shook her head: "Nay, Nan," quoth

she, "not even to thee, sweet one, will I yield one jot or tittle of

this mean, but, in relation to him who doth own these poor hose,

exalted labor." Then she asked her sister if she had heard of the

duke's request that Mr. Fox, his old schoolmaster, should attend on

him in the Tower, to whom he desired to profess that faith he did

first ground him in.

And my Lady Surrey answered yea, that my lord had informed her of

{617} it, and many other proofs beside that his grace sought to

prepare for death in the best manner he could think of.

"Some ill-disposed persons have said," quoth Lady Margaret, "that it

is with the intent to propitiate the queen that my father doth show

himself to be so settled in his religion, and that he is not what he

seems; but tis a slander on his grace, who hath been of this way of

thinking since he attained to the age of reason, and was never at any

time reconciled, as some have put forth."

This was the last time I did see these afflicted daughters until long

after their father's death, who was beheaded in the chapel of the

Tower shortly afterward. When the blow fell which, striking at him,

struck a no less fatal blow to the peace and well-doing of his

children, they all left the Charter House, and removed for a time into

the country, to the houses of divers relatives, in such wise as before

his death the duke had desired. A letter which I received from Lady

Surrey a few weeks after she left London doth best serve to show the

manner of this disposal, and the temper of the writer's mind at that

melancholy time.

"My OWN DEAR CONSTANCE,--It may like you to hear that your afflicted

friend is improved in bodily health, and somewhat recovered from the

great suffering of mind which the duke, their good father's death,

has caused to all his poor children--mostly to Megg and Phil and me;

for their brothers and my sister are too young greatly to grieve. My

Lord Arundel is sorely afflicted, I hear, and hath writ a very

lamentable letter to our good Lady Sussex concerning this sad

mishap. My Lady Berkeley and my Lady Westmoreland are almost

distracted with grief for the death of a brother they did singularly

love. That poor lady (of Westmoreland) is much to be pitied, for

that she is parted from her husband, maybe for ever, and has lost

two fair daughters in one year.

"My lord hath shown much affection for his father, and natural

sorrow in this sad loss; and when his last letters written a short

time before he suffered, and addressed "To my loving children,"

specially the one to Philip and Nan, reached his hands, he wept so

long and bitterly that it seemed as if his tears should never cease.

My lord is forthwith to make his chief abode at Cambridge for a year

or two; and Meg and I, with Lady Sussex, and I do hope Bess

also--albeit his grace doth appear in his letter to be otherwise

minded. But methinks he apprehended to lay too heavy a charge on

her, who is indeed a good lady to us all in this our unhappy

condition, and was loth Megg should be out of my company.

"The parting with my lord is a sore trial, and what I had not looked

to; but God's will be done; and if it be for the advantage of his

soul, as well as the advancement of his learning, he should reside

at the university, it should ill befit me to repine. And now

methinks I will transcribe, if my tears do not hinder me, his

grace's letters, which will inform thee of his last wishes better

than I could explain them; for I would have thee know how tender and

forecasting was his love for us, and the good counsel he hath left

unto his son, who, I pray to God, may always follow it. And I would

have thee likewise note one point of his advice, which indeed I

should have been better contented he had not touched upon, forasmuch

as his having done so must needs hinder that which thy fond love for

my poor self, and resolved adherence to what he calls 'blind

papistry,' doth so greatly prompt thee to desire; for if on his

blessing he doth charge us to beware of it, and then I should move

my lord to so much neglect of his last wishes as at any time to be

reconciled, bethink thee with what an ill grace I should urge on

him, in other respects, obedience to his commands, which indeed are

such as do commend themselves to any Christian soul as most wise and

profitable. {618} And now, breaking off mine own discourse to

transcribe his words--a far more noble and worthy employment of my

pen--and praying God to bless thee, I remain thy tender and loving

friend,

"ANN SURREY."

"The Duke of Norfolk's letters to

his children:

"DEAR CHILDREN,--This is the last letter that ever I think to write

to you; and therefore, if you loved me, or that you will seem

grateful to me for the special love that I have ever borne unto you,

then remember and follow these my last lessons. Oh, Philip, serve

and fear God, above all things. I find the fault in myself, that I

have (God forgive me!) been too negligent in this point. Love and

make much of your wife; for therein, considering the great adversity

you are now in, by reason of my fall, is your greatest present

comfort and relief, beside your happiness in having a wife which is

endued with so great towardness in virtue and good qualities, and in

person comparable with the best sort. Follow these two lessons, and

God will bless you; and without these, as you may see by divers

examples out of the Scripture, and also by ordinary worldly proof,

where God is not feared, all goeth to wreck; and where love is not

between the husband and wife, there God doth not prosper. My third

lesson is, that you show yourself loving and natural to your

brothers and sister and sister-in-law. Though you be very young in

years, yet you must strive with consideration to become a man; for

it is your own presence and good government of yourself that must

get friends; and if you take that course, then have I been so

careful a father unto you, as I have taken such order as you, by

God's grace, shall be well able, beside your wife's lands, to

maintain yourself like a gentleman. Marry! the world is greedy and

covetous; and if the show of the well government of yourself do not

fear and restrain their greedy appetite, it is like that, by

undirect means, they will either put you from that which law layeth

upon you, or else drive you to much trouble in trying and holding

your right. When my grandfather died, I was not much above a year

elder than you are now; and yet, I thank God, I took such order with

myself, as you shall reap the commodity of my so long passed travel,

if you do now imitate the like. Help to strengthen your young and

raw years with good counsel. I send you herewith a brief schedule,

whom I wish you to make account of as friends, and whom as servants;

and I charge you, as a father may do, to follow my direction

therein; my experience can better tell what is fit for you than your

young years can judge of. I would wish you for the present to make

your chief abode at Cambridge, which is the place fittest for you to

promote your learning in; and beside, it is not very far hence,

whereby you may, within a day's warning, be here to follow your own

causes, as occasion serveth. If, after a year or two, you spend some

time in a house of the law, there is nothing that will prove more to

your commodity, considering how for the time you shall have

continual business about your own law affairs; and thereby also, if

you spend your time well, you shall be ever after better able to

judge in your own causes. I too late repent that I followed not this

course that now I wish to you; for if I had, then my case perchance

had not been in so ill state as now it is.

"When God shall send you to those years as that it shall be fit for

you to keep house with your wife (which I had rather were sooner,

than that you should fall into ill company), then I would wish you

to withdraw yourself into some private dwelling of your own. And if

your hap may be so good as you may so live without being called to

higher degree, oh, Philip, Philip, then shall you enjoy that blessed

life which your woful father would fain have done, and never could

be so happy. Beware of high degree. To a vain-glorious, proud

stomach it seemeth at the first sweet. Look into all {619}

chronicles, and you shall find that in the end it brings heaps of

cares, toils in the state, and most commonly in the end utter

overthrow. Look into the whole state of the nobility in times past,

and into their state now, and then judge whether my lessons be true

or no. Assure yourself, as you may see by the book of my accounts,

and you shall find that my living did hardly maintain my expenses;

for all the help that I had by Tom's lands, and somewhat by your

wife's and sister's-in-law, I was ever a beggar. You may, by the

grace of God, be a great deal richer and quieter in your low degree,

wherein I once again wish you to continue. They may, that shall wish

you the contrary, have a good meaning; but believe your father, who

of love wishes you best, and with the mind that he is at this

present fully armed to God, who sees both states, both high and low,

as it were even before his eyes. Beware of the court, except it be

to do your prince service, and that, as near as you can, in the

lowest degree, for that place hath no certainty; either a man, by

following thereof, hath too much of worldly pomp, which, in the end,

throws him down headlong, or else he liveth there unsatisfied;

either that he cannot attain for himself that he would, or else that

he cannot do for his friends as his heart desireth. Remember these

notes, and follow them; and then you, by God's help, shall reap the

commodity of them in your old years.

"If your brothers may be suffered to remain in your company, I would

be most glad thereof, because continuing together should still

increase love between you. But the world is so catching of

everything that falls, that Tom being, as I believe, after my death,

the queen's majesty's ward, shall be begged by one or another. But

yet you are sure to have your brother William left still with you,

because, poor boy, he hath nothing to feed cormorants withal; to

whom you will as well be a father as a brother; for upon my blessing

I commit him to your charge to provide for, if that which I have

assured him by law shall not be so sufficient as I mean it. If law

may take place, your sister-in-law will be surely enough conveyed to

his behoof, and then I should wish her to be brought up with some

friend of mine; as for the present I allow best of Sir Christopher

Heydon, if he will so much befriend you as to receive her to sojourn

with him; if not there in some other place, as your friends shall

best allow of. And touching the bestowing of your wife and Megg, who

I would be loth should be out of your wife's company; for as she

should be a good companion for Nan, so I commit Megg of especial

trust to her. I think good, till you keep house together, if my Lady

of Sussex might be entreated to take them to her as sojourners,

there were no place so fit considering her kindred unto you, and the

assured friend that I hope you shall find of her; beside she is a

good lady. If it will not be so brought to pass, then, by the advice

of your friends, take some other order; but in no case I would wish

you to keep any house except it be together with your wife.

"Thus I have advised you as my troubled memory can at present suffer

me. Beware of pride, stubbornness, taunting, and sullenness, which

vices nature doth somewhat kindle in you; and therefore you must

with reason and discretion make a new nature in yourself. Give not

your mind too much and too greedily to gaming; make a pastime of it,

and no toil. And lastly, delight to spend some time in reading of

the Scriptures; for therein is the whole comfort of man's life; all

other things are vain and transitory; and if you be diligent in

reading of them, they will remain with you continually, to your

profit and commodity in this world, and to your comfort and

salvation in the world to come, whither, in grace of God, I am now

with joy and consolation preparing myself. And, upon my blessing,

beware of blind papistry, which brings nothing but bondage to men's

consciences. {620} Mix your prayers with fasting, not thinking

thereby to merit; for there is nothing that we ourselves can do that

is good,--we are but unprofitable servants; but fast, I say, thereby

to tame the wicked affection of the mind, and trust only to be saved

by Christ's precious blood; for without a perfect faith therein,

there is no salvation. Let works follow your faith; thereby to show

to the world that you do not only say you have faith, but that you

give testimony thereof to the full satisfaction of the godly. I

write somewhat the more herein, because perchance you have

heretofore heard, or perchance may hereafter hear, false bruits that

I was a papist; [Footnote 123] but trust unto it, I never, since I

knew what religion meant (I thank God) was of other mind than now

you shall hear that I die in; although (I cry God mercy) I have not

given fruits and testimony of my faith as I ought to have done; the

which is the thing that I do now chiefliest repent.

[Footnote 123: There would seem to be no doubt that the Duke of

Norfolk was a sincere Protestant. The strenuous advice to his

children to beware of Popery affords evidence of it. Greatly,

however, as it would have tended to their worldly prosperity to

have followed their father's last injunctions in this respect, all

but one of those he thus counselled were subsequently reconciled

to the Catholic Church.

The Duke's letters in this chapter are all authentic. See the Rev.

M. Tierney's History of Arundel, and the Appendix to Nott's

edition of Lord Surrey's poems.]

"When I am gone, forget my condemning, and forgive, I charge you, my

false accusers, as I protest to God I do; but have nothing to do

with them if they live. Surely, Bannister dealt no way but honestly

and truly. Hickford did not hurt me in my conscience, willingly; nor

did not charge me with any great matter that was of weight otherways

than truly. But the Bishop of Ross, and specially Barber, did

falsely accuse me, and laid their own treasons upon my back. God

forgive them, and I do, and once again I will you to do; bear no

malice in your mind. And now, dear Philip, farewell. Read this my

letter sometimes over; it may chance make you remember yourself the

better; and by the same, when your father is dead and rotten, you

may see what counsel I would give you if I were alive. If you follow

these admonitions, there is no doubt but God will bless you; and I,

your earthly father, do give you God's blessing and mine, with my

humble prayers to Almighty God that it will please him to bless you

and your good Nan; that you may both, if it be his will, see your

children's children, to the comfort of you both; and afterward that

you may be partakers of the heavenly kingdom. Amen, amen. Written by

the hand of your loving father. T. H."

"And to Tom his grace did write:

"Tom, out of this that I have written to your brother, you may learn

such lessons as are fit for you. That I write to one, that I write

to all, except it be somewhat which particularly touches any of you.

To fear and serve God is generally to you all; and, on my blessing,

take greatest care thereof, for it is the foundation of all

goodness. You have, even from your infancy, been given to be

stubborn. Beware of that vice, Tom, and bridle nature with wisdom.

Though you be her majesty's ward, yet if you use yourself well to my

Lord Burleigh, he will, I hope, help you to buy your own wardship.

Follow your elder brother's advice, who, I hope, will take such a

course as may be to all your comforts. God send him grace so to do,

and to you too! I give you God's blessing and mine, and I hope he

will prosper you."

"And to Will he saith (whom methinks his heart did incline to, as

Jacob's did to Benjamin):

"Will, though you be now young, yet I hope, if it shall please God

to send you life, that you will then consider of the precepts

heretofore written to your brethren. I have committed the charge of

your bringing-up to your elder brother; and therefore I charge you

to be obedient to him, as you would have been to me if I had been

{621} living. If you shall have a liking to my daughter-in-law, Bess

Dacres, I hope you shall have it in your own choice to marry her. I

will not advise you otherways than yourself, when you are of fit

years, shall think good; but this assure yourself, it will be a good

augmentation to your small living, considering how chargeable the

world groweth to be. As you are youngest, so the more you ought to

be obedient to your elders. God send you a good younger brother's

fortune in this world, and his grace, that you may ever be his, both

in this world and in the world to come."

"To me, his unworthy daughter, were these lines written, which I be

ashamed to transcribe, but that his goodness doth appear in his good

opinion of me rather than my so poor merits:

"Well-beloved Nan, that hath been as dear to me as if you had been

my own daughter, although, considering this ill hap that has now

chanced, you might have had a greater marriage than now your husband

shall be; yet I hope that you will remember that, when you were

married, the case was far otherways; and therefore I hope your

dutiful dealings shall be so to your husband, and your sisterly love

to your brothers-in-law and sister-in-law, as my friends that shall

see it may think that my great affection to you was well bestowed.

Thanks be to God, you have hitherto taken a good course; whereby all

that wish you well take great hope rather of your going forward

therein than backward--which God forbid! I will request no more at

your hands, now that I am gone, in recompense of my former love to

you, but that you will observe my three lessons: to fear and serve

God, flying idleness; to love faithfully your husband; and to be

kind to your brothers and sisters--specially committing to your care

mine only daughter Megg, hoping that you will not be a sister-in-law

to her, but rather a natural sister, yea even a very mother; and

that as I took care for the well bestowing of you, so you will take

care for the well bestowing of her, and be a continual caller on

your husband for the same. If this mishap had not chanced, you and

your husband might have been awhile still young, and I would, by

God's help, have supplied your wants. But now the case is changed,

and you must, at your years of fifteen, attain to the consideration

and discretion of twenty; or else, if God send you to live in your

age, you shall have cause to repent your folly in youth, beside the

endangering the casting away of those who do wholly depend upon your

two well-doings. I do not mistrust that you will be mindful of my

last requests; and so doing God bless you, and send you to be old

parents to virtuous children, which is likeliest to be if you give

them good example. Farewell! for this is the last that you shall

ever receive from your loving father. Farewell, my dear Nan!"

"And to his own sweet Megg he subjoined in the same letter these

words:

"Megg, I have, as you see, committed you to your loving sister. I

charge you therefore, upon my blessing, that you obey her in all

things, as you would do me or your own mother, if we were living;

and then I doubt not but by her good means you shall be in fit time

bestowed to your own comfort and contentment. Be good; no babbler,

and ever be busied and doing of somewhat; and give your mind to

reading in the Bible and such other good books, whereby you may

learn to fear God; and so you shall prove, by his help, hereafter

the better wife, and a virtuous woman in all other respects. If you

follow these my lessons, then God's blessing and mine I give you,

and pray that you may both live and die his servant. Amen."

When I read these letters, and my Lady Surrey's comments upon them,

what pangs seized my heart! Her {622} messenger was awaiting an

answer, which he said must be brief, for he had to ride to Bermondsey

with a message for my Lord Sussex, and had been long delayed in the

city. I seized a pen, and hastily wrote:

"Oh, my dear and honored lady, what grief, what pain, your letter

hath caused me! Forgive me if, having but brief time in which to

write a few lines by your messenger, I dwell not on the sorrow which

doth oppress you, nor on the many excellences apparent in those

farewell letters, which give token of so great virtue and wisdom in

the writer, that one should be prompted to exclaim he did lack but

one thing to be perfect, that being a true faith,--but rather

direct my answer to that passage in yours which doth work in me such

regret, yea such anguish of heart, as my poor words can ill express.

For verily there can be no greater danger to a soul than to be lured

from the profession of a true Catholic faith, once firmly received

and yet inwardly held, by deceptive arguments, whereby it doth

conceal its own weakness under the garb of respect for the dead and

duty to the living. For, I pray you, mine own dear lady, what

respect and what duty is owing to men which be not rather due to him

who reads the heart, and will ask a strict account of such as,

having known his will, yet have not done it? Believe me, 'tis a

perilous thing to do evil that good may come. Is it possible you

should resolve never to profess that religion which, in your

conscience, you do believe to be true, nor to move your lord

thereunto, for any human respect, however dear and sacred? I hope

other feelings may return, and God's hand will support, uphold, and

never fail you in your need. I beseech him to guard and keep you in

the right way.

"Your humble servant and truly loving poor friend,

"CONSTANCE SHERWOOD."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

------

{623}

From The Fortnightly Review.

THE HEART AND THE BRAIN.

BY GEORGE HENRY LEWES.

Heart and brain are the two lords of life. In the metaphors of

ordinary speech and in the stricter language of science, we use these

terms to indicate two central powers, from which all motives radiate,

to which all influences converge. They rule the moral and the physical

life: the moral owes to them its continuous supply of feelings and

ideas; the physical its continuous supply of food and stimulus. All

the composite material which serves to build up the bodily fabric, and

repair its daily waste, is only so much "carted material" awaiting the

architect, until it has twice passed through the heart--until having

been sent by the heart to the lungs it has there received its plastic

virtues, and returns to the heart to be thence distributed throughout

the organism. So much is familiar to every one; but less familiar is

the fact that this transmission of the blood from heart to lungs, and

its distribution throughout the organism, are rendered possible and

made effective only under the influence of the brain. Life is

sustained by food and stimulus. The operation of nutrition itself is

indissolubly connected with sensibility. Life is a plexus of nutrition

and sensation, the threads of which may ideally be separated, but

which in reality are so interwoven as to be indissoluble. This is a

paradox which even many physiologists will reject; but it is only a

paradox because biological questions have constantly been regarded

from a chemical point of view.

To render my proposition free from ambiguity, it is needful to premise

that the term heart, by a familiar device of rhetoric, here expresses

the whole of that great circulatory apparatus of which it is only a

part; and in like manner the term brain here expresses the whole of

the sensory apparatus. The reader knows perfectly well that in strict

anatomical language the heart is only one organ having a definite

function; and that the brain--although the term is used with

considerable laxity--is only one portion of the complex nervous

mechanism, having also its definite functions. But I am not here

addressing anatomists, and for purposes of simplification I shall

generally speak of the heart as if it were the whole of the vascular

system, and of the brain as if it were the whole of the nervous

system. And there is a philosophic truth suggested by this departure

from the limitations of anatomical definition, namely, that if the

brain as a nervous centre requires to be distinguished from all other

nervous centres, it also requires to be affiliated on them: it has its

special functions as an organ, but it has also a community of

property--_i.e._, sensibility--with all other nervous centres.

In the study of animal organisms, the scientific artifice called

analysis, which separates ideally what nature has indissolubly united,

isolating each portion of a complex whole to study it undisturbed by

the influences of other portions, has established a division of life

into animal and vegetable. The division is as old as Aristotle, but

has become the common property of science only since the days of

Bichat. It is not exact, but it is convenient. As an artifice it has

proved its utility, but like all such distinctions it has a tendency

to divert the mind from contemplation of the real synthesis of nature.

Even as an artifice the classification is not free from ambiguities;

and perhaps it would be less exceptionable if {624} instead of vegetal

and animal we were to substitute nutritive and sensitive. All the

phenomena of growth, development, and decay--phenomena common to

plants as to animals--may range under the laws of nutrition. All the

phenomena of feeling and motion which specially distinguish animals,

will range under the laws of sensibility. Plants, it is true, manifest

motion, some few of them even locomotion; but in them it is believed

that these phenomena are never due to the stimulus of sensibility.

Viewing the animal organism as thus differentiated, we see on the one

hand a complex system of organs--glands, membranes, vessels--all

harmoniously working to one end, which is to build up the body, and

silently repair its continual waste. They evolve the successive phases

of development. They prepare successive generations. On the other

hand, we see a complex system of organs--muscles, tendons, bones,

nerves, and nerve-centres--also harmoniously co-operative. They

stimulate the organs of nutrition. They work first for the

preservation of the individual in the struggle of existence; next, for

the perfection of the individual in the development of his highest

qualities.

But it is important to remember that this division is purely ideal--a

scientific artifice, not a reality. Nature knows of none such. In the

organism the two lives are one. The two systems interlace,

interpenetrate each other, so that the slightest modification of the

one is followed by a corresponding change in the other. The brain is

nourished by the heart, and were it not for the blood which is

momently pumped into it by the heart, its sensibility would vanish.

And the heart in turn depends upon the brain, not for food, but for

stimulus, for motive power, without which food is inert. That we may

feel, it is necessary we should feed; that we may feed, it is

necessary we should feel. Nutrition cannot be dissociated from

sensation. The blood which nourishes the brain, giving it impulse and

sustaining power, could never have become arterial blood, could never

have reached the brain, had not the heart which sent it there been

subjected to influences from the brain. The blood itself has no

locomotive impulse. The heart has no spontaneous power: it is a

muscle, and like all other muscles must be stimulated into activity.

Unless the sensitive mechanism were in action, the lungs could not

expand, the blood would not become oxygenated, the heart would not

pump. Look on the corpse from which the life has just vanished. Why is

it inert? There is food within it. It has blood in abundance. There is

air in the lungs. The muscles are contractile, and the tendons

elastic. So little is the wondrous mechanism impaired, that if by any

means we could supply a stimulus to awaken the dormant sensibility,

the chest would expand, the heart would beat, the blood would

circulate, the corpse would revive.

It is unnecessary to point out in detail how dependent the brain is

upon the heart; but mention may be made of the fact that more blood is

sent to the brain than to any other organ in the body: according to

some estimates a fifth of the whole, according to others a third. Not

only is a large quantity of blood demanded for the continuous activity

of the brain, but such is the peculiar nature of this great nervous

centre, that of all organs it is the most delicately susceptible to

every variation in the quality of the blood sent to it. If the heart

pumps feebly, the brain acts feebly. If the blood be vitiated, the

brain is lethargic; and when the brain is lethargic, the heart is

weak. Thus do the two great centres interact. They are both lords of

life, and both mutually indispensable.

There are two objections which it may be well to anticipate:

Nutrition, it may be objected, cannot be so indissolubly blended with

sensation as I have affirmed, because, in the first place, most of the

nutritive processes go on without the intervention of {625}

sensibility; and in the second place, the nutritive life of plants is

confessedly independent of sensation, since in plants there is no

sensitive mechanism whatever. Nutrition is simply a chemical process.

The answers to these objections may be very brief. Nutrition is a

biological not a chemical process: it involves the operation of

chemical laws, but these laws are themselves subordinated to

physiological laws; and one of these laws is the necessary dependence

of organic activity on a nervous mechanism wherever such a mechanism

exists. Although popular language, and the mistaken views (as I

conceive) of physiologists, allow us to say, without any apparent

absurdity, that the processes of respiration, digestion, circulation,

and secretion go on without feeling or sensation--because these

processes do not habitually become distinct in consciousness, but are

merged in the general feeling of existence--we have only to replace the

word feeling, or sensation, by the phrase "nervous influence," and it

then becomes a serious biological error to speak of nutrition as

dissociated from the stimulus of nervous centres, as capable of

continuance without the intervention of sensibility. The chemical

combinations and decompositions do not of course depend on this

intervention, but the _transport_ of materials does. All the disputes

which have been waged on this subject would have been silenced had the

disputants borne in mind this distinction between the chemical and

organic elements in every nutritive process. It is not the stoker who

makes the steam; but if the stoker were not to supply the fire with

coals, and the safety-valve were not to regulate the amount of

pressure, steam might indeed be generated, but no steam-engine would

perform its useful work. In like manner, it is not the vascular system

which makes a secretion; but if the blood did not supply the gland

with materials, the secreting process would quickly end, and the blood

can only be brought to the gland through the agency of muscular

contractions stimulated by nervous influence.

Granting that plants have no sensibility, and that in them the process

of nutrition must go on without such an intervention, we are able to

demonstrate that in animals in whose organism the sensitive apparatus

is an integral portion, the processes of nutrition are more or less

under the influence of this apparatus. In saying "more or less," I

indicate the greater or less perfection of the organism; for, as every

one knows, the perfection of each type is due to the predominance of

its sensitive mechanism. In some of the lowest types, no trace of a

nervous mechanism can be discovered. A little higher in the scale, the

mechanism is very slight and simple. Still higher, it becomes complex

and important. It culminates in man. Corresponding with this scale of

complexity in the sensitive life is the scale of complexity in the

nutritive life. As the two rise in importance they rise in the scale

of dependence. Thus a frog or a triton will live long after its brain

is removed. I have kept frogs for several weeks without their brains,

and tritons without their heads. Redi, the illustrious Italian

naturalist, kept a turtle alive five months after the removal of its

brain. Now it is needless to say that in higher animals death would

rapidly follow the loss of the brain. A somewhat similar parallelism

is seen on the removal of the heart. None of the higher animals can

survive a serious injury to the heart; but that organ may be removed

from a reptile, and the animal will crawl away seemingly as lively as

ever. A frog will live several hours without a heart, and will hop,

swim, and struggle as if uninjured. Stilling once removed all the

viscera from a frog, which, however, continued for one hour to hop,

defend itself, and in various ways manifest its vivacity. [Footnote

124]

[Footnote 124: Stilling, _Untersuchungen ueber die Functionen des

Rueckenmarks_, p. 38. ]

{626}

In spite of these evidences of a temporary independence of brain and

heart, as individual organs, there is nothing more certain than the

intimate interdependence of the sensitive and circulating systems; and

if in lower animals the interdependence of the two great central

organs is less energetic than in the higher, the law of the

intervention of sensibility in all processes of nutrition is

unaffected. In fact, wherever the motor mechanism is muscular, as it

is in all but the simplest animals, the necessary intervention of

sensibility is an _a priori_ axiom. Every action in the organs of such

animals is a manifestation of muscular contractility, and there is no

known means of exciting this contractility except by the stimulus of a

nerve.

The heart is a muscle. Some years ago there was a school of

physiologists advocating the hypothesis that the action of the heart

was due to the irritability of its muscular tissue, which was

stimulated by the presence of blood. The great Haller was the head of

this school, and his _"Memoires sur la nature sensible et irritable

des parties"_ [Footnote 125] is still worthy the attention of

experimentalists. And, indeed, when men saw the heart continue its

pulsations some time after death, and even after removal from the

body, and saw, moreover, that after pulsation had ceased it could be

revived by the injection of warm blood, there seemed the strongest

arguments in favor of the hypothesis. Unhappily for the hypothesis,

the heart continues to beat long after all the blood has been pumped

out of it, consequently its beating cannot be due to the stimulus of

the blood.

[Footnote 125: Lausanne, 1756, in 4 vols. ]

In our own day the difficulty has to a considerable extent been

removed by the discovery of a small nervous system specially allotted

to the heart,--nerves and ganglia imbedded in its substance, which

there do the work of nerves and ganglia everywhere else. Cut the heart

into pieces, and each piece containing a ganglion will beat as before;

the other pieces will be still. Beside this special cardiac system

which influences the regular pulsations, there is the general nervous

system, which accelerates and arrests these pulsations at every moment

of our lives. The heart is thus connected with the general organism

through the intervention of the great sensory apparatus. Filaments of

what are called the pneumogastric nerves connect the heart with the

spinal chord and cerebral masses; but it is not the influence of these

filaments which causes the regular beatings of the heart (as

physiologists formerly supposed), and the proof is that these

filaments may all be cut, thus entirely isolating the heart from all

connection with the great nervous centres, and yet the heart will

continue tranquilly beating. What causes this? Obviously the stimulus

comes from the heart's own nerves; and these are, presumably, excited

by the molecular changes going on within it.

Physiologists, as we said just now, supposed that the filaments of the

pneumogastric nerves distributed to the heart caused its beating. What

then was their surprise, a few years since, when Weber announced that

the stimulation of these fibres, instead of accelerating the heart's

action, arrested it! Here was a paradox. All other muscles, it was

said (but erroneously said), are excited to increased action when

their nerves are stimulated, and here is a muscle which is paralyzed

by the stimulation of its nerves. The fact was indisputable; an

electric current passed through the pneumogastric did suddenly and

invariably arrest the heart. Physiologists were interested. The frogs

and rabbits of Europe had a bad time of it, called upon to answer

categorically such questions put to their hearts. In a little while it

appeared that although a strong electric current arrested the

pulsations--and in mammals instantaneously--yet a feeble current

accelerated instead of arresting them. The same opposite results

followed a powerful and a gentle excitation of the upper region of the

spinal chord.

{627}

To these very important and suggestive facts, which throw a strong

light on many phenomena hitherto obscure, let us add the interesting

facts that in a healthy, vigorous animal, the heart quickly recovers

its normal activity after the withdrawal of the electric stimulus; but

in a sickly or highly sensitive animal the arrest is final.

Who does not read here the physiological explanation of the familiar

fact that powerful mental shocks momently arrest the heart, and

sometimes arrest it for ever? That which a powerful current will do

applied to the pneumogastric nerve, will be done by a profound

agitation of grief or joy--truly called a heart-shaking influence. The

agitation of the great centres of thought is communicated to the

spinal chord, and from it to the nerves which issue to various parts

of the body: the limbs are violently moved, the glands are excited to

increased activity, the tears flow, the facial muscles contract, the

chest expands, laughter or sobs, dances of delight and shouts of joy,

these and the manifold expressions of an agitated emotion, are the

after results--the first effect is an arrest, more or less fugitive,

followed by an increase of the heart's action. If the organism be

vigorous, the effect of a powerful emotion is a sudden paleness,

indicating a momentary arrest of the heart. This may be but for an

instant; the heart pauses, and the lungs pause with it--"the breath is

taken away." This is succeeded by an energetic palpitation; the lungs

expand, the blood rushes to face and brain with increased force.

Should the organism be sickly or highly sensitive, the arrest is of

longer duration, and fainting, more or less prolonged, is the result.

In a very sensitive or very sickly organism the arrest is final. The

shock of joy and the shock of grief have both been known to kill.

The effects of a gentle stimulus we may expect to be very different,

since we know that a feeble electric current stimulates the heart's

action. The nature of the stimulus is always the same, no matter on

what occasion it arises. It may arise from a dash of cold water on the

face--as we see in the revival of the heart's action when we throw

water on the face of a fainting person. It may arise from inhaling an

irritant odor. It may arise from the pleasurable sight of a dear

friend, or the thrill of delight at the new birth of an idea. In every

case the brain is excited, either through an impression on a sensitive

nerve, or through the impulses of thought; and the sensibility thus

called into action necessarily discharges itself through one or more

of the easiest channels; and among the easiest is that of the

pneumogastric nerve. But the heart thus acted on in turn reacts. Its

increased energy throws more blood into the brain, which draws its

sustaining power from the blood.

Experimentalists have discovered another luminous fact connected with

this influence of the brain upon the heart, namely, that although a

current of a certain intensity (varying of course with the nature of

the organism) will infallibly arrest the heart, if applied at once,

yet if we begin with a feeble current and go on gradually increasing

its intensity, we may at last surpass the degree which would have

produced instantaneous arrest, and yet the heart will continue to beat

energetically.

The effect of repetition in diminishing a stimulus is here very

noticeable. It will serve to explain why, according to the traditions

of familiar experience, we are careful to break the announcement of

disastrous news, by intimating something much less calamitous,

wherewith to produce the first shock, and then, when the heart has

withstood that, we hope it may have energy to meet the more agitating

emotions. The same fact will also serve, partly, to explain why from

repetition the effect of smoking is no longer as it is at first to

produce paleness, sweating, and sickness. The heart ceases to be

sensibly affected by the stimulus.

{628}

Returning to the effects of a gentle stimulus, we can read therein the

rationale of change of scene, especially of foreign travel, in

restoring the exhausted energies. The gentle excitement of novel and

pleasurable sights is not, as people generally suppose, merely a

mental stimulus--a pleasure which passes away without a physical

influence; on the contrary, it is inseparably connected with an

increased activity of the circulation, and _this_ brings with it an

increased activity of all the processes of waste and repair. If the

excitement and fatigue be not too great, even the sickly traveller

finds himself stronger and happier, in spite of bad food, irregular

hours, and many other conditions which at home would have enfeebled

him. I have heard a very distinguished physician (Sir Henry Holland)

say that such is his conviction of the beneficial influence of even

slight nervous stimulus on the nutritive processes, that when the

patient cannot have change of scene, change of room is of some

advantage--nay, even change of furniture, if there cannot be change

of room!

To those who have thoroughly grasped the principle of the indissoluble

conjunction of nutrition and sensation, such effects are obvious

deductions. They point to the great importance of pleasure as an

element of effective life. They lead to the question whether much of

the superior health of youth is not due to the greater amount of

pleasurable excitement which life affords to young minds.

Certain it is that much of the marvellous activity of some old men,

especially of men engaged in politics or in interesting professions,

may be assigned to the greater stimulus given to their bodily

functions by the pleasurable excitement of their minds. Men who

vegetate sink prematurely into old age. The fervid wheels of life

revolve upon excitement. If the excitement be too intense, the wheels

take fire; but if the mental stimulus be simply pleasurable, it is

eminently beneficial.

Every impression reacts on the circulation, a slight impression

producing a slight acceleration, a powerful impression, producing an

arrest more or less prolonged. The "shock" of a wound and the "pain"

of an operation cause faintness, sometimes death. Indeed, it is useful

to know that many severe operations are dangerous only because of the

shock or pain, and can be performed with impunity if the patient first

be rendered insensible by chloroform. On the other hand, the mere

irritation of a nerve so as to produce severe pain will produce

syncope or death in an animal which is very feeble or exhausted. It is

possible to crush the whole of the upper part of the spinal chord (the

_medulla oblongata_) without arresting the action of the heart, if the

animal has been rendered insensible by chloroform; whereas without

such precautions a very slight irritation of the medulla suffices to

arrest the heart.

A moment's reflection will disclose the reason of the remarkable

differences observed in human beings in the matter of sensitiveness.

The stupid are stupid, not simply because their nervous development is

below the average, but also because the connection between the two

great central organs, brain and heart, is comparatively languid; the

pneumogastric is not in them a ready channel for the discharge of

nervous excitement. The sensitive are sensitive because in them the

connection is rapid and easy. All nervous excitement must discharge

itself through one or more channels; but _what_ channels, will depend

on the native and acquired tendencies of the organism. In highly

sensitive animals a mere prick on the skin can be proved to affect the

beating of the heart; but you may lacerate a reptile without sensibly

affecting its pulse. In like manner, a pleasurable sight or a

suggestive thought will quicken the pulse of an intelligent man,

whereas his stupid brother may be the spectator of festal or solemn

scenes and the auditor of noble eloquence with scarcely a change.

{629}

The highly sensitive organism is one in which the reactions of

sensibility on the circulation, and of the circulation on the

sensibility, are most direct and rapid. This is often the source of

weakness and inefficiency--as we see in certain feminine natures of

both sexes, wherein the excessive sensitiveness does not lie in an

unusual development of the nervous centres, but in an unusual

development of the direct connection between brain and heart. There

are men and women of powerful brains in whom this rapid transmission

of sensation to the heart is not observable; the nervous force

discharges itself through other channels. There are men and women of

small brains in whom "the irritability" is so great that almost every

sensation transmits its agitating influence to the heart.

And now we are in a condition to appreciate the truth which was

confusedly expressed in the ancient doctrine respecting the heart as

the great emotional organ. It still lives in our ordinary speech, but

has long been banished from the text-books of physiology, though it is

not, in my opinion, a whit more unscientific than the modern doctrine

respecting the brain (meaning the cerebral hemispheres) as the

exclusive organ of sensation. That the heart, as a muscle, is not

endowed with the property of sensibility--a property exclusively

possessed by ganglionic tissue--we all admit. But the heart, as the

central organ of the circulation, is so indissolubly connected with

every manifestation of sensibility, and is so delicately susceptible

to all emotional agitations, that we may not improperly regard it as

the ancients regarded it, in the light of the chief centre of feeling;

for the ancients had no conception of the heart as an organ specially

endowed with sensibility--they only thought of it as the chief agent

of the sensitive soul. And is not this the conception we moderns form

of the brain? We do not imagine the cerebral mass, as a mere mass, and

unrelated to the rest of the organism, to have in itself sensibility;

but we conceive it as the centre of a great system, dependent for its

activity on a thousand influences, sensitive because sensibility is

the form of life peculiar to it, but living only in virtue of the

vital activities of the whole organism. Thus the heart, because its

action is momently involved in every emotion, and because every

emotion reacts upon it, may, as truly as the brain, be called the

great emotional centre. Neither brain nor heart can claim that title

exclusively. They may claim it together.

----

{630}

[Transcriber: Read this section with a fixed pitch font so the

two columns are correctly aligned.]

From The Month.

THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.

BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.

[Concluded.]

Sec.4.

SOUL.

But hark! upon my sense

Comes a fierce hubbub, which would make me fear,

Could I be frighted.

ANGEL.

We are now arrived

Close on the judgment-court; that sullen howl

Is from the demons who assemble there.

It is the middle region, where of old

Satan appeared among the sons of God,

To cast his jibes and scoffs at holy Job.

So now his legions throng the vestibule,

Hungry and wild, to claim their property,

And gather souls for hell. Hist to their cry.

SOUL.

How sour and how uncouth a dissonance!

DEMONS.

Low-born clods

Of brute earth, They aspire

To become gods,

By a new birth, And an extra grace,

And a score of merits,

As if ought Could stand in place

Of the high thought, And the glance of fire

Of the great spirits,

The powers blest, The lords by right,

The primal owners

Of the proud dwelling And realm of light,

Dispossessed, Aside thrust,

Chucked down,

By the sheer might

Of a despot's will,

Of a tyrant's frown,

Who after expelling Their hosts, gave,

Triumphant still,

And still unjust,

Each forfeit crown

To psalm-droners

And canting groaners,

To every slave,

And pious cheat,

And crawling knave,

Who licked the dust

Under his feet.

{631}

ANGEL.

It is the restless panting of their being;

Like beasts of prey, who, caged within their bars,

In a deep hideous purring have their life,

And an incessant pacing to and fro.

DEMONS.

The mind bold

And independent,

The purpose free,

So we are told,

Must not think

To have the ascendant, What's a saint?

One whose breath Doth the air taint

Before his death; A bundle of bones,

Which fools adore, Ha! ha!

When life is o'er,

Which rattle and stink,

E'en in the flesh. We cry his pardon!

No flesh hath he;

Ha! ha! For it hath died,

'Tis crucified

Day by day,

Afresh, afresh, Ha! ha!

That holy clay,

Ha! ha!

And such fudge,

As priestlings prate, Is his guerdon

Before the judge,

And pleads and atones

For spite and grudge,

And bigot mood,

And envy and hate And greed of blood.

SOUL.

How impotent they are! and yet on earth

They have repute for wondrous power and skill;

And books describe, how that the very face

Of th' evil one, if seen, would have a force

To freeze the very blood, and choke the life

Of him who saw it.

{632}

ANGEL.

In thy trial state

Thou hadst a traitor nestling close at home,

Connatural, who with the powers of hell

Was leagued, and of thy senses kept the keys,

And to that deadliest foe unlocked thy heart.

And therefore is it, in respect of man,

Those fallen ones show so majestical.

But, when some child of grace, angel or saint,

Pure and upright in his integrity

Of nature, meets the demons on their raid,

They scud away as cowards from the fight.

Nay, oft hath holy hermit in his cell,

Not yet disburdened of mortality,

Mocked at their threats and warlike overtures;

Or, dying, when they swarmed like flies, around,

Defied them, and departed to his judge.

DEMONS.

Virtue and vice, A knave's pretence.

'Tis all the same; Ha! ha! Dread of hell-fire,

Of the venomous flame, A coward's plea.

Give him his price, Saint though he be, Ha! ha!

From shrewd good sense He'll slave for hire;

Ha! ha! And does but aspire

To the heaven above

With sordid aim, Not from love. Ha! ha!

SOUL.

I see not those false spirits; shall I see

My dearest Master, when I reach his throne?

Or hear, at least, his awful judgment-word

With personal intonation, as I now

Hear thee, not see thee, angel? Hitherto

All has been darkness since I left the earth;

Shall I remain thus sight-bereft all through

My penance-time? if so, how comes it then

That I have hearing still, and taste, and touch,

Yet not a glimmer of that princely sense

Which binds ideas in one, and makes them live?

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ANGEL.

Nor touch, nor taste, nor hearing hast thou now;

Thou livest in a world of signs and types,

The presentations of most holy truths,

Living and strong, which now encompass thee.

A disembodied soul, thou hast by right

No converse with aught else beside thyself;

But, lest so stern a solitude should load

And break thy being, in mercy are vouchsafed

Some lower measures of perception,

Which seem to thee, as though through channels brought,

Through ear, or nerves, or palate, which are gone.

And thou art wrapped and swathed around in dreams,

Dreams that are true, yet enigmatical;

For the belongings of thy present state,

Save through such symbols, come not home to thee.

And thus thou tell'st of space and time and size,

Of fragrant, solid, bitter, musical,

Of fire, and of refreshment after fire;

As (let me use similitude of earth,

To aid thee in the knowledge thou dost ask)--

As ice which blisters may be said to burn.

Nor hast thou now extension, with its parts

Correlative,--long habit cozens thee,--

Nor power to move thyself, nor limbs to move.

Hast thou not heard of those, who after loss

Of hand or foot, still cried that they had pains

In hand or foot, as though they had it still?

So is it now with thee, who hast not lost

Thy hand or foot, but all which made up man.

So will it be, until the joyous day

Of resurrection, when thou wilt regain

All thou hast lost, new-made and glorified.--

--How, even now, the consummated saints

See God in heaven, I may not explicate:--

Meanwhile let it suffice thee to possess

Such means of converse as are granted thee,

Though till the beatific vision thou art blind;

For e'en thy purgatory, which comes like fire,

Is fire without its light.

SOUL.

His will be done!

I am not worthy e'er to see again

The face of day; far less his countenance,

Who is the very sun. Natheless, in life,

When I looked forward to my purgatory,

It ever was my solace to believe,

That, ere I plunged into th' avenging flame,

I had one sight of him to strengthen me.

ANGEL.

Nor rash nor vain is that presentiment;

Yes,--for one moment thou shalt see thy Lord.

Thus will it be: what time thou art arraigned

Before the dread tribunal, and thy lot

Is cast for ever, should it be to sit

On his right hand among his pure elect,

Then sight, or that which to the soul is sight,

As by a lightning-flash, will come to thee,

And thou shalt see, amid the dark profound,

Whom thy soul loveth, and would fain approach,

One moment; but thou knowest not, my child,

What thou dost ask: that sight of the Most Fair

Will gladden thee, but it will pierce thee too.

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SOUL.

Thou speakest darkly, angel; and an awe

Falls on me, and I fear lest I be rash.

ANGEL.

There was a mortal, who is now above

In the mid glory; he, when near to die,

Was given communion with the Crucified,--

Such, that the Master's very wounds were stamped

Upon his flesh; and, from the agony

Which thrilled through body and soul in that embrace,

Learn that the flame of the Everlasting Love

Doth burn, ere it transform. . . .

Sec. 5.

. . . Hark to those sounds!

They come of tender beings angelical,

Least and most childlike of the sons of God.

FIRST CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise:

In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

To us his elder race he gave To battle and to win,

Without the chastisement of pain, Without the soil of sin.

The younger son he willed to be A marvel in his birth:

Spirit and flesh his parents were; His home was heaven and earth.

The Eternal blessed his child and armed, And sent him hence afar,

To serve as champion in the field Of elemental war.

To be his vice-roy in the world Of matter, and of sense;

Upon the frontier, toward the foe, A resolute defence.

ANGEL.

We now have passed the gate, and are within

The house of judgment; and whereas on earth

Temples and palaces are formed of parts

Costly and rare, but all material,

So in the world of spirits nought is found,

To mould withal and form a whole,

But what is immaterial; and thus

The smallest portions of this edifice,

Cornice, or frieze, or balustrade, or stair,

The very pavement is made up of life--

Of holy, blessed, and immortal beings,

Who hymn their Maker's praise continually.

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SECOND CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise:

In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

Woe to thee, man! for he was found A recreant in the fight;

And lost his heritage of heaven, And fellowship with light.

Above him now the angry sky, Around the tempest's din

Who once had angels for his friends, Has but the brutes for kin.

O man! a savage kindred they: To flee that monster brood

He scaled the sea-side cave and clomb The giants of the wood.

With now a fear and now a hope, With aids which chance supplied,

From youth to old, from sire to son, He lived, and toiled, and died.

He dreed his penance age by age; And step by step began

Slowly to doff his savage garb, And be again a man.

And quickened by the Almighty's breath, And chastened by his rod,

And taught by angel-visitings, At length he sought his God;

And learned to call upon his name, And in his faith create

A household and a fatherland, A city and a state.

Glory to him who from the mire, In patient length of days,

Elaborated into life A people to his praise!

SOUL.

The sound is like the rushing of the wind--

The summer wind--among the lofty pines;

Swelling and dying, echoing round about,

Now here, now distant, wild and beautiful;

While scattered from the branches it has stirred,

Descend ecstatic odors.

THIRD CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise:

In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

The angels, as beseemingly To spirit-kind was given,

At once were tried and perfected, And took their seats in heaven.

For them no twilight or eclipse; No growth and no decay:

Twas hopeless, all-engulfing night, Or beatific day.

But to the younger race there rose A hope upon its fall;

And slowly, surely, gracefully, The morning dawned on all.

And ages, opening out, divide The precious and the base,

And from the hard and sullen mass Mature the heirs of grace.

O man! albeit the quickening ray Lit from his second birth,

Takes him at length what once he was, And heaven grows out of earth;

Yet still between that earth and heaven-- His journey and its goal--

A double agony awaits His body and his soul.

A double debt he has to pay-- The forfeit of his sins:

The chill of death is past, and now The penance-fire begins.

Glory to him, who evermore By truth and justice reigns;

Who tears the soul from out its case, And burns away its stains!

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ANGEL.

They sing of thy approaching agony,

Which thou so eagerly didst question of:

It is the face of the incarnate God

Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain;

And yet the memory which it leaves will be

A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound;

And yet withal it will the wound provoke,

And aggravate and widen it the more.

SOUL.

Thou speakest mysteries; still methinks I know

To disengage the tangle of thy words:

Yet rather would I hear thy angel voice,

Than for myself be thy interpreter.

ANGEL.

When then--if such thy lot--thou seest thy Judge,

The sight of him will kindle in thy heart

All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.

Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for him,

And feel as though thou couldst but pity him,

That one so sweet should e'er have placed himself

At disadvantage such, as to be used

So vilely by a being so vile as thee.

There is a pleading in his pensive eyes

Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.

And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though

Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned,

As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire

To slink away, and hide thee from his sight;

And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell

Within the beauty of his countenance.

And these two pains, so counter and so keen,--

The longing for him, when thou seest him not;

The shame of self at thought of seeing him,--

Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.

SOUL.

My soul is in my hand: I have no fear,--

In his dear might prepared for weal or woe.

But hark! a deep, mysterious harmony

It floods me, like the deep and solemn sound

Of many waters.

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ANGEL.

We have gained the stairs

Which rise toward the presence-chamber; there

A band of mighty angels keep the way

On either side, and hymn the incarnate God.

ANGELS OF THE SACRED STAIR.

Father, whose goodness none can know, but they

Who see thee face to face,

By man hath come the infinite display

Of thine all-loving grace;

But fallen man--the creature of a day--

Skills not that love to trace.

It needs, to tell the triumph thou hast wrought,

An angel's deathless fire, an angel's reach of thought.

It needs that very angel, who with awe

Amid the garden shade,

The great Creator in his sickness saw,

Soothed by a creature's aid,

And agonized, as victim of the law

Which he himself had made;

For who can praise him in his depth and height,

But he who saw him reel in that victorious fight?

SOUL.

Hark! for the lintels of the presence-gate

Are vibrating and echoing back the strain.

FOURTH CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise

In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

The foe blasphemed the holy Lord, As if he reckoned ill,

In that he placed his puppet man The frontier place to fill.

For even in his best estate, With amplest gifts endued,

A sorry sentinel was he, A being of flesh and blood.

As though a thing, who for his help Must needs possess a wife,

Could cope with those proud rebel hosts, Who had angelic life.

And when, by blandishment of Eve, That earth-born Adam fell,

He shrieked in triumph, and he cried, "A sorry sentinel.

The Maker by his word is bound, Escape or cure is none;

He must abandon to his doom, And slay his darling Son."

ANGEL.

And now the threshold, as we traverse it,

Utters aloud its glad responsive chant.

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FIFTH CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise:

In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

O loving wisdom of our God! When all was sin and shame,

A second Adam to the fight And to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood Which did in Adam fail,

Should strive afresh against the foe, Should strive and should prevail.

And that a higher gift than grace Should flesh and blood refine,

God's presence and his very self, And essence all-divine.

O generous love! that he who smote In man for man the foe,

The double agony in man For man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly, And on the cross on high,

Should teach his brethren and inspire To suffer and to die.

Sec. 6.

ANGEL.

The judgment now is near, for we are come

Into the veiled presence of our God.

SOUL.

I hear the voices that I left on earth.

ANGEL.

It is the voice of friends around thy bed,

Who say the "Subvenite" with the priest.

Hither the echoes come; before the throne

Stands the great angel of the agony,

The same who strengthened him, what time he knelt

Lone in the garden shade, bedewed with blood.

That angel best can plead with him for all

Tormented souls, the dying and the dead.

ANGEL OF THE AGONY.

Jesu! by that shuddering dread which fell on thee;

Jesu! by that cold dismay which sickened thee;

Jesu! by that pang of heart which thrilled in thee;

Jesu! by that mount of sins which crippled thee;

Jesu! by that sense of guilt which stifled thee;

Jesu! by that innocence which girdled thee;

Jesu! by that sanctity which reigned in thee;

Jesu! by that Godhead which was one with thee;

Jesu! spare these souls which are so dear to thee,

Who in prison, calm and patient, wait for thee;

Hasten, Lord, their hour, and bid them come to thee,

To that glorious home, where they shall ever gaze on thee.

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