with his pupils, which practically sealed his conversion. The perusal of
the records of this journey in his 'Sights and Thoughts in Foreign
Countries' affords a curious revelation of biased history (and therefore
often very inaccurate), an interesting account of his mental
perplexities, and of the wonderful organization of the Papal hierarchy,
enabling it to shadow his steps and 'create an atmosphere' around him
wherever he went. This time he carried letters of introduction from the
astute Dr. Wiseman, which assured his seeing the æsthetic best of all
the great cathedrals and institutions of the Church, in each country he
traversed, and helped him to shut the eyes of his memory to
Inquisitions, and persecutions, and the pride and licentiousness of
Popes and Cardinals, and to the grosser side of popular superstition,
comprising the annals of the places he visited, and to the story of
Italy especially. He had a keen sense of the misdeeds of poor people
provoked to reprisals by the tyranny of kings and priests, but never
breathed a word--for he failed to notice anything wrong--against the
Church that was courting him, and was coquetting with others like him in
the Anglican Communion of that day. At Rome the cultured and winsome Dr.
Grant was selected as his chaperon, and once more the attractive figment
of a world-dominion of an united Church was dangled before his
imaginative mind amidst the music and incense of elaborate ceremonials
appealing to his senses. The kindness and sympathy of those who were
watching over him effectually removed the last veil between him and
Roman doctrine. The Pope accorded him an interview in private, and he
prostrated himself to kiss his feet and receive his benediction. The
Pope was already the 'Holy Father' to him, and he is able in his letters
of this date, though still nominally an Anglican, to pledge himself to a
life-crusade against the detestable and diabolic heresy of Protestantism
'as being' what he calls 'the devil's masterpiece.'
After all this, one wonders how he could have persuaded himself it was
right to accept, on his return to England, the living of Elton, in
Huntingdonshire. He did so, however, and for the space of two years he
did his utmost to Romanize the district. His charming manners, and
natural persuasiveness, the vein of superstition in him (evidenced by
his kissing relics and touching them for healing), which fitted well
with the ignorance of his rural parishioners, gave him such influence in
this direction that when, in 1845, he somewhat suddenly relinquished his
pastorate, and was officially united with the Roman Church, he carried
off with him several of his young men, who were the nucleus of his
Brotherhood of the Will of God in Birmingham.
From this time forward, the Church having gained a priest but, as
Wordsworth said, 'England having lost a poet,' there was developed in
him a neurotic mysticism impelling him to ascetic neglect of his body,
and suppression of human affections and responsibilities, which preyed
on his physical frame, producing incessant headaches, and complete
prostrations, and unquestionably shortened his days on earth. His love
fixed on such intangible objects as Mary and the saints, rather than the
living Christ, indulges itself in luscious outbreathings towards her who
was not only to him Queen of Heaven and of Purgatory, and Mother of God,
but his 'dear Mama,' his 'dearest Mama,' in whose 'fondling care,' and
under whose 'sweet caress' he dwelt, finding, he tells her, 'Our home,
deep in Thee, eternally, eternally.' His favourite saints are 'Joseph
our Father,' and St. Wilfrid, whom he adopted as his patron, and from
whom his monks were called 'Wilfridians.' He lived henceforth a life of
self-renunciation, the will of God being accepted by him as made known
through his superiors in the Roman priesthood. He devoted his time,
substance, and skill to church building, and creation of monastic
brotherhoods, in Birmingham, in Shropshire, in the City of London, and
finally at Brompton, ere long merging his order in that of the Oratory
of St. Philip Neri--an Italian confraternity introduced into England by
Newman, a missionary body formed for proselytizing the poor and the
young. Besides the beautiful church of St. Wilfrid's erected under the
auspices of the Earl of Shrewsbury, there is the well-known Brompton
Oratory, wherein his preaching, magnetizing rather by its fervour and
picturesqueness than convincing by its reason and logic, held
congregations of thousands spell-bound, who were partly, no doubt,
attracted by his fame, though quite as much by the exquisite singing of
the hymns of his composition and the lavish ceremonies of the Mass. It
proved an immense strain upon his nervous system, the daily necessity of
feeding the monks, building his churches slowly but magnificently,
supplying the vestments, the lights, the incense, and all the other
thousand and one requirements of so gorgeous a ritual. He failed under
it in 1863, and died while only forty-nine years of age, prematurely
worn out and aged.
Protestant as I am, at the extreme antipodes of conviction, religious
experience, education, and sympathies from Father Faber, I doubt not
his soul went straight to the Great All Father, the only 'Holy Father,'
without the help of Masses to liberate it from any intermediate
imprisonment, or process of purification, and without need of
intercession from our Lord's virgin Mother, or from any portion of the
pantheon of Roman saints. Some of his objectionable opinions and
teachings--some that are very terrible to us--as well as many that are
common to all true Christians, will be noticed in the next article, and
there may only be added now a caution to many Protestants, as well as to
many of the Church of Rome, not to confound wrong views with moral
wrong-doing, nor to make a man's intellectual mistakes the measure of
his presumed status before the throne of his God. 'Shall not the Judge
of all the earth do right,' when He sits in judgment upon the soul? As
Faber's own celebrated hymn declares:
'The love of God is broader,
Than the measures of man's mind;
And the Heart of the Eternal,
Is most wonderfully kind.'
COME TO JESUS
'Souls of men! why will ye scatter
Like a crowd of frightened sheep?
Foolish hearts! why will ye wander
From a love so true and deep?
'Was there ever kindest shepherd
Half so gentle, half so sweet,
As the Saviour who would have us
Come and gather round His feet?
'It is God: His love looks mighty,
But is mightier than it seems:
'Tis our Father: and His fondness
Goes far out beyond our dreams.
'There's a wideness in God's mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea;
There's a kindness in His justice,
Which is more than liberty.
'There is no place where earth's sorrows
Are more felt than up in heaven;
There is no place where earth's failings
Have such kindly judgment given.'
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER: _Hymns_.
A RELIGIOUS MEDIEVALIST
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER
II.--HIS BOOKS
'At the evening service, after a few preliminary words, he told his
people that the doctrines he had taught them, though true, were not
those of the Church of England; that, as far as the Church of
England had a voice, she had denounced them.'--FATHER BOWDEN'S _Life
of Faber_.
Faber's mental output is a reflex of his character. I assumed this by
using his letters and poems as the matrix of the life I sought to
present my readers with. Neither I nor they found them rocks of barren
quartz. They contained much gold--'yea, much fine gold'--of
conscientiousness, devotion, and self-abnegation; of poetic, oratorical
fervour; of rare zeal for the Church of his adoption. But with the fine
gold there is also much dross. There are, for instance, not a few
passages in 'Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches' of a startling
kind to Englishmen--a book, be it remembered, written while the author
was an Anglican clergyman. To him Charles I. was more than 'Charles the
Martyr.' He was a King, 'conformed to the image of his Master through
suffering.' Most of us will ask whether, supposing Jesus of Nazareth had
been King in Charles's stead, there would have been any ship-money, any
Star-Chamber, or any Civil War? Surely no man bears the image of Christ
any farther than he comports himself Christly in politics and general
public as in private life. Christ is a poor Master to serve if Charles
was an image of Him. The admitted tyranny and licentiousness of the
French Bourbons seemed to him to be condoned because they were great at
building churches and convents. National struggles for liberty, and
their champions, are usually presented in their worst lights, and the
freer the nation the bitterer his words about her. The American Republic
is thus a 'proud invalid' for whom there is no cure except by 'a
multiplication of bishops, and then a monarchy.' In this book occurs his
famous passage in favour of burning heretics. His attempted palliation,
or modification, of the passage when challenged by Crabbe Robinson, the
Diarist, on their ramble together to Eskdale Tarn, is disingenuous. The
objectionable sentiment is explicitly made by 'the stranger,' who is as
distinctly alleged to be Faber himself by his biographer, and virtually
admitted to Robinson to be so. Here is the excerpt: 'Persecution belongs
not, strictly speaking, to the Church. Her weapon, and a most dire one,
is excommunication, whereby she cuts off the offender from the fountains
of life in this world, and makes him over from her own judgment to that
of Heaven in the world to come. But surely it is the duty of a Christian
State to deprive such an excommunicate person of every social right and
privilege; to lay on him such pains and penalties as may seem good to
the wisdom of the law, or even, if they so judge, to sweep him from the
earth; in other words, to put him to death. The least that can be done
is make a civil death to follow an ecclesiastical death, and this must
be done where the Church and State stand in right relation to each
other.' To the ultramontane views promulgated in this book might be
added others from his letters and published sermons, as, for instance,
the phrase, 'the pernicious influence of Protestant ragged schools';
that in which he opposes the reading of the English Bible because its
'uncommon beauty and marvellous English' made it 'the stronghold of
heresy'; those in which he elaborately argues for the 'adoration' of
Mary ('surely it must be called so,' he says); the many in which he
disparages the Reformation and applauds the blessings which the Church,
and the Papacy in particular, had bestowed upon the nations; and those,
once more, in which he declares a man has no rights as man conferred on
him by the Bible, unless he be a Christian (by which he means a
Churchman, for he says so), and dilating on the misery and unrest of
that Protectionist period, proposes no remedies other than obedience to
the Church, the keeping of saints' days and holy days, and the sweeping
away of the 'indecent system of pews'! Incredible as it may seem, every
one of these proposals is seriously propounded in 'A Churchman's
Politics in Disturbed Times.'
One might make large quotations from the Oratory sermons full of
descriptions, graphic even to gruesomeness, of the bodily agony of Jesus
on the Cross, powerful enough to stir emotional women into hysterical
weeping, and to bring them into a profound, if temporary and unreal,
sentiment of fellowship with His sufferings, leaving Him still afar off
as a risen and personal Friend, and leaving them unmoved by the
bleeding figure on the crucifix in the silent recess till the next
cerebral excitement. The whole of my articles might be taken up with
extracts from his hymns that are simply astounding to the unprejudiced
mind in their luscious sentimentality towards Mary and the saints. Of
these it may be said the expressions do not necessarily mean all to a
Catholic that they seem to a Protestant to imply. But is that so? Who
that has watched and heard Italian or Irish worship, or studied the
biographies and writings of the Romanist mystics of Italy or Spain, can
possibly doubt their perfect sincerity? Is it not an entirely natural
transfer of ardent love from the Redeemer to His mother happening
concurrently with the priestly transfer of worship, of 'adoration,' from
Him to her? Her images are bedecked with flowers and gorgeous attire,
and her shrines are brilliantly lighted and are perfumed with incense.
His image stands in a dark, neglected, railed-off side-chapel, in all
the great cathedrals and rural churches of Romanist Europe.
Some of Faber's best prose is curiously reserved for lamentations over
the decay of Paganism!--the 'beautiful births of Greek faith, most
radiant legends, springing from every hard and barren spot, like
unnumbered springs out of the Parnassian caverns, or the leafy sides of
Citheron, or the bee-haunted slope of pale Hymettus.' 'The decline of
Paganism was mournful and undignified. Faith after faith went out, like
the extinguishing of lamps in a temple, or the paling of the marsh-fires
before the rising sun.' Yet were the old creeds full of symbols, and the
'whole of external nature an assemblage of forms and vases capable of,
and actually filled with, the Spirit,' and so Greek Paganism was the
expression of a wish to 'write God's name on all things beautiful and
true.' We can re-echo his dirge and acknowledge the saner, more cheerful
side of the 'Paganism' that feels after God, 'if haply it may find Him';
but what a contrast between his attitude towards the non-Christian world
and the fellow-Christians--not lacking in as holy teaching or living as
his own--whom he had left, for an approachment towards image-worship!
Let us see, now, however, what he can do in description of places and
scenery, in both prose and poetry. Here is his first impression of
Venice: 'How is it to be described? What words can I use to express that
vision, that thing of magic that lay before us?... Never was so wan a
sunlight, never was there so pale a blue, as stood round about Venice
that day. And there it was, a most visionary city, rising as if by
enchantment out of the gentle-mannered Adriatic, the waveless Adriatic.
One by one rose steeple, tower, and dome, street, and marble palace;
they rose to our eyes slowly, as from the weedy deeps; and then they and
their images wavered and floated, like a dream, upon the pale, sunny
sea. As we glided onward from Fusina in our gondola, the beautiful
buildings, with their strange Eastern architecture, seemed like fairy
ships, to totter, to steady themselves, to come to anchor one by one,
and where the shadow was, and where the palace was, you scarce could
tell. And there was San Marco, and there the Ducal Palace, and there the
Bridge of Sighs, and the very shades of the Balbi, Foscari, Pisani,
Bembi, seemed to hover about the winged Lion of St. Mark. And all this,
all, to the right and left, all was Venice; and it needed the sharp
grating of the gondola against the stairs to bid us be sure it was not
all a dream.'
He says of Milan Cathedral that 'In the moonlight it disarms criticism.
When the moon's full splendour streams on Milan roofs, and overflows
upon its lofty buttresses; when the liquid radiance trickles down the
glory-cinctured heads of the marble saints, like the oil from Aaron's
beard, and every fretted pinnacle, and every sculptured spout ran with
light as they might have run with rain in a thunder-shower, who would
dare to say there was a fault in that affecting miracle of Christian
Art?' Of Corfu, the most perfect earthly Elysium I myself have seen,
though I first saw it when returning from the Far East, he writes: 'What
traveller does not know the delight of getting among foliage whose shape
and hues are not like those of his native land? The interior of the
island of Corfu was to us a sweet foretaste of Oriental foliage. We rode
among strange hedges of huge cactus, fields of a blue-flowering grain,
occasional palms, clouds of blue and white gum cistus, myrtle-shoots
smelling in the sun, little forests of the many-branched arbutus, marshy
nooks of blossoming oleander, venerable dull olives and lemon groves
jewelled with pale yellow fruit. It was a dream of childhood realized,
and brought with it some dreary remembrances barbed with poignant
sorrows. Dreams, alas! are never realized till the freshness of the
heart is gone, and their beauty has lost all that wildness which made it
in imagination so desirable.'
'Sir Lancelot,' his longest and most ambitious poem, though finished at
Ambleside in 1847, was issued from his Elton Vicarage two years later,
and is under the guise of 'an attempt to embody and illustrate the
social and ecclesiastical spirit of the thirteenth century,' avowedly an
allegory of the soul seeking for that which it is represented as finding
only when brought 'back to the foot of Peter's sovran chair.' To us its
chief interest lies in his portraiture of our Westmorland surroundings.
The hermitage to which the returned Crusader wends his way lies
'Within the Vale of Troutbeck, where towards the head
There is a single woody hill, enclosed
Within the mountains, yet apart and low.
Amid the underwood around, it seems
Like a huge animal recumbent there,
Not without grace; and sweetly apt it is
To catch all wandering sunbeams as they pass,
Or volatile lights in transit o'er the vale.'
Who among us does not recognise it? Who does not know 'the bell-shaped
mountain which the wild winds ring full mournfully'? And the beck, too,
where the ouzel flits even in winter on the 'ice-rimmed stones,' and the
banks, whereon Sir Lancelot might lie and watch 'the flowery troops in
pageant movable'--the snowdrops 'like a flock of children purely white,'
the 'deep Lent-lilies, like constellations girt with lesser orbs.' When
he crosses to the western sea 'angry and purple, far and wide outspread
in stormy grandeur,' we go with him, and as we wander thitherward see
Scawfell 'palpitating in the haze,' feel 'the tingling of the woodlands'
at night-time down the valley of the Duddon, and learn how Esk is
'suckled in sylvan places' by 'clusters of wild tarns.'
Among his minor local poems 'English Hedges'--the Saxon hedgerows--are
apostrophized:
'The hedges still survive, shelters for flowers,
An habitation for the singing birds,
Cool banks of shadow, grateful to the herds,
A charm scarce known in any land but ours.'
And in 'Mountain Tarns' he sings:
'There is a power to bless
In hillside loneliness--
In tarns and dreary places--
A virtue in the brook,
A freshness in the look
Of mountains' joyless faces--
And so when life is dull,
Or when my heart is full
Because my dreams have frowned,
I wander up the rills
To stones and tarns, and hills--
I go there to be crowned.'
If we turn to Faber's purely devotional writings, such as 'All for
Jesus,' and can forget, or slide over, the subtle insinuations of Romish
doctrines, and the curious blending of saints and sacraments, popes and
priests, confessions and penances, with earnest appeals on behalf of
Jesus, at one time as though the soul's salvation depended solely on
ceremonials and priestly absolutions, and at another time as if on
'Jesus only,' one may find much help and light in many beautiful
passages--as, for example: 'Who can look into the world and not see how
God's glory is lost upon the earth? It is the interests of Jesus that we
should seek and find it. Apart from clear acts of great and grievous
sin, how is God forgotten, clean forgotten, by the greatest part of
mankind! They live as if there were no God. It is not as if they openly
rebelled against Him. They pass over and ignore Him. He is an
inconvenience in His own world, an impertinence in His own creation. So
He has been quietly set on one side, as if He were an idol out of
fashion, and in the way. Men of science, and politicians, have agreed on
this, and men of business and wealth think it altogether the most decent
thing to be silent about God, for it is difficult to speak of Him, or
have a view of Him, without allowing too much to Him.... Half a dozen
men, going about God's world, seeking nothing but God's glory--they
would remove mountains. This was promised to faith--why should not we be
the men to do it?'
Similarly burning words, apart from his descriptions of Calvary, might
be quoted from his sermons, but, alas! these would lack the passionate
personality behind them, with the flashing eye, the expressive
emphasizing hands, and, above all, the voice rising like the swelling of
bells in the steeple, or tender as a silver chord trembling into
silence. Without the spirit to make them live, let us not try to
reproduce them.
THE BLACK ANT
This fly is an inhabitant of woods and coppices, and is very
abundant in the neighbourhood of the English Lakes. The nest is
often of enormous size, sometimes containing more than a cart-load
of sticks and small twigs. The Vale of Duddon swarms with wood ants,
and is the only place where I have seen the wryneck, which is said
to feed principally on these insects. Like other ants, they have the
enjoyment of wings for a few weeks in each year, and often, as the
proverb says, "to their sorrow," as by them they are conveyed to
places where they suffer greatly from birds, as well as from fishes.
They generally make their appearance in August and September. Body,
a strand of peacock's herl, and one of black ostrich's herl laid on
together; silk, dark brown; wing, the lightest part of a starling's
quill; hackle from a black cock.'--JOHN BEEVER: _Practical
Fly-Fishing_.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Herbert Bell, Ambleside._
YEWDALE.
The Favourite Valley of John Ruskin (see p. 64), and
of the Sisters of the Thwaite.]
XVII
JOHN RUSKIN'S FRIENDS
THE SISTERS OF THE THWAITE, AND THEIR
BROTHER
'Nature takes the hue of a man's own feeling, and he finds in it
what he brings to it. In proportion as he becomes more intelligent
and holy, so does it become more beautiful and significant to
him.'--HUGH MACMILLAN.