Beatrice; or, the Unknown Relatives

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ti BEATRICE; OR. THE UNKNOWN RELATIVES. BY CATHERINE SINCLAIR, AUTHOR OF MODERN ACCOMPLISHMENTS," " HOLIDAY HOUSE," " SIR EDWARD GRAHAM. " JANE B0UVERIE," " THE JOURNEY OF LIFE," ETC. " If authors must write, they had better compose Their stories too marvellous almost for prose; Add some incidents, too, which are strange above measure." Bath Guide. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET 1852. TO ALEXANDER SINCLAIR In attempting to represent the happiness of a Protestant family circle, it is impossible for me not to think of that Brother whose inestimable friendship makes my home what it is ; and in delineating the advantage be stowed on Protestants by their free access to the Bible, the pleasing recollection is ever before me, how long we have studied its pages daily together.

Having been hitherto precluded from consulting the wishes of any one on the subject of these volumes, I now request that you and all my family circle will, when for the first time yon read this narrative, treat them as you always treat the Author, being " to every fault a little blind." or rather, if possible, com pletely so. September 15, 1S52. PREFACE, " But oh ! my soul, avoid the wondrous maze, Where reason lost in endless error strays." Cowper. The object of this narrative is to portray, for the consideration of young girls now first emerging into society, the enlightened happiness derived from the religion of England, founded on the Bible, contrasted with the misery arising from the superstition of Italy, founded on the Breviary; and in exemplifying both from the best authorities, it has been done with a most careful and most laborious refer ence to the standard authors of the English Church, and of the Popish persuasion.

If an India-rubber quill could be invented to rub out every word that should not be written, the author would be particularly happy to obtain the advantage of it on this occasion, t

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. VI as she never felt more deeply responsible for the use she makes of her own pen, though during many long years it has been her daily fervent prayer that whatever she writes amiss, how ever good the intention, may be at once and for ever forgotten. Having been much gratified lately, and most agreeably surprised, by the very favourable reception given to the volume she recently dedicated to her nieces, " Popish Legends and Bible Truths," in which all the thoughts or anecdotes that seemed more peculiarly to bear on the subject of English Romanism were recorded, the author has been induced to follow up the subject by embodying in a fictitious narrative, what she knows to be true, of the irreconcilable hostility with which the Italian school of superstition looks upon the moral principles and domestic peace of a happy English fire-side.

As the machinations of Popish emissaries to effect a division of faith and of feeling between families, have been hitherto chiefly directed, and chiefly successful, among ladies, generally very juvenile ones, it is hoped that the author may not be con sidered presumptuous in attempting thus to warn the young against being ensnared, who have not all had the same sad opportunities as

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. VII herself, to observe the rise, progress, and most calamitous termination of a taste for the excitements of Romanism.* - Cardinal Pole offered the Pope in his day to subjugate England by " dealing with the con sciences of dying men;" but though that plan is by no means now neglected, much more is done in the present time by dealing with the con sciences of richly endowed ladies. The author can assure her young readers, and she entreats them seriously to consider the statement, which is very seriously and sorrowfully made, that among her own personal acquaintances there are already those who have left their heart broken parents for ever, those who are now buried in foreign convents, those who have relinquished their beautiful estates, those who have beggared themselves of all they ever possessed, those who are shut up in a lunatic asylum, and those who have died in such a fever of popish perplexity, that the doctors declared, had they lived it would have been in a state of derangement.

All this began, like the fall of Eve, from mere unjustifiable curiosity, excited by those who wish to mislead the inquirer. * Kaleidoscope of Anecdotes.

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. VIII A young girl is induced by a proselyting friend to go and hear the "most delightful music" at a Popish chapel, and to visit in a popish house, where religion, she is assured, is the subject of all others that shall never be mentioned to her; and there she becomes acquainted with a Romish priest, who is war ranted never to aUude to religious differences, and who lends her books that she is told any Protestant might read with pleasure. The author was told last winter by a young lady of fifteen, the only child of an esteemed landed proprietor, that when walking with her gover ness lately in a public garden, they were stopped by a " Sister of Charity," who offered them some tracts to read, and said as she presented them, that if they wished for an explanation, they had only to ring at the bell of her convent, and to ask for " Sister Margaret."

Some less prudent young ladies might have been tempted by the romance of such an adventure to go, and neither fathers, brothers, nor legislators can adequately protect a girl from such devices unless she also pro tects herself by avoiding them. As the first step in all such cases is made very easy and agreeable, the author has endeavoured, in these

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. IX volumes, to exemplify the end to which such beginnings lead. Few young ladies in the whirl of education have leisure systematically to study those important questions, which will now be constantly obtruded unasked on their notice, but which involve the whole happiness for time and eternity of themselves, as well as the whole peace of their parents and relatives ; therefore the author has endeavoured in this narrative, as well as in her previous work on Popish Legends, to place the result of many years' prayerful reading in a small compass before those she earnestly wishes to serve, if they will favour her with their kind consideration. It is hoped that the strong good sense of English minds may long continue to be their salutary protection against the Church of "Our Lady Star of the Sea !

" a name much more fit for the Arabian Nights than for Christian teachers, but which is very attractive to young lovers of the imaginative and picturesque, as well as the whole gorgeous paraphernalia of Romish pageantry. The author was favoured with a description lately of a Popish dignitary entering one of the provincial towns of Eng land in state, the first carriage drawn by four a3 X

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. grey horse3, and another following. At a levee which ensued the ladies kissed hands! and the clergymen knelt. Such more than royal homage claimed and bestowed had so be wildering an effect on the imagination of some excitable spectators, that several Protestant ladies conformed to this new custom, yielded to this total prostration of female dignity, and kissed the diamond ring, emblematical of popish authority. In return for their almost delirious homage a benignant hope was ex pressed, not very likely to be disappointed, that they shall soon become members of the Popish flock. There is a keen canvass constantly go ing on to induce young people to attend such dramatic scenes ; the author herself has been frequently invited to witness them ; but the doing so is at a hazard which nothing can justify any one for incurring.

There is a strange influence in vast pretensions which few have the moral courage to resist; and if a Grand Mufti of London and Westminster, bringing his ** O O diploma, were to appear in England, claiming all the honours due to Grand Mufti-ism, the safest plan would be to avoid him, as those once in his presence, if invited by a card inscribed in large characters " To meet the Grand

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. XI Mufti," would feel, if they went, partly pledged to meet him on the terms expected, and would find it very difficult not in some degree to fulfil his expectations of receiving perfectly prostrate reverence. The effect of example, assisted by the influence of a gorgeous dress and a diamond ring, probably led people on the occasion speci fied into lengths of temporary enthusiasm which they did not previously contemplate; but the kissing of a Popish dignitary's hand, or of the ring that adorns it, if meant as a religious act, is a virtual acknowledgment of Papal supremacy; and if as a mere demonstration of drawing room politeness, the ladies then reverse what has usually been towards them the order of etiquette. Protestant ladies entering such a scene, place themselves in a very false position indeed, by thus assisting to engraft a foreign supremacy as well as a foreign religion on the English tree of civil and religious liberty.

Those girls who expatiate in joyous freedom along the daisied meadows of England, the sun shining over their heads, and the flowers bloom ing around their path, would not be easily persuaded to make their permanent abode at the bottom of a coal-pit ; nevertheless if any persons had an interest in persuading them to

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. do so, the most urgent advice of their best friends would be, not to approach the verge, not to listen to those who would entice them onwards, and if tempted rashly to descend one step, that they should first look down into the very lowest depths, that they might fully anticipate the end from the beginning, and know to what, they were consigning themselves. Therefore the author having lost no opportunity to inform herself on the subject, has most humbly endeavoured on the present occasion to raise a finger-post which shall give due warning of a danger impending over every individual girl in England now, to her freedom and her happiness. Not many years ago, the mother of a happy cheerful family, known to the author, expressed a wish, for once, to see all the wonders of the Popish ritual, and after some slight opposition from her Protestant husband, she obtained leave to take her daughters there, and went.

Nothing more was said between the parents upon that sub ject till several months afterwards, when it was unexpectedly discovered that the young ladies clandestinely wore crucifixes. Then the unhappy father, on investigation, to his astonishment ascertained that their visits to the chapel ,

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. XIII and to the priests had been secretly continued, till his whole family around him had become Papists. He died soon after, literally of a broken heart, his wife and daughters live now in a foreign convent, and his son, relinquishing his whole inheritance, became a Popish priest. Who has not read, with a just indignation, that it was necessary for the Principal of Glen almond College to publish a letter in the news papers remonstrating with a Popish priest for clandestinely lending books of Romish theology to his pupils? and in an English public school it was discovered lately, to the inexpressible grief of the parents, that two pupils had been privately perverted by similar means ; yet British fathers abroad, placing their children in foreign convents for the benefit of accomplishments, do so on a mere vague understanding that their religion shall not be tampered with !

They might as judiciously dip a white dress into the dyer's vat of black, on the positive assurance that it shall come out white again ! The author could name one young lady of fortune, who was entrusted to the care of a Popish governess, on a solemn agreement that she was never to be spoken to on the subject of religion; but the unfortunate

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. parents omitted to stipulate also that she was not to be lent any books on Romanism, there fore she had a complete course administered to her of the most enticing Popish works, which produced their almost inevitable effect in teaching the young pupil to prefer a religion of fancy and fiction to one of sober and truthful reality. She was lately, of course, "received" into the Romish Church. The author read a letter, some time since, from an English nun in a foreign convent, mentioning that the Virgin Mary is often seen in their garden, and that one of the nuns had obtained a vision of her there very recently — perhaps, sowing the seeds of Popery ! Such is the result of solitude, sleeplessness, fasting, and a very excited imagination ! A relation of the author's printed for private circulation once, and sent her a copy of the following curious narrative : — He was tra velling on the continent, about fifteen years ago, when, seeing a funeral procession enter a church, he followed to witness the solemn rite.

On an open bier lay the corpse of a lovely young girl, and beside it stood her sister, whose beauty and grief so moved the young Scotchman, that he gazed at her earnestly and

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. XV mournfully, till quite on a sudden she looked up, and sprung forward, with an exclamation of devout reverence, declaring, in an exstasy of rapture, that she had prayed all the morning to her patron, St. Sebastian, for comfort, and that here he had come in person to console her. The astonished traveller, a shy, reserved man, unaccustomed to Popish visions, felt greatly startled on finding himself thus the subject of one ; but became afterwards so in terested in the adventure, that he had his own picture done, by an eminent Italian master, in the character of St. Sebastian, which may still be seen in his collection, stuck full of arrows. In the present day, many children are al lowed no imaginative reading, except on religion. The universal craving which they all have for something supernatural, used to be humoured by allowing their young fancies to expand over the harmless wonders of " Mother Bunch;" but now their books of relaxation or amusement consist of conversations on science or on history, — very dry, often, to the young pupil, who sits down with rapture afterwards to read of modern visions and miracles, of guardian angels visibly appearing, of speaking trees and talking birds, of dark rivers flowing

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. XVI over golden sands, and miraculous flowers, that droop when a child is naughty, and hold up their heads again as soon as he becomes good. These " very pretty books" have gene rally a frontispiece, resembling those prints and images now so sadly in vogue for school rooms and nurseries, in which a visible guar dian angel leads a child onwards, " with up turned eyes," who is evidently walking straight to Rome. These are the fairy tales of the present day, but written with a purpose ; and that purpose is — anything but Protestant ! The object of Romanism is, entirely to sub jugate the will and the intellect ; therefore, as Niebuhr says of the Italians, their slavish sub jection to the Church is " ghastly death." He adds, " I am perfectly correct in saying that, even among the laity, you cannot discover a vestige of piety.

The life of the Italian is little more than an animal one, and he is not much better than an ape endowed with speech. There is nowhere a spark of originality or truthfulness. Slavery and misery have even extinguished all acute susceptibility to sensual enjoyments; and there is, I am sure, no people on the face of the earth more thoroughly ennuye, and more oppressed with a sense of their own

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. XVII existence, than the Romans. Their whole life is a vegetation." Thus it becomes with all nations, or individuals, whose misfortune it is to fall under the tuition of Papal tyranny. May English girls long remain in the free and happy exercise of that mental and personal liberty in a domestic home, of which none can deprive them, unless they deprive themselves, by heedlessly venturing among the rocks and quicksands of Romanism, which they will now be often asked to do, probably in a tone of mere jest — perhaps at first to hear some very fine singing, or to meet some very eminent Popish dignitary; but it all turns to very serious earnest at last. A girl who blindly rushes into conventual life, reduces herself to the same state as if every relative God ever gave her had died in a day ; and it were well to pause till she has come to very mature judgment, before venturing beyond the help of old and tried friends, into the power of those who sell and buy pardons for any offence.

In England, the friends of the most abject criminal, or the most delirious maniac, may gain uncontrolled access to certify that she is treated with kindness and propriety ; besides

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. which indispensable protection, the inmates of a prison, or of a lunatic asylum, have the inestimable privilege of being occasionally visited by the authorized Crown officers, to take legal proof that they are either justly or willinglv incarcerated ; but a convent is the only spot in her Majesty's wide dominions to which the law of British liberty does not extend. It is better, perhaps, for the com munity that those whose minds have got into a morbid state, should thus voluntarily im prison themselves while the delusion lasts, but care should be taken, that if cured, they can emerge into liberty again. In Italy it is con sidered that where the manners are so dissolute, the only safety for " unprotected females " is in a convent ; but experience has shown, that the propriety of Englishwomen can be preserved in their own families, without having recourse to solitary imprisonment.

The Pro testants are one great anti-slavery society, anxious to preserve for all men that " liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free," but the Papists make their votaries, bodily and mentally, slaves, who buy liberty in this world to sin, and in another world an escape from the punishment of having sinned.

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. XIX A lively author describing his visit, in 1 843, to the Ursuline Convent at Cork, says,* " Here I was in the room with a real live nun, pretty and pale I wonder, has she any of her sisterhood immured in oubliettes down below ? Is it policy, or hypocrisy, or reality ? These nuns affect extreme happiness and content with their condition, a smiling beatitude which they insist belongs peculiarly to them, and about which, the only doubtful point is, the manner in which it is produced before strangers. " Is it possible that I shall see a nun's cell ? Do I not recollect the nun's cell in The Monk, or in The Romance of the Forest ? or, if not there, at any rate in a thousand noble romances, read in early days of half holiday perhaps — romances at twopence a volume. Here is the cell. I took off my hat and examined the little room with much curious wonder and reverence.

There was an iron bed, with comfortable curtains of green serge. There was a little clothes-chest of yellow wood, neatly cleaned, and a wooden chair beside it, and a desk on the chest, and about six pictures on the wall — little religious pictures ; a saint with gilt paper * Titmarsh's Irish Sketch-hook. XX

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. round him, and other sad little subjects calcu lated to make the inmate of the cell think of the sufferings of the saints and martyrs ; then there was a little crucifix and a wax-candle on a ledge. And here was the place where the poor black-veiled things were to pass their lives for ever ! " The poor nun's Convent - museum of gim-cracks was displayed in great state ; there were spars in one drawer, and, I think, a Chinese shoe and some Indian wares in an other ; and some medals of the Popes, and a couple of score of coins ; and a clean glass case full of antique works of French theology of the distant period of Louis XV., to judge by the bindings, — and this formed the main part of the museum. ' The chief objects were gathered together by a single nun,' said the sister with a look of wonder ; and she went prattling on, and leading us hither and thither, like a child showing her toys.

What strange mixture of pity and pleasure is it which comes over you sometimes, when a child takes you by the hand, and leads you up solemnly to some little treasure of its own — a feather, or a string of glass beads ! I declare I have some times looked at such with more delight than PREFACE, XXI at diamonds ; and felt the same sort of soft wonder in examining the nun's little treasure chamber." " In the grille is a little wicket and a ledge before it. It is to this wicket that women are brought to kneel; and a bishop is in the chapel on the other side, and takes their hands in his, and receives their vows. I had never seen the like before, and own that I felt a sort of shudder at looking at the place. There rest the girl's knees as she offers herself up, and forswears the sacred affections which God gave her ; there she kneels and denies for ever the beautiful duties of her being, — there she kneels and commits suicide on her heart.

O, honest Martin Luther ! thank God, you came to pull that wicked, unnatural altar down." " I came out of the place quite sick ; and looking before me — there, thank God ! was the blue spire of Monkstown church, soaring up into the free sky, — a river in front rolling away to the sea, — liberty, sunshine, all sorts of glad life and motion, round about : and I couldn't but thank Heaven for it, and the Being whose service is freedom, and who has given us affections that we may use them — not smother and kill them ; and a noble world

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. XXII to live in, that we may admire it and Him who made it — not shrink from it, as though we dared not live there, but must turn our backs upon it and its bountiful Provider. I declare I think, for my part, that we have as much right to permit Suttee in India, as to allow women in the United Kingdom to take these wicked vows, or Popish bishops to receive them ; and that Government has as good a right to interfere in such cases, as the police has to prevent a man from hanging himself, or the doctor to refuse a glass of prussic acid to any one who may have a wish to go out of the world." Let us concede that suffering, and mental and bodily debasement, are the things most agreeable to Heaven, and there is no knowing where such piety may stop. We shall see men, like Hindoos, with their arms withered up right in the air, or English faqueers burying themselves alive in their gardens, or attempt ing to sit upon nothing in the air, — or, like the prophets of Baal, hacking themselves with knives.

Can there be any foundation for believing that in this cheerful and beautiful world of God's creation, where every man is an invited guest, surrounded with blessings,

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. XXIII he is bound in gratitude to make himself as miserable as possible, — to chain down his honest thoughts, to mutilate his friendly affections, and to relinquish all his natural enjoyments ? A little girl from the convent at New Hall, on a visit once to that of Cork, exclaimed with delighted astonishment on hearing that the Irish nuns were allowed to amuse themselves with making hay. The Maynooth students are expelled if they read a Protestant newspaper.* They begin term with a "retreat" of a week, which time they are made to pass in silence ; and this silent system, considered too cruel for prison discipline, is acknowledged to be in frequent use for the children at Norwood and other places of Popish education. It has a most crushing effect on the intellect and spirits, producing a bewilderment and pro stration of mind which prepares the victim to believe anything or nothing, as may be re quired.

If the most acute philosopher tried the rather tedious experiment of gazing in tensely at a white-washed wall for a week, he would probably find his intellect become at last a perfect carte blanche ; and yet this is the stupifying process to which children are sub- * Titmarsh's Irish Sketch-hook.

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. jected as a suitable preparation for a life of credulity and seclusion afterwards, when they must learn, both literally and metaphorically, to consider that black is white, in actions as well as in substances, if commanded to do so. Bonacina, a Jesuit author, says, " A mother is guiltless who wishes the death of her daughters, when, by reason of their deformity or poverty, she cannot marry them to her heart's desire." This sentence of death on plain young ladies might alarm some, and should make many pause before they venture to join a sect which forbids men to rnarry, and at the same time sanctions any mother in wishing those daughters in another world who are unlikely to marry advantageously in this. The only alternative left is, of course, a convent, that mournful scene of blank deso lation, terror-struck devotion, and objectless despair.

No home-born happiness, sprung from mutual affection, is there— no familiar discussions — no intellectual pursuits — no play of humour, to beguile the lagging hours, to palliate dulness, to adorn existence, to give time a relish, or to occupy an unfurnished mind. No parents or brothers are there, to unite in studying the sacred message of God

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. XXV to each living soul, and to find out new beauties together. The Divine Saviour of man compares the affection he feels for his own people to that of a father or of a brother ; but how can such ties be understood by a lonely nun, frozen into a solitary iceberg of cold-hearted indifference ? The nature of a nun is from the hour of her profession to be like no other human nature, after the priest has convinced her that religion is his accomplice in commanding a life of solitary heart lessness, of voluntary austerities, of grovelling heathenisms, and of self-inflicted misfortunes. The whole power of the screw is supplied in a convent by the doctrine of blind obedience ; while the hourly repetition from day to day, and from year to year, of the same habits and the same prayers, becomes at last like the rocking of a cradle for putting the mind, heart, and conscience to sleep.

The early Reformers justly called a confessional " the slaughter-house of conscience." It is well known to have indeed proved so to both priests and penitents, by familiarising them to the contemplation of sin, while each instructs the other in a knowledge of its modes aud temptations. A relation of the author's, b

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. XXVI who once saw a person fall out of a four-pair of stairs window, said that when vainly en deavouring to obliterate the scene from his memory, he would gladly give 100/. to forget the sight ; but if forgetfulness could be bought, and if confession be all that is represented, many might willingly give more than double the sum if they could forget all that is taught them in the confessional, and a very advan tageous bargain it would be. Protestants may sometimes grow old in happy unconsciousness of many vices which are, in a Popish confessional, forced on the consideration of the very youngest members of society ; who might often be inclined to say, with the poet Pope, whom Protestants consider wiser than the Pope of Rome, — " Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." Let it be for a moment supposed that the careful mother of a young family resolves her self to act as confessor to her own children, and feeling some day in a particularly instructive mood, she calls up for examination the eldest inmate of the nursery, a fine, frolicsome, clever boy. Anxious about his morals and religion, she begins with a look of earnest and very ominous suspicion, — " My dear little pet, many

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. XXVII children hide their catechism-book on Sunday mornings, to escape the trouble of repeating it. Have you ever done so ? Your Uttle cousin was sent once to give a blind beggar half-a-crown, but he gave only one of his own half-pence and kept the larger sum to spend on whipping-tops. Did you never do so ? My darling boy, tell me, have you sometimes put your black-leather Bible-cover over a story book, and made your tutor believe you were studying the one when you were only idling over the other? Such tricks are very often tried, and generally succeed. When I am busily occupied, every day, my dear child, with the housekeeper, giving out stores, do you never slip into your pocket a handful of those delicious French plums on a tray near the door ? Do you ever pretend to have a violent cough, that your tutor may give you some of his excellent lozenges, and that he may let you remain away from church ?