Chapter XVIII
A PROPOSAL: AND MORE THAN ONE.
The summons to London was on the business of cutting off the entail to the estates as proposed at the beginning of the last chapter. Mr. Godfrey, whose love for Hester certainly approached to dotage, had decided to gratify his darling's wishes; and to avoid future confusion, had decided to allow her to come of age at eighteen, and to enter on the enjoyment of the estates he destined for her, subject to an annuity for himself. To give the matter a semblance of justice, he proposed to pension off the rest of the family in the same manner, thus settling their claims to the property during his life, as after his death. What was wanting to this plan was Eugene's acceptance of a present annuity in the stead of his inheritance at death.
The proposal made to him was by no means a liberal one, considering the wealth of the family and the expectations in which he had been reared.
"Three thousand pounds a year for life, now, instead of fifteen thousand in reversion to descend to my posterity; the proposal is preposterous," said Eugene, "especially as I was always given to understand that I might look to receive a sum equal to that on my coming of age, which I shall do in three weeks' time."
"That promise was conditional, young man," said Mr. Godfrey, somewhat sternly; "conditional at least by implication; could I have foreseen that you would have disgraced my family, it would not have been made."
"Disgraced!" ejaculated Eugene.
"Brother," interposed Hester, anxious to avoid any expression of excited feeling, "you have renounced the position my father ambitioned for you; you cannot hold office under government; you cannot become a member of Parliament; you cannot act as a magistrate; [Footnote 173] or take any useful part in the work of society. Surely three thousand pounds a year will supply all your personal wants."
[Footnote 173: At the time of which we write the civil disabilities for all dissenters from the English Establishment, and for all Catholics, were still in force in England.]
"You have assumed a great deal, my good sister; a great deal more than you can prove, I think. If I understand this matter rightly, it these yourself who are be to benefited by this arrangement. You want to experimentalize, to found a new Utopia; surely I might do that at least as well as a woman."
"No, for you believe not in the principle. Money in your hands, just now, would sink; you might build churches or convents, but forward the progression of the race you would not. A bare-footed Carmelite ranks higher in your estimation that a man raised by talent and industry to a position surrounded by means of enjoyment. Now, my father objects conscientiously, and his immediate ancestors would also object to appropriate the both of his property to a phantasm. He offers you a maintenance superior to the property your theory upholds. Be consistent; try your own principle of renunciation, of poverty, if you so like to term an annuity of three thousand a year. The allotment which will be termed mine is in my eyes, and in in my father's, an investment for the good of society, of which I am but a directress. Give to the world that which the world claims, {599} take the portion you have chosen in which the world has no share--spirituality. Conscientiously my father has strained a point to offer you so much, for he looks upon the promotion of your views as injurious to the human race."
There was a long pause, a long silence; then Eugene said, "I must take time to consider; my signature would not be of any avail until I am of age, and it wants three weeks to that time. In a month's time I will give you an answer."
Eugene, after a vain attempt to see his mother, returned to the town in which Euphrasie resided. He was now determined to have the interview he had so long vainly sought for. On that interview greatly depended his future determination.
He did not call on her at her mother's abode. He waylaid her as she was returning home from giving her lessons; with a few earnest words induced her to permit him to lead her into a secluded grove where often he had mused on her perfections, and there, at length, he took courage, and poured forth, as much by gesture as by words, his long pent-up tale of love, so hidden out of reverence, a reverence which now gave way to the anxiety of placing her in a more suitable position than the one she at present occupied, although still falling short of that which she was calculated to adorn.
Euphrasie listened with profound attention; certainly not coldly. She fully appreciated the young man's devotion, she fully believed his tale. Even tears filled her eyes as he proceeded; but she was long in answering.
"May I take this silence for consent, dear Euphrasie?" said Eugene.
Euphrasie shook her head. "No, indeed, you may not, my kind friend," she said. "I am silent because I know not how to express my sense of your worth, of your kindness, of your disinterestedness, in fitting terms, and accompany my words with a refusal. What you propose can never be. Another vocation is mine. Yet believe me that my gratitude, my friendship, my esteem, are, and ever must remain, your own. I thank you earnestly for the long forbearing and silent sympathy which I have ever received from you."
"Your tones are solemn, Euphrasie. You are not one to act a part, and say no when you mean yes. You have seen this proposal possible, you have weighed it; is it indiscreet to ask in confidence your reasons?"
"Is not all explained by the words, another vocation is mine? May I not recall to your memory the explanation I once gave at Durimond Castle?"
"But, Euphrasie, in this country, where Catholics are barely tolerated, you can scarcely be a nun."
"I think, indeed, that at present there seems little likelihood that I shall be what the world calls a nun; but I am none the less certain that I am called to serve God by following the three evangelical counsels."
"But as a married woman, Euphrasie, surely you could serve God also. Marriage in the Catholic Church is exalted to the dignity of a sacrament, and I would respect your self-imposed duties not only of devotion but of charity also. I would share the cares you now bestow on my aunt's comfort, and--"
"I believe it, Eugene, but it cannot be. I dare not resist the voice which forbids me to bind myself by human ties. We are Catholics, Eugene; we know that a vocation is something real; that not to respond to it is to endanger salvation, is to risk the abstraction of that grace which is of all treasures the most valuable."
Eugene replied not. There was a long pause. Euphrasie was agitated beyond her wont, and was glad to avail herself of a seat fixed beneath the shade of a tree. Eugene rested his forehead against the tree. Suddenly he seized her hand and pressed it to his lips, but he spoke not. The warm tears were pouring down his {600} cheeks. Oh! it is agonizing to behold a strong man weep. No woman at least can see it unmoved; still less Euphrasie, who beneath an impassive exterior bore a feeling, tender heart. Scarcely less affected than himself she took his hand in both of hers, and faltered out: "Eugene, my friend, my brother, the day will come when you will rejoice at this hour's decision, and make it the subject of your earnest thanksgiving. No Catholic can have witnessed your noble struggle for truth, your disinterestedness, your magnanimity, without feeling that for you, too, God has a noble mission in store. As yet you are scarcely conscious of what you would lose were you to fetter yourself by human ties. Your studies as yet have occupied the intellect somewhat exclusively. Controversy was necessary while you were assuring yourself of the grounds of faith, of the reasonableness of the creature's trusting to the solemn promise of the Creator, of the unerring infallibility of the church founded by Christ, and sustained by his holy spirit. Your learned research, conducted in simplicity of spirit, has led you to the temple of truth. You have entered, but as yet its most wondrous teachings are to be unfolded, to be contemplated, to be realized in practice. Your soul is too noble to content itself with the things of earth; your heart needs pure, exalted realities to love, and those it will find only here." (She took from her bosom a small ivory crucifix, which she placed in his hand as she spoke). "Everlasting love speaks to you from this cross, my beloved friend. Leave other studies for awhile to contemplate its lessons in all its bearings, and a divine rapture will fill your inmost soul; you will live in him only who is life and light and love, and your heart will need to pour itself out for him, through him, in him. Suffering for Christ will become blissful, and your whole being will shape itself to one aim, his will, whom to serve is to find the truest happiness on earth, as it is also the only happiness in heaven! Oh! dared I speak to you, Eugene, of what it is to love God, and to feel his love for us within our souls, you would not need consolation then. But God himself will speak to you and instruct you in his wondrous love, and you will be happy beyond your utmost imagination."
Euphrasie spoke as one inspired; and it was so rarely that she made any speech of considerable length, that the effect was greatly increased. Again there was a long pause, Eugene gazed on the crucifix, pressed it to his lips, then hit it in his bosom. At length he said: "Euphrasie, I can but submit. I will do my best to follow the beautiful course you have described for me. But ere I leave you, since since leave you I must, may I ask one favor?"
Euphrasie signified assent.
"It is this, then: You have called me friend brother. May I hope, then, for a brother's privilege, a friends affection? I will never again asked for more, if you will promise me these. But let your brother be of use to you, dear sister, confide to your friend your plans, and give him the happiness of helping them forward. Let there be no estrangement between us, Euphrasie."
"There shall be none, I promise you, save such as prudence demands. Your nobleness, your disinterestedness, claim my admiration, and I promise you, my brother, to inform you when i need your proferred aid. But you must forgive me if, for a while at least, I converse with you only through the medium of our mutual friend. Let our excited feelings have time to subside into a more reasonable frame ere we meet again, Eugene. And now may the holy Angels have you in their keeping. Adieu."
She was gone ere Eugene could reply. Hid among the foliage, he had not the courage to follow her, and in spite of his resolves the remained desolate.
What now were to him the chances of heirship, the thoughts of transmitting his name to a long posterity? {601} At the end of the month Eugene signed the deed which deprived him for all time of a fair estate. An additional motive for his doing this was found in the reflection that he had no right to be depriving his mother of her private property. He returned the deed of gift to her as soon as he received the proposed annuity. There were no bells rung, according to the custom from immemorial ages, when the heir of the Godfrey family came of age; there was no feasting, no rejoicing among the tenantry. All was silence and gloom, it was as if the very air were hung with a funeral pall. Mrs. Godfrey seemed stricken to the heart. But when the transactions became known which disinherited Eugene and appropriated an unfair proportion of the estate to the youngest sister, all the family were roused. Vexed as they were at Eugene's religious demonstrations they were not prepared to give Hester so exclusive a preference. Mrs. Godfrey, especially, felt the transaction as most bitterly unjust. She yearned for Eugene's presence, and it was not permitted her. Scarcely could she tolerate the sight of Hester in the house. Her melancholy increased. Alas! poor mother!
Chapter XIX
Hester was now made rich. Her doting father settled on her not only the Yorkshire farms, but also other revenues, that she might be provided with capital to carry into execution her philanthropic plans. Hester was endowed with many brilliant qualities. She was, as it were, "born to reign." She perfectly understood her own dignity, perfectly realized her own power of intellect, was well aware that both her father and his man of business were her tools, and she managed accordingly with intuitive prudence, not permitting Mr. Godfrey to perceive how entirely he obeyed her bidding. Under these circumstances she might fairly hope for success. Large iron factories on the one hand, and large cotton factories on the other, were erected on a scale calculated to employ many hundred hands, and to bring into extensive operation the new steam-power that then absorbed scientific attention. Mr. Godfrey was delighted, for it brought him into frequent contact with the most scientific men of the day. The operations necessarily attracted public attention, and Mr. Godfrey as director of the scientific operations, with Hester as deviser of a new scheme for rendering the "populations" happy and progressive, were continually besieged by a concourse of visitors, eager to understand the new "idea."
Hester's arrangements were on a magnificent scale. She started on the principle of mutual co-operation united to division of labor. Instead of separate dwellings for her employés, she had large boarding-houses built. These were provided with halls, refectories, baths, lecture-rooms, reading-rooms, libraries, and, lastly, schools, which in those days were rare for the laboring population. For since the suppression of the monasteries and convents, the schools in which the good religious had taught the children of England to love God and their neighbor had been shut up, education had fallen to a fearfully low standard in this sect-divided kingdom.
Hester was a severe disciplinarian, with little compassion for the weakness of human nature. She intended her people should become intellectual; and when she shortened the hours of labor, expressly to give time to cultivate the mind, when she hired lecturers and bought books, she felt herself aggrieved that these were not responded to. Her people were well fed at a common table; they were well sheltered and accommodated; why should they not be intellectualized? How discouraged she felt when she found she was speaking in an unknown tongue to {602} the adults among her operatives. They hardly considered short hours a benefit when they were compelled to sit and listen to subjects in which they took no interest. "A glass of ale and, a pipe of 'backy would do a poor body far more good than all this preaching, and 'tain't to save our souls either." There were other difficulties in this commonwealth; the young men and women were on different sides of the building, and certain rules were laid down to secure good conduct, but these rules were very difficult to enforce, and the dismissals for disorder became frequent. The operatives began to call the place a jail. Hester would not yield, but she turned more strenuously to the children. Here she had better success, and she spent days and weeks in providing for the better education of these little ones. "The elder ones are already formed," she argued, "but we will give these young ones better tastes, better habits, and they will become intelligent and happy."
M. de Villeneuve was a frequent visitor at these institutions, for the character of Hester interested him greatly, and he was constantly endeavoring to draw her attention to the motives that actuated her people, and to the probabilities of their producing lasting results.
"Tell me," said he, "how is a knowledge of the material law to produce happiness? We know that a steel knife cuts flesh; will that knowledge reconcile one to the loss of his arm when the sturgeon has cut it off in the most masterly manner?"
"No," said Hester, "but perhaps a knowledge of the material law might have prevented the necessity of cutting off the arm at all. Much of disease is caused by ignorance. To banish pain needs a wide acquaintance with the whole range of laws which govern our being. To know and practise one law and neglect another would but result in pain."
"You will require a life of scientific research. I see; and after all, as we all begin with ignorance and helplessness, we must suffer some pain during our apprenticeship. For instance, you cannot teach an infant to cut its teeth painlessly."
"But because we cannot do everything, shall we do nothing?"
"That were a sweeping conclusion; it is not necessary to go so far as that. But might it not be wise to examine the principle of actions when we attempt to regulate for others on a new system? Your exterior arrangements our splendid; your laws rigidly moral; but will you ensure their being kept? What motive do you propose?"
"I have expelled those who, after suitable remonstrance, would not conform," said Hester.
"A very effective proceeding, my kind hostess, but it is just possible that eventually such a practice might create a desert. The motive power of perseverance comes from within. The desire must be in the heart, the understanding must approve, the will must accept, the deed must co-operate, and until you have secured this motive power, your arrangements rest on an insecure basis. You cannot force men to choose good; you cannot make them studious by providing a library, or moral by denouncing the penalties of immorality. You must subdue passions, excite tastes. Can mere knowledge of physics do this?"
"There is other knowledge besides mere physics--classical knowledge."
"And will classical knowledge do it? Will reading Virgil and Horace tend to evolve moral power?"
"Why not? Knowledge is power!"
"Then why are so many of the educated sickly, unhappy and immoral?"
"Because they do not act upon their knowledge; they are idle and dissipated and worthless. The frivolities of the young men 'de bon ton' were always disgusting to me. But then they are not really educated; they may have been to school, but they have learned nothing useful, nothing of the material world."
{603}
"But" said M. de Villeneuve, "how does the knowledge of the material world affect man's existence as a moral agent? The laws which regulate materiality leave and impress of invariability upon them--a want of power to change themselves, at any rate. They are obedient to a will to which they appear insentient. This is true not only of inert, stolid matter, not only of vegetable life, but of animals, even of those wondrous developments of instinct which approach so near to reason that they are scarcely distinguishable from it. The highest mere animals are creatures of circumstance--circumstance ruled, indeed, by appetite and instinct, but not by recognition of a higher law, not by any consciousness of affinity to a higher state of existence. Therefore, you can tame them by an appeal to their appetites; you can rule them by providing for their animal natures; you can subdue them if you bring to bear on them a force stronger than their own. But, surely, we may assume that man is more than a mere animal. He has inborn affinities to higher natures which force cannot subdue, and which rise superior to animal temptations. These affinities may be starved out, it is true, by not providing them with their own fitting nutriment, which is not the food of the body. They may be crushed or restrained in their development by overloading the soul with extraneous objects; but in proportion as these powers are starved out or crushed out, the man sinks, the animal rises. And the animal man is, I assure you, a very ferocious kind of beast, and nonetheless so for having intelligence developed; rather is he dangerous in proportion."
"You would not, then, developed intelligence?"
"On the contrary, I think it the highest and holiest task in which a human being can be employed. I rejoice in all the plans that tend to raise the race; I applaud your benevolence in forming these establishments, although I feel that you are preparing for yourself a disappointment."
"But why?"
"Because you have begun on the wrong principle. It is good that you have begun at all to see the principle acknowledged that man is man, and not a mere machine to win riches for the few; that principle emanated from selfishness in the beginning, but selfishness will not root out selfishness. I admire your idea principally because it proves your own zeal, your own earnestness, your own capability of sacrificing yourself for others; even the disappointment impending will be fraught with good if it do not discourage you from seeking the true principle, which I hope it will not do. Faith in man is easily overset, because man can fall of himself, but of himself he cannot rise."
"You believe, then, as I do, that a new era is dawning on mankind, and that the laborer must be protected and enlightened?" said Hester.
"I do!" said M. de Villeneuve.
"Yet you do not believe that my schools and arrangements will make him happier?"
"Will you forgive me if I say I do not?"
"You are an enigma; I cannot make you out," said Hester.
"How did man fall into the degraded state in which the masses are?" said M. de Villeneuve. "We have proof of intelligence enough in the founders of Babylon, of Nineveh, of Thebes, and of Egypt."
"Some men must have known something, I think," said Hester, "but they seem to have kept their knowledge very carefully to themselves, and made slaves of those to whom they did not impart it. Knowledge was very much an affair of class or rank. The populace was brutish, if accounts are true, and kept in order by sheer force."
"And when that force pressed too hardly, they fled and became the founders of the savage life. Such is the probable course. And what power, think you, elevated the mass, even to the extent in which we see them now? for, debased as they may be, they are {604} far above the races that did the same work in ancient times; nay, the laborers of Europe are far above the slaves of Asia. What has caused the difference?"
"The march of intellect," said Hester proudly.
"Supposing that granted for the sake of the argument, what caused 'the march of intellect?' what gave the impetus to raise the 'toiler for bread' in the scale of humanity?"
Hester could not answer. The comte continued:
"I believe it to be that very influence which 'the age' is seeking so earnestly to destroy. Man's selfishness oppressed his fellows, overpowered his faculties, laid them to sleep so effectually that the rich and great were acknowledged by the crowd to be of another order, of another scale of being, to be judged of by another standard, to be weighed by another measure. The gospel came: to the poor it was preached par excellence; it was a call of the Father to his downtrodden children, an appeal to their hearts, their affections, a loving invitation to them to come, as children of the most High God, to claim their inheritance of lofty faculty, of high intuitions, of exalted aspiration. The understanding enlightened through the heart changed by slow degree's the face of nations; the slave disappeared from the christianized lands, the leaven worked from the interior to the exterior, life became protected, the rich and the poor, equal before God, became equal before the law also; civilization of heart produced civilization of manners among the masses. The greater involved the lesser. Men's intellects were awakened, roused to action, and then followed the old story over again; they forget how they had obtained these gifts, and from whom, and they are applying them to selfish purposes, to animal gratification. But liberty is the gift of the gospel, liberty emanating from emancipation of the understanding by means of the soul. If we would preserve the gift, we must observe the conditions."
"Do you really think 'liberty' a good?" asked Hester.
"True liberty is one of the greatest of blessings," said the comte; "but you will find it difficult to give 'true liberty' on earthly grounds alone, it would so easily degenerate into license. Now the repression of license by force is a restraint to which men unwillingly submit, and easily engenders tyranny, so that, unless license is restrained by the spiritual sense, liberty is in continual jeopardy; it is difficult to believe it can be lasting."
"And you think the spiritual sense necessary to liberty?"
"I do; how else can lawlessness be restrained without force?"
"Surely intellectual enlightenment ought to suffice. Common-sense even tells us that some restraint is necessary, that the moral law must be observed."
"It may tell us so, but does it give the power to execute its bidding?"
"It should do so."
"It should, and would, if man's being were in harmony. All laws, physical, mental, and spiritual teach in different forms the same truth; the material is a manifestation of the spiritual, of which the intellect demonstrates the beauty and the necessity; but power to develop the spiritual facility does not reside either in the intellect or in matter, it belongs to a higher source, and without the will is powerless. Therefore is it, I prophesy disappointment for you; for I see no provision made to destroy selfishness, and promote a higher life."
"There is none needed," interposed Mr. Godfrey somewhat abruptly; "we teach what we know. As for mysticism and matters we guess at but do not know, we leave the people free. If they need religion let them choose one, or make one for themselves."
The asperity with which this was said closed the conversation for that time.
{605}
Hester continued her plans, though less firm than before in the conviction that the spread of intelligence would annihilate evil. She watched the results with an anxiety intent on discovering the exact truth. She tried more and more to enforce morality. She studied the influences by which children are won to good behavior. She thought love was the governing principle of the little folks, and that her indulgence would excite love. Rewards were profusely given, and a system of excitement acted upon. This produced certain effects in calling forth intelligence, but the children became selfish and fond of ease and dissipation in a manner she had not looked for.
With her young people she had scarcely better success. There was no religious restraint, and their morals soon betokened that some restraint was called for. Then, again, Mr. Godfrey's opinions were pretty well known, and itinerant lecturers held forth on the unreasonableness of the marriage tie, on the necessity of easy divorce, and other topics of like nature that placed Hester in great perplexity. It was not a subject in which she as a woman could properly interfere, and her father shrugged his shoulders, and passed them by with the remark, "These are not matters that can be interfered with, they are altogether conventional."
What could Hester do? She was in great perplexity.
XX. THE TRIALS OF LADY CONWAY
Meantime we must return to Lady Conway. Time passed on and she became the mother of a little girl, and after another interval of a little boy also. At this latter event Sir Philip's joy was great. The bells rang, bonfires blazed, every festive demonstration was called into play to welcome the heir to the estate. All the father's affection seemed showered upon him. The misunderstanding between himself and his lady had never been thoroughly put to rights, for Alfred still continued to keep awake in Sir Philip's mind the suspicions he had aroused. Had Annie been of a meek and gentle temper, she might very soon have convinced her husband how far she was as yet removed from religion of any kind, although conscious of secret influences creeping over her. But Annie thought herself aggrieved, and disdained conciliatory measures; and by degrees, under the insidious influence to which he was exposed, Sir Philip began to assume a high tone of marital authority which gave his wife continual provocation and rendered her situation almost unbearable. Daily he assumed more and more the reins of domestic government, until at last it could scarcely be said that the ordinary jurisdiction which a woman exercises over her household belonged to Annie. She felt this keenly at first, but the birth of her little girl came somewhat to reconcile her. She spent much time in the nursery, and recreated herself with books. She tried not to notice the arbitrary manner and haughty bearing of her husband, for, high-spirited as she was, she thought it undignified to live in a perpetual jangle. So, gradually, the married couple learned to live in different ideal worlds, though they continued under one roof and to society appeared as usual. But this did not suit Alfred Brookbank. His hatred went deeper than this, and he set himself seriously about attempting to destroy what little was left of domestic comfort. The birth of the young heir soon furnished him with grounds. None were more warm than he in offering his congratulations, and in making continual inquiries after the well-being of this young scion of an ancient race. Indeed, the interest he seemed to take in all that affected Sir Philip's happiness was extreme. One would have said that he lived but for the pleasure of serving him. Sir Philip, on the other hand, became daily more wrapt up in this specious man, and daily congratulated himself on having secured so invaluable a servant.
{606}
"Sir Philip," said Alfred one day, after meeting the infant in its nurse's arms during a business walk over the grounds, "that is a splendid boy! I need not ask a man of your wisdom if you have made provision that he should be brought up a staunch and loyal upholder of the Protestant interest."
"Time enough yet, my worthy friend," responded the baronet, "the child is not six months old."
"But before six months more, Sir Philip, he will begin to receive impressions, and early impressions are of immense importance. You remember, doubtless, that when the treaty of marriage was on foot between the ill-fated Charles I. and Henrietta of France, the question was mooted respecting the education of the children, and it was finally settled that for the first seven years they should remain under the mother's influence, and afterward be brought up Protestant. They result was that, in the long run, the early impressions prevailed. Charles II. certainly received the Romish sacrament on his death-bed, and his brother James sacrificed his crown to his papistry. I imagine that the first impressions are almost indelible, and we never know when first impressions are made."
"But all my people are Protestants," said Sir Philip.
"And has Lady Conway renounced her predilection for the papists?" asked Alfred. Sir Phillip's brow lowered.
"Forgive me if I go too far," continued Alfred deprecatingly. "The inroads made by these people who came to seek English hospitality on being driven from their own homes, are too alarming. Awhile ago it would have been an insult to suspect a well-bred person of such folly; but when we see such talented young men as Eugene Godfrey led away, it puts us on our guard against future encroachments. I for one should be sorry to see the heir apparent of Sir Philip Conway an upholder of bigotry, or in image worshiper."
"I would see them in his grave first," thundered out the baronet. "But there is no fear; at least I see no immediate cause of apprehension. But the matter shall be look to. My son shall be watched over, depend upon it".
Sir Philip's mother was still living, and with her a sister of his, and old maid, who was a little too much of the puritanical school to suit her brother's taste. But now he thought these ladies might assist his views. He paid them a visit, and in strict confidence laid his difficulty before them. He was not satisfied, he said of Lady Conway's opinions. She went to the English Church occasionally, but he did not consider her a member of it at heart. He wanted his children to be interviewed from the first with strict Protestant ideas. The little girl was now two years old, and though the little boy was but a few months old, there was no telling how soon impressions might be made, so he intended to have a nursery governess of the right sort at once. This the ladies undertook to look out for, and when found to accompany the treasure themselves to the household. Annie's annoyance was excessive. Neither the dowager Lady Conway nor her daughter was intellectual or high-minded, and now that they came to take the management of the nursery out of her hands, and place a stranger there whose office was to watch herself in her intercourse with her own children, their presence became unendurable. Mrs. Bedford, the new governess, was in herself a quiet, unobtrusive person, faithful to her duties, and of gentle manners; but she had been selected on account of her unmitigated horror of popery, and it had been whispered to her that Lady Conway was not a little tainted with its delusion, and this made her more constrained in manner and less deferential than she would otherwise have been.
{607}
It was in vain that any pleaded that she was quite capable of directing her own nursery, that this new inmate was equally unnecessary as unwelcome to her. Sir Philip was immovable; and to prove how intent he was on having his own way, he dismissed the nurse, who had attended both children most skillfully, merely because she had not shown herself sufficiently respectful to the new-comer. The children cried after their old friend, and the little girl clung to her dress, to beg her not to leave her. It was useless. No one is more obstinate than a fool in power. That wife and children were unhappy was nothing to Sir Philip now. His will was law, and to his rule of iron all must submit.
Some months after this they were sitting at table when the letters were brought in. Among them came one directed to Annie. Sir Philip opened it (it was now his custom to open his wife's letters), read it, and handed it to her, with the words:
"Dear me, I am very sorry, I suppose you must go immediately." The letter was from Hester. It stated that Mrs. Godfrey (who had been for years out of health) had latterly become much worse, that she was constantly asking for any, and the physicians said she must be humored in every wish, that her reason, if not her life, depended on it. Annie was therefore requested to come without delay.
"How soon can I have the carriage," inquired any of her liege Lord.
"As soon as you can get ready, of course," answered Sir Philip.
"And the children?" faltered Annie.
"Mrs. Bedford will take care of the children, and I shall be at home; make yourself easy about them."
But Annie would have liked to take the children with her; they would interest her mother at times, and in that large mansion could not be in the way; but her heart seemed crushed, she dared not express her thought, and she departed without remonstrance.
She found her mother even more depressed then she anticipated. Mrs. Godfrey had ever been tenderly attached to her children. Their happiness had been her fondest care, and a melancholy settled upon her as she found her hopes disappointed. The haughty Adelaide seemed quite changed from the time when she was a joyous girl at home. Annie, though still affectionate to herself, seemed pining away under some secret unhappiness. But the darling of her heart--her son, whom she loved with the whole force of her character, in whom were united alike joy and pride--why was he banished from her sight? That Mrs. Godfrey was sorry for her son's Catholicity there was no doubt; certainly she was mortified at this unexpected result of her fine intellectual training; but the love she bore this her only son far overpowered both sorrow and vexation, and she bitterly felt his prolonged absence, and had often endeavored to shake Mr. Godfrey's determination in this regard. Some little passages had even occurred between herself and her husband on the subject. "She could not understand," she said, "why a person should be persecuted for his religion. When Mr. Godfrey told his children to think for themselves, did he mean that they were to think as he did, on pain of expulsion? Was not Eugene good, dutiful, noble, and generous? Why was he treated like a criminal? Had he been a roué, like so many young men of his standing, it would have been called 'sowing his wild oats,' and every allowance would have been made for him. Why could they not treat this vagary as intellectual wild oats, and give him time to recover?" Mr. Godfrey tried to pacify her, but in vain; illness succeeded. "She must see her son," she said.
Mr. Godfrey was a little too resolute. He did not even give her tidings of him when he summoned him to the lawyers. It was by sheer accident that she discovered they had met; and when she discovered the result of that meeting her indignation was terrible. She could not bear to {608} have Hester in her sight. She would not accompany her and Mr. Godfrey to Yorkshire. She stayed at home alone whole months. Years past; Eugene went abroad, and in the disturbed state of the continent his letters miscarried. It was long since she heard from him. A paroxym ensued. Her mind became affected. Mr. Godfrey was sent for. A gentleman experienced in diseases of the brain was invited to reside in the house. But in vain. The malady increased, and her calls for Eugene and for Annie became so frequent and so terrific that all hope of keeping the matter a secret seemed at an end, and the doctor insisted that the persons she called for should be sent for. Annie came forthwith as we have seen, but Eugene's address was not known.
On entering the room where her mother set in company with two strange nurses, Annie was struck with the wildness of her manner: her hair was disordered and hung loose over her shoulders; it was far whiter than when Annie had seen it last, and her eyes were restlessly looking round the room. She sprang up at her daughter's entrance, threw herself on her neck, and burst into tears, "O Annie, Annie! are you come at last? I have a strange illness upon me; I do not know how to bear myself; but yon will not let them hurt me, you will take care of me."
Annie was not prepared for this greeting. She could only clasp her mother's hands, caress her, make her sit down, and try to keep down the swelling in her own throat. Suddenly Mrs. Godfrey broke from her, and standing up laid her hand on Annie's shoulder, saying: "Where is Eugene?"
"I do not know, my dear mother."
"Not know! Are you all leagued against me? What share in his inheritance had you?"
Annie looked as she felt, surprised. She had heard of the transaction only when it was over, but she answered soothingly, not wishing to bring forward exciting ideas. But Mrs. Godfrey was not to be Sue; all night she raved of Eugene; when Hester approached, she sprang from the bed and attempted to strike her; Mr. Godfrey dared not trust himself within her hearing. "Thief, traitor, knave, rascal, villain", and other opprobrious epithets were bestowed on him and his fondling. The doctor was not to be shaken in his opinion that the only hope lay in finding Eugene and bringing him to her bedside. But where? They had no clue; his lawyer only knew he was gone abroad and would probably not return for months. In the hope that some one might be more successful, they at length resolve, to Mr. Godfrey's intense vexation, to have inserted in the London and local papers a notice to the effect that "We are sorry to announce the serious and dangerous illness of the Hon. Mrs. Godfrey, at Estcourt Hall. Should this meet the eye of her eldest son, now on his travels, his family request him to return without delay."
This advertisement luckily was pointed out to M. Bertolot very soon after it appeared at Cambridge, and he hastened to forward it by a courier to Eugene, who, traveling by post (those were not days of railways), arrived at Estcourt Hall within three weeks after Annie had taken up her residence there. The old butler who answered the ring at the gate bowed a solemn but speechless welcome, and with a significant gesture conducted him, not through the usual entrance-hall, but by a side door, up-stairs, till he came to Annie's apartment, which communicated with the sick-chamber. Here he wrapped, and on Annie's appearance left the two together without a word.
Eugene entered and sat down. "What is the matter?" He said. But Annie answered not; her looks were those of one too wretched to weep.
Eugene repeated his inquiry, and then she softly whispered: "O! Eugene, she has gone out of her mind!" Eugene covered his face with his hands. {609} It was a long time ere either could speak again. At length Annie rose on tiptoe and opened the door communicating with the invalid's apartments. His mother was lying quietly on the sofa, muttering at intervals. Eugene approached and listened. He thought he caught the sound of his own name. He went nearer and knelt beside her. The sick woman knew it not, but her arm laid itself restlessly around his neck, and as his hot tears fell on her cheek she kept repeating in her sleep the words, "Eugene, my dear Eugene!" Singularly enough, when she waked she evinced no surprise at finding him there. It was as though she knew it intuitively, or had expected it. Perhaps it was the prolongation of her dream. She did not greet him as a stranger, or speak as if long months had passed since she saw him, for question him as to his occupation or place of abode. She waked, but was as if still dreaming of him. She found him there, where she had so long wished him to be, quietly asked him to hand her a glass of water, took it from him contentedly, returned the glass, kissed him as he bent over her, and sank into along, tranquil sleep, from which she tranquilly and apparently refreshed, but still taking Eugene's appearance as a matter of course which called for no expression of surprise.
The physician now insisted on this state of contentment being left undisturbed. He had long wished Mr. Godfrey and Hester out of the house on account of the excitement they produced in his patient; he now insisted that they should not be seen, heard, board named in the sick-room; "in fact," he said to them, "if it were convenient, it would be better you should retire from the house until Mrs. Godfrey can herself be moved. A paroxysm now might kill her. Spare her that, and I hope she will recover. This illness appears to have been occasioned by mental anguish and evidently her son only has the power to soothe her." Hester was deeply moved; Mr. Godfrey was angry, but he hid his vexation. "He would wait a day or two," he said; "if Mrs. Godfrey continued to improve, he would take Hester to Yorkshire, where their presence was greatly needed."
He was, however, so much irritated that he would not see Eugene, in spite of his entreaties conveyed by Annie. Meals were served up to him and Hester in a separate room, and he now appeared only anxious to get away. Hester was, however, almost heart-broken. She had not been allowed to speak to Eugene; but the night before their departure, after Mr. Godfrey had retired for the night, she sent a note to him containing these words only:
"Come to my room, I am very unhappy. Let me see you ere I go. "Your own sister, "HESTER."
"I thought you would not deny me, Eugene," she said, as the latter entered her apartment; "you were ever kind and forgiving. Tell me, first, have you any hopes of mother?"
"Indeed I have, dear sister, the greatest hopes."
"Do you call me 'dear sister'? You are not angry with me, then, Eugene?"
"Not much more angry than I was the day you took my horse away when I wanted to go hunting; do you remember it, Hester?"
"I do, but you would not speak to me then till mother reconciled us. Dear mother! our childish quarrels always worried her. She was never easy till she had set them right. Would we were children again, Eugene, and our quarrels as easily adjusted." Hester was weeping as she spoke.
"We may be, Hester, as soon as we so will it. Why should we lose the simplicity, love, and truth that make childhood sweet?"
"Do you love me still, Eugene?"
"I do; nay, I admire you too, though I think you are mistaken."
"You are very good to say so. Now then, dear Eugene, I may tell you to set our dear mother's mind at rest as soon at she can understand reason. {610} You will tell her that, at least as for as I am concerned, there shall be no injustice committed eventually. My father gives me the control of his property now, which he has a right to do if he so pleases; you have your allowance such as he promised you, that is all right too; but tell my dear mother that, as far as it depends on me, matters shall be made right at my father's death. It would serve nothing, as you know, to moot the matter now, but I will never rob you or any one. Tell my mother this, Eugene, and tell her to restore to me her love."
"I will, my darling Hester. Now make yourself easy. Be sure my mother loves you still, that I love you, that we all love you. Be easy, my sister, my sweet sister." But Hester was weeping bitterly; the thought of not being allowed to see her mother, to help nurse her, was almost more than she could bear, and she very sorrowfully acquiesced in the arrangement.
XXI. PROGRESS AGAIN
The estates in Yorkshire were indeed in need of the master's eye. One of the clerks had absconded with a considerable sum of money; and this touched Mr. Godfrey nearly: while Hester was more affected by the discovery that the insidious doctrines of 'free love' were making terrible inroads on the morality of the young people. She was the more affected as she felt a natural repugnance to approach the subject. She found the people legislating for themselves, and systematizing divorce in what they deemed a manner consonant to nature. She was not prepared for this development, and drew back in disgust. "Is there, then, no remedy for this?" she asked of her father. "None but to legalize it, I believe," he replied. "You know nothing of these things, child, and had better not meddle with them. Legalizing divorce must take place sooner or later, from causes you do not understand; nay, I do not think the matter will stop there. As people become enlightened, and live more according to the laws of nature, polygamy must be legalized too; [Footnote 174] it is the only way to prevent disorder. In fact, but for the prejudice created by religion, it would have been done long since in theory as it has ever been done in practice!"
[Footnote 174: This plea is now used by intelligent men, non-Mormonites, to justify the existence of legalized polygamy in an American State. It is gravely asserted that only in Mormondom can the moral laws be enforced; that the practice in other states is the same without the sanction of the law, and that the absence of that sanction creates the disorders and night brawls of our streets. Order reigns in Utah!]
"Are you serious?"
"Perfectly so!"
"Then there must be something wrong, absolutely wrong. I can never be brought to believe polygamy necessary; that must enslave a woman, and I must protest against it."
"Protest as you will you will find nature too strong for your theory. You have been so peculiarly brought up, Hester, by your poor mother, that you know nothing, absolutely nothing, of the world's necessities, and I begin to wish I had never let your eyes become unsealed. You are a privileged one, and belonging to a privileged class; the majority of the world are not so protected. But this is not a subject for you; shut your eyes to these matters, and attended to the spread of intelligence."
But it is not easy to shut one's eyes when once they have been opened. Hester was stupefied. This came as a climax to the sorrow already arising from her mother's illness, from her remorse in having partly occasioned it. The woman's heart within her was beginning to make itself felt. The occupations of the Yorkshire estate grew trite and dull, until she had found a remedy for this grievance, a principal to propose, a power with which to act. Mr. Godfrey was also gloomy from his pecuniary loss through the embezzlement of the clerk, and matters were assuming a very unpleasant appearance.
{611}
M. de Villeneuve called to pay them a parting visit, the illness of his father called him to America.
"Shall you return to Europe?" said Mr. Godfrey.
"Yes; as soon as I can get away, I must return to take care of my ward; and if I can possibly find a location for her order, take her to America with me."
"Your ward? Her order?"
"Did you not know that Euphrasie de Meglior is my ward, that her father increased her to my care the night before he died? That which has kept me in Europe so long as been the hope of assisting her to regain her estates and to establish yourself. Fortunately for my peace of mind, I have been able partially to succeed in both. A part, though but a small part, of the estate has been rescued; and Madame de Meglior is already returned to France. Euphrasie thinks herself still more fortunate. Four of the ladies of the continent where she was educated have found shelter in England. They have met, and by the age of friends have wherewith to establish themselves. They have taken a house at------, about ten miles from this, and have already commenced community life, two Euphrasie's great content."
"And Euphrasie did not return with her mother to France?"
"No. She resigned her right to the estate during madame's life."
"And what will she live on?"
"The poor Clares support themselves by their work."
Hester looked surprised, almost shocked. M. de Villeneuve continued:
"During my absence I have deputed warm friends to look after them, and, as I said, my object is finally to transplant them to America. But I must not forget to inquire after Mrs. Godfrey, of whose health I hear such sad accounts. I do not wonder to perceive you are dejected, every one must sympathize in your anxiety. But tell me, how was it that Mrs. Godfrey, so lofty-minded, so motherly a woman, so full of magnetism, if I may be allowed the expression, could bring herself to patronize this materialistic scheme of education? Her loving heart must have felt intuitively that systems, exterior expressions which lack the vital principle, cannot regenerate the earth."
"I do not know that my mother ever did patronize my plans. She has never been well enough to come to Yorkshire since they were started."
"No! Then you missed the benefit of her fine intuitive reasonings, and of the results of her experience. Believe me, Miss Hester, applauding as I do, perforce, the zeal which animates you, I am constrained to tell you, you must necessarily fail. You appeal but to the selfish passions; you will be startled one day at the demoralization that will be manifested."
"I am beginning to feel this already," said Hester. "I want some power that as yet I do not find."
Mr. Godfrey rose impatiently and went to the window, scarcely out of earshot, but far enough away to decline any share in the conversation. He was always displeased when his "best policy" principle was called in question, though just now his pocket was suffering from that cause.
"You will find out soon the sanction you require," said M. de Villeneuve. "Every real unperverted natural law is the material symbol of a higher supernatural law, to which it is essentially related. It is the disunion of these two laws in your mind that now perplexes you; but you are too sincere in your search for truth not to perceive their relative bearings at last."
"Truth! what is truth?" said Hester.
"Truth is the harmony of all things as they exist in God; as love is their manifestation," said M. de Villeneuve. "The simplicity of ideas, their order, beauty, harmony, find expression in the created world; but the ideas themselves {612} are immaterial or spiritual, and have a relative spiritual expression in the soul. You have taken one and left the other, hence the failure. Missing the idea itself, you necessarily fail in power, for spiritual power is needed to develop truly even the material type. And, moreover, you cannot understand the type until you possess the idea."
"Something is wanted, that is certain," said Hester; "but if all virtue is typified in some material existence, tell me where is the type of purity?"
"Where but in the virgin-mother," responded the comte. "In the mother of him who died to obtain for man that power over sin which had escaped him. The world lies the victim of its own self-will: it needs a high ideal of purity and of sanctifying love, and this it finds in Mary; it needs the power to work out this ideal, and this it finds in Jesus. The progression of man is dearer to Mary than ever it can be to you, for she is our mother, and the mother of our Redeemer; but progression consists in sanctifying the individual, in destroying that overweening empire of sense which overlies the spiritual faculty, and which is fatal to woman in every sense, even in this world. Did you never observe how the progression of ancient times ever riveted woman's chains? From Egypt to Greece, from Greece to Rome, as luxury increased the degradation of the majority of women followed. The temples of the gods were filled with thousands of women enacting scenes of horror under the name of worship. This affords a key to the disorders that always accompanied ancient civilization, for woman is the mother of the race, the peculiar impersonation of the affections, and in her maternity the representative of that self-sacrificing principle which forgets self in care for the welfare of her children. Where woman is not cognizant of her true office, where her spiritual affinities remain undeveloped, the race can get no further than materialism, and that sensuous gratification which contains already within itself the germ of decay, No For it is of earth, earthy. But the divine instinct of religion, when proclaiming the 'grace to rise' one for us by the cross on which the God-man died, raised Mary on the altars of his church, for the special protection of all that is holy and aspirative to in womanhood. And since that blessed time Christian women have been respected as virgins and as mothers; as beings formed to foster virtue and watch over the spiritual education of the of the members of Christ's body. Mary acts wonderfully through her daughters. Christian queens converted their husbands, and with them their subjects throughout Europe; Christian matrons have given that tone to society which now, even in this age of heresy, respect security in theory, though it throws it off in practice. All that is pure, all that is lovely, all that is harmonious and holy invests the shrine of Mary, and from her influence proceeds the charm that represses vice, converts the heart to goodness as its chief happiness, and gives power to the individual to do those works of penance, of violence to self, which win the kingdom of heaven; a kingdom which commences here, in our own hearts, when we once enter into the harmonies of the religious teachings of nature and of revelation."
Hester started to her feet. "Is this the office of Mary?" she exclaimed.
M. de Villeneuve assented by a gesture.
"True or not true," said Hester, "this explanation does not in the least savor of ignorance and superstition it is beautiful poetry!"
"And is not poetry the highest truth?" said the comte.
"No," said Mr. Godfrey, coming forward with a frown on his countenance. "No! I wonder you religious people can never keep within your proper bounds. I, who have traveled in France, in Belgium, and in Italy, and seen the painted dolls and gaudy dressed-up images, protest against your giving a poetic or philosophic dress to this idolatry or mariolatry. When I {613} take Hester abroad, she will see with me that this worship is nothing but the rankest superstition."
"But I thought you said there was always a meaning under every myth. Pop, may not this be the meeting of 'Mary'"?
"Mary is no myth," said the Comte de Villeneuve, "she is a real, holy, pure, and loving woman, to be loved with a personal affection!"
"Beware!" said Mr. Godfrey, "our family has suffered enough already from these fantastic dreams. Eugene's Catholicity has driven his mother crazy. If my Hester were to succumb, it would be even worse with me. Let us make a truce with religion, I see it will produce no other fruits than to set people buy the ears."
"As you will. I am leaving for America, can I bear a greeting from you to my father?"
"Tell him to inspire his son with a little of his common sense. In a twenty years' intercourse he never mentioned the word religion in my family."
"You must forgive me, Mr. Godfrey," said the comte rising. "I thought to console your daughter; she is much changed since I saw her last."
Hester was much changed, but never so much as now. She longed to thank the comte, to unsay her father's rude words, but she dared not. She dared not anger Mr. Godfrey. Nor was it necessary: her eyes had kindled, her countenance had glowed, and the comte felt that his words had not been thrown away, that Hester had received a revelation, and he departed consoled.
It was a new study that Hester now entered upon. Woman as she was in the olden time: in Greece and Rome; in Egypt and Abyssinia; in Persia and India. Woman as she is everywhere where Christianity is not known, where the mothership of Mary is ignored. The facts presented to her were appalling, and none the less so that Mr. Godfrey was so peevish when addressed on this subject. He felt intuitively that the more Hester knew of this, the more she would shrink from materialism; and if she abandoned him, if she adopted Catholicity, he would have lost his last hope. He began to tire of "perfectibility" and "progress," the more that they seemed to detach his only joy from his side.
Yet with an old man's obstinacy he would not yield. Hester continued her system, but now it was to watch more closely its results, to penetrate the secret workings of the heart. She wanted to speak of higher motive than self, but she knew not how. She only knew, and daily she knew it more, that some high controlling power was wanting which could speak to the heart and regulate the inward spirit: "Was that power God?" "And Mary, was she a real manifestation of the power of God residing in a woman's frame?"
Hester now wished this might be true.
XXII. THE CONSOLATIONS OF RELIGION
After a few weeks spent in the company of Eugene and Annie, Mrs. Godfrey rallied somewhat, and the physicians prescribed change of air. Her insanity had somewhat subsided, but she was now dull and stupid, utterly unlike her former self, and her illness had affected her limbs also so that she was obliged to be wheeled in a chaise-longue from one place to another.
The place chosen for their new abode was a lone house within half a mile of the sea-coast, the road to which lay in a beautiful valley between two hills of considerable elevation. On the highest of these was a light-house, which gave warning of the perilous nature of the coast, while the neat little white dwellings of the coast-guardsmen, at the foot of the hill, betokened that this was a locality famed for smuggling excursions. Mrs. Godfrey was often laid on a couch placed on wheels, and drawn by hand to the beach on the sea-shore. The murmur {614} of the waves seemed to soothe her; and though she spoke very little, she seemed by slow degrees to be recovering her faculties, and now and then listened to the subjects discussed by her children, Eugene and Annie, who were seldom away from her, and who took work or study to the seaside, that they might while away the long hours of attendance. After a little time they observed that when the weather was pleasant an old blind woman was often led from one of the cottages to a pleasant seat beneath the cliff, and that the two or three children who played near her seemed to regard her with equal reverence and affection.
The old woman knitted in the sunshine, now and then interrupting her work to tell her beads or relate short stories to the young ones. In the evening a tidy young woman, of most pleasing appearance, would come to lead the blind woman home. This happened so often that the faces became familiar, and Mrs. Godfrey began to watch for them as for interesting objects, and at length she also began to wish to form their acquaintance. One afternoon she had her chaise-longue wheeled up to the side of the blind woman, and kindly inquired after her health.
"I am well, madam. Thanks for your inquiry," was the reply.
"And is this your daughter?" asked Annie, pointing to the young woman who was just come to lead her home.
"She is my son's wife, thanks be to God, and sure no daughter of my own could be better to me, who am but a burden to them all."
"Don't talk of burden, mother dear," said the young woman. "Sure, what should we do without you? Don't you teach the children their prayers and their catechism, and without you shouldn't we be almost like the heathens in this land of--" She paused and colored.
"Heresy," suggested Eugene, as if concluding the sentence for her.
"No offence, sir, I hope," courtesied the woman.
Eugene took up the old woman's beads which had fallen to the ground, reverently touched the cross with his lips, and restored them to her. "No offence at all," said he. "This is a land of heresy and of infidelity, and it cheers us to find out now and then one who continues faithful to the truth. Where do you live?"
"In the white cottage yonder, sir."
"And your husband belongs to the coast-guard?"
"He does, sir."
"And is he a Catholic also?"
"Glory be to God, he is!" said the old woman.
"But how do you manage? Can you ever go to mass?"
"Not often, sir."
"Is there any priest near here?"
"None that I know of nearer than Arundel Castle. The Duke of Norfolk has a private chaplain, they say." This was all that could be drawn from the parties on that subject. They evidently feared to compromise some one by speaking more plainly.
After this day Mrs. Godfrey seemed attracted to the poor blind old woman. She had always been benevolent, though she seldom took a strong personal interest in the object of her bounty, and beyond relieving physical want had little idea of doing good. Now a new idea had taken possession of her, she appeared to feel reverence for the cheerful sufferer, and treated her with a proportionate respect and sympathy.
"Is your husband long dead," she asked.
"May God rest his soul! He has been dead these ten years."
"And how long have you been blind?"
"Nearly as long, praise be to God! I took the fever immediately after, and the disease fell into my eyes, and when I recovered I was blind."
"Do you praise God, my good woman, for making you blind?"
{615}
"And why not, my lady? Sure 'tis he that knows best what is good for us, and what is most for his own his honor and glory."
"But how can his honor and glory be promoted by your being blind?" asked Mrs. Godfrey, as a dim recollection of Euphrasie crossed her mind.
"Faith, then, and its little we know of such matters, and less that we can tell. But we are sure that God created us himself, and wishes for our love and service; and often when things go well with us we forget him, and love ourselves and our friends so much that we neglect to serve him; then he sends sorrow to recall us to himself, and for this we should bless him."
"But has not God commanded us to love our neighbor?"
"Yes, my lady; but it must be with a holy love that we love our neighbor, because he is the creature of God, the child of the same Father. Many our kind from a dislike to feel pain or to witness pain, but this is not the true worship required by God, who says we must love him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength. This real love submits in all things to his holy will, because it gives 'self' into his keeping."
"But if you could see you might read of God, and learn to love him better?"
"I never could read, my lady," was the reply.
"Then where did you get your knowledge?" asked Annie.
"The priest taught me my catechism, my lady and every Sunday and holiday he explained it, and for many a long year I never missed the lesson. Then we often had instructions at Mass, and he taught us the rosary and the way of the cross. Ah! it is not the good father's fault if the children of his congregation do not know their religion."
"And you never went to school?"
"To none other than the school of poverty which our Lord founded and blessed," said the old woman. "Oftentimes we had scarcely potatoes enough to eat, though we little ones tried to work as well as the big ones; but labor was worth very little at that time, and afterward my father took sick and lay for a long time helpless. We had hard times of it in my young days."
"And did your mother take it very much to heart?"
"No, not very much. She grieved when my father died, though she hoped and believed he was happy, and would smile through her tears while she told us so. But for the rest, we all knew that it was not fine clothes or dainty food that would make us happy: we knew that we should have as much of both as it was God's will to send us, and we tried not to wish for more. When we were cold and hungry mother would gather us round her, and talk of that solemn midnight at Bethlehem when, under the clear frosty sky, the angels came to the shepherds, singing songs of glory, because the Lord of heaven and earth lay poor and helpless in the stable at Bethlehem. Then she would tell us of the long, dreary flight into Egypt, when Mary and Joseph begged hospitality by the way, because they loved poverty, for it made them more immediately dependent upon God. Then she showed us the poverty of Nazareth, and of the time of his ministry, who had not where to lay his head; and we became not only reconciled to poverty, we tried to love it for his sake, who became poor for our sakes. So you see, my lady, we could not be unhappy even when sorrow was upon us."
"Twas a sublime philosophy," said Annie.
"Rather say a glorious religion, Annie!" said Eugene. "Well might the boast of the gospel be that it was preached unto the poor."
Conversations like these brought a new train of ideas to the minds of both mother and daughter. Patience, meekness, and humility were embodied before them, bringing with them such childlike confidence in the providence of God that they could but feel such religion to be indeed reality.
{616}
XXIII. CONTROVERSY ON IMPORTANT POINTS
"Brother," said Annie, "I begin to perceive that it is of necessity that philosophy divides itself into two branches, the exoteric and esoteric. The human mind evidently needs considerable preparation to be able t comprehend the higher ideas that lie hidden under first teachings. It is not so much the teachings that are separate as that the mind must pass through a given process to arrive at the meaning. Every form of matter seems a metaphor, involving a spiritual idea, and many minds seem powerless to penetrate to this; they necessarily remain content with the material explanation."
"And yet you blame religion for presenting defined dogmas, practical methods, and real precepts to her children, forgetting that this is the necessary preparation to higher truth, and that every mind must begin at the beginning?"
"I blame only trivial and childish practices; I reject only untenable doctrines."
"As for example?"
"The idea that a good God will plunge us into hell!"
"Have you ever reflected on what God is, Annie?"
"No! how should we know aught of such a being?"
"Chiefly by revelation, but also somewhat by observation."
"Give me your idea on the subject, Eugene."
"God is light, power, and love. He created intelligent beings, that he might impart to them a degree of these attributes, and in their degree call upon them to participate in the joys they impart. The unvarying law impressed on material agencies, whether endowed with vitality or not, did not (in all reverence be it spoken) content the love of God; the enforced obedience of the material world to the attractions acting upon it, and the instincts animating the various races of the verified matter, though beautiful, though glorious evidence of power, wisdom, and benevolence, did not call forth a consciousness of creatureship, could not render to the creator a free-will offering of warm, outpouring, grateful love. This the Creator desired. It is his pleasure to desire to be loved; and he created the human soul for the satisfying of this desire; he rendered it free, and endowed it with the faculty of loving, that it may freely offer the purest love to himself."
"Go on; how do you reconcile this with hell?"
"God is pure, holy, incapable of defilement, change, or division. His essential being penetrates all space, comes in contact, literally, with all material and spiritual existence. Now, God created the human soul like unto himself, with affinities to himself, and in proportion as that likeness continues or is restored, light, love, and power exist in that soul. The absence of these constitutes disease, which will result in spiritual death. They are absent in the wicked, and the divine rays entering that soul cause pain, even as the rays of the sun cause pain when they enter the eye of the body after it has become diseased."
"But eternally?"
"The soul preserves its identity and consciousness eternally, though it undergoes spiritual death. If by an act of volition it has lost light, love, and power, it has not lost immortality, and the divine rays, penetrating this wreck of life, necessarily fill it with terror and dismay when all affinity for purity and holiness are destroyed. The spirit of love, culturing the spirit of hate, must produce pain, discord, rage; and as the strife is now unequal and hate is impotent, it creates despair also. We see this on a minor scale on earth. The French revolution {617} brought prominently before us men whose spiritual faculties seemed already dead--men given up to a reprobate sense, who appeared utterly beyond conversion, and who were styled by the vulgar incarnate demons; yet these are immortal beings who will carry their dispositions beyond the grave. Should you like hereafter to come in contact with such?"
Annie shuddered. She thought of Alfred Brookbank, whose mere entrance into the room had often caused her blood to curdle.
Eugene continued: "Remember, sister, that evil means cutting ourselves off voluntarily from God, and thereby subjecting ourselves to become the prey of our own passions, of our own selfishness, which when once loosed may lead to every kind of excess. Good, on the contrary, is living in God, adoring his will, admiring his perfections, loving his law. While on earth the choice of good and evil is before us; and what repugnances to perfect action or to perfect dispositions we find difficult to overcome in this our fallen state will be overcome for us if we pray in a sincere, in a co-operative spirit, or rather we shall receive power to overcome all evil and to accomplish all good if only in simplicity of heart we turn to him who is faithful to fulfil all promises; for he has said, 'Ask and you shell receive' all graces necessary to form in you the true spiritual life. If we choose to neglect this means appointed by God, we have no right to complain of the result."
"I will pray," whispered Annie.
"I, too," said Mrs. Godfrey, who was for the most part a silent listener in these discussions. "Strange it is, Eugene, that you should be teaching the principles which I ought to have instilled into you from youth upward."
"Why, you were not a Catholic, mother!" said Eugene.
"No! but I had many opportunities of becoming instructed, had I been willing; but I was worldly; I cared for none of these things; I did not think the time would come when I should consider sorrow and sickness a blessing: without that fearful malady and these paralyzed limbs I might have died in ignorance of all that it most concerns me to know. I have lived without God; dare I hope, Eugene, he will accept my tardy return to him now?"
"The grace that is working in your heart to make you wish that return is an evidence of his love for yon, dear mother; only continue to respond to it, and all will be well."
. . . . .
"Brother," said Annie, on another occasion, "the accounts that we have of the ancients soon after the deluge seem to denote that they were a race of wondrous power. The mere history we have of the building of the city of Babylon, its wondrous walls, its bricks so well cemented by bitumen that they seemed imperishable; its six hundred and seventy-six squares, so planned that they preserved the ventilation of the city in perfect order; its provision for water; its hanging gardens and palaces--to read of such cities as this and Nineveh and many others, one imagines a fairy tale in hand instead of realities. Then, I presume, the raising of those immense blocks of stone which go to form the Pyramids would puzzle our modern engineers, as would many things in that land of wonders, Egypt. Conceive a modern traveller losing his way among the ruins of ancient temples that strew the site where Thebes once stood, passing the night in the rude hut of a Bedouin or Copt erected amid these ruins, and in the morning seated upon a fallen pillar, making his meditation on 'Progression.' All ancient, very ancient history, is instinct with power. What does this mean?"
"That probably the knowledge that Adam imparted to his descendants was greater than that which we now possess, or the intellectual faculties may have been stronger before passion and egotism again corrupted the race."
{618}
"You think the earlier men really possessed higher intellectual facilities than we have now?"
"I think their works would warrant the assumption. Beside, it is reasonable to suppose that Adam was created perfect according to his nature, that it was endowed with the highest spiritual and intellectual faculties, capable not only of understanding the material creation in its laws of attraction, in the relationships of matter to matter, but also of comprehending the type enfolded in each material manifestation; the spiritual co-relationship existing between such manifestation and the idea it represents. This spiritual faculty was overborne by sin, impurity deluged the world, and a material deluge destroyed the race. But to Noah, doubtless, the mental organization as well as the spiritual power descended; hence immediately after the deluge we see mighty works which betoken that high creative intellect which inspire modern imitators with mute wonder."
"Then you think sin was absolutely a destroying power?"
"I do, even from the first. The intellectual faculties, when used as the mere servant of the selfish passions, shrink and cannot receive their full expansion, cannot perceive spiritual relationships, cannot perceive man's moral relationships, each one to his fellow. Indulgence of the passions, inordinately pursued, of itself cripples the intellect and takes away the desire of intellectual culture; selfishness, on the other hand, shuts up the fountains of knowledge, in order to retain the material power that knowledge gives for selfish purposes. Both these causes were in operation to cause that inequality of fortune which finally wrought the 'castes' among mankind. The knowing ones kept the knowledge transmitted from Noah downward in their own exclusive possession, which the majority submitted to at first in order more freely to indulge their passions, and afterward because they could not help themselves, having (under the influence of passion) fallen out of the intellectual sphere. Laws compelling by force certain restraints became necessary, and soon labor was performed by force also, and most of the laborers became slaves. These laws, in their action, usually touched only the governed, that is, those who had let the intellectual power slip from them. The governors had, almost universally, power to trample on the common law when applied to themselves; it was only when they came in contact with each other, and intruded on each other's privileges, that they were called to account. I speak not of the theory, but of the practice; there was one law for the rich, another for the poor, throughout all ages. What was called civilization, before the coming of Christ, did not touch the poor, the enslaved; the down-trodden slaves had little chance of justice or of mercy. What was meant by liberty applied only to the freemen; the want of remembering this leads many two mistakes in comparing the civilization of ancient and modern times. The gospel preached to the poor taught them to repress the empire of the passions, thus slowly but surely causing that rise of intellect in the masses which has swept slavery from Europe, and from all countries where the laborer has followed even imperfectly this first requisite, the doing which has enabled him to cultivate his intellect sufficiently to compete with those in possession of power. A people enslaved my passion easily succumb to external force, as a virtuous people, however poor, have an innate power of preserving external freedom. The external depends on the internal. One is a manifestation of the other; almost a consequence."
"Then," said Annie, "if I have understood you aright, man was originally in direct communication with his Creator. Sin not only destroyed this communication, which was the source of all knowledge and happiness, it impaired the faculties through which that communication is held."
"Yes," said Eugene.
{619}
"And as temporal happiness is but the reflex of spiritual happiness, the necessary result of order in the spiritual relationship, it follows that the spiritual order must be restored before the natural order can yield the happiness it is calculated to produce. This, then, is the redemption, penance, violence to flesh, and to self will, before the restoration can take place; these being the necessary medicine to heal the soul's diseases. Those who refuse the medicine perish."
"You surprise me, sister," said Eugene; "you are apt at understanding."
"You forget that long since the enigma was propounded to us. I am but just getting my ideas into form. You will tell me if I have drawn correct inferences. Man, by the fall, lost not only actual knowledge and actual means of knowledge, but he lost empire over the animal world, and, worse than all, over himself; he became a slave to his own appetites and passions, and to his own self-will. From this state no effort of his own could rescue him. The Redeemer came to offer him means of rescue, to enable him to re-establish spiritual communication, to bring man again into such actual relationship with God that he shall look up to him, practically as well as theoretically, as the highest metaphysical teacher; as the source of real power and light to the understanding; the restorer of all things to their pristine harmony. Is this so?"
"It is."
"And naturally this restoration must begin by the healing of the disorders of the soul. The first impulses of grace create desire for goodness, purity, and truth; but the old man is still within, and can only be subdued by violence done to ourselves. 'The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' This is why the saints welcome mortification and suffering, looking on them as tools with which to subdue themselves, with which they may be enabled to offer themselves a living sacrifice to God. This is why what men call 'progress' is repugnant to sanctity--progress meaning increased facilities for indulging the passions; facilities which, as we advance in sanctity, we learn to dispense with more and more. This is what Euphrasie meant when she puzzled us at her first coming."
"Indeed, sister, I believe it is."
"And her non-appreciation of human learning must have arisen from the intense pleasure she felt in personal, absolute dependence upon God. She did not want to know the material intermediate sequences; of all things, she preferred feeling they came to her directly from her Father's hand."
"I presume this was the case."
"Then, too, if I understood her aright, the soul, purified by prayer, mortification, and good works, becomes by the grace of God detached from the things of this world; it seeks its rest only in God, and then it begins to regain some of the sublime spiritual privileges it had lost. Even on earth it may hold communication with the glorified spirits in heaven, while these glorified spirits themselves, blessed with the beatific vision, drink in sensations of beauty, harmony, and delight, such as exist only in God, and of which we cannot form the slightest conception."
Eugene could only press his sister's hand in silence. She continued:
"It is this union of spiritual natures with our struggling existence, this interest taken by the saints in glory in the members of the church militant on earth, that you term the 'communion of saints,' is it not, Eugene?"
"Yes, Annie."
"And men have dared to call the recognition of this divine union, of this sacred bond of love, idolatry! It is the true conquest over death! the earnest of our own loving immortality! How absurd to call so beautiful a demonstration of the effect of divine charity 'idolatry'!"
"As absurd," said Eugene, "as to believe that God, in providing means to redeem men from the death of sin, should not watch over those means, and preserve them intact from man's defilement."
{620}
"Yes," interposed Mrs. Godfrey, "it is wonderful that men who believe in revelation should not see, primâ facie, that the same miraculous interposition which produced the revelation would, as if of necessity, watch over and protect that revelation." Then suddenly becoming very earnest, she said: "Eugene, I am drawing near my end, I feel it every day more. You must bring me a priest, if, indeed, one so worthless as I can become a member of the church of Christ. O my God! it scarcely seems possible that a life of worldliness should be followed by an eternity of bliss! But I will hope against my feelings of justice! The blood of Jesus is powerful to save. O my God! accept it; it was shed for me in pity and in mercy."
"And for me, too," said Annie. "I must be a Catholic also."
"But have you considered the cost, Annie? Your husband! your children!"
"I have weighed everything, and am resolved."
"I think feet, O my God!" said the sick woman. "O eternal justice! I offer thee my children's faith, my children's courage, in union with the precious blood of thy Son, to atone for my own shortcomings. Oh! bless these my children--give them grace to persevere!"
There was a solemn pause. Than she added: "Annie, there is suffering in store for you, but you will accept it. Eugene will be to a friend, a protector, a guide. I made my will before this malady came on. I dare not change it now, lest it should be disputed. I left to Eugene all that I have to leave, but he will provide for you, if provision is needed; and you, Annie, will confide in him when you need a friend."
"I will, dear mother," faltered Annie. "Surely, we have always loved each other."
Eugene threw his arm around his sister's waist, and kneeling by his mother's side, solemnly pledged himself self to watch over his sister and care for her.
TO BE CONTINUED.
----------
ORIGINAL.
PARDON.
"Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much."
Love may, then, hope to quite refund What sin hath ta'en away? Poor heart! thou hast a debt beyond Thy straitened means to pay.
My sins in number far excel The sands beside the sea. Lord! if thou wilt, I pay thee well. Then lend thy heart to me.
----------
{621}
From Chamber's Journal.
SEA-SIDE FLOWERS.
Visitors to the sea-shore love to wander along the beach in search of the beauteous shells of scallop or cowry, left by the retiring tide, and delight to trace their exquisite design and structure; or, scrambling over the shiny rocks, covered with treacherous algae, will appear into the little pools, fringed with crimson and purple weed, inhabited by various anemones, gray shrimps, and darting fish, in hopes of discovering some new treasure to capture, and carry off in triumph for the aquarium at home; but how few care to examine the modest beauty of the many sea-side flowers blooming on regarded at their very feet; nay, their very existence often unknown, or looked upon as common weeds, devoid of all beauty or interest. Many a lover of wildflowers and country beauty will pause in the fields and lanes, and even dusty roads that skirt the shore--especially if they be on the southern coasts of England--where the brier and hawthorn hedges are tangled with luscious honeysuckle, and the primroses cluster in masses; where the wild hyacinth peeps from amidst the nettles, and the speedwell opens its "angel's eyes" of loveliest azure; but as they approached the sea-beach, the proverb of its sterility,
"Barren as the sand on the sea-sure,"
is felt, and not is expected or looked four but the rich harvest of the ocean's wondrous things cast on the shingle, or left in the pools beyond. The immediate banks and links of the sea-side are usually treeless, and, to non-observant eyes, dreary wastes; but not a spot on this wide world is without its interest and beauty, and delightful it is, when rambling along the sandy beach, listening to the music of the waves on the pebbly shore, to find how many lovely blossoms are scattered even here, ornamenting the rugged sides of the chalky cliff or rock, weaving a flowery tapestry over the sloping links, and binding together with interlaced roots the loose substance of many a sand-bank.
Unlike the country meadows, where the loveliest blossoms appear with the earliest sunshine of the year, the fairest sea-side flowers are to be gathered during the summer and autumn months; though even in spring, the turf which enamels the links, down often to the water's edge, will be found decked with an occasional early blossom,
"As if the rainbows of the first fresh spring Had blossomed where they fell."
While, at all seasons of the year, here as elsewhere,
"Daisies with their pinky lashes"
raise their glad faces to the sun:
"On waste and woodland, rock and plain. Its bumble buds unheeded rise; The rose has but a summer reign-- The daisy never dies."
The first gleam of spring sunshine is, however, reflected not only by the silver daisy, but by that "sunflower of the spring," the golden dandelion, which glitters as early as April on the sandy, grassy slope, familiar to all, and common everywhere. The leaves of the dandelion grow from the root; they are deeply cut and notched, and from this have gained their name, which we English have corrupted from the French dent-de-lion. The Scotch call the dandelion the hawkweed gowan. The leaves are much eaten on the continent for salad, and a medicine is extracted from the root. Every one is familiar {622} with the downy ball that succeeds the flower:
"The dandelion with globe of down, The school-boy's clock in every town. Which the truant puff's amain, To conjure lost hours back again."
When Linnaeus proposed the use of what he termed a floral clock, which was to consist of plants which opened and closed their blossoms at particular hours of the day, the dandelion was one of the flowers selected, because its petals open at six; the hawkweed was another--it opens at seven; the succory at eight, the celandine and marigold at nine, and so on, the closing of the blossoms marking the corresponding hours in the afternoon. Nor is this the effect of light on the plants, because, when placed in a dark room, the flowers are found to open and close their petals at the same times.
In the month of May many sea-side blossoms appear; but in June they burst forth in such wild profusion that we are at a loss to know which to gather first:
"For who would sing the flowers of Jane, Though from gray morn to blazing noon. From blazing noon to dewy eve. The chaplet of his song he weave, Would find his summer daylight fail, And leave half told the pleasing tale."
We must only attempt to pluck such as are most common, and most likely to attract attention.
Many a sea-side cliff is adorned with the handsome pale-yellow clusters of the sea-cabbage, which flowers from May until the late autumnal months, and is very ornamental, hanging in tufts from the crevices of the chalky heights. It grows from one to two feet high, has woody stems, and leaves a deep green, tinged with purple and yellow. It is very common on the Dover cliffs, where it is gathered, and sold to be boiled and eaten. From it spring our numerous varieties of cabbage; and this reminds me how very greatly we are indebted to our sea-side plants for many of our most valuable vegetables: the fresh crisp celery, the dainty asparagus, the beet, and sea-kale, in addition to the cabbage, are all derived from our salt-marshes, and, under careful cultivation, have become what they are.
The rest-harrow, which we gather in the cornfield, may also be found adorning many a green patch on on the chalky cliff-side or sandy bank near the sea. Its woody thorns are more abundant and stronger than when when flourishing in richer soil. Its leaves are numerous and small, its butterfly-shaped blossoms usually a purple-rose color, but sometimes almost white. Near the sea-side, I have often found the little see-pearl-wort, which requires close observation to detect it. It grows upright, has tiny, delicate leaves, and flower-cups tinged with a reddish-purple color.
Very common in the sand is the sea-rocket, a smooth, glaucous plant, with pretty lilac-pink flowers, which often mixes its blossoms with the white petals of the scurvy-grass.
But June flowers press upon us: here we have plentiful at Dover and many other sea-side places the viper's bugloss, certainly one of the handsomest wild-flowers, either of the neglected field or beach that we have. It is a magnificent plant, sometimes attaining the height of three feet, its rich purple blossoms, with their long bright-red stamens, often extending half-way down the stems. It is peculiar for the variety of tints it exhibits in its flowers, the buds being a rosy red, but expanded blossom a rich purple, which gradually assumes a deep blue. Sometimes it is found white. The stems and leaves are covered with bristles and brownish warts, or tubercles. Its name is taken from the resemblance the seeds bear to a viper's head, and its spotted stem to the snake's skin; and in olden times the plant was supposed to heal the bite of a viper. It flourishes best on a chalky bill or sandy waste ground:
"Here the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil,"
and rears its rich spike of closely sent flowers with a stately air. Though its foliage is coarse, its blossom is very beautiful; not easy, however, together, for bees are ever hovering around it; {623}
"Flying solicitous from flower to flower, Tasting each sweet that dwells Within its scented valves";
and oft tearing their delicate wings among the thick, hairy prickles. The common kidney-vetch flourishes luxuriantly by the sea-shore, decking the heights with its handsome yellow flowers from May to September. It crowds its blossoms into flower-cups, thickly covered with down; and two such tufts or beads usually grow at the top of each stem. It is as common a flower on the continent as with us, though it varies in color--owing, Linnaeus tells us, to the nature of the soil. The French call it barbe de Jupiter, Jupiter's beard. We also give it the names of lady's-fingers and lambtoe. Clare tells us:
"The yellow lambtoe I have often got, Sweet creeping o'er the banks in sunny time."
Daring June, the common pellitory of the wall spreads over many a rocky spot, sometimes trailing its stems over the surface, and at others rising erect, a foot high. Its leaves grow up the hairy stalk, and are mixed with the small purple-red flowers that lie closely against the stem. The white ox-eye, though loving best to bow in beauty midst the waving grass of the meadow, may yet be found straying near the coast; and very beautiful are its large solitary flower-heads, with their rich golden centre and pure white ray.
Several thistles are to be found flourishing by the sea-coast, blooming from June to September. Perhaps the most familiar is the common sow-thistle, growing on almost every waste place, and greatly relished by rabbits, on account of the milky juices it contains. Its leagues are deeply notched, the lobes turned backward, its flowers yellow. The milk-thistle is easily recognized by its large leaves veined with white, and deep purple flowers. It is a prickly plant, often growing as high as four or five feet. Though common in England, it is rare in Scotland, and, I have red, is only to be found on the rocky cliffs near Dumbarton Castle, where tradition tells it was planted by Mary, Queen of Scots. The star-thistle may occasionally be found among the wild blossoms of the sea-side, growing on cliff-tops, or green patches of the beach. It has hard woody spines, standing out from the flower-cup only, and in this differs from the other thistles; which are usually covered with sharp bristles, and seem defiantly to announce:
"I am sir Thistle, the surly, The rough and the rude and the burly; I doubt if you'll find My touch quite to your mind, Whether late be your visit or early."
July comes laden with a host of fair blossoms of her own, as numerous as those of June:
"Bright gems of earth, In which perchance we see What Eden was, what Paradise may be."
Perhaps one of the most attractive, as well as one of the first in beauty, and blooming down almost to the water's edge, is the yellow-horned poppy, scattering its crumpled golden blossoms with every passing breeze on the surrounding sea-weed. Its stems and leaves are a delicate blue-green, wearing the bloom that is called glaucous, from which its botanical name is taken. It is hairy, and its peculiar, curved, horn-like pods are often half a foot long. It is a showy, handsome plant, but smells badly, and is said to be poisonous. Quite as pretty, and far less harmful, is the sea-convolvulus, trailing its rose-colored bells with yellow rays, and dark-green succulent leaves, in clusters on the sandy links, where it presents a succession of delicate, short-lived flowers; and equally common but less showy, are the green blossoms and thick wavy leaves of the sea-beet (Beta maritima), which, when cultivated, we often recognize as a useful vegetable. I have often gathered near the sea the hound's-tongue, easily recognized by its dark purple-red blossoms, and strong smell of mice. Its soft downy leaves are supposed to resemble in form the tongue of a dog, and from this it derives its Greek and common name. It is a tall plant, often growing two feet hi. Its foliage is a dull green, its flowers a rich claret color.
{624}
On the sandy downs and in the rock-crevices down even to the shore,
"Flourishing so gay and wildly free, Upon the salt-marsh by the roaring sea,"
are the pink and white heads of the sea-pink, or well-known thrift, so often used as a bordering in our flower-gardens, but here hanging in little tufts from the rocks, thriving where little nourishment can be afforded, and thus well meriting its name. Its leaves grow from the root, and mostly resemble coarse grass. Its flowers form round heads of lilac-pink blossoms, and crown downy stalks, some four inches high. There, too, is
"The sea-lavender, which lacks perfume,"
and is a species of everlasting, retaining its color and form long after being gathered. Its spike of blue-lilac flowers is very handsome. There are several species of sea-lavender; and in August we have the delicate, lilac-blue blossoms and bluish-green foliage of the upright-spiked sea-lavender, so often gathered to deck the winter vase. It is smaller both in leaf and flower than the former species.
Growing down, even amid the sand, we may now gather the compact head of the tall eryngo, or sea-holly, which has blue blossoms, in shape resembling the thistle's; and firm prickly leaves, beautifully veined, and adorned with that pale sea-green bloom so common in our sea-side plants. It grows about a foot high, and is stiff and rigid.
One of the purest-tinted blue flowers that we have may be found flourishing by the sea. It is the narrow-leaved pale flax, a sweet, delicate, fragile blossom, that drops its petals as we gather it. It is a tall plant, with a solitary flower on each stem, and small alternate leaves, adorning each to the root. Its stem is tough and fibrous, like all its species. The flax cultivated for commerce is a pretty pale-blue bell, erect and fragile, dancing and trembling with the faintest whisper of the passing breeze. Mrs. Howitt well describes it:
"Oh! the goodly flax-flower! It groweth on the hill; And be the breeze awake or asleep It never standeth still! It seemeth all astir with life, As if it loved to thrive, As if it had a merry heart Within its stem alive."
How pretty are the little sendworts now in blossom, especially the sea-pimpernel, or sea-side sandwort, which blooms in shining, glossy patches only a few inches high. Its clustering white flowers are almost hidden by the sick, crowding, succulent leaves. There are ten species of sandwort. Perhaps the commonest of all is the sea-spurry sandwort, which hangs its little blossoms in trailing tufts from the cliff-sides.
In this month also we may gather the white-rayed flowers of the sea-side feverfew, which often grows far down on the beach. Its blossoms are the size of a daisy, its stems tick, its leaves stalky, its growth low. And now also, decking the size of the banks, is the perfoliate yellowwort with its bright yellow flowers, and pale sea-green leaves, which grow in couplets, joining at the base, the stalk passing through them. The plant grows about a foot high, is not uncommon, and to be found in flourishing abundance on the Kentish coast.
Fringing the summit of the tall sea-cliffs, and clothing with its clusters of yellowish-white flowers and fleshy sea-green leaves the many crevices on the steep sides of the rocks, we may see the samphire, so plentiful on the southern shores, and especially at Dover, where it is gathered during May 4 pickle. That there is danger to the gatherer we may infer from Shakespeare's mention in King Lear, whence the scene is laid near Dover:
"Half-way down Hangs one that gathers samphire: dreadful trade!"
{625}
Several kinds of sea southern wood are now showing their green flowers; the saltwort and funny-looking, jointed-branched, leafless glasswort are to be gathered now, both so useful for the soda they contain.
There is a species of nightshade often to be found flourishing on our see beaches, with blossoms shaped like the potato-flower, but white, and followed by black berries, highly poisonous.
These are also the dwarf-centaury and dwarf-tufted centaury, neither growing beyond a few inches in height, both possessing light-green stems and clusters of rose-colored blossoms.
The buck's-horn plantain is common on the sea-shore. It derives its name from the peculiar cutting of its leaves.
Very common on the rocky bank is the wild mignonette. Though lacking the sweet fragrance of the garden species, its pale greenish-yellow spikes are very ornamental. The sea-side pea grows on the links and banks of our beaches, but is uncommon. Its butterfly shaped blossoms remind one of the sweet-pea of the garden:
"Where swelling peas on leafy stalks are seen, Mixed flowers of red and azure shine between."
During the great famine of 1555, it is said that thousands of families subsisted on the seeds contained in the pods of the sea-side pea.
Near the beach, I have often gathered the knot-grass, so named from the knottiness of its stem, and to be found flourishing everywhere:
"By the lone quiet grave, In the wild hedgerow, the knot-grass is seen, Down in the rural lane, Or on the verdant plain, Everywhere humble, and everywhere green."
Shakespeare has called it "the hindering knot-grass," on account of the obstacles its trailing, tangled stems offer to the husbandman. Milton speaks of it as
"The knot grass, dew besprent."
It is familiar to almost every eye, forming little green patches even between stones of our streets, its tiny pale-pink blossoms growing so closely to the stem as to be half hidden among the leaves. Its seeds and young buds afford a store of food for birds; and it is said that swine and sheep love to feed upon it. Milton tells us,
"The chewing flocks Had ta'en their supper of that savory herb, The knot-grass."
It bears little resemblance to a grass but this reminds me that among our sea-side plants the grasses are perhaps the most interesting, as well as useful and important, and are often of great service by their spreading mass of tough underground stems offering a strong resistance to the inroads of the sea. Several of the shores of England are so protected; and the greater part of the coast of Holland, being composed of dikes, owes its security to the powerful obstacles the peculiar growth of these grasses affords. Thus we see
"The commonest things may ofttimes be Those of the greatest utility. How many uses hath grass which groweth, Wheresoever the wild wind bloweth."
Useful as the sea-side grasses are, however, we have not space in this short paper to take more than a passing glance at them, remarking that the two most deserving of notice for their value in sea-resistance are the sea-wheat grass and the sea-reed.
I have often seen flourishing near the sea-coast the rich clusters of the ragwort (Senecio Jacoboea), bright as the golden sunbeam, waving its tall blossoms in the breeze, and emitting a strong smell of honey. It opens its flowers first in July, but often,
"Coming like an after-thought, When other flowers are vainly sought,"
lingers on until Christmas; and when cold winds and wintry snows have withered every other flower, this remains,
"A token to the wintry earth that beauty liveth still".
Very pretty is the yellow carpet spread on the dry bank by the yellow bed-straw, with its mass of tiny blossoms and slender thready leaves of brilliant green. Its flowers, like those of the ragwort just mentioned, also smell sweetly of honey. In the Hebrides, a reddish-brown dye is extracted from its roots.
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In September, we see the tall, handsome golden-rod, not only in our woods and hedgeways, but also on the sea-side cliff, somewhat stunted in growth, but still beautiful with its crowded clusters of golden blossoms, over which butterflies, moths, and bees hover incessantly, in spite of its
"Florets wrapped in silky down, To guard it from the bee."
In the days of Queen Elizabeth it was sold in the London markets by herb-dealers. It was supposed to cure wounds.
Then also the Michaelmas daisy, or sea-starwort, opens its pale lilac petals, and continues to blossom until other flowers have nearly all faded away:
"And the solo Lawson which can glad the eye Is yon pale starwort nodding to the wind."
It often grows as high as three feet; its leaves are smooth, a sickly green in color, and very succulent. At this time we shall also find the marsh-mallow. It is a medicinal plant, containing a quantity of starchy mucilage, which is formed into a paste, and taken as a cure for coughs. Its flowers are a pretty rose-tint; its leaves soft, downy, and very thick. It grows about two feet high, and is altogether an attractive, handsome plant, the more more valued,
"Because a fair flower that illumines the scene When the tempest of winter is near; 'Mid the frowns of adversity, cheerful of mien, And gay, when all is dark and serene".
Such are a few of the sea-side blossoms to be gathered on our coasts. Let my reader, next summer, take a ramble along the beach, and hunt for themselves, when they may discover a host of fresh beauties rising on all sides, creeping over the loose sand, topping the rocky heights, or decking the grassy slopes--
"As though some gentle angel, Commissioned love to bear, Had wandered o'er the greensward, And left her footprints there."
Let not the humblest, most neglected flower be discarded, for each bears its own little mine of beauty, front with instruction, and the promptings of pure and holy thoughts, that lead the mind from "nature up to nature's God."
"Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege Through all the years of this our life to lead From joy to joy; for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e're prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful face, that all that we behold Is full of blessings."
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ORIGINAL.
ON THE REQUEST OF THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.
"I will that forthwith thou give me in a dish the head of John the Baptist."
Fie, silly child! Thou askest more Than Herod doth engage to grant-- As time hath truly shown. That head, enshrouded in its gore, Would be a price exorbitant For all of Herod's throne.
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{627}
ORIGINAL.
THE CHURCH AND MONARCHY.
Mr. Bancroft, the learned and philosophical historian of the United states, in one of his volumes devoted to the history of the American Revolution, makes the remark that "Catholics are in general inclined to monarchy, and Protestants to republicanism." This is a very common opinion with non-Catholic American writers, and a large portion of the American people honestly fear that the rapid spread of catholicity in this country is pregnant with danger to our republican institutions. Dr. England, late bishop of Charleston, one of the most illustrious Catholic prelates the country has ever had, maintained, on the contrary, with great earnestness and force, that the church does not favor monarchy, but does favor republicanism. What is the fact in the case? The question is not doctrinal, but historical, and relates to Catholics and Protestants, rather than and Protestantism.
It should be observed before entering into any investigation of the historical facts in the case, that in the Catholic mind theology is superior to politics; and no intelligent Catholic ever consents or can consent to have his religion tried by a political standard. The church, the Catholic holds, represents what is supreme, eternal, universal, and immutable in human affairs, and that political principle or system which conflicts with her, is by that fact alone condemned as false; for it conflicts with the eternal, universal, and immutable principles of the divine government, or the truth and constitution of things. Religion is for every one who believes in any at all the supreme law, and in case of conflict between religion and politics, politics, not religion, must give way.
Well grounded in his faith, sure of his church, the Catholic has never any dread of historical facts, and can always, so far as his religion is concerned, enter upon historical investigations with perfect freedom and impartiality of mind. He has no fear of consequences. Let the historical fact turn out as it may, it can never warrant any conclusions unfavorable to his religion. If the fact should place his politics in conflict with his religion, he knows they are so far untenable, and that he must modify or change them. The historian of the United States is deeply penetrated with a sense of the independence and supremacy of moral or spiritual truth, and with a justice rare in non-Catholic writers, attributes much of the corruption of French society in the last century to the subjection of the church to the state. Most non-Catholic writers, however, consider what is called Gallicanism as far more favorable to society than what they call Ultramontanism; and in doing so, prove that they really, consciously or unconsciously, assume the supremacy of the political order, not of the religious. But in this they grossly err, and make the greater yield to the less; for not only is religion in the nature of things superior to politics, but one is always more certain of the truth of his religion than he is or can be of the wisdom and soundness of his politics.
The church teaches the divine system of the universe, asserts and maintains the great catholic principles from which proceeds all life, whether religious or political, and without which there can be neither church nor state; but it is well known that she prescribes no particular constitution of the state or form of civil government, for no {628} particular constitution or form is or can be catholic, or adapted alike to the wants and interests of all nations. Whatever is catholic in politics, that is, universally true and obligatory, is included in theology; what is particular, special, temporary, or variable, the church leaves to each political community to determine and manage for itself according to its own wisdom and prudence.
Every statesman worthy at all of the name knows that the same form of government is not fitted alike to the wants and interests of all nations, nor even of the same nation through all possible stages of its existence; and hence there is and can be no catholic form of government, and therefore the church, as catholic, can enjoin no particular form as universally obligatory upon Catholics. Were she to do so she would attempt to make the particular universal, and thus war against the truth and the real constitution of things, and belie her own catholicity. The principles of government, of all government, are catholic, and lie in the moral or spiritual order, as do all real principles. These the church teaches and insists on always and everywhere with all her divine authority and energy; but their practical application, saving the principles themselves, she leaves to the wisdom and prudence of each political community. The principles being universal, eternal, and unalterable, are within the province of the Catholic theologian; the practical application of the principles, which varies, and must vary, according to time and place, according to the special wants and interests of each political community, are within the province of the statesman.
Such being the law in the case, it is evident that the church does and can prescribe no particular form of civil government, and Catholics are free to be monarchists, aristocrats, or democrats, according to their own judgment as statesmen. They are as free to differ among themselves as to forms of government as other men are, and do differ more or less among themselves, without thereby ceasing to be sound Catholics. Mr. Bancroft, however, does not even pretend that the church requires her children to be monarchists, and he more then once insinuates that her principles, as Bishop England maintains, tend to republicanism, the contrary of what is done by most non-Catholic writers.
To determine what is the fact we must define our terms. Monarchy and republic are terms often vaguely and loosely used. All governments that have at their head a king or Emperor are usually called, by even respectable writers, monarchies, and those that have not are usually called republics, whether democratic like ancient Athens, aristocratic like Venice prior to her suppression by General Bonaparte, or representative like the United States. But this distinction is not philosophical or exact. All governments, properly speaking, in which the sovereignty is held to rest in the people or political community, and the king or emperor holds from the community and represents the the majority of the state, are Republican, as was Imperial Rome or is Imperial France; all governments, on the other in which the sovereignty vests not in the political community, but in the individual and is held as a personal right, or as a private estate, are in principal monarchical. This is, in reality, the radical distinction between republicanism and monarchy, and between civilization and barbarism, and it is so the terms should be understood.
The key to modern history is the struggle between these two political systems, or between Roman civilization and German barbarism, and subsequently to Charlemagne, were especially between feudalism and Roman imperialism. In this struggle the sympathies and influences of church have been on the side against barbarism and feudalism, and in favor of the Roman system, and therefore on the side of republicanism, Rome, theoretically and in name, {629} remained a republic under the emperor from Augustus to Augustulus. However arbitrary or despotic some of the Caesars may have been and certainly were in practice, in principle they were elective, and held their power from the political community. The army had always the faculty of bestowing the military title of Imperator or emperor, and all the powers aggregated to it, as the tribunitial, the pontifical, the consular, etc., were expressly conferred on Augustus by the senate and people of Rome. The sovereignty vested in the political community never in the person of the emperor. The emperor represented the state, but never was himself the state. In principle Roman imperialism was republican, not in the strict or absolute sense monarchical at all.
The barbarian system brought from the forests of Germany was in its principle wholly different. Under it power was a personal right, and not, as under Roman imperialism, a trust from the community. With the barbarians there were tribes, nations, confederations, but no commonwealth, no republic, no civil community, no political people, no state. Republic, res publica, Scipio says, in the Republica of Cicero, cited by St. Augustine in his De Civitate Dei, means res populi; and he adds, that by people is to be understood not every association of the multitude, but a legal association for the common weal. "Non esse omnem coetum multitudinis, sed coetum juris condensu et utilitatis communione sociatum." [Footnote 175] In this sense there was no people, no res populi, or affairs of the people, under the barbarian system, nor even under the feudal system to which, with some Roman ideas it gave birth after Charlemagne. Absolute monarchy, which alone is properly monarchy, according to Bishop England, did not exist among the barbarians in its full development; but it existed in germ, for its germ is in the barbarian chieftainship, in the fact that with the barbarians power is personal, not political, a right or privilege, not a trust, and every feudal noble developed is an absolute monarch.
[Footnote 175: Apud St. Augustine, tom. vii. 75. B.]
These two systems after the conquest occupied the same soil. What remained of the old Roman population continued, except in politics, to be governed by the Roman law, lex Romanorum, and the barbarians by the lex barbarorum, or their own laws and usages. But as much as they despised the conquered race, the barbarians borrowed and assimilated many Roman ideas. The ministers of the barbarian kings or chiefs were for a long time either Romans or men trained in the Roman schools, for the barbarians had no schools of their own, and the old schools of the empire were at no time wholly broken up, and continued their old course of studies with greater or less success till superseded by modern universities. The story told us of finding a copy of the Civil or Roman Law at Amalfi, in the eleventh century, a fable in the sense commonly received, indicates that the distinction between barbarian and Roman in that century was beginning to be effaced, and that the Roman Law, as digested or codified by the lawyers of Justinian, was beginning to become the common law in the West as it long had been in the East, and still is in all the western nations formed within the limits of the old Roman empire, unless England be an exception. There was commenced, even before the downfall of Rome, a process of assimilation of Roman ideas and manners by the barbarians, which went on with greater force and rapidity in proportion as the barbarians were brought into the communion of the church. This process is still going on, and has gone furthest in France and our own country.
The barbarian chiefs sought to unite in themselves all the powers that had been aggregated to the Roman emperor, and to hold them not from the political community, but in their own personal right, which, had they {630} succeeded, would have made them monarchs in the fall and absolute sense of the term. Charlemagne tried to revive and re-establish Roman imperialism, but his attempt was premature; the populations of the empire were in his time not sufficiently Romanized to enable him to succeed. He failed, and his failure resulted in the establishment of feudalism--the chief elements of which were brought from Germany. The Roman element, through the influence of the church and the old population of the empire, had from the close of the fifth century to the opening of the ninth acquired great strength, but not enough to become predominant. The Germanic or barbarian elements, re-enforced as they were by the barbarians outside of both the church and the empire, were too strong for it, and the empire of Charlemagne was hardly formed before it fell to pieces. But barbarism did not remain alone in feudalism, and Roman principles, to some extent, were incorporated into feudal Europe, and the Roman law was applied, wherever it could be, to the tenure of power, its rights and obligations; to the regulation, forfeiture, and transmission of fiefs, and to the administration of justice between man and man, as we apply the Common Law in our own country. But the constitution of the feudal society was essentially anti-Roman and at war with the principles of the Civil or Roman Law. Hence commenced a struggle between the feudal law and the civil--feudalism seeking to retain its social organization based on distinctions of class, privileges, and corporations; and the civil law, based on the principle of the equality of all men by the natural law, seeking to eliminate the feudal elements from society, and to restore the Roman constitution, which makes power a trust derived from the community, instead of a personal right or privilege held independently of the community.
In this struggle the church has always sympathized with the Romanizing tendencies. It was under the patronage of the Pope that Charlemagne sought to revive Imperial Rome, and to re-establish in substance the Roman constitution of society; but his generous efforts ended only in the systematization and confirmation of feudalism. The Franconian and especially the Swabian in emperors attempted to renew the work of Charlemagne, but were opposed and defeated by the church, not because she had any sympathy with feudalism, but because these emperors undertook to unite with the civil and military powers held by the Roman emperors the pontifical power, which before the conversion of the empire they also held. This she could not tolerate, for by the Christian law the Imperial power and the pontifical are separated, and the temporal authority, as such, has no competency in spirituals. The Popes, in their long and severe struggles with the German emperors, or emperors of the holy Roman empire, as they styled themselves, did not struggle to preserve feudalism, but the independence of the church, threatened by the Imperial assumption of the pontifical authority held by the emperors of pagan Rome. This is the real meaning of those struggles which have been so strangely misapprehended, and so grossly misrepresented by the majority of historians, as Voigt and Leo, both Protestants, have conclusively shown. St. Gregory VII., who is the best representative of the church in that long war, did not struggle to establish a theocracy as so many foolishly repeat, nor to obtain for the church or clergy a single particle of civil power, but to maintain the spiritual independence of the church, or her independent and supreme authority over all her children in things spiritual, against the Emperor, who claimed, indirectly at least, supreme authority in spirituals as well as in temporal's. For the same reason Gregory IX. And Innocent IV. Opposed Frederic II., the last and greatest of the Hohenstaufen, the Ward in his childhood of Innocent III. {631} Frederic undertook to revise Roman imperialism against mediaeval feudalism, but unhappily he remembered that the pagan Emperor was Pontifex Maximus, as well as Imperator. Had he simply labored to substitute the Roman constitution of society for the feudal without seeking to subject the church to the empire, he might have been opposed by all those Catholics, whether lay or cleric, whose interests were identified with feudalism, but not by the church herself; at least nothing indicates that she would have opposed him, for her sympathies were not and have never been with the feudal constitution of society.
In the subsequent struggles between the two systems, the church, as far as I have discovered, has uniformly sympathized with kings and kaisers only so far as they simply asserted the republican principles of the Roman constitution against feudalism, and has uniformly opposed them, whenever they claimed or attempted to exercise pontifical authority, or to make the temporal supreme over the spiritual, that is to say, to subject conscience to the state. But in this she has been on the side of liberty in its largest and truest sense. Liberty, as commonly understood, or as it enters into the life, the thought, and conscience of modern Christian nations, is certainly of Greek and Roman, not barbarian origin, enlarged and purified by Christianity. The pagan republic united in the sovereign people both the pontifical and imperial powers as they were in the pagan emperors, and hence subjected the individual, both exteriorly and interiorly, to the state, and left him no rights which he could assert before the republic. The Christian republic adds to the liberty of the state, the liberty of the individual, and so far restricts the power of the state over individuals. This personal or individual freedom, unknown in the Graeco-Roman republic, Guizot and many others tell us was introduced by the German invaders of the Roman empire. They assign it a barbarian origin; but I am unable to agree with them, because I cannot find that the German barbarians ever had it. The barbarian, as the feudal, individual freedom was the freedom of the chief or noble, not the freedom of all men, or of all individuals irrespective of class or caste. This universal individual freedom, asserted and in a measure secured by the Christian republic, could not be a development of a barbarian idea, or come by way of logical deduction from the barbarian individual freedom, for it rests on a different basis, and is different in kind. The only ancient people with whom I can find any distinct traces of it are the Hebrew people. It is plainly asserted in the laws of Moses for the Jewish people. Christianity asserts it for all, both Jews and Gentiles, in that noble maxim. We must obey God rather than men. Every martyr to the Christian faith asserted it, in choosing rather to be put to death in the most frightful and excruciating forms than to yield up the freedom of conscience at the command of the civil authority, and the church shows that she approves it by preserving the relics of martyrs, and proposing them to the perpetual veneration of the faithful. The martyr witnesses alike to faith and the freedom of conscience.
To this individual freedom, as the right of manhood, the real enemy is the feudal society, which is founded on privilege; and where then should the church be found but on the side of those who asserted Graeco-Roman civilization as enlarged, purified, and invigorated by Christianity against the barbarian elements retained by the feudal society? It was her place as the friend of liberty and civilization. There can be no question that since the beginning of the fifteenth century the interests of humanity, liberty, religion, have been with the kings and people, as against the feudal nobility. It is owing to this fact, not to any partiality for monarchy, even in its representative sense, that the church has supported the monarchs in their struggle against feudal privileges and corporations.
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But it is said that she has favored Roman imperialism not only against feudalism, but also against democracy. This is partially true, but she has done so for the very reason that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries she opposed the German emperors, because everywhere, except in the United States, it seeks to unite in the republic or state, after the manner of the pagan republic, both the imperial and the pontifical powers. In the United States this has not been done; our republic recognizes its own incompetency in spirituals, protects all religions not contra bonos mores, and establishes none; and here the church has never opposed republicanism or democracy. In Europe she has done so, not always, but generally since the French revolution assumed to itself pontifical authority. In the beginning of the French revolution, while it was confined to the correction of abuses, the redress of grievances, and the extension and confirmation of civil liberty, the Pope, Pius VI., the cardinals, prelates, and people of Rome, encouraged it; and the Pope censured it only when it transcended the civil order, made a new distribution of dioceses, enacted a civil constitution for the clergy, and sought to separate the Gallican Church from the Catholic Church, precisely as the Popes had previously censured Henry IV., Frederic Barbarossa, Frederic II., Louis of Bavaria, and others. She opposes to-day European democrats, not because they are democrats, but because they claim for the people the pontifical power, and seek to put them in the place of the church, nay, in the place of God The more advanced among them utter the words, people-pontiff and people-God, as well as people-king, and your German democrats assert almost to a man humanity as the supreme God. She opposes them not because they make deadly war on monarchy and aristocracy, and assert the sovereignty, under God, of the people, but because the war against catholic truth, the great eternal, universal, and immutable principles of the divine government, which lie at the basis of all government and indeed of society itself, and of which she is the divinely appointed guardian in human affairs. If she supports the European governments against them, it is not because those governments are monarchical or aristocratic in their constitution, but because they represent, however imperfectly, the interests of humanity, social order, civilization, without which there is and can be no real progress. She cannot oppose them because they seek to establish democratic government unless they seek to do so by unlawful or unjust means, because she prescribes for the faithful no particular form of civil government, and cannot do it, because no particular form is or can be Catholic. She offers no opposition to American democracy.
The church opposes, by her principles, however, what is called Absolutism, or what is commonly understood by Oriental despotism, that is, monarchy as understood by Bishop England, under which the monarch is held to be the absolute owner of the soil and the people of the nation, and may dispose of either at his pleasure. This is evident from the fact that when she speaks officially of the state generally, without referring to any particular state, she calls it republica, the republic; especially is this the case when she speaks of the civil society in distinction from the ecclesiastical society. Our present Holy Father, in his much miss apprehended and grossly misrepresented Encyclical of December 8, 1864, calls the civil community republica, or commonwealth. St. Augustine denies that God has given to man the lordship of man. He gave man the lordship or dominion over irrational creations, but not of the rational made in his own image, "Rationalem factum ad maginem suam noluit nisi irrationabilibus, dominari: non hominem homini, sed hominem {633} pecori. Inde primi justi pastores pecorum magis quam reges hominum constituti sunt." [Footnote 176] Hence he denies that the master has the lordship of his servants or slaves, and admits slavery only as a punishment, as does the civil law itself. For the same reason we may conclude against despotism. If the master has not the absolute lordship of his servants, far less can a king have the absolute lordship of a whole nation. St. Gregory the great cites St. Augustine with approbation, so also, if my memory serves me, does St. Gregory VII., the famous Hildebrand, who tells the princes of his time that they hold their power from violence, wrong, Satan.
[Footnote 176: De Civit. Dei. Opera, tom. vii. 900.]
Catholic writers of the highest authority St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Bellarmin, and Suarez, whom to cite is to cite nearly the whole body of Catholic theologians, follow in the main the political philosophy of Greece and Rome as set forth by Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero; and there is no doubt that, while vesting sovereignty in the community, or the people politically associated, they generally incline to monarchy, tempered by a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, as does Aristotle himself. But the monarchy they favor is always the representative monarchy, the Roman, not the feudal or the oriental. The prince or king, according to them, holds his power from the people or community, jure humano, not jure divino, and holds it as a trust, not as a personal and indefeasible right. It is amissible; the king may forfeit it, and be deprived of it. St. Augustine asserts, and Suarez after him, the inherent right of the people or political society to change their magistrates and even their form of government; and the Popes, on more occasions than one in the middle ages, not only excommunicated princes, but declared them by a sovereign judgment deprived of their crowns, which proves, if nothing else, that kings and kaisers are held by the church to be responsible to the nation for the manner in which they use their trusts, for the Popes never declared a forfeiture except on the ground that it was incurred by a violation of the civil constitution.
There were numerous republics in Europe before the reformation, as Venice, Genoa, Florence, the Swiss Cantons, and many others, not to speak of the Lombard municipalities, the Hanse towns, and the Flemish or Belgian communes, all of which sprang up during Catholic times, and were founded and sustained by a Catholic population. Nearly all of them have now disappeared, and some of them almost within our own memory; but I am not aware that there is a single republic in Europe founded and sustained by Protestants, unless the United Dutch Provinces, now a monarchical state, be a partial exception. The fact that Catholics as a body are wedded to monarchy is therefore not susceptible of very satisfactory proof, not even if we take monarchy only as representing the majesty of the people, in which sense it is republican in principle.
Protestantism is in itself negative, and neither favors nor disfavors any form of government; but the reformation resulted, wherever it prevailed in Europe, in uniting what the church from the first had struggled to keep separate, the pontifical and the imperial or royal powers, and also in maintaining the feudal monarchy instead of the Roman or representative monarchy. In every nation that accepted the reformation the feudal monarchy was retained, and still subsists. The crown in them all is an estate, as in England, and in some of them is, in fact, the only estate recognized by the constitution. The elector of Saxony, the landgrave of Hesse, the margrave of Brandenburg, the kings of Sweden, of Denmark, and of England and Scotland, became each in his own dominions supreme pontiff, and united in his own person the supreme civil and ecclesiastical powers. The same in principle {634} became the fact in the Protestant Netherlands and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland; and though some Protestant European states tolerate dissent from the state religion, there is not one that recognizes the freedom of religion, or that does not subject religion to the civil power. The political sense of the reformation was the union of the imperial and pontifical powers in the political sovereign, and the maintenance of the feudal monarchy and nobility, or the constitution of society on feudal principles. Nothing, then, is or can be further from the fact than that Protestants generally incline to republicanism, except the pretense that Protestantism emancipates the mind and establishes religious liberty.
No doubt, the feudal monarchy and nobility struggled in all Europe to maintain themselves against the Greco-Roman system represented by the Civil Law and favored by the theologians of the church and her supreme pontiffs. So far as the struggle was against the feudal nobility, or, as I may term it, the system of privilege, the church, the kings, and the people have in their general action been on the same side; and hence in France, where the struggle was the best defined, the great nobles were the first to embrace the reformation; they came very near detaching the kingdom itself from the church, during the wars of the Ligue, and were prevented only by the conversion, interested or sincere, of Henri Quatre. Henry saw clearly enough that monarchy could not struggled successfully in France against the feudal nobility without the support of the church and the people. Richelieu and Mazarin saw the same, and destroyed what remained of the feudal nobility as a political power. They, no doubt, did it in the interest and for the time to the advantage of monarchy. Louis XIV. concentrated in himself all the powers of the state, and could say "L'état, c'est moi--I am the state," and tried hard to grasp the pontifical power, and to be able to say, "L'église, c'est moi--I am the church;" but failed. Always did and do kings and emperors, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, seek to enlarge their power and to gain to themselves the supreme control not only of civil but also of ecclesiastical affairs, and courtiers, whether lay or cleric, are always but too ready to sustain absolute monarchy. Warring against the system of privilege, for national unity against the disintegrating tendencies of feudalism, monarchy threatens in the seventeen and eighteenth centuries to become absolute in all Europe, but it met with permanent success in no state that did not adopt the reformation, and ceased to be Catholic.
I hold that Roman constitution, as modified and amended by Christianity, is far better for society and more in accordance with religion and liberty, then the feudal constitution, which is essentially barbaric. If we look at Europe as it really was during the long struggle hardly yet ended, we shall see that it was impossible to break up the feudal constitution of society without for the moment giving to the kings and undue power, which in its turn would need to be resisted. But in all countries that remained Catholic, monarchy was always treated as representative by the theologians, and the republican doctrines that subsequent to the reformation found advocates in Protestant states were borrowed either from the agents or from Catholic writers--for the most part, probably, from the mediaeval monks, of whom modern liberals know so little and against whom they say so much. It was only in those countries where the reformation was followed and religion subjected to the state that the feudal monarchy developed into the oriental. England under Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth Tudor, and James and Charles Stuart, had lost nearly all its old liberties, and nearly all power was centred in the crown. The resistance offered to Charles I. was {635} not to gain new but to recover old liberties, with some new and stronger guaranties. The Protestant princes of northern Germany governed as absolutely as any oriental despot. The movement toward republicanism started in the south, not in the north, in Catholic not in Protestant states. The fact is patent and undeniable, explain it as you will.
I admit that Catholic princes, as well as Protestant, sought to grasp the pontifical power, and to subject the church in their respective dominions to their own authority, but they never fully succeeded. The civil power claimed in France more than belonged to it; but while it impeded the free movements of the Gallican Church, it never succeeded in absolutely enslaving it. Louis XIV., or even Napoleon the First, never succeeded in making himself the head of the Gallican Church; and the Constitutional church created by the Revolution, and which, like the Church of England, was absolutely dependent on the civil power, has long since disappeared and left no trace behind. In Spain, Portugal, Naples, Tuscany, Austria, attempts to subject religion to the state have not been wanting, but, though doing great harm to both the ecclesiastical and the civil society, they have never been completely successful. It is only in Protestant states that they have fully succeeded, or rather, I should say, in non-Catholic states, for the church is as much a slave in Russia as in Great Britain.
Bossuet, courtier and high-toned monarchist as he was, and as much as he consented to yield to the king, never admitted the competency of the king in scriptuals strictly so called; and if he yielded to the king on the question of the regalia, it was only on the ground of an original concession from the head of the church to the kings of France, or the immemorial custom of the kingdom, not as an inherent right of the civil power. He went too far in the Four Articles of 1682 to meet the approbation of Innocent XI., but he did not fall into heresy or schism. And it may be alleged in his defence, that if he had not gone thus far the court would most likely have gone further, and have actually separated the Gallican Church from the Holy See.
Bossuet was unquestionably a monarchist and something of a courtier, though he appears to have had always the best interests of religion at heart; and we can hardly say that he did not take the best means possible in his time of promoting them. As one of the preceptors of the Dauphin, father of the Duke of Burgundy, of whom Fénelon was the principal preceptor, he taught the political system acceptable to the king; but he impressed on his pupil as much as possible under that system a sense of his responsibility, his duty to regard his power as a high trust from God to be exercised without fear or favor for the good of the people committed to his charge. Fénelon went further, and hinted that the nation had not abdicated its original rights, and still retained the right to be consulted in the management of its affairs; and he was dismissed from his preceptorship, forbidden to appear at court, and exiled to his diocese, while every possible effort, in which it is to be regretted that Bossuet took a prominent part, to degrade him as a man and a theologian, and to procure his condemnation as a heretic, was made by the French court. But heretic he was not; he simply erred in the use of language which, though it had been used by canonized saints, was susceptible of an heretical sense. The Congregation condemned the language, not the man, nor his real doctrine. He retracted the language, not the doctrine, and edified the world by his submission.
There is hardly any doctrine further removed from every form of republicanism than that of the divine right of kings, defended by James I. of England in his Remonstrance for the Divine Right of Kings and the Independency of their Crowns, written in reply to a speech of the {636} celebrated Cardinal Duperron in the States-General of France in 1614--the last time the States-General were convoked till convoked by the unhappy Louis XVI. at Versailles, in May, 1789. In that work, a copy of the original edition of which, as well as of "his majestie's speech in the Star-chamber," now lies before me, their kingship immediately from God, and are accountable to him alone for the use they made of their power. He denies their accountability alike to the Pope and the people. This was and really is the doctrine, if not of all Protestants, at least of the Anglican Church and of all Protestant courts; but it is not and never was a Catholic doctrine. The utmost length in the same direction that any Catholic writer of note, except Bossuet, ever went, so far as I can find, is that the king, supposing him to be elected by the people, does, when so elected, reign de jure divino or by divine right; but Suarez [Footnote 177] refutes them, and maintains that the royal power emanates from the community, and is exercised, formaliter, by human right, de jure humano, and thus asserts the real republican principle. Balmes, in his great work on the Influence of Catholicity and Protestantism on European Civilization compared, cites an instance of a Spanish monk who in the time of Philip II. ventured one day to preach the irresponsibility of the king, but was compelled by the Inquisition to retract his doctrine publicly, in the very pulpit from which he had preached it.
[Footnote 177: De Legibus, lib. iii., cap. 3 and 4, i.]
He who has studied somewhat profoundly the internal political history of the so-called Latin nations of Europe, will find that they have had, from very early times, a strong tendency to republicanism, and even to democracy, and that the tendency has been checked never by the church, but by the kings and feudal nobility. The doctrines of 1789 were no novelty in France even in the thirteenth century, and they were preached very distinctly and very boldly in the Ligue when the nation was threatened with a non-Catholic or Huguenot king, even by Jesuits. The great Dominican and Franciscan orders have never shown any strong attachment to monarchy in any form, and have rarely been the courtiers or flatterers of power. That the sad effects of the old French revolution produced a reaction in many Catholic minds, as well as in many Protestant minds, in favor of monarchy, is very true; and perhaps the most influential portion of European Catholics, living as they do in the midst of a revolution that makes war on the church, on civil order, on society, on civilization itself, cling to the royal authority as the lesser evil and as their only security, under God, for the future of religion. And it is not strange that they should. But this, whether wise or otherwise, is only accidental, and no people will be more loyal republicans than Catholics, when the republic gives them security for life and property, and more than all, for the free and full exercise of their religion as Catholics, as is the case in the United States.
The republic of the United States, we are told, was founded by Protestants, and it is only the United States that can give the slightest coloring to the pretense that Protestants are inclined to republicanism. But, closely examined, the fact gives less coloring than is commonly supposed. The republic of the United States can hardly be said to be founded either by Catholics or Protestants: it was founded by Providence, not by men. The Puritans, the most disposed to republicanism of any of the original colonists, were dissenters from the Church of England, and the principles on which they dissented were in the main those which they had borrowed or inherited from Catholic tradition. They objected to the Church of England that she allowed the king to be both king and pontiff, and subjected religion to the civil power. In this they only followed the example of the Popes. They {637} with the Popes denied the competency of the civil power in spirituals. This was the principle of their dissent, as it has recently been the principle of the separation of the Free Kirk in Scotland from the national church. As the king was the head of the Church of England, making it a royal church, they were naturally led to defend their dissent on republican principles. M. Guizot seems to regard the English revolution, which made Cromwell Lord Protector of the realm, as primarily political; but with all due respect to so great an authority, I venture to say that it was primarily religious, that its first movement was a protest against the authority of the king or parliament to ordain anything in religion not prescribed by the word of God. I state the principle universally, without taking notice of the matters accidentally associated with it, and so stated it is a Catholic principle, always asserted and insisted on by the Popes. It was primarily to carry out this principle, and to regain the civil liberties lost by the nation through the reformation, but not forgotten, that they resisted the king, and made a republican revolution, which very few foresaw or desired. The Puritans who settled in the wilds of America brought with them the ideas and principles they had adopted before leaving England, and if they had republican tendencies, they were hardly republicans.
Mr. Bancroft, in Volume IX. of his History of the United States, just published, shows very clearly that at the beginning of their disputes with the mother country the colonists were not generally republican in the ordinary sense of the word, but attached to monarchy after the English fashion, and also that the struggle in the minds of the colonists was long and severe before they reluctantly abandoned monarchy and accepted republicanism. The American revolution did not originate in any desire to suppress monarchy as it existed in Great Britain and establish republicanism, but to resist the encroachments of the mother country on their rights as British colonists, or rather, as British subjects. The rights of man they asserted had been derived from the civil law, for the most part through medium of the common law, and the writings, if not of Catholic theologians, at least of Catholic lawyers. They held as republicans not from Protestantism, but chiefly from Greece and Rome. Moreover, a monarchical government was impracticable, and there really was no alternative for the American people but republican government or colonial dependence. In the main our institutions were the growth of the country, and were very little influenced by the political theories of the colonists or the political wisdom and sagacity of American statesmen. Hence they are more strictly the work of Providence than of human foresight or human intelligence and will. It is therefore that their permanence and growth are to be counted on. They have their root in the soil, and are adapted to both the soil and the climate. They are of American origin and growth.
Religious liberty is not, as I have shown, of Protestant origin. Most of the colonists held the Catholic principle of the incompetency of the civil power in spirituals, but the greater part of them held that the civil power is bound to recognize and to provide for the support by appropriate legislation of the true religion, and that only. Yet as they were not agreed among themselves as to which is the true religion, or what is the true sense of the revealed word, and having no authoritative interpreter recognized as such by all, and no one sect being strong enough to establish itself and to suppress the others, there was no course practicable but to protect all religions not contra banos mores, and leave each individual free before the law to choose his own religion and to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. This was of absolute necessity in our case if we were to form a political community and carry on civil government at all.
{638}
I do not claim that Catholics founded civil and religious liberty in the United States, nor do I deny that so far as men had a hand in founding them, they were founded by Protestants, but I do contend that our Protestant ancestors acted in regard to them on Catholic rather than on Protestant principles. We have so often heard civil and religious liberty spoken of as the result of the reformation that many people really believe it, and many good honest American citizens are really afraid that the rapid increase of Catholicity in the country threatens ruin to our free institutions. But the only liberty Protestantism, as such, has ever yet favored, is the liberty of the civil power to control the ecclesiastical. There is no danger to any other liberty from the spread of Catholicity. There is a great difference between accepting and sustaining a democratic government where it already legally exists, and laboring to introduce it in opposition to the established and to the habits, customs, and usages of the people where it does not exist. And even if Catholics in other countries had a preference for the monarchical form, they would not dream of introducing it here, and would be led by their own conservative principles, if here, to oppose it, since nothing in their religion requires them, as a Catholic duty, to support one particular form of government rather than another.
Protestantism affords in its principles no basis for either civil or religious liberty. Its great doctrine, that which it opposes as a religion to the church, is the absolute moral and spiritual inability of man, or the total moral and spiritual depravity of human nature, by the fall. This is the central principle of the reformation, from which all its distinctive doctrines radiate. This doctrine denies all natural liberty and all natural virtue, and hence the reformation maintains justification without works, by faith alone, in which man is passive, not active, and that all the works of unbelievers or the unregenerate are sins. Man is impotent for good, and does not and cannot even by grace concur with grace. All his thoughts and deeds our only evil, and that continually, and even the regenerate continue to sin after regeneration as before, only God does not impute there seems to them, but for his dear Son's seek turns away his eyes from them, and imputes to them the righteousness of Christ, and with it covers their iniquities. There is no ground on which to assert the natural rights of man, for the fall has deprived man of all his natural rights; and for republican equality the Reformation phones at best the aristocracy of grace, of the elect, as was taught by Wickliffe, and attempted to be realized by Calvin in Geneva, and by the Puritans in New England, who confined the elective franchise and eligibility to the saints, which is repugnant to both civil and religious liberty for all men.
It is time that our historians and popular writers should reflect a little on what they are saying, when they assert that the reformation emancipated the mind and prepared the way for civil and religious freedom. This has become a sort of cant, and Catholics here it repeated so often that some of them almost think that it cannot be without some foundation, and therefore that there must be something uncatholic in civil and religious liberty. It is all a mistake, and illusion, or a delusion. The principles of the reformation, as far as principles it had, were and are in direct conflict with them, and whatever progress either has made has been not buy it, but in spite of it, by means and influences it began its career by repudiating. The man reared in the bosom of the reformation has no conception of real religious, civil, or mental liberty till he is converted to the Catholic faith, and enters as a freeman into the Catholic Church.
I have dwelt at length on this subject for the sake of historical truth, and also to quiet the fears of my non-Catholic countrymen that the spread {639} of the church in our country will endanger our republican or democratic system of government. That system of government is quite as acceptable to Catholics as it is to Protestants, and accords far better with Catholic principles then with the principles of the reformation. The church does not make our system of government obligatory on all nations; she directly enjoins it nowhere, because no one system is adapted alike to all nations; and each nation, under God, is free to adapt its political institutions to its own wants, taste, and genius; but she is satisfied with it here, and requires her children to be loyal to it. It is here the law, and as such I supported it. I might not support a similar system for Great Britain, France, or Russia; because, though it fits us, it might not fit equally well the British, the French, or the Russians, or as well as the systems they already have fit them. My coat may not fit my neighbor, and my neighbor's coat may not fit me. I am neither as a Catholic nor as a statesman a political propagandist. But I love my own country with an affection I was unconscious of as a Protestant, and Americans bred up Catholics will always be found to be among our most ardent patriots, and our most stanch defenders of both civil and religious freedom.
The mistake is that people are too ready to make a religion of their politics, and to seek to make the system of government they happen to be enamored of for themselves a universal system, and to look upon all nations that do not accept it, or not blessed with it, as deprived of the advantages of civil society. They make their system the standard by which all institutions, all men and nations, are to be tried. They become political bigots, and will tolerate no political theories but their own. Hence, the American people are apt to suppose there is no political freedom where our system of government does not prevail; and to conclude because the church recognizes the legitimacy in other forms of governments in other countries, and does not preach a crusade against them, that she is the enemy of free institutions and social progress. All this is wrong. Religion is one and catholic, and obligatory upon all alike; political systems, save in the great ethical principles which underlie them, are particular, national, and are obligatory only on the nation that adopts them. There are catholic principles of government, but no catholic or universal form of government. Our government is best for us, but that does not prove that in political matters we are wiser or better than other civilized nations, or that we have the right to set ourselves up as the model nation of the world. Other nations may not be wholly forsaken by Providence. Non-Catholic Americans cry out against the church that she is anti-republican; but if we were monarchists we should cry out as did the monarchical party in the sixteenth century, that she is anti-monarchical and hostile to the independence of kings. Let us learn that she may in one age or country support one form of civil constitution, and without inconsistency support a different system in another.
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{640}
From All the Year Round.
"DEO OPT. MAX"
Art thou drowsy, dull, indifferent, Folder of the hands, Dreaming o'er the silent falling Of life's measured sands?
Living without aim or motion, Save thyself to please, Careless as the beasts that perish, Sitting at thine ease?
Not for thee the mighty message Rings in startling tone; Vainly would its peeling accents Strike through hearts of stone.
Sounding o'er the clash and clatter Of this earth's vain din, Unto you, that live in earnest, And that work to win,
Thus it speaks: "Aspirants, toilers For some lofty gain, See ye spend not strength and spirits, Hope and faith, in vain!
"All that soars past self is noble-- Every upward aim-- Make it nobler yet--the noblest! And immortal fame!
"Let not good or great content ye-- Higher and still higher, Only for the best, the greatest, Labor and aspire!
"Spurning all that's partial, doubtful, All your vigor bend (Worthiest aim and worthiest effort) To a perfect end!
"Thus have all true saints before ye, All true heroes striven, Reaching for the best, the highest, Beyond earth to heaven."
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{641}
Translated from the French.
ROBERT; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF A GOOD MOTHER.
CHAPTER FIRST.
"Although young on the earth, I am already alone. . . . . . And when I ask myself Where are those I love? I look at the green turf." LAMARTINE.
THE ORPHAN.
The traveler who passes through the village of the baths of Mount Dore, situated at the base of the mountain of Angle, will find that between the mountains the little streams of Dore and Dogne unites, and take the name of the river Dordogne. In looking at the course of this new-born River, he will see to the left of the mountain of Ecorchade, thus named for its ruggedness and its deep ravines. This mountain crumbles away each day under the powerful hand of time, and its volcanic wrecks move the valley with strange sounds, which the echo takes up and wafts to the most distant spots. On the other side of the valley, to the right of the mountain, and in front of Ecorchade, is another mountain, the round top of which is covered with verdure and with wood. Its base is formed of basaltic columns of black, white, and gray rocks of different shapes and sizes, which stand there like a troop of phantoms. Near the base, and in one of the fissures of this mass of rocks, piled up by some giant hand, there was, about twenty-five years ago, a little house, constructed, one might imagine, by the spirit of the mountain, to serve as a refuge for travellers when the furious children of the tempest were unchained. Hidden by the abrupt flanks of the mountain, and masked in the spring and summer by the dense foliage of trees centuries old, this retreat suddenly became visible to mortal eye. But the chief interest attached to it is, that for twelve years it was inhabited by a high-bred lady, who chose this secluded spot, and placed herself, one might say, on the first step of this gigantic ladder, which seemed by degrees to draw her nearer to heaven, and away from the vain pursuits of earth. She came unattended, carrying in her arms an infant several months old. This child, her son, was the object of her most tender care, and was the only thing that was to endear her to this savage solitude. From whence came this person, who was she, and what were her resources for living? No one knew. Her real name even was to remain a mystery for all, even for those eager and pitiless people who are always ready to unravel the causes of secret sorrow, and who rejoice when they can see tears and suffering. Such people are like a species of wasp that only approach to sting you most cruelly. The people of the valley had on many occasions tried to stop this young woman and capture her confidence by testimonials of friendship and feigned sensibility, but they had seen their insidious advances repulsed with such coldness that, deceived and disappointed, they were obliged to put an end to their efforts. Finally, when all curiosity had subsided and given place to the most complete indifference, they learned in some way that she called herself Madame Dormeuil, and her little boy Robert. There was one person, however, who had received the intimate confidence of Madame Dormeuil, and that was the curé of the village, and from time to time he was seen directing his steps toward the solitary abode, where more than one indiscreet eye had wished to penetrate. At the time this story opens it is {642} night, one of those glorious nights of the month of May, nights full of sweet mysteries and soft perfumes, nights the nightingale resounds in harmonious cadences. It is the hour of silence and repose for humanity; but still a dim light shone through one of the windows of this isolated house. As the hours of the night advanced, when all nature slept, even the smallest insect under the humid leaves of the rose, hard necessity constrained even the inmates of this house to sleep, but alas! It proved a funeral awakening. The tender mother, who, during the infancy of her child, had tasted in this modest asylum moments of happiness, pure and chaste, such as our only given to maternal love, closed her eyes, and breathed out her last sigh, with no one here but her little son. In vain he calls his dear mother, her voice can reply to him no more. Poor child! what will become of him? for he has no one in the wide world to love and protect him; and in the bitterness of his grief he sobs and cries, "Dead! dead! I have no mother now!" and takes her hand, but it is cold and stiff, and no longer sensible to the soft pressure of his. The unaccustomed silence of those lips, that never parted but to speak tenderly to him, is more than he can bear, but suddenly his face recovers its habitual serenity, and a smile lights up his pallid cheeks. What means this sudden change, this almost instantaneous forgetfulness of sorrow, which drives in an instant the tears of love? But do not blame him; it is not forgetfulness, but remembrance--the remembrance of his mother's last words--her last adieu, her last sublime expression of a love which cannot be extinguished, even by the cold shadow of death, for it re-lives in heaven. "My child," said his mother to him on that day, "I have loved you much, but I must leave you. I am going to live with the angels, but I will watch over you. Be wise, honest, laborious; love God with all your heart, and others as yourself, and he will bless you. Do not grieve for my loss, for I will still be useful to you in heaven. I will pray there for you. Take courage, and always remember, when you are in trouble, to raise your thoughts to the eternal throne, and consolation will not be denied you." These were the words which Robert remember, and which stopped so suddenly the violence of his grief. This was why he almost thought his mother was not dead; this was why he felt no fear, though alone; with these sweet thoughts forever present, he fancied her eyes would reopen and smile upon him. He knelt in prayed with fervor, seeming to solicit some special manifestation, and his attitude told that he mentally invoked of his mother and the Protector of children what he knew to be good for them; and his prayer, no doubt, was favorably received, for it his imagination he saw the home of the saints. "My mother!" cried the child, transported with joy, "is it thee? Oh! speak, I pray thee, speak to thy Robert!" But the celestial vision faded, and he saw nothing but the thousands of little globes of light, the sparkling fire of which dazzled his eyes. Thus maternal influence, even from the tomb, comes as a gentle authority to this pious orphan. We will see him in each important event, and in each critical phase of his life invoking this mysterious and beneficent power that presides over him from heaven, in the presence of his mother. It is already under the generous impulse of this belief that he is consoled and strengthens, and returns to the funeral chamber, and calls again upon prayer and reflection.
Robert had never played with children. Always with his mother, whom he passionately loved, and who conversed with him as she would have done with an older person, he had acquired a seriousness of conversation and a precocity of judgment which made him, though still a child in years, almost a man in his intelligence and good sense. Child of solitude, wild flower of the mountain, he was {643} entirely ignorant of the habits of cities and of society, but he possessed an instinct which took the place of large experience in human nature. He was what God had made him, good and generous, loving the beautiful with the fervent adoration which characterizes great souls, and feeling a deep repugnance for even the appearance of evil. These inestimable gifts God in his wisdom has seen fit to endow to certain souls.
Robert was not more than twelve years of age, but he could read and write well. Possessed of a good memory, he had retained the many recitations made him by his mother in geography and sacred and profane history. His course of reading had not been extensive, for his mother had but few books; but she had been to him the living book from which he had gained all he knew, and which developed the qualities of the heart and Christian virtues which, later in life, shone so brilliantly in him. Robert was often absorbed in thinking over his past life, so rich in delicious memories. He remembered that his mother had spoken to him of Paris with an emotion which betrayed itself in her trembling voice. She was born there, she had told him, and had passed a part of her youth there. He remembered perfectly that, each time his mother referred to the subject, she exercised upon him a charm which entirely captivated his attention. If by her glowing descriptions of Madame Dormeuil had any intention of exciting in her son the wish to go to that city, she completely succeeded, for, notwithstanding his tender years, the words of his mother had filled him with an ardent desire to see the place predestined to be the most beautiful and most wonderful city ever built by the hands of man. This desire taking hold of him, he naturally thinks of the means of satisfying it, if the unfortunate circumstances in which he finds himself will forget. Moved by the strong wish, which was not weekend when obstacles presented themselves, Robert tried to get things ready to start. Opening a closet where he had often seen his mother put things she intended for him, the first object that met his eyes was a package, tied, and bearing this inscription, "For my son when he is twenty-one years of age." Under this was another paper, folded double, but not tied. He opened this, looking at the words which were written at the top: "My last requests." "When I shall be no more, my son," said Madame Dormeuil (and unfortunately the hour of death approaches very near) "quit this mountain where thou hast been a happy child, and go to Paris, where thou wast born. God and my love will conduct thee there, but constantly place thyself under his protection. Work; make thyself beloved, by thy sweetness and perseverance and good conduct. A voice within said to me one day, that happiness crowned all virtuous efforts, and this prediction of my heart will be realized, and thy mother will rejoice in heaven when she sees it descend on thee. Thou wilt find in a purse some crown pieces; it is all that I possess. Start soon, walk the short roads, have courage. Avoid bad children, seek the old and the wise. Pray to God fervently, and he will never abandon the good who walk in his presence and keep in their hearts the counsels of a mother. Adieu, my child, my dear and much loved Robert I will meet you in a better world than that in which I leave you, my poor little one, and then we will never part again."
Robert covered with kisses and with tears the words traced by the failing hand of his mother; then, when he was a little calmed, it made him happy to know that she had conceived a plan which was precisely the same he had thought of, and that she was solicitous for him to go. The rest of the night passed slowly enough to the young orphan. At daybreak he came down from the mountain and knocked at the door of the rectory. The virtuous and worthy curé, who preached to the inhabitants of the village of Bains, received him with the utmost kindness, for he had known him long and well, and had already initiated him into the {644} mysteries of our divine religion, and from his pure and touching morals he had been led to give him his first communion. When he saw the poor child in such distress he could scarcely utter a word, so much did he feel for his bleeding heart, either could he ask him the questions he knew he ought relative to his leaving the isolated place in which he had lived, nor could Robert have answered them so full was he of emotion; but he said to him in a paternal tone and full of interest: "Let us see, my child, what is to be done with your effects. Don't you think that you should leave the place, now that you are alone? What do you intend to do? Have you formed any project? If you have confidence in me, tell me your ideas, speak to me openly, and all that I can possibly do for you I will with pleasure I have no occupation but to do good to others, to console them in their sorrows, and take them by the hand with a need assistance." "Thank you, good curé," replied Robert, with sweetness and respect. "I desire to obey the wishes of my mother, who tells me to go to Paris. See what she says to me--this dear, good mother--before she dies," holding to him with the trembling hand the precious paper containing the interpretation of his mothers wishes. He then said: "Is it not a sacred duty I owe my mother, that of accomplishing her last request?" "Yes, my dear child, but you are very young to make so long a journey on foot to Paris. Do you know any one there?" "No, sir; but my mother said I must go, and no matter how I get there I must do it." "Your resolution is praiseworthy my child, yet it seems to me that you should reflect a little, before undertaking what seems so much for you. But if you really must attempt it, I will give you a letter to a friend of mine, who is now curé of the Church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. This recommendation, I hope, will be of great assistance to you, for my friend is a man of rare virtues and inexhaustible charity Place your cell under his protection, and I do not doubt but you will soon be out of embarrassment. I think you should sell your furniture, the proceeds would in large your funds very much. But, my child, your extreme youth frightens me. I am afraid you will never get to Paris." "Oh! be tranquil, good father. I trust so much to God as my guide that I know I shall arrived without accident, and with but little fatigue." "Go, my child, I have no longer any objection; and since you desire it so much, I will do all I can to facilitate your project. While I am gone refresh yourself; take something to eat, it will strengthen your body, which cannot but be feeble under the sufferings of your soul. Do you hear, my child? I want you to take some nourishment, if it is only a little you will feel better after it. I will return directly," and, looking kindly at him, the venerable curé went out, to see which of his parishioners would purchase the furniture belonging to the orphan.
Chapter II
"Still an hour of suffering, Still a sad farewell".
. . . . .
THE FAREWELL.
The curé was a all time absent, and when he return had no good news for Robert; his errand had been ineffectual. "My child," said he, "my wishes for disposing of your furniture have been in vain, but do not be discouraged. Let us go and pay the last mark of respect to your mother, and then we will speak of other things." Robert followed him, and on the way told him of the package of papers he had found in the closet, the contents of which he was not to know until he had attained his majority.
"I advise you, my child, to leave me the package to take care of. If you should lose it, it would be an irreplaceable loss, and might be attended with {645} serious results. You need fear no accident on my part, for, if God should call me to him, before we meet again, I will put it in safe hands; for instance, if it please you, to the Notary of Besse, a small town about two leagues from here. It might be a long time before you would return, but the grave of your mother will draw you here, and I know you are too good a son to forget it. I am sure, then, of seeing you sometimes if God wills it, for it is the Supreme Arbiter who decides the length of our days." They had come by this time to the house, the door of which was opened by a woman who had been sent there by the curé to "lay" out the mother of the poor orphan. Her body was then enclosed in the coffin, and the cortége took the way which led to the churchyard, where rest at last the king and his subjects, the rich and the poor. Oh! what courage it requires to bear up under the sorrows of this last sad walk, above all when the earth receives the remains of a cherished mother. How each sound that fell on the coffin bruised this poor child's heart! And were it not for the consoling hope, the firm belief, that his mother was in heaven, his life would be one of despair; but he believed what she told him before she died, that she would rest on the bosom of God, and that she would watch over him with the same love and the same solicitude of which she had given him so many proofs during her life. He was the last to leave this new grave, which hid from his sight forever the only being he ever loved, and which was watered with filial tears. "Oh!" he exclaimed, "if I can only put a stone over my good mother, it will be a consolation to know, when I visit the spot where I leave my heart, that it is marked by the love of a son." Full of this idea he revealed it afterward to the good curé, who took an interest in it, and listened, with tears in his eyes, while the child cultures the cost of a simple so. "But, my child," he said sadly, "all simple as it may be, it will still be too dear for your feeble resources. Wait for executing this pious wish until you have more to spare. I cannot promise you that it will be a new one, but I will place a wooden cross on your mother's grave." Robert, although saddened at the non-success of his project, felt the wisdom of the advice which was given him. He resigned it for the present, hoping that a more prosperous time would come, when miserable pecuniary considerations need not stop him in the accomplishment of what he felt was a filial duty. Then after having thanked the pastor, and told him how grateful he was to him for his paternal care and loving advice, he asked his permission to pass another night in the house where he first remembered the light of day. "Go, my child," said the curé, moved by his touching resolution, "go if you feel strong enough: solitude raises the soul and purifies its approach to the Creator. Sometimes remember the consoling words of our divine Saviour, 'Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.' It is time for you to go. May God in the silence of your solitary night visit your desolate soul, and with his paternal hand wipe away your tears. To-morrow morning I will see you, and we will arrange about your affairs."
The courageous child, for he was courageous to put himself face to face with so many dear remembrances, wished to visit once more the haunts of his infant joys, where his mother had guided his tottering steps, and, later, where she had explained to him the wonders of nature in the presence of these wonders. Yes, he wished to see them all again, and engrave them in an ineffaceable manner upon his memory. They were all dear to his heart, all filled with thoughts of his mother, and the most tender caresses had been exchanged there between them. He recalled the dreams of those days when his head rested on his mother's bosom, and he felt himself {646} bathed in love and happiness; he recalled the charm of that intercourse, when two hearts are bound in sweetest sympathy; and it was for this purpose that he wandered over the mountain, stopping at each loved spot, until he reached the highest plateau. There he sat down, but not before looking around him, for, for the first time in his life, he felt a little timid and frightened. The magic beauty of his surroundings was not new, he had seen it all often before, had contemplated it a thousand times, but a sort of unquiet terror seizes him, and betrays itself in tears. It seems but a day since he bounded and frolicked gayly in the same places, under the eye of his mother, and now what a strange and sorrowful change! He is alone; his strength and courage all gone. He seems so small and insignificant by the side of these masses of rocks, so gigantic and imposing, which look at him as though they would crush him. Little by little he becomes reassured; he thinks he hears above him chords of infinite sweetness; these ravishing sounds seem to come from the sky; it is a choir of angels, who chant the notes of some sweet melody. The child is transported with delight: he listens; his soul is strengthened, he is not deceived. From among those harmonious voices he discovers one well known to him, the sound of which makes him happy. He knows it is his mother's, and she calls tenderly to him: "Robert, what do you believe? am I not always with you? Look, my child, and admire this grand picture, radiant with waves of gold and purple from the declining sun. Look in wonder at what God has done for you." These words transformed Robert. He is transported with a new emotion, and, prostrating himself on his knees, cries, "O God! O God! how wonderful art thou, how grand are thy works!" After he had satisfied his soul with the enchanting scene, he went to all the spots where he had sat with his mother, and gave them each a long and sorrowful look, and then bade farewell to them. "Farewell, dear mountain, farewell beautiful valley. I gaze at you perhaps for the last time. And, shady wood, where I have so often slept, watched by my tender mother, you who have protected me from the two great heat of the sun, farewell also. I must leave you now, and I know not if I shall ever gaze upon your glories again. I would I could pass my life in your deep shades, and hear you whisper unceasingly the cherished name of my mother. But it cannot be; and now farewell. And thou, beautiful and fertile Limagne, that I see shining in the distance, I salute thee, and will soon traverse light green fields. Be hospitable to the poor little orphan, and made by smiling aspect and fresh verdure be a happy presage for me." He stood some moments silent and immovable, lost in regrets, and then returned to the house. During the night involuntary fear filled his mind. When the rays of the moon penetrated his chamber and the stars shed their soft light, he felt revived, and waited for the vision of the preceding night, but it came not, and his lips quivered, and at last sleep came to close his eyelids and repair the strength of his body and mind. The next day the curé found him somewhat consoled, at least more calm than before he slept. Together they made an inventory of his modest furniture, which was worth about fifty pounds. In one of the drawers they found a small medallion containing the portrait of a gentleman. The face was handsome and expressive, though a little hard. It was easy to see that it was a person of high rank; and if the good curé had been less preoccupied and had examined closely the face, he would, perhaps, have been struck by the resemblance which existed between the features of the child and those of the miniature. He would have concluded beyond doubt that it was his father. But he simply handed it to Robert, saying almost mechanically, "It is necessary to preserve this with care." The {647} examination being concluded, he said to him: "My child, I have not found any purchasers for this furniture, and may not for some time. I will give you, however, what I suppose to be its value, and if I should get more for it shall be glad to remit it to you; by thus doing I will have time to look about, and can, perhaps, dispose of it two more advantage." The poor child knew not how to reply to this kindness, but he said, "All that you have done is right, my dear father, you are too good to take so much trouble for me, and I thank you with all my heart." Again the curé closed the door and took Robert's hand. He burst into sobs at the idea of being separated from all which reminded him of his mother, but he baked him to have courage. "Courage, my child. I know you suffer in leaving a spot sacred to your mother's memory; it is but a natural feeling but you cannot stay. Leave all to my care, accomplish the wish of your mother, go to Paris, and if the blessing of an old man, a blessing which calls down that of God, can inspire you with resolution and confidence in the future, I give you mine, and made it make you happy." In saying these words he had laid his hands on the head of the child, who was kneeling before him.
Robert past several days with the kind father, where he gained strength and courage; and one morning at sunrise, with a small bundle of his shoulder and a stick in his hand, set out, accompanied by the good curé, who had wished to render less painful by his presence the first steps of this sad journey. He had sent a letter to his friend the curé in Paris, in which he enclosed the fifty pounds, not thinking it prudent that Robert should carry it with him. A half league from the village, on the route to Claremont, the excellent man embraced the child, pointed to heaven, and bade him farewell!