II. The Slaves' Feast

II. The Slaves' Feast

The great Festival called Saturnalia was being celebrated in Rome when these events took place. The occurrence of this feast enabled the Christians from many parts of the world to assemble in the city, and to celebrate under cover of it the feast of Christmas. History does not light us with certainty to the precise time at which this latter feast was instituted, but shows it in matured existence at a very early period. Tradition has surmised that it had its birth in the first century, and that it was celebrated in secret and security under shadow of the pagan festivities of the Saturnalia.

The Saturnalia, in honor of Saturnus, to whom the Latins traced the introduction into Italy of agriculture and the civilizing arts, fell toward the end of December. The agricultural labors of the year being then over, it became a kind of harvest-home with the rural population. After the Julian addition of two days to the month of December, it commenced on the 16th of the Kalends of January, that is, on the 17th December, and continued for three days. But the people generally anticipated the time and prolonged it to the end of the month, especially to the 24th, when it became merged in another feast called Sigillaria, on account of the earthenware figures then hawked about as toys for children.

During the feast the slaves were allowed great liberty of act and of speech. Throwing off their sombre garments of brown and black, which, together with their slippers, made up the servile dress, (vestis servilis,) they donned their masters' clothes, assumed like freedmen the pileus, or felten cap, considered the badge of freedom. Their allowance of bread and salt and oil was increased and made palatable by the addition of wine. Their masters often waited on them at table, where thoughts were freely uttered in joke and song as well as in sober earnest without restraint or blame. The whole people made merry; the toga was laid aside, and the loose-fitting garment synthesis put on with a high-peaked skull-cap without brim, (pileus.) Wax-tapers were given as presents, particularly by slaves to their owners and by the clients to their patrons; with these lighted in their hands, they went along the streets shouting "Io Saturnalia!" Stores and courts were closed; schools kept holiday; war could not be proclaimed; evil-doers could not be punished; gambling, prevented by law at other times, was permitted. In private circles mock-kings were chosen, who ruled the sports with right royal dignity. All these and greater privileges, were granted the slaves.

Aurelian was in no mood for enjoyment since his interview with Flavia. Knowing that many strangers would be calling at his Roman palace, he avoided them by betaking himself to his suburban villa. There, too, he could with less fear of discovery keep his engagements with Zoilus and Sisinnius for the 8th of the Kalends of January. He was nervously anxious to prove the truth of what the former had told him.

He retired, therefore, to the country. Thither he invited Sisinnius to meet him on the day agreed on with Zoilus, under plea of seeing his slaves celebrate the feast in rural style. {530} Sisinnius found him in the Tablinum, a room opposite the hall door, where family records and archives were kept. Seeing Aurelian, thin, pale, and dull, writing on a parchment roll, he asked:

"Is it making your will you are? You remind me of the shade of Dido! This comes of neglecting the gods and their feasts, and shutting yourself up among those woods and stone-walls like a vestal. If you staid in the city, and lighted your wax-taper, and sang your song to Saturn like a good jolly fellow, you would be far more cheerful and comely!"

"Perhaps so. But the three destinies are not all and always kind. I have had my happy times; it is fair my sad ones should come."

"Pshaw, Aurelian! Pour out a libation to Bacchus and then empty off the goblet yourself, and you shall find the jolly god will stiffen up your drooping spirits! I know the cause of all this--your interview with that wilful girl! Cheer up! women are like the summer clouds, one time damp and dark, the next beaming with the sunshine of love and beauty."

"Very poetical, Sisinnius, but Flavia is not after the ordinary mould. Tonight, however, will decide my doubts and hopes for ever. You remember our engagement with Zoilus?"

"Yes, I am half sorry I made it. I cannot read that slave. He seems to know every one and everything; and one can scarcely distinguish between his jocose and his serious moods. Do you know where I met him as I came to the crossway of the Appian and Latin roads? Talking to that Jewish beggar who sits morning, noon, and night asking pennies from the passers-by near the Egerian fountain."

"I allowed him into the city to arrange for our admission to the meeting-place of the Christians. He certainly does know a great deal, and must be a clever deceiver. Otherwise he could not have crept into the secrets of those mysterious, plotting Jewish sects without being distrusted. However, in the present instance he is serious and to be trusted; for I have promised him and a female slave--a Jewess also, who has fascinated him--their liberty, in case he convinces me that Flavia has become a Christian. But, hush! here he comes. Well, Zoilus, you have returned sooner than I expected. What news from the city?"

"Hail, noble Sisinnius!" said the Greek, bowing. "Well, master, the divine Domitian is in a fury; the exhibition of games in the new amphitheatre has been a failure. He had ordered, it is said, nearly ten thousand beasts and a proportionate number of gladiators, a number exceeding that with which his brother Titus had dedicated it. The play of Hercules and Omphale was to be enacted before the people. A gladiator was under training for many weeks to sustain the character of Hercules, and was to have been burned alive at the end in a skirt set on fire with vitriol and tar. The gladiator went through the preparatory training well, and seemed to enjoy the good things ordered him by the emperor with the view of making him fleshier and fatter for the burning. But, while being brought to the amphitheatre this morning, he slipped his head between the spokes of the cart-wheel, and, without gratitude for the good things, or feeling for the disappointment of the imperial god, suffered his neck to broken. This was really too bad of mere slave! [Footnote 166]

[Footnote 166: An historical fact. Friedlander.]

"So another had to substituted; what comfort or cause of laughter would there be in witnessing the burning of the corpse? A live substitute was found, who most ungraciously refused to move either hand or foot in the love-making of Hercules and Omphale. However, this could be borne in anticipation of the fiery ending; but, wonderful to relate, when the skirt was put on and the flames were lighted, he stood unscorched in their midst, calling on the Christian God. Was not the emperor in a rage! {531} The water was let into the arena and the crocodiles and other amphibious monsters were swimming about, devouring each other; and the man was thrown in, but they would not touch him! Floating on the surface of the water, with upturned face and clasped hands, he prayed the Christian God to have pity on Domitian. This so angered the latter that, standing up from his seat above the arena, he cursed the Christian and the Christian's God, in the name of his own and of Jupiter's divinity. When, lo! as if Jupiter was provoked, a thunderbolt like a burning globe came flashing as if from highest heaven, and went hissing through the water in the arena, killing every living thing within it except the floating Christian! The veil of the amphitheatre, with the machinery by which it was sustained, was set on fire and torn away. The people rushed from their seats; it is not known how many lives were lost. The emperor himself was terrified, and, running from his throne to his chariot, drove furiously to his palace, to find it also struck by the lightning." [Footnote 167]

[Footnote 167: These facts are substantially true. Tillemont's Lives of the Emperors, and the History of the Flavian Amphitheatre, or Colosseum, relate things as wonderful of Domitian's reign.]

"This will hasten the edict of persecution against the Christians; and it is time," observed Aurelian.

The villa stood on a farm of many hundred acres. A wooded hill, from which it was separated by a stream emptying into the Tiber, sheltered it from the wintry winds. The stream drained the land, which otherwise would have been a marsh, and thus prevented the unhealthy effluvia which unfitted many parts near the city for human resilience. Its distance of some miles from the great southern road saved it from many visitors, and thereby rendered it a secure retreat for a mind seeking solitude. Attached to the villa, but at some hundred yards from it, were the dwelling-places of the outdoor slaves, in and around which they were now feasting. It consisted of two open courts, [Footnote 168] an outer and an inner one.

[Footnote 168: Cohortes, chortes, cortes--courts.]

In the buildings around the former was the kitchen, an apartment large enough to contain the whole family employed on the farm. Family (familia) was the word used to designate the total number of slaves employed on an estate or in a household. Near the kitchen were the baths, the oil and wine-presses, the cellars, and in the upper stories the granaries, carefully protected from damp, heat, and insects. At the entrance-gate of this court were the apartments for the Villicus, or chief steward, and for the Procurator of the family. In the inner court were the stables, stalls, and sheds, (equilia, bubilia, and ovilia.) In the centre of each court was a large reservoir, into which the water from the stream was carried through terra-cotta pipes, or Roman-arched drains. The reservoir in the outer court was generally used for cleansing and soaking vegetables; that in the inner was carefully supplied with fresh water for poultry and cattle. Around both courts were the chambers (cellae) of the slaves, which fronted southward so as to catch the sun's light and heat. Near these chambers, but partly underground, was the prison for refractory or fugitive slaves; it was partially lighted by long and narrow windows.

Aurelian and Sisinnius strolled leisurely from the villa, accompanied by Zoilus, and discussing the wonderful events he had related. When they reached the courts, they found the slaves engaged in different amusements. It was a bright, bracing day; the sun shone in a cloudless sky, which had been swept by the wind. There was nothing to remind them of December, save only the long, dry branches of the trees rustling and swaying on the hillside, and the gusts sweeping at times in eddies round the courts as if they had lost their way. Some of the slaves were playing at quoits; others at draughts (latrunculi) in sheltered nooks. Some indulged in the usually forbidden game of dice, while younger ones took a boyish pleasure in rattling the cylindrical dice-boxes of bone or ivory, (fritillus.) {532} A group in the central area of the outer court played at odd and even, (par impar ludere;) while another was gathered around a slave with long-flowing philosophic beard, who proposed puzzles on the abacus, or calculating tray. Many sat quietly apart; others walked moodily about, wrapped in thoughts that seemed tinged with disappointment and gloom. But the great body of the family was in the kitchen, which resounded with singing, music, and dancing. As soon as Aurelian and his companions had entered the last-named apartment, a little slave with hunchback, wiry frame bounded from a couch and seized the skirt of his master's toga, which was slung in walking style over the left shoulder.

"The gods will be angry with the senator for wearing his toga during the feast, and for not waiting on Caipor as he did last year," exclaimed the dwarf.

"No, no, Caipor! Saturnus has given me leave to retain the toga; because I am not well, and he fears I would catch cold if I laid it aside for a lighter dress."

The face of Caipor darkened and tears brightened through his eyelashes.

"Poor master is not well and shall die! Then what will Caipor do? Villicus will whip him and put him in the furca for ringing his bells; or they will sell him and he will never more see or love good master or beautiful Flavia."

Aurelian assured him that there was no danger of his own death, and that he might ring his bells and should not be whipped. The little fellow shook his Phrygian cap, and rang a tiny peal from the tiny bells attached around it. The jingle caused him to laugh out with idiotic delight.

"Villicus cannot whip Caipor for shaking his bells, ha, ha! Villicus whipped Lucius to-day until the big drops of blood came from between the shoulders, and put him on the mill in the prison."

"Impossible!" said Sisinnius. "It is not lawful to punish or imprison during the feast."

"Lucius said so. But Villicus would not listen. Lucius is a big, strong man --why did he not kill Villicus? He did not cry or stir, but he kept calling on Jesus to help him; but Jesus did not come. Master, who is Jesus?" asked the fool.

Aurelian's curiosity was aroused. On questioning the steward, he was told that Lucius, with many other slaves, refused to join in honoring Saturn or any of the gods, or to award divinity to the emperor; that it was necessary to punish some one for example's sake, and that Lucius, other wise quiet and inoffensive, was chosen as being principal among the recusants.

"What is to come next?" said Aurelian bitterly to Sisinnius. "Our wives and daughters, and now our lowest slaves, are lured by this Christian seducer! Like the pestilence from the marshes, his influence is creeping into every corner and poisoning the whole atmosphere of our social system. Something must be done to check its deadly progress. A stronger dose than that administered by Nero is requisite to kill it."

Caipor was clinging affectionately to his master's side. At length, drawing the toga by a sudden jerk, he looked up into Aurelian's face and said:

"Caipor waits upon the senator the year round. Will not the senate wait upon Caipor during the festival?"

"Certainly, I will be your slave and wait on you, my Caipor! Where is your couch?"

Couches with, small tables for the guests had been arranged in form of a triclinium at one end of the large apartment. Leading Aurelian to one of these seats, the hunchback fool reclined upon his elbow in [a] most approved dining attitude; and, as Aurelian rolled the table to his side and helped him to wine and fruit, looked around the room with mingled pride and pleasure at being the only one so honored.

Meantime Zoilus told Sisinnius the history and character of several slaves. There were about four hundred present. {533} Our readers may give us credit for exaggeration if we draw attention to the vast numbers, the varied origin, and occupations of slaves owned by noble Romans in the age of Domitian. Slavery arose from three causes, namely, from birth, from civil punishment, and captivity in war. The captives by war alone would swell the number enormously. In the reign of Augustus a freedman died leaving by will over four thousand slaves, after having lost other thousands in the civil wars. Historians say that many Romans had from ten to twenty thousand. Juvenal puts the test of a person's fortune in the question, "Quot pascit servos?" "How many slaves does he support?" During the empire they filled every position, from the most menial to the most literary. They were tillers and caretakers of the territories of the patricians in Italy, Sicily, and in the provinces beyond the mountains and the seas. They were employed as bakers, barbers, cooks, stewards, and artisans; as tutors, clerks, amanuenses, readers, teachers, physicians, astronomers, rhetoricians, poets, and philosophers. The literature and science of the Roman world, the "Orbis terrarum" found many a worthy representative in their ranks. Hence it has been well said that the martial prowess of Rome conquered that of foreign nations, but that the civilization and learning of foreigners conquered or rather produced hers.

We need not wonder, therefore to find hundreds of slaves in the household of Aurelian. His family was among the oldest and noblest of the city. Counting those on his Italian and foreign estates, they numbered many thousands. In the assemblage which Sisinnius was scanning, many nationalities had representatives--Phrygians, Cappadocians, Thracians, Britons, Greeks, and Jews.

"Whence was Caipor purchased?" asked Sisinnius.

"The mother of Aurelian," answered Zoilus, "was driving in her four-wheeled chariot (rheda) through the streets of Rome. Her attention was drawn to a dwarfish figure, who, emerging from the forum of Augustus, followed the chariot-wheels, clapping his hands and crying out, 'Well done! little wheel. Run fast! Big wheel can't catch you; well done, little wheel!' He was in ecstasies on seeing the smaller wheels of the carriage, as it rolled quickly on, keep their position at the same distance from the larger. The slave-dealer from whom he had wandered came up and scourged him severely. He cried piteously and called on the lady for protection. Moved with pity, she made her husband buy him at a cost of ten thousand sestertia, ($50,000.) [Footnote 169] Since that time he has been the pet fool of the household (morio,) and was, according to custom, named Caipor (Caii puer) after my noble master's father."

[Footnote 169: A morio, or fool, in the reign of Nero cost $15,000! Dio.]

"What is the name of that female yonder? How beautiful is the symmetry of her face and figure! But there is determined purpose in her lip and eye."

"That is Judith the Jewess," said Zoilus, slightly confused. "She was bought like myself from among the slaves left by the late Consul Domitilla. She was a little girl during the siege of Jerusalem; and, having miraculously escaped was, like other girls of her age and beauty, brought to grace the triumphal return of the conqueror Titus. During the procession she was perched like a winged Iris on the same chariot with Venus and Apollo."

"And that other near her?"

"Is the daughter of a Roman plebeian, and by birth a free woman. But, having secretly married a slave, she was on discovery reduced to his level. She bears her lot patiently, however, because she cannot be separated by sale from her husband."

"I see two strongly built slaves sitting near each other. One of them wears his beard; and the fair locks of the other are down to his shoulders. They seem to look contemptuously on the amusements."

{534}

"One of these is a Getulian, the other a Briton. They were both chiefs and warriors in their respective countries. You perceive the mark (stigma) burned into the former's forehead? When first exposed in the slave-market, having on his neck the tablet (titulus) describing his various qualities, a physician was brought, before whom he was to be stripped and examined. Before they had time to so treat him he snatched up a staff, and, having prostrated slave dealer and physician, with a sweep bounded over the railing of the area and escaped among the buildings of the old forum. It cost the lives of three slave-hunters before he was captured. He was branded as a dangerous character and condemned to die as a gladiator. But Aurelian succeeded in procuring him. Since he came on this estate he has made no attempt at escape. Being allowed a percentage (peculium) on his work like many others employed by our master, he has become industrious, and hopes after some years to be able to purchase his liberty by his savings. The Briton is similarly situated. If they succeed in procuring freedom, depend upon it, they will return to their native hills and relight the torch of war."

"Who is that old man with bald head and long white beard, to whom Aurelian is now speaking?"

"That is Bathus, the tutor and caretaker of Aurelian's youthhood. He wears the long beard and cloak of a philosopher by license of the festival. He hates the emperor on account of his late edict of expulsion against the philosophic tribe. He also professes grammar and rhetoric. Next [to] him is Tritonios, a disciple of Hippocrates. He is famous for his skill in bleeding and in amulets. His bored ears show his Eastern origin, probably in Arabia. You may find him any morning before sunrise gathering herbs for charms. There is scarcely a slave, or a tree on the estate that has not a triangular Abracadabra, or some other amulet suspended on him or it, as a protection against disease and the evil genii."

While Zoilus and Sisinnius were thus conversing, those in the other parts of the apartment were not without their own topics and amusements. It was observable that they instinctively took their places according to their position and rank in the family. Those born in the household, the vernae, were more forward and talkative than the others; they well deserved the character given of them by the poet as the "vernae procaces."

A Roman slave-family contained all the sources of social enjoyment and happiness, such as was possible for persons in their condition, provided the owner and the superintendents were not inclined to tyranny. Their marriage was not indeed sanctioned by law; but the contubernium, which permitted them to live as man and wife under the same roof, was respected in its relations as much perhaps among the pagan, as among Christian nations, among whom slavery flourished. [Footnote 170]

[Footnote 170: Cod. iii. 23.]

An enactment was passed by the senate that in sales and divisions of property husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, should not be sundered. Roman jurists, no doubt, defined slavery to be a "constitutio juris gentium, quâ quis contra naturam alterius dominis subjicitur," thus strictly giving the master power to do much as he liked with the slave; to sell, punish, and put to death. In consequence great cruelties were often inflicted. But generally social intercourse and positive morality softened down their severity. Positive legislation also came to the aid of the slave. Under the Antonines, a man putting his slave to death without a justifying cause was subject to a heavy penalty. If a slave were treated too harshly, he might bring the case before the public tribunal and claim to be sold to another master. If a sickly or aged slave were exposed by the owner, he became free; and, if put to death, the crime was punished as murder. Christianity, though it did not proclaim slavery to be an essential evil, made way for emancipation. {535} The great principles of charity were urged by the first Christian writers and fathers of the church. Clement of Alexandria devoted much of his eloquence to this subject. Gradually this Christian spirit impregnated society, especially after the triumph of the cross under Constantine. Slaves who became priests, monks, nuns, or were promoted to any clerical order, were made free by law. Owing to these circumstances, the number of slaves became very much lessened. Many Christian masters emancipated all they possessed; others kept them, until they were instructed and converted, and then gave them freedom. Justinian particularly did much for the overthrow of slavery: his legislation, inspired by the Catholic Church, would have wholly extinguished it, but for the invasion of the northern barbarians. These brought with them their slaves, who were mostly Sclavonians, (sclavi, or slaves,) and reduced many of the conquered to the same level. The church was true to her policy of not suddenly tearing up any of the foundations of society when not essentially wrong; but she never ceased to preach, "in season and out of season," the great principle of "doing unto others as we would have them do unto us." This is the mirror she has always held up before master and slave. Seeing their duties here reflected, the evils of slavery, and finally the system itself, began to fade like snow under the softening influence of the sun. The voice of the Catholic Church was the herald of freedom from the beginning. Wondrous changes were brought about without those calamities accompanying sudden transitions. The echoes of her teaching have been taken up by religious and political parties. But they have had the injustice of appropriating it as their own, and the ingratitude to forget that the Catholic Church was the mother at whose knees mankind learned the lessons of Christian charity and liberty! But we must return.

During the conversation between Zoilus and Sisinnius, the jests and laughter of the "vernae" were heard above all other sounds.

"Observe Zoilus," said one, "he looks as sober and serious as Rhadamanthus on the judgment-seat. What is the matter with him?"

"He is expecting to be a freedman one of these days, and thinks it time to become a gentleman and quit his old habits and associates."

"Why, as to that matter, he is as free as the wind on the hill-side. He is in and out of the city as often as he likes. What induces master to give him so much freedom? There is something in it."

"See Murena, too! He expects in a few months to buy himself out with the profits of his peculium."

"That accounts for his being so great a miser. The barber told me that, after having his hair cut and nails pared the other day, Murena gathered the cuttings in order to make a denarius on them!"

This observation of the physician Tritonios caused laughter and was not unheard by Murena, who replied:

"O doctor! that is a stale joke stolen from Plautus. Next time I will preserve the parings for your amulets, they may be as good for the toothache or the colic as the hairs on the goat's chin which you hung upon the arm of Marcus!"

"Take care, Murena!" said a third, "you don't know how soon you may require Tritonios to assist you."

"Yes, and share the fate of Procax, who only saw the doctor in a dream, and awoke no more, though he carried an amulet."

The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of two slaves, a male and female, dressed in short and close garments for the dance. They wore leathern skull-caps for protection of the head in case of falling, because as they danced they flung themselves on their heads and alighted again upon their feet. Another slave played appropriate airs on the flute. {536} After engaging in this dance, in which, after Spartan style, the hands and head and eyes were in motion as well as the feet, a rope was extended across the room. The female dancer ascended, carrying a thyrsus bound with white fillet and ending in a bunch of vine and ivy leaves mixed with berries. Balancing herself with this, she danced in many graceful attitudes, representing satyrs, fauns, bacchanals, and other mythological beings. Then exchanging the thyrsus for a crater of wine and a small drinking-cup, she danced and meantime poured the wine from one vessel into the other, balancing herself by the action, and then descended amid great applause. After the dance the amanuensis of Aurelian declaimed with great spirit the beautiful passage of Homer in which the death of Hector at the hands of Achilles is described. Here some one remarked that Zoilus had not sung or improvised during the evening, and a unanimous call was made on turn, with which, after some hesitation, he complied by singing the following:

The Song of Saturnus.

A hymn to Saturnus, a grateful hymn, With goblets festooned to the bead-crowned brim, On his festival we sing: Who once in the year Doth freedom and cheer To slave and to master bring, Bring, To slave and to master bring.

He taught unto men how to till the hard soil, To plant the green grape and to draw the fat oil Which flows in the olive's heart, To prune the vine And to tap the mine, And every useful art.

He breathed on the earth; and his breath is the spring Which flowers and fruits on its bosom doth fling, And sweetens the summer breeze As it freshly blows Where the water flows Through the roots of the leaf-clad trees.

He breathed on the sea; and the ripples came Like smiles o'er its face, and its amorous frame Kissed with its cooling lip The shore in the hours When the sky sends its showers For the thirsty earth to sip.

He breathed on the air; and its brow grew white With rays scarce concealed by the veil of night; And the sun from its blue looked down With a smile so bland As to free the land From the chill of his winter frown.

He breathed on the springs; and the streams rushed out From their mother's lap with a mirthful shout: "Oh! come to the fields," they sang, "For the parched meads Need our limpid beads," And they laughed as they onward sprang.

Then a hymn to Saturnus, a grateful hymn, With goblets festooned to the wine-crowned brim, On his festival we sing: Who once in the year Doth freedom and cheer To slave and to master bring!

"Why, Zoilus, you rival Martial the Spaniard in wooing the virgin Nine," said Bathus. "If the emperor only knew your powers, he would patronize you as well as Juvenal, Quinctilian, and the Jew Josephus."

"The renegade from his race and creed!" said Ephrem, a Jewish slave, in an underbreath to Judith, who sat beside him.

"The golden age of poesy, like that of philosophy, has departed," remarked Zoilus in answer to Bathus. "The emperor has lost his early love of verse-making, and betaken himself to the burning of vestals [Footnote 171] and of Christians.

[Footnote 171: Vestals were burned in the reign of Domitian for violation of their vows.]

"By the way, Bathus, have you heard that Epictetus and the whole host of philosophers have been exiled? They say that Dio Chrysostom is consoling himself in the Getulian desert with a tract of Plato and a speech of Demosthenes. I would advise you strongly to shave your beard and lay aside the philosopher's cloak, or the beard may be cut off with the head attached to it. Genius is at a low ebb nowadays; that is my reason for having ceased to be one."

"Beware, lest you might share a like fate; your tongue wags very freely," observed Aurelian, who overheard the conversation.

"Noble master, this is the feast of free speech. To-morrow I will padlock my lips, and nothing but a golden key will open them." said the slave, glancing knowingly at his master. Then turning to Ephrem the Jew, "Sing us that ode to your native land I heard you repeat the other day, Ephrem."

"It is in Hebrew, and would not be understood."

{537}

"No matter; the metre and air are sweet and melancholy. I will have it translated into Latin hexameter by your countryman Josephus, one of these days, if you like."

"Name him not, the arch-sycophant, who lives by flattering tyrants," whispered Judith with a fierce tone and glance, before which Zoilus blanched and trembled.

"Fair Judith, be not angry; I meant it only in joke."

"Jokes at the expense of others' feelings deserve not the award of wit," said Ephrem, who, standing up, declaimed the following with a vehement earnestness:

Ode of the Exiled Jew to Jerusalem.

I.

Thy heart, Jerusalem! is desert and drear, Thy children no more in thy bosom appear; In the land of the Gentiles they sigh and they moan, While thou, dear mother! dost pine all alone.

II.

Thy turrets, and temple, and beautiful gate-- The gems that shone bright in the crown of thy state-- Like the ark of the prophets, no longer remain, And the Philistine foxes thy beauty profane!

III.

The gold harp of David awakens no more Thy echoes where pontiff and people adore; Thy silver-voiced trumpets are silent and dead, No smoke from thy temple ascends overhead.

IV.

Like the weeds on the beach by the ocean-tide hurled, Thy daughters are cast on the shores of the world; Thy eye's filled with weeping, thy heart's filled with woe, And thy brow once so fair in the dust is laid low!

V.

The dust of thy kings in thy bosom remains Where the hoofs of the Gentiles insult thy sad plains, And their lamps sacrilegious invade the deep glooms That wrap them to rest in thy Valley of Tombs!

VI.

Jerusalem, mother! we pray unto Him Who has filled up thy chalice of woe to the brim: "A curse on the tyrants whose impious hands Have seized thee, denied thee, and bound thee in bands!

VII.

"O send down, Jehovah! by night and by day, Thy blight on apostate impostors, we pray; The Christian deceivers, whose God we nailed fast [Footnote 172] To the tree of the cross as a sail to the mast!

[Footnote 172: The Jews cursed the Christians three times a day in their synagogues, says Epiphanius in this direful form, "Send down thy curse, God! on the Christians."]

VIII.

"Since the hour he was crucified outside thy gate, His blood like a poison has mixed in thy fate! May the God of thy fathers, the God of our race, From thy forehead, Jerusalem, wipe the disgrace!

During the delivery of the first verses tears flowed down the cheeks of Judith. During the last part fire seemed to flash from her eyes.

After Ephrem others were induced to sing or deliver pieces in the languages of their respective countries. In the reign of Domitian, the Sarmatians, Dacians, Parthians, and the German tribes beyond the Rhine had been completely subdued. Agricola had broken on the Grampians the fierce hardihood of the tribes beyond the Tay and Tweed. The success of the Jewish war in the two preceding reigns had scattered that unfortunate race over the earth. We can thence understand how on a large estate like that of Aurelian so many nationalities met. Leaving them to amuse themselves, we will follow Zoilus.

He left the hall quietly, crossed the outer court and a paddock between it and the villa, and entered through a low-arched door into the garden behind it. Between this garden and the villa was the peristyle, a rectangular area so named from having stone pillars around it. In its centre was a xystus with box and other shrubs, shaped like tigers, lions, and galleys. The deepening shades of evening brought out their figures with weird-like indistinctness. Judith the Jewess stood between two pillars, and as she stood, tall, straight, and motionless, might have passed for the guardian goddess of the place.

"I have been expecting you, Zoilus."

"You do not forget your promise, then?"

"No! my part shall be fulfilled as soon as you have complied with the conditions."

"Judith! these conditions are hard. I have my misgivings and fears about the part I have to play."

"Fears and misgivings?" she repeated. "These account for your changed manner this evening?"

{538}

"Yes, I have never known any one to end well who interfered with the Christians."

"Ha, ha!" she laughed ironically. "You fear the uncircumcised dogs!"

"Not them; but I fear their God."

"Their God! Is it the Galilean impostor?"

"Moreover," he went on, not noticing her question, "I do not like to betray the niece of our former owner Domitilla the consul. She was always good and kind to me."

"Look here," said the Jewess, baring her right arm, "see that scar, which after many years leaves a red seam behind. It was that girl, so good and kind, that drove her ivory hair-pin into the very bone, because I did not plat her hair to her liking. Was she not good and kind to me, Zoilus?"

"She was then young and thoughtless, but she is now different," he said.

"You see that tiger," she pointed to a shrub shaped like that animal, "does not the young cub betray the instincts of the full grown beast? But she is different, you will perhaps say, since she became a Christian. As well might you expect the drugs of Locusta [Footnote 173] to cure the leprosy. Have you heard what takes place in the private meetings of those fully initiated? Ah! there she can indulge her liking for human blood!"

[Footnote 173: A famous poisoner in the time of Nero.]

Zoilus was silent. Some struggle of feeling with principle was going on. Judith, observing him, exclaimed:

"A lustrum of five long years has gone by since you asked me to become your wife. I told you I would never be a wife, or have a husband, in slavery. It is in your power now to procure freedom for both. Do so, and Judith will be yours to-morrow. Hesitate now, and she takes back for ever the promise and the pledge she made you!" She left the peristyle before he had time to answer.

To Be Continued.

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From The Popular Science Review.

On the Struggle for Existence Amongst Plants.

The quaint dictum, "Plants do not grow where they like best, but where other plants will let them," which is credited to the late eminent horticulturalist, Dean Herbert of Manchester, expresses a truth not yet half appreciated by botanists. It is a protest against the prevalent belief that circumstances of climate and soil are the omnipotent regulators of the distribution of vegetables, and that all other considerations are comparatively powerless. The dean's crude axiom has lately found a philosophical exposition and expression in Mr. Darwin's more celebrated doctrine of the "struggle for life, and preservation thereby of the favored races," and if to it we add that great naturalist's more fruitful discovery of the necessity for insect and other foreign agencies in ensuring fertility, and hence perpetuating the species, we shall find that the powers of climate and soil are reduced to comparatively very narrow limits. Before proceeding to show what are the causes that do materially limit the distribution of species, it may be well to inquire how far the hard pressed soil and climate theory really helps us to a practical understanding of one or two great questions that fall under our daily observation; of these, the following are the most prominent.

{539}

That very similar soils and climates, in different geographical areas, are not inhabited naturally either by like species or like genera; that very different soils and climates will produce almost equally abundant crops of the same cultivated plants; and that, in the same soil and climate, many hundreds, nay, thousands of species, from other very different soils and climates, may be grown and propagated for an indefinite number of successive generations.

Of the first of these statements, the examples embrace some of the best known facts in geographical botany; as, for example, that the flora of Europe differs wholly from that of temperate North America, South Africa, Australia, and temperate South America, and all these from one another. And that neither soil nor climate is the cause of this difference is illustrated by the fact that thousands of acres in each of these countries are covered, year after year, by crops of the same plant, introduced from one to the other; and by annually increasing numbers of trees, shrubs, and herbs, that have either run wild or are successfully cultivated in each and all of them. The third proposition follows from the two others, and of this the best example is afforded by a good garden, wherein, on the same soil and under identical conditions, we grow, side by side, plants from very various soils and climates, and ripen their seeds too, provided only that their fertilization is insured. The Cape geraniums, London pride, and Lysimachia nummularia in our London areas, the pendent American cacti in the cottage windows of Southwalk and Lambeth, are even more striking examples of the comparative indifference of many plants to good or bad climate or soil; and what can be more unlike their natural conditions than those to which ferns are exposed in those invaluable contrivances, Ward's cases, in the heart of the city? True, the conditions suit them well, and, with respect to humidity and equability of temperature, are natural to them; but neither is the absolute temperature, nor the constitution, nor freshness of the air, the same as of the places the ferns are brought from; nor is any systematic attempt made to suit the soil to the species cultivated; for, as Mr. Ward himself well shows, the arctic saxifrage, the English rose, the tropical palm, and desert cactus live side by side in the same box, and under precisely similar circumstances, and, as it were, in defiance of their natal conditions.

Let it not be supposed that we at all underrate such power as soil and climate really possess. In some cases, as those of chalk, sand, bog, and saline and water plants, soil is very potent; but the number of plants actually dependent on these or other peculiarities of the soil is much more limited than is supposed. Of bonâ-fide water-plants there are few amongst phaenogams. Sand plants, as a rule, grow equally well on stiffer soils, but are there turned out by more sturdy competitors; and with regard to the calcareous soils, it is their warmth and dryness that fits them, to so great an extent, for many plants that are almost confined to them, or are absolutely peculiar to them. So, too, with regard to temperature, there are limits, as regards heat, cold, and humidity, that species will not overstep and live; but, on the other hand, so much has been done by selection in procuring hardy races of tender plants, and so much may be done by regulating the distribution of earth-temperature, etc., that we already grow tropical plants in the open air during a portion of the year, and eventually may do so for longer periods.

Amongst the most striking examples of apparent indifference to natural conditions of soil and climate, I would especially adduce two. One is the Salicornia Arabica, a plant never found in its natural state, except in most saline situations, but which has flourished for years in the Succulent House at Kew, in a pot full of common soil, to which no salt has ever been added; the other is the tea-plant, which luxuriates in the hot, humid valleys of Assam, where the thermometer ranges between 70° and 85°, and the atmosphere is so perennially humid that watches are said to be destroyed after a few months of wear; and it is no less at home in north-western India, where the summers are as hot and cloudless as any in the world, and the winters very cold. {540} I may add that the tea-plant has survived the intense cold of this last January, at Kew, on the same wall where many hardy and half-hardy plants have been killed.

It is, further, a great mistake to suppose that the native vegetation of a country suffers little and very exceptionally by abnormal seasons. The most conspicuous instance of the contrary that ever fell under my observation was the destruction of the gigantic gum-tree (Eucalyptus) forests in the central districts of Tasmania, which occurred, if I remember right, about the year 1837. In 1840, I rode over many square miles of country, through stupendous forests, in which every tree was, to all appearance, absolutely lifeless. The district was totally uninhabited, consisting of low mountain ranges, 2,000 feet above the sea, separating marshy tracts interspersed with broad fresh-water lakes. The trees, much like the great gaunt elms in Kensington Gardens during winter, but much larger, were in countless multitudes, 80 to 180 feet high, close set, and ten to twenty feet in girth; their weird and ghostly aspect being heightened by the fact of most being charred for a considerable distance up the trunk, the effects of the native practice of firing the grass in summer during the kangaroo hunting season; and by the bark above hanging from their trunks in streaming shreds, that waved dismally in the wind; for the species was the stringy-bark gum, that sheds its bark after this fashion. And not only had the gum-trees suffered, but the hardier Leptospermum (tea tree bush) and many others were killed, some to the ground and some altogether; so that, though my journey was in spring and the weather was delightful, the aspect of the vegetation was desolate in the extreme.

In such climates as our own, similar devastations are unknown, and, though we know that our island was once covered with other timber than now clothes it, we have every reason to suppose that the change was slow, and the effect either of a gradually altered climate, or of the immigration of trees equally well or better suited to the conditions of the soil and climate, but which had not previously had the opportunity of contesting the ground with the ruling monarchs of the forest.

Making every allowance, then, for the influence of soil and climate in checking the multiplication of individuals, we have still two classes of facts to account for: the one, that plants which succeed so well, when cultivated, that we are assured both soil and climate are favorable to their propagation, nevertheless become immediately or soon extinct when the cultivator's care is withdrawn; the other, that plants of one country, when introduced into another, even with a very different soil and climate, will overrun it, destroy the native vegetation, and prove themselves better suited to local circumstances than the aboriginal plants of the country. In the first case, the reasons are very various, all of them relating to the conditions of the plant's existence. Of these the two most potent are, the absence of fertilizing agents, and the destruction of seeds and seeding plants. In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to say which of these is most fatal in its effect. In the case of our annual plants or our cereals, which never run wild, it is the latter certainly; for they seed freely enough; in the case of many perennials, shrubs, and trees, it may be the former, as with the common elm and lime, which rarely or never seed in England, though the latter is so notably frequented by insects during its flowering season; whilst a third cause is to be found in their seedling plants being smothered by others, of which we have numerous examples in our common pasture grasses, which are, perhaps, the most prejudicial in this respect. {541} A most conspicuous example of this is afforded by the common maple, of which the seedlings come up early in spring by thousands in the neighborhood of the parent tree, in lawns and plantations, but scarcely ever survive the smothering effects of the common summer grasses as soon as these begin to shoot.

When I visited the cedar grove on Mount Lebanon, in the autumn of 1860, I found thousands of seedling plants, but every one of them dead; and so effectual is the annual slaughter of the yearlings in that grove, that, though the seeds are shed in millions, and innumerable seedlings annually spring up, there is not a plant in the grove less than about sixty years old. It may hence have been sixty years since a cedar there survived the first year of its existence; that is to say, has struggled through its infancy, and reached the age even of childhood!

On the other hand, when once the natural conditions of a country have been disturbed, the spread and multiplication of immigrants is so rapid that it shortly becomes impossible to discover the limits of the old, indigenous flora. Take the English flora, for example. If we contrast the cultivated counties with the uncultivated, the difference of their vegetation is so great that I have often been compelled to doubt whether many of the most familiar so called wild flowers of the cultivated counties are indigenous at all; nay, more, I have been tempted to suspect that some of the more variable of them, as some species of chenopodium and fumitory, may have originated since cultivation began. In the uncultivated counties the proportion of annual plants is exceedingly small, whereas in the cultivated counties annuals are very numerous; and the further we go from cultivation, roads, and made ground, the rarer they become, till at last, in the uninhabited islets of the west coast of Scotland, and in its mountainous glens, annuals are extremely rare, and confined to the immediate vicinity of cottages. Let any one who doubts this contrast between the floras of cultivated and uncultivated regions compare the annuals in such florae as those of Suffolk or Essex, the North Riding or Cumberland, with those of the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Arran. And it is not only that annuals abound in the cultivated districts, but that so many are nearly confined to ground that is annually or frequently disturbed. The three commonest of all British plants, for example, are, perhaps, groundsel, shepherd's purse, and Poa annua. I do not remember ever having seen any of these plants established where the soil was undisturbed, or where, if undisturbed, they had not been obviously brought by man or the lower animals; and yet I have gathered one of these, the shepherd's purse, in various parts of Europe, in Syria, in the Himalayas, in Australia, New Zealand, and the Falkland Islands. Were England to be depopulated, I believe that in a very few years these plants, and a large proportion of our common annual "wild flowers," would become exceedingly rare or extinct, such as the poppies, fumitories, trefoils, fedias, various species of speed-well, polygonum, mallow, euphorbia, thlaspi, senebiera, medicago, anthemis, centaurea, linaria, lamium, etc., etc.

It is usually said of some of the above-named plants that they prefer cultivated ground, nitrogenous soil, and so forth; and this is no doubt true, but that they will flourish where no such advantages attend them, a very little observation shows; and that they do not continue to flourish elsewhere is due mainly to the fact that, being annuals, their room is taken as soon as they die, and the next year's seedling has no chance of success in the struggle with perennials.

{542}

For good instances of this rapid replacement of annuals by perennials, the new railroad embankments should be examined. Whence the plants come from which spring up like magic in the cuttings many feet below the surface of the soil, is a complete mystery, and reminds us of the so-called spontaneous generation of protozoa in newly made infusions or in distilled water. In the south of Scotland in 1840-50, and many parts of the north of England, the first plant that made its appearance was Equisetum arvense, which covered the new-formed banks, for miles and miles, with the most lovely green forest of miniature pines. In the following year comparatively few of these were to be seen, and coltsfoot, dandelions, and other biennials, especially umbelliferae, with a great number of annuals, presented themselves. For many successive years I had no opportunity of watching the struggle for life on these banks, but when I last saw them they were clothed with perennial grasses, docks, plantains, and other perennial rooted plants.

The destruction of native vegetations by introduced is a subject that has only lately attracted much attention, but it has already assumed an aspect that has startled the most careless observer. Some thirty years ago the fecundity of the horse and European cardoon in the Argentine provinces of South America, so graphically described by Sir Edmund Head, drew the attention of naturalists to the fact that animals and plants did not necessarily thrive best where found in an indigenous condition; and the spread of the common Dutch clover, Trifolium repens, in North America, where it follows the footsteps of man through the pathless forests, has long afforded an equally remarkable instance of vegetable colonization. Still more recently in South Africa, Australia, and Tasmania, the Scotch thistle, brier rose, xanthium, plantain, docks, etc., have all become noxious weeds; and this leads me to the last and most curious point to which I shall allude in this article, namely, that the same annuals and other weeds that are held so well in check by the indigenous perennial plants of our country, when transplanted to others, show themselves superior to the perennial vegetation of the latter. Of this New Zealand furnishes the most conspicuous example; it was first visited scarcely more than 100 years ago, and it is not yet fifty since the missionaries first settled in it, and scarce thirty since it received its earliest colonists. The islands contain about 1,000 species of flowering plants, amongst which no fewer than 180 European weeds have been recorded as intruding themselves and having become thoroughly naturalized; and probably double that number will yet be found, as they have never been systematically collected; but the most curious part of the history is this, that whereas of indigenous New Zealand plants scarcely any are annual, no less than half the naturalized European ones are annual.

Of the effect of these introduced European plants in destroying the native vegetation, I have given examples in an article that appeared in the Natural History Review, (January, 1864,) from which I quote the following:

In Australia and New Zealand, the noisy train of English emigration is not more surely doing its work than the stealthy tide of English weeds, which are creeping over the surface of the waste, cultivated, and virgin soil, in annually increasing numbers of genera, species, and individuals. Apropos of this subject, a correspondent, (W. T. Locke Travers, Esq., F.L.S.,) a most active New Zealand botanist, writing from Canterbury, says: "You would be surprised at the rapid spread of European and other foreign plants in this country. All along the sides of the main lines of road through the plains, a Polygonum, (aviculare,) called 'cow-grass,' grows most luxuriantly, the roots sometimes two feet in depth, and the plants spreading over an area from four to five feet in diameter. The dock (Rumex obtusifolius or R. crispus) is to be found in every river-bed, extending into the valleys of the mountain rivers until these became mere torrents. {543} The sow-thistle is spread all over the country, growing luxuriantly nearly up to 6,000 feet. The watercress increases in our still rivers to such an extent as to threaten to choke them altogether; in fact, in the Avon, a still, deep stream running through Christ Church, the annual cost of keeping the river free for boat navigation and for purposes of drainage exceeds £300. I have measured stems twelve feet long and three quarters of an inch in diameter. In some of the mountain districts, where the soil is loose, the white clover is completely displacing the native grasses, forming a close sward. Foreign trees are also very luxuriant in growth. The gum-trees of Australia, the poplars, and willows particularly grow most rapidly. In fact, the young native vegetation appears to shrink from competition with these more vigorous intruders."

Dr. Haast, F.L.S., the eminent explorer and geologist, also writes to me as follows:

"The native (Maori) saying is, 'As the white man's rat has driven away the native rat, as the European fly drives away our own, and the clover kills our fern, so will the Maoris disappear before the white man himself." It is wonderful to behold the botanical and zoological changes which have taken place since first Captain Cook set foot in New Zealand. Some pigs, which he and other navigators left with the natives, have increased and run wild in such a way that it is impossible to destroy them. There are large tracts of country where they reign supreme. The soil looks as if ploughed by their burrowing. Some station-holders of one hundred thousand acres have had to make contracts for killing them at sixpence per tail, and as many as twenty-two thousand on a single run have been killed by adventurous parties without any diminution being discernible. Not only are they obnoxious by occupying the ground which the sheep farmer needs for his flocks, but they assiduously follow the ewes when lambing, and devour the poor lambs as soon as they make their appearance. They do not exist on the western side of the Alps, and only on the lower grounds on the eastern side where snow seldom falls, so that the explorer has not the advantage of profiting by their existence, where food is scarcest. The boars are sometimes very large, covered with long black bristles, and have enormous tusks, resembling closely the wild boar of the Ardennes, and they are equally savage and courageous,

"Another interesting fact is the appearance of the Norwegian rat. It has thoroughly extirpated the native rat, and is to be found everywhere, even in the very heart of the Alps, growing to a very large size. The European mouse follows it closely, and, what is more surprising, where it makes its appearance, it drives, in a great degree, the Norway rat away. Amongst other quadrupeds, cattle, dogs, and cats are found in a wild state, but not abundantly.

"The European house-fly is another importation. When it arrives, it repels the blue-bottle of New Zealand, which seems to shun its company. But the spread of the European insect goes on very slowly, so that settlers, knowing its utility, have carried it in boxes and bottles to their new inland stations."

But the most remarkable fact of all has been communicated to me since the above was printed, namely, that the little white clover and other herbs are actually strangling and killing outright the New Zealand flax, (Phormium tenax,) a plant of the coarsest, hardest, and toughest description, that forms huge matted patches of woody rhizomes, which send up tufts of sword-like leaves six to ten feet high, and inconceivably strong in texture and fibre. I know of no English plant to which the New Zealand flax can be likened so as to give any idea of its robust constitution and habit to those who do not know it; in some respects the great matted tussocks of Carex paniculata approach it. {544} It is difficult enough to imagine the possibility of white clover invading our bogs, and smothering the tussocks of this carex, but this would be child's play in comparison with the resistance the phormium would seem to offer.

The causes of this prepotency of the European weeds are probably many and complicated; one very powerful one is the nature of the New Zealand climate, which favors the duration of life in individuals, and hence gives both perennials and annuals a lengthened growing season, and, in the case of some, more than one seed crop in the year. This is seen in the tendency of mignonette and annual stocks to become biennial and even perennial, in the indigenous form of Cardamine hirsuta being perennial, and in the fact that many weeds that seed but once with us seed during a greater part of the year in New Zealand. Another cause must be sought in the fact that more of their seeds escape the ravages of birds and insects in New Zealand than in England; the granivorous birds and insects that follow cultivation not having been transported to the antipodes with the weeds, or, at least, not in proportionate numbers.

Still the fact remains as yet unaccounted for, that annual weeds, which, except for the interference of man, would with us have no chance in the struggle with perennials, in New Zealand have spread in inconceivable quantities into the wildest glens long before either white men or even their cattle and flocks penetrate to their recesses. Such is the testimony of Drs. Haast and Hector, and Mr. Travers, the original explorers of large areas of different parts of the almost uninhabited middle island, and who have sent to me, as native plants, from hitherto unvisited tracts, British weeds that were not found in the island by the careful botanists (Banks, Solander, Forster, and Sparrmann) who accompanied Captain Cook in his voyages; and which were not found by the earlier missionaries, but which of late years have abounded on the lowlands near every settlement.

This subject of the comparative great vis-vitae of European plants, as compared with those of other countries, involves problems of the highest interest in botanical science, and the subject is as novel as it is interesting; it is quite a virgin one, and requires the calmest and most unprejudiced judgment to treat it well. It cannot be doubted that the progress of civilization in Europe and Asia has, whilst it has led to the incessant harassing of the soil, led also to the abundant development of a class of plants, annual, biennial, and perennial, which increase more rapidly and obtain a greater development when transplanted to the Southern hemisphere than they have hitherto done in the Northern, and that, in this respect, they contrast strikingly with the behavior of plants of the Southern hemisphere when transplanted to the Northern; and hitherto no considerations of climate, soil, or circumstance have sufficed to explain this phenomenon.

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{545}

Original.

The Leaf of Last Year

I know I am dry and decayed; My skin is all yellow and sere; I know I ought not to have staid To become an old leaf of last year.

You are youthful, and merry, and green. I feel like a stranger up here; And can see you're ashamed to be seen By the side of a leaf of last year.

My wrinkled and shrivelled up face Excites you to laugh and to sneer; And the branch thinks that this is no place For an old-fashioned leaf of last year.

I can tell, as you toss your proud heads, What you whisper in each other's ear: "Old leaves should be gone to their beds, 'Tis no time for a leaf of last year."

You may flirt with the amorous winds; With your joys I will not interfere: But I'm sad; for my heart it reminds How they jilted a leaf of last year.

Ay! flatter and laugh with the breeze, You may think that its love is sincere, But I know what it said to the trees When I was a young leaf last year.

"Each one of these silly green leaves Is so flattered if I but come near, That she dances, and smiles, and believes I most surely will wed her this year.

"With soft kisses the hours I beguile; And their prattling is pleasant to hear. When I tire, I depart with a smile And a promise to meet them next year."

Then it came to my side with a bow, Embraced me, and called me its 'dear.' I was foolish to trust it, and now It forgets its old love of last year.

{546}

Away the false summer breeze hied; And my fibres all quivered with fear. One by one my mates withered and died, And left me alone till this year.

Soon autumn will come with its blast. And your beauty will, too, disappear. When you think on the joys that are past, You'll remember the leaf of last year.

This morn, when the sun rose, I wept; On my cheek lingers yet a bright tear: 'Twas a dew-drop fell there whilst I slept And was dreaming about the last year.

Not long will I cumber the tree, For my hour of departure is near; And your beautiful branch will be free Of its faded old leaf of last year.

------

Original.

The Influence of the Catholic Church Upon Modern Art.

As in many a sacred painting the divine persons are seen descending upon earth, attended by angels who, with trumpets, unheard by men, announce the visitation; so religion, revealed to prepare men for the next world, sits enthroned in this with all the arts, its ministers and servants. It is a glory of the Catholic Church that it has recognized to the utmost the spirituality of art. It has denied the dogma, of all dogmas the most absurd, that with the use of the highest powers of the imagination, and with delight in the beauty with which God has clothed the world, his worship is incompatible. It has not made piety a thing ugly, repulsive, barren; a mere assent of the will to an abstraction. The child of the church, standing in a world where the rainbow bends above him, and sunset opens the burning gates of heaven, is not taught to believe the seven colors the seven sins, or, at least, but secular beauty, to be banished from the house of worship; with the voices of birds' and winds, and waters, and the gothic grandeur of forests around him, he is not taught that music and architecture interfere with piety, or, if used at all in worship, must be limited to their lowest and simplest forms. Of creeds I do not need to speak; but this much it is necessary to say in the strict limits of my subject, that the world owes to Catholicism so much of its music, and painting, and architecture, that, had the world been without the church, these arts, though of human origin, and though highly developed before the Christian era, would in their modern forms probably be still in their infancy. In sculpture, undoubtedly, the Greeks surpassed even Michael Angelo; the statues of Phidias, though in ruins, are the wonder and despair of artists. The Roman empire built temples, roads, aqueducts, the Colosseum, and, when it fell, the arts, even in these less imaginative forms, seem to have fallen with it. {547} For a long time there was no art worthy of the name in Europe. Apollo, blind and dumb, wandered without a home or a temple; for, though in those centuries there must have been men born to be composers, or painters, or sculptors, they were born too soon or too late. Athens had fallen; Christian Rome had not arisen to her destined greatness. So the world slumbered in darkness till the Catholic Church wrought the miracle by which the arts were raised from their tombs and made her interpreters and ministers. This cannot be denied, that she gave the impulse to the revival of art, encouraged its development, inspired it with energy, and purpose, and faith, and so sent it forth to bless and transfigure the world. In every city in Europe she built a cathedral. In Rome, St. Peter's; in Paris, Notre Dame; in Vienna, the Dom Kirche; in Milan, La Duomo. No town was without its church, few of them, without beauty, many monuments of the genius of their builders. Because the Saviour was born in a stable, it was not held an article of faith that he should be worshipped in barn. The church believed that the temple should show that it was built not for the service of man, but of God. To adorn these majestic buildings she summoned the sister arts. Through the stained windows,

"The panes Of ancient churches, passionate With martyred saints, whom angels wait, With Virgin and with Crucified,"

the light shone holier for that transfiguration. There the painter told in language all could read the solemn story of the religion they believed. How in a manger the Christ was born, and worshipped by the wise men whom the mysterious star had led from the Chaldean plains; how the holy mother journeyed with Joseph into Egypt, bearing in her arms the babe who came into the world himself to bear the burden of its grief; how he taught the poor and healed the sick, raised Lazarus from the grave, and bade the Magdalene sin no more; how he spake with God upon the mount, and was tempted by the fiend, betrayed by Judas, tried by Pilate, and crucified upon Calvary; how at the foot of the cross the Marys wept all night; and how, when he was buried, angels rolled away the stone from the sepulchre, and apostles beheld him ascend into the depths of heaven. Upon the sacred walls, which were to these pious, worshippers as windows opening into the Holy Land, they saw miracles, transfigurations, ascensions, the agonies of martyrs, the adorations of saints, and--vision of all visions fairest--the tender face of the Virgin bending in prophetic sadness above the infant Christ. But with other than silent teachers the church appealed to the soul. Music, whose miraculous voice utters all passions, pains, delights, and truths, breathed her beautiful religion on the air. She sang of what Raphael and Titian painted; of the birth, and the death, and the resurrection; of the prayers of penitence, the anguish of strife, the rapture of heaven, the torments of hell; and in her voice were heard sobs, and cries, and supplications, thunders of divine wrath, trumpets of doom and of redemption, and choruses upon choruses of angels proclaiming the glory of God. In all the arts the church embodied Christianity; as she converted souls, so she converted music and painting. By the twelfth century, nay, before that, all the art of Europe was Catholic. In Italy, Spain, Germany, wherever a school of art existed, however humble, its highest aspirations were through the Catholic Church. The ideality of art, as we may see in its remaining works, was then almost exclusively religious; to be imaginative was to be pious. Centuries before the dawn of modern painting, in the silence and seclusion of cloisters, laborious monks, slowly perfecting their wonderful illuminated missals, were unawares preparing the advent of Cimabue and Giotto. The tradition that St. Luke was a painter was carefully cherished by his disciples, who may have found inspiration in the legend that he painted the portrait of the Saviour. {548} Thus it is probable, and other reasons might be cited, that modern art was not adopted by the church, but, born within its monasteries, was cherished till it grew too great for them alone, and then, as the child of the church, turned in natural faith and gratitude to the service of its parent.

The church was the chief patron of the early painters; it furnished not only their inspiration, but their occupation. There is little trace of the earliest Christian art; but Eusebius, whose history was written in the reign of Constantine, mentions that images of Christ were then common. In the third century pictures had been generally introduced in the churches of Palestine. But it was scarcely before the twelfth century that Catholic art gave promise of that splendor which in later days exalted it above all rivalry. We find Cimabue famous about the year 1250, and after him Giotto, almost the father of Italian art, whose portrait of Dante, recently discovered, is acknowledged as the best likeness we possess of the author of the greatest Christian poem. He painted the Last Supper of Christ, at Florence, and an idea of his influence may be formed from the fact that he had one hundred pupils, some of whom were afterward renowned. To catalogue the painters of this period would be unnecessary, but their close sympathy with the church, and the encouragement they received from it, are unquestionable. In 1308, Duccio, an artist of Sienna, was called upon to paint an altar-piece, and in his contract pledged himself thus: "I will execute it according to my best ability, and as the Lord shall grant me skill." The picture when completed was carried in solemn procession to the church. When, in 1438, it was proposed to build the Sienna Cathedral, it was ordained that "no one even suspected of immorality shall be eligible" to the position of its architect. A more earnest expression of the faith of the early artists in the dignity of their work, and their religious duty, is found in the rules adopted by the painters of Sienna in 1335. They held that, "since we are teachers to ignorant men, and since in God every perfection is united, we will in our work earnestly ask the aid of the divine grace." This spirit of devotion gave a higher direction to genius that might without it have wasted itself in empty and unmeaning tasks; and, whatever the artist was born to do, he found in the church his opportunity. To paint, in those days, for the best of those men, was to serve God; to build, was to build his temples. The purpose ennobled the work. Not merely with intellect Lorenzo Gbiberti labored when he wrought the doors of the baptistery in the rear of the cathedral at Florence--doors of which Michael Angelo exclaimed in his enthusiasm, "Worthy to be the gates of paradise!" Casts of these wonderful carvings of scriptural subjects, are exhibited in the Academy of the Fine Arts at Philadelphia. These artists were the worthy forerunners of greater men--of Domenichino, of Guido, of Titian, of Murillo, of Correggio, and of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michael Angelo. The greatest works of the three latter were upon Christian themes. The Las Supper, painted by Da Vinci, in 1497, for the Dominican convent at Milan, is accepted as the crowning proof of genius. The statue of Moses in St. Peter's, the Last Judgment, and the Dome of St. Peter's are the master works of the mighty Angelo. Raphael, who began his beautiful career by painting altar-pieces, in the Transfiguration reached its highest point, and questionings of the model who sat for his divine madonnas is idle, for not the loveliness of the face, but the holiness of the spirit gives them immortality. But I need cite no other instances. The highest subjects of the Italian painters were found in their religion, and the church was their most generous patron. {549} And not only was this dedication of art to spirituality of direct value to its intellectual progress, but indirectly it ennobled art that aimed merely to paint the things of earth and not the dreams of heaven. The less gained dignity from the sacred office of the greater, and art became more strongly rooted in that which was of the world, because of its aspiration to that which was celestial.

The vast influence of religion upon art is signally exhibited in the history of English art. Neither painting nor architecture, it is true, had made much progress in England up to the seventeenth century, as compared with their success on the continent; for, when Italy was civilized, Great Britain was still rude, and in certain respects barbarian. Yet the cathedrals which still exist in ruins, monuments of Gothic grandeur, were the expressions of a national art in close relation with religion. In England as in all other countries the Catholic Church gathered around her the arts. But with a religion which professed to see in images nothing but idols, in paintings of Christ and the apostles and the prophets nothing but profanity and blasphemy, came desolation and destruction. The Roundhead was not satisfied with the downfall of a throne, with the death of one Stuart and the banishment of that royal line, nor with the proscription of the Catholic religion. The men who followed Cromwell were iconoclasts, who destroyed Christian images to set up in their stead an idol of barbarian bigotry. They fired the churches, they shattered the statues, they made war upon the pictures of madonnas and martyrs without remorse or fear. They had driven out the Cavaliers, they were resolved to drive out the saints; and, as they had banished the church, they were bent upon sending art to keep it company. They succeeded but too well. Puritan enmity to the employment of painting in church decoration--the sweeping principle that art and religion could not be united and had different aims struck a blow at English art which almost ended it for three reigns. It did not, indeed, fully recover from the effect until near the close of the eighteenth century, when, as little more than portraiture, it was re-established by Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. To this day it is only in portraiture and in landscape that a great English school exists. There are many fine Vandykes, and Lelys, and Reynolds in the galleries of England, and many landscapes and marines by Gainsborough, Wilson, and Turner; but where is the historical painter who can be compared with Turner? Haydon, who bitterly complained that historical painting was not appreciated in England, and that those who by their wealth and position should have encouraged it cared only for their own faces on canvas, might have found the cause of its decline in the absence of any religious inspiration in English art. He admitted this truth, unconsciously perhaps, when he chose for his own subjects of "high art" Christ in the Temple and Lazarus coming from the Tomb. In the landscapes and marines of Turner there is imagination grander than Claude, or Poussin, or Salvator Rosa possessed; in Wilkie unsurpassed character is given to humble themes. But the English historical school is infinitely below English landscape and portraiture. The Boydell gallery, in which the best artists of the time were employed to illustrate Shakespeare, is an utter failure. Fuseli was fanciful and coarse; and, though I know little of Blake's pictures, it is safe to presume they were not equal to his strange and beautiful poetry. Did he ever realize with the brush such verses as

"Tiger, Tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night"?

Reynolds failed when he sought to be imaginative, as the Death of Dido and the Deathbed of Cardinal Beaufort are proof. {550} The defeat of the repeated efforts to establish an historical school of art in England must not be ascribed solely to a deficiency of genius in the men or in the character of the nation. Art and religion were divorced. Men worshipped God in one way, and painted in another. It is a significant fact that the pre-Raphaelite school, however objectionable in some respects, owes its highest success to the religious element which inspires it. Millais and Hunt proclaim that the rudest art must be spiritual, and thus seek to atone for centuries of infidelity to that truth.

Upon music the influence of the church has probably been even greater than upon painting, certainly as great. With no exaggeration, it may be said that to write the history of the composers who have written for the church is to write the history of modern music. What this fact implies will be understood by those who know that in none other of the arts has the term modern such significance; for, while ancient painting, sculpture, and architecture were based upon the same general laws which are now recognized as absolute, the principles of music, like her own sweet sounds, have changed and passed away from age to age. There is a known difference between what may be called the musical ear of this century and that of the sixteenth. What was then felt to be harmony, and embodied in the works of the great masters, is now discord. There was a time when consecutive fifths were common, a fact almost incredible to the musician of to-day. If such changes have occurred within four or five hundred years, the gulf which divides ancient and modern music must be deep and wide; and the latter, having little visible connection or known sympathy with the former, and originating in Christian Europe, must inevitably owe much of its character to Catholic civilization.

The oldest form of music known to us belongs to the church; it is the Ecclesiastical Chant of St. Ambrose and St. Gregory. The former, near the close of the fourth century, endeavored to give a fixed form to church music, and we may judge of his success from his Te Deum. The words and the the music of this noble canticle are still sung. Of the Ambrosian chant, St. Augustine wrote: "As the voices flowed into mine ears, truth was instilled into my heart, and the affections of piety overflowed in tears of joy." It is said that St. Ambrose composed the Te Deum upon the conversion of St. Augustine. Two centuries later Pope Gregory vastly improved the system of sacred music; from him we have the celebrated Gregorian chant, solemn, severe, and pure, and still heard in Lent and in the Holy Week. Such value did St. Gregory place upon music that he established a school for singers at Rome, which flourished till the tenth century. After the Gregorian chant little reformation in music was accomplished for centuries; but the next step was also taken within the church when Guido, a Benedictine monk, early in the eleventh century, discovered the musical scale now used. Modern rhythm was invented by a French priest about the same time, and for many years music owed all its progress to religious enthusiasm. Thus, Odington, an English Benedictine monk, in 1240, wrote De Speculatione Musicae, and John Muris in the fourteenth century did much to establish fixed rules of harmony. Counterpoint was slowly developed; the canon and the fugue were introduced; and the laws of music were gradually established as the basis of the grander and more ideal genius of the strictly modern system. We need not follow the history of the art from that great master Palestrina through the long succession of famous names destined to be remembered when those of kings are half forgotten.

From the first it has been seen the church recognized the sacred offices of music, and did not merely permit, but authorized and developed its use. It is true that at one time use led to abuse. In the sixteenth century composers for the church frequently forgot religion in science. {551} "In this kind of composition," says Alexander Cheron, "the meaning of the words was entirely overlooked, and its tendencies were only to the display of the genius of the composers or the powers of the singers." The evil became so great that the Council of Trent even deliberated upon the suppression of music in religious service. Pope Marcellus II. had, indeed, resolved to banish all music but the Gregorian chant, when Palestrina composed a mass which made that step unnecessary. It was a revolution. Solemnity, grandeur, and purity were the elements of the new style, from which mere bravuras and all levities were excluded. Thus the power which authorized the employment of music had the influence to redeem it from degradation, till now the sacred music we possess embodies the genius of three centuries, and will, perhaps, endure longer than the finest lyric dramas. That the religious purposes of great masters have had vast influence upon the merely lyric composition is not to be doubted. We cannot raise one form of art without raising all. The author of Don Giovanni might not have achieved the full grandeur of that work had he not also composed his marvellous masses. Of the influence of Catholic music upon such minds, an incident in Mozart's life is proof. In his youth he heard the famous Miserere sung in the Sistine chapel at Rome--that strange and solemn harmony, composed two hundred years ago by Gregorio Allegri, for the sublime ceremonial of the Passion week. Pontiff and cardinals, when the Miserere begins, kneel around the altar, the church is darkened, the voices swell in tenor, and die into silence. Mozart twice heard this wonderful work, and then reproduced it note for note, and sang it with the exact method and feeling of the Sistine choir. And it is said that the effect of this Miserere upon him may be traced in all his other works. Haydn's piety is found in all of his music, chiefly in those masses which are known to all lovers of music. "In nomine Domini," "Soli Deo Gloria," he invariably wrote at the beginning of his scores, and "Laus Deo" at their end. When composing, if his imagination failed, he repeated his rosary, and, before beginning his greater works, he prayed to God for inspiration to praise him worthily. Of the composers inspired by religion, the list is long; longer, perhaps, that of those who unconsciously were influenced by it. When Haydn was asked which of his works he considered the greatest, he replied, The Seven Words. It was written for the service called the "Funeral of the Redeemer" at Madrid, in which the seven words uttered by the Saviour on the cross were uttered by the bishop, who explained each, and between each exposition Haydn's music in sympathy with the word was given. Upon his masses he lavished his pains, and generally required twice the time for a mass that he needed for a symphony.

Palestrina, Porpora, Clementi, Haydn, Mozart, Rossini, Beethoven, are but a few of the illustrious masters whose sacred music was dedicated to the Catholic Church. Handel's religious music was chiefly written for the English, and is embodied, as well as that of Mendelssohn, in oratorio. But, for my part, I do not think the form of the oratorio as well fitted for sacred music as that of the mass. An oratorio is generally sung in a concert-room; the words are frequently poor adaptations of the language of the Scriptures; its auditors expect to be entertained. Therefore, though the music may be perfect in itself, as in the "Total Eclipse" or "I know that my Redeemer liveth" of Handel, it does not seem that the form is suited to express the deepest emotions of worship. It is in the Catholic Church alone that music and religion are wedded. Who can translate into words the profound devotion inspired by the solemn mass in the cathedral service? Over the kneeling worshippers, the illuminated altar, the pictures of the crucifixion and the ascension, the intonation of the priest, "the dim religious light" shining through the stained windows, Music breathes her voice. {552} As the great organ swells, and the deep-toned choir utters the despair of the Miserere, the heavenly beauty of the Agnus Dei, the exultation of the Gloria, the devotion of the Credo, etc., what soul is not bowed in sympathy with grief, raised with gratitude, or bathed in heavenly peace? I know no music that has a more profound effect. It is a part of worship. It expresses something to which words the most eloquent are inadequate. It is the glory of the Catholic Church, I repeat, that she has so freely recognized the spirituality of this act, and these who reject her creed are compelled to admit the propriety and supremacy of her service. How cold are the musical exercises of other churches, how little they express of this intense and passionate devotion. I do not think God is served by the exclusion of his greatest gifts from the ceremonial of worship, and that point is conceded by all sects which sing his praise. But, if any music is used, why not the best? If a hymn, why not a mass? If an organ, why not an orchestra? The objection that the Catholic Church would have its choirs composed of the best voices, its music written by the greatest composers, is too absurd to be answered; for, if the highest art is unfit for the purposes of worship, then by inevitable logic it must be shown that all art is unfit; those who hold such objections should consistently agree with the Quakers, and banish the simplest hymn. [Footnote 174]

[Footnote 174: The writer of this article is not a Catholic.--ED. C.W.]

More than this, if music may be worthily used, why not painting? The value of architecture is universally admitted, ever since it was shown by the Catholic Church, and music is more or less accepted as a mode of adoration by nearly all sects. Pictures, however, are admitted into Catholic churches alone. Is, then, the genius of Titian and Raphael less holy than that of Beethoven or Mozart? Is it right to sing the praise of God in his temple, wrong to paint the story of the Son of God upon the consecrated walls? We need not answer such questions, which are only introduced to show how it is by the Catholic Church alone that the religious influences of the arts have been first and fully understood, and by it alone that they have been made agencies of worship.

Further examination of this important subject cannot now be made, for in these limits it can be little more than suggested. If we generalize, we discover that all the great artists, in architecture, painting, and music have found their highest employment in the church, and that its history includes their biographies. Of its present influence it is unnecessary to speak, but it is felt most in architecture, at least in this country; the noblest church edifice in Philadelphia, perhaps in any American city, is incomparably the new cathedral. From what has been said, the depth, and extent, and value of the influence of the church upon art may be inferred; but no one can imagine the condition of our art had it been without the inspiration of religion. Majestic and venerable stands the Church of Rome; upon her walls the arts have registered their victories; for her the muses have forsaken the summits of Parnassus; to her the poet, painter, and musician have dedicated their genius; and, giving all they brought to her humblest and poorest worshipper, she has repaid the masters with perpetual recognition and universal fame. Far as her realm extends are known the glories of Raphael, and Angelo, and Mozart.

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{553}

Original.

Adelaide Anne Procter.

Next to imagination, genius is, perhaps, the faculty of the human mind about which we have had the most instructiveness and the least instruction. Yet every one who knows anything of it at all knows the two great types of genius that appear in history--extremes between which lie all minds of mark. One is the familiar form that the word itself at once suggests--the regular fashion, as it were, of being exceptional. This is the erratic, fitful, uncontrolled, keen, brilliant, sensitive, sympathetic, eccentric character, who wears regardless collars, fights his publisher on less than no provocation, eats opium if he chooses, and sometimes chooses--or, if not opium, some other stimulant--has whims and moods and irritabilities, and the biggest heart, and the best tongue, and the most heedless head, with the most brilliant oddities in it, wherever he goes--a totally lopsided organism, where the soul cannot be kept from wearing its way through the body, and where a few faculties, preternaturally developed, domineer over a warped and stunted system, to the ultimate ruin of the whole man.

The other kind, calm, clear, broad, poised, equable, powerful, seems exactly the opposite of the first type. The strength of the one is in balance, the force of the other in overbalance. Yet the difference is only that the man of balance is symmetrically developed; it is the difference between the autumn maturity of the full-grown fruit and the hectic ripeness, with the worm at the core, of the August windfall.

Of these two types, the first is vastly the more frequent, the other the higher in history. The reason is simply this, that a moderate degree of uniform development gives neither more nor less than mediocrity, while disproportionate preponderance of the intellect, even where all the faculties are below the average, will reproduce in miniature all the phenomena of the overbalanced kind of genius. Between Byron Don-Juanning it over his gin-and-water, and the brilliant Bohemian who dashes off the cleverest leader of the next day, fresh from the convivial influences of a roystering champagne supper, and the gentle youth who floods the rural poet's corner with heaven-scaling hankerings inspired by green tea, the difference is not in kind, but in degree.

Men of this order are the ones who achieve fame and famine. Their blossoms of promise are bright, their early graves are green on all the paths of human progress. History kindles at their high hopes and deeds, and blushes for the petty failings that suffice to drag them down. Literature, above all, is a very Golgotha, all the ghastlier for its glory, of their self-conscious sensitiveness, their refined self-torture, their blasted lives and miserable deaths. Yet there is hardly one but has his little day, longer or shorter, but with always some little sunshine and flowers of popular favor. Stimulated to their utmost by susceptibility to praise, they are the most brilliant and bizarre in effects, and the most blindly admired. Besides, their eccentricities are an advertisement in themselves, and very often first attract the attention which afterward discovers the powers underneath. The world, on the contrary, finds nothing about the other sort of genius to display any peculiar capabilities--a sort of pleasant self-completeness, it may be, but no salient points and queer angles--and passes on, to gape at the man with half the brains and nothing to balance them. {554} Byron woke up one morning and found himself famous: some one in Elizabeth's reign made a list (is it not D'Israeli who preserves it?) of the best writers of his day, whereon the thirteenth name is that of the successful London manager and decidedly good fellow, William Shakspeare.

In fact, this latter type of genius is not only rare as all well-poised organisms are rare, but seems to evade public appreciation by some hidden inherent law of its nature. It has often happened with men of this order that not only their families--of course, it is the exception, if a man's family ever discover his powers till the rest of the world thunders his fame into their ears--but their daily acquaintance, their most intimate friends, nay, themselves, never suspect their greatness.

But, if such a man of genius is an event of his generation, and, with all a man's opportunities for appreciation, activity, acquaintance, and, above all, women and their ennobling influence, to bring out his best energies, often dies undiscovered, what chance is there for a woman of kindred abilities to struggle into the light of recognition? In literature, men are the severest judges of women possible, except, of course, their own sex. To the best of them the expression "woman of genius" is the mythical relic of some lost tradition as old as Sappho's day, and "women's thought" a contradiction in terms. All their experience teaches them to disbelieve in it utterly. The truth is, most women think very ill in print. The cause lies less in their nature than in their second nature of education. Their thought is beautiful enough--beauty is their mental as their bodily characteristic--but seldom strong, and then its strength is that of the tempered Toledo rather than the shearing Andrea Ferrara. It comes in April gleams from behind cloud after cloud. They lack concentration, terseness, sequence; in a word, training. This breeds, with mainly correct thought, constant loose digressions, diffuseness of expression, and dilution of ideas. (Hence that saddest thing on the earth, wherein women writers so abound, the unexceptionable poem.) It seems as though women wrote as if conversing, forgetting how much of the charm is in themselves and evaporates on the pen. Every reader has noticed how the writings, and, above all, the poems, of really extraordinary women--women that men of mind looked up to--are to us such monuments of apparent mediocrity that we wonder what they found to worship. The most impartial critic's nose inclines involuntarily heavenward the moment a woman comes forward to claim any intellectual place of honor. And genius, the highest quality, man's special prerogative--horror of horrors! All reason says it cannot be; and underneath a subtle male esprit de corps too often adds that it shall not be. Of course, the intruder cannot climb the heights, but to avoid accidents and disappointment she is seldom suffered to try. Such are the difficulties which beset the path of even the most favored female aspirant.

It ought not to surprise us, then, that Adelaide Anne Procter, even had she been the most pushing and irrepressible of blue-stockings, with every vantage-ground of circumstance, was not appreciated as she deserved. But, in addition to the original sin of being a woman, several reasons peculiar to herself concurred to render her, what we think she has been, one of the most underrated writers of her day.

First, she was an Englishwoman. Had she not been, she might never have been anything; but once being something, we do not think it was an utterly inestimable advantage. For, as being English, every one took for granted that she must be a Protestant, and every one was disappointed and provoked to find her a Catholic. Now one of the circumstances which mitigate the glory of being English is that there is very little achromatic criticism in England. As a wise and keen analyst [Footnote 175] complains, each of the reviews has some set of theses nailed to its doors, whose upholding is the first thing, to which all their criticism proper must stand subordinate.

[Footnote 175: Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism.]

{555} English bigotry, under nineteenth century forms, is to-day as patent, as understood, as calculable a mainspring and motive of public judgment as in Archbishop Laud's era. Miss Procter's chance of any high praise was thus never very great. But appearing as she did on the scene of letters at a time when the Church of England was yet in the full sanctimoniousness of righteous reaction against the dismembering logic of the Puseyites, any good there was in her was very safe from discovery by most of the critics. Had she been a self asserting sectarian, cramming her dogmas, as some of us did their abolitionism, down her readers' throats, she might have been hunted down to fame by the indignant zeal of the saintly star-chamberers of letters, who lead public opinion much as the foam leads the wave. Unfortunately for this opening, Miss Procter was a lady, and such self-assertion the most foreign of traits to her nature. Not loud enough for martyrdom, she was just firmly Catholic enough for misjudgment, or rather for denial of judgment. While the tribunals of criticism could not avoid taking notice of a book by Barry Cornwall's daughter, still, with all the little good and ill the reviewers said of her, they never did her the one essential service they could render, of putting her name where the reading public would see it and pass judgment on her. There is a way of praising that keeps off, and a way of blaming that attracts, the mass of readers.

With the returning tide of ritualism, she has begun to be more appreciated, but it is only a beginning. We are so strongly inclined to think her poems at the outset of a new career in public favor, and we consider that so little justice has been done her in the critical journals of this country, that we cannot help feeling toward them accordingly; and so, in range of our attempted discussion of her merits, and copiousness of citation, we have treated her in all respects precisely as a new author.

For we believe sincerely that the clouds of circumstance and prejudice about Miss Procter's entrance into literary life have obscured from us poetical powers not only of no common order, but of that calm, self-centred kind we have spoken of as rare enough in man, and the feminine counterpart of which is almost unknown in literary history. Her mind is not Shakespeare's, nor Coleridge's, nor Goethe's, but the resistless river and the fountain of the rocks may both be the overflow of the same sunless reservoir in the deep bosom of the mountains. And her poetry is indeed a fountain of the rocks; pure, placid, deep of source, shaded yet sparkling, "making a quiet music all its own;" with no torrent nor show of force, yet musically passing all obstacles, and emerging, clear, bright, and beautiful, in the sunlight beyond. Most varied and versatile in her choice of subjects, she brings to all a poetic insight, a freedom and fancy of expression, a grasp of the topic, and, above all, a strange, noble earnestness, that altogether make up a style whose quiet charm we had rather easily illustrate than elaborately fail in describing.

The key-note of all her writings is thoughtfulness, and withal a peculiar kind of thoroughness of thought such as we have found in no other woman. Mrs. Browning (perhaps we ought to add the new Mrs. Augusta Webster, whose perceptive powers are the theme of the English reviews) is the only one who ever has analyzed nearly so well, and she and all the others seem only incidentally, while Miss Procter is habitually, analytical. Her entire superiority, indeed, is the consequence and corollary of this curious depth of mind. Bold in abstractions, tender in revealings of the heart, ingenious in incident and invention, she is sure to have a well-defined thought at bottom, always suggestive, often philosophic, sometimes profound. The rare combination of entire femininity with this thinking habit is an originality in itself. Very novel and very charming is the effect of seeing together with this strong, clear, searching introspection, all the woman's delicacy of touch.

{556}

But the reader is tired of our generalities, and would much rather see for himself how well Miss Procter thinks. So we give him a fair example in the poem called

Incompleteness.

Nothing resting in its own completeness Can have power or beauty; but alone Because it leads and tends to further sweetness, Fuller, higher, deeper than its own.

_Spring's real glory dwells not in the meaning, Gracious though it be, of her blue hours, But is hidden in her tender leaning To the summer's richer wealth of flowers.

Dawn is fair because the mists fade slowly Into day, which floods the world with light; Twilight's mystery is so sweet and holy Just because it ends in starry night._

Childhood's smiles unconscious graces borrow From strife that in a far-off future lies; _And angel glances (veiled now by life's sorrow) Draw our hearts to some beloved eyes._

Life is only bright when it proceedeth Toward a truer, deeper life above; Human love is sweetest when it leadeth To a more divine and perfect love.

Learn the mystery of progression duly: Do not call each glorious change decay; But know we only hold our treasures truly, When it seems as if they passed away.

Nor dare to blame God's gifts for incompleteness; In that want their beauty lies; they roll Toward some infinite depth of love and sweetness, Bearing onward man's reluctant soul.

This poem holds one of the great principles in Miss Procter's very noble theory of life--a theory abundantly developed in her poems. Her cardinal axioms would seem to be three: The great rule of life is progression; its great agent, sorrow; its great fact and end, love. On these pillars she builds, and 'Incompleteness' is one of the most direct statements of one part of her creed. Another fine poem, in thought a kind of companion-piece to this, in which we readily recognize the same underlying thought, is

Beyond.

We must not doubt, or fear, or dread that love for life is only given, And that the calm and sainted dead will meet estranged and cold in heaven: Oh! love were poor and vain, indeed, based on so harsh and stern a creed.

True that this earth must pass away with all the starry worlds of light, With all the glory of the day, and calmer tenderness of night, For in that radiant home can shine alone the immortal and divine.

Earth's lower things--her pride, her fame, her science, learning, wealth, and power, Slow growths that through long ages came, or fruits of some convulsive hour, Whose very memory must decay--heaven is too pure for such as they.

They are complete; their work done. So let them sleep in endless rest. Love's life is only here begun, nor is, nor can be, fully blest; It has no room to spread its wings, amid this crowd of meaner things.

Just for the very shadow thrown upon its sweetness here below, The cross that it must bear alone, and bloody baptism of woe, Crowned and completed through its pain, we know that it shall rise again.

So, if its flame burn pure and bright, here where our air is dark and dense, (And nothing in this world of night lives with a living so intense,) When it shall reach its home at length, how bright its light! how strong its strength!

And while the vain weak loves of earth (for such base counterfeits abound) Shall perish with what gave them birth-- their graves are green and fresh around-- No funeral song shall need to rise for the true love that never dies.

If in my heart I now could fear that, risen again, we should not know What was our life of life when here--the hearts we loved so much below I would arise this very day and cast so poor a thing away.

But love is no such soulless clod; living, perfected it shall rise, Transfigured in the light, of God, and giving glory to the skies: And that which makes this life so sweet shall render heaven's joy complete.

As a poem, this latter is superior, because it applies beautifully to a beautiful subject the principle which the other merely enunciates. And the style is not less remarkable than the ideas. Can anything be more clearly, calmly right than the thought, more easy, lucid, real than its utterance? And it is not the bald perspicuity, either, of mere logical disquisition, but full of suggestion and spirit; and it does not flag; especially in Beyond there is not a weak line nor lower thought. Now is not all this refreshing after the diffuse grace and dilute sweetness of female poetry in general? It is to the run of it as a copse of May's arbutus to a meadow strewn with buttercups.

Apropos of this superiority, we find another poem which illustrates it even more strongly, because so very many women have fluttered about the same thought. {557} Every femme incomprise--and what poetess does not think she is one? is full of it; why have none of them said it so broadly and well as this?

Unexpressed.

Dwells within the soul of every artist More than all his effort can express, And he knows the best remains unaltered, Sighing at what we call his success.

Vainly he may strive; he dare not tell us All the sacred mysteries of the skies: Vainly he may strive; the deepest beauty Cannot be unveiled to mortal eyes.

And the more devoutly that he listens, And the holier message that is sent, Still the more his soul must struggle vainly, Bowed beneath a noble discontent.

No great thinker ever lived and taught you All the wonder that his soul received; No true painter ever set on canvas All the glorious vision he conceived.

No musician ever held your spirit Charmed and bound in his melodious chains, But be sure he heard, and strove to render Feeble echoes of celestial strains.

No real poet ever wove in numbers All his dream, but the diviner part, Hidden from all the world, spake to him only In the voiceless silence of his heart.

So with love; for love and art united Are twin mysteries; different, yet the same: Poor, indeed, would be the love of any Who could find its full and perfect name.

Love may strive, but vain is the endeavor All its boundless riches to unfold; Still its tenderest, truest secret lingers Ever in its deepest depths untold.

Things of time have voices, speak and perish: Art and love speak, but their words must be Sighings of illimitable forests, Waves of an unfathomable sea.

The positive merit of this--passing the odious business of comparison--is, to our mind, the well-managed amplification of the main thought, and the swell both of sense and sound at the close, which we find a beauty of high order. The last two lines especially seize the melodic principle of the metre, which, beyond almost any other we know, calls for long musical words. Only "voiceless silence" strikes one as tautological to the last degree. Miss Proctor very rarely makes outright mistakes, and she may have seen some subtle sense added by the word "voiceless" that we cannot. All the silences we have ever known were strictly voiceless, and decidedly apt to terminate about the time any voice began.

The next great topic with our poetess is the sweet uses of adversity. She is never weary of celebrating the beauty and benignity of sorrow. In fact, she appears to have a personal friendship for misfortune, as the great elevating and purifying dispensation of earthly existence. Grief, disappointment, death, are to her philosophy but natural incidents, to be expected and met without fear--processes tending to the higher result hereafter. But here is her whole thought, better set forth than we can say it:

Friend Sorrow.

Do not cheat thy heart and tell her Grief will pass away, Hope for fairer times in future And forget to-day. Tell her, if you will, that sorrow Need not come in vain, Tell her that the lesson taught her Far outweighs the pain.

Cheat her not with the old comfort, "Soon she will forget:" Bitter truth, alas! but matter Rather for regret. Bid her not "Seek other pleasures, Turn to other things:" Rather nurse her caged sorrow Till the captive sings.

Rather bid her go forth bravely And the stranger greet, Not as foes with spear and buckler, But as dear friends meet; Bid her with a strong clasp hold her By her dusky wings, Listening for the murmured blessing Sorrow always brings.

This is only one of a large number of poems full of varied exposition of these same views. Some are so ingenious and happy that we can hardly resist quoting them, were it not that, if those were the only qualifications, we should have to cite the major part of her poems. In fact, this conception of sorrow as a hidden blessing is peculiarly strong in all she has written. And yet, while recognizing in tribulation an elevating grace that wins it a welcome from her heart, she fully feels the sadness, the weariness, the poverty and pain of earthly lives. A strong instance of this is the "Cradle Song of the Poor," with its singular, sad refrain:

"Sleep, my darling, thou art weary, God is good, but life is dreary."

{558}

And the miseries of the poor have evoked the only bitter lines she ever wrote, which, coming, as they do, the very last in her book, seem almost like an after-addition--the strange strong lines called "Homeless." There is a force in some of the lines that reminds us of Hood:

It is cold, dark midnight, yet listen To that patter of tiny feet! Is it one of your dogs, fair lady, Who whines in the bleak, cold street? Is it one of your silken spaniels Shut out in the snow and the sleet?

My dogs sleep warm in their baskets, Safe from the darkness and snow; All the beasts in our Christian England Find pity wherever they go. (Those are only the homeless children Who are wandering to and fro.)

Look out in the gusty darkness: I have seen it again and again, That shadow, that flits so slowly Up and down past the window-pane: It is surely some criminal lurking Out there in the frozen rain!

Nay, our criminals all are sheltered, They are pitied and taught and fed: That is only a sister-woman, Who has got neither food nor bed: _And the Night cries, "Sin to be living;" And the River cries, "Sin to be dead."_

.....

There is one other piece perhaps even sadder than this when we penetrate its full, stern significance:

The Requital.

Loud roared the tempest, fast fell the sleet; A little child-angel passed down the street With trailing pinions and weary feet.

The moon was hidden; no stars were bright; So she could not shelter in heaven that night, For the angels' ladders are rays of light.

She beat her wings at each window-pane, And pleaded for shelter, but all in vain: "Listen," they said, "to the pelting rain!"

She sobbed, as the laughter and mirth grew higher, "Give me rest and shelter beside your fire, And I will give you your heart's desire."

The dreamer sat watching his embers gleam, While his heart was floating down hope's bright stream, So he wove her wailing into his dream.

The worker toiled on, for his time was brief; The mourner was nursing her own pale grief: They heard not the promise that brought relief.

But fiercer the tempest rose than before, When the angel paused at a humble door And asked for shelter and help once more.

A weary woman, pale, worn, and thin, With the brand upon her of want and sin, Heard the child-angel and took her in.

Took her in gently, and did her best To dry her pinions; and made her rest With tender pity upon her breast.

When the eastern morning grew bright and red, Up the first sunbeam the angel fled, Having kissed the woman, and left her--dead.

Human waifs forgotten by all their kind are a sorrowful picture enough, but this of a human heart so desolate, so blank, so seared, so far from all hope or joy in life, that even God its Creator does not deny its supreme wish to die, is inexpressibly dreary. This is worthy to stand beside Tennyson's "Mariana in the Moated Grange."

One touch worth noticing is the fiction by which the angel is detained on earth; that "the angels' ladders are rays of light." It strikes us as one of the most ingenious we have ever met, and no less beautiful than happy. The whole structure of the narrative indeed, is admirable; it is difficult to see how the parts could be fitted more nicely. This skill Miss Procter has in an uncommon degree, and all her longer narrative poems exemplify it.

Of course, such thoughts on life as these last verses contain blend naturally with noble thoughts on death. Here, again, Miss Procter's prevailing thoughtfulness has developed her ideas into many beautiful applications. The lines called "The Angel of Death," which so touchingly close Charles Dickens's late sketch of her, the sweet, weary "Tryst with Death," and many others, are examples of this. But among them all there is none which more truly embodies her conceptions, or which, at the same time, is more deeply instinct with the hopefulness which underlies all her graver utterances, than the admirable lines:

Our Dead.

Nothing is our own; we hold our treasures Just a little time ere they are fled: One by one life robs us of our treasures: Nothing is our own except our dead.

They are ours, and hold in faithful keeping, Safe for ever, all they took away. Cruel life can never stir that sleeping; Cruel time can never seize that prey.

Justice pales, truth fades, stars fall from heaven: Human are the great whom we revere; No true crown of honor can be given, Till we place it on a funeral bier.

How the children leave us, and no traces Linger of that smiling angel hand; Gone, for ever gone; and in their places Weary men and anxious women stand.

{559}

_Yet, we have some little ones, still ours; They have kept the baby smile, we know, Which we kissed one day, and hid with flowers, On their dead white faces, long ago._

When our joy is lost--and life will take it-- Then no memory of the past remains, Save with some strange, cruel sting, to make it Bitterness beyond all present pains.

_Death, more tender-hearted, leaves to sorrow Still the radiant shadow, fond regret;_ We shall find, in some far bright to-morrow Joy that he has taken, living yet.

"Is love ours, and do we dream we know it Bound with all our heart-strings all our own? Any cold and cruel dawn may show it Shattered, desecrated, overthrown.

_Only the dead hearts forsake us never: Death's last kiss has been the mystic sign Consecrating love our own for ever, Crowning it eternal and divine._

_So when Fate would fain besiege our city, Dim our gold or make our flowers fall, Death, the angel, comes in love and pity And, to save our treasures, claims them all._

Her ideas regarding death are very lofty. They are equally removed from the timorous, painful harping on dissolution that characterizes the underdone poetic organism, from the graphic grimness of Miss Rossetti's class of thinkers, who seem to take a ghastly delight in anatomizing the subject, and last from the passionate weak welcoming of the end--the coward courage which dares not live. In a word, Miss Procter was a Christian.

In quitting her poems of thought, it will perhaps be well to pretermit our long course of praise, and speak of the faults of her writing, most of which are strongest in these very poems. In verbal correctness, she is far above the average; for so voluminous a writer, singularly free from them. Still, by G. Washington-Moon-light, we can discover certain errors, principally of accent or collocation. Some few appear in the verses we have cited. In "Beyond," "baptism" is made a trisyllable; though, standing where it does, an appeal might well be taken to the higher equity of rhythm against the arbitrary technicality of the law of orthoepy. Also, we doubt if "perfécted" be the best pronunciation to-day. And in "Homeless," in the expression,

"Is it one of your dogs, fair lady, Who whines in the bleak, cold street?"

it might with all respect for the intelligence of the race at large, and, above all, for the prodigious latent capabilities of all ladies' dogs--it might be seriously questioned whether the canine personality is so marked as to admit of the relative "who." We feel quite sure that the original idea was to reserve this particular pronoun for selfish mankind, and we fear that the slow science of grammar is still fettered, even as to the most marvellous of the dog kind, by the trammelling traditions of comparative anatomy.

But such flaws as these are venial, occurring as they do at rare intervals, in a very large number of verses, written young, and crowded into the compass of a few years. Many of them were mere passing contributions to the periodical press of the day, and, taken as a whole, compare to advantage with the hasty emanations of almost any author.

In metre Miss Procter achieves no high effects, and attempts none. With very fair taste in selection of metre, she is by no means an artist in rhythm, and appears to aim at little or nothing beyond passable metrical correctness. She is carelessly harsh and incidentally melodious. Once or twice she tries some sort of irregular or lyric measure, and it appears rather to impede than aid her accustomed clear flow of thought.

In style she has two prominent though not great faults. One is her refinement. She is so refined that it would, even had she reached the full promise of her life, have prevented her, in all probability, from ever being broadly popular. Her field is too high and narrow: she deals mainly with sentiments and sympathies which interest only those who have not only sorrowed, but reflected. But this blame is praise in itself. The other is more of a real fault. Miss Procter tempts us to believe that the diffuseness which we have attributed chiefly to their education has some foundation in woman's nature itself. {560} Different as she is from the ordinary type, her womanhood vindicates itself, though still in a way of her own. The effect on her style is not what we spoke of--dilution--but amplification. Sometimes she is led away by her fertility of illustration to illustrate too much. She holds up the idea in too many lights, more than are needful to understand her. There is a little of this even in "Incompleteness," before cited, but the illustrations are so happy that the effect is not perceived: it is seldom we are troubled with too many good things in a poem. Very often, however, this practice of ramifying thoughts into so many applications--one natural result of her thorough thinking--greatly injures the whole, and almost always, where there is much of this amplification, it passes beyond the strict limits of the strongest effect.

There are, furthermore, some few poems liable to cavil which seem to have been mere exercises or experiments, and call for other criticism than her finished performances. Others suffer from their author's inveterate habit of seizing on every-day subjects. Now and then she takes up one so trite that all the charm of her manner cannot mend it. The result is like a pebble set in filigree.

The only grave artistic fault we ever found in her poems occurs in the Legend of Provence, one of her best narrative pieces, founded on the exquisite Legend of the Virgin Mary's assuming the personality and filling the place of a nun who has proved false to her vows and fled her convent. Repentant at last, she returns, a worn-out beggar, to die where her religion died, meets her semblance, recognizes it as what she might have been, and implores Mary's aid.

And Mary answered: "From thy bitter past, Welcome, my child! Oh! welcome home at last! I filled thy place: thy flight is known to none, For all thy daily duties I have done; Gathered thy flowers and prayed, and sung, and slept; Didst thou not know, poor child, thy place was kept?"

This strikes us as a tremendous blunder. For the nun to know that her place was kept would knock the bottom out of the entire legend. Who wouldn't sin with his pardon drawn up in advance, and entire secrecy and perfect restoration awaiting the first active twinge of repentance? We cannot imagine for an instant how Miss Procter could overlook this; unless we have made some equally egregious error in our understanding of the poem and its scope.

We find, or fancy we find, in her writings, a shade of resemblance to the taste and tact of her father, "Barry Cornwall." Perhaps it was because she feared her generic tendencies of style, that she has written few or no songs, and none at all like his sort. If her object was to avoid suspicious resemblance, she has succeeded. The likeness is utterly intangible, and there is not a trace anywhere of an imitation most natural to her relations with him, and which must have proved easy to talent like hers.

Another noteworthy fact about her is also alluded to by Mr. Dickens. It is the total absence of humor, and the sober and shaded style of what she has written. He takes occasion, while speaking of this prevailing seriousness in one so young, expressly to bar the inference that she was of the melancholy moonlit sort, and mentions her abundant wit, and keen sense of the ludicrous, and the joyous quality of her laugh. We do not think an observant reader would misconceive her, as her kind-hearted biographer apprehended. She lacks the distinctive element of morbidness. There is a soundness in her sadness, so to speak, that makes us feel it to be the shadow of a soul that knows the sunshine also. Mournful people of the true chronic mournfulness show it far more by taking dismal views of ordinary subjects than by dealing only in dismal things. But the fact itself suggests a curious question which our aphorists have not yet answered. How is it that some men naturally rollick in print, while others, not less humorous, write nothing but the gravest stuff? {561} What made Hood's pen merry on his death-bed, and took the wit so out of Sydney Smiths's sermons? These two classes are so marked that one would think there must be a principle of some sort dividing them. Yet no one has ever laid down this principle. We no more pretend to do this than the rest, but merely raise the question, leaving it to some future critic to disentangle us from a most Cartesian dubitation.

Thus far we have quoted mainly in illustration of Miss Procter's characteristics. It must not be inferred, however, that there are not in her books excellences not specially arising out of her peculiar ideas of life. On the contrary, there are a number of pieces of that provoking class of good things which we might just as well have written ourselves--only we didn't. Very few of our friends, though, would think of looking in an English author for the following strong, spirited protest, written in 1861, when it was proposed to "strengthen the hands" of the mission for the conversion of Irish Catholics:

An Appeal.

Spare her, O cruel England! Thy sister lieth low: Chained and oppressed she lieth; Spare her that cruel blow. We ask not for the freedom Heaven has vouchsafed to thee, Nor bid thee share with Ireland The empire of the sea. Her children ask no shelter-- Leave them the stormy sky; They ask not for thy harvests, For they know how to die; Deny them, if it please thee, A grave beneath the sod; But we do cry, O England, Leave them their faith in God!

Take, if thou wilt, the earnings Of the poor peasant's toil; Take all the scanty produce That grows on Irish soil, To pay the alien preachers Whom Ireland will not hear-- To pay the scoffers at the creed Which Irish hearts hold dear: But leave them, cruel England, The gift their God has given; Leave them their ancient worship, Leave them their faith in heaven.

You come and offer learning-- A mighty gift, 'tis true, Perchance the greatest blessing, That now is known to you; But not to see the wonders Sages of old beheld Can they peril a priceless treasure, The faith their fathers held.

For in learning and in science They may forget to pray: _God will not ask for knowledge On the great judgment day._

When, in their wretched cabins, Racked by the fever pain. And the weak cries of their children Who ask for food in vain; When, starving, naked, helpless, From the shed that keeps them warm Man has driven them forth to perish In a less cruel storm; Then, then we plead for mercy; Then, sister, hear our cry; For all we ask, O England, Is--leave them there to die! Cursed is the food and raiment For which a soul is sold; Tempt not another Judas To barter God for gold. You offer food and shelter If they their faith deny; What do you gain, O England! By such a shallow lie? We will not judge the tempted-- May God blot out their shame-- He sees the misery round them, He knows man's feeble frame. His pity still may save them. In his strength they must trust Who calls us all his children. Yet knows we are but dust.

Then leave them the kind tending, Which helped their childish years; Leave them the gracious comfort Which dries their mourner's tears; Leave them to that great mother In whose bosom they were born, Leave them the holy mysteries That comfort the forlorn; And, amid all their trials, Let the great gift abide, Which you, O prosperous England! Have dared to cast aside. Leave them the pitying angels, And Mary's gentle aid, For which earth's dearest treasures Were not too dearly paid. Take back your bribes, then, England, Your gold is black and dim; _And if God sends plague and famine, They can die and go to him._

This is by far the most unpolished and unequal thing Miss Procter has ever written, and full of faults of detail. But, spite of loose texture and repetition, and weak lines, and identical rhymes, there is a strength in all the essential features, and a spirit everywhere, that contrast strongly with the patriotic effusions that we have had so much of these last few years.

Another poem which has incidentally attracted no little notice is Homeward Bound, which anticipates the whole plot of Enoch Arden so completely that some shallow people felt called upon to say a number of very foolish things about the coincidence when Enoch Arden came out. {562} The chief differences are that the ship-wrecked hero is thrown on a desert island in the one and captured by Moors in the other. Enoch Arden also turns away from the agonizing picture of his forfeited home in silence, while Miss Procter's mariner reveals himself, kisses his wife once more as if she were his, and departs, leaving the very awkward bigamy question wide open behind him, and in general evincing a noble ignorance of the law of England. He also perpetrates the dramatic error of surviving in a state of marine vagrancy for a quarter of a century. But, though inferior to Tennyson's, this poem has many excellent touches of pathos and nature, and must claim, equally with Enoch Arden, the full merit of its simple yet most telling conception.

Apropos of resemblances, we are tempted to quote another of her best known poems, both for its real beauty and because it subtly reminds us of Longfellow, and we should be thankful if some one would only tell us why:

The Storm.

The tempest rages wild and high; The waves lift up their voice and cry Fierce answers to the angry sky. Miserere Domine

Through the black night and driving rain, A ship is struggling, all in vain, To live upon the stormy main. Miserere Domine

The thunders roar, the lightnings glare, Vain is it now to strive or dare; A cry goes up of great despair. Miserere Domine

The stormy voices of the main, The moaning wind and pelting rain Beat on the nursery window-pane, Miserere Domine

Warm curtained was the little bed, Soft pillowed was the little head: "The storm will wake the child," they said. Miserere Domine

Cowering among his pillows white, He prays, his blue eyes dim with fright, "Father, save those at sea to-night!" Miserere Domine

The morning shone all clear and gay On a ship at anchor in the bay, And on a little child at play. Gloria tibi Domine!

Out of many which commend themselves, we select only one more, a little gem which we were surprised and pleased to find copied the other day in a little New York evening paper. We think it very suggestive and sweet.

A Lost Chord

Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease, And my fingers wandered idly Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing, Or what I was dreaming then, But I struck one chord of music Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight Like the close of an angel's psalm, And it lay on my fevered spirit With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow, Like love overcoming strife; It seemed the harmonious echo From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexed meanings Into one perfect peace, And trembled away into silence As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly, That one lost chord divine, That came from the soul of the organ, And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel Will speak in that chord again, It may be that only in heaven I shall hear that grand Amen.

We have yet to speak of one great element in these poems, their religion. With those who are born and bred in a church, their belief sits on them like their clothes--becomes a part of themselves. With converts it is oftener like a badge which they are proud to wear, and which some are fond of displaying. Miss Procter's was one of those rare natures in which religion seems to stain back, as it were, and color the very fountain-heads of all thought and impulse, as they are colored by the associations of childhood. In her, it was not like regalia for the processions of life or a reserve fund for emergencies, but thoroughly assimilated and vitalized; a living faith; an actual, practical element in her daily doings, as present in her consciousness as her own individuality. Nor had she any of the combativeness of converts, whose zeal is apt sometimes to be aggressively meek and intolerantly lowly. Hers was a faith full of the charity that judges not. {563} Like all real feeling, it never obtrudes itself, and never shrinks from appearing in its proper place. Thus she has very few devotional and no sectarian pieces at all in her Legends and Lyrics, but once professedly entering on that line of thought, in her Chaplet of Verses, she is both Christian and Catholic throughout.

Yet among the few devotional pieces in the earlier series we find one of the best:

The Peace of God.

We ask for peace, O Lord! Thy children ask thy peace; Not what the world calls rest, That toil and care should cease; That through bright sunny hours Calm life should fleet away, And tranquil night should fade In smiling day: It is not for such peace that we would pray.

We ask for peace, Lord! Yet not to stand secure, Girt round with iron pride, Contented to endure; Crushing the gentle strings That human hearts should know, Untouched by others' joy Or others' woe: Thou, dear Lord! wilt never teach us so.

We ask thy peace, Lord! Through storm, and fear, and strife, To light and guide us on Through a long, struggling life: While no success or gain Shall cheer the desperate fight, Or nerve what the world calls Our wasted might; Yet pressing through the darkness to the light.

It is thine own, Lord! Who toil while others sleep; Who sow with loving care What other hands shall reap: They lean on thee entranced In calm and perfect rest: Give us that peace, Lord! Divine and blest, Thou keepest for those hearts who love thee best.

Very like this in sentiment are several of her best pieces, "Per Pacem ad Lucem," "Ministering Angels," and "Thankfulness." There are a number also addressed to the Virgin Mary, the best of which are too long for insertion. It is this which will restrict our quotations to one more piece, which breathes that lofty ardor that every struggling Christian has felt in his brighter hours of exaltation, and sighed to know that common moods cannot rise to it.

Our Titles.

Are we not Nobles? we who trace Our pedigree so high That God for us and for our race Created earth and sky, And light and air and time and space, To serve us and then die?

Are we not Princes? we who stand As heirs beside the throne, We who can call the promised land Our heritage, our own; And answer to no less command Than God's, and his alone?

Are we not Kings? both night and day, From early until late, About our bed, about our way, A guard of angels wait; And so we watch and work and pray In more than royal state.

......

Are we not more? our life shall be Immortal and divine. The nature Mary gave to thee, Dear Jesus, still is thine: Adoring in thy heart I see Such blood as beats in mine.

O God! that we can dare to fail And dare to say we must! O God! that we can ever trail Such banners in the dust, Can let such starry honors pale And such a blazon rust!

Shall we upon such titles bring The taint of sin and shame? Shall we, the children of the King, Who hold so grand a claim, Tarnish by any meaner thing The glory of our name?

But, although just to-day, in the present undeveloped state of woman's intellect, Miss Procter may strike us most by her advance in thought beyond her sex, she has a far higher claim on us for the admiration due to true womanhood. Where do these poets school their souls, that they come forth full of the experience of threescore years and ten? We know that Miss Procter died in the prime and summer of her days, with most of the great epochs and experiences of a woman's life yet before her. It is not even said that she ever loved; for the sake of him who should lose her, we hope it may be so. Yet her poems hold more tenderness and truth, more of real love, its anxiety, faith, fulfilment, more of woman's inner life, than any ten of the sweet soft natures who have taken these things to be their sole province; who fancy their inkstands are in their souls, and devote a lifetime of harmless harpings to rhyming some flutterings of heart and more flutterings of nerves. {564} Here, as everywhere, we meet with Miss Procter's unfailing force and clearness, and tremble at first to meet it. For of all agonizing things (as many a sensitive nature can testify) there is none like the unconscious cruelty of pure intellect when it comes to deal with the strange intuitions, the noble unreason, the holy follies of the heart. But hand in hand with her inborn analysis comes such a womanhood, so deep, so delicate, so full of sympathy and sweet counsel, as passes words. This union it is, as we said before, that stamps Miss Procter a poet. We men cannot half appreciate this; the sisterhood of sex that her poems must establish with women who have loved and suffered is for some woman only to set forth.

It is difficult to choose any one poem which stands pre-eminent in these qualities. One which will show her insight into the seemingly contradictory impulses of a woman's breast is

A Woman's Question.

Before I trust my fate to thee, Or place my hand in thine; Before I let thy future give Color and form to mine, Before I peril all for thee. Question thy soul to-night for me.

I break all slighter bonds, nor feel A shadow of regret: Is there one link within the past That holds thy spirit yet? Or is thy faith as clear and free As that which I can pledge to thee?

Does there within thy dimmest dreams A possible future shine, Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe Untouched, unshared by mine? If so, at any pain or cost, Oh! tell me before all is lost.

Look deeper still. If thou canst feel Within thy inmost soul That thou hast kept a portion back, While I have staked the whole, Let no false pity spare the blow, But in true mercy tell me so.

Is there within thy heart a need That mine cannot fulfil? One chord that any other hand Could better wake or still? Speak now--lest at some future day My whole life wither and decay.

Lives there within thy nature hid The demon-spirit Change, Shedding a passing glory still On all things new and strange? It may not be thy fault alone-- But shield my heart against thy own.

Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day, And answer to my claim That fate, and that to day's mistake-- Not thou had been to blame? Some soothe their conscience thus; but thou Wilt surely warn and save me now.

Nay, answer not--I dare not hear, The words would come too late; Yet I would spare thee all remorse, So comfort thee, my fate-- Whatever on my heart may fall, Remember, I would risk it all.

The strength of this is in the rendering of that eloquent instinct of love which intuitively strikes the most responsive chord. Here it hits on the strongest appeal a woman can make to a man--to save her against himself. And no one can deny the boldness and beauty of the closing turn of thought.

The following poem bears a strong resemblance to the last in tone and train of analysis, with an element of calm fruition instead of the utter devotion. The one is love's June of trust; the other its September of fulfilment.

A Retrospect.

From this fair point of present bliss, Where we together stand, Let me look back once more, and trace That long and desert land Wherein till now was cast my lot, And I could live, and thou wert not.

......

What had I then? A hope that grew Each hour more bright and dear, The flush upon the eastern skies That showed the sun was near. Now night has faded far away, My sun has risen, and it is day.

A dim ideal of tender grace In my soul reigned supreme; Too noble and too sweet, I thought, To live save in a dream; Within thy heart to-day it lies, And looks on me from thy dear eyes.

Some gentle spirit--love, I thought-- Built many a shrine of pain; Though each false idol fell to dust, The worship was not vain, But a faint radiant shadow, cast Back from our love upon the past.

And grief, too, held her vigil there; With unrelenting sway, Breaking my cloudy visions down, Throwing my flowers away: I owe to her fond care alone That I may now be all thine own.

Fair joy was there: her fluttering wings At time she strove to raise; Watching through long and patient nights, Listening long eager days: I know now that her heart and mine Were waiting, love, to welcome thine.

Thus I can read thy name throughout, And, now her task is done, Can see that even that faded past Was thine, beloved one. And so rejoice my life may be All consecrated, dear, to thee.

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There could scarcely be a truer sign of poetic power than the fidelity and finish of some of these heart-pictures. Out of many others we select two for contrast: one tracing the deep, dreary introspection of passive suffering; the other following out the subtle, restless impulses of pain with pangs. The first we take from a longer poem, "Philip and Mildred."

Dawn of day saw Philip speeding on his road to the great city, Thinking how the stars gazed downward just with Mildred's patient eyes. Dreams of work and fame and honor struggling with a tender pity, Till the loving past receding saw the conquering future rise.

Daybreak still found Mildred watching, with the wonder of first sorrow, How the outward world unaltered shone the same this very day, How unpitying and relentless human life met this new morrow-- Earth, and sky, and man unheeding that her joy had passed away.

Then the round of weary duties, cold and formal, came to meet her, With the life within departed that had given them each a soul; And her sick heart even slighted gentle words that came to greet her; For grief spread its shadowy pinions, like a blight, upon the whole.

_Jar one chord, the harp is silent; move one stone, the arch is shattered; One small clarion-cry of sorrow bids an armed host awake. One dark cloud can hide the sunlight; loose one string, the pearls are scattered; Think one thought, a soul may perish; say one word, a heart may break._

Life went on, the two lives running side by side, the outward seeming, And the truer and diviner hidden in the heart and brain: Dreams grow holy put in action, work grows fair through starry dreaming: But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.

We hardly know which to like the better, the description itself or the moralizing. Very different, very far from moralizing, and yet even more to the life, is

A Comforter.

"Will she come to me, little Effie, Will she come to my arms to rest, And nestle her head on my shoulder, While the sun goes down in the west?

"I and Effie will sit together All alone in this great arm-chair: Is it silly to mind it, darling, When life is so hard to bear?

"No one comforts me like my Effie. Just, I think, that she does not try, Only looks with a wistful wonder Why grown people should ever cry;

"While the little soft arms close tighter Round my neck in their clinging hold: Well, I must not cry on your hair, dear, For my tears might tarnish the gold.

"I am tired of trying to read, dear; It is worse to talk and seem gay; There are some kinds of sorrow, Effie, It is useless to thrust away.

"Ah! advice may be wise, my darling, But one always knows it before; And the reasoning down one's sorrow Seems to make one suffer the more.

"But my Effie won't reason, will she? Or endeavor to understand; Only holds up her mouth to kiss me, As she strokes my face with her hand.

"If you break your plaything yourself, dear, Don't you cry for it all the same? I don't think it is such a comfort, One has only one's self to blame.

"People say things cannot be helped, dear, But then that is the reason why; For, if things could be helped or altered One would never sit down to cry.

"They say, too, that tears are quite useless To undo, amend, or restore: When I think how useless, my Effie, Then my tears only fall the more.

"All to-day I struggled against it, But that does not make sorrow cease; And now, dear, it such a comfort To be able to cry in peace.

"Though wise people would call that folly, And remonstrate with grave surprise, We won't mind what they say, my Effie; We never professed to be wise.

"But my comforter knows a lesson Wiser, truer than all the rest, That to help and to heal a sorrow, Love and silence are always best.

"Well, who is my comforter tell me! Effie smiles, but she will not speak, Or look up through the long, curled lashes That are shading her rosy cheek.

"Is she thinking of talking fishes, The blue-bird, or magical tree? Perhaps I am thinking, my darling, Of something that never can be.

"You long, don't you, dear, for the genii, Who were slaves of lamps and of rings? And I--I am sometimes afraid, dear, I want as impossible things.

"But, hark! there is nurse calling Effie! It is bedtime, so run away; And I must go back, or the others Will be wondering why I stay.

"So good-night to my darling Effie; Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise: There's one kiss for her golden tresses And two for her sleepy eyes."

We do not know where to look for anything like this. It is so graphic, so simple, so true. We, at least, never realized a scene so vividly, so minutely, with all the details we would notice if it actually happened, and not a touch beyond, unless perhaps after reading Maud Müller. {566} The kind of force is in many respects the same, except that the woman-poet, as usual, says what the man-poet suggests of the inner life underlying. But it is excellently said, so well that one mentally declines to apply the principles of aesthetics, which would dictate Whittier's method as the more thoroughly artistic. How well the whole logic, or illogic, of that grand solace, a good cry, is given, and how natural and how sweet if one could only chance on an Effie that would not tell nurse all about it, to have a little "comforter" that would only know the grief and never care for the causes!

We have only one more poem to quote--one which we consider in many respects Miss Procter's best. If feeling, delicacy, pathos, truth, make beauty and poetry, this alone ought to entitle its author to distinction. Bare of all factitious ornament, carrying no overload of elegances, it goes straight to the heart of every mother, and strikes the deepest key-note in the organism of the world--motherhood. And it seems to us that, if all men today were to league against her memory, this poem should win her an immortality in the hearts of womankind:

Links With Heaven.

Our God in heaven, from that holy place To each of us an angel guide has given; But mothers of dead children have more grace, For they give angels to their God and heaven.

How can a mother's heart feel cold or weary, Knowing her dearer self safe, happy, warm? How can she feel her road too dark or dreary, Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm?

How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding, Our God forgot, our holy saints defied; But can a mother hear her dead child pleading, And thrust those little angel hands aside?

Those little hands stretched down to draw her ever Nearer to God by mother love: we all Are blind and weak, yet surely she can never, With such a stake in heaven, fail or fall.

She knows that, when the mighty angels raise Chorus in heaven, one little silver tone Is hers forever; that one little praise, One little happy voice, is all her own.

We may not see her sacred crown of honor, But all the angels flitting to and fro Pause smiling as they pass--they look upon her As mother of an angel whom they know;

One whom they left nestled at Mary's feet-- The children's place in heaven--who softly sings A little chant to please them, slow and sweet, Or, smiling, strokes their little folded wings;

Or gives them her white lilies or her beads To play with: yet, in spite of flower or song, They often lift a wistful look that pleads And asks them why their mother stays so long.

Then our dear Queen makes answer she will call Her very soon: meanwhile they are beguiled To wait and listen while she tells them all A story of her Jesus as a child.

Ah! saints in heaven may pray with earnest will And pity for their weak and erring brothers; Yet there is prayer in heaven more tender still, The little children pleading for their mothers.

In conclusion, we think the world will not know for a while yet how much it has lost in Adelaide Anne Procter. Her time to be missed will come when Catholic England will need to be represented in the national literature. For those who will force it into recognition, there will of necessity be strong rather than fine intellects. Then the world will turn back to her pages, and wish she were but there to represent Catholicity in England; then she will be carefully read, and, once this happens, her place is assured. And yet, even then, we can never know her as she was; for beyond almost any author we recall, Miss Procter impresses us as being far superior to her works. She is the best of examples of her own doctrine of imperfect expression. The fulness and fineness of her nature strike one from the beginning as being immeasurable by what she has written. There is something exalted and tender, rich and yet reserved, about the life which animates her poems, that interests us uncommonly. And when we come to read of her, what was her life and what its aims, and, above all, when we see how she is mourned by those who held her dear here, we recognize her for one of those rare and beautiful hearts whom God loves too well to leave us long, and conclude, in laying down these broken reflections of her spirit, that her noblest poem was herself.

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The Indissolubility of Christian Marriage.

Number One.

The frightful corruption in the legislation and practice respecting divorce which has spread so widely during the past few years in our country has at last aroused the attention of those who are interested in the preservation of the public morals. They are beginning to write on the subject, and are casting about for the means of protecting the endangered institution of marriage. We feel it to be our duty to exercise what little influence we may possess in the community at large, in the same direction. At present, we shall restrict our remarks to one single point, which is the theological question of the lawfulness of divorce a vinculo matrimonii, for the cause of adultery, under the law of Christ. In order to make our intent and meaning plain, we shall begin by stating the proposition we wish to maintain. The marriage of Christians, validly ratified and consummated, is absolutely indissoluble; and therefore there can be no legal and valid divorce of the parties to such a marriage a vinculo matrimonii. The best and ablest Protestant writers admit this with one exception, that is, of the innocent party in the case of a marriage which has been violated by adultery. We leave them, therefore, to defend the indissolubility of marriage in all other cases, and confine ourselves to the one case in which they permit divorce.

The sole argument for the lawfulness of divorce in this instance is derived from the following texts in St. Matthew's gospel. "Whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery." (v. 32.) "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery." (xix. 9.) The Catholic interpretation of these passages is, that our Lord permits a final separation a mensâ et thoro, for one cause, and one only, which is the grievous crime mentioned in these texts. In accordance with this interpretation, we explain these passages by the following paraphrase: "Whoever, for any lesser cause than the crime of adultery, separates himself finally from his wife, places both her and himself in the danger of sinning, and is guilty of creating a proximate occasion of adultery. If he separates himself from her on account of the grievous crime above mentioned, he is not responsible for her future crimes, nor is he guilty of placing himself without just cause in a condition in which the observance of his marriage vows becomes more difficult. Nevertheless, if he marries another, he commits adultery."

In order to sustain the truth of this interpretation, it is necessary to defend three propositions. First. That our Lord declared the bond of marriage indissoluble. Second. That he condemned all soi-disant marriages of persons who were divorced, as adulterous. Third. That he permitted a final divorce a mensâ et thoro simply, for the cause of adultery, and for no other.

The first proposition is established by all the texts of the New Testament which speak on the subject. We will first examine the text of St. Matthew, which includes the passage that is in dispute:

"And the Pharisees came to him, tempting him, and saying: Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man in the beginning, made them male and female? {568} And he said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they two shall be in one flesh. Wherefore they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say to him: why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away? He saith to them: Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so."

It is evident from these words of our Lord that the reason for the marriage of one man with only one woman, and for the perpetuity of this union, is founded in the law of nature and the primitive revelation of God to the founders of the human race. Also, that our Lord intended to restore marriage to its primitive and perfect law, abrogating all temporary dispensations in favor of polygamy and divorce. His commandment not to put asunder what God hath joined is universal, and establishes the principle that marriage is not dissoluble by human law. In the gospel of St. Mark we are further informed that "in the house again his disciples asked him concerning the same thing. And he said to them: Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if the wife shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery." (x. 11.) St. Luke also relates the words of our Lord with the same explicitness: "Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband, committeth adultery." (xvi. 18.) The same doctrine is established by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans: "For the woman that hath a husband, whilst her husband liveth, is bound to the law: but if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. Wherefore, whilst her husband liveth, she shall be called an adulteress if she be with another man: but if her husband be dead, she is free from the law of her husband: so that she is not an adulteress if she be with another man." (vii. 2, 3.) This passage lays down clearly and without exception the law that the bond of marriage can only be dissolved by death. It is confirmed by other texts in the first epistle to the Corinthians: "But to them that are married, not I, but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from her husband: and if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife." "A woman is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth: but if her husband die, she is at liberty: let her marry to whom she will; only in the Lord." (vii. 10, 11, 39.)

There can be no question between us and that class of strict Protestant moralists who allow of divorce only in one case, and of re-marriage even in that one case only by the innocent party, that the passages we have cited lay down in general terms the indissolubility of Christian marriage. The only point to be discussed, therefore, is, whether they are right or wrong in so interpreting our Lord's words as to permit re-marriage in this one particular case. If it cannot be shown that our Lord distinctly and positively releases the innocent party in this case from the vinculum matrimonii, our proposition stands firm that this vinculum is in all cases indissoluble except by death.

In regard to this point we remark, first, that obscure passages ought to be interpreted in conformity with those which are clear, and not the reverse. The passages we have cited which proclaim the indissolubility of the marriage-bond are clear. Those which are cited in proof of the exception are obscure. It is not clear on the face of them how far the permission to dismiss the guilty wife extends, and the conclusion that this permission includes the permission to marry another woman is a mere inference. {569} The Catholic interpretation, that the permission extends no further than a divorce a mensâ et thoro, harmonizes those passages with all others in the New Testament which speak on the subject, and is, therefore, in itself more probable.

We remark, secondly, that the opposite interpretation is intrinsically improbable, because it contravenes the evident scope and intention of our Lord's words, which were to abrogate the special dispensations of the Mosaic law, and introduce a stricter law in conformity with the original institution of matrimony. Our opponents explain the law as giving the wife an equal privilege of divorcing her husband with that conceded to the husband. But, according to the law of Moses, the woman could not divorce her husband for any cause whatever. If, now, our Lord gave her this privilege, he relaxed the Mosaic law in an important respect. This is highly improbable, seeing that it is only by inference that we can apply the permission given the injured husband to dismiss his wife to the injured woman in similar circumstances. We admit fully that, our Lord did intend to give woman an equal right in the premises with that which he conceded to man. But, if that right had been the one claimed by our opponents it is not to be supposed that he would have failed to express it in clear and distinct terms. We argue that, as his whole scope was to make the law of marriage stricter, and as the law of Moses gave women no right of divorce, our Lord did not concede to Christian women that right. Our opponents admit that no more was conceded to men than to women, therefore no right of divorce was conceded to men.

We remark, thirdly, that the divorce permitted by our Lord cannot have been a divorce a vinculo, from the concession of our opponents, who admit that the guilty party is not released from it so as to be capable of contracting a second marriage.

They admit that the guilty party commits adultery by attempting another marriage, and that the person marrying the one divorced commits adultery. Adultery is not possible where there is no vinculum matrimonii subsisting. But there can be no vinculum except between two parties. It is absurd that a woman should be bound to keep faith with the man who has another lawful wife. Therefore, on the principles of our opponents, since the guilty party is still in the bonds of the first marriage, the innocent party is so also.

Let us now examine the passage itself, which permits the dismissal of a guilty consort, to see if it can fairly be interpreted in accordance with the doctrine we have endeavored to establish. Our opponents argue that the sense of the passage is as follows: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, commits adultery, unless the cause of his putting her away was adultery on her part." Therefore, they say, if she was put away for the crime above mentioned, he does not commit adultery, though he marries another. The mere verbal construction admits of this interpretation, but does not positively require it. It may fairly be understood to mean this: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, commits adultery, and whosoever shall marry another commits adultery." That is, he who puts away his wife for any lesser cause, causes her to commit adultery, and exposes himself to the danger of committing the same sin, on account of the facility given by the civil law to both parties to contract second marriages, and also because of the danger in which a woman is placed, when cast off by her husband, of giving herself up to a bad life through want and desperation, especially in a state of society which is morally corrupt. And, much more, the one who actually does contract a second marriage during the lifetime of the wife whom he has repudiated commits adultery, by contracting an invalid marriage. Both acts are a violation of the marriage vows, the desertion of the wife, and the formation of a second, unlawful union with another; and, therefore, both are classed together, although it is only the latter which is strictly and technically called adultery.

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Our opponents may justly say that the text does not require this interpretation, and that, if this really was the sense and meaning of our Lord, the apostle has expressed it in an elliptical and obscure manner. Very true. And if we had no other information than that which is furnished by St. Matthew, the real doctrine of our Lord would be doubtful. This is nothing strange or surprising. The sacred writers frequently speak in an obscure, in artificial, and elliptical manner, which obliges us to interpret their meaning from sources extraneous to the text. There is no evidence that all the words used by our Lord himself to explain his doctrine to the by-standers in public, or to his disciples in private, have been recorded with verbal accuracy or completeness. St. Matthew gave a brief summary of Christ's doctrine in his own language, which was intelligible to his readers at the time, because they already knew the law which had been promulgated in the Christian church. We hope to show hereafter what this law was, from evidence furnished by the early Christian writers and by the uniform canonical practice of the church. Meanwhile, we think we have proved that the general scope of the language of the New Testament sustains the doctrine of the indissolubility of Christian marriage.

Our second and third propositions have been established in the process of maintaining the first, and flow from it obviously. It is evident that, where the vinculum matrimonii subsists between two persons, either of them who attempts marriage with a third party violates the rights of the lawful consort, and makes an invalid contract, whatever the civil law may decide to the contrary. It is also evident that our Lord did permit a final dissolution of the connubium between married persons for one cause, and one only. If this dissolution is not a divorce a vinculo, it must be a mensâ et thoro. We leave the subject here for the present, hoping to resume it again at a convenient opportunity; and we respectfully recommend to our learned readers, who are desirous of investigating it fully, the work of Perrone, De Matrimonio Christiano, 3 vols. Rome, 1858.

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Miscellany.

The Magnetic Polarity of Rifles. Mr. J. Spiller has lately made some very interesting observations respecting the magnetic power assumed by rifles. He finds that all the long Enfield barrels of the arms in the possession of the volunteers of his company exhibit magnetic polarity as the result of the violent and repeated concussions attending their discharge in a direction parallel to the magnetic meridian. The Royal Arsenal range runs nearly north and south, and the rifles, when in use, are always pointed either due north or a few degrees toward the west--in fact, nearly in the direction indicated by a compass-needle--so that the repeated shocks brought about by the explosion of the powder may, Mr. Spiller thinks, be considered equivalent to so many hard blows from a hammer, which, as is well known, have a similar effect. Mr. Spiller goes on to say that the magnetic character appears to be permanent, which would not be the case if the gun-barrels were of the softest description of malleable iron; and the region of the breech is, in every instance, possessed of north polarity, since it strongly attracts the south pole of the compass needle. {571} These effects should not be noticed at all, or only to an inferior degree, in arms ordinarily fired in directions east and west; and it is supposed that by reversing the usual practice, if it were possible, and firing towards the south, the indications of polarity would be changed.

Mont Cenis Railway.--In a paper read before the Institute of Civil Engineers, Capt. H. W. Tyler has fully described the results of experiments with Mr. Fell's locomotive, which has been adopted for surmounting the steep gradients and sharp curves of the Mont Cenis route. On Mr. Fell's system an intermediate or centre rail is adopted, against which horizontal wheels worked by the engine are pressed by springs, so as to yield any requisite amount of adhesion. The engine constructed for the Mont Cenis line is partly of steel; its weight fully loaded does not exceed 17 tons. There are two 15-inch cylinders working both the four coupled horizontal and the four coupled bearing wheels. The pressure on the additional horizontal wheels can be varied by the engine-driver at pleasure; during the experiments it amounted to from 2½ to 3 tons on each wheel, or 10 tons altogether, but provision was made for increasing this pressure to 24 tons if necessary. During the official trials, with a load of 24 tons exclusive of the engine, on an average gradient of 1 in 13, with curves of 2 to 4 chains radius, the speed of 6.65 miles to 7.46 miles per hour was attained in ascending. With a load of 16 tons the speed was 10 miles.

Fossil Man in the Rhine Valley.--In the Lehm of the valley of the Rhine, near Colmar, there is a marly deposit composed of a mixture of clay, fine sand, and carbonate of lime. It forms part of the diluvial beds, and in it M. Faudel has found a number of human and other remains. These consisted of shells, bones of a huge stag, teeth of Elephas primigenuis, and a human frontal and right parietal bone of a man of middle size. M. Faudel concludes that man was contemporaneous with the mammoth fossil stag and bison.

Tobacco Smoking Injurious to the Eyes.--In a recent number (February 15) of the Bulletin de Thérapeutique, M. Viardin describes two cases of serious eye affection (amblyopia) resulting from the habit of smoking. M. Viardin at once, on learning the habits of the patients, induced them to smoke a much smaller quantity of tobacco than usual, and the result was a complete restoration of vision in a few weeks from the date of their application.

Intermittent Fevers produced by Vegetable Organisms.--Some time since, we called attention to Dr. Salisbury's observations, tending to support the theory expressed above. More recently these ideas have been, in some measure, confirmed by Professor Hannon, of the University of Brussels. In 1843, says M. Hannon, "I studied at the University of Liege; Professor Charles Morsen had created in me such an enthusiasm in the study of the fresh-water algae that the windows and mantel-piece of my chamber were encumbered with plates filled with vaucheria, oscillatoria, and confervae. My preceptor said to me: 'Take care at the period of their fructification, for the spores of the algae give intermittent fever. I have had it every time I have studied them too closely.' As I cultivated my algae in pure water, and not in the water of the marsh where I had gathered them, I did not attach any importance to his remark. I suffered for my carelessness a month later, at the period of their fructification. I was taken with shivering; my teeth chattered; I had the fever, which lasted six weeks."

Origin of Petroleum.--Although nearly all geologists are agreed as to the organic origin of petroleum, a great many are of opinion that the rock-oil is the result of a natural distillation of coal. Professor Hitchcock, however, no mean authority, comes to a different conclusion. Admitting, with all who have carefully studied the matter, that petroleum is of organic origin, he says that, in his opinion, it comes from plants, and that it is not, as some have suggested, a fish-oil or a substance altered to adipocere. It does not appear to be the result of a natural distillation of coal, since its chemical composition is different from the oil manufactured artificially from the cannels, containing neither nitro-benzole nor aniline. Moreover, petroleum occupied fissures in the silurian and devonian strata long before the trees of the coal period were growing in their native forests. The nearly universal association of brine with petroleum, and the fact of the slight solubility of hydrocarbons in fresh, but insolubility in salt water, excite the inquiry whether the salt water of primeval lagoons may not have prevented the escape of the vegetable gases beneath, and condensed them into liquids.

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Structure of the Liver.--Dr. Lionel Beale's opinion as to the structure of the vertebrate liver has been recently substantiated by the researches of Herr Hering. This histologist states that the liver is constructed like the other secreting glands. It is of the tubular type, with canals, anastomosing in every direction, and having a tendency to form a series of networks. Like other secretions, the bile travels along glandular canals surrounded by glandular cells. It is easy (he says) to observe this arrangement in the livers of vertebrates. Five or more cells are disposed in simple layers around the circular and minute aperture of a hepatic utricle seen in transverse section. This arrangement loses itself insensibly in that variety of structure in which there are no utricles properly so called. Occasionally may be seen four, three, or even only two cells, uniting to form a biliary canal. The Russian anatomist denies the existence of hepatic trabeculae of biliferous capillaries, and believes that the biliary cells are persistent. He looks upon serpents' livers as the only organs for minute inquiries upon the subject.

The Cometary Theory of Shooting-Stars--to whom does it belong?--The Abbé Moigno, who has broached this question, and who evidently feels strongly on the point, makes the following observations in our contemporary, the Chemical News, of March 15th: "In a quite recent note inserted on March 3d, in the International Bulletin of the Imperial Observatory, and on the 8th inst. in the Bulletin of the Scientific Association of France, M. Le Verrier resumes on the cometary theory of shooting-stars, and persists in attributing the honor of it to himself, without condescending to mention the name of Schiaparelli, whose letters, however, have been published in a journal of great authority, the Meteorological Bulletin of the College of Rome, issued under the superintendence of the Rev. P. Secchi, and were translated by the writer before M. Le Verrier had published a single word of his researches. We are really frightened by this system of organized cool-blooded appropriation, and more so by these lines, the effect of which has been even more coolly calculated: 'Sir John Herschel, who, along with his son, Alexander Herschel, has paid great attention to shooting-stars, gives his complete assent to the theory of the swarms of November.' Poor M. Schiaparelli! Happily the Astronomische Nachrichten have collected the necessary papers, and he will soon be in a position of having his revenge."

New Form of Telegraphy.--An invention for the transmission of despatches by an automatic electro-chemical method has been devised by MM. Vavin and Fribourg. Its object is to utilize all the velocity of the current on telegraphic lines. The Abbé Moigno, who has called attention to it in England, gives the following description of it: It consists in the distribution of the current through as many small wires, very short and isolated, as there are signals to be transmitted, all the while only employing one wire on the main line. Each of these small isolated wires communicates, on the one hand, with a metallic plate, of a particular form, fixed in gutta-percha; and, on the other, with a metallic division of a disc, which is also formed of an insulating substance. A group of eleven of those small laminae form a sort of cipher, which will give all the letters of the alphabet by the suppression of certain portions of the fundamental form. "Now," says the abbé, "suppose rows of these compound characters to be placed on a sheet of prepared paper of a metallic nature, the words of the telegram to be sent are written on them with isolating ink, leaving the other parts of the small 'stereotyped' blocks untouched. The consequence is that the current is intercepted at every point touched by the ink, and a letter is, imprinted on the prepared paper at the other end of the line where the telegram is to be received."

A Cheap and Ingenious Ice Machine.--M. Tonelli, says the Abbé Moigno, has just devised an ice-making machine which bids fair to become very popular in this country, since it is convenient, cheap, and efficient. The inventor calls it the "glacier roulante." It is a simple metallic cylinder mounted on a foot. The salt of soda and the salt of ammonia are added in two operations, the smaller cylinder, containing the water to be frozen, is introduced into the interior, and the orifice is close by an india-rubber disc, and then by a cover fastened with a catch; the cylinder is then placed in a sac, or case of cloth, and it is made to roll on the table with a slight oscillatory movement given by the hand. {573} After a lapse of ten minutes, the water in the interior of the cylinder becomes a beautiful cylinder of ice. Nothing is more simple, more economical, or more efficacious than the new "glacier roulante" which costs 10 fr., and gives us, moreover, what could not hitherto be obtained with an apparatus containing freezing mixtures the means of freezing a decanter of water or a bottle of champagne. The apparatus, in a case, packed for travelling, with 20 kilogrammes of refrigerating materials and a measure, costs, at present, only 1_l._--Popular Science Review.

The "Cybele Hibernica."--The invaluable work which Mr. Watson achieved for England is being imitated on the other side of the Irish Channel. Messrs. Moore & More have issued a volume upon the subject of the distribution of Irish plants, and the facts it lays before the botanical public are both numerous and interesting. Taking the number of species for Britain proper at Mr. Watson's estimate of 1,425 species, the authors of the "Cybele Hibernica" claim for Ireland about 1,000 species. Of the 532 plants of the British type, Ireland has all, or very nearly so. The Atlantic type is the only other one where she has decidedly more than half, forty-one species out of seventy. Of the boreal species, (Highland, Scottish, and intermediate types taken together,) although there is not a single one of the twelve provinces in which there is not a hill of upward of 2,000 feet in altitude, Ireland has only 106 species out of 238. Of the 458 English and local species she has just over one half; and, finally, out of the 127 Germanic species only 18.

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Original.

New Publications.

History Of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M. A. Vols. VII., VIII., IX. and X. 12mo. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

The four volumes of this work which are now before us carry the history of the reign of Elizabeth from her accession to the death of Maitland and Grange, and the consequent extinction of the Mary Stuart party in 1573. The wars and troubles in Ireland, the invasion of Ulster, the insurrections and death of Shan O'Neil, the quarrels of the Ormonds and the Desmonds; the career of John Knox; the reign of Mary Queen of Scots; the English maritime adventures of the sixteenth century; and the St. Bartholomew massacre, are some of the exciting topics which Mr. Froude touches with his brilliant pen, and upon which he lavishes his wonderful powers of narration and his skill of dramatic arrangement. That our readers should be satisfied with the pictures he presents to them is not to be expected. They must not look in his pages for candor or judicial calmness. They will find Mary Stuart painted here in darker and more horrible colors than in any other modern work; John Knox lauded as "the one supremely great man that Scotland possessed;" and the Huguenot massacre detailed with all the exaggerations and harrowing circumstances which the partisan spirit of former historians has spread about it. Mr. Froude is too anxious to make an effective story ever to be an honest historian. A picturesque grouping of events and persons has a temptation for his refined literary taste which often overcomes the cardinal principle of historical composition, to tell the truth and the whole truth. The extravagant admiration of the Tudor dynasty with which he began to write has not cooled with the progress of his labors. The fealty which he held to Henry and Edward he has now transferred unshaken to Elizabeth; but there is this to be said for him, that Elizabeth, with all her many faults, (and now and again even Mr. Froude recognizes some of them,) possessed many really great qualities, which the most uncompromising of her enemies must admire.

{574}

We have no purpose to go into the vexed question of the character of Mary Queen of Scots; but it is only fair to mention that Mr. Froude fortifies his unfavorable conclusions by copious references to authorities which have only recently been brought to light, and that he has enjoyed in particular a free use of the important manuscript archives of Simancas to which historians were so long denied access.

The Student Of Blenheim Forest; or, The Trials of a Convert. By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. John Murphy & Co. Baltimore.

This is a new and revised edition of an old work. It is a narrative of the trials of a convert from Protestantism to the Catholic Church at the time it was written. These trials, thank God, are daily becoming less as the doctrine and practice of the church become better known, and prejudice and misrepresentation disappear. Not every convert is called to pass through such trials as the hero of this tale, although all should have the same willingness to suffer for Christ, to give up friends and worldly hopes rather than be untrue to one's conviction.

The scene is laid in Virginia, and gives us a vivid picture of Southern life. We think, in a book intended for general reading and the diffusion of Catholic truth, it would be better to omit unfriendly allusion to what the authoress calls the "cold customs of the North."

Studies In English; Or, Glimpses Of The Inner Life Of Our Language. By M. Schele de Vere, LL.D., Professor of Modern Languages in the University of Virginia. London: Trübner & Co. New-York: Charles Scribner & Co. Printed at the Riverside Press, Cambridge.

This is one of the few American books we are called upon to notice which make a real and important addition to any solid and useful branch of learning outside of the circle of the physical sciences. It is a thoroughly scholarly production, full of the most instructive information regarding the history, formation, and component elements of the English language. This information is communicated not in a dry, technical, and college-text-book manner, but in a graceful, charming, and entertaining style, rich in illustrations and apt references to classic authors, which makes the reading of the book a true pleasure. Happily, the author does not ride the Anglo-Saxon or any other hobby, but does full justice to the Latin, Celtic, and other elements of the language. It is especially interesting to the Catholic reader to notice the abundant evidence the author furnishes of the ineffaceable impress the Catholic religion has stamped upon the English language. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of a thorough study and right understanding of words as the signs of thoughts, the vehicles of the transmission of truths, the current coin of the intellectual kingdom. It is this which is one great secret of the power possessed by such great masters of the divine faculty of speech as Dr. Brownson and Dr. Newman. Sophists, like Carlyle, corrupt thought by corrupting language, and confused, inconsistent reasoners, like Dr. Pusey, obscure truth by obscuring language. The volume before us will prove an invaluable aid to the scholar who wishes to study the pure, good, sound sense, and correct use of our mother tongue. We think the author betrays some English prejudice, in ascribing a peculiar faculty of understanding the genuine doctrine of the Scriptures to the English people. This is a spice of the Anglican "True Church" theory, which all the rest of mankind laugh at. We think, also, that he somewhat exaggerates the excellence of the English language, and its influence on the world. We were reminded while reading his eulogium on the English language of the verse of Kenelm Digby:

"Greek's a harp we like to hear, Latin hath a trumpet clear, Italian rings like marriage-bells, While Spain her solemn organ swells, French with many a frolic mien Tunes her jocund violin, The German beats her heavy drum As Russian's clashing symbols come; But Britain's sons may well rejoice, For English is the human voice."

The English people are proud, and the American people are vain of a fancied superiority in all things, except the fine arts, over the rest of mankind. Neither are aware how far behind some other nations they are in many of the highest branches of science and literature. A little boasting will, therefore, add to the popularity of an author in the English language, as indeed it will in any other. {575} We will not quarrel over this point with Professor De Vere, for nothing is more difficult than a precisely accurate judgment concerning the relative merits of the principal modern languages. We have a mother tongue with which we have every reason to be satisfied, and therefore let us try to use it well, and preserve it from corruption. On this head, we have great reason to fear for the future, and therefore we give a hearty welcome to the learned professor's suggestion that an English Academy should be constituted, which shall decide all questions respecting the spelling, pronunciation, and right use of English words.

It is enough to say that this volume is from the Riverside press to guarantee its typographical excellence, and we hope this circumstance will counterbalance, in those minds disposed to be rigid in excluding everything which has not the Boston stamp, the fact that the author hails from Virginia.

Antoine De Bonneval. A Tale of Paris in the days of St. Vincent de Paul. By Rev. W. H. Anderdon. Kelly & Piet, Baltimore.

In this narrative are portrayed some of the most exciting scenes in French history. It tells of that period in which Richelieu, Mazarin, St. Vincent de Paul, and Monsieur Olier figured so largely, and whose history is so suggestive to the thoughtful reader. The style is vigorous and the volume worthy of a place in a Sunday-school or parochial library.

Etudes Philologiques Sur Quelques Langues Sauvages De L'amerique. Par N. O., Ancien Missionnaire. Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 55 Grande Rue St. Jacques. 1866.

The Indian dialects of North America deserve a more attentive study than they have yet received. If the inquirer did no more than confine his researches to the languages spoken by the Algic tribes, (to use an epithet happily devised by Schoolcraft to designate the native races found east of the Alleghanies,) the compensation would be fairly worth the work. Resolved into two groups, the Algonquin and Iroquois, these varieties of speech present contrasts so striking and analogies so rare as to forbid the theory of a derivation from a common stock. The words of these two families of tongues are not only wholly dissimilar, but are, for the most part, mutually unpronounceable. The Algonquin cannot articulate an f or an r; while the Iroquois, to whom these sounds are familiar, can make nothing of a b or an m. The two languages, with the doubtful exception of a corrupt dialect, and then in words evidently borrowed from the conqueror, agree in little else than an odd aversion to the letter l, and, we may add perhaps, in a plentiful lack of adjectives and a most oppressive multiplicity of verbs.

It is in this last-mentioned field (the analysis of Algic verbs) that our author N. O. has exerted his main strength, and has given the best proofs of his linguistic skill. The Algonquin verb to love, sakih, expatiates, in the course of twenty-two pages of this treatise, into two active and three passive voices, served by eight moods, three past tenses, two futures, and two first persons plural, with participles and gerunds to match; and all subject to fifteen accidents, corresponding to the various modifications of Semitic verbs. The Iroquois verb, though in quite another way, rejoices also in conjugations, moods, tenses, and numbers not unworthy of comparison with the Greek, subject to secondary forms more or less resembling the Semitic. The Algonquin participle may assume a negative shape, and it is this nullifying syllable si that mainly distinguishes the two words which in that language signify Catholic and Protestant. The Catholics are tcipaiatikonamatizodjik, literally, "they who make upon their own persons the sign of the wood of the dead body of Christ." "Protestants" (having as usual failed to make themselves understood except as deniers of Catholicity, and who are nothing if not negative) are tcipaiatikonamatizosigok, "those who do not make upon themselves the sign of the wood of the dead body of Christ." It is to be hoped that the theologians of the two professions have shorter and more convenient terms when they resort, as they have been known to do, to the refreshment of reciprocal objurgation.

We regret that we cannot go into details. The book is pleasantly written, lucidly arranged, and full of satisfactory evidence of a keen perception of philological distinctions. We cordially recommend it to those who are ambitious to gain an insight into the philosophy of the languages, before they also (we mean the languages) take their inevitable turn to be numbered with the dead.

{576}

The Literary Character Of The Bible. A Lecture delivered before the Wilmington Institute. By H. Beecher Swoope, Attorney-at-law.

The author delivered and now publishes this as "A Lawyer's tribute to the Bible," and it is surely a very graceful one. It shows a just appreciation of the literary excellences of the sacred volume, of the grandeur of its history, the depth of its philosophy, the sublimity of its poetry. We dislike, however, this consideration of the inspired volume merely as a literary production, without keeping in view its sacred character as the word of God. Containing as it does, the revelation of God's infinite perfections, it must necessarily contain all that is most beautiful, profound, sublime. We agree with the author that, "in order to bring out all the hidden beauties of the original Scriptures, we need a new translation brought fully up to the present standard of our language," and that "our present version of the Bible is sublime, grand, and beautiful, only because many of the ideas and conceptions are so essentially great and lofty that they necessarily appear magnificent in the most artless dress."

Catholic Anecdotes; Or, The Catechism In Examples. Illustrating the Sacraments. By the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Translated from the French by Mrs. J. Sadlier. New-York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

This is the third and last part of this series of anecdotes. They are intended to assist those engaged in teaching the Christian doctrine, by giving them examples illustrative of the subject they may be teaching. They are arranged in the same order as the subject matter of the Catechism, and are well adapted for this purpose.

Lives And Times Of The Roman Pontiffs. 2 vols. Sadliers.

This great work, in two large quarto volumes of nearly 1000 pages each, is a translation from the French of the Chevalier Artaud de Montor. The author is both a well-informed historian and an elegant writer. Although there are some faults in the translation, and some typographical errors, the value of the work is nevertheless very great, and it is a noble addition to our Catholic literature. There is much beauty in the mechanical execution, and the illustrations are numerous. Many of the portraits and other illustrations are excellent, though a few are quite indifferent. The preface is carelessly written, and has not the excellence which ought to characterize the introduction to such a great work. The hand of a finished scholar would have done great good in retouching the whole work, which is, notwithstanding its minor defects, on the whole a superb one and a credit to its publishers.

Christianity And Its Conflicts, Ancient And Modern. By E. E. Marcy, A.M. New-York: Appleton & Co. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street.

This work comes upon our table just as we are going to press. A rapid glance over its contents shows us that it presents a comprehensive view of the church and its work, contrasted with the vain and fruitless attempts made by her enemies to set up a rival system of Christianity. It is a work which will be widely read and excite no little interest, and deserves at our hands a more extended critical notice, which we propose to give it in our next issue. It is not an ordinary book of controversy, and we advise our readers in the mean time to get a copy and read it.

H. McGrath, Philadelphia, announces a new and illustrated volume of Poems, by E. A. S.

Books Received.

From P. O'Shea, New-York. The Beauties of Faith; or, Power of Mary's Patronage. Leaves from the Ave Maria. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 272 and 145. Price, $2.

From Charles Scribner & Co., New-York. Liber Librorum; its Structure, Limitations, and Purpose. A friendly communication to a reluctant sceptic. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 232. Price, $1.50.

Studies in English; or, Glimpses of the Inner Life of our Language. By M. Schele de Vere, LL.D. 1 vol. 12mo. Price, $2.50.

From D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New-York. Peter of Castle and the Fetches. By the Brothers Banim. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 348. Price, $1.50.

From M. Doolady, New-York. The History of Pendennis, etc. By W. M. Thackeray. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 479. Diamond Ed.

From the author. Dion and the Sibyls; a Romance of the First Century. By Miles Gerald O'Reilly, H. M. Colonial Secretary in Bermuda. 2 vols. 8vo Richard Bentlev, London.

From Leypoldt & Holt, New-York. Fathers and Sons. A Novel. By Ivan Sergheievitch Turgeneff. Translated from the Russian by Eugene Schuyler, Ph.D. 1 vol. 12mo. Price, $1.50.

The Man with the Broken Ear; from the French of Edmond About. By Henry Holt. 1 vol. l2mo. Price, $1.50.

From P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia. Stories of the Commandments; The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy; Caroline, or Self-Conquest. Being vols. 16, 17, and 18 of the Young Catholic's Library. Price, 50 cents each.

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{577}

The Catholic World.

Vol. V., No. 29.--August, 1867.

Original.

Guettée's Papacy Schismatic. [Footnote 176]

[Footnote 176: See The Catholic World, July, 1867.]

M. Guettée, it will be remembered, undertakes to establish two propositions --first, "The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries possess the authority of divine right which he has since sought to exercise; and second, The pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of divine right over the whole church was the real cause of the division," or schism between the East and the West. To the first proposition, we have replied, the bishop of Rome is in possession, and it is for the author to prove that he is not rightfully in possession. This he can do only by proving either, first, that no such title by divine right was ever issued; or, second, that it vests in an adverse claimant. He sets up no adverse claimant, but attempts to make it appear that no such title as is claimed was ever issued. This he attempts to do by showing that the proofs of title usually relied on by Catholic writers are negatived by the Holy Scriptures and the testimony of the fathers and councils of the first eight centuries. We have seen that he has signally failed so far as the Holy Scriptures and the fathers of the first three centuries are concerned; nay, that instead of proving his proposition, he has by his own witnesses refuted it, and proved that the title did issue, and did vest in St. Peter, and consequently now vests in the bishop of Rome as Peter's successor.

This alone is enough for us, and renders any further discussion of the first proposition unnecessary. After the testimony of St. Cyprian, who is his own witness, the author really has nothing more to say. He has lost his case. But, ignorant of this, he proceeds in the fourth division of his work to interrogate the fathers and councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, but even less successfully, as we now proceed to show. We only beg the reader to bear in mind that we are not adducing our proofs of the papacy by divine right, but are simply examining the proofs the author adduces against it. We do not put forth the strength of our cause, which is not necessary in the present argument; we are only showing the weakness of the case the author makes against us.

The author attempts to devise an argument against the papal authority from the sixth canon of the council of Nicaea. This canon, as he cites it, reads: "Let the ancient custom be preserved that exists in Egypt, Lybia, and Pentapolis, that the bishop of Alexandria have authority in all these countries, since that has also passed into a custom for the bishop of Rome. {578} Let the churches at Antioch and in the other provinces preserve also their privileges." It must not be supposed that the author cites the canon with any degree of exactness, or faithfully renders it; but let that pass. From this canon two consequences, he contends, necessarily follow: first, That "the council declared that the authority of the bishop of Rome extended over a limited district, like that of the bishop of Alexandria; and second, That this authority was only based on usage," (p. 95.)

But the authority of the bishop of Rome was not in question before the council, for that nobody disputed. "The object of the canon," the author himself says, pp. 93, 94, "was to defend the authority of the bishop of Alexandria against the partisans of Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, who refused to recognize it in episcopal ordinations; .... therefore was merely to confirm the ancient customs respecting these ordinations, and, in general, the privileges consecrated by ancient usages. Now, according to an ancient custom Rome enjoyed certain prerogatives that no one contested. The council makes use of this fact in order to confirm the similar prerogatives of Alexandria, Antioch, and other churches."

The question before the council, and which it met by this canon, evidently was not the primacy of the see of Rome--although it would seem from the form in which the papal legate, Paschasinus, quoted it, without contradiction, in the council of Chalcedon, that the council of Nicaea took care to reserve that primacy--but certain customary rights, privileges, and dignities which the bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and some other churches held in common with the bishop of Rome. As the ancient custom was preserved in the Roman Church, the council says, so let it be in Alexandria, Antioch, and other churches. The council refers to the custom in Rome as a reason for confirming the similar custom which had obtained elsewhere, and which had been violated by Meletius of Lycopolis in Egypt, and by his partisans.

To understand this, we must recollect that prior to the fall of the great patriarchates of Alexandria and the East, the administration of ecclesiastical affairs was less centralized than at present. Now nearly all, if not all bishops depend immediately on the Holy See, but in the early ages they depended on it only mediately. The bishops of a province or of a patriarchate depended immediately on their exarch, metropolitan, or patriarch, and only mediately through him on the bishop of Rome. The appointment or election of the patriarch, and of the exarch or metropolitan of a church independent of any patriarch, as were the churches of Asia Minor, Pontus, and Thrace, needed the papal confirmation, but not their suffragans, or the bishops subject to their immediate jurisdiction. The patriarch or metropolitan confirmed their election, ordained or deposed them by his own authority, subject of course to appeal to Rome. Lycopolis, by ancient custom or canons of the fathers, depended on the bishop of Alexandria, who was its bishop's immediate superior. For some reason, Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, had been deposed by the bishop of Alexandria, and deprived of his functions; but he refused to submit, ordained bishops by his own authority, contrary to the ancient custom, and created a schism, was to meet this case, and others like it, that the council decreed the sixth canon.

The authority confirmed by that canon was the authority of patriarchs, as they were subsequently called, and of metropolitans by usage independent of any patriarchal jurisdiction, and therefore the authority of the bishop of Rome which it recognized as derived from usage, could have been only his authority as metropolitan of the Suburbicarian churches, called the Roman territory, or as patriarch of the West. {579} That this authority was limited, and dependent on ancient usage or custom, nobody disputes; but this is distinct from his authority as supreme pontiff or governor of the whole church. There are instances enough on record of metropolitan churches, like Aquileia, and those of Illyrium and Bulgaria, disputing their immediate dependence on the bishop of Rome, that never dreamed of calling in question his authority as supreme pontiff, or governor of the whole church. The schismatic Armenians do not deny and never have denied the supreme authority in the whole church of the bishop of Rome; they only assert that the pope gave to their apostle, Gregory the Illuminator, and to his successors, the independent government of the church in Armenia. St. Cyprian depended on the bishop of Rome, and acknowledged the papal authority, but it is questionable if he depended on him as patriarch of the West. We suspect Carthage was independent of patriarchal jurisdiction, and that St. Cyprian had no superior but the pope. However this may have been, the fact that churches did not depend immediately on the bishop of Rome did not in any sense deny or impair his universal authority as supreme pontiff. So the argument against the papacy from the sixth canon of the council of Nicaea, like the author's other arguments, proves nothing to his purpose.

M. Guettée, in his blind hatred of Rome, after having alleged the authority of the council of Nicaea in his own favor, undertakes to prove that it was no council of the church at all, but merely a council of the empire. He labors hard to prove that it was convoked by the Emperor Constantine by virtue of his imperial authority alone, that the emperor presided in its sessions, and confirmed and promulgated its acts. Does he not see that if it was so, the council had no ecclesiastical authority, and therefore that its acts have no bearing on the question before us? If anything is certain, it is that the church, as a polity, is independent of the state, and that civil rulers or magistrates, as such, have no authority in her government. Civil rulers have often usurped authority over the church and oppressed her: they did so at Constantinople, as Gregory III. complains; they attempted to do so all through the middle ages in the West, and they do so now to a most fearful extent in the Russian empire, as in all European Protestant states; but the authority they exercise is usurped, and is repugnant to the very nature and constitution of the church. Our Lord said, "My kingdom is not of this world." The Non-united Greeks as well as Catholics hold that there is and can be no oecumenical council without the bishop of Rome to convoke it, preside over it, and to confirm and promulgate its acts; and hence they confess their inability to hold an oecumenical council, and therefore really acknowledge that they are not the Catholic Church in its integrity though they claim to hold the orthodox faith. They admit the Roman Church is the primatial see, and that the presidency of a general council belongs to the bishop of Rome by the right and dignity of his see. If he did not preside in the council of Nicaea in person or by his legates or representatives, and approve formally or virtually its acts, it could not, by their own doctrine, have the authority of a general council. The confirmation and promulgation of its canons by the emperor might make them laws or edicts of the empire, but could not make them canons of the church.

It would be no difficult matter to prove that the author is as much out in his facts as in his inferences. The universal church has recognized the council of Nicaea as a legitimate council, and there are ample authorities to prove that its convocation and indiction were at the request or with the assent of the Roman pontiff, that he presided over it by his legates, Osius, bishop of Cordova, and Vitus and Vincentius, two Roman presbyters; that he virtually, if not formally, confirmed and published its acts; and that whatever the emperor did was merely executory; but the question is foreign to our present argument, and we have no space to indulge in extraneous or irrelevant discussions. {580} If we were endeavoring to prove the papacy, we should adduce the proofs; but our line of argument requires us only to refute the reasons the author alleges for asserting that the papacy is schismatic. If the council of Nicaea was simply an imperial council, we have nothing to do with it; if it was a true general council of the church, it makes nothing for the author, for the sixth canon, the only one relied on, has, as the author cites it, no reference to the jurisdiction of the Holy Apostolic See of Rome.

M. Guettée pretends that the third canon of the second general council, the first of Constantinople, contains a denial of the papal authority by divine right. The canon, as he cites it, which is only the concluding part of it, says: "Let the bishop of Constantinople have the primacy of honor (priores honoris partes) after the bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is the new Rome." Hence he concludes that as the primacy conferred on the bishop of Constantinople was only a primacy of honor, the bishop of Rome had only a primacy of honor; and as the primacy of honor was conferred on the bishop of Constantinople because that city was the new Rome, so the primacy of the bishop of Rome was conferred because he was the bishop of old Rome, or the capital of the empire. The reasoning, which is Guettéean, if we may coin a word, is admirable, and we shall soon see what St. Leo the Great thinks of it. But the canon does not affect the authority, rank, or dignity of the bishop of Rome; it simply gives the bishop of Constantinople the precedence of the bishop of Alexandria, who had hitherto held the first rank after the bishop of Rome. It conferred on him no power, and took nothing from the authority of any one else. It was simply a matter of politeness. Besides, the canon remained without effect.

From the second general council the author rushes, pp. 96, 97, to the fourth, the council of Chalcedon, held under the pontificate of St. Leo Magnus, in 451, and lights upon the twenty-eighth canon of that council, which, as he gives it, reads: "In all things following the decrees of the holy fathers, and recognizing the canon just read (the third of the second council) by the one hundred and fifty bishops well beloved of God, we decree and establish the same thing touching the most holy church of Constantinople, the new Rome. Most justly did the fathers grant privileges to the see of ancient Rome, because she was the reigning (capital) city. Moved by the same motive the one hundred and fifty bishops well beloved of God grant equal privileges to the most holy see of the new Rome, thinking, very properly, that the city that has the honor to be the seat of the empire and the senate should enjoy in ecclesiastical things the same privileges as Rome, the ancient queen city, since the former, although of later origin, has been raised and honored as much as the former. In consequence of this decree the council subjected the dioceses of Pontus, Asia, (Asia Minor,) and Thrace to the jurisdiction of Constantinople."

Of course the author cites the canon with his usual inexactness, and makes it appear even more illogical and absurd than it really was. The alleged canon professes to decree and establish the same thing decreed and established by the one hundred and fifty bishops who composed the second council, in their third canon, which as we have seen, was simply that the bishop of Constantinople should have the primacy of honor after the bishop of Rome, that is the second rank in the church. The canon, therefore, does not deprive the Roman pontiff of his rank, dignity, and authority as primate of the whole church, and therefore did not, as it could not, raise the see of Constantinople to an equal rank and dignity with the see of Rome. This was never pretended, and is not pretended by the author himself. {581} The council never could, without stultifying itself, have intended anything of the sort, for it gave to the bishop of Rome the title of "universal bishop," and it says expressly: "We consider the primacy of all and the chief honor, according to the canons, should be preserved to the most beloved of God, the archbishop of Rome." [Footnote 177] The Non-united Greeks and the author himself concede that the Church of Rome was and is the first church in rank and dignity.

[Footnote 177: Act, xvi. col. 637. Apud Kenrick.]

Whatever value, then, is to be attached to this twenty-eighth canon it did not and was not designed to affect in any respect the rank, dignity, or authority of the Roman pontiff. What was attempted by it was to erect the non-apostolic see of Constantinople or Byzantium into a patriarchal see, with jurisdiction over the metropolitans of Pontus, Asia Minor, Thrace, and such as should be ordained in barbarous countries, that is, in countries lying beyond the limits of the empire, and to give its bishop the first rank after the patriarch of the West. It sought to reduce the bishop of Alexandria from the second to the third, and the bishop of Antioch from the third to the fourth rank, but it did not touch the power or authority of either. It violated the rights and privileges of the metropolitans of Pontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace, by subjecting them to a patriarchal jurisdiction from which, by ancient usage, confirmed by the sixth canon of the council of Nicaea, they were exempt.

The author relies on this canon because it asserts that the privileges of the see of Rome were granted by the fathers, and granted because Rome was the capital city of the empire. This sustains his position, that the importance the fathers attached to the see of Rome was not because it was the see of Peter, but because it was the see of the capital--a position we showed, in our previous article, to be untenable and also that the authority exercised by the Roman pontiff over the whole church, which he cannot deny, was not by divine right, but by ecclesiastical right. But even if this last were so, since there is confessedly no act of the universal church revoking the grant, the power would be legitimate, and the author and his friends the Non-united Greeks would be bound by a law of the church to obey the Roman pontiff, and clearly schismatics in refusing to obey him. But we have seen from St. Cyprian, the author's own witness, that the primacy was conferred by our Lord himself on the Roman pontiff as the successor of Peter to constitute him the visible centre and source of unity and authority. Besides, a canon, beyond what it decrees or defines, is not authoritative, and it is lawful to dispute the logic of a general council, and even the historical facts it alleges, at least so far as they can be separated from the definition or decree itself. The purpose of the canon of Chalcedon was not to define or decree that the privileges of the see of Rome were granted by the fathers, and because it was the see of the capital of the empire, but to elevate the see of Constantinople to the rank and authority of a patriarchal see, immediately after the see of Rome, and simply assigns this as a reason for doing so; and a very poor reason it was, too, at least in the judgment of St. Leo the Great, as we shall soon see.

But there is something more to be said in regard to this twenty-eighth canon of the council of Chalcedon. The council is generally accepted as the fourth general council, but only by virtue of the papal confirmation, and only so far as the pope confirmed its acts. In many respects the council was a scandalous assembly, almost wholly controlled by the emperor and the Byzantine lawyers or magistrates, who have no authority in the church of God. The part taken by the emperor and civil magistrates wholly vitiated it as a council of the church, and all the authority its acts had or could have for the church was derived from their confirmation by St. Leo the Great. But bad as the council was, the twenty-eighth canon never received its sanction. {582} It was introduced by the civil magistrates, and when only one hundred and fifty bishops, all orientals, out of the six hundred composing the council, were present, and no more subscribed it. It was resisted by the legates of the Roman pontiff and protested against; the patriarchal churches of Alexandria and Antioch were unrepresented. Dioscurus, bishop of the former, was excluded for his crimes, and Macarius of Antioch had just been deposed by the emperor and council for heresy and expelled; a large number of prelates had withdrawn, and only the rump of the council remained. It is idle to pretend that the canon in question was the act even of the council, far less of the universal church.

Now, either Leo the Roman pontiff had authority to confirm the acts of the council of Chalcedon, and by his authority as supreme pastor of the church to heal their defects and make them binding on the universal church, or he had not. If he had, the controversy is ended, for that is precisely what Mr. Guettée denies; if he had not, as Mr. Guettée contends, then the acts of Chalcedon have in themselves no authority for the church, since through the tyranny of the emperor Marcian and the civil magistrates it was not a free council, and, though legally convoked and presided over, was not capable of binding the church. The author may take which horn of the dilemma he chooses, for the pope refused to confirm the twenty-eighth canon, and declared it null and void from the beginning.

The fathers of the council, or a portion of them, in the name of the council, addressed a letter to the Roman pontiff in which they recognize him as the constituted interpreter of the words and faith of Peter for all, explain what they have done, the motives from which they have acted, and pray him "to honor their judgment by his decrees"--that is, confirm their acts. St. Leo confirmed those of their acts that pertained to the definition of faith, but refused to confirm the twenty-eighth canon, which he annulled and declared void, as enacted without authority, and against the canons.

Mr. Guettée says, pp. 97, 98, that the council did not ask the Roman pontiff to confirm the canon in question, "but by his own decrees to honor the judgment which had been rendered. If the confirmation of the bishop of Rome had been necessary, would the decree of Chalcedon have been a judgment, a promulgated decision, before that confirmation?" An authoritatively "promulgated decision" certainly not; but the author forgets that the canon had not been promulgated, and never became "a promulgated decision." As to its being a judgment, a final or complete judgment it was not, and the council, by calling it nostrum judicium, do not pretend that it was. They present it to the Roman pontiff only as an inchoate judgment, to be completed by his confirmation. They tell the pope that his legates have protested against it, probably because they wished to preserve to him its initiation, and that in adopting it they "had deferred to the emperor, to the senate, and the whole imperial city, thinking only to finish the work which his holiness, who always delights to diffuse his favors, had begun." The plain English of which is, We have enacted the canon out of deference to the civil authority and the wishes of the imperial city, subject to your approval. "Rogamus igitur, honora et tuis sententiis nostrum judicium. We pray you, therefore, to honor our judgment by your decrees." [Footnote 178] If this does not mean asking the pope to confirm their act or judgment, we know not what would so mean. It is certain that St. Leo himself, who is one of the author's anti-papal authorities, so understood it, as is evident from his replies to the emperor, the empress, and Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople, the assertion of M. Guettée to the contrary notwithstanding.

[Footnote 178: Opp. S. Leo, tom. i. col. 960-962. Migne's edition.]

{583}

The Emperor Marcian wrote expressly to St. Leo, begging him to confirm by his apostolic authority the acts of the council, and especially the twenty-eighth canon, because without his confirmation they would have no authority. The Empress Pulcheria wrote him to the same effect, and finally Anatolius did the same. To the emperor the Roman pontiff replied, and set forth the reasons why he could not confirm the canon in question. He makes short work with M. Guettée's doctrine, broached in the second council, and extended in the twenty eighth canon of Chalcedon, that the rank and authority of the see derive from the rank, authority, or importance of the city in which it is established. He denies that the fact that Constantinople was the second capital of the empire, or the new Rome, was any reason for elevating its bishop to the patriarchal rank and authority. "Let, as we desire, the city of Constantinople have its glory, and, protected by the right hand of God, may it long enjoy the reign of your clemency; but different is the reason of secular things from the reason of divine things, and no edifice will be stable unless it is built on that rock (St. Matthew xvi. 18) which the Lord has laid for a foundation. Who covets what is not his due shall lose what is his own. Let it suffice this man, (Anatolius,) that by the aid of your piety and my assent and favor, he has obtained the episcopate of so great a city. Let him not disdain the imperial city because he cannot make it an apostolic see; and let him by no means hope to enlarge his power at the expense of others."

It is very clear from this that St. Leo did by no means concede that the bishop of Constantinople was entitled to be clothed with patriarchal power and take precedence of the patriarch of Alexandria, because he had his see in what had become the second capital of the empire. "Alia ratio est rerum secularium, alia divinarum; nec prater illam petram quam Dominus in fundamento posuit, stabilis erit nulla constructio;" that is, only what is built on Peter, the rock, will stand, and in vain do you build on the greatness, splendor, and dignity of earthly cities. [Footnote 179] If M. Guettée had remembered this, he would never have turned from the chair of Peter, or allowed himself to be seduced by the nationalism of the Greek sophists, and the misguided ambition of the bishop of Constantinople. Alas! he left his father's house, and, famished in the far country to which he has wandered, he is forced to feed on husks with the swine he tends. What can that man think of the church of God who holds that the dignity and authority of its prelates have only a secular origin?

[Footnote 179: Ibidem, ad Marcianum Augustum, epist. civ.]

St. Leo unequivocally refuses, in his reply to the solicitations of the emperor, to confirm the twenty-eighth canon. "And why," asks the author, p. 98, "did he refuse his assent? Because the decree of Chalcedon took from the bishop of Alexandria the second rank, and the third from the bishop of Antioch, and was in so far forth contrary to the sixth canon of Nicaea, and because the same decree prejudiced the rights of several primates or metropolitans," that is, of Pontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace. This we think was reason enough, and proves that the Roman pontiff was not only the chief custodian of the faith, but also of the canons. "The bishop of Constantinople," says St. Leo, as cited by the author, "in spite of the glory of his church, cannot make it apostolic; he has no right to aggrandize it at the expense of churches whose privileges, established by the canons of the holy fathers, and settled by the decrees of the venerable council of Nicaea, cannot be unsettled by perversity nor violated by innovation." St. Leo in the whole controversy appears as the defender of the canons against innovation, and of the catholicity of the church against Greek nationalism.

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The author continues, same page, "In his letter to the Empress Pulcheria, St. Leo declares that he has 'annulled the decree of Chalcedon by the authority of St. Peter.' These words seem at first sight to mean that he claimed for himself a sovereign [supreme] authority in the church in the name of St. Peter." Undoubtedly, not only at first sight, but at every sight. The Pope uses the strongest terms to be found in the Latin language, and terms which can be used only by one having the supreme authority, irritus and cassare. He refuses to ratify it, declares it null, and says, "per auctoritatem Beati Petri apostoli," he makes it void. He could make no greater assumption of authority. "But," adds the author, upon a more careful and unbiased examination of his letter and other writings, "we are convinced that St. Leo only spoke as the bishop of an apostolic see, and that in this character he claimed the right, in the name of the apostles who founded his church, and of the Western countries which he represented, to resist any attempt of the Eastern Church to decide alone matters of general interest to the whole church," pp. 98, 99. If he is convinced, we are not. If such was St. Leo's meaning, why did he not say so? Why did he annul when he only meant that the canon was null, because decreed by Orientals alone; or why did he not assign that reason for annulling it, and not the reason that it was repugnant to the canons of the holy fathers and the decrees of the Council of Nicaea?

"The proof that he regarded matters in this light," (p. 99,) "is that he does not claim for himself any personal authority of divine origin, descended to him from St. Peter, but that, on the contrary, he presents himself as the defender of the canons, and looks upon the rights and reciprocal duties of the churches as having been established by the fathers and fixed by the council of Nicaea. He does not pretend that his church has any exceptional rights, emanating from another source." This proof is inconclusive. St. Leo had no occasion to claim personal authority for himself, for whatever authority he had was official, not personal, and inhered in him as the successor of Peter in the apostolic see of Rome, and in this capacity he most assuredly did claim to have authority, when he declared to the Empress Pulcheria, as we have seen, that, "by authority of Peter, he annulled and made void and of none effect," the decree of Chalcedon. What the author says he did not do, is precisely what he did do. He does not annul and make void the decree by authority vested in him by the canons, or which he holds by ecclesiastical right, but "by the authority of Peter." He, moreover, was not defending the rights and prerogatives of his own see, nor his authority as metropolitan, patriarch, or supreme pontiff, for this was not called in question; the council most fully recognized it, and in his letter defining the faith against Eutyches, it professed to hear the voice of Peter. He was defending the canons, not for himself, nor for churches subjected to him as patriarch of the West, but for Alexandria, Antioch, and the metropolitans of Pontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace, which the twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon sought to subject to the bishop of Constantinople; and he therefore had no occasion to dwell on the exceptional rights, or rights not derived from the canons, but from God through Peter, of the Roman Church. It sufficed him to exercise them, which he did do effectually.

"By ecclesiastical right he is the first bishop of the church," the author continues; "besides, he occupies the apostolic see of the West; in these characters he must interfere and prevent the ambition of one particular church from impairing rights that the canons have accorded to other bishops too feeble to resist." Wherefore must he do so? In these characters he might offer his advice, he might even refuse his assent to acts he disapproved; but he could not authoritatively interfere in any matters outside of his own particular diocese, or his own patriarchate, far less to annul and make void acts which did not concern him in either of these characters. {585} He had no right to interfere in the way he did, except as supreme pontiff and head of the whole church, and Roman theologians have never claimed for the Roman pontiff greater power than St. Leo exercised in the case of the council of Chalcedon.

"After reading all that St. Leo has written against the canon of the council of Chalcedon, it cannot be doubtful what he meant." We agree to that, nor is it doubtful what he did. He annulled and made void by authority of Peter an act of a general council, and null and void it remained.

"He does not claim for himself the autocracy which Roman theologians make the groundwork of the papal authority." Very likely not, for nobody claims it for the Roman pontiff, as we showed in our former article. He is the supreme pastor, not the autocrat, of the church. "In his letter to the fathers of the council of Chalcedon he only styles himself 'guardian of the Catholic faith and of the constitutions of the fathers,' and not chief and master of the church by divine right." Does he deny that he is chief and master by divine right? Certainly not, and no one can read his letters without feeling that in every word and syllable he speaks as a superior, in the language and tone of supreme authority. His reply to Anatolius is such as could be written only by a superior not only in rank, but in authority, and while replete with the affection of a father, it is marked by the majestic severity of supreme power.

The refusal of St. Leo to confirm the twenty-eighth canon gave rise to the report that he had refused to confirm the acts of the council, and the Eutychians, against whom its definitions of faith were directed, began to raise their heads and boldly assert that they were not condemned, that the definitions of the council against them counted for nothing, since the Roman pontiff had refused to confirm them, as he refused to confirm the doings of the Ephesian Latrocinium. The imperial court became alarmed, and the emperor wrote to St. Leo for an explicit statement of what he had done. St. Leo answers that he has confirmed all the decrees of Chalcedon defining the faith, but that he has not confirmed the decree erecting the church of Constantinople into a patriarchal church. This fact does not seem to favor the author's theory that the Roman pontiff was held to have only a primacy of honor, nor that St. Leo did not claim universal jurisdiction.

It will have been observed that the council of Chalcedon undertakes to support, very illogically indeed, the twenty-eighth canon on the authority of the third canon of the first council of Constantinople, which gave the bishop of Constantinople simply the primacy of honor after the bishop of Rome. But St. Leo, in the letter to the empress just cited, denies the authority of that canon, on the ground that it had never been communicated to Rome, and therefore could have no effect.

We have dwelt at great length on the sixth canon of Nicaea, the third canon of Constantinople, and twenty-eighth of Chalcedon, because they are the author's three strongholds, and we have wished to show that they do not in the least aid him--do in no sense contradict the papal authority, but, as far as they go, tend to confirm it. The author claims St. Leo as a witness against the Catholic doctrine of the papal supremacy, and we have thought it well to show that he has in him about such a witness as he had in St. Cyprian, or as he would have in our holy father, Pius IX., now gloriously reigning. Leo Magnus is our ideal of a pope, or visible head of the universal church, and we cannot sufficiently admire the hardihood or the stupidity that would claim him as a witness against the primacy he adorned, and the papal authority which he so gracefully and so majestically wielded, and with such grand effects for the church and the empire. {586} No nobler man, no truer saint, no greater pontiff ever sat in the chair of Peter, and no higher or more magnificent character is to be found in all history. Sancte Leo Magne, ora pro nobis.

The author says, p. 102: "The canons of the first oecumenical councils throw incontestably a strong light upon the prerogatives of the bishop of Rome. They are the complement to each other. The twenty-eighth canon contains nothing less than the doctrine we defend, even though the opposition of the West in the person of the bishop of Rome should strip it of its oecumenical character, as certain theologians maintain." M. Guettée finds but two canons that in any respect favor his doctrine, the third of the second general council, and the twenty-eighth of the fourth, neither of which was ever accepted by the universal church, and both of which have remained from the first without Catholic authority. A doctrine sustained or favored only by irregularity and violent innovation needs no refutation. "St. Leo," the author continues, "did not protest against it, (the twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon,) as opposed to the divine and universal authority of the see of Rome, for which he claimed only an ecclesiastical primacy, but simply because it infringed upon the sixth canon of the council of Nicaea." That he claimed only an ecclesiastical primacy for his see is not true, for he claimed to annul the canon by authority of Peter. Nor did he object to it only because it infringed the sixth canon of Nicaea, but because it contained a grave innovation in the constitution of the church, and attempted to found the authority of bishops on a temporal instead of a spiritual and apostolic basis. It proposed to change entirely the basis of the pontifical authority, which had hitherto rested on Peter, and to make it rest on the empire. The church of Constantinople was not an apostolic see, and only the bishop of an apostolic see could be clothed with patriarchal authority. This seems to us to be the great objection of St. Leo. Therefore, he writes to the emperor, as already cited: "Let not the bishop of Constantinople disdain the imperial city, which he cannot make an apostolic see." Hitherto only apostolic sees, and indeed only sees founded by Peter, had been clothed with the authority of patriarchal sees; and to give to a non-apostolic and non-Petrine church authority over other metropolitan churches was to strike at apostolic authority itself, and especially at that of Peter. The whole organization of the church was from the first based on Peter as the immediate representative of Christ and prince of the apostles. The twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon was therefore aimed at Peter, and in the name and by the authority of Peter, whom he fully represented, St. Leo annulled it, and declared it void, and the author, without knowing well what he concedes, says: "St. Leo was right."

"One fact is certain, that they (the Roman pontiffs) did not convoke the first four oecumenical councils, that they did not preside over them, and that they did not confirm them." This is certain only of the second general council, or first of Constantinople. But suppose it, what follows? Simply that they were not councils of the church at all--which will be very pleasant news to Unitarians and Rationalists, who wish a Christianity without Christ--and can have the authority of general councils only by the ex-post facto sanction of the universal church; but, as the two canons on which the author bases his anti-papal theory have never received that sanction, they have no authority, and never have had any. Hence, the author's theory, on any ground he chooses, has nothing in the church to sustain it. We shall, therefore, pass over what he adduces to prove the part taken by the civil authority in the councils, with the simple remark that the acts of several of them depend entirely on the confirmation of the Roman pontiff and the ex-post facto sanction of the church for their authority.

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M. Guettée's proofs are not seldom proofs of the contrary of what he alleges. "It is undeniable fact," he says, p. 118, "that the dogmatic letter addressed by St. Leo to the fathers of the council was there examined, and approved for this reason: that it agreed with the doctrine of Celestine [his predecessor] and Cyril, confirmed by the council of Ephesus." That the letter was read in the council, and that the council adopted its definitions of faith, is true; but that it was approved for the reason alleged does not appear from the proofs the author adduces. He continues, pp. 118, 119: "At the close of the reading, the bishops exclaimed: 'Such is the faith of the fathers; this is the faith of the apostles. We all believe thus. Anathema to those who do not thus believe. Peter has spoken by Leo. Thus taught the apostles. Leo teaches according to piety and truth, and thus has Cyril taught.'" Any one not bent on proving the papacy schismatic would gather from this that the bishops approved of the letter because they recognized in it the doctrine of the apostles and the tradition of the fathers.

The author imagines that he gets an argument against the papacy from St. Leo's refusal to accept the title of universal bishop offered him by the council of Chalcedon, as we learn from Pope St. Gregory the Great. He also thinks the argument is strengthened by the fact that St. Gregory himself disclaimed it; and he therefore claims both of these great pontiffs and great saints as witnesses against the pretensions of the bishops of Rome. If they had believed in their jurisdiction by divine right over the whole church, would they have refused the title of universal bishop?

John the Faster, Bishop of Constantinople, on some occasion summoned a particular council, and signed its acts, which he transmitted to Pope Pelagius II. as universal patriarch, for which, as St. Gregory says, Pelagius, "in virtue of the authority of the apostle St. Peter, nullified the acts of the synod." Gregory succeeded Pelagius, and immediately on his accession to the pontificate wrote to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, condemning the title, and warning them and the whole church of the danger it threatened; and also he wrote to John the Faster himself, admonishing him of the impropriety of the title, not only as savoring of pride and vanity, but as involving a most serious error against faith, and beseeching him to lay it aside, lest he be obliged to cut him off from the communion of the church, and depose him from his bishopric. He does not at all disclaim his own authority as supreme pastor and governor of the universal church, but quietly assumes it. Thus, he writes to the emperor Maurice, as cited by the author: "All who know the gospel know that the care of the whole church was confided by our Lord himself to Peter, the first (St. Gregory says prince) of all the apostles. Indeed, he said to him, 'Peter, lovest thou me? Feed my sheep.' Again he said to him: 'Satan has desired to sift thee as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.' It was also said to him: 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' He thus received the keys of the celestial kingdom; the power to bind and loose was given him; the care of all the church and the primacy [principatus--principality, or primacy of jurisdiction] were committed to him, and yet he did not call himself universal apostle. But that holy man John, (bishop of Constantinople,) my brother in the priesthood, [cosacerdos,] would fain assume the title of universal bishop! O tempora! O mores!" (Pp. 212, 213.)

"It is certain," St. Gregory continues, "that this title was offered to the Roman pontiff by the venerable council of Chalcedon, to honor Blessed Peter, prince of the apostles. {588} But none of us has consented to use this particular title, [title of singularity,] lest by conferring a special matter on one alone, all priests would be deprived of the honor which is their due. How, then, while we are not ambitious of the glory of a title which has been offered us, does another, to whom no one has offered it, have the presumption to take it?" (Pp. 214, 215.)

In his letter to Eulogius of Alexandria and Anastatius of Antioch, St. Gregory is more explicit still, "As your holiness, whom I particularly venerate, well knows, this title of universal, was offered by the council of Chalcedon to the bishop [pontiff] of the apostolic see, which by God's grace I serve. But none of my predecessors would use this impious word, because in reality, if a patriarch be called universal, it takes from all others the title of patriarch." The author, after quoting a passage from another letter to Eulogius, adds: "Thus did Pope Gregory condemn even in the person of the bishops of Rome the title of pope and universal." But in this he is mistaken, as his own quotation shows. Eulogius answers that he will not give the title of universal patriarch to the bishop of Constantinople, but that he gives that of universal pope to the Roman pontiff. "No," says St. Gregory, "if your holiness calls me universal pope, you deny yourself what I should then be altogether." The author interpolates in his quotation the copulative and, which is not in St. Gregory's text. It is not to the title of pope that St. Gregory objects, which was and is applied to simple presbyters, but the title universal, which he will not permit to be applied to any man, because it excludes others from all participation in the hierarchy, or even the priesthood. If you call a man a universal presbyter, you deny that any others are presbyters; if you call any one universal bishop, you exclude all others from the episcopate; if you call any one universal patriarch, you deny the patriarchate to all others; and if you call the bishop of Rome universal pope, since as such he possesses the priesthood, and both the apostolate and the episcopate in their plenitude, you exclude all others from sharing the priesthood, the episcopate, or the apostolate, even the pope himself from the church, and deny the solidarity of apostles, bishops, and presbyters, asserted, as we have seen, by St. Cyprian.

Eulogius was priest, bishop, and patriarch, and as such was the brother of the Roman pontiff. This brotherhood remained all the same, whether the Roman pontiff had or not supreme jurisdiction over the whole church. When Eulogius called St. Gregory, not, as the author says, pope and universal, but universal pope, he denied this brotherhood, and deprived himself of his own priestly, episcopal, and apostolic character. Hence, St. Gregory, after saying to him and other bishops. "I know what I am, and what you are; by your place or office, you are my brothers, by your virtues, my fathers," he adds, in reference to the title of universal which Eulogius had given him, "I beseech your holiness to do so no more in future, for you take from yourself what you give in excess to another. I do not ask to increase in dignities, but in virtues. I do not esteem that an honor by which my brethren are deprived of theirs. For my honor is the honor of the universal church, my honor is the unshaken firmness of my brethren. Then am I truly honored when to no one is denied the honor that is his due. For, if your holiness calls me universal pope, you deny that you are yourself what I should be confessed to be universally. Sed absit hoc, Recedant verba quae vanitatem inflant, et charitatem vulnerant." [Footnote 180]

[Footnote 180: Opp. S. Gregorii Magni, lib. viii. epist. xxx. Migne's edition, tom, iii. col. 953.]

We may call the bishop of Rome pope of the universal church, but not universal pope, nor universal bishop, because he only possesses in its plenitude what is possessed in a degree by every member of the hierarchy, and even now, as always, the pope addresses the bishops in communion with him as "Venerable Brethren." {589} The argument against the claim of the bishop of Rome to jurisdiction in the universal church, which the author attempts to build on the refusal of the title of universal bishop by St. Leo, and that of universal pope, papa universalis, by St. Gregory, is refuted by St. Gregory himself, as cited in the volume before us, pp. 212, 213. The holy pontiff and doctor, after asserting that our Lord had given to Peter the primacy of jurisdiction, and confided to him the care of the universal church, adds that Peter "did not call himself universal apostle." Peter was not the only apostle, and the others could not be excluded from the apostleship. He was prince of the apostles, their chief, the centre of apostolic unity and authority, as St. Cyprian explains, and had the care and jurisdiction (principatus) of the universal church, as Gregory asserts, but inclusive, not exclusive of the other apostles. Peter held in relation to the other apostles and the whole church all the supremacy claimed by Catholics for the bishop of Rome. If, then, the refusal of the title of universal apostle by St. Peter did not negative his supreme authority, why should the refusal of the title of universal bishop or universal pope by the bishops of Rome negative their supremacy, or their primacy of jurisdiction in the whole church? Peter held that primacy, and yet was not universal apostle, and why not, then, the bishop of Rome, without being universal bishop or universal pope?

The author is unhappy in his witnesses, and they are all too decidedly Roman to testify otherwise than against him. He cites other eminent fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, but he raises no new questions, and makes no points in his favor not already met and disposed of; and we may, therefore, pass over what he adduces, since, as we continue to remind our readers, we are not adducing our proofs of the papal authority, but refuting his arguments or pretended arguments against it.

In his fifth division, chapter, or section, the author examines "the authority of the bishop of Rome in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries." We have anticipated him in regard to St. Gregory the Great, the most prominent papal figure in these centuries, and shown that this great pontiff and doctor, who justly ranks along with St. Leo, offers no testimony in support of the author's vain attempt to prove the papacy schismatic. We have read this section of his book with care, but we find that, while he shows very clearly that the Roman pontiff, to save the faith and the constitution and canons of the church from the attacks of the heretics and schismatics of the East, was obliged to intervene with his supreme authority in the affairs of the Eastern churches more frequently than in earlier ages, he brings forward nothing different from what has already been refuted to prove that they did not possess the authority which they exercised by divine right. We may say, then, that the author has totally failed to establish his first conclusion, that "the bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries possess the sovereignty of divine right which he has since sought to exercise." The facts he adduces prove that during those centuries the popes did exercise all the authority they have as supreme pontiffs since exercised, and that they professed to exercise it by divine right, and without any contradiction by the universal church. No doubt the author has adduced instances in which general councils have recognized it, and made it the basis of their action; but this does not prove that the papal authority was conferred by the church, and was held only by ecclesiastical right. No doubt the civil authority on more than one occasion recognized it and made it the law of the empire, but this does not prove that it was held as a grant of the emperor, but the reverse rather. {590} The author, then, has not refuted the argument from possession, turned the presumption against the papacy, or proved that he and his friends the Non-united Greeks are not decidedly schismatics in resisting the council of Florence, in which both the East and West were represented and united.

The author, having failed to establish his first conclusion, notwithstanding his misquotations, mistranslations, and misrepresentations of facts, which are numerous and barefaced enough to excite the envy of his editor, the Protestant Episcopal bishop of Western New-York, cannot prove his second conclusion, namely: The pretension of the bishops of Rome to the sovereignty of divine right over the whole church was the cause of the division. This depends on the first, and falls with it; for it is necessary to deny the divine authority of the pope to govern the whole church before his assumption and exercise of that authority can be held to be a usurpation, and the cause of the divisions which result from resistance to it. Resistance otherwise is illegal, unauthorized, and conclusive evidence of schism, or, rather, is undeniably itself schism. The resistance on the part of the Eastern bishops and prelates to the Roman pontiff in the exercise of his legitimate authority was schism, as much so as an armed insurrection against the political sovereign is rebellion, and the rebels cannot allege that the sovereign in the exercise of his legitimate authority is the cause of their rebellion, and hold him responsible for it.

The author, forgetting that the pope is in possession, and that throughout the presumption is in favor of his authority, argues as if the presumption was on the other side, and the onus probandi was on us. He, therefore, concludes that every exercise of papal jurisdiction beyond the patriarchate of the West is a usurpation, and resistance to it justifiable, unless we are able to prove the contrary. We deny it, and maintain that it is for him to prove that jurisdiction is usurped, and not held by divine right. The laboring oar is in his hands. It is always for those who resist authority to justify their resistance. The author can justify his resistance to papal authority only by producing some law of God or some canon of the universal church that restricts the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff to the Western patriarchate, and forbids him to exercise jurisdiction over the whole church. A law or edict to that effect of the empire or canon of the Eastern churches alone, could it be produced, would not avail him; it must be a decision of the universal church, even according to his own doctrine. He alleges no such act or canon, and can allege none, for all the acts or canons of the universal church bearing on the question, unhappily for him, are the other way.

The author adduces the third canon of the second general council, and the twenty-eighth of the fourth, but these canons, having never been assented to by the West, are without the authority of the universal church. And, besides they do not distinctly deny the supreme authority of the bishop of Rome, and only profess to confer the first rank and authority after the Roman pontiff on the bishop of Constantinople. It is a strong presumption against the author that he does not even allege any law or canon of the universal church which the popes have violated, and his charge against them is that of presenting themselves as defenders of the canons against innovation, as in the refusal of St. Leo to accept the twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon.

But the author, with his usual facility, refutes himself, and shows that it was not the pretension of the bishops of Rome, but the pretensions of the bishop of Constantinople and of the secular government that caused the division. We have seen that the third canon of the second general council, and the twenty-eighth of the fourth, which was annulled by St. Leo, were in violation of the canons, but were prompted by the ambition of the bishop of Constantinople and the secular authority. {591} "We can perceive," says the author, p. 100. "in the struggles between the bishops of Rome and Constantinople, respecting the twenty-eighth canon of the council of Chalcedon, the origin of the dissensions which afterward led to an entire rupture." And why did these dissensions lead to an entire rupture? Certainly because the same parties continued to maintain the same claims in relation to each other. The ground of the dissension remained always the same. The question, then, is, which party in the beginning was in the right, and which was in the wrong? "In principle," says the author on the same page, "St. Leo was right;" that is, right in defending the canons of the holy fathers and the decrees of the venerable council of Nicaea against their violation and subversion by the innovations of Constantinople and Chalcedon. St. Leo, the author himself says, presented himself as the defender of antiquity and the canons of Nicaea; he must, then, have been right not only in principle, but in fact. The real cause of the division was not the pretension of the bishops of Rome to an authority which they did not possess, but their refusal to assent to the violent and shameless usurpations of Constantinople. The attitude of the popes and the ground on which they resisted from first to last, were distinctly taken by St. Leo in his letter to the emperor, Marcian, already cited: "Privilegia ecclesiarum, sanctorum Patrum canonibus instituta et venerabilis Nicaenae synodi fixa decretis, nulla possunt improbitate convelli, nulla mutari novitate." [Footnote 181]

[Footnote 181: Ad Marcianum Augustum, epist. 105, edit. Migne.]

But St. Leo "could not deny," says the author, "that one general council had the same rights as another that had preceded it." But, even if so, none of the innovations proposed by the East and opposed by the bishops of Rome have ever had the authority of a general council. There is and can be, even according to the author and his schismatic Greek friends, no general council without the bishop of Rome; and the canons on which the author relies were from the first resisted by the Roman pontiff, and, therefore, could not override or abrogate the decrees of the council of Nicaea.

The whole controversy originated in the attempt to raise the see of Constantinople, which was not an apostolic, a patriarchal or even a metropolitan see, to the rank and authority of the first see in the church after that of the see of Rome, contrary to the sixth canon of Nicaea, to the constitution of the church, to ancient usage, and to the prejudice of the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, and the metropolitans of Pontus, Asia, (Minor.) and Thrace. On what ground does the author seek to defend this attempt, always resisted by the Roman pontiffs and the whole West? Simply on the ground that the rank and authority of a see are derived from the splendor and importance of the city in the empire. He assigns and pretends to assign no other ground. "The Nicaean council," he says, "in consecrating the usage by which the bishop of Rome was regarded as the first in honor in the church, had in view not as much the apostolic origin of his see as the splendor which he acquired from the importance of the city of Rome. ... Why, then, should not the bishop of Constantinople have been received as second in rank, Constantinople having become the second capital of the empire; since the bishop of Rome was first in rank, only because of its position as the first capital?" (Pp. 100, 101.)

The argument is worthless, because its premises are false. In the first place, the question is one of authority as well as of rank. In the second place, the council of Nicaea did not consecrate the usage by which the primacy, whether of honor or jurisdiction, was ascribed to the bishop of Rome, but confirmed the usage by which the bishop of Alexandria, the bishop of Antioch, and other metropolitans held a certain rank, and enjoyed certain privileges, and gave as their reason that a like usage or custom obtained with the bishop of Rome. {592} In the third place, the council says not one word about the splendor acquired by the Roman pontiff from the importance of the city of Rome; and we have proved that, whatever his rank and authority, he derived it from the fact that his see was held to be the see of Peter, and he the successor of Peter, the prince of the apostles. Finally, the author has no ground for his assertion, except the third canon of the second general council and the twenty-eighth of the fourth, the latter authoritatively annulled and the former declared to be without effect by St. Leo, and neither ever receiving the sanction or assent of the universal church. The ground on which the bishop of Constantinople based his ambitious pretensions, that of being bishop of the second capital of the empire, is wholly untenable. "Alia ratio est rerum secularium, alia divinarum," says St. Leo. "We laughed," says Pope St. Gelasius as cited by the author, p. 198, "at what they (the Eastern bishops) claim for Acacius (bishop of Constantinople) because he was bishop of the imperial city. ... The power of the secular empire is one thing, the distribution of ecclesiastical dignities is quite a different thing. However small a city may be, it does not diminish the greatness of the prince who dwells there; but it is quite as true that the presence of the emperor does not change the order of religion; and such a city should rather profit by its advantages to preserve the freedom of religion, by keeping peaceably within its proper limits."

From first to last, one is struck, in reading the history of the controversy, not only with the superior calmness and dignity of the Roman pontiffs, but with their profound wisdom and catholic sense. They defend throughout the catholicity of the church against Greek nationalism, and the independence of the kingdom of Christ on earth against its subjection to the secular empire, which was attempted and finally succeeded at Constantinople, and is the case in Russia, Great Britain, and all modern schismatical and heretical states and empires. The author sees and appreciates nothing of this; he comprehends nothing of the church as the mystic body of Christ, the continuous representation of the Incarnation; his ideas are external, political, unspiritual, and, as far as appears from his book, pagan rather than Christian. The church he recognizes, as far as he recognizes any, is national, not catholic, and holds from the imperial authority, not from Christ, and has no completeness in itself.

It was precisely in nationalism, in regarding the church as organized for the Roman empire, not for the whole world, and in recognizing the authority of the civil power in theological and ecclesiastical matters, as the author himself unwittingly shows, that the Greek schism originated. The bishop of Constantinople, having in the hierarchy no apostolic, patriarchal, or metropolitan rank or authority beyond that which is held by every suffragan bishop, was obliged, in order to defend his ambitious aspirations to the second rank in the church, to give the hierarchy a secular origin, and to fall back on the imperial authority to support him. The idea was pagan, not Christian, and was but too acceptable to the Byzantine Caesars. In pagan Rome the emperor was at once imperator and pontifex maximus, and held in his own person the supreme authority in both civil and religious matters. He preserved the tradition of this in Christian Rome, and continually struggled to be under Christianity what he had been under paganism. In the West the imperial pretensions were in the main successfully resisted, though not without long and bitter struggles, which have not even yet completely ended; but in the East, owing to the ambition and frequent heresy of the bishop of Constantinople, rarely faithful to the church after Constantinople became an imperial capital, and the great patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, weakened by the Arian, Nestorian, monophysite, and monothelite heresies, and betrayed by the heretics, had fallen, through the pride, treachery, and imbecility of the Byzantine court, under the power of the Mohammedans, those bitter enemies of the cross, the emperor was enabled to grasp the pontifical power, to bring the administration of religion under his despotic control, to make and unmake, murder or exile bishops at his will or the caprices of the ladies of his court. Hence the Greek schism.

{593}

And this is what M. Guettée defends; and because the Roman pontiffs did all in their power to resist such open profanation and secularizing of the church, he has the impudence to contend that it was the usurpations of Rome that caused the schism, and he has found a Protestant Episcopal bishop in Western New-York ignorant enough or shameless enough to endorse him, and to assure us that he is a Catholic in the true sense of the word!

Notwithstanding the author defends the usurpations of the imperial authority and the ambitious pretensions of the courtly bishops of Constantinople, and maintains that all the general councils held in the East were convoked and presided over by the emperors, he does not blush to object to the council of Florence on the ground that the reunion effected in that council was brought about by the ambition of a few Eastern prelates and the undue pressure of the emperor of Constantinople. If the intervention of the emperor did not in his judgment vitiate the third canon of the first council of Constantinople, or the twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon, or the fifth or sixth general council, what right has he to pretend that a far less intervention on the emperor's part vitiated the canons of the council of Florence? On the principles he has defended throughout, the emperor may convoke, preside over a council, dictate and confirm its acts, without detriment to its authority as a general council. He is by his own principles, then, bound to accept the canons of Florence as the voice of the universal church, for they were adopted by the East and West united, and are and have been constantly adhered to by the West and the Eastern churches proper, and resisted only by heretics and schismatics, who have no voice in the church.

We need proceed no further. We have said enough to refute the author in principle, and are tired of him, as must be our readers. We said in the beginning that he had told us nothing in his book that we did not know before; but we are obliged to confess that the examination of authorities into which it has forced us has made us feel as we never felt before how truly the church is founded on Peter, brought home to us the deep debt of gratitude the world owes to the Roman pontiffs, and enabled us to see more clearly than we ever had done the utter groundlessness, the glaring iniquity, and the open paganism of the Greek schism. The author has made us, we almost fear, an ultra-papist, and certainly has strengthened our attachment, already strong, to the Holy Apostolic See. He has served to us the office of the drunken Helotae to the Spartan youth. It is in relation to its purpose the weakest and absurdest book we have ever read, and has not, so far as the author is concerned, a Christian thought from beginning to end. If this book fairly represents the Christian intelligence and sentiments of the Non-united Greeks, it is hard to see wherein they are to be preferred to the Turks, or why Christendom should seek their deliverance from the Mohammedan yoke.

If M. Guettée's readers will weigh well the arguments for the papacy he reproduces for the sake of refuting them, and his quotations from the fathers and the Roman pontiffs for the sake of blunting their force, they will find that, in spite of misquotations, mistranslations, and misrepresentations, the book carries with it its own antidote. It can do real harm only to those who cannot weigh testimony, who never think, and are utterly unable to reason.

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{594}

Impressions of Spain.

By Lady Herbert.

Excursions Near Seville.

The excursions in the neighborhood of Seville are full of beauty and interest of various kinds. One of the first undertaken by our travellers was to the ruins of Italica, the ancient Seville, formerly an important Roman city, and the birthplace of Trajan and of Adrian. In the church, half convent and half fortress, are two very fine statues of St. Isidore and St. Jerome, by Montanés. Here St. Isidore began his studies. He was hopelessly dull and slow, and was tempted to give up the whole thing in despair, when one day, being in a brown study, his eye fell on an old well, the marble sides of which were worn into grooves by the continual friction of the cord which let down the bucket. "If a cord can thus indent marble," he said to himself, "why should not constant study and perseverance make an impression on my mind?" His resolution was taken, and he became the light of his age and country. The well which gave him this useful lesson is still shown near the south door of the church. Here also is the monument of Doña Uraca Osorio, a lady who was burnt to death by order of King Pedro the Cruel, for having resisted his addresses. The flames having consumed the lower part of her dress, her faithful maid rushed into the fire, and died in endeavoring to conceal her mistress. In the sacristy is a very curious Byzantine picture of the Virgin. Leaving the church our party went on to the amphitheatre, which has recently been excavated, and must have contained ten or twelve thousand people. A fine mosaic has lately been discovered, which evidently formed part of the ancient pavement. The custode was a character, and lived in a primitive little cabin at the entrance of the circus: a moss bed and a big cat seemed the only furniture. He was very proud of his tiny garden, poor old man! and of his wall-flowers, of which he gave the ladies a large bunch, together with a few silver coins which had been dug up in the excavations.

On their way home they passed by a cemetery in which was a very beautiful though simple marble cross. On it were engraved these three lines:

Creo en Dios. Espero en Dies. Amo á Dios.

It was the grave of a poor boy, the only son of a widow. He was not exactly an idiot, but what people call a "natural." Good, simple, humble every one loved him; but no one could teach him anything. His intelligence was in some way at fault. He could remember nothing. In vain the poor mother put him first to school, and then to a trade; he could not learn. At last, in despair, she took him to a neighboring monastery, and implored the abbot, who was a most charitable holy man, to take him in and keep him as a lay brother. Touched by her grief, the abbot consented, and the boy entered the convent. There, all possible pains were taken with him by the good monks to give him at least some ideas of religion; but he could remember nothing but these three sentences. Still, he was so patient, so laborious, and so good, that the community decided to keep him. When he had finished his hard out-of-door work, instead of coming in to rest, he would go straight to the church, and there remain on his knees for hours. "But what does he do?" exclaimed one of the novices. {595} "He does not know how to pray. He neither understands the office, nor the sacraments, nor the ceremonies of the church." They therefore hid themselves in a side chapel, close to where he always knelt, and watched him when he came in. Devoutly kneeling, with his hands clasped, his eyes fastened on the tabernacle, he did nothing but repeat over and over again: "Creo en Dios; espero en Dios; amo á Dios." One day he was missing: they went to his cell, and found him dead on the straw, with his hands joined and an expression of the same ineffable peace and joy they had remarked on his face when in church. They buried him in this quiet cemetery, and the abbot caused these words to be graven on his cross. Soon, a lily was seen flowering by the grave, where no one had sown it; the grave was opened, and the root of the flower was found in the heart of the orphan boy. [Footnote 182]

[Footnote 182: This anecdote is from the lips of Fernan Caballero.]

Another morning our party visited the Cartucha, the once magnificent Carthusian convent, with its glorious ruined church and beautiful and extensive orange-gardens. Now all is deserted. The only thing remaining of the church is a fine west wall and rose-window, with a chapel which the proprietor has preserved for the use of his workpeople, and in the choir of which are some finely carved wooden stalls; the rest have been removed to Cadiz, where they form the great ornament of the cathedral. Here and there are some fine "azulejos," and a magnificently carved doorway, speaking of glories long since departed. This convent, once the very centre of all that was most cultivated and literary in Spain, a museum of painting, architecture, and sculpture, is now converted into a porcelain manufactory, where a good-natured Englishman has run up a tall chimney, and makes ugly cheap pots and pans to suit the taste and pockets of the Sevillians. O for this age of "progress"! It is fair to say that the proprietor, who kindly accompanied the party over the building, and into the beautiful gardens, and to the ruined pagoda or summer house, lamented that no encouragement was given by the Spanish nobles of the present day to any species of taste or beauty in design, and that his attempts to introduce a higher class of china, in imitation of Minton's, had met with decided failure; no one would buy anything so dear. They had imported English workmen and modellers in the first instance; but he said, that the Spaniards were apt scholars, and had quickly learned the trade, so that his workmen are now almost exclusively from the country itself. The only pretty thing our travellers could find, and which was kindly presented to one of the party, was one of the cool picturesque-shaped bottles made, like the "goolehs" of Egypt, of porous clay, which maintains the coldness and freshness of any liquid poured into it.

Among the many charming expeditions from Seville, is one to Castilleja, (the village before alluded to as the scene of the death of Fernan Cortes) through the fertile plains and vine yards of Aljarafa. Here begins the region which the Romans call the gardens of Hercules. It produces one of the best and rarest wines in Spain: the plants having been originally brought from Flanders by a poor soldier named Pedro Ximenes, who discovered that the Rhine vines, when transplanted to the sunny climate of Andalusia, lose their acidity, and yield the luscious fruit which still bears his name. In the centre of this fertile plain stands a small house and garden, to which is attached one of those tales of crime, divine vengeance, and godlike forgiveness, which are so characteristic of the people and country. About twenty years ago it was inhabited by a family consisting of a man named Juan Pedro Alfaro, with his wife and a son of nineteen or twenty. Their quiet and peaceable lives were spent in cultivating their vineyard and selling its produce in the neighboring town. {596} They were good and respectable people, living in peace with their neighbors, and perfectly contented with their occupation and position. One thing only was felt as a grievance. A lawyer, of the character of the "Attorney Case" in our childhood's story, had lately started an obnoxious new tax on every cargo of wine brought into the city; and this tax, being both unjust and illegal, they resolved to dispute. One day, therefore, when the good man and his son were driving their mules to market with their fruity burden, they were stopped by the attorney, who demanded the usual payment. The younger man firmly but respectfully refused, stating his reasons. The attorney tried first fair words, and then foul, without effect, upon which he vowed to be revenged. The son, pointing to his Albacetan poniard, on which was the inscription, "I know how to defend my master." defied his vengeance; and so they parted. But never again was the poor wife and mother's heart gladdened by the sight of their returning faces. In vain she waited, hour after hour, that first terrible evening. The mules returned, but masterless. Then, beside herself with fear, the poor woman rushed off to the town to make inquiries as to their fate. No one knew anything further than that they had been at Seville the day before, had sold their wine for a good price, and been seen, as usual, returning cheerfully home. She then went to the Audiencia, or legal supreme court of the city, where the magistrates, touched by her tale, and alarmed also at the disappearance of the men, who were known throughout the country for their high character and respectability, caused a rigorous search to be made in the whole neighborhood; but in vain. No trace of them could be discovered. By degrees, the excitement in the town on the subject passed away, and the poor muleteers were forgotten; but in the heart of the widowed mother there could be no rest and no peace. The mystery in which their fate was involved was so inexplicable that, the hope of their return, however faint, would not die out; and for twenty years she spent her life and her substance in seeking for her lost ones. At last, reduced to utter misery, and worn out both in mind and body, she was forced to beg her daily bread of the charity of the peasants: the "bolsa de Dios," as the people poetically call it, a "bolsa" which, to do the Spaniards justice, is never empty. The little children would bring her eggs and pennies; the fathers and husbands would give her a corner by the "brasero" in winter, or under the vine-covered trellis in summer; the wives and mothers knew what had brought her to such misery, and had ever an extra loaf or a dish of "garbanzos" set aside for the "Madre Ana," as she was called by the villagers. She, humble, prayerful, hopeful, ever grateful for the least kindness, and willing in any way to oblige others, at last fell dangerously ill. The curé, who had been striving to calm and soothe that sorely tried soul, was one day leaving her cottage, when his attention was attracted by a crowd of people, with the mayor at their head, who were hurrying toward an olive wood near the village. He followed, and, to his horror, found that the cause of the sensation was the discovery of two human skeletons under an olive-tree, the finger of one of which was pointing through the earth to heaven, as if for vengeance. The mayor ordered the earth to be removed: the surgeon examined the bodies, and gave it as his opinion that they must have been dead many years. But on examining the clothes, a paper was found which a waterproof pocket had preserved from decay. The attorney, who was likewise present, seized it; but no sooner had his eyes lighted on the words than he fell backward in a swoon. "What is the matter? what has he read?" exclaimed the bystanders as with one voice. "It is a certificate such as used to be carried by our muleteers," exclaimed the mayor, taking the paper from the lawyer's hand; and opening it, he read out loud the following words: "Pass for Juan Pedro Alfaro."

{597}

Here, then, was the unravelling of the terrible mystery: the men had evidently been murdered on their way home. The attorney recovered from his fainting fit, but fever followed, and in his delirium he did nothing but exclaim: "It is not I!--my hands are free from blood. It is Juan Caño and Joseph Salas." These words, repeated by the people, caused the arrest of the two men named, who no sooner found themselves in the hands of justice than they confessed their crime, and described how, having been excited to do so by the attorney, they had shot both Juan Alfaro and his son, from behind some olive-trees, on their way home from market, had robbed, and afterward buried them in the place where the bodies had been found. Sentence of death was passed upon the murderers, while the attorney was condemned to hard labor for life, and to witness, with a rope round his neck, the execution of his accomplices in the fatal deed. The poor "Madre Ana" had hardly recovered from her severe illness when these terrible events transpired. The indignation of the peasantry, and their compassion for her, knew no bounds: they would have torn the attorney in pieces if they could. The widow herself, overwhelmed with grief at this confirmation of her worst fears, remained silent as the grave. At last, when those around her were breathing nothing but maledictions on the heads of the murderers, and counting the days to the one fixed for the execution of their sentence, she suddenly spoke, and asked that the curé should be sent for. He at once obeyed the summons. She raised herself in the bed with some effort, and then said: "My father, is it not true that, if pardon be implored for a crime by the one most nearly related to the victims, the judges generally mitigate the severity of the punishment?" He replied in the affirmative. "Then to-morrow," she replied, "I will go to Seville." "God bless you! my daughter," replied the old priest, much moved; "the pardon you have so freely given in your heart will be more acceptable to God than the deaths of these men." A murmur of surprise and admiration, and yet of hearty approval, passed through the lips of the bystanders. The next day, mounted carefully by the peasants on their best mule, the poor widow arrived at the Audiencia. Her entrance caused a stir and an emotion in the whole court. Bent with age, and worn with sickness and misery, she advanced in front of the judges, who, seeing her extreme weakness, instantly ordered a comfortable chair to be brought for her. But the effort had been too much; she could not speak. The judge, then addressing her, said: "Senora, is it true that you are come to plead for the pardon of Juan Caño and Joseph Salas, convicted of the assassination of your husband and son? and also for the pardon of the lawyer, who, by his instigation, led them to commit the crime?" She bowed her head in token of assent. A murmur of admiration and pity spread through the court; and a relation of the lawyer's, who saw his family thus rescued from the last stage of degradation, eagerly bent forward, exclaiming: "Senora, do not fear for your future. I swear that every want of yours shall henceforth be provided for."

The momentary feebleness of the woman now passed away. She rose to her full height, and, casting on the speaker a look of mingled indignation and scorn, exclaimed: "You offer me payment for my pardon? I do not sell the blood of my son!"

No account of "life in Seville" would be complete without a bull-fight, "corrida de toros;" and so one afternoon saw our travellers in a tolerably spacious loggia on the shady side of the circus, preparing, though with some qualms of conscience, to see, for the first time, this, the great national sport of Spain. The roof of the cathedral towered above the arena, and the sound of the bells just ringing for vespers made at least one of the party regret the decision which had led her to so uncongenial a place. {598} But it was too late to recede. No one could escape from the mass of human beings tightly wedged on every side, all eager for the fight. Partly, perhaps, owing to the mourning and consequent absence of the court, there were very few ladies; which, it is to be hoped, is also a sign that the "corrida" has no longer such attractions for them. Presently the trumpets sounded. One of the barriers which enclosed the arena was thrown open, and in came a procession of "toreros," "banderilleros," and "chulos," all attired in gay and glittering costumes, chiefly blue and silver, the hair of each tied in a net, with a great bow behind, and with tight pink silk stockings and buckled shoes. With them came the "picadores," dressed in yellow, with large broad-brimmed hats and iron-cased legs, riding the most miserable horses that could be seen, but which, being generally thoroughbred, arched their necks and endeavored, poor beasts! to show what once they had been. They were blindfolded, without which they could not have been induced to face the bull. The procession stopped opposite the president's box when the principal "torero" knelt and received in his hat the key of the bull's den, which was forthwith opened; and now the sport began. A magnificent brownish red animal dashed out into the centre of the arena, shaking his crest and looking round him as if to defy his adversaries, pawing the ground the while. The men were all watching him with intense eagerness. Suddenly the bull singled out one as his adversary, and made a dash at a "banderillero" who was agitating a scarlet cloak to the left. The man vaulted over the wooden fence into the pit. The bull, foiled, and knocking his horns against the wooden palings with a force which seemed as if it would bring the whole thing down, now rushed at a "picador" to the right, from whose lance he received a wound in the shoulder. But the bull, lowering his head, drove his horns right into the wretched horse's entrails, and, with almost miraculous strength, galloped with both horse and rider on his neck round the whole arena, finally dropping both, when the "picador" was saved by the "chulos," but the horse was left to be still further gored by the bull, and then to die in agony on the sand. This kind of thing was repeated with one after the other, till the bull, exhausted and covered with lance-wounds, paused as if to take breath. The "banderilleros" chose this moment, and with great skill and address advanced in front of him, with their hands and arms raised, and threw forward arrows, ornamented with fringed paper, which they fixed into his neck. This again made him furious, and, in eager pursuit of one of his enemies, the poor beast leapt out of the arena over the six-feet high barrier into the very middle of the crowded pit. The "sauve qui peut" may be imagined; but no one was hurt, and the din raised by the multitude seemed to have alarmed the bull, who trotted back quietly into the circus by a side-door which had been opened for the purpose. Now came the exciting moment. The judge gave the signal, and one of the most famous "matadores," Cuchares by name, beautifully dressed in blue and silver, and armed with a short sharp sword, advanced to give the coup de grâce. This requires both immense skill and great agility; and at this very moment, when our party were wound up to the highest pitch of interest and excitement, a similar scene had ended fatally for the "matador"' at Cadiz. But Cuchares seemed to play with his danger; and though the bull, mad with rage, pursued him with the greatest fury, tearing his scarlet scarf into ribbons, and nearly throwing down the wooden screens placed at the sides of the arena as places of refuge for the men when too closely pressed to escape in other ways, he chose a favorable moment, and, leaping forward, dug his short sword right into the fatal spot above the shoulder. {599} With scarcely a struggle, the noble beast fell, first on his knees, and then rolled over dead. The people cheered vociferously, the trumpets sounded. Four mules, gayly caparisoned, were driven furiously into the arena; the huge carcass, fastened to them by ropes, was dragged out, together with those of such of the horses as death had mercifully released, and then the whole thing began over again. Twenty horses and six bulls were killed in two hours and a half, and the more horrible the disembowelled state of the animals, the greater seemed the delight of the spectators. It is impossible, without disgusting our readers, to give a truthful description of the horrible state of the horses. One, especially, caused a sensation even among the "habitués" of the ring. He belonged to one of the richest gentlemen in Seville, had been his favorite hack, and was as well known in the Prado as his master. Yet this gentleman had the brutality, when the poor beast's work was ended, to condemn him to this terrible fate! The gallant horse, disembowelled as he was, would not die: he survived one bull after the other, though his entrails were hanging in festoons on their horns, and finally, when the gates were opened to drag out the carcasses of the rest, he managed to crawl away also and to drag himself where? To the very door of his master's house, which he reached, and where he finally lay down and died. His instinct, unhappily wrong in this case, had evidently made him fancy that there, at any rate, he would have pity and relief from his agony: for the wounds inflicted by the horns of the bull are, it is said, horrible in their burning, smarting pain. Fernan Caballero was with the wife of a famous "matador," whose chest was transfixed by the bull at the moment when, thinking the beast's strength was spent, he had leant forward to deal the fatal stroke, He lingered for some hours, but in an agony which she said must have been seen to be believed. Generally speaking, however, such accidents to the men are very rare. Carlo Puerto, one of the "picadores," was killed last year by a very wary bull, who turned suddenly, and, catching him on his horns in the stomach, ran with him in that way three times round the arena!--but that was the fault of the president, who had insisted on his attacking the bull in the centre of the ring, the "picadores" always remaining close to the screen, so that their escape may be more easily managed. If the sport could be conducted, as it is said to be in Salamanca and in Portugal, without injury to the horses, the intense interest caused by a combat where the skill, intelligence, and agility of the man are pitted against the instinct, quickness, and force of the bull, would make it perhaps a legitimate as well as a most exciting amusement; but, as it is at present conducted, it is simply horrible, and inexcusably cruel and revolting. It is difficult to understand how any woman can go to it a second time. The effect on the people must be brutalizing to a frightful extent, and accounts in a great measure for their utter absence of feeling for animals, especially horses and mules, which they ill use in a manner perfectly shocking to an Englishman, and apparently without the slightest sense of shame. But there is no indication of this sport becoming less popular in Spain. Combats with "novillos," or young bulls, whose horns are tipped to avoid accidents, are a common amusement among the young aristocracy, who are said to bet frightfully on their respective favorites; and thus the taste is fostered from their cradles.

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The Charitable Institutions and Convents of Seville.

A few days after the holy week, our travellers decided on visiting some of the far-famed charitable institutions of Seville; and, taking the kind and benevolent Padre B---- as their interpreter, they went first to the Hospital del Sangre, or of the "Five Wounds," a magnificent building of the sixteenth century, with a Doric façade 600 feet long, a beautiful portal, and a "patio," in the centre of which is the church, a fine building, built in the shape of a Latin cross, and containing one or two good Zurbarans. There are between 300 and 400 patients; and in addition to the large wards, there are--what is so much needed in our great London hospitals, and which we have before alluded to at Madrid--a number of nicely-furnished little separate rooms for a higher class of patients, who pay about two shillings a day, and have both the skill of the doctors and the tender care of the sisters of charity, instead of being neglected in their own homes. There was a poor priest in one of these apartments, in another a painter, and in a third a naval captain, a Swede, and so on. The hospital is abundantly supplied with everything ordered by the doctors, including wine, brandy, chickens, or the like; and in this respect is a great contrast to that at Malaga, where the patients literally die for want of the necessary extra diets and stimulants which the parsimony of the administration denies them. In each quadrangle is a nice garden, with seats and fountains, and full of sweet flowers, where the patients, when well enough, can sit out and enjoy the sunshine. There is not the slightest hospital smell in any one of the wards. The whole is under the administration of the Spanish sisters of charity of St. Vincent de Paul; and knowing that, no surprise was felt at the perfection of the "lingerie," or the admirable arrangement and order of the hospital. They have a touching custom when one of the patients is dying, and has received the viaticum, to place above his head a special cross, so that he may be left undisturbed by casual visitors. The sisters have a little oratory up-stairs, near the woman's ward, beautifully fitted up. An air of refinement, of comfort, and of home pervades the whole establishment.

Close to this hospital is the old tower where St. Hermengilde was put to death, on Easter eve, by order of his unnatural father, because he would not join the Arian heresy, or receive his paschal communion from the hands of an Arian bishop. This was in the sixth century; and is not the same persecution, and for the same cause, going on in Poland in the nineteenth? [Footnote 183] The old Gothic tower still remains, and in it his close dungeon. A church has been built adjoining, but the actual prison remains intact. There are some good pictures in the church, especially a Madonna, by Murillo; and a clever picture of St. Ignatius in his room, meditating on his conversion. There is also a fine statue of St. Hermengilde himself, by Montanés, over the high altar. The good old priest who had the care of this church lived in a little room adjoining, like a hermit in his cell, entirely devoted to painting and to the "culte" of his patron saint. St. Gregory the Great attributes to the merits of this martyr the conversion of his brother, afterward King Recared, the penitence of his father, and the christianizing of the whole kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain.

[Footnote 183: The manner in which, during this very last Easter, the poor Polish Catholics have been treated and forced to receive schismatical communions through a system of treachery unparalleled in the annals of the church, is unfortunately not sufficiently known in England, where alone public opinion could be brought to bear on the instigators of such tyranny. The strife between Russia and Poland has ceased to be anything but a religious struggle: Russia is determined to quench Catholicism out of the land. But the cry of hundreds of exiled pastors of the flock is rising to heaven from the forests and mines of Siberia; in the holy sacrifice (offered in earthenware cups on common stones) they still plead for their people before the throne of the great Intercessor. And that cry and those prayers will be answered in God's own time and way.]

From thence our travellers went on to the orphanage managed by the "Trinitarian sisters." The house was built in the last century, by a charitable lady, who richly endowed it, and placed 200 children there; now, the government, without a shadow of right has taken the whole of the funds of the institution, and allows them barely enough to purchase bread. The superior is in despair, and has scarcely heart to go on with the work. {601} She has diminished the number of the child and has been obliged to curtail their food, giving them neither milk nor meat except on great festivals. But for the intervention of the Duc de Montpensier, and other charitable persons, the whole establishment must long since have been given up. There are twenty four sisters. The children work and embroider beautifully, and are trained to every kind of industrial occupation. From this orphanage our party went to the Hospital for Women, managed by the sisters of the third order of St. Francis. It is one of the best hospitals in Seville. There are about 100 women, admirably kept and cared for, and a ward of old and incurable patients besides. The superior, a most motherly, loving soul, to whom every one seemed much attached, took them over every part of the building. She has a passion for cats, and beautiful "Angoras" were seen basking in the sun in every window-sill.

This hospital, like the orphanage, is a private foundation; but the government has given notice that they mean to appropriate its funds, and the poor sisters are in terror lest their supplies should cease for their sick. It is a positive satisfaction to think that the government which has dealt in this wholesale robbery of the widow and orphan is not a bit the better for it. One feels inclined to exclaim twenty times a day: "Thy money perish with thee!"

But of all the charitable institutions of Seville, the finest is the Caridad, a magnificent hospital, or rather "asilo," for poor and incurable patients, nursed and tended by the Spanish sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. It was founded in the seventeenth century, by Don Miguel de Mañara, a man eminent for his high birth and large fortune, and one of the knights of Calatrava, an order only given to people whose quarterings showed nobility for several generations. He was in his youth the Don Juan of Seville, abandoning himself to every kind of luxury and excess, although many strange warnings were sent to him from time to time, to arrest him in his headlong, downward course. On one occasion especially, he had followed a young and apparently beautiful figure through the streets and into the cathedral, where, regardless of the sanctity of the place, he insisted on her listening to his addresses. What was his horror, on turning round, in answer to his repeated solicitations, when the face behind the mask proved to be that of a skeleton! So strongly was this circumstance impressed on his mind, that he caused it afterward to be painted by Valdés, and hung in the council-room of the hospital. Another time, when returning from one of his nocturnal orgies, he lost his way, and, passing by the church of Santiago, saw, to his surprise, that the doors were open, the church lit, and a number of priests were kneeling with lighted tapers round a bier in perfect silence. He went in and asked "whose was the funeral?" The answer of one after the other was: "Don Miguel de Mañara." Thinking this a bad joke, he approached the coffin, and hastily lifted up the black pall which covered the features of the dead. To his horror he recognized himself. This event produced a complete change in his life. He resolved to abandon his vicious courses, and marry, choosing the only daughter of a noble house, as much noted for her piety as for her beauty. But God had higher designs in store for him, and, after a few years spent in the enjoyment of the purest happiness, his young wife died suddenly. In the first violence of his grief, Don Miguel thought but of escaping from the world altogether, and burying himself in a monastery. But God willed it otherwise. There was at that time, on the right bank of the Guadalquivir, a little hermitage dedicated to St. George, which was the resort of a confraternity of young men who had formed themselves into brothers of charity, and devoted themselves to the care of the sick and dying poor. {602} Don Diego Mirafuentes was their "hermano mayor," or chief brother, and, being an old friend of Don Miguel's, invited him to stay with him, and by degrees enlisted all his sympathies in their labors of love. He desired to be enrolled in their confraternity, but his reputation was so bad that the brotherhood hesitated to admit him; and, when at last they yielded, determined to put his sincerity and humility to the test by ordering him to go out at once from door to door throughout Seville (where he was so well known) with the bodies of certain paupers, and to crave alms for their interment. Grace triumphed over all natural repugnance to such a task; and with his penitence had come that natural thirst for penance which made all things appear easy and light to bear, so that very soon he became the leader in all noble and charitable works.

Finding that an asylum or home was sadly needed in winter for the reception of the houseless poor, he purchased a large warehouse, which he converted into rooms for this purpose; and, by dint of begging, got together a few beds and necessaries, so that by the Christmas following more than two hundred sick or destitute persons were here boarded and lodged. From this humble beginning arose one of the most magnificent charitable institutions in Spain. The example of Don Miguel, his burning charity, his austere self-denial, his simple faith won all hearts. Money poured in on every side; every day fresh candidates from the highest classes pleaded for admission into the confraternity. It was necessary to draw up certain rules for their guidance, and this work was entrusted to Don Miguel, who had been unanimously elected as their superior. Nowhere did his wisdom, prudence, and zeal appear more strongly than in these regulations, which still form the constitutions of this noble foundation. Defining, first, the nature of their work the seeking out and succoring the miserable, nursing the sick, burying the dead, and attending criminals to their execution--he goes on to insist on the value of personal service, both private and public; on the humility and self-abnegation required of each brother; that each, on entering the hospital, should forget his rank, and style himself simply "servant of the poor," kissing the hand of the oldest among the sufferers, and serving them as seeing Jesus Christ in the persons of each. The notices of certain monthly meetings and church services which formed part of the rule of the community were couched in the following terms: "This notice is sent you lest you should neglect these holy exercises, which may be the last at which God will allow you to assist." Sermons and meditations on the passion of our Lord, and on the nearness of death and of eternity, formed the principal religious exercises of the confraternity; in fact, the Passion is the abiding devotion of the order.

His hospital built, and his poor comfortably housed and cared for, Miguel turned his attention to the church, which was in ruins. A letter of his, still extant, will show the difficulties which he had to overcome in this undertaking. "We had hoped," he writes, "that one of our brothers, who was rich and childless, would have given us something to begin the restoration; but he died without thinking of the church, and so vanished our golden hopes, as they always will when we put our trust in human means to accomplish God's ends. I was inclined to despond about it; when, the next morning, at eight o'clock, a poor beggar named Luis asked to speak to me. 'My wife is just dead,' he said. 'She sold chestnuts on the Plaza, and realized a little sum of eighty ducats. To bury her I have spent thirty: fifty remain; they are all I have; but I bring them to you, that you may lay the first stone of the new church. I want nothing for myself but a bit of bread, which I can always beg from door to door.'" Don Miguel refused, the beggar insisted; and so the church was begun: and the story spread, and half a million of ducats were poured into the laps of the brothers; but, as Mañara added, "the first stone was laid by God himself in the 'little all' of the poor beggar." [Footnote 184]

[Footnote 184: How often, when buying chestnuts of one of the old women in the Plaza of the Caridad, did the recollection of this story come into the mind of our traveller!]

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This church was filled in 1680 with the chefs-d'oeuvre of Murillo and of Valdés Leal: an autograph letter from the great religious painter is still shown in the Sala Capitular of the hospital, asking to be admitted as a member of the confraternity. "Our Saviour as a child;" "St. John and the lamb;" "San Juan de Dios with an angel;" the "Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes;" but, above all, "Moses striking the Rock," called "La Sed," (so admirably is thirst represented in the multitudes crowding round the prophet in the wilderness,) were the magnificent offerings of the new "brother" toward the decoration of God's house and the cause of charity. Equally striking, but more painful in their choice of subjects, are the productions of Valdés, especially a "Dead Bishop," awful in its contrast of gorgeous robes with the visible work of the worms beneath, and of which Murillo said "that he could not look at it without holding his nose." Other pictures by Murillo formerly decorated these walls; but they were stolen by the French, and afterward sold to English collectors, the Duke of Sutherland and Mr. Tomline being among the purchasers. After the church, the most remarkable thing in the Caridad is the "patio," divided into two by a double marble colonnade. Here the poor patients sit out half the day, enjoying the sunshine and the flowers. On the wall is the following inscription, from the pen of Mañara himself, but which loses in the translation: "This house will last as long as God shall be feared in it, and Jesus Christ be served in the persons of his poor. Whoever enters here must leave at the door both avarice and pride."

The cloisters and passages are full of texts and pious thoughts, but all associated with the two ideas ever prominent in the founders mind--charity and death. Over what was his own cell is the following, in Spanish: "What is it that we mean when we speak of death? It is being free from the body of sin, and from the yoke of our passions: therefore, to live is a bitter death, and to die is a sweet life."

The wards are charmingly large and airy, and lined with gay "azulejos." The kitchen is large and spacious, with a curious roof, supported by a single pillar in the middle. Over the president's chair, in the Sala Capitular, is the original portrait of Don Miguel Mañara, by his friend Valdés Leal, and, at the side, a cast taken of his face after death, presented to the confraternity by Vicentelo de Leca. Both have the same expression of dignity and austerity, mingled with tenderness, especially about the mouth; and the features have a strong resemblance to those of the great Condé. He died on May 19th, 1679, amidst the tears of the whole city, being only fifty-three years of age: but a nature such as his could not last long. A very interesting collection of his letters is still shown in the hospital, and his life has been lately admirably translated into French by M. Antoine de Latour.

The "Sacré Coeur" have established themselves lately in Seville, through the kindness of the Marquesa de V----, and are about to open a ladies' school--which is very much needed--on the site of a disused Franciscan convent. The archbishop has given them the large church adjoining the convent; and it was almost comical to see the three or four charming sisters, who are beginning this most useful and charitable work, singing their benediction alone in the vast chancel, until the building can be got ready for the reception of their pupils.

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Another convent visited by the ladies of the party was that of Sta. Ines, which stands in a narrow street near the church of St. Felipe Neri. The great treasure of this convent is the body of Sta. Maria Coronel, which remains as fresh and as life-like as if she had died but yesterday. Her history is a tragical one. Pedro the Cruel, falling madly in love with her great beauty, condemned her husband, who was governor of the Balearic Islands, to an ignominious death; but then, with a refinement of cruelty, promised his pardon to his wife on condition that she would yield to his passion. Maria Coronel, preferring death to dishonor, permitted the execution of her husband, and fled for refuge to this convent, where the king, violating all rights, human and divine, pursued her. One night he penetrated into her cell. Maria, seeing no other mode of escape, seized the lamp which burnt on the table before her, and poured the boiling oil over her face, thus destroying her beauty for ever. The king, enraged and disappointed, relinquished his suit; and the poor lady lived and died in the convent. In the library of the university is an ancient MS. describing Pedro the Cruel as "tall, fair, good-looking, and full of spirit, valor, and talent!" but his execrable deeds speak for themselves. The curious thing is, that the marks of the boiling oil are as clearly seen on Maria Coronel's face now as on the day when the heroic deed was committed. The sisters of this convent are dressed in blue, with a long black veil, and their cloisters contain some very curious pictures and relics.

The most interesting visit, however, paid by one of the party in Seville, was to the strictly enclosed convent of Sta. Teresa, to enter which the English lady had obtained special papal permission. Of the sorrows and perils which St. Theresa experienced in founding this house, she herself speaks in writing to her niece, Mary of Ocampo: "I assure you that of all the persecutions we have had to endure, none can bear the least comparison with what we have suffered at Seville." [Footnote 185]

[Footnote 185: For both this and other quotations regarding St. Theresa's foundations, the writer is indebted to the charming life of the saint published by Hurst & Blackett in 1865, and which, from its wonderful truth and accuracy, is a perfect handbook to anyone visiting the Carmelite convents of Spain. She trusts that its author will forgive her for having, often unintentionally, used her actual expressions in speaking of places and of things, from the impossibility of their being described by an eye-witness in any other manner.]

Suffering from violent fever, calumniated by one of her own postulants, denounced to the inquisition, persecuted incessantly by the fathers of the mitigated rule, with no prospect of buying a house, and no money for the purchase, the saint could yet find courage to add; "Notwithstanding all these evils, my heart is filled with joy. What blessed things are peace of conscience and liberty of soul!" It reminds one of another occasion, when it was necessary to begin a foundation which was to cost a great, deal of money, and the saint had but twopence-halfpenny. "Never mind," she replied courageously, "twopence halfpenny and Theresa are nothing; but twopence-halfpenny and God are everything!" And the work was accomplished. In the case of the Seville house her patience and faith met with a like reward. On the Feast of the Ascension, 1576, the blessed sacrament was placed in the chapel of the new convent by the archbishop himself, accompanied by all his clergy, who wished to make public amends to St. Theresa and her nuns for the persecutions they had endured; and when Theresa knelt to ask for his pastoral benediction, the archbishop, in the presence of all the people, knelt to ask for hers in return, thus testifying to the high estimation in which he held both her and her work.

It was this convent, untouched since those days of trial, which our visitors now entered. There are twenty two sisters, of whom three are novices, and their rule is maintained in all its primitive severity. They keep a perpetual fast, living chiefly on the dried "cabala," or stockfish, of the country, and only on festivals and at Easter tide allowing themselves eggs and milk.

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They have no beds, only a hard mattress, stuffed with straw; this, with an iron lamp, a pitcher of water, a crucifix, and a discipline, constitutes the only furniture of each cell, all of which are alike. One or two common prints were pasted on the walls, and over the doors hung various little ejaculations: "Jesu, superabundo gaudio;" "O crux! ave, spes unica!" "Domine, quid me vis facere?" or else a little card in Spanish, like the following, which the English lady carried off with her as a memorial:

Aplaca, mi Dios, tu ira, Tu justicia y tu rigor. Por los ruegos de Maria, Misericordia, Señor! Santo Dios, Santo fuerte, Santo inmortal, Liberanos, Senor, de todo mal.

At the refectory, each sister has an earthenware plate and jug, with a wooden cover, an earthenware salt-cellar, and a wooden spoon. Opposite the place of the superior is a skull, the only distinction. They are allowed no linen except in sickness, and wear only a brown mantle and white serge scapular, with a black veil, which covers them from head to foot. They are rarely allowed to walk in the garden, or to go out in the corridor in the sun to warm themselves. Their house is like a cellar, cold and damp; and they have no fires. Even at recreation they are not allowed to sit, except on the floor; and silence is rigidly observed, except for two hours during the day. They have only five hours sleep, not going to bed till half-past eleven, on account of the office. At eleven, one of the novices seizes the wooden clapper, (or crecella,) which she strikes three times, pronouncing the words: "Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Blessed Virgin Mary, his Mother; my sisters, let us go to matins to glorify our Lord." Then they go to the choir, singing the Miserere. They are called again in the same manner at half-past four by a sister who chaunts a verse in the Psalms. At night a sentence is pronounced aloud, to serve as meditation. It is generally this:

My sisters, think of this: a little suffering, and then an eternal recompense.

They see absolutely no one, receiving the holy communion through a slit in the wall. The English lady was the first person they had seen face to face, or with lifted veils, for twelve years. They play the organ of the chapel, which is a public one, though they themselves are entirely invisible; and they are not even allowed to see the altar, which is concealed by a heavy black curtain drawn across the grating looking into the church. They have an image of their great foundress, the size of life, dressed in the habit of the order, and to her they go night and morning and salute her, as to a mother. Their convent is rich in relics, beautiful pictures, and crucifixes, brought in by different religious, especially the Duchesse de Bega, who became a Carmelite about fifty years ago. But their chief treasure is an original picture of St. Theresa, for which she sat by command of the archbishop, and which has lately been photographed for the Duc de Montpensier. It is a very striking and beautiful face, but quite different from the conventional representations of the saint. When it was finished, she looked at it, and exclaimed naively: "I did not know I was grown so old or so ugly!" There is also in this sacristy a very beautiful Morales of the "Virgin and a Dead Christ," and a curious portrait of Padre Garcia, the saint's confessor. Up-stairs, in her own cell, they have her cloak and shoes, and the glass out of which she drank in her last illness. The stranger was courteously made to drink out of it also, and then to put on the saint's cloak, in which she was told "to kneel and pray for her heart's desire, and it would be granted to her."

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But the most interesting thing in the convent is the collection of MSS. They have the whole of the "Interior Mansion," written in her own firm and beautiful handwriting, with scarcely an erasure; besides quantities of her letters and answers from St. John of the Cross, from St. John of Avila, from Padre Garcia, and a multitude of others. The superior is elected every three years, and the same one cannot be reelected till three years have elapsed. They require a "dot" of 8000 reals, or about a hundred pounds; but their number is full, and several candidates are now waiting their turn for admission. The government has taken what little property they once had and gives them at the rate of a peseta (two reals) a day, so that, poor as their food is, they are often on the verge of starvation.

It was with a feeling almost of relief that the English lady found herself once more in the sunshine outside these gloomy walls; yet those who lived within them seemed cheerful and happy, and able to realize in the fullest degree, without any external aid, those mysteries of divine love and that beauty of holiness which, to our weaker faith, would seem impossible when deprived of all sight of our Lord in his tabernacle or in his glorious creations. We are tempted to ask, why it is that convents of this nature are so repugnant to English taste? Every one is ready to appreciate those of the sisters of charity. People talk of their good deeds, of the blessing they are in the hospitals, of the advantages of united work, etc. etc.; but as for the enclosed orders, "They wish they were all abolished." "What is the good of a set of women shutting themselves up and doing nothing?" Reader, do they "do nothing"? We will not speak of the schools; of the evening classes for working women; of the preparations for first communions and confirmations; of the retreats within their sheltering walls for those of us who, wearied with this world's toil and bustle, wish to pause now and then and gain breath for the daily fight, and take stock, as it were, of our state before God. These and other works like these, form almost invariably a very important portion of the daily occupation of the cloistered orders. But we will dismiss the thoughts of any external work, and come to the highest and noblest part of their vocation. What is it that is to "move mountains"? What is it that, over and over again in Holy Scripture, has saved individuals, and cities, and nations? Is it not united intercessory prayer? Is it nothing to us, in the whirl and turmoil of this work-a-day life, that holy hands should ever be lifted up for us to the Great Intercessor? Is there no reparation needed for the sins, and the follies, and the insults to the majesty of God, and to his sacraments, and to his Mother, which are ever going on in this our native country? Does it not touch the most indifferent among us to think of our self-indulgence being, as it were, atoned for by their self-denial?--our pampered appetites by their fasts and vigils? It is true that our present habits of life and thought lead to an obvious want of sympathy with such an existence. It has no public results on which we can look complacently, or which can be paraded boastfully. Everything seems waste which is not visible; and all is disappointment which is not obvious success. It is supernatural principles especially which are at a discount in modern days! Surely the time will come when we shall judge these things very differently; when our eyes will be opened like the eyes of the prophet's servant; and we shall see from what miseries, from what sorrows we and our country have been preserved by lives like these, which save our Sodom, and avert God's righteous anger from his people. [Footnote 186]

[Footnote 186: In a simple but touching French biography of a young English lady who lately died in the convent of the "Poor Clares" at Amiens, the writer's idea is far more beautifully expressed: "A cette heure de la nuit, peut-ètre qu'une jenne fille du monde, martyre (sans couronne) de ses lois et de ses exigences, rentre chez elle, épulsée d'emotions et de fatigues. En longeant le mur du monastère et en entendant le son de la cloche qui appelle les recluses volontaires à la prière elle se sera adressée cette question: 'A quoi servent done les religieuses?' Je vais vous le dire: à expier. Après cette nuit de plaisir que vous venez de passer au théatre ou au bal, viendra une autre nuit--nuit d'angoisses et de supréme douleur. Vous étes la étendue sur votre couche de mort en face de l'éternité ou vous allez entrer seule, et sans appui. Peut-étre vous n'osez, ou vous ne pouvez prier; mals quelqu'un a prié pour vous, et faisant violence au ciel, a obtenu ce que vous n'etiez pas digne d'espérer. Voila d quoi servent les religieuses."]

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One more curious establishment was visited by our party at Seville before their departure, and that was the cigar manufactory, an enormous government establishment, occupying an immense yellow building, which looks like a palace, and employing 1,000 men and 5,000 women. The rapidity with which cigars are turned out by those women's fingers is not the least astonishing part. The workers are almost all young, and some very beautiful. They take off their gowns and their crinolines as soon as they come in, hanging them up in a long gallery, and take the flowers out of their hair and put them in water, so that they may be fresh when they come out; and then work away in their petticoats with wonderful zeal and good humor the whole day long. The government makes 90,000,000 reals a year from the profits of this establishment, though the dearest cigar made costs but twopence!

And now the sad time came for our travellers to leave Seville. In fact, the exorbitant prices of everything at the hotel made a longer stay impossible, though it was difficult to say what it was that they paid for: certainly not food; for, excepting the chocolate and bread, which are invariably good throughout Spain, the dinners were uneatable, the oil rancid, the eggs stale; even "el cocido," the popular dish, was composed of indescribable articles, and of kids which seemed to have died a natural death. One of the party, a Belgian, exclaimed when her first dish of this so-called meat was given her at Easter: "Vraiment, je crois que nous autres nous n'avons pas tant perdu pendant le Carême!" An establishment has lately been started by an enterprising peasant to sell milk fresh from the cow, a great luxury in Spain, where goat's milk is the universal substitute; and four very pretty Alderneys are kept, stall-fed, in a nice little dairy, "à l'Anglaise," at one corner of the principal square, which is both clean and tempting to strangers. At every corner of the streets, water, in cool, porous jars, is offered to the passers by, mixed with a sugary substance looking like what is used by confectioners for "meringues," but which melts in the water and leaves no trace. This is the universal beverage of every class in Spain.

There is little to tempt foreigners in the shops of Seville, and, with the exception of photographs and fans, there is nothing to buy which has any particular character or "chique" about it. The fans are beautiful, and form, in fact, one of the staple trades of the place; there is also a sweet kind of incense manufactured of flowers, mixed with resinous gums, which resembles that made at Damascus. But the ordinary contents of the shops look like the sweepings-out of all the "quincaillerie" of the Faubourg St. Denis.

It was on a more lovely evening than usual that our travellers went, for the last time, to that glorious cathedral. The sorrow was even greater than what they had felt the year before in leaving St. Peter's: for Rome one lives in hopes of seeing again; Seville, in all human probability, never! The services were over, but the usual proportion of veiled figures knelt on the marble pavement, on which the light from those beautiful painted windows threw gorgeous colors. Never had that magnificent temple appeared more solemn or more worthy of its purpose; one realized as one had never done before one's own littleness and God's ineffable greatness, mercy, and love. Still they lingered, when the inexorable courier came to remind them that the train was on the point of starting, and with a last prayer, which was more like a sob, our travellers left the sacred building. At the station all their kind Seville friends had assembled to bid them once more good-by, and to re-echo kind hopes of a speedy return; and then the train started, and the last gleam of sunshine died out on the tower of the Giralda.

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Original.

Il Duomo

A Vision.

IL DUOMO, being interpreted, signifies "The Cathedral," and the subject of the following poem is the picturesque and beautiful cathedral of Milan. This splendid building is adorned externally by nearly five thousand white marble statues, life size, of knights, martyrs, monks, etc. etc., the roof being ornamented also externally with sculptured buds and flowers in great profusion. Upward of fifty massive pillars support the roof internally, and over the grand altar is suspended a casket containing a nail from the true cross, and other relics. On the topmost pinnacle of the cathedral stands, serene and splendid, a glittering, gilded statue of the Madonna, who, with her eighteen feet of stature, towers nobly above her magnificent body-guard of saints, knights, and martyrs.

Faint with the sunny splendors of the king of light, Nature disrobes, and from her wearied shoulders casts The oppressive mantle of the burning day; Flings to the glowing west her regal diadem of fire; Upon her drooping brow all gladly binds The calm and holy moon; And with a zone of stars loops round her languid form The cool sweet robe of night: The placid moonbeams, o'er that stately fane, Pour the rich affluence of their silvery light, And with a chaste soft lustre, tint The graceful slender spires, The marble phalanx of the white-robed saints, The silent knights, the multitudinous flowers, The mother of our Lord, And all the wonders of that wondrous roof! With hushed and reverent step, through the wide doors I passed! Passed from the outer splendors to the inner mystic gloom Of the majestic pile; Through the emblazoned windows streams the tempered light, Showing dimly forth the shrines of holy men, The sacred emblems, and the fifty marvellous pillars, Dumb stony giants, who, with patient strength, Bear up the ponderous roof; Upon the altar steps I bend me down, and, awe-struck, rest. Suddenly, through the deep stillness Breathed a solemn sound, as sweet as mournful; A hand unseen ran o'er the organ's keys, And o'er the broad, dark air the harmonious waves Rolled grandly on! Entranced I heard, and soon the subtle strains Distilled within my soul a deep oblivion Of things terrestrial.

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A vision came upon me, and I saw The darkness melt, the shades opaque dissolve, And the dull, sombre midnight change To day bright lustre! With soft and lambent flame the fifty columns glowed From base to branching head, And with supernal light pierced the thick denseness Of the arched roof: And I saw the innumerable leaves, The sculptured garlands of fair buds and flowers-- Strewn with such lavish hand o'er all that broad parterre-- With life-renewing tints endowed: The sacred vessels on the altar ranged, The pious gifts of ages passed away, And all the saintly relics of that holy place Glittered with new effulgence! Mine unused eyes drank in amazed the dazzling scene, And now upon mine ears arose the clang of music, And the sound of men rejoicing! From their huge stanchions 'scaped the massy doors, And through the enfranchised portal paced A wondrous train! A thousand mailèd knights, the Duomo's guards, Strode proudly in! As when in life they marched, so came they now; No marble corslets still their lofty hearts, Rich suits of Milan steel enclasp them round, Through the gold helmets' bars their dark eyes flash, Bright banners wave above them, and their hands Clasp as of old the trenchant blade! A stately white-robed troop, the Duomo's priests, The pageant swells. No rigid garb of stone impedes their solemn steps; Girt round with high, ecclesial pomp, The sacred aisles they pace, The jewelled crosiers grasp, the censers swing, And, as of yore, the glad "Hosannas" raise! Again the clash of steel, the armed tread, The banners' silken folds-- And twice five hundred warriors Pass the gaping doors! Hark! in the air, a choir angelic sings:

Wake, jubilant harps! peal, ye clarions of silver! Swell, ye loud organs! for mighty's the theme! Bend lowly the knee, ye saints, knights, and martyrs, With offerings of gold let the high altar gleam! Fill the gemmed censers with myrrh and with amber, Deck the rich shrines with a splendor ne'er seen, Raise high the song, the loud hymn of devotion, Give homage to Mary, our lady, our queen!

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Loud glorias peal, and with reverberant blast, Throughout the illumined space, The silver trumpets clang! Doffed is the casque, the mitred head bent low, The song subsides, and on that marvellous crowd An awful silence dwells! A Presence is among them-- A Being gracious as resplendent. And the resuscitate host is filled with holy terror! She smiles benignly on the kneeling throng, And melts with heavenly look the still, deep fear! Again the hymn breaks forth, With heavenly, earthly voices join, Monks, warriors, martyrs swell the raptured strain!

Lo! where she comes, all meek, yet all noble, The glory celestial encircling her brows. Fall prostrate, ye thousands, all lowly adore her; Bare your swords, valiant knights, yet once make your vows; Chant paeans, ye priests; let the harmonies roll Till the gorgeous temple resounds to its veil. Through our midst she is moving, the chosen, the holy: Hail, Mary, Madonna, blest Virgin, all hail!

The voices ceased, the echoes died away, The mighty pillars throbbed no more with flame; The roof closed in, the pageant vanished, And the darkness swathed once more The sombre nave. Still on the air the organ's notes float sad and wailing, Still through the storied windows streams the moon's soft light, Still rest the things of earth; The mute Colossi yet bear up The vaulted roof; The shrines still glimmer in the dim night air, The mystic glories of my vision Gone!

Arthur Matthison.

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Translated from Revue des Questions Historiques.

Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus.

The True Origin of the Name of America.

I.

For three centuries, the world has regarded it as an historical fact that Christopher Columbus, after enduring many wrongs at the hands of ungrateful Spain, had the unspeakable mortification of seeing a usurper, screened behind public injustice, wrest from him not only the honor of bestowing his name on the world he had discovered, but the reward of glory, and the supreme consolation of his last days. Fortunately this belief is erroneous. Neither was Americus Vespucius a despoiler, nor was Columbus the victim of so poignant an affront. It is true that the great navigator became after death the subject of shameful misapprehensions; but his countrymen should be held as free from the responsibility of this injustice as Columbus was free from suspicion or presentiment of coming evil. The facts are fully explained by the illustrious Prussian savant, who has consecrated his glorious career in great part to the study of the New World. [Footnote 187]

[Footnote 187: M. Alexander Von Humboldt, Critical Examination of the History and Geography of the New World. Vols. iii. and iv. are entirely devoted to an examination of this problem. We merely offer here an abstract of this work, which is little known, and, while exceedingly interesting, demands a very attentive perusal. See also Washington Irving, History of Christopher Columbus, vol. iv. app. 9, Americus Vespucius.]

Americus or Alberic Vespucius, (Amerigo Vespucci,) born at Florence, March 9th, 1451, of an important family, was educated by his uncle, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, a Dominican monk, and one of the honorable personages connected with the Renaissance. His fellow-student was René de Vaudémont, who, later in life, after gloriously defending his duchy of Lorraine against Charles the Bold, exercised in peace a noble patronage of science and letters.

Americus, when about forty years of age, left Italy for Spain, and entered the flourishing commercial house founded at Seville by his countrymen the Berardi. At this period a large number of Italians established themselves in Spain, in Portugal, and even in England. Some became promoters of the commerce fed by Portuguese discoveries, (the Marchioni at Lisbon;) others (Cadomosto, the Corte reali) traced out a route along the African coast or explored the icy barrier that guards the north-west passage; while others again, (Christopher Columbus, John and Sebastian Cabot,) crossed the Atlantic ocean, bringing back a wondrous discovery. This was one of the glories of Italy, so rich in all glory during the fifteenth century.

At first a clerk, and in 1496 the general accountant of the Berardi, Americus Vespucius listened with passionate interest to narrations uttered by the lips of Christopher Columbus himself. He studied astronomy and the science of navigation, and made four voyages; the first two under protection of the Spanish flag, the last two under that of Portugal.

He naturally drew up an account of these expeditions. Like Columbus he related his foreign experiences to friends and patrons; first, in three successive letters, describing his first three voyages, written to the Florentine, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici; and later, after his fourth expedition, in a single narrative, containing a résumé of all his travels, addressed simultaneously, but not in the same form, to another countryman, the gonfalonniere Piero Soderini, and to the Duke of Lorraine, René II. This last was similar in tenor to a narrative sent by him a short time before to Ferdinand the Catholic.

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These four voyages, so soon made famous, are extracts, varied by Vespucius according to the correspondents for whom they were destined. He drew them from a complete and detailed account, written according "to the weakness of his puny talent," [Footnote 188] as his overstrained modesty expresses it; a work executed with assiduous care, "in order that coming generations might remember him," but which he never published. It has not yet been brought to light.

[Footnote 188: "Juxta ingenioli mel tenuitatem." Crit. Exam, vol. iv. p. 170, n. 1.]

It is, then, only by those of his printed letters that have come down to us--and they are not all preserved--that we know the dates and circumstances of his voyages.

In the first voyage, which took place between May 20th, 1497, and October 15th, 1499, he recognized the coasts of Surinam and of Paria, at the mouth of the Orinoco. In the second, dated from May 6th, 1499, to September 8th, 1500, he crossed the equator and saw Cape St. Augustine off Brazil; and from there sailed north to Paria and Hispaniola. The dates of these two expeditions contradict each other; for, according to them, his second voyage must have begun five months before the first ended. Moreover, the date 1497 for the beginning of the first voyage is inadmissible. The registers of the Spanish administration (La Casa de Contratacion at Seville) prove that, from April, 1497, to May, 1498, Americus Vespucius was detained at Seville and San Lucar, occupied with preparations for the third voyage of Christopher Columbus. [Footnote 189]

[Footnote 189: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 267, 268. This third voyage took place from May 30th. 1498, to November 25th, 1500.]

For this reason the Florentine has been accused of fabricating this pretended voyage by disguising a few incidents drawn from the second; and of having antedated his departure from Spain, in order at one stroke to earn the credit of first touching terra firma at Paria, and deprive Christopher Columbus of that honor. We shall discuss this question later.

It is a singular fact that, without attributing to himself any share in the command, and even while distinctly stating that he was there under orders "to aid in making discoveries," [Footnote 190] he does not name the chiefs under whose authority he was placed.

[Footnote 190: M. Von Humboldt supposes him to have been the astronomer of the expedition. Crit. Exam, vol. iv. p. 189, and following. In several instances the other mariners failed to mention the name of their captains.]

But, in spite of this reticence, we gather from the deposition of Alonzo de Hojeda in the lawsuit brought against the crown by the son of Columbus in 1508, that Vespucius served on the squadron of Hojeda. [Footnote 191]

[Footnote 191: He states that on this voyage (May 20th, 1499, to June, 1500) he took with him Juan de la Cosa, pilot, Morigo Vespuche, and other pilots. (Crit. Ex; vol. iv. p. 188.)]

A comparison between the narratives left by both leads to the conclusion that the first voyage of Americus, so inaccurately dated, must be identified with that of Alonzo. [Footnote 192]

[Footnote 192: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 195-200.]

But, instead of accompanying the latter during the entire expedition, Vespucius, after exploring the coast of Paria with him, left him at Hispaniola at the end five months. Then, having been absent only from May 5th to October 15th, 1499, he must have returned to Spain in time to embark in the December of that year with the expedition Vicente Yanez Pinzon. [Footnote 193]

[Footnote 193: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 290.]

This expedition, which ended in September, 1500 agrees in a host of details with the second voyage of Vespucius. [Footnote 194]

[Footnote 194: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 293-316; vol. v. pp. 61-69, 212-213. M. Von Humboldt shows that the circumstances of each of the two first voyages of Vespucius bear too distinctive a character to render admissible the idea that they were but one voyage, that is, the voyage which the Florentine is accused of calling the second, while its elements, divided by him with more or less art, furnished fallaciously the material for a first supposed voyage, bearing the false date of 1497. The first voyage was confined entirely in the northern hemisphere, the second extended to southern regions.]

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These enterprises aroused the attention of the King of Portugal, Emmanuel le Fortune, in whose service our traveller let himself be enrolled. He joined a squadron (May, 1501, to Sept. 1501) sent to reconnoitre the land of Santa Cruz, or Brazil, discovered April 22d, 1500, by the Portuguese Admiral Alvarez Cabral, who, while on his way to the Cape of Good Hope and the East-Indies, had been dragged westward by winds and currents. In this voyage Americus Vespucius passed the equator by a distance which he values at 52°. On this he boasts of having traversed one fourth of the world (40° lat. north of Lisbon to the equator 50° lat. south; total 90°, or the quarter of a meridian.) He gives a brilliant description of the inhabitants, of natural features in that region, and of southern constellations. The leader of this expedition is not known. One remarkable fact, the encounter at Cape Verd with the vessels of Alvarez Cabral, returning from Malabar to Lisbon, and the details which Vespucius received from a member of that expedition concerning the admiral's adventures in the Indies, and transmitted to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, [Footnote 195] prove the habitual veracity of the Florentine navigator, confirmed and attested in this instance by Portuguese documents. [Footnote 196]

[Footnote 195: Letter dated at Cape Verd, June 4th, 1501.]

[Footnote 196: Crit. Exam. vol. v. pp. 69-107 and 213-215.]

The fourth voyage, (June, 1503, to June, 1504,) made probably under the direction of Gonzalo Coelho, had an object which Americus extols beforehand without clearly explaining it: "I shall do many things," he writes to Medicis, "for the glory of God, the good of my country, and the perpetual commemoration of my name." It appears that the king of Portugal wished to discover a passage to the Indies further south than Brazil; and, if it be true that Vespucius had already penetrated to the fiftieth degree of southern latitude, he must have just missed giving his name to the straits, whose discovery twenty years later immortalized Magellan. But results disappointed these cherished hopes and anticipations. The incapacity of the commander-in-chief, whose name the narrator conceals while roundly abusing his presumption and folly, rendered it disastrous.

Emmanuel, occupied at that period with grand projects of conquest in Oriental India, abandoned all attempts directed to the West. Vespucius on his side, disgusted with the barren service of Portugal, lent ear to King Ferdinand's solicitations, and, with a facile change of patron not without precedent among his contemporaries, returned to Castile. We find him leaving Seville for Valladolid, where the court was assembled, bearing an introduction to Diego, son of Christopher Columbus, from the admiral himself. Columbus recommends him (February 5th, 1505) as a man "to whom fortune has been adverse, and who has not enjoyed the legitimate fruit of his labors."

He received a commission to equip a squadron destined to seek a western route to the "land of spices." But after two years of preparation, Ferdinand, wearied with dissensions with his son-in-law Philippe le Beau, abandoned the design. At all events, on the 2d of March, 1508, he appointed Americus Vespucius to be pilot-in-chief (piloto mayor) at Seville, with a salary of fifty thousand maravedis, with these duties: first, to make sure that the pilots understood the use of astrolabe and quadrant; second, to make out a table of positions, to bear the name of Padron real, and serve the sole purpose of fixing maritime routes; third, to oblige pilots after each voyage to explain, in the presence of the officers of La Casa de Contratacion and of the piloto mayor, the exact position of the newly discovered lands, and also any corrections in the bearings of coasts, in order that all necessary changes might be recorded in the Padron real.[Footnote 197]

[Footnote 197: Crit. Exam. vol. v. pp. 167, 168.]

It was while filling this eminent position that Americus Vespucius died at Seville, on the 22d of February, 1512, aged sixty-one years, without having made another voyage.

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II.

Thus lived Americus Vespucius, joining actively and honorably for the last twenty years of his life in the gigantic labors by which the mariners of Castile and Portugal wrenched one by one her secrets from the sea.

Valued and sought by kings as well as by the most illustrious men, a little vain himself, proud of the early education that had raised him above the generality of navigators, with a mind rather commonplace than brilliant, nowhere does he give evidence in his narratives of a dishonest leaning toward usurpation; nor does a single act accuse him of such desires.

And yet usurpation there was. Let us discover its source and the manner of its consummation.

The Italian friends with whom Americus was in correspondence probably took upon themselves to publish his letters. The first one put in print was the letter to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, containing an account of his third voyage. Rich in curious details, and in vivid pictures of habits and manners, this little work was the more striking to imaginations already overwrought, that the narrator's explorations had embraced vast coast regions of southern latitudes. [Footnote 198]

[Footnote 198: The fact that these discoveries of Americus had taken place in southern regions added to their interest. Many persons still persisted in the error of ancient cosmography, that the two temperate zones, north and south of the equator, were alone habitable, and could never hold communication with each other because of the burning atmosphere of the torrid zone. We find a ludicrous and remarkable specimen of this blind spirit of conservatism in a certain Zachariah Sillus, who writes at Paris in 1515, that is to say, twenty-three years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus and seventeen years after Vasco de Gama's expedition to the Indies: "Between the torrid zone and the glacial zones, two zones only are habitable. By whom is the one corresponding to our own inhabited? Macrobius affirms it; no one has ever known, no one ever will know. For the torrid zone placed between them interdicts all intercourse between the men of these two regions. The superior zone, then, only is inhabited, I mean the one lying between the northern and equatorial regions." (Bibliothèque Magazine, No. 16169.) Others understood no better the antipodes, the men of the opposite hemisphere standing head downward. The voyages of Vespucius contributed largely toward the solution of these problems.]

The first publication of this third voyage appears to have been made in Italy. The Latin language served it for a passport beyond the Alps, and furnished the type for numerous French and German translations. The first Latin edition known is without date, and bears the name of the publisher Lambert, in Paris. Afterward came those of Otmar, in Augsburg, 1504, published previously under the title of Mundus Nova, an expression used by Americus himself; and those of Strasburg, published by Hupfuff, in 1505; those of Leipzig, 1506.

Soon the Italians with their génie d'ensemble gather together into ever-increasing collections various narratives published separately. First appeared the "Book of all the Expeditions of the King of Spain among the newly discovered Islands and Mainlands," (printed in Venice, 1504, in quarto,) by Albertine Vercellese di Lisona. This collection comprises only the first three voyages of Christopher Columbus, with those of Pietro Alonzo, and of Pinzon. Three years later, the great collection of Vicenzo absorbs all these, adding to the voyages made by Spaniards those made by the Portuguese, and placing en vedette, as we say nowadays, the name of Americus Vespucius: Mondo Novo e Paesi Nuovamente ritrovati da Alberico Vespuxio, Florentine, 1507. The author, who writes anonymously, was Alessandro Zorzi.

This book was also translated into Latin at Milan, 1508; into German by Jobst Ruchamer, of Nuremberg, 1508; and into French, by Mathurin du Redouer, of Paris, without date. Of the French version, several editions followed each other in rapid succession about the year 1516.

Thus popularity became rapidly attached to the name of Americus Vespucius. These collections, disseminated through the learned nations of Europe, gave the Florentine the fame of having traversed a greater extent of newly discovered country than any other man, and predisposed public opinion to give him all the credit of the essential discovery.

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But the decisive influence came from a remote corner of the Vosges.

René II., Duke of Lorraine, the old school companion of Vespucius, shared, as has been already said, the elevated tastes natural to princes of the Renaissance. He followed with attentive eye the explorations of navigators, and favored the progress of geographical science.

Americus Vespucius addressed to him, as we know, from Lisbon, in 1504, an account or rather an abstract of his four voyages.

There lived in those days in Lorraine, in the little town of Saint Dié, a learned bookseller, a native of Fribourg-en-Brisgau, and an ancient student in the university of that town. Following a custom of the time, he had, by a Greek transformation, translated his name from Martin Waldsee Muller to Martinus Hylacomylus. [Footnote 199] He prepared an edition of Ptolemaeus. The mathematician of Alexandria, the last exponent of geographical knowledge and of cosmography among the ancients, had been successively the oracle of the immovable middle ages and of the invincible pioneers who opened the modern era. The world was never weary of making reprints of his writings, adding in a supplement what antiquity had not known of our globe, or as the saying went, of lands outside Ptolemaeus, (regiones extra Ptolemaeum.)

[Footnote 199: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 99 and following. See the positive and sagacious researches which led M. Von Humboldt to discover the true name of Hylacomylus. The passage is of great interest, not only on account of the problem whose solution it presents, but as showing with what persevering ardor the illustrious author devoted himself to the elucidation of the truth.]

But before entering upon his great work, Hylacomylus published an introduction to the cosmography, and as an addition precious as it was novel, enriched it with the four voyages of Americus Vespucius, under this title "Cosmographiae introductio cum qui busdam geometriae ac astronomiae principlis ad eam rem necessariis. Insuper quatuor Americi Vespucii navigationes." He wrote anonymously, revealing his name only with the second edition in 1509.

From whom did he obtain these four voyages, never before printed? No doubt from the Duke of Lorraine. But he is silent upon that point, limiting himself to the information that they had been translated from Italian into French and from French into Latin.

Here and there in the nine chapters that compose his work Hylacomylus alludes to the discoveries of Americus Vespucius, extolling their extent and their scientific importance. "The torrid zone," he says, "is habitable and inhabited. The Golden Chersonesus and Taprobane contain many human beings, as well as a very considerable portion of the country entirely unknown until lately, when it was discovered by Americus Vespucius."

Further on, in a more decided manner, after mentioning the seven climates described by Ptolemaeus, and named after several remarkable towns, mountains, or rivers of the northern hemisphere, Hylacomylus opposes to them six others recently recognized in the southern hemisphere. The names of the first five repeat those of the north in symmetrical opposition. [Footnote 200] In the sixth, toward the antarctic region and the extremity of Africa, he places Zanzibar, discovered shortly before, the islands of Java Minor, (Sumatra,) Seula, (Ceylon,) with the fourth part of the world; "and this quarter, since Americus discovered it, we may be allowed to call the land of Americus, or America."

[Footnote 200: "Pari modo dicendum est de eis quae sunt ultra sequinoctialem ad austrum quorum sex contraria nomina habentia sunt lustrata: et dici possunt antidia Meroes, antidia Alexandrias, antidia Rhodon, antidia Rhomes, (sic,) antidia Borischener, (sic,) a graeca particula antiquae oppositum vel contra denotat."-Ch. vii.]

Finally, and it is here that this obscure author decides the question for future ages, he enumerates the countries comprised in Europe, Asia, and Africa. {616} He reminds us that Europe and Asia are the names of two queens, and continues: "Now these three portions have been explored to their utmost limits; and another, a fourth, has been discovered by Americus Vespucius, (as we shall see later.) Now I see no grounds upon which opposition can be made to naming it America, or the land of Americus, after its discoverer, Americus, a man of sagacious genius, since Europe and Asia owe their names to women."

Two series of distichs precede and announce the four navigations. We mention them merely for the characteristic enthusiasm that they exhale in honor of the fortunate mariner. He alone who sang the maritime adventures of the Trojan hero, says the poet in closing his verses, could worthily celebrate this theme. [Footnote 201]

[Footnote 201: The poetical part of the Cosmographiae Introductio is by Philesius, (Ringmann,) a friend of the editor.]

This, then, was the baptism of the new-born world. It was in one of the humblest cities of Lorraine that an unknown bookseller bade Europe and Asia hold it with him over the font, inscribing it in the classic family by a name thenceforth imperishable.

III.

This name became quickly famous in the Old World. Its birth in Lorraine was an advantage in the beginning. This country was fortunately placed for facilities of intercourse between France and Germany, very near the Rhine, along whose banks were crowded so many famous towns from Bâle to Rotterdam, and close to Strasburg, that centre of powerful radiation.

From the presses of Grieninger, or Gruninger, issued, in 1509, the second edition of the Cosmography, bearing this time the author's name affixed to the dedication. Piquant selections were made from the four voyages of Americus, and many persons, allured by its success, falsely claimed the paternity of the book. [Footnote 202] Long after the death of Hylacomylus his work was destined to be reprinted at Venice in 1535 and in 1554. The suffrage of Italy served not a little the popularity of the navigator and the name of America.

[Footnote 202: Hylacomylus complains of this in a letter to Philesius, dated 1509.]

Everywhere an irresistible and universal concurrence enhanced the renown of Americus Vespucius, as wave after wave bears its tribute to the rising tide. From the time of the appearance of that first edition, (1507,) maps and globes were printed in Strasburg and sold at low prices, bearing indication of the discoveries of Americus Vespucius, with his name. [Footnote 203]

[Footnote 203: Crit. Exam, vol iv. pp. 140-142. Letters of the Benedictine Trithemius, Aug. 12th, 1507. Humboldt shows that this letter is often dated incorrectly 1510. Trithemius makes Vespucius a Spaniard.]

In 1509, the same year when the second edition of Hylacomylus appeared, an anonymous opvscule, another product of John Grieninger's active press, called, "Globus mundi declaratio, sive descriptio mundi et totius orbis terrarum," sanctions the proposition of the scholar of Saint-Dié. This is the first geographical treatise in which the name of America takes undisputed possession as the designation of the New World. The phraseology in which it is couched is fantastic, and, independently of its significance, merits a moment's attention.

"Doctors," saith the cosmography "compare our earth to the human frame as possessing all the parts contained in a body. First, the flesh is the earth itself; blood corresponds to water, bones to stones, veins to mountains. The head is the East, or Asia; the feet are the West and America lately discovered. Africa is the right arm, and our own continent of Europe the left."

Science in her first essays was sometimes satisfied with very naive puerilities, and young America was received under strange auspices. But at that time, perhaps, this was an advantage. The author of the Globus shows himself more rational while undertaking to demonstrate clearly, even to persons of small education, the existence of antipodes whose feet are opposed ours; and the possibility of life in any portion of the globe, because the sun shines upon all parts of the earth--problems that disturbed many minds.

{617}

Nevertheless, great as is his admiration for Americus Vespucius, and for "the fourth part of the world by him discovered, that island larger than Europe whose shores develop westward with relation to Europe and Africa," the geographer of Strasburg does not inscribe the name of America on his map. He is content with the appellation of the New World. [Footnote 204] Pierre Apier, in 1520, was the first to enroll the name of America on a map of the world added to an edition of Solinus. [Footnote 205]

[Footnote 204: Newe Welt. The indications on this map of the Globus are in German.]

[Footnote 205: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 255; vol. v. pp. 174, 188.]

Then comes the author who, adding practice to precept, should have anticipated others--we mean Hylacomylus.

His ambition, like that of every cosmographer, was to re-edit the mathematician of Alexandria. The magnificent bounty of René II. furnished the funds for the preparatory labors and provided for the engraving of maps. But death interrupted the work in 1508 by snatching away its noble patron. [Footnote 206]

[Footnote 206: We find in a treatise of 1511, composed of a tract chart of Europe by Hylacomylus, with a description of the same continent by his friend Philesius, an interesting tribute to the memory of René II. Hylacomylus dedicates this map, of which he is very proud, to Duke Antony, René's son and successor. He observes that the late duke was "the first among the first of princes to favor the liberal arts, full of the love of letters and of lettered men. We ourselves remember the indulgent ear, the smiling countenance, and the good grace with which he received the general description of the globe, and other monuments of our literary labors offered by us to him." This book (Biblio. Magazine, No. 16169) is entitled: Instructio manuductionem praestans in cartam itinerariam Martini Hilacomile, cum luculentiori ipsius Europae enarratione à Ringmanno Philesio conscripta. Strasbourg Imprimerie Grieninger, April, 1511.]

In the language of the editors, two ecclesiastical dignitaries of Strasburg, it was aroused from its sleep among the rocks of the Vosges only after six years of neglect. It was published at Strasburg in the year 1513, under the superintendence of Philesius. The maps do not present the name of Americus, nor the body of the work that of Hylacomylus. But, following those belonging to the geography proper of Ptolemaeus, there is a rich supplementary atlas, which represents the geographical state of the world in the sixteenth century, and offers us two very curious maps; a map of the world, entitled "Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem," with the profile of the western mainland and several islands of the Antilles and a special map of discoveries, Tabula Terre Nove, loaded with names that mount in a grand scale up to the fortieth degree of south latitude. This place is eminently suited to introduce the name of America, [Footnote 207] but we seek it in vain. It was destined to appear in a posthumous work of the bookseller of Saint-Dié.

[Footnote 207: On the contrary, we find this inscription: Haec terra cum adjacentibua insulis inventa est per Columbum Januensem ex mandate Regis Castellae. Elsewhere the preface of the supplement contains this singular phrase à propos of the map of the world: "Charta autem marina quam hydrographiam vocant per admiralem quondam serenissimum Portugaliae regis Ferdinandi caeteros denique lustratores verissimis peragrationibus lustrata." (Folio, Imperial Lib., G. 10.) How place Ferdinand on the Portuguese throne then occupied by Emmanuel? Who is this admiral? Remark that the names of locality on the second map are Spanish. This extraordinary confusion of names of kings will serve to explain other errors in after times.]

In 1522, Laurentius Phrisius, who must not be confounded with Philesius, published a new edition of Ptolemaeus at John Grieninger's in Strasburg. Hylacomylus was dead; but how could they do better than employ the maps prepared by him in his lifetime? "That we may not seem," says Phrisius to the reader, "to arrogate to ourselves another's merit, know that these maps have been lately prepared by Martin Hylacomylus, dead in Christ, and reduced to dimensions smaller than their first form. If they are good, to him then, and not to us, peace and place among the celestial hierarchy, in the bosom of him who separated the edifice of this world by spaces so marvellous. For the remainder that follows, know that it is our own work." [Footnote 208]

[Footnote 208: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 116.]

Now, upon this map of the world, which is the work of Hylacomylus, and, is entitled as in the Ptolemaeus of 1513, "Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem," is displayed the name of America. {618} And what a triumphant commentary upon it is given in the preface written by Thomas Aucuparius! "Not less worthy of panegyric are those who, since the days of Ptolemaeus, have succeeded by an incredible effort of genius in exploring new countries and islands. And in the first rank among them, and deserving an extraordinary fame, stands Americus Vespucius, the illustrious and eminent man who discovered and explored and was the first guest of the land of America, called to-day America, or the New World, or the fourth part of the world; as well as of other new islands adjacent to it or lying at no great distance."

This enthusiasm was not free from confusion. The savans on the borders of the Rhine received by repercussion the echoed reports of these wonderful Portuguese and Spanish discoveries, without distinguishing quite clearly the name and extent of each one. For instance, this Ptolemaeus of 1522 repeats the map of 1513, with the indication that the continent in question with its neighboring islands was discovered by the Genoese Columbus under orders of the King of Castile. [Footnote 209]

[Footnote 209: We have not been fortunate enough to find the Ptolemaeus of 1522. But there exists in the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève (G. 8) an edition of 1525, made by Bilinald Pirckeymer, at Grieninger, in Strasburg. The atlas, in the second part of the volume, evidently repeats in a smaller form that of 1513. The maps are identical. Now, the last Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem exactissime depicta bears, with the sacramental date of 1522, the name of America upon the great tract of country in the south-western part of the Western ocean. This, then, is the first document. After the date come the initials L. P. (Laurentius Frisius. Frisius, another form of Phrisius.)]

The same legend, under date of 1497, adjoining the words America provincia, on Apian's map, appears in the edition of Pomponius Mela, by Vadianus, (Joacquin de Watt,) Bâle, 1522. Yet the first pages in the book reproduce a letter from Vadianus to a friend, concerning the discovery of America by Vespucius, and the remarkable proficiency in mathematics of this navigator. The editor does not remark that the name of America upon the map is in contradiction with that of Columbus in the legend, or that elsewhere he attaches erroneously to the third voyage of Columbus, during which the great navigator touched Paria, the pretended date (1497) of the discovery of Americus Vespucius. [Footnote 210]

[Footnote 210: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 144. Columbus discovered the terra firma of the delta of the Orinoco, (Isla Santa,) August 1st, 1498. The third voyage lasted from May 30th, 1498, to November 25th, 1500.]

This discrepancy among Rhenish geographers was not of long duration.

Simon Grynaeus, author of a collection of voyages, (Orbis Novus, Bâle, March, 1532,) in which he inserts the four voyages of Americus Vespucius and only the first of Columbus, does not hesitate in deciding their respective importance; witness the following words in a little treatise by Sebastian Munster, placed at the head of the collection: "There has been discovered in our own day in the Western ocean, by Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus, what one may call a new world, and very correctly the fourth part of the globe, so that our earth no longer consists of three parts, but of four; because these Indian islands surpass Europe in size, especially the one which takes its name of America from Americus, who discovered it." The same Munster writes in his Cosmography: "What shall I say of these great islands America, of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, Yucatan?" And again, upon a map giving the southern part of the New World: "Atlantic Island, called Brazil and America."

The collection of Grynaeus was reprinted in Paris about the month of November, 1532, and several times afterward.

Apian and Phrisius, the same who worked upon the Ptolemaeus of 1522, say in their Cosmography: "America takes its name from Americus Vespucius, who discovered it: others call it Brazil. Is it a continent or an island? We do not yet know." Of Columbus not one word.

These references to Christopher Columbus, evoked à contretemps, are only exceptions of ever lessening frequency. {619} The name of America in a few years had taken possession of maps and of science, and passed into a brilliant and resonant notoriety with the public. The erudite, those who controlled the printing press, and those who, in the centre of Europe, formed opinions almost uninfluenced by Spain, and whose admiration, more or less enlightened, created fame, were fairly dazzled by Americus Vespucius. Columbus, after being faintly discerned from time to time, at last disappeared, and was lost like a satellite in the nimbus of a principal star planet. No doubt he could lay claim to a few islands; but he who, unveiling the vast expanse of southern shores, had discovered a new world, was beyond dispute Americus Vespucius, the noble, the illustrious traveller par excellence--egregius et nobilissimus inventor, visitator et primus hospes.

IV.

But why this silence respecting Christopher Columbus? Whence this apparent conspiracy against a man who in our own day rears himself like a giant above all those who navigated the route opened by his genius? Where shall we seek the cause of the ingratitude no longer peculiar of Spain, but attributable to all Europe, that pains our hearts?

The truth must be told: he himself was one of its principal causes.

The illustrious Genoese never courted publicity. The only papers printed during his life, concerning his discoveries, were his first voyage, taken from his letter of March 14th, 1493, to the treasurer Sanchez; and his fourth, an account of which he addressed to the kings in a letter from Jamaica, (July 7th, 1503;) [Footnote 211] the one in Latin at Rome, (1493,) the other at Venice, translated into Italian, (1505.) The title of Lettera rarissima by which this last document is designated, shows plainly that it was not for general distribution. Of the writings of Columbus these are all that were published up to the close of the eighteenth century. [Footnote 212]

[Footnote 211: First voyage from August 3d, 1492, to March 15, 1493: discovery of the Bahama islands, and of Hayti. Fourth voyage from May 11th, 1502, to November 7th, 1504; discovery of the coast of the continent from Honduras to Puerto de Mosquitos, at the end of the Isthmus of Panama. First notion of the existence of another sea to the west.]

[Footnote 212: Crit. Exam. vol. ii. p. 330; vol. iv. p. 72 and note.]

This great man thought it for his interest to keep the secret, if not of his discoveries, at least of the route he had followed. As his treaty of Santa Fé with Isabella and Ferdinand secured to him the government and a part of the fruits of the lands discovered by him, he had not cared to provoke or facilitate competition. Indeed we have two letters from Isabella, (September 5th, 1493, and August 16th, 1494,) reproaching him for leaving the degrees of latitude blank, and asking for a complete chart of the islands with their names and distances. [Footnote 213] He became still less communicative after the crown of Castile violated its engagements with him, (1495,) and when his enemy Fonseca gave up his charts to the navigator Hojeda. They had reduced him, he said, to the position of a man who opens the door for others to pass through. Silence may, then, have seemed to him a means of defending his legitimate possessions, or, at least, of diminishing the force of attacks upon his just rights.

[Footnote 213: Crit. Exam. vol. iii. p. 340. We hear of a chart given at Rome, in 1505, by Bartholemew Columbus, the admiral's brother, to a canon of St. John of Lateran, and given by him to Alessandro Zozi, author of the collection of 1507. Its fate is unknown. Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 80, note. This does not look like publicity.]

Besides, though his discovery anticipated by six years the arrival of the Portuguese in the East-Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, it was eclipsed by the brilliant voyages of Vasco de Gama and Alvares Cabral, followed as they were by immediate results. What were Spaniards and Portuguese in search of? The Indies, the empire of Cathay, or of China, those regions depicted by antiquity and by the travellers of the middle ages as gorged with precious metals, with pearls and diamonds, with spices and glittering tissues. {620} Now, the Portuguese had been wafted to the very source of these treasures. In the earliest years of the sixteenth century, their fleets returned laden with spoils from kingdoms of sonorous names, rendered famous by the songs or by the ambition of the poets and conquerors of classic antiquity. All this time the Spaniards, following the steps of Christopher Columbus, were groping in the western seas among remote regions supposed by them to belong to extreme Asia, finding only savage tribes where they had looked for imposing monarchies. They had picked up a few pearls, a little gold, and some slaves, and had returned to Europe, unable to conceal from themselves the fact that their rivals of Lisbon owed more to Vasco de Gama than Castile to Christopher Columbus.

If, then, in the eyes of history, the glory of the immortal Genoese lies in having sought with a reflective and discerning boldness, and discovered more than he sought, namely, an unknown world independent of all other lands, at a time when the only aim in view was to open a western route to the "land of spices," in the beginning his voyage looked like a half successful enterprise. Was the talk of discoveries, properly speaking? What were a small number of islands compared with that southern country coasted by Americus to the fiftieth degree of south latitude without finding its termination?

The discovery of the Southern sea by Balboa at the Isthmus of Panama, (1513,) the extraordinary conquests of Mexico and Peru, the adventures of a Cortez and of a Pizarro, chilled yet more the public opinion toward him whose works, considered then so humble, had given the impetus to these prodigious enterprises.

A little while yet, and he was considered a simpleton for believing that his navigation from east to west had brought him to Asia, and for having found what he did not seek. John Beller, in reprinting at Anvers (1584) the Cosmography of Apian and Frisius, adds a description of the Indies, drawn from the Cosmography of Jerome Girava, of Tarragona. The latter, à propos of Cuba, explains that under the name of Indies are comprehended all the lands recently discovered. "This name," he says, "comes from the fact that the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, a distinguished mariner and a poor cosmographer, [Footnote 214] having obtained in 1492 the favor and aid of Ferdinand the Catholic and of Isabella to go in search of regions until then unseen and unknown, called them the Indies. After making the discovery, he returned in the same year, saying that he had found the Indies. Therefore have these lands retained the name."

[Footnote 214: Naucierus insignia ac mediocriter cosmographia peritus, p. 167, Biblioth Magazine, 15824.]

Thus did Christopher Columbus lose ground so materially in the admiration of his contemporaries that his end was obscure and almost overlooked. Peter Martyr of Anghiera, who is called his friend, but hardly seems to have merited the title, for two months and a half saw him upon the bed of pain to which the last great crisis nailed him at Valladolid. He does not speak of this illness in his letters, nor of his death which took place May 20th, 1506, short time after his own departure. His Oceanic Decades mention it incidentally several years later.[Footnote 215]

[Footnote 215: It was between the years 1510 and 1514 that Pierre Martyr thought proper to remember the great man's death.]

Why wonder, then, that the editors of Vicenzo's collection in 1507, and the translator of this collection into Latin in 1508, inform us that at the moment they write the admiral and his brother are living honorably in the splendid court of Castile? Grynaeus in 1532 speaks in the same terms in his Orbis Novus. [Footnote 216] So had fame abandoned the life and the grave of Christopher Columbus.

[Footnote 216: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 24, 124.]

{621}

V.

So far we have traced the principal features of the nautical career of Americus Vespucius. Still following the light of Humboldt's brilliant researches, we have found in the bookstore of Saint-Dié, the inventor of the name of America; we have shown how and at what period this appellation passed from the Introduction of the Cosmography on to maps and into public use; and how motives personal to Christopher Columbus, and the astounding exploits of Portuguese or Spanish conquerors, threw into the shade the services and genius of the most daring mariner the world has ever seen.

We have shown that a strong current of public opinion, self-formed in a certain sense, had developed, without leaving room to suppose or suspect any culpable participation in Americus Vespucius. Strictly speaking, this should absolve us from all obligation to justify him further from the reproach of usurpation. Yet it is our intention to conclude with a review of that side of the question.

To begin with, there exists no proof or presumption that he had any hand in the publication of his voyage. The work contains details such as he would certainly not have consigned to a writing intended for the public; as, for example, when speaking of the second voyage, he complains, in a letter to Soderini, that the Queen Isabella had taken from him a shell to which were found attached one hundred and thirty pearls. "After that," he continues: "I took good care how I showed her such precious things."

Does not he himself tell us that he has in reserve the project of publishing a complete and extended narrative, the object of his assiduous cares, and the hope of his future glory? So scrupulously, it appears, he observed Horace's precept, (nonumque prematur in annum,) that death surprised him while still hesitating to bring it to the light. Its destiny is unknown.

Living and writing at Seville, in the very centre of the excitement of discoveries, among a crowd of seafaring men who had seen, accompanied, or talked with Christopher Columbus, whom he survived only six years, how can we suppose that he could conceive the plan of attributing to himself an honor known by all to belong to the admiral? And if he had dared to do so, how could he with impunity have attempted it before such judges, without calling forth a cry of indignation that should resound to the furthest extremities of Europe?

It is said that he gave to his first voyage, which really dates from May 20th, 1499, the fraudulent date of May 20th, 1497, in order to rob Columbus of priority in the discovery of terra firma. [Footnote 217] But in that case, would he not have adjusted his dates more adroitly? Would he have committed the gross blunder of assigning the end of this voyage to October 15th, 1499, mentioning directly afterward that he began the second in May, 1499, [Footnote 218] that is to say, five months before his return from the first? What answer could he have made to those who had the registers of La Casa de Contratacion in hand, [Footnote 219] and, armed with universal testimony, would have told him that, pending the pretended duration of this first expedition, all Seville and Cadiz had seen him occupied with preparations for the third voyage of Columbus, who set sail May 30th. 1498.

[Footnote 217: Remember that Columbus touched terra firma at the delta of the Orinoco, August 1st, 1498.]

[Footnote 218: The edition of Hylacomylus bears date 1489, a printer's error.]

[Footnote 219: These registers bear their testimony at the present day. We had occasion to refer to them in the first part of this article.]

Moreover, these errors in dates were extremely common at the commencement of the sixteenth century. Education was incomplete. The means of verification were hard to obtain concerning expeditions that crossed each other in every sense. Thus, in the eighteen years following Vasco de Gama's expedition, the king of Portugal sent no less than 294 vessels to India and to the land of the Holy Cross, (Brazil.) The fourteen expeditions that sailed from Spanish ports between 1496 and 1509, though less numerous, followed each other as closely, and were no less difficult to disentangle.

{622}

The hurry of copying and of printing multiplied errors.

The different editions of the voyages of Vespucius are full of contradictions in dates, a confusion that seems to exclude all reasonable suspicion of intentional falsification. [Footnote 220] Christopher Columbus erred as to the duration of the two passages of his first expedition, and that at the very moment, when toward its close, he approached the shores of Europe. [Footnote 221] The most exact and attentive historians err constantly as to well-authenticated facts, as, for instance, Orviédo, the official historian of the Indies, in asserting as a notorious fact that Columbus discovered the Indies in 1491. [Footnote 222]

[Footnote 220: Crit. Exam. vol. v. p. 111.]

[Footnote 221: Ibid. vol. v. p. 201.]

[Footnote 222: Instead of 1492. M. Humboldt cites many similar errors.]

Not daring to misrepresent the facts in Andalusia, did Americus induce the editors in Lorraine to tell falsehoods at a distance, acting in his stead? Or, to speak more correctly, did he get them to decree to him the honors of the discovery, and suggest to them the name of America? We have absolutely no ground for the supposition. Nowhere do the numerous publications taking their origin from the Cosmography of Hylacomylus allude to any relation direct or indirect with the Florentine. If the maps of the editions of Ptolemaeus in 1513 and 1522, had resulted from interested suggestions on the part of Americus Vespucius, we should not find upon them, in large characters, the indication that the great southern country was discovered by Christopher Columbus, the Genoese. This southern country would assuredly have extended to that famous fiftieth degree of south latitude, of which Americus was so proud, instead of ending somewhere about the fortieth degree. The editors of 1513 would not have fallen into the singular blunder of making Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Portugal. Some explanation would be needed, too, of the impostor's having selected as an accomplice an obscure scholar in a still more obscure town of Lorraine, (which an eminent representative of the scientific world tried lately to locate in the depths of Hungary,) [Footnote 223] where he had many Italian friends to whom he would more naturally have addressed himself. And one might reasonably ask why the good people of Saint-Dié and Strasburg (whom one cannot know through their writings without conceiving a high opinion of their character and of their devotion to science) could have participated so coolly in a dishonest action, or even have entered hoodwinked into a snare spread for their ingenuousness--a snare, too, of which no trace remains.

[Footnote 223: Navarrete. Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 103.]

To this accusation consisting of gratuitous and baseless assertions, there is a crowd of real motives to be opposed.

It is far more natural to admit, taking into consideration the extreme difficulties of communication at that period, that the enthusiasm of Hylacomylus and his Strasburg neighbors was spontaneous. Such is certainly the character of the extracts we have presented to the reader. It is extremely probable that Americus Vespucius never saw the Cosmography of 1507 or the Globus of 1509, and that he was to the end unconscious of the dangerous honor bestowed upon him at Saint-Dié. As to the maps illustrated with his name, they appeared in 1520 and 1522, eight and ten years after his death.

But for the tyranny of habit, which demands a response, point for point, to charges once preferred against an individual, we should have suddenly adopted a more radical system, and have declared not only that Americus Vespucius did not entertain the vile and criminal intentions ascribed to him with regard to Christopher Columbus, but that, at the stage of ideas and of science existing in his day, he could not have conceived them.

{623}

In using the expression New World, or the fourth part of the world, we attach to it the precise sense of the vast American continent. Our eyes instinctively behold that colossal dike, which, stretching, so to speak, from pole to pole, restrains and divides the two oceans facing easterly toward Europe and Africa, and westerly toward Asia, but separated by enormous distances from all three.

We must set aside this preconceived idea, and return in thought to the latter days of the fifteenth century.

The ancients and the travellers of the middle ages prolonged Asia indefinitely eastward; and when at last they set a term to that country by India, the Mangi and Cathay, (China,) they continued it again by sowing in handfuls through the neighboring seas innumerable archipelagoes. It was while more especially acting upon the words of antiquity that Christopher Columbus braved the awful solitudes of the Atlantic, and, bearing directly westward, sought the Indies by another route than that used by the Portuguese. When the unknown land, the prize of his divination, rose from the bosom of the waters, the admiral never for an instant doubted that he was about to plant the standard of Castile upon an Asiatic island. He took Cuba for the very continent of Asia, the end and the beginning of the Indies. "I have discovered," wrote he to Pope Alexander VI. (February, 1502,) "333 leagues of the terra firma of Asia." On his third voyage, the spectacle of the immense flood of the Orinoco having suggested to him the very rational idea that such a river must belong to a large country, he made of it the India of the Ganges. In this conviction he lived and died.

In the same way Americus Vespucius, during his second voyage, coasting along the country destined to bear his name, fully believed himself to be in Asia. He tried to find Cape Cattigara in the great gulf of Ptolemaeus; [Footnote 224] and followed for 400 leagues a shore which was, he said, the end of Asia, by the eastern side, and the commencement by the western side. "This expedition has lasted thirteen months, during which we have run the greatest risks, and discovered an infinite stretch of the land of Asia as well as a number of islands." [Footnote 225] In passing over to the Portuguese service afterward, it was with a hope of pursuing his investigations, and of "finding the Island of Taprobana, (Ceylon,) situated between the sea of the Indus and the sea of the Ganges." His fourth had for its object the Molucca Islands, the land of spices, and Malacca.

[Footnote 224: Sinus Magnus. Ptolemaeus took the Indian ocean for a sea, bounded on the north by Asia, and on the south by Africa, the latter continent widening from west to east, to form the southern barrier of the Indian ocean.]

[Footnote 225: "Discoprendo infinitissima terra de l'Asia e gran copia d'isole."--Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 299 and note, et passim.]

The conviction of these two men decided general opinion, as is attested by the name of the Indies applied to the western lands. Both had passed away before Balboa's march to the great ocean (1513) and Magellan's voyage unsealed all eyes and dissipated the dreams of Ptolemaeus.

Now, since it is an indisputable fact that Christopher Columbus and Americus Vespucius never had an intuition of their veritable discovery, and that for the rest of their lives both of them firmly believed that they had reached the extreme end of the continent of Asia, how could the one have planned to frustrate the other of the glory of having revealed a new world whose existence they neither of them suspected? How could Vespucius undertake to slip surreptitiously into history, and impose a contraband name upon a continent that only seemed to him susceptible of bearing the name of Asia? Moreover, what personal advantage could he hope to reap from fraudulently dating his arrival at Paria during his first expedition, 1497, when the discovery of Oriental Asia was looked upon as accomplished by Christopher Columbus five years before?

{624}

Let us also take these expressions of fourth part of the world and new world according to their original sense, and not with the absolute signification attached to them at the present day. In the mouth of Americus Vespucius, the former meant simply that he had passed over, between Lisbon and the extreme point of his explorations, an arc of 90°, whether the quarter of a grand circle or of the terrestrial circumference from one pole to the other. As to the latter, it was quite natural that the extraordinary and unexpected extent of the Asiatic lands, contemplated for the first time, and the aspect of a nature of which nothing European could give an idea, with inhabitants of a strange color and of cannibal habits; it was quite natural, we repeat, that the navigator should exclaim that before him lay a new world.

Cosmographers in their turn were struck by the interminable succession of shores, whose development south of the equator resolved, contrary to old prejudices, the problems so long agitated concerning the torrid zone and the second temperate zone, and the question whether or not the sun enlightened the southern hemisphere in the same manner as the northern. Such a theatre suddenly thrown open to geographic science appeared to them worthy to rival Europe by its gigantic proportions, and to be accounted a new part of the world. And yet it was not considered the New World, as we understand it, until the time when, explorations being completed, it was known to have nothing in common with the continent or the archipelagoes of Asia. If precaution had been taken to disengage this idea, the accusation against Americus Vespucius would have died a natural death in the beginning.

But we are told that he abused his office of piloto mayor, and his right of rectifying the maps by inserting his own name upon them.

This assertion is not sustained by the shadow of a proof. Mariners were not in the habit of giving their own names to the lands they discovered, whether Americus Vespucius, Columbus, Balboa, or Magellan. Had he done so, it would have had only the very restricted and allowable signification of a name applied to one of the numerous islands near Asia that seemed to spring from the sea on all sides to greet the eyes of navigators. The scholars of Lorraine and Alsace had no other view in selecting for this destiny the largest southern country. They treated as coequals in importance the great island of America and the islands of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, and Yucatan. [Footnote 226] Finally, the name of America, applied to the whole of the New World, resulted from the mistake by which the island (Cuba) was taken for the mainland, and the mainland (Paria) for the island. When with time the first error was recognized, they extended to the whole the appellation given to what had proved to be the principal part.

[Footnote 226: Cosmography of Munster, quoted above.]

For this Americus Vespucius could not have been responsible. He deserves, then, to preserve in the estimation of posterity the esteem accorded to him by all his contemporaries. He was loved and respected during his life, and from this fact we shall in conclusion draw a new testimony.

VI.

In the first place, Americus Vespucius possessed the friendship of Christopher Columbus. At the commencement of our article we saw Vespucius going to Toro, (where was assembled the court of Castile,) recommended by the admiral to his son Diego. We give the letter entire:

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SEVILLE, Feb. 5, 1505.

"My Dear Son: Diego Mendez [Footnote 227] left here Monday, the 3d of this month. Since his departure I have talked with Amerigo Vespuchy, who is going to court, called thither by business concerning navigation. He has always shown a desire to please me; and he is a very able man. Fortune has shown herself adverse to him as to many others. His labors have not proved so profitable to him as should have naturally been the case. He is going to court in my behalf, and with an ardent desire of effecting something useful to me, if occasion should offer. While in this place I cannot specify in what way he can serve us, not knowing how they stand affected toward him, but he is quite determined to do all in his power for my good. You will see for yourself how you can best employ him, for he will speak and set everything at work; I want it to be done secretly, that nothing may be suspected. I told him everything I could concerning our interests." [Footnote 228]

[Footnote 227: A faithful servant of Columbus.]

[Footnote 228: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 29,30, and Washington Irving, vol. iv. App. No. 9.]

He who expressed himself thus concerning Americus had known him not merely a day or two, but for long years.

But let us admit that he was the dupe of a consummate hypocrite. The traitor was to be unmasked when death should relieve him of the obstacle who had been a source of such insupportable impatience to him. Witnesses there were, however, to denounce him. Let us hear them:

Sebastian Cabot, a worthy rival of the most illustrious navigators of his day, had been summoned from England to Spain about the year 1512, to succeed Americus as corrector of geographic tables. Three years later he took occasion to bear testimony to his expertness in the determination of latitudes.

Peter Martyr, whose hand falls willingly on all whom he suspects of intrigue, whether correctly or incorrectly, has only words of praise for Vespucius, à propos of his knowledge of nautical astronomy and of the art of navigation.

Ramusio, who employed thirty-four years of his life (1523-1557) in preparing and publishing his great collection of travels, and knew how to wither with his indignation all who enviously cavilled at Columbus, [Footnote 229] speaks five times in terms of high esteem, "of that high intelligence, of the excellent Florentine endowed with such fair genius, il signor Amerigo Vespucio."

[Footnote 229: Those who maintained that Columbus had stolen the knowledge of the New World from a pilot who died in his house. Oviedo echoed this calumnious report. (History of the West-Indies, 1535.)]

But a discordant voice arose. Michel Servet, in re-editing the geography of Ptolemaeus at Lyons (1535, 1541,) says severe things of Americus, but not without making mistakes. "Columbus," he says, "discovered during a new voyage the continent and many more islands, of which the Spaniards are now completely masters. They then are totally misled who would call this continent America, since Americus never touched it until long after Columbus, and since he went there not with the Spaniards, but with the Portuguese, and to make trade."

Without pausing to notice details, we will confine ourselves to the morality of Vespucius which the author does not attack. He only blames those who invented the name of America. [Footnote 230]

[Footnote 230: M. Von Humboldt, vol. iv. p. 137, note, corrects Servet's inaccuracies. Vespucius made a voyage for Spain with Hojeda in 1499. It was assuredly not in the character of a merchant, but probably of an astronomer. A striking circumstance! this edition of 1535 contains after all the map of 1522, bearing the name of Americus.]

To this accusation, such as it is, the History of India, by Gomara, (1551,) answered contemptuously: "There are persons who enjoy blackening Alberico Vespucio's reputation, as may be seen by some editions of Ptolemaeus in Lyons."

Now, having seen the proofs drawn from those who have spoken, let us look at the counter-proofs of those who have not spoken--a testimony not without significance.

Witness, for example, Oviedo, who systematically cries down Christopher Columbus. He is silent as to the supposed pretension of Vespucius to priority in the discovery of the mainland. Is it to be supposed that, if the Florentine had actually claimed this honor, Oviedo would not have taken him under his protection, and used his claim to make a breach in a reputation that annoyed him?

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But there is another silence more decisive. Two years after the death of Christopher Columbus, that is to say in 1508, Don Diego, his eldest son, brought a lawsuit against the crown before the council of the Indies, to recover dignities and privileges that had been guaranteed to the admiral in the treaties acceded to by Ferdinand and Isabella. It was essentially important to the fiscal to prove that Columbus had been anticipated by some one else in Paria, in order to deprive the heirs of all claim to the revenues drawn from that country at least. Nor, although in this debate efforts were made to draw from the seamen testimony inimical to Columbus, and although the fiscal disdained to use no rumor, however vague or futile it might be--descending to every refinement of deceit and fraud, and pushing the hostility of the investigation even to extravagance, according to Las Casas; yet neither Americus Vespucius, who was still alive during the first four years, nor John Vespucius, his nephew, a renowned pilot, ever brought forward any claim to priority in the discovery. They were not called up as witnesses; the cosmographies printed in other countries in his honor were not mentioned; [Footnote 231] and the lawsuit came to an end in 1527, after nineteen mortal years, without the name of Vespucius having been brought forward in opposition to the great victim of injustice.

[Footnote 231: It is quite possible that they had not been seen in Seville. This furnishes a strong though indirect proof that Vespucius did not know of their existence.]

About the year 1513, Fernando Columbus, the admiral's second son, put the last touches to the history of his father. An openly expressed and pious indignation animated him against those who had embittered with so many mortifications that illustrious career. He leaves the memory of Americus Vespucius in peaceful repose. Evidently there was nothing to avenge in that quarter.

Sole and last of his contemporaries, finishing in extreme old age, at eighty-five, in the year 1559, a general history of the Indies, Las Casas accuses Vespucius of having falsified the date of his first voyage, and given the number 1497 to the editors of Lorraine, with the premeditated design of robbing Christopher Columbus of a glory so dearly acquired. [Footnote 232] Nevertheless, he does not prove this, nor try to do so. Las Casas was in fact mistaken. Americus Vespucius was a posthumous usurper, and absolutely irresponsible.

[Footnote 232: Humboldt shows that mistakes in dates occur in Las Casas as in all the works of that day. Vol. iv. p. 139; vol. v. p. 191. Charlevoix (History of St. Domingo,) says that Diego Columbus, in gaining the suit raised by the fiscal, condemned Vespucius. Diego simply proved that the admiral was the first to touch the coast of Paria, 1498. He never thought of condemning Vespucius, who did not appear in the case. The records of the lawsuit were not printed before 1829. Crit. Exam. vol. v. p. 204, and note 2.]

But a reaction came to the public conscience in favor of Christopher Columbus. To ingratitude, to the base passions and mean motives so cruelly leagued against him, there succeeded a more sound appreciation, in proportion as, further removed by time, perspective views re-established matters in their true position. He, who in 1492, had found the small island of San Salvador in the little group of the Bahamas, was not known to have that day discovered the New World. And yet it was another man's name that his discovery was destined to immortalize! Then opinion, deceived in the first instance about Christopher Columbus, erred in regard to Americus Vespucius. The latter had to bear the weight of an error he had not provoked, and, condemned without a hearing by a sort of universal consent, to incur the sad celebrity of imposture unveiled.

But to-day, we believe, a more enlightened judgment has acquitted him. His fame is pure. Christopher Columbus does not accuse one who was his friend. One glory does not mar another. It is sweet to have at least one injustice less to inscribe in the martyrology of great initiators.

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{627}

Translated from the German.

Three Leaves From an Old Journal.

I.

Milan, May 4, 1811.

I arrived at Milan, at eight P.M., two days ago. I had never before seen the magnificent cathedral, and I had everything to set off the picture on which I came unexpectedly. The slender sickle of the new moon hung in the violet sky, crimsoned in the west with the lingering sunlight: the street-lamps, just lighted, threw before me a line of red glow; the bronze statue surmounting the lofty obelisk rose in the clear blue above; around it silence, with a tumult below of a crowd hurrying to the theatre. While I stood lost in admiration, I saw two men, dressed for travel like myself, emerge from the shadow of one of the pillars. Their voices as they approached told me who they were, though I had not seen them in five years.

"Hermann! Adolph!" I exclaimed; and they greeted me with joy.

In a few moments we were seated at a table near the door of the nearest cafe, flasks of the Lombard champagne, the foaming wine of Asti, before us, each telling his adventures since our separation. From the same Fatherland, we had travelled far in different directions. They had just come from the Tyrol; from beholding the holy strife waged against the overbearing power of France by those brave sons of the mountains. We talked of those events, of those true-hearted patriots, and of our trust in justice human and divine. Adolph had visited the noble hero, Hofer, and read us a poem he had composed in his dwelling. I took a copy of the verses.

We had little thought of our imprudence in thus discoursing, as we talked till midnight, when the people were returning from the theatre. With promises of another meeting, we then parted and I went to my lodgings. Before I had walked far, I heard heavy, jingling steps close behind me, and, turning, saw a French gendarme. I crossed toward a side street; he followed, and suddenly seized me by the arm. "Monsieur, votre portefeuille." he said; and, when I gave it up, bade me follow him.

He led me to a lofty old building, the large door of which was secured with heavy bolts. When it swung open, I saw French soldiers on guard. My captor spoke apart with an officer, who presently gave me in charge to two soldiers. A turnkey, bearing a lamp, preceded us, and, going up-stairs, we entered a gloomy gallery. An iron-barred door was opened, and I was thrust into a narrow cell, ventilated only by a small grated window, through which gleamed a ray of starlight. The gendarme then came in, searched me, and took away my papers, handing back my watch and purse. I was then asked if I wanted anything; to which I replied with a bitter laugh; and with a not uncourteous "au revoir," the soldiers departed.

I threw myself on the straw mattress, and ruminated in the darkness on my own imprudence and my probable fate. I was only twenty-one, and full of the hope of great deeds in my country's service. I had parents, sisters, and one dearer than all; yet, for my love to them and to my native land, I should, no doubt, on the morrow be forced to kneel and receive the fire of the soldiers. Thought was agony, but I could not help thinking. Suddenly the dead silence of night was broken by a tone of melody so soft, so exquisite, so melancholy, that it penetrated my soul. It was no song; it was simply a strain of melody--such as brought tears to my eyes--such as was never heard before. {628} Orpheus might have drawn it forth! It was--yes, I was sure it was--the sound of a violin!

Only a violin and yet such music--in my cold despair, with the galleys or death before me--it raised me to the summit of rapture! With the profoundest feelings of solemnity, it blended all the joy of freedom! How it stole on the stillness of night, wafted through the bars of my window; clear, softly swelling, plaintive, imploring like a prayer of love--yielding like the timid bride--how did that wondrous harmony possess my soul! Various airs were apparently improvised; sometimes the tones glided like magic; then rising into power, they melted into the most enchanting melody; ever clear, as if the notes had been distinct pearl-drops. Then the rhapsodical strains passed, by a strange but charming transition, into deep and wonderful pathos. It was full of sadness sweet and tender, like a mourner's sigh; now it rose into silvery richness, now gradually faded away; the melancholy plaint of an imprisoned king! It filled me with calmness and trust in the midst of misfortunes.

The music continued at intervals. I knew not whether to wonder most at the composition or the execution of the player. Then he passed into strange combinations, into bolder and wilder flights; his music was full of fire; he seemed under the influence of inspiration. He seemed to create difficulties only to triumph over them, and surpassing harmony was in all. I had played the violin, (I have never attempted it since,) and could never have imagined the instrument capable of what I heard. When the music ceased, it lingered unforgotten in my soul.

At daylight I heard the beating of a drum, and I climbed to my window to see what was going on. It overlooked the court, and I saw a company of soldiers, with three prisoners standing in front of them. The officer gave a sign, and they marched away. Just then, my cell door was opened by the jailer, who, in reply to my questions, said: "Those prisoners are to die in an hour. They are suspected of treason; of having favored the insurrection among the Tyrolese."

These words were my death-warrant. I listened, shuddering, but with composure. The jailer then informed me that the prisoners were allowed to go into the court at that hour, and I could descend if I chose. I did so. I found myself in a crowd of rough men, collected out of Lombardy, as its scum, by the energy of the French government. At a distance from the others, leaning against a pillar, his eyes turned toward the rising sun, I saw a young man about twenty-five, apparently worn out with suffering. His form was emaciated, his face deadly pale; his eyes were sunken; his nose was aquiline; his forehead broad and high; and his tangled mass of black hair, with a long beard, gave him a wild aspect. But there was a touching interest in the sorrowful expression of his chiselled mouth and the lines of his blanched face. He noticed no one, and was quite unconscious of my long, earnest gaze.

Suddenly he went up to the guard who had charge of the cells, and spoke to him earnestly in Italian. I heard his voice in moving accents of entreaty.

"No, you cannot!" replied the old man, sternly. "And if you are not quiet of nights, I will even cut your last string for you."

"It is the musician!" I cried to myself, and I hastened to speak to him. But my steps were checked by hearing my own name pronounced behind me. The gendarme who had arrested me stood there, and sternly bade me follow him. I dared not hesitate. We went out of the door, and I saw a carriage in waiting. My conductor motioned me to get in, and followed me. After a short drive the carriage stopped before a handsome house. The French soldier alighted, held the door open for me, and led me up the steps and into the house. We stood in the hall some time; at length a door opened, and a voice cried, "Entrez!" I went in alone.

{629}

A gentleman in military dress stood in the room, and extended his hand to me. I recognized him at once. Four years before, in Berlin, General K. had been brought wounded to the house of my father. Though a political enemy, he had received tender care and nursing till restored to strength.

He grasped my hand cordially. "You have been imprudent, my young friend," he cried. "Had I not occupied this post, nothing could have saved your life. You are now at liberty."

"And Hermann--and Adolph," I questioned.

"They are free also."

I poured out thanks, which the general interrupted. "You must all be my guests to-day," he said. "To-morrow I leave Milan with my troops, and you must depart, or your adventure might still have serious consequences. I have had your passports made out--to Germany."

II.

Paris, April 13, 1814.

A distinguished musical amateur--an intimate friend, to whom I had told the story of my imprisoned violinist, and who thought it a romance highly colored by imagination--sent me a note to say that I was to be treated to a violin concert, by way of curing my enthusiasm. Lafont had promised to give it; my friend took him at his word. It was to come off that evening, and Baillot, Kreuzer, and Rode were invited to take part in the music.

During the last four years I had heard the best violin players in the different cities where I had sojourned, but none even approached the unknown performer. Now, my ideal was to be tested by hearing the four most celebrated masters in the world!

The saloon was brilliantly lighted, and filled with a crowd of the artistic and fashionable. The splendor was distasteful to me; I thought of the dungeon in Milan, and the melody that seemed wafted from heaven.

After the overture, Lafont opened the concert. He displayed the most finished grace in andante as in allegro; the most exquisite polish and silvery clearness of tone; but his playing--compared to my prisoner's--was like a delicate miniature beside a grand historical painting.

Kreuzer played next. His tones were full and clear, and rose into rare boldness and strength; many passages were brilliant as a string of diamonds; but it was the brilliancy of polished metal or jewels, not the living beam that penetrates the soul.

Next we heard Baillot. His performance glowed with a noble fire. He drew forth a full, energetic harmony that thrilled me; it was glorious! He ruled the realm of sound like a monarch. But my prisoner ruled it like a god!

Rode appeared last. His form was impressive in grace and dignity; his features were expressive and full of magnetic attraction. I started when he began to play; for he stirred memory to its depths. He seemed to embody the picture that had been floating before my fantasy. His music breathed the same fire and fervor, restrained by kindred power. At one moment, he rose to a height that seemed to equal the stranger's; but he could not sustain it. I felt the difference. In Rode it was a wonderful, a masterly effort-- that which my prisoner accomplished with perfect ease. His chainless spirit would have soared upward and onward, seeking prouder heights, more fathomless depths. He swept the empyrean till nearing the confines of purer worlds, and gave back to men in unrivalled melodies the music heard from other spheres.

After the concert was over, my friend M---- introduced me to the celebrated artists, to whom I was bound to praise their admirable performances. I said nothing of my adventure in Milan; but Lafont, who had heard of it from M----, questioned me, and then I related the occurrence. {630} They all laughed except Rode. I tried to describe the mysterious music, mentioning peculiar difficulties overcome in a wonderful manner by the prisoner. "Oh! you are jesting!" exclaimed Lafont. They did not believe me. I was not well pleased, and soon after took my leave. Some one followed me as I walked from the house. It was Rode.

He expressed himself deeply affected by what I had told them, and asked me if it was certainly true. I assured him it was.

"I can believe you," he said, "and, furthermore, I am sure there is but one man on earth who can be your mysterious prisoner. I heard him myself fifteen years ago. I was in Genoa, and going home late one evening, when I heard a violin played in a manner that filled me with surprise. The music was enchanting. At length I discovered the performer to be a youth hardly grown out of boyhood. He stood on a garden wall, and was looking up toward a window, while he drew from the instrument sounds which revealed mysteries in music of which I had never dreamed before. I stood in the shadow and listened. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and shone full on the boy's face and form; he was like what you have described.

"When he ceased playing, the window was softly opened, and the face of a young girl appeared. The next moment I heard a harsh voice exclaim: 'Traditore! pel diavolo!' The boy sprang from the wall into the street, plunged into a dark alley, and disappeared. A head peered over the wall, and oaths and menaces were profusely poured forth. The light in the window had been quickly extinguished. Some love affair, of course! After waiting some time, I went on, and as I passed by the wall trod upon something. It was a violin bow, no doubt dropped by the lad as he leaped from the wall. I kept the bow in hopes of finding the owner. It was marked with a P. But I could not trace him; I had to leave Genoa, and have heard nothing of him since. But to him I owe the improvements I have introduced into my performance, for I never lost the impression of his music. I call it a revelation: I owe to it the best part of my fame!"

I listened to the great artist with astonishment. Then I told him of the strange, fitful resemblances I had found in his playing to that of the stranger. Both of us cherish the hope that we shall yet discover him. So mighty a genius must one day sway the world.

III.

Berlin, March 30, 1829.

After my long residence in the north, I returned here yesterday. It was half-past eight when I had changed my travelling dress and dined. I asked the butler if there was anything new at the theatre. "Nothing, mein Herr," he replied. "But the concert is an attraction. There is a violin player--"

"I have had enough of violin players."

"This one, sir, is called a wonder. See, in the paper, here, what the critic--Rellstab--says of him."

"Never mind, I care little for the critic's praise. What is the name of this wonderful performer?"

"His name? I will tell you directly. Strange--it has just gone out of my head! He is an Italian--"

"An Italian?" I exclaimed, starting up.

"Yes--and the name .... it begins with a P."

"With a P! I must go instantly Where can I procure a ticket?"

"At the bureau opposite."

In a moment I had rushed across the street, and had the ticket.

At the door of the concert hall I found the crowd so great I could not force my way in. I was compelled to stand outside with the others. Gradually I edged myself nearer. The tutti of the last composition was ended; the solo--apollacca--began.

{631}

The tones struck deep in my heart. I had heard them before; they were unforgotten. But what a miracle! Do two play--or three? That I have never heard. No, I could not trust my ears. If I might but see the player! but gain one look! In vain! the crowd surged against the open door, yet none could make way through the swaying mass. At least I could hear now--and I lost not one note.

The music ceased, and a thunder-burst of applause shook the building. I pressed forward again, striving to get a sight of the player; but others, equally eager, pushed before me. I was again disappointed. With swelling heart I waited, impatient to hear him commence again.

At last: "Now he plays on the G string," said some one near me. He began. I was not deceived. That was the very melody I heard in prison! Those were the self-same tones that once--calming, elevating, faith-inspiring, as if sent direct from heaven--sent light into my gloomy soul!

With renewed efforts I forced my way into the hall. I saw once more the pale, melancholy brow, the sunken eyes, the long, dark hair, the attenuated cheeks, the enfeebled aspect of the whole person. It was HE! The mystery of eighteen years was at length solved. The stranger who had so charmed my soul, filling me with feelings unutterable--who had ceaselessly accompanied me since, like a veiled phantom--familiar, yet from which I could not tear the covering stood before me. I heard--I saw--PAGANINI!

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Original.

Mary's Dirge.

By Carolus.

"Manibus date lilia plenis."

O THOU, whose awful mandate goes Throughout a wondering world of woes, Mysterious, still the same, In moments such as this, we feel, When grief is boundless, we must kneel And bless THY holy name.

Ah, MARY! what avails thee now Thy radiant eyes, thy classic brow, And form of queenly mould; The charms of polished culture's art, Thy trusting, noble woman's heart, Now pulseless, senseless, cold?

What now avails it to have stood, In mind's keen conquest of the good, Peerless among thy mates? Or that a widowed mother wound, Like NIOBE, her arms around Her last, whom death awaits?

{632}

Alas! when heaven such gifts bestows, It would, to earth-stained souls, disclose A gleam of its own light, But ere we learn how dear the prize, All fades before our longing eyes, Save sorrow, dreams, and night.

But where can friends so stricken find A solace for the anguished mind, Except in Him who sends The grief that clouds, the joy that cheers, The course of checkered, fleeting years. And whilst he smites befriends?

As now I stand beside thy form, So late in youth and beauty warm, And sad, hushed vigil keep, The eye would be as rayless grown, As tearless, MARY, as thine own, Could see--and could not weep.

Behold that lovely ruined shrine, That marble waste where thought divine Still seems to sit enthroned; Those pallid lips whose every word, Like sweet aëolian music heard, A hymn to nature toned.

In pity, strew the virgin flower, By virgin hands, in tender shower Upon her virgin breast; There sleeps she, purity's picked rose-- An angel snatched from earthly woes To calm, eternal rest.

Though death's resistless, ruthless might Sweeps beauty's loveliest forms from sight, The soul retains her love, And MARY'S spirit, ever near The friends her young life cherished here, Will lead their thoughts above.

Pittsburg, Jan. 21, 1867.

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{633}

Abridged from the Dublin University Magazine.

Sir Thomas More.

Sir Thomas More did not account his own death an evil; not only, in his last moments, did he mention the king with sweet loyalty, but he also displayed a cheerfulness which has scandalized some writers. Holinshed, for instance, charges him with having been "a jester and scoffer at the houre of his death." This mirthful disposition of More's has made his character an interesting subject of inquiry. But irreverence has nothing in common with that genial tendency which Southey has called pantagruelism, and the desirability of which he has advocated. For pantagruelism is not buffoonery, levity, cynical insensibility; neither does it consist in mere play of wit, intellectual tumbling, and playful freaks of fancy. Jests are but its effects, the ripples, fitfully reflecting the sunlight on the surface, and showing that the underlying mass is a running stream and not a stagnant fen. Music and prayer are sisters; cheerfulness is the music of life, and harmonizes human passions into rest; it is most consistent with that holy creed, the apostle of which taught men to "rejoice evermore;" it is an ascensional force, a verbum, as the old mystics would have said, which carries the spirit upward, and turns human nature toward the bright side of things. He who was the teacher of its outwardly most grotesque aspect has by implication defined pantagruelism as a "marvellous contempt and holding cheap of fortuitous things," (Introd. to Gargantua;) its basis is a want of love for the things that are in the world; its effect is, therefore, a sweet smile at the contrast, perpetual in this earthly life, between aspirations and realities. Hence More's pleasantry, always harmless and free from sarcasm--sparks issuing from a healthy and beautiful spirit. Pantagruelism itself becomes linked, in some natures, to a gentle melancholy, the sadness of the soul exiled from its eternal birthplace; in northern minds especially is this solemnity of reverie frequent; More, to whom religion was a daily food, evinced this dreamy pensiveness, side by side with his mirth, from his youth to his death. It also seemed as if, gifted with the sagacity of a Machiavel, but without craft, he had in the most prosperous moments of his life a power of intuition which could divine his fate, and thus cast a softening radiance over what to other men would have appeared a most dazzling brightness of worldly success. Hence there is in the expression of his features a sort of anxiety mixed with cheerfulness; the penetrative and humorous nose is like that of Erasmus; but the bony, caustic traits of the humorist have otherwise an expression very different from the melancholy which tempers More's face, the open gray eyes, that seem anxiously anticipating the future or contemplating religious things, the lips that half project in that pouting way to be noticed on many Saxon types of countenances.

When Henry VIII. ascended the throne, More ventured to express, in a poem which attracted the royal favor, a conceit which was at once a criticism of the past reign, a hope, and a foreboding for the future:

"So after six and thirty thousand year All things shal be the same which once they were; After the Golden came the Silver age: Then came the Brass, and Iron the last stage. The Golden age is revolv'd to your reign: I now conceive that Plato did not feign."

From that time began the prosperity of More; but his previous life had been both happy in a domestic capacity, and remarkable in a literary point of view. He had already been an ascetic, a husband, and a poet. {634} As Disraeli remarks, "More in his youth was a true poet; but in his active life he soon deserted these shadows of the imagination."

Whether in poetry or in prose, More was to fulfil Cardinal Morton's observation, that "The child here waiting at table, whomever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man." It was at the archbishop's that More won his first spurs in wit, devising pageants and allegories. But while his airy character early manifested itself, his early poems also reflect a vein of ascetic thoughtfulness; as in the Ruful Lamentacion he wrote on the death of Queen Elizabeth, mother to King Henry VIII:

"O ye that put your trust and confidence In worldly joy and frayle prosperite, That so lyve here as ye should never hence, Remember death, and joke here uppon me. Ensaumple, I thinke there may no better be. Yourself wotte well that in this realme was I Your quene but late, and lo, now here I lye.

"If worship myght have kept me, I had not gone; If wyt myght have me saved, I neded not fere; If money myght have helpe, I lacked none. But, good God, what vayleth all this gere? When deth is come, thy mighty messengere, Obey we must there is no remedy. Me hath he summoned, and now here I ly.

"Yet was I late promised otherwyse, This yere to live in welth and delice. Lo, whereto cometh thy blandishyng promyse, O false astrology and devynatrice, Of Goddes secrets makyng thyselfe so wyse. How true is for this yere thy prophecy-- The yere yet lasteth, and lo, nowe here I ly."

Rhenanus, Brixius, Erasmus, commended his early poems; he was admitted among the brotherhood of those who cultivated lettered lore. This was a period of general renovation throughout Europe. For good or for evil, the torch of knowledge had been lighted. Vocabularies and lexicons had reached a fearful multiplication in Germany and Italy toward the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. Nuremberg, Spires, Basil, teemed with rudimentary treatises, dictionaries, and grammars; men were feeding on Latin and Greek, studying eight or ten hours at a stretch. England and Italy surpassed France in the literary movement; and Budé complained that, in his countrymen's estimation, philological studies were the hobbies of a few monomaniacs. More began his contributions to the learning of the age by translating Lucian and Augustine's City of God. Erasmus, in a letter to Hutten, described him as a unique genius in England. But he gave his attention to religion no less than to literature. "Erudition," Stapleton quaintly remarks, "however varied and extensive, is, without piety, like a golden ring in the nostrils; there is nothing more absurd than to set a precious jewel in a decaying piece of wood. Knowledge is ill suited to a corrupt breast." To knowledge without goodness, Plato had denied the name of wisdom, and given the inferior designation of cleverness. But the youthful More was no less eager to attain piety than to become proficient in learning. He manifested these aspirations according to the tenets of his creed; he wore a hair-shirt, he slept on the bare floor, his head resting on a wooden block; he restricted his hours of rest to four or five at longest; acquainted with watchings and fastings, he nevertheless made no ostentatious display of these and similar austerities--often, on the other hand, concealing them under as conventional an appearance as it was possible to bear.

Finding it useful to have some great man as an ideal, he translated Pico della Mirandola's life. At that time, Colet, dean of St. Paul's, was preaching in London; More derived much comfort from his friendship, and compared himself to Eurydice following Orpheus, but in danger of falling back into the realms of darkness. In a letter to the dean he thus expatiates upon the annoyances of life in London: "The roofs intercept a great portion of the light, and do not allow a free view of the sky. The air is not bounded by the circle of the horizon, but by the housetops. Therefore I the more willingly bear with you for not repenting of your residence in the country, where you see good people around you, void of the cunning of towns; where, whithersoever you turn your eyes, the bland face of the earth delights you. {635} There you see nothing but the benignant gifts of nature, and, as it were, the sacred vestiges of innocence." As for his literary study, Lilly and Tonstall were his associates--Linacre and Grocinus his tutors. Now began that series of friendships which he was through life always willing to contract with educated men, such as Crooke, or Croke, one of the greatest students of the sixteenth century, who wrangled at Leipzig, "de dogmatibilitatibus" and other long things--schools then disputed on the weight of Hercules's club and the size of Diogenes's tub--who taught Greek to Henry VIII., and succeeded Erasmus in the chair of Greek at Cambridge; Lee, who wrote against Erasmus; Fisher, who wrote sturdily against reformers; Dorpius, who was shocked at the new classical studies, hearing people swear "by Jove," and was desirous of limiting Grecian studies to the works of Chrysostom and the Eastern fathers; Goclenius, who professed for twenty years; Cornelius Crocus, who wrote Latin with Terentian elegance, and became a Jesuit when fifty years old; Grynaeus, who taught Greek, who, although a reformer, never insulted his antagonists and discovered six books of Livy; Peter AEgidius, or Giles, whom Erasmus called a most agreeable host, and who wrote a Greek lexicon while Luther was bewailing his sins in a convent cell; Paulus Jovius, who spent twenty-seven years in writing his Latin history, was esteemed by Leo. X. above Livy, and wanted a great lady to send him some jam from Naples, because he was getting sick of new-laid eggs; Vives, who was one of the literary triumvirs of the age, and who, at his lectures at Corpus Christi College, was often applauded by Henry and Queen Catherine. In the mean while he had, in a more practical sphere, taken the virile gown, before practising as a barrister, and at twenty-eight years of age been elected to the office of perpetual "shyrevus" or sheriff. His business was to "administer justice" for the subordinate sheriffs, "pro istis shyrevis" (Stapleton,) who were incompetent in matters of law. While he was filling this office, a riot took place in the city. For several years past there had been a great increase of foreign workmen, to the great annoyance of the native working classes. A popular preacher of the day, Dr. Bell, preached a sermon, in which he urged the people to expel the foreign usurpers. Apprentices and artisans, therefore, agreed that on the first of May, after business, there should be a massacre of the foreigners. This trades' demonstration, however, was baffled through the foresight of More. He issued an edict, enjoining all well-disposed persons to stay within doors after nine o'clock on the first of May. On that day there was no disturbance. A few days after, however, several riotous crowds of working-men gathered in their thousands, rushed to Newgate, and set free some tiny minorities of swains who had been locked up for robbing, murdering, or otherwise annoying the foreigners. Hour by hour they mustered in huger strength; angry shouts in homeliest Saxon rang through the air; the whirligig was getting louder and louder to one's ears. It seemed at one time rather hard to say how all this would end. More, being loved by the town mob, tried to speak to the crowd of small boys, big men, and roughs. Was it a Saturday night, that there should be such noise in the streets? Did the working-men forget their duty? They did; and it was at last needful to send for the red coats, who, with queer-looking harquebuses, soon put the mob to flight. Thirteen ringleaders were arrested and condemned to death; one only, however, was executed, the others being saved through the intercession of three queens and the influence of More.

In 1503 he was made a member of Parliament, and opposed a grant of money to Henry VII. That monarch, who has been compared to Louis XI. of France, was not to be bearded in this manner, and More was obliged to fly to the continent. {636} But when Henry VIII. began his reign, More became the object of royal favor. His literary talent and jovial mood were qualities too valuable not to be appreciated by the king, who was surrounding himself with all varieties of genius. Like Gargantua, the young king was athirst of all that could adorn his court; More was therefore bound to the court by a golden chain. He was made a knight, and one of the privy council. In return for the royal favor he had to enliven the king with witty sayings, until this yoke became almost too heavy for him. He had scarcely any time left for his home enjoyments and his literary pursuits. In self-defence he was at last driven to a kind of stratagem; he affected dulness, and tried as much as he possibly could to become a bore. At last he succeeded and was allowed more freedom and privacy.

At that period he resided in Chelsea, then a fashionable suburb. There Sir Thomas lived in a semi-patriarchal fashion. So strict was he in religious observances in his family that his house has been compared to a kind of convent or religious abode. Meekness, order, industry characterized the inmates. He set every one an example of gentleness and wisdom. Roper says that, during sixteen years spent with Sir Thomas, he never saw the latter in a "fume." A young lady who had been brought up in the family used to behave badly for the sole purpose of being chid by More, whose gentle pity and gravity were delightful to observe. In his second wife, Mrs. Alice Middleton, who had an acrid and disagreeable temper, he had an opportunity for taming a shrew, and had performed that feat with more credit to his skill and patience than pleasantness to himself. He used to give his wife and children plenty of sound ethical advice: "It is now no mastery (difficulty) for you children to goe to heaven," he would say, "for everybody giveth you good counsel and good example. You see virtue rewarded and vice punished, so that you are carried up to heaven as it were by the chins." He would encourage them to bear diseases and afflictions with patience, and to resist the devil, whom he would compare to an ape--"for as the ape, not well looked to, will be busie and bold to do shrewde turnes, and contrarily being spyed and checkt for them, will suddenly leap back and adventure no further; so the devil," etc. Thus at dinner and supper did he entertain his family with high moral purpose; he allowed them, for their recreation, to sing or to play on "violes." Some biographers allege that he once cured his daughter of the sweating sickness. Ellis Haywood published at Florence a little book called "Il Moro," in which many details are given respecting the home life of More. Thus he is represented as entertaining six guests at dinner. After the meal the party ascend the mound in the garden, and, sitting on a greensward, they admire the meanderings of the river, the hills undulating on the horizon, the turf and flowers of the river side. His establishment, in its simplicity, greatly contrasted with Wolsey's household, and its five hundred dependents, chancellors, chaplains, doctors, ushers, valets, and others. More, however, a jester, the middle-ages custom of keeping a "fool" not yet having been discontinued. Henry VIII. had his Somers, Wolsey his Path, and More his Patterson.

Sir Thomas was desirous of appropriating his leisure to the production of some notable work. Already, while still unnoticed by Henry, he had written a History of Richard III., in which he gave the following portrait of that king:

"Ill fetured of limmes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard-favoured of visage ... he was malicious wrathful, envious, and from afore his birth, ever frowarde. ... Hee was close and secrete, a deepe dissimuler, lowlye of countenance, arrogaunt of heart, outwardly coumpinable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kisse whome hee thoughte to kyll; dispitious and cruell, not for evill well alway, but after for ambition, and either for the suretee or encrease of his estate. Frende and foo was muche what indifferent, where his advantage grew; he spared no man's deathe whose life withstoode his purpose. He slewe with his owne handes King Henry the Sixt, being prisoner in the Tower, as menne constantly saye."

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Shakespeare no doubt borrowed from this sketch some of the traits with which he depicted the ambitious monarch. On the other hand, Horace Walpole, in his "Historic Doubts," will have it that this history was written "from a most corrupted source."

More now began to concentrate his energies for a work of more universal interest. He became more abstemious than ever in his food and sleep; he snatched as many hours as possible from his official pursuits, in order to cultivate literature. The result of this labor was the famous "Utopia," composed in 1516. In a letter to Peter Giles or AEgidius, he describes the manner in which that work was written: "After having been engaged in pleading or hearing causes, either as judge or arbiter, there is left me but scant opportunity for literature. I return home; I must talk with my wife, amuse my children, confer of household affairs with my dependents. It is necessary to do all this unless you are to be a stranger in your own house. ... When therefore can I write? Neither have I mentioned the time necessary for sleep or food." ... In fact he used at that time to rise at two o'clock in the morning, writing till seven. Under these difficulties he effected his purpose--he completed a work which won him a European reputation.

Poets and philosophical dreamers react in their speculations against the barrenness or terror of reality; and the more striking is this background, the more impressive is the effect of the whole. More's book had an appropriate practical contrast in the political circumstances of the time. There were rumors of great wars; the Moslem emperor was threatening Christendom. This fact, perhaps, not less than the intrinsic merit of the book, explains the brilliant success of the "Utopia." Every educated man read it. Morus [sic] was greatly delighted, and candidly gave expression to his feelings. He was, he averred, more pleased with Tunstall's appreciation than if he had received an Attic talent. Sometimes he fancied that his Utopians were about to elect him their king for ever. In reality, he was highly praised by AEgidius, Jovius, Busleyden, Paludanus, and others. The new republic, these friendly critics averred, transcended the polity of ancient Athens or Rome. A way had been shown toward the attainment of true happiness. The book was a masterpiece of erudition, philosophy, knowledge of the world. All this approbation was the more acceptable to More, that he had been somewhat diffident concerning the reception of his work. In a letter to Peter AEgidius, or Giles, of Antwerp, he had indulged in that superciliousness toward the multitude which is the besetting temptation of solitary thinkers. He complained of the discordances of criticism, the small qualification of many for the exercise of lettered appreciation:

"The tastes of men are very different; some are of so morose a temper, so sour a disposition, and make, such absurd judgments of things, that men of cheerful and lively tempers, who indulge their genius, seem much more happy than those who waste their time and strength in order to publishing a book; which, though of itself it might be useful or pleasant, yet instead of being well received, will be sure to be either laughed at or censured. Many know nothing of learning, others despise it; a man that is accustomed to a coarse and harsh style thinks everything is rough that is not barbarous. Our trifling pretenders to learning think all is slight that is not dress'd up in words that are worn out of use; some love only old things, and many like nothing but what is their own. Some are so sour that they can allow no jests, and others so dull that they can endure nothing that is sharp; while some are as much afraid of anything gay and lively, as a man with a mad dog is of water; others are so light and unsettled, that their thoughts change as quick as they do their postures. Some, again, when they meet in taverns, take upon them, among their cups, to pass censures very freely on all writers, and with a supercilious liberty to condemn everything they do not like; in which they have an advantage, like that of a bald man, who can catch hold of another by the hair, while the other cannot return the like upon him. They are safe, as it were, from gunshot, since there is nothing in them solid enough to be taken hold of; others are so unthankful, that even when they are well pleased with a book, yet they think they owe nothing to the author."

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Although More did meet with some of these ignorant or malevolent critics, he must have been gratified at finding himself exalted into a modern Plato. Nor was the praise he received partial or exaggerated. He had expressed the leading idea of the time. Casting a general glance over the social field, he had applied the newly arisen spirit of research and criticism to the survey of society. Judging the actual, he had also evolved the ideal, which the humanitarians of the age had more dimly viewed. Being a man of genius, he had expressed a certain order of thought--concisely, but not the less comprehensively--for all ages; and modern Positivists, Owenists, Fourierists, and many other ists, might, from a study of the "Utopia," gather another illustration of the great truth that there is nothing new under the sun.

The plan of the work is as follows: More supposes himself in Flanders, in the capacity of ambassador to Charles the Fifth, and in the company of "that incomparable man, Cuthbert Tonstal, whom the king, with such universal applause, lately made master of the roles." At Antwerp, they become acquainted with Peter Giles, or AEgidius, "a man of great honor and of good rank in his town, though less than he deserves;" and they make another acquaintance in this wise: "One day, as I was returning home from mass at St. Mary's, which is the chief church, and the most frequented of any in Antwerp, I saw him (Petrus AEgidius, or Giles) by accident, talking with a stranger, who seemed past the flower of his age; his face was tanned, he had a long beard, and his cloak was hanging carelessly about him; so that by his looks and habits I concluded he was a seaman." This ancient mariner, however, turns out to have travelled as an observer and philosopher as well as a naval man; his name is Raphael Hythloday. He is a Portuguese, who has travelled with Americus Vespucius. It is in conversation with the stranger that More becomes acquainted with the history and manners of the Utopians. In the first part of the book, Raphael censures the polity of ordinary countries; he complains that "most princes apply themselves more to affairs of war than to the useful arts of peace; they are generally set more on acquiring new kingdoms, right or wrong, than on governing well those they possess." Such opinions had a peculiar pungency at a time when Selim was threatening to root out the Christian name from Europe. Raphael criticises those in power, and their conservative spirit; he betrays an implacable hostility toward those who "cover themselves obstinately with this excuse, of reverence to past times;" he had, he said, met with them chiefly in England, where he happened to be when the rebellion in the west was suppressed, "with a great slaughter of the poor people that were engaged in it." When relating his sojourn in England, Raphael also indulges in the eulogy of that reverend prelate, John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury--in whose house More had been brought up-- "A man, Peter, (for Mr. More knows well what he was,) who was not less venerable for his wisdom and virtues, for the high character he bore: he was of a middle stature, not broke with age: his looks begot reverence rather than fear; his conversation was easy, but serious and grave; he sometimes took pleasure to try the force of those that came as suitors to him upon business, by speaking sharply though decently to them, and by that he discovered their spirit and presence of mind, with which he was much delighted, when it did not grow up to impudence, as bearing a great resemblance to his own temper, and he looked on such persons as the fittest men for affairs. {639} He spoke both gracefully and weightily; he was eminently skilled in the law; had a vast understanding, and a prodigious memory; and those excellent talents with which nature had furnished him were improved by study and experience. When I was in England, the king depended much on his councils, and the government seemed to be chiefly supported by him; for from his youth he had been all along practised in affairs; and, having passed through many traverses of fortune, he had with great cost acquired a vast stock of wisdom; which is not soon lost, when it is purchased so dear." More's talent for keen observation and portraiture is also evinced in the delightful sketch of the lawyer whom Raphael observes at Archbishop Morton's. This gentleman "took occasion to run out in a high commendation of the severe execution of justice upon thieves, who, as he said, were then hanged so fast that there were sometimes twenty on one gibbet; and upon that he said he could not wonder enough how it came to pass that, since so few escaped, there were yet so many thieves left who were still robbing in all places." Raphael, who in that nineteenth century which takes upon itself to realize almost all the visions of dreamers, would have been a zealous advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, objects that "this way of punishing thieves was neither just in itself, nor good for the public; for as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual; simple theft not being so great a crime that it ought to cost a man his life; no punishment, how severe soever, being able to restrain those from robbing who can find out no other way of livelihood. Not only you in England, but a great part of the world, imitate some ill masters that are readier to chastise their scholars than to teach them." Here is included the modern fallacy about reforming criminals, which has been so much insisted on, as if that reformation was so easy a task, as if so many probabilities were not against it, as if it was not better for poor criminals to be sent to a better world, than to be left open in this life to almost irresistible temptations. However, that form of sentiment called humanitarianism--which would spare the wicked and lost, while the honest and useful are left to slow tortures, as in the case of merchant sailors--that humanitarianism is continually displayed by this Raphael, in a completeness and energy beyond which no later speculations have attained. The lawyer maintains about the thieves that "there are many handicrafts, and there is husbandry, by which they may make a shift to live, unless they have a greater mind to follow ill courses;" and Raphael's rejoinder discloses a state of things which was not very well calculated to make the army popular: "That will not serve your turn, for many lose their limbs in civil or foreign wars, as lately in the Cornish rebellion, and some time ago in your wars with France, who, being thus mutilated in the service of their king and country, can no more follow their old trades, and are too old to learn new ones. He owns, however, that wars do not occur every day. The following opinion of his may be advantageously recommended to the careful study of enlightened and disinterested democrats, who, by the magical power of their thought, can amplify it, transmogrify it, intensify it for the benefit of their country's flesh and blood: "There is a great number of noblemen among you, that are themselves as idle as drones; that subsist on other men's labors, on the labor of their tenants, whom, to raise their revenues, they pare to the quick." Applying this to his theory of thieves, Hythlodoeus says that these noblemen keep a great number of servants who, on their master's death, are turned out of doors and betake themselves to larceny. The lawyer, in nowise disconcerted, answers that these tatterdemalions, constitute a capital recruiting-ground for the army. Raphael retorts that a converse metamorphosis of efficient soldiers into able robbers is liable to take place. {640} He also inveighs against France for keeping up a ruinous military establishment: "But this bad custom, so common among you, of keeping many servants, is not peculiar to this nation. In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people; for the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace, if such a state of a nation can be called peace; and these are kept in pay upon the same account that you plead for those idle retainers about noblemen, this being a maxim of those pretended statesmen, that it is necessary for the public safety to have a good body of veteran soldiers ever in readiness. They think raw men are not to be depended upon, and they sometimes seek occasions for making war, that they may train up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats; or, as Sallust observed, for keeping their hands in use, that they may not grow dull by too long an intermission. But France has learned to its cost how dangerous it is to feed such beasts. The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians, and Syrians, and many other nations and cities, which were both overturned and quite ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser." And Hythloday in his enthusiasm adds a stinging taunt, the truth of which, however, subsequent agitations and rebellions have not confirmed: "Every day's experience shows that the mechanics in the towns or the clowns in the country are not afraid of fighting with those idle gentlemen." He further attributes the great number of thieves to the increase of pasture, "by which your sheep, which are naturally mild and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople not only villages, but towns;" land was enclosed, tenants turned away, and Hythlodoeus points out a cattle plague among the results of this state of things, adding somewhat fiercely: "To us it might have seemed more just had it fell on the owners themselves." He does not seem to perceive that by this enclosure the land is saved from that exhaustion which must ultimately reduce Europe to a barren state, and thus annihilate civilization; but humanitarianism was never remarkable for excess of foresight. The lawyer is about to reply in a speech divided into four points, but the humane archbishop interferes, and "eases him of the trouble of answering;" unfortunately, however, or perhaps from a relish for humor, he allows Raphael to indulge in a long speech on the reasons against putting thieves to death. Hythloday recommends a punishment which no sensible thief would prefer to death, namely, that the criminal should be made to work all his life in quarries or mines. But as this was the ancient Roman method, it is not perfect enough for the ingenious Raphael, who would much prefer a scheme according to which the thieves are let loose in the daytime, engaged in working for the public; and, although liable to be whipped for idleness, these debonair convicts punctually return to prison every evening, and answer to their names before being locked up for the night. The reformer adds somewhat naively, "the only danger to be feared from them is their conspiring against the government." The unfortunate lawyer, rather taken aback at the idea of London being full of convicts with cropped ears and a peculiar dress, playing the part of commissionaires or otherwise making themselves generally useful to Londoners, says that he fears this could not take place without the whole nation being endangered; the sensible cardinal avoids this slight exaggeration, and answers with quiet irony that it is not easy to form a judgment with respect to the success of this scheme, since it is a method that has never yet been tried. If, in this exquisite scene, which evinces such dramatic genius, there is any trace of a lyrical element, this is most likely to be found in the cardinal's verdict, who is confessedly the most honored and reverend personage, and withal one with a real prototype. There is no reason to suppose that Morus was a Hythloday; of course, reflecting the thoughts of his age, he had entertained similar ideas; but instead of petrifying them in his mind, he vaporized them, dramatized them, as it were, in the character of Hythloday, contemplated their embodiment or type in an objective, extraneous form, and thus remained, as to his inner self, impartial and moderate.

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Now, however, the Pantagruelistic element tends to predominate, and More will expend some humor in satirizing friars, those bétes noires of educated men in the sixteenth century. A jester who is standing by gives it as his opinion that mendicants should become monks and nuns. A friar says that even that transformation would not save the kingdom from beggars; the jester calls the friars vagabonds; the friar falls into a passion and overwhelms the fool with epithets. Notwithstanding a scriptural reminder from the jester, "in patience possess ye your souls," the friar wrests the words of Scripture to the purposes of his anger. The cardinal courteously exhorts him to govern his passions; "but," answers the friar, "holy men have had a good zeal--as it is said; the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." "You do this perhaps with a good intention," replies the cardinal; "but in my opinion, it were wiser in you, and perhaps better for you, not to engage in so ridiculous a contest with a fool." The friar retorts that "Solomon, the wisest of men, said to answer a fool according to his folly," and asserts that "if the many mockers of Elisha, who was but one bald man, felt the effect of his zeal, what will become of one mocker of so many friars, among whom there are so many bald men? We have likewise a bull, by which all that jeer at us are excommunicated." Seeing the matter is not likely soon to end, the archbishop sends the jester away and changes the subject.

After criticising the policy by which Henry VII. extorted money from his subjects, Raphael Hythlodoeus, the radical, freely avows his opinion, that "as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard of all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or happily; not justly, because the best things will fall to the share of the worst men; nor happily, because all things will be divided among a few, (and even those are not in all respects happy,) the rest being left to be absolutely miserable." An Owenite of the nineteenth century could not express himself more plainly. Again, he asserts that "till property is taken away, there can be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor can the world be happily governed; for, as long as that is maintained, the greatest and the far best part of mankind will be still oppressed with a load of cares and anxieties. I confess that, without taking it quite away, those pressures that lie on a great part of mankind may be made lighter; but they can never be quite removed."

In the second book Raphael gives up criticising the established order of things, and describes the condition of Utopia. That island, once called Abraxa, lies on the other side of the Atlantic. In days of yore it was conquered and redeemed from a barbarous condition by the great legistor Utopus. There are fifty-four cities in the island, and Amaurot is the metropolis. All these towns are as like one another, in outward conformation, laws, and customs, as possibility will admit. Farm-houses fill up the rural part of the island. Agricultural business is carried on by means of a kind of transportation from the cities; parties of inhabitants, in families of forty, are sent to rusticate for two years, after which lapse of time they return to town and others are sent out. There is in this manner a continual and well regulated supply and demand in agricultural labor; and the pursuits of tillage are conducted so intelligently as to avoid that scarcity of corn which would occasion unpleasant complications in so well-regulated a country. Among these husbandmen's devices is a plan for the artificial hatching of eggs. {642} So wonderful a system of Fetichism prevails in Utopia that "he that knows one of their towns knows them all, they are so like one another, except where the situation makes some difference." Raphael describes Amaurot, where he has resided for not less than four years. "Their buildings are good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house. The streets are twenty feet broad; there lie gardens behind all their houses, which are large but inclosed with buildings, that on all hands face the street, so that every house has both a door to the street and a back door to the garden." The magistrate was, of old, called the syphogrant, but is now designated as the philarch; and over every ten syphogrants is a higher functionary anciently called the tranibore, and now the archphilarch. The syphogrants elect the prince by ballot--"they give their voices secretly so that it is not known for whom every one gives his suffrage." The prince is elected for life, with, however, this reservation--"unless he is removed upon suspicion of some design to enslave the people." The syphogrants in their council have it for their peculiar mission to prevent any conspiration being formed by the prince and the tranibores for the enslavement of the nation. Mechanics in Utopia have their day's work limited to six hours; the rest of the twenty-four hours being by them devoted to hearing lectures if they are of a studious turn, or to reading, eating, sleeping, etc. After supper, they go in winter to music halls; in summer, to gardens; or they divert themselves with games, "not unlike our chess," between "virtues and vices," in which are represented, in a manner combining instruction with amusement, "the methods by which vice either openly assaults or secretly undermines virtue; and virtue on the other hand resists it." There are no taverns or ale-houses. The Utopians prefer iron to gold or silver; they make their commonest utensils of what to other nations are the precious metals; of silver and gold they also make chains for slaves, adding to the infamy of convicts by making them wear golden earrings or coronets. Pearls they find on the coast, and diamonds on the rocks. The ambassadors of Anemolia were therefore disappointed when, thinking to astonish the Utopians by a profuse display of gold ornaments, they were only derided by this utilitarian race as wearers of useless metal.

As to knowledge, the Utopians are fortunate in having all the wisdom of the ancients without the trouble of being acquainted with dead languages; for it seems that they themselves have made "the same discoveries as the Greeks, both in musick, logick, arithmetick, and geometry." Their habit of mind, unlike that of the Scotch, is rather outer than inner, objective than subjective, inclined to practical science rather than to metaphysics; they would be unable to understand a definition of man in the "aibstract." They are acquainted with astronomy, but eschew divination by the stars. Touching the causes of things, and the problems of moral philosophy, there is by no means a perfect agreement among them: they have a tendency toward the 'happiness' principle. Such is their aversion to war that, when compelled to enter the field, they immediately set a price on the head of the enemy's king, or of any of his ministers who may have been instrumental in bringing about the outbreak of hostilities. The admirers of More have been somewhat shocked at this practice, more utilitarian than honorable; but there is no reason to suppose he would have consented to such a course in a similar conjuncture; it is as an artist, and to complete the necessary development of the Utopian character, that he has imputed to them this utilitarian, positivistic device; a nation which could be brought to regard war as an evil, damaging the happiness of the greatest number, would not stick at sacrificing a few princes in a quiet way in order to secure the advantage of the many through the ruin of the few. {643} Here's account of the high esteem in which the Utopians hold their priests, is, perhaps, more lyrical than consistent with the character of that imaginary nation; he makes them go so far in their reverence as to bring no sacerdotal criminals to account, the punishment of these offenders being "left to God and to their own consciences." It must be recollected, however, that they have but few priests, and those chosen with great caution. The Utopians have ritualistic tendencies. "They burn incense, and other sweet odors, and have a great number of wax lights during their worship; not out of any imagination that such oblations can add anything to the divine nature, which even prayers cannot do; but as it is a harmless and pure way of worshipping God, so they think those sweet savors and lights, together with some other ceremonies, by a secret and unaccountable virtue elevate men's souls and inflame them with greater energy and cheerfulness during the divine worship." The priests' vestments "are parti-colored; and both the work and colors are wonderful. ... They say that, in the ordering and placing those plumes, some dark mysteries are represented, which pass down among their priests in a secret tradition concerning them; and that they are as hieroglyphics, putting them in mind of the blessings that they have received from God, and of their duties both to him and to their neighbors." Raphael concludes the book by saying that "there are many things in Utopia which I rather wish than hope to see followed in our governments;" and this hint shows the dreamy nature of the scheme. The Utopia is, indeed, a mere philosophical romance, in which More sacrificed to the humanitarian tendencies of the age, but which left his deep and inner convictions unshaken. His after life showed that he was free from any tendency to realize the Utopian idea; and the more so, perhaps, because he had written the Utopia; for there is in the utterance of thought a peculiar virtue which clears the mind from the effects of a lingering and stagnating condition of ideas. Like Plato's Atlantis, the Utopia is an ingenious play of fancy rather than a production intended to convey serious truths under a veil; it is alike removed from the earnest intensity of thought pervading Cicero's Republic, and the semi-prophetic rapture of Bacon's New Atlantis. And in relation to our age, the Utopia serves to show that what enthusiasts have imagined, under the influence of the modern sceptical spirit, had been foreshadowed and included at the very dawn of that spirit, by the comprehensiveness of genius; and that the class of schemes which are designated by the name of Sir T. More's production, are as far from their practical fulfilment now as they were three hundred or three thousand years ago.

Like every successful author, More had his literary quarrels. The favor with which the Utopia had been received, excited the gall of a French man of letters, who had already broken a few lances with More. This Brixius, Brice, or Brie according to Rabelais, published a book called Anti-Morus, in which he carefully raked up every mistake in grammar and quantity to be found in More's early Latin poem. He punned on More's name, likening it to Môros, the Greek word for madman. Erasmus wrote to this critic, charging him with being a very child compared with More. Sir Thomas speedily prepared an answer, but Erasmus advised him to meet the attack with silent contempt. There is nothing so galling to fools. More perceived that to be attacked by dunces is an advantage rather than otherwise.

It was about that period that Oxford was convulsed by the introduction of Grecian studies. The "Trojans," as they called themselves, evinced an implacable hostility toward the "new learning." Priam, Hector, Paris, waged war against Hellenic writings. {644} But the tide of grammars, aorists, accents, was no more to be staid than the hosts of real invaders at the siege of Troy. More played the part of Sinon. He wrote to the Oxonians that Greek was being learned at Cambridge, that the king and Wolsey were in favor of Greek; that in the end the Trojans would have to be wise; and at last the reactionists gave in.

In 1523, Sir T. More was appointed speaker of the house of commons. This advancement he accepted with some reluctance. In his opening speech, he besought the clemency of the king in behalf of any man who, in the house, should chance to speak unadvisedly and roughly: "Such is the weight of the matter, such is the reverent dread that the timorous hearts of your naturall subjects conceive towards your highnesse, (our most undoubted soveraign,) that they cannot in this point rest satisfied, except your gracious bounty therein declared, put away the scruple of their timorous mindes, and animate and encourage them from all doubt; may it therefore please your majesty, (our most gracious king ) of your great goodnesse, to pardon freely, without doubt of your dreadful displeasure, whatsoever shall happen any man to speak in the discharging of his conscience, interpreting every man's words, how unseemly soever couched, yet to proceed of good zeal to the prosperity of the kingdome, and the honour of your royall person." Not long after, a grant of money being before parliament, the cardinal, fearing it would not pass the lower house, bethought himself of attending the debate. Previously there had been a slight disagreement or "garboyle" between the cardinal and the honorable members, with whom Wolsey was displeased, because they were addicted to revealing in ale-houses what had been said within the walls of parliament. On this occasion, therefore, the new speaker urged the necessity of the cardinal's entering the house in full pomp: "Masters," said Sir Thomas, "for as much as my lord cardinall, not long since, as ye all know, laid to our charge the lightnesse of our tongues, for things spoken out of this house; it shall not, in my judgment, be amisse to receive him with all his pomp; his maces, his pillars, his pole axes, his crosses, his hat, and great seal, too; that so if he blame us hereafter, we may be the bolder to excuse ourselves, and lay it upon those that his grace bringeth hither with him." The house agreed to this, and the cardinal, in a "solemn oration," gave many reasons for granting the money; but the house remained silent. He made another appeal: "Masters, you have many wise and learned men among you, and since I am, by the king's own person, sent hither unto you for the preservation of yourselves and all the kingdome, I think it fit you give me some reasonable answer." Still every man held his peace, so that he called them by name. Mr. Murray (afterward Lord Murray) and several others of "the wisest of the house," when challenged in this way, returned no answer, "being before agreed." The cardinal expressed his surprise at "this marvellous obstinate silence," and called on the speaker to answer. Sir Thomas, first meekly kneeling upon his knees, pleaded that the house was abashed by so illustrious a presence as the cardinal's; showed that, besides, the ancient liberty of the house allowed the members to be silent; averred that he was quite unable to speak in their name, "except every one of them could put their several wits into his head." The poor cardinal retired in despair, and afterward gave vent to his grief by saying to More, in the gallery at Whitehall: "Would to God, Mr. More, you had been to Rome when I made you speaker!" "Your grace not offended, so would I too, my lord." rejoined Sir Thomas. Then, with his usual kindly tact, he changed the subject.

{645}

And now More was to enter on the fiercer struggles of the theological arena. He was to write in a weighty, but also nervous and popular manner, often condescending to the humorous anecdote, or "merrie tale," those ample controversial treatises in which was laid the broad foundation stone of English prose. Even for so dreamy and gentle a thinker, there could be no avoiding the contests of the age. The times were too stirring for mere literary dilettanteism. As Le Bas has remarked, "Things which, for many a century, had been deemed by multitudes immutable as the laws of nature, were now found to contain within themselves the elements of a change. The supremacy of the Roman pontiff, more especially, had till then been very generally regarded as a fundamental principle of revealed religion. Yet this was precisely the principle against which the first violence of the spirit now abroad was vehemently directed; and, what was still more astounding, the assault against it was either directed or assisted by men who had pledged themselves to its maintenance by the most solemn sanctions which religion can impose. All this cannot have happened without a perilous convulsion of the public mind. It may be said, without the smallest exaggeration, that no disturbance in the order of the physical world could have produced, in many a heart, much more confusion and dismay than that which was occasioned by this rupture of immemorial prejudices and associations. The fountains of the great deep were breaking up before their eyes, and the summits of ancient institutions seemed in danger of disappearing beneath the deluge." (Le Bas's Life of Cranmer.) More answered an attack which Luther had made on the king. In 1525, he wrote a very acrid letter against the Reformers, urging Erasmus to more decided action. But the humanitarian had small anxiety for engaging in these disputes. More soon found abundant work for himself. In 1524 or 1525, there was published an anonymous tract, entitled the Supplycacion of Beggers, which was a virulent attack on the clergy.

Erasmus had said that, under a religious veil, the Reformation movement was the quarrel of those who had not against those who had. This, the opinion of most educated men in the sixteenth century, appeared to be confirmed by this tract, which urges a severe blow against the church, not on religious grounds, but in behalf of the poor. In the Supplycacion the king is advised to take the wealth of the monasteries and give it to the poor. In this singular production the long-winded sentences of the opening are the very whine of mendicants:

"Most lamentably complayneth theyre wofull misery unto your highness, your poore, the wretched hidous monsters, (on whom scarcely for horror any dare loke,) the foule unhappy sort of lepers, and other sore people, nedy, impotent, blinde, lame, and sike, that live only by almesse, name that theyre nombre is daily so sore increased that all the almesse of all the well-disposed people of this youre realme is not halfe ynough for to susteine theim, but that for very constreint they die for hunger. And this most pestilent mischief comen uppon youre saide poore by the reason that there is yn the tyrnes of youre noble predecessours passed craftily creypt ynto this your realme another sort (not of impotent but) of strong puissant and counterfeit holy and idell beggers and vacabundes, which syns the tyme of theyre first entre by all the craft and wilinesse of satan are nowe encreased under your sight not onely into a great nobre but also ynto a kingdome. These are (not the herdes, but the ravinous wolves going in herdes clothing devouring the flocke) the bisshoppes, abbottes, priours, deacons, archedeacones, suffraganes, prestes, monkes, chanons, freres, pardoners, and somners. ... The goodliest lordshippes, maners, landes, and teritories, are theyrs. Besides this they have the tenth part of all the corne, medowe, pasture, grasse, colts, calves, lambes, pigges, gese, and chickens."

He calculates the salaries paid to the clergy as amounting to one hundred and thirty thousand angels. "Whereof not foure hundreth yeres passed they had not one peny." He gives historical illustrations to show the desirableness of being freed from such tributes: "The nobill king Arthur had never ben abill to have caried his armie to the fote of the mountains to resist the coming downe of Lucius the emperoure if such yerely exactions had ben taken of his people. {646} The Grekes had never ben abill to have so long continued at the siege of Troie if they had had at home such an idell sort of cormorantes to finde. The auncient Romains had never ben abil to have put all the hole world under theyre obeisance if theyre people had byn thus yerely oppressed. The Turke nowe yn your tyme shulde never be abill to get so moche groande of Cristendome if he had yn his empire such a sort of locustes to devoure his substance." As it proceeds, the tract becomes more and more nervous and truculent. Irritated by the utterance of this "beggars' proctour," More in 1529 replied in his Supplycacion of Soules.

This purports to be an appeal from the "holy souls in purgatory" to all good Christians. The Supplicacion of Beggars is called "an unhappy boke." It is urged that "lacke of belief in purgatory bringeth a man to hell." He refutes the "beggars' proctour" by showing that Peter's pence was paid before the conquest, and exclaims: "Oh! the grevouse shipwrak of the comen weale; he sayeth that in auncient time before the coming of the clergye there were but few pore people, and yet thei did not begge, but there was gyven them ynough unasked, because at that time he saith there was no clargy. ... In thys place we let pas his threfold foly." He says that this "beggars' proctour" should have concluded his "supplycacion" in such terms as these: "After ye the clergy is thus destroied and cast out, then shall Luther's ghospel come in; then shal Tyndal's testament be taken up; then shal false heresies bee preached; then shal the sacramentes be set at naught; than shal fasting and prayour be neglected; then shal holy saints be blasphemed;... then shal the servantes set naught by theyr maysters, and vnruly people rebell against their rulers; then wyll ryse vp ryflyng and robbery, murther and mischief, and playn insurreccion. ... all which mischief may yet be withstanden easilye, and with Godde's grace so shal it, yf ye suffer no such bold beggars to seduce you with sedycyouse billes." More girds on the most substantial armor in the Dialogue concerning Heresies, and other polemical treatises. He maintains that the church cannot err in the interpretations of Scripture; that according to the teaching of early doctors it is lawful to venerate images and render homage to relics. He argues for the real presence, comparing it with St. Chrysostom to one man's face reflected in several mirrors; all the hosts, although in different places, are but one body and divine oblation. He adduces as one of the reasons for which Tyndal's New Testament was burned, that in that version the words priests, church and charity, are respectively rendered "seniours," "congregation," and "love." The word senior, he maintains, would apply "Englishly" rather to aldermen of towns than to priests of the church. The word congregation can be applied equally to a company of Christians and a company of Turks though the church is indeed a congregation, yet every congregation is not the church. "Lyke wysedom was there in the change of this word (charitie) into love. For though charitie be alway love, yet is not, ye wote well, love alway charitie." He blames that "greate arche heretike Wickliffe" for having taken it upon himself to make a new translation of the Scriptures. "Whereas ye hole byble was long before his dayes by vertuous and wel learned men translated into ye English tong, and by good and godly people with devocion and sobrenes wel and reverently red." He sees no reason why Scripture should not be read in the vulgar tongue. Luther's books, however, should be proscribed, "because his heresies be so many and so abominable;" a "ich and tikling of vanite and vain glory has set hym besyde hys minde." He shows that "it is a great token that the world is nere at an ende while we se people so farre fallen fro God, that they can abide it to be content with this pestilent frantike secte;" that "fayth may be without charitie, and so fervent that it may suffer a payneful death, and yet for fault of charitie not sufficient to salvacion." {647} He establishes that "princes be bounden to punish heretykes." He charges heretics with being wont to perpetrate "outrages, and temporall harmes" with "destroying Christe's holy sacramentes, pulling down Christ's crosse, blaspheming his blessed saints, destroying all devocion." He contrasts "Saynt Cypryane, Saynt Chrisostome, Saynt Gregory, and al the vertuous and cunning doctours by rowe," with the doctors "of this newe secte, frere Luther and his wyfe, frere Lambert and his wife, and frantike Tyndall." It must be remembered that the excesses and seditions brought forth by the Reformation in Germany were calculated to establish an association between the ideas of religious reformer and of rebel; nor does the experience of succeeding centuries go very far toward destroying this link. As a statesman, therefore, if on no other ground, More was inclined toward the display of an uncompromising severity. Nor was he alone in this tendency. Both in England and on the continent, heresy was a crime punishable by law. At the same time, there is no reason for thinking that More carried his doctrines on that point into practice, as Fox, Burnet, and others have asserted. This theory is based on a passage of Erasmus, which declares that while More was chancellor no one was put to death in England for adherence to the new doctrines. (Nisard.) In his apology, written after his fall, More candidly exposes both his opinions and the facts of his administration. He vindicates himself from the "lies neither fewe nor small" which certain "blessed brethren" had industriously spread concerning him. "Dyvers of them have said that of suche as were in my house while I was chauncellour, I used to examine theym with tormentes, causynge them to bee bounden to a tree in my gardeine, and there pituously beaten." "Of very truth, albeit that for a greate robbery, or an heighnous murder, or sacriledge in a church, I caused sometyme suche thynges to be done by some officers of the marshalsie, with which orderynge of them by their well deserved paine, and without any great hurt that afterward should sticke by them, I founde out and repressed many such desperate wretches as elles had not failed to have gone farther abrode, and to have done to many good folke a greate deale much more harme."

Only twice did he punish any heretic in this manner--a boy and a lunatic, whose case he thus relates:

"Another was one whiche, after that he had fallen into that frantik heresies, fell soone after into plaine, open fransy beside; and albeit that he had therefore bene put up in Bedelem, and afterward by beating and corecion, gathered his remembrance to him, and begaune to come again to himself, being thereupon set at liberty, and walkinge aboute abrode, his olde fransies begaune to fall againe in his heade, and I was fro dyvers good holy places advertised, that he used in his wandering about to come into the churche, and there make many mad toies and trifles, to the trouble of the good people in the divine service, and specially would he be most busye at the time of most silence, while the priest was at the secretes of the masse, about the levacion. ... whereupon I, being advertised of these pageauntes, and being sent unto and required by very devout, religious folke, to take some other order with him, caused him as he came wanderinge by my doore, to be taken by the counstables and bounden to a tree in the streete before the whole towne and ther they stripped him with roddes therefore till he wared weary, and somewhat longer; and it appeared wel that his remembrance was goode enoughe, save that it went about in grasing till it was beaten home; for he could than verie well reherse his fautes himselfe, and speake and treate very well, and promise to doe afterward as well, and verylye, God be thanked, I heare none harme of him now; and of al that ever came into my hand for heresye, as helpe me God, saving, as I said, the sure keping of them, and yet no so sure neither, but that George Constantine could stele away; els had never any of them any stripe or stroke given them, so much as a fylyppe on the forehead."

{648}

He also gives an amusing instance of the manner in which slanderous accusations were fabricated against him. Simon Fryth, author of the "Supplication of Beggars," charged More with having said that "his heresye shoulde coste him the best blude in his body." More answers that:

"Some truthe they might happe to heare, whereupon they myghte buylde theyr lye. For so was it that on a tyme one came and showed me that Frithe laboured so sore that he sweat agayne, in studieng and writing against the blessed sacrament; and I was of trouth verie heavy to heare that the younge fooly the felowe shoulde bestowe suche labour about suche a develyshe woorke. For if that Fryth (quoth I) swete in laboring to quench that faith that al true Christen people have in Christe's blessed body and bloude, which all Christen folke veryly, and all good folke frutfuly receive in the fourme of bread, he shal laboure more than in vayne; for I am sure that Frith and al his felowes, with al the friendes that are of theyr affiniti, shal neither be able to quench and put out that faith, and over that if Frythe labour about the quenching thereof till he sweate, I would some good friend of his shoulde showe hym that I feare me sore that Christe wyll kyndle a fyre of fagottes for hym, and make hym therin sweate the bloud out of his bodye here, and straight from hence send hys soule for ever into the fyre of hell. Nowe in these wordes I neyther ment nor meane that I would it wer so. For so help me God and none otherwyse, but as I would be glad to take more labour, losse, and bodelye payne also, then peradventure many a man would wene to winne that yonge man to Christe and hys true faythe agayne, and thereby to preserve and keepe hym from the losse and peryll of soule and body both."

And in another part of the same treatise he declares that

"as touching heretikes, I hate that vice of theirs, and not their persons, and very faine would I that the one were destroied, and the tother saved ... and if all the favour and pity that I have vsed among them to theire amendement were knowen, it woulde I warrant you well and plaine appere, whereof if it were requysite I could bring forth witnesses more than men would wene."

In these earnest words is reflected his innocence of persecution. These apologies for his career as chancellor were written after his fall.

In 1529, More had been made lord high chancellor of England. The new dignitary had been sounded by the king concerning the matrimonial cause. Although Sir Thomas excused himself from giving an opinion, on the plea that he was no divine, he was evidently expected ultimately to concur in forwarding the accomplishment of the king's wishes. But More was too candid and unworldly to adopt a policy of self-interest. He had foreseen the danger of his elevation, and in his opening speech had alluded to the sword of Damocles. One evening he had confided to Roper that he would gladly be tied up in a sack, and thrown into the Thames, if only there could be peace on earth, unity in the church, and a good termination of the divorce question. At last the decisive moment came, and Henry requested More to take the proposed divorce into consideration. The chancellor, falling on his knees, lamented his inability to serve the king in this matter with a safe conscience; he had, he said, borne in mind the words uttered by his majesty on More's first entering office, namely, first to look unto God, and after God unto the king. Henry, concealing his vexation, expressed a hope that More could serve him in other instances.

Then Cranmer broached his plan, and the universities began to dust folios and hold grave deliberations on the matrimonial cause. Not only Oxford and Cambridge, but Paris, Anjou, Bruges, Orleans, Padua, Toulouse, summoned their doctors, regents, and canons, to weigh and consider the important question. There was "much turning and searching of bookes;" divine law, civil law, were carefully discussed and examined. "There was in the realme much preching, one lerned man holding against another," (Holinshed.) Foreseeing the impending harvest of determinations and arbitraments, More perceived that the king would marry Anne Boleyn at any cost. In May, 1532, he tendered his resignation. Henry accepted it in an affable manner, and a weight fell from More's heart--for the nonce he gave himself up to his harmless gaiety. {649} Lady More lectured him severely for not having taken care of his pecuniary interests when in office, and for relinquishing place through a selfish love of ease, without thinking of the children. "Tilly vally, what will you do, Mr. More?" cried Lady Alice; "will you sit and make goslings in the ashes? it is better to rule than to be ruled." More, quietly turning to his daughters, asked whether they did not see "that her nose standeth somewhat awry."

With calm dignity he proceeded to reduce his establishment; sent his jester to the lord mayor; and consulted with his children on the best means of avoiding the breaking up of the family. His income was little more than £100 a year; Lady More must have been hard up for pin money wherewith to buy gowns, coifs, and stomachers. He wrote to Erasmus that he had at last obtained freedom from public business; and he had his epitaph inscribed in the parish church of Chelsea. He was beginning to have a foreboding of approaching danger; whether from the declining state of his health--he had been liable, through much writing, to an "ache" in his breast--or his acquaintance with the king's character, At the height of his friendship with the monarch, when congratulated by Roper on the marks of favor he was receiving, More had mournfully answered that if Henry, by beheading him, could get one castle more in France, he would not scruple to do so. During several nights, it is said, he had been sleepless under the influence of a strange, haunting anticipation; he prayed for strength, his delicate frame being averse to bodily pain--or, as he said, "his flesh could not endure a fillip."

In the mean while the king married Anne Boleyn; Cheapside ran with claret. Sir Thomas received an order to attend the procession, with twenty pounds to buy a gown; but he declined to be present. The king's displeasure began to arise. More was much esteemed, had considerable influence, and his prolonged opposition was anything but agreeable to Henry. More's enemies began to cast about for a ground of accusation against him. The adventure of the Maid of Kent furnished them with an opportunity. Elizabeth Barton was a girl of cataleptic temperament, who had visions and uttered prophecies. Unfortunately for herself and others, she meddled with politics and inveighed against the king. More complained to Cromwell that he had been accused of communicating with that "nun of Canterbury;" whereas he had written to her, "Good madam, I will hear nothing of other men's matters; and least of all of any matter of princes or of the realm." The poor "good madam" was executed at "Tiburne." More's name had been included in the act of attainder, and a royal commission was appointed to examine him. It soon became apparent that the Maid of Kent's case had little to do with this prosecution of Sir T. More, and that the real question at issue was, that he should remember the king's former favors and give his consent to that divorce which the hierarchy, parliament, and the universities had approved. More answered, meekly but firmly, that he had hoped to hear no more of that matter. In the Maid of Kent affair, his innocence was so evident that Henry was obliged to yield to the pressure of the commissioners, who besought him on their knees to dismiss More from the accusation. But More knew this was only a reprieve. The commissioners had assured the king that they would in time find another opportunity that would serve the royal turn better. "Quod differtur non aufertur," answered More, when his "Megg" congratulated him on the bill being withdrawn. There had been no chance of getting a verdict against him. But a "meet matter" for his enemies to act upon was not long in supervening. The succession to the crown for the issue of the new marriage, and the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, became law. An oath of allegiance was required. Sir T. More and Bishop Fisher were recusants. More could not be brought to imply that the marriage with Catherine had been illegal. {650} His innate nobleness made him very little anxious as to the consequences of his opposition. The Duke of Norfolk gave him advice one day. "By the mass, Mr. More, it is perilous striving with princes; therefore I would wish you somewhat to incline to the king's pleasure, for, Mr. More, 'indignatio principis mors est." We can imagine the sweet smile with which More answered, "Is that all, my lord? then in good faith the difference between your grace and me is but this, that I shall die to-day and you to-morrow."

He was too brave and merry not to despise death; but, the day he was summoned to Lambeth, he was afraid to face his family on his departure. Whenever he went down the river, they used to accompany him to the boat and be dismissed with kisses; but that morning he did not allow them to follow him. With Roper he took boat to Lambeth. There the vicar of Croydon, and many London clergy were sworn; after which proceeding, the reverend the vicar, "Either for gladness or dryness, or else that it might be seen 'quod ille notus erat pontifici,' went to my lord's buttery-bar and called for drink, and drank 'valde familiariter.'" (Sir T. More's Letters.) Sancho is ever near Quixote. Without blaming those who took the oath, More maintained that his conscience would not be satisfied if he allowed himself to be sworn. In vain did "my lord of Westminster" charge him to "change" his conscience, because the great council of the realm had determined on acknowledging the points at issue. More said his opinion was backed by the general council of Christendom. He and Roper were committed to the Tower, probably through the influence of Queen Anne, who was herself "behedded" a few years afterward.

And now his greatness showed itself in adversity, as it had before brightened his prosperity. He had something worse than a vultus instantis tyranni to endure, namely, the expostulations of his wife. Having obtained leave to visit him, she gave him a lecture in her positivistic philosophy: "I marvel that you, who hitherto have been taken for a wise man, will now so play the fool to lie here in this close, filthy prison, and be content thus to be shut up among mice and rats, when you might be abroad at your liberty, and with the favour and good-will both of the king and his council, if you would but do as all the bishops and best learned of this realme have done; and seeing you have at Chelsea a right fair house, your library, your gallery, garden, orchard, and all other necessaries so handsome about you, where you might, in the company of me, your wife, your children, and household, be merry, I muse what a God's name you mean here still thus fondly to tarry." His daughter Margaret, however, proved a better comfort to him. She, too, attempted to persuade him to take the oath; he playfully compared her to Eve, thinking more of his body than his soul. She quoted all the instances of great doctors who had taken the oath. At last she said that, like Cressida in Chaucer, she was at her wit's end; what could she say more but that his jester had said, "Why does not he take the oath? I have done so," and that she herself had taken it? More than a year did he stay in that prison, to the detriment of his health. He was then tried and found guilty. On his return from the trial, when he landed at the Tower-wharf, his poor daughter rushed from the crowd and kissed him frantically several times. One more letter did he write to her with a coal. As he had once written, pecks of "cole" would not have sufficed to express all his love for her. He expressed himself much indebted to the king, who was sending him out of this wretched world. He wanted to go on the scaffold in his best clothes, and sent the executioner a piece of gold. On the platform he evinced that mixture of gayety and piety which was characteristic of him. The structure being somewhat cranky, "I pray see me up safe," he said, "and for my coming down, let me shift for myself." {651} He then knelt down and said a psalm. He then addressed the executioner: "Thou will do me this day a greater benefit than ever any mortal man can be able to give me. Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thy office. My neck is very short; take heed, therefore, that thou strike not awry, for saving thy honesty." When about to lay his head on the block, he craved time to remove his beard, "as that had never committed treason." "So, with great alacrity and spiritual joy, he received the fatal blow of the axe, which, no sooner had severed the head from the body, but his soul was carried by angels into everlasting glory."

Margaret bought his head, enclosed it in a leaden box, and it was afterward buried with her at Canterbury. In the nineteenth century, the head was found, with the metal covering corroded away in front. (See Gentleman's Magazine, 1837.)

Dr. Lark, rector of Chelsea, and More's friend, was so influenced by More's death that he soon after denied the supremacy, and was executed. More's death made a deep impression on men's minds throughout Europe. When the report of the execution reached the king, he looked steadfastly on Anne, and said, "Thou art the cause of this man's death," and soon after retired in sadness to his chamber. Scarcely, however, can readers of history deplore a death which brought out the beauty of such a character.

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The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.

By Clonfert.

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