Chapter VIII

Chapter VIII

As might have ben supposed, Dick was at Mr. Brandon's office long before that gentleman made his appearance down-town. It was a sultry morning, with occasional snatches of rain to make the gloomy streets more gloomy, and the depressing atmosphere more depressing. Mr. Brandon was sensitive to heat; he had no cool summer retreat to go to in the evenings, and return from with a rose in his button-hole in the mornings; and as, instead of being grateful for the many years in which he had enjoyed this luxury, he was disposed to consider himself decidedly ill-used in not having it still, so soon as he found Dick waiting for him, he began his repinings in the most querulous of all his tones:

"Pretty hard on a man who has had his own country-place, and been his own lord and master, to come down to this blistering old hole every morning, isn't it, Mr. Heremore? Well, well, some people have no feeling! There are those old nabobs who were hand and glove with me, mighty glad of a dinner with me, and where are they now? Do they come around with 'How are you, Brandon?' and invitations to their dinners? Indeed not!"

"Mr. Brandon, I have come to talk to you about some business," began Dick, who had prepared a dozen introductions, all forgotten at the needed moment; then abruptly, "Mr. Brandon, did you ever hear my name, the name of Heremore before?"

It would be false to say that Mr. Brandon showed any emotion beyond that of natural surprise at the abruptness of the question; but it is safe to add that the surprise was very great, almost exaggerated. He replied, coolly enough, as he hung up his hat and sat down, wiping his face with his handkerchief: "Heremore? It is not, so to say, a common name; and I may or may not have heard it before. One who has been in the world so long as I have, Mr. Heremore, can hardly be expected to know what names he has or has not heard in the course of his life. I suppose you ask for some especial reason."

"I do," said Dick, a little staggered by the other's unembarrassed reply, "Did you not once know a gentleman in Wiltshire, called Dr. Heremore?"

"This is close questioning from a young man in your position to an old gentleman in mine, and I am slightly curious to know your object in asking before I reply."

"I believe you were married twice, Mr. Brandon, and that your first wife's maiden name was Heremore?"

"Well--and then?"

"And that she died while you were away, believing you were dead; and and that she had two children," said Dick, who began to feel uneasy under the steady, smiling gaze of the other--"and that she had two children, a son and a daughter."

"Almost any one can tell you that my family consists of my first wife's daughter, and two sons by my second wife. But that's of no consequence. Two children, a son and a daughter, you were saying."

"Yes, two; although you may have been able to trace only one. She died in great poverty, did she not?"

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"I decline answering any questions, I am highly flattered--charmed, indeed--at the interest you show in my family by these remarks; and I can only regret that my fortunes are now so low that I know of no way in which to prove my grateful appreciation of the manner in which you must have labored in order to know so much. In happier times, I might have secured you a place in the police department; but unfortunately, I am a ruined man, unable to assist any one at present."

At this speech, which was delivered in the most languid manner, and in a tone that was infinitely more insulting than the words, Dick was on the point of thrusting his mother's letter before the man's eyes, to show by what means he had obtained his knowledge; but the cool words, the indifferent manner, had a great effect upon our hero, who found it every moment more difficult to believe in the theory that from the first had seemed so likely to be the real one, and so he answered respectfully:

"I assure you, I mean no rudeness to you, Mr. Brandon; but I am engaged in the most serious business in the world, for me. I may be mistaken in you, and shall not know how to atone for the mistake, should I come to know it; but I hope you will be sure of my respectful intention, however I may err."

Mr. Brandon bowed, smiled, and played with his pen, as if the conversation were drawing to a close. Dick, heated and more embarrassed than ever, was obliged to recommence it.

"But was not your first wife's name Heremore? I beg you to answer me this one question, for all depends upon it."

"A very sufficient reason why I should not answer it. But as you to have something very interesting to disclose, perhaps we had better imagine that her name was Heremore before it was Brandon. Permit me to ask if, in that case, I am to own a relation in you? I certainly cannot make such a connection as advantageous as I could a year or so ago; but though I cannot prove the rich uncle of the romances, I shall be glad to know what scion of my wife's noble house I have the honor of addressing."

It seems easy to have answered "your son" but the words would not come. More and more the whole thing seemed a dream. What! a man so hardened that he could sit before his own son, whom by this time he must have known to be his son, and talk after this fashion of his dead wife's house! Impossible! If, then, he should tell his tale, and tell it to an unconcerned listener, what a sacrilege he would commit!

"A very near relative," Dick said at last. "I know that Dr. Heremore's daughter married a Charles Brandon about twenty-five years ago."

"Ah! I see! And you thought there was but one Charles Brandon in in the world! You see I shall have to learn a lesson in politeness from you; for I could conceive that there should be room in this world even two Richard Heremores."

Poor Dick was silenced for the moment. He knew he was taking up Mr. Brandon's time, and so the time of his employer. He walked up and down the little office and thought it all over. Certain passages in his mother's letter came to his mind. In this way, perhaps, had her appeals been sneered at in the olden times!

"Mr. Brandon," he said, standing in front of his tormentor, his whole appearance changed from that of the hesitating, embarrassed boy to the resolute, high-spirited man-- "Mr. Brandon, there has been enough trifling. {65} I insist upon knowing if you were or were not the husband of Miss Heremore. If you were not, it is a very simple thing to say so. There are plenty of ways by which I can make myself certain of the fact without your assistance; but out of consideration for you, I came to you first."

"I am deeply grateful," with a mock ceremonious bow.

"But if you persist in this way of treating me, I shall have to go elsewhere."

"And then?"

"Heaven knows I do not ask anything of you, beyond the information I came to seek. I wondered yesterday why she should have given me her father's name instead of mine; now I can understand it. I had doubts while first speaking to you, but now they are gone. I believe it is so. If you will not tell me as much as you know of Dr. Heremore, I can go to his old home for it. It would have saved me time and expense if you had answered my questions; but as you please."

He was clearly in earnest. Mr. Brandon saw it, and stopped him at the door.

"My wife's name was Heremore," he said very indifferently, "and her father has been dead these twenty years. You have your answer. Permit me to ask what you mean to do about it?"

"Dr. Heremore was my grandfather," said Dick, coming back and sitting down.

"Ah! indeed!" politely; "he was a very excellent old gentleman in his way; it is much to be regretted that he and you should have been unable to make each other's acquaintance."

"When my mother--your first wife--died, you knew she left two children."

"One--a daughter. I think you have met her."

"There were two. I was the other."

"Are you quite sure?" asked Mr. Brandon in the same languid tones; but, for the first time, it seemed to Dick that they faltered.

"I am quite sure. You would know her writing."

"Possibly. It was a great while ago, and my eyes are not as good as they were."

"You would recognize her portrait?"

"If one I had seen before, I might."

"I should say this was a portrait of the first Mrs. Brandon," he said, taking that which Dick handed him and, looking at it, not without some signs of embarrassment, "or of someone very like her. And this is not unlike her writing, as I remember it. Oh! you wish me to read this?"

Dick signed assent, watching him while he read. Whatever Mr. Brandon felt while reading that letter, he kept it all in his own heart.

"This is all?" he asked when he had read and deliberately refolded it.

"It is all at present," answered Dick.

Then Mr. Brandon arose, handed the paper back, and said very quietly but deliberately:

"My first wife is dead and gone; her daughter lives with me, and, as long as I had the means, received every luxury she could desire. The past is past, and I do not wish it revived. Understand me. I do not wish it revived. I want to hear nothing more, not a word more, on this subject. If I were rich as I once was, I could understand why you should persist in this thing. I am not yet so poor that the law cannot protect me from any further persecution about the matter. Your mother, you say, named you for your grandfather, not for me. {66} If you wish paternal advice--all that my poverty would enable me to give, however I were disposed--I advise you to go for it to her father, for whom she showed her judgment in naming you. Good morning."

"You cannot mean this! You must have known me as a child, and known my name before, long, long ago, and surely consented to it, or she would not have so named me. Of course, it was by some mistake the Brandon was dropped at first, not by her, but by those who took care of me when she died; she could never have meant such a thing; it was undoubtedly an accident. You cannot mean to end all here--that I am not to know, to see, my sister!"

"I tell you I wish to hear not another word of this matter; do you hear me? Have I not troubles enough now without your coming to bring up the hateful past? You shall not add to your sister's, whatever you may do to mine."

"I insist upon seeing her."

"You shall not. I positively forbid you to go near her. Now leave me! I have borne enough."

"But I cannot let the matter rest here; you know I cannot. The idea of it is absurd! If you do not wish me for a son, I have no desire to force myself upon you. I do not know why you should refuse to own me; I am not conscious of any cause I have given you to so dislike me."

"I don't dislike you, nor do I like you particularly; I have no ill-feeling against you, but I don't want this old matter dragged up. I am not strong enough to bear persecution now."

"But I do not want to persecute you. I want--"

"Well, what do you want?"

"I hardly know. I may have had an idea that you would welcome your oldest child after so many years of loss, however unworthy of you he might be. I may have thought that if you once were not all you should have been to one who, likely, was at one time very dear to you, it might be a satisfaction to you, even at this late day, to retrieve--"

"You thought wrong, and it is not worth while wasting words on the matter. I have got over all that, and don't want it revived. I can't put you out, but I beg you to go; or, if you persist in forcing your words upon me, pray choose some other subject."

"I will go, since you so heartily desire it; but I warn you that I will not give up seeing Miss--my sister."

"As you please. You will get as little satisfaction there, I fancy; though it may not be quite as annoying to her as to me."

"I shall try, at all events."

"Try. Go to her; say anything to her; make any arrangement with her you choose; take her away altogether. I don't care a button what you do, so you only leave me."

"I will leave you willingly, and am indeed sorry to have put you to so much pain."

"Not a word, I pray you," answered Mr. Brandon, now polite and smiling. "You have performed a disagreeable duty in the least disagreeable way you could, I do not doubt. All I ask is, never to hear it mentioned again."

Dick stayed for no more ceremony. Glad to be released from such an atmosphere of selfishness and cowardice, he hardly waited for the answer to his good-morning before turning to the street.

In less than an hour he was in the dreary room, with boarding-house stamped all over its walls, saying good-morning to a stately young lady, very pale and weary-looking, who kindly rose to receive him. {67} The little room was hot and close; there were no shutters to the windows; the shades were too narrow at the sides; besides being so unevenly put up that the eyes ached every time one turned toward them, and the gleaming light was almost worse than the heat.

"I have been trying for the dozenth time to straighten them," said Mary, drawing one down somewhat lower, "but it's of no use."

"Are they crooked?" asked Dick innocently.

"Well, yes, rather," answered Mary, smiling. "I think I never saw anything before that was so near the perfection of crooked."

"I have seen your father this morning," Dick began, taking a chair near the table.

"There is nothing the matter, I hope?" she questioned nervously.

"Nothing that any one but myself need mind. I made some discoveries about myself last evening that I would like to tell you. Have you time?"

"I have nothing to do. I shall be very glad if my attentive listening can do you any service." She moved her chair, in a quiet way, a little farther from his, and looked at him in some surprise. She saw he was very earnest, excited, and greatly embarrassed. She could not help seeing that his eyes were anxiously following her every movement, eagerly trying to read her face.

"I am afraid I shall shock you very much, and you are not well; I am sorry I came. I thought only of my own eagerness to see you; not, until this moment, of the pain I may cause you."

"Do not think of that. I do not think, Mr. Heremore, you are likely to say anything that should pain me. I think you too sensible--I mean, too gentlemanly for that."

"I hope you really mean that. I am sure I must seem very rude and unpolished in your eyes; but I would have been far more so, had it not been for you."

"For me?"

"Yes." And he told her about the Christmas morning in Fourteenth Street.

"And you remembered that little thing all this time!" Mary exclaimed. "And you were once a newsboy!"

"Yes; I was once a great, stupid, ragged newsboy. I do not mean to deny, to conceal anything. I am so very sorry, for your sake; but I hope you will like me in spite of it all. If just those few words and that one smile did so much for me, what is there your influence may not do?"

"Mr. Heremore, I do not in the least understand you."

"I don't know where to begin; this has excited me so that I do not know what I am saying, and now I wish almost that you might never know it; there is such a difference between us that I cannot tell how to begin."

"Is it necessary that you should begin?" asked Mary. "You told me you wished to speak to me, of some discoveries you had made in regard to yourself. To anything about yourself I will listen with interest; but I do not care to have anything said about myself; there can be no connection between the two subjects that I can see; so pray do not waste words on so poor a subject as myself; but tell me the discovery, if you please."

"But it concerns you as much as it does me. Do you know much about your own mother? She died, you told me, long ago."

"I know very little about her. I presume her death was a great grief to papa; for he has never permitted a word to be said about her, and anything that pains papa in that way is never alluded to. {68} The little I do know I have learned from my old nurse."

"You do not remember her?"

"Not in the least; she died when I was a mere baby."

"Did you ever see her portrait, or any of her writing, or hear her maiden name?"

"No, to all your questions. Does papa know you are here, this morning?"

"Yes; I went to him at once. At first he was very determined I should not see you; but in the end, he seemed glad to get me silenced at any price, and I was so anxious to see you that I did not wait for very cordial permission."

"You did not talk to papa about my mother?"

"Yes, that is what I went for."

"How did you dare to do it? Was he not very angry? I am sure you know something about mamma."

"Yes, I do. I have her portrait; this is it."

"Her portrait! My mamma's portrait! O what a beautiful face! Is this really my mamma? Did papa see it? Did he recognize it?"

"I showed it to him. He did not deny it was hers."

"Deny it was hers! What in the world do you mean, Mr. Heremore? Where did you get it?"

Then Dick, in the best way he could, told the whole story of the box, and gave her the letter to read. When Mary came to the part which said, "Will you love your sister always, let what may be her fate? Remember, always, she had no mother to guide her," she turned her eyes, full of tears, to Dick, saying no words.

"She did not know that it would be the other way," Dick replied to her look, his own eyes hardly dry. "She would have begged for me if she had known that--" farther than this he could not get. Mary put her hands in his, and said earnestly:

"No need for that; her pleading comes just as it should. Will you really be my brother--all wearied, sick, and worn-out as I am? Oh! if this had only come two years ago, I could have been something to you!"

But Dick could not answer a word, He could only keep his eyes upon her face; afraid, as it seemed, that it would suddenly prove all a dream.

But the day wore on and it did not prove less real. The heat and the glaring light were forgotten, or not heeded, while the two sat together and talked of this strange story, and tried to fill up the outlines of their mother's history.

"I feel as if our grandpapa were living, or, if not living, there must be somebody who knows something about him," she said.

"I think I ought to go and see. Mr. Staffs was very particular in urging that."

"I think so; even if you learned nothing, it would be a good thing for you just to have tried."

"I know I can get permission to stay away for a few days longer; there's nothing doing at this season, Would it take long?"

"I don't know much about it; not more than two days each way, I should think. There is a steamer, too, that goes to Portland, and you can find out if Wiltshire is near there. The steamer trip would be splendid at this season. Are you a good sailor?"

"I don't know. You have got a great ignoramus for a brother. I have never been half a day's journey from New York in my life."

"Is that so? Well, you must go to Portland. How you will enjoy the strong, bracing sea-breezes; they make one feel a new life!"

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Then suddenly Dick's face grew very red, but bright, and he said eagerly: "Would you trust me--I mean could your father be persuaded--would you be afraid to go with me?"

"Oh! I wish I could! I would enjoy it as I never did a journey before! Just to see the sea again, and with a brother! I can't tell you how I have all my life envied girls with great, grown-up brothers. Nobody else is ever like a brother. Fred and Joe are younger than I, and have been away so much that they never seemed like brothers. A journey with you on such a quest would be something never to be forgotten."

"It doesn't seem as if such a good thing could come to pass," answered Dick. "I don't know anything about travelling; you would have to train me; but if you will bear with me now, I will try hard to learn. Do you think your father would listen to the idea?"

"No; he would not listen to ten words about it. He hates to be troubled; he would never forgive me if I went into explanations about an affair that did not please him; but if I say, 'Papa, I am going away for a couple of weeks to New England, unless you want me for something,' he will know where I am going, what for, and will not mind, so he is not made to talk about it; that is his way."

"Will you really go, then, with me? You know I shall not know how to treat you gallantly, like your grand beaux."

"Ah! don't put on airs, Mr. Dick; you were not so very humble before you knew our relationship. Remember, I have known you long."

"I wonder what you thought of me."

"I thought a great deal of good of you; so did papa, so does Mr. Ames."

"You know Mr. Ames?"

"Ah! very well indeed; he comes to see us every New Year's day; he actually found us out this year, and I got to liking him more than ever; he has come quite often since, and we talked of you; he says you are a good boy. I am going to be grande dame to-day, and have lunch brought up for us two, unless Madame the landlady is shocked."

"Does that mean I have staid too long?"

"No, indeed. Mrs. Grundy never interferes with people with clear consciences, at least in civilized communities; in provincial cities, and country towns she will not let you turn around except as she pleases; that's the difference. There are no bells in this establishment, or, if there are, nobody ever knew one to be answered, so I will start on a raid and see what I can discover."

In course of time she returned with a servant, who cleared the little rickety table, and then disappeared, returning at the end of half an hour with a very light lunch for two; but that was not her fault, poor thing!

Then hour after hour passed and still Dick could not leave her; he had gone out and bought a guidebook, which required them to go all over the route again, and there was so much of the past life of each to be told and wondered at, that it was late in the afternoon and Mr. Brandon's hand was on the door before Dick had thought of leaving. Of course he must remain to see Mr. Brandon, who, however, did not seem any too glad to see him. Nothing was said in regard to the matter which had been all day under discussion. Mr. Brandon talked of the news of the day, of the weather, and the last book he had read, accompanied him to the door, and shook hands with him quite cordially, to the surprise of the landlady, who was peeping over the banisters in expectation of high words between them. {70} Mr. Brandon even went so far as to speak of him as a very near relative, as several of the boarders distinctly heard. Mr. Brandon hated to be talked to on disagreeable subjects, but he knew the world's ways all the same.

"Come very early to-morrow morning," Mary said in a low voice as they parted, "and I will let you know if I can go."

Dick did not forget this parting charge, and early the next morning had the happiness of hearing that her father had consented to let her go.

"Papa isn't as indifferent as he seems," she said. "When it is all fixed and settled, he will treat you just as he does the rest of us, only he hates a scene and explanations. I suppose he was unkind to poor mamma, and now hates to say a word about it; but you may be sure he feels it. And now you must take everything for granted, come and go just as if you had always been at home with us, and he will take it so."

"But what will people say?"

"Why, we will tell the truth, only as simply as possible--as if it were an everyday affair--that papa's first wife died while he was away from home, and that when he returned from Paris, where he says he was then, the people told him you were dead too. I don't know why that old woman should have told such a story."

"Nor I, but perhaps, poor, ignorant soul, she thought the boy was better under her charge than given over to a 'Protestant,' who had acted so like a heathen to the child's mother; but good as was her motive, and perhaps her judgment, I hope she did not really tell a lie about it, so peace to her soul. Who knows how much Dick owes to her pious prayers?"

A very proud and happy man was Dick in these days, when he journeyed to Maine with his newly-found sister. It is true that the change in Mr. Brandon's circumstances did not enable Mary to have a new travelling suit for the occasion, and that she was obliged to wear a last year's dress; but last year's dress was a very elegant one, and almost "as good as new;" for Mary, fine lady that she was, had the taste and grace of her station, and deft fingers, quick and willing servants of her will, that would do honor to any station; so her dress was all à la mode, and Dick had reason to be proud of escorting her. She had, however, something more than her dress of which to be proud, or Dick would not have been so grateful for finding her his sister; she had a kind heart, which enabled her always to answer readily all who addressed her, to make her constantly cheerful with Dick, and to keep everything smooth for the inexperienced traveller, who otherwise would have suffered many mortifications; she had, too, a womanly dignity, a sense of what was due to and from her, not as Miss Brandon, but as a woman, which secured her from any incivility and made her always gentle and considerate to every one. Dick could never enough delight in the quiet, composed way in which she received attentions which she never by a look suggested; for the gentle firmness, the self-possession, the quiet composure, the perfect courtesy of a refined and cultivated woman were new things to him; and to say he loved the very ground she walked on would be only a mild way of expressing the feeling of his heart toward her.

Added to all this, giving to everything else a greater charm, Mary's mind was always alive; she had been thoroughly educated, and had mingled all her life with intelligent and often intellectual people, whose influence had enabled her to seek at the proper fountains for entertainment and instruction. {71} Whatever passed before her eyes, she saw; and whatever she saw, she thought about. In her turn, Mary already dearly loved her brother; although two years younger than he, she was, as generally happens at their age, much more mature, and she could see, as if with more experienced eyes, what a true, honest heart, what thorough desire to do right, what patience and what spirit, too, there was in him, and again and again said to herself, "What would he not have been under other circumstances!" But she forgot, when saying that, that God knows how to suit the circumstances to the character, and that Dick, not having neglected his opportunities, had put his talent out to as great interest as he could under other influences. There was much that had to be broadened in his mind, great worlds of art and literature for him to enter; but there was time enough for that yet; he had a character formed to truth and earnestness, and had proved himself patient and energetic at the proper times. It now was time for new and refining influences to be brought to bear; it was time for gentleness and courtesy to teach him the value of pleasant manners and self-restraint; for the conversation of cultivated people to teach him the value of intelligent thoughts and suitable words in which to clothe them; for the knowledge of other lives and other aims to teach him the value or the mistake of his own. These things were unconsciously becoming clearer to him every day that he was with his sister, who, I need hardly say, never lectured, sermonized, or put essays into quotation marks, but whose conversation was simple, refined, and intelligent, whatever was its subject. Others greater than Mary would come after her when her work was done, we may be sure; but at the present time Dick was not in a state to be benefited by such.

To Be Continued.

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When?

Come, gentle April showers, And water my May flowers. The violet-- Blue, white, and yellow streaked with jet-- Thickly in my bed are set; Gay daffodillies, Tulips and St. Joseph's lilies; Bethlehem's star, Gleaming through its leaves afar; Merry crocuses, which quaff Sunshine till they fairly laugh; And that fragrant one so pale, Meekest lily of the vale, All are keeping whist, afraid Of this late snow o'er them laid. Come, then, gentle April showers, And coax out my pretty flowers.

I am tired of wintry days, Have no longer heart to praise Icicles and banks of snow. When will dandelions blow, And meadow-sweet, And cowslips, dipping their cool feet In little rills Gushing from the mossy hills? I am weary of this weather. Vernal breezes, hasten hither, Bringing in your dappled train, Tearful sunshine, smiling rain, And, to coax out all my flowers, Fall, fall gently, April showers.

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{73}

Translated From The French Of Le Correspondant.

Influence Of Locality On The Duration Of Human Life.

In every place there are influences which are favorable or unfavorable to the duration of human life. The nature of the soil, the atmospheric changes, the variations of the temperature, the position of one's abode with respect to the points of the compass and its elevation above the level of the sea, act in a powerful manner upon the organization.

A vast forest is one the grandest, most enchanting and enlivening scenes in nature. What an ineffable and touching harmony comes from the varieties of foliage, and what a sweet perfume they lend to the caressing breeze! What a soothing charm in their cool shade, calming the fever of life, purifying the soul from all passion, expanding and elevating the mind, and making man realize more fully his celestial origin. All men who are endowed with superior mental faculties have a natural and powerful inclination for solitude--especially the solitude of a vast forest. The soft light of its open spaces, the deep shades, the endless variety of tones from the quivering leaves, the pungent sweetness of the odors, the air full of vibrations and sparkling light, surround and penetrate them. It seems to them a glimpse of a world of mystery to which they have drawn near, and which harmonizes perfectly with all the thoughts and feelings in which they love to indulge.

Not only persons capable of reading the divine lessons written on space, love to wander in the shades of vast forests, but great noble hearts that have been wounded, also find here a balm. The soothing melancholy they drink in, the divine presence they feel, fill up the void left by some charming illusion that has been dispelled. There are special places where the air we breathe, and every exterior influence, tend to nourish and develop not only physical but intellectual life. A beneficent spirit seems to watch over the safety of humanity and to promote its happiness. The fluids, the emanations that surround us, penetrate our organization and become a part of our being; and in consequence of the wonderful sympathy between the body and soul, it is evident that they also influence our intellectual faculties.

Umbrageous forests are especially favorable to our existence; trees are devoted and faithful friends that never reproach us for their benefits, and their love is susceptible of no change, Plants are for us a real panacea. They are the natural pharmacies which Providence has established on earth for the prevention or cure of our diseases. From their wood, barks, leaves, flowers, and fruits, are exhaled essences which strengthen our organs, purify the blood, and neutralize the noxious air around us.

The history of all ages shows that those regions which are favored with vast forests have always been healthy and propitious to man; but where the forests have been cut down, those same regions have become marshy and the source of deadly miasmas, The marsh fevers which now prevail in certain parts of Asia Minor render them uninhabitable. {74} Nevertheless, ancient authors speak of marshes of small extent, but not of marsh fevers, because then the forests still remained.

A thousand years ago, La Brenne was covered with woods, interspersed with meadows. These meadows were watered by living streams. It was then a country famous for the fertility of its pastures and the mildness of its climate. Now the forests have disappeared. La Brenne is gloomy, marshy, and unhealthy. The same could be said of La Dombe, La Bresse, La Sologne, etc.

The following is a permanent example exactly to the point. In the Pontine marshes, a wood intercepts the current of damp air laden with pestilential miasmas, rendering one side of it healthy, while the other is filled with its destructive vapors. The places where forests have disappeared seem as if inhabited by evil genii, who eagerly seek to enter the human frame under the form of fevers, cholera, diseases of the lungs and liver, rheumatism, etc. For example, it is sufficient to breathe for only a few seconds in certain regions of Madagascar, or some of the fatal islands near by, for the whole organization to be instantly seized with mortal symptoms. The most robust and vigorous young man, who goes full of ardor to those shores with the hope of a bright future, affected by these miasmas, feels as if dying with the venom of the rattlesnake in his veins; and, if he recovers from his agony, it is often to drag out in sorrow the small remnant of his days. How many unfortunate people of this class have I not met during my voyage in the Indian Ocean. What a sacrilege to think of destroying these delicious and mysterious forests, with their atmosphere full of celestial vibrations, and their divine orchestra, where the breeze murmurs in a thousand tones the hymn which reveals the Creator to the creature! Every sorrow is soothed in the depths of those beneficent shades. There the soul, as well as the body, finds a repose which regenerates it. The divinity descends; we feel its presence. It moves us to the depths of our souls. It caresses us like the breath of the mother we adore!

Man may live to an advanced age in almost every climate, in the torrid as well as the frigid zone; but he cannot everywhere attain the utmost limit of human life. The examples of extreme longevity are more common in some countries than in others. Although, in general, a northern climate may be favorable to long life, too great a degree of cold is injurious. In Iceland, in the north of Asia--that is, in Siberia--man lives, at the longest, but sixty or seventy years. The countries where people of the most advanced age have been found, of late years, are Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England. Individuals of one hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty, and one hundred and fifty years of age, have been found there. Ireland shares with England and Scotland the reputation of being favorable to the duration of life. More than eighty persons above fourscore years of age have been found in a single small village of that country, called Dumsford. Bacon said that he did not think you could mention a single village of that country where there was not to be found at least one octogenarian. Examples of longevity are more rare in France, in Italy, and especially in Spain. Some cantons of Hungary are noted for the advanced age to which their inhabitants attain. Germany also has a good many old people, but few who live to a remarkable age. Only a small number are to be found in Holland. It is seldom that any one reaches the age of one hundred in that country. {75} The climate of Greece, which is as healthy as it is agreeable, is considered now, as it formerly was, favorable to longevity. The island of Naxos is specially noted in this respect. It was generally admitted in Greece that the air of Attica disposed those who breathed it to philosophy.

Examples of longevity are to be found in Egypt, and in the East Indies, principally in the caste of Brahmins and among the anchorets and hermits, who, unlike the rest of the inhabitants, do not abandon themselves to indolence and excesses of every kind.

A careful computation of the comparative longevity, in the different departments of France, has been made for 1860 and the preceding years. The medium annual number of deaths in France, at the age of one hundred years and upward, is 148. The following fifteen départements, given in decreasing order, are those which have the greatest number: Basses-Pyrenees, Dordogne, Calvados, Gers, Puy-de-Dôme, Ariége, Aveyron, Gironde, Landes, Lot, Ardèche, Cantal, Doubs, Seine, Tarn-et-Garonne. It will be seen that a great number of mountainous districts are to be found in these departments. It is surprising to see that of la Seine on this list. Nevertheless these departments do not hold the same rank in respect to the ordinary duration of life; which would seem to prove that some examples of extreme longevity are not a sufficient index that a country is favorable to long life. I give their numbers in order: Basses-Pyrénées, 7; Dordogne, 42; Calvados, 2; Gers, 9; Puy-de-Dôme, 30; Ariége, 48; Aveyron, 34; Gironde, 18; Landes, 52; Lot, 33; Ardèche, 43; Cantal, 23; Doubs, 25; Seine, 53; Tarn-et-Garonne, 13.

The fifteen departments in which ordinary life is most prolonged are: Orne, Calvados, Eure-et-Loir, Sarthe, Eure, Lot-et-Garonne, Deux-Sèvres, Indre-et-Loire, Basses-Pyrenees, Maine-et-Loire, Ardennes, Gers, Aube, Hautes-Pyrenees, et Haute-Garonne.

It is evident that places need not be very remote from each other to produce a different influence on the duration of life.

That cold is injurious to the nerves, remarks M. Reveille-Parise, is a truth almost as old as the medical art. A low temperature produces not only a painful effect upon the skin, but it benumbs and paralyzes the nerves of the extremities, and diminishes the circulation of the fluids, and this gives rise to all sorts of diseases.

Men of intellectual pursuits, having an extremely nervous susceptibility, are particularly affected by change of temperature. It is not surprising, then, to find that the mental faculties have attained their utmost degree of perfection in certain climates. Choice natures, such as poets and other men of genius, only produce the finest fruit under the influence of an ardent sun and a pure and brilliant atmosphere. It is only in warm and temperate climates that nature and life are most lavish of their treasures; there we find genuine creations; elsewhere are imitations only, with the exception of the physical sciences, which depend on continued observation. It is remarkable that, if the men of the North have conquered the South, the opinions of the South have always held sway in the North. Besides, fertility of the soil and a mild temperature set man free, in southern countries, from all present care and all anxiety respecting the future, and infuse that blissful serenity of soul so favorable to the flights of the imagination. In the misty climate of the north, he has to struggle incessantly against the influence of the weather, which so greatly diminishes the powers of the mind. {76} This struggle is almost always a disadvantage to the minds of men, who are particularly impressible and often reduced to a state of muscular enervation. Cold, dampness, fogs, violent winds, sudden changes of temperature, frequent rains, endless winters, uncertain summers with their storms and unhealthy exhalations, are fearful enemies to an organization which is delicate, nervous, irritable, suffering, and exhausted.

The state of the atmosphere, then, acts powerfully on the mental faculties. There are really days when the mind is not clear. The thoughts, sometimes so free and abundant, are suddenly arrested. The sources of the imagination are expanded and contracted according to the degrees of the barometer and thermometer. The different seasons of the year have more influence than may be thought, upon the master-pieces of art, upon the affections, the events of life and even upon political catastrophes. History relates that Chancellor de Cheverny warned President de Thou that if the Duke de Guise irritated the mind of Henry III during a frost, (which rendered him furious,) the king would have him assassinated; and this really happened on the twenty-third of December, 1588.

The Duchess d'Abrantès says:

"Napoleon could not endure the least cold without immediate suffering. He had fires made in the month of July, and did not understand why others were not equally affected by the least wind from the northeast. It was Napoleon's nature to love air and exercise. The privation of these two things threw him into a violent condition. The state of the weather could be perceived by the temper he displayed at dinner. If rain or any other cause had prevented him from taking his accustomed walk, he was not only cross but suffering."

We read in the Journal of Eugénie de Guerin:

"With the rain, cold winds, wintry skies, the nightingales singing from time to time under the dead leaves, we have a gloomy month of May. I wish my soul were not so much influenced by the state of the atmosphere and variations of the seasons, as to be like a flower that opens or closes with the cold and the sun. It is something I do not understand, but so it is as long as my soul is imprisoned in this frail body."

Ask the poets, artists, and men of thought, if a lively feeling of energy and of joy, prompting to action and labor; or, otherwise, if a certain state languor--of strange and undefinable uneasiness--does not make them dependent on the state of the atmosphere.

It may be considered, then, as an established principle, that a temperate climate, mild seasons, and pure air constantly, renewed constitute not only the highest physical enjoyment but the indispensable conditions of health.

The physical character of places has a truly astonishing effect upon man. A distinguished traveller, M. Trémaux, has endeavored to prove, in several mémoires to the Académie des Sciences, that man be changed from the Caucasian to the negro type simply by this influence. He calls attention to the coincidences that exist between the physical types and the geological nature of the countries acting especially through their products. The least perfect, or rather, the type which is farthest removed from our own, belongs to the oldest lands, and, in a subsidiary manner, to climates the least favored. The most perfect belongs to the countries which, within the smallest limits, offer the greatest variety of formations, allowing the most recent to predominate, and, in a subsidiary manner, to the most favored climates. The type is also influenced by other causes of a more secondary nature which are very complex.

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The geological chart of Europe, says Mr. Trémaux, shows that the greatest surface of primitive rock formations is in Lapland, which possesses also the most inferior people; going to the south of Scandinavia, gneiss and granite occupy also a great part of the country, but that region is also connected with others more varied. It contains many lakes, and its climate is more favored, as well as its inhabitants. As to the Scandinavians of Denmark, they have a purely Germanic type and are, in effect, upon the same soil.

Russia possesses different formations of a medium age, but the extended surface of each kind does not permit its people to profit by the resources of those adjoining, and, consequently, they are but indifferently favored. If we turn to the countries which are in the best condition, we distinguish in general all the west and south of Europe, and more particularly France, Italy, Greece, the eastern part of Spain, and the north-east of England. It is here, in truth, that civilization and the intellectual faculties have most sway.

Race does not change while it remains upon the same soil and under the same natural influences; whereas, it is gradually modified, according to its new position, when it is removed to another place.

The physical influences of a region, and of mixture of race, have a distinct manner of acting. By cross-breeding, the features are at once strongly modified in individuals, but especially according to the region in which it takes place. Thus, in Europe, the mixed race is more strongly inclined to the type of the white man; in Soudan, to that of the negro. A type seems to be more readily improved than degenerated. The physical character of a place does not act in detail, but in a general manner, beginning by modifying the complexion more and more in each generation. It acts less quickly upon the hair, and more slowly still upon the features. Cross-breeding is considered the principal modifying agent only because its effects are at once perceptible, but it can explain evident facts only in an imperfect manner.

The elevation of a place above the level of the sea has a radical influence upon phthisis. With the design of indicating the regions and the degrees of elevation within which this malady is rare or completely unknown, Dr. Schnepp has made a compilation from a series of meteorological observations, made in the Pyrenees and at Eaux Bonnes, and from analogous documents furnished by travellers who have lived upon the elevated and inhabited plateaux of the old and new world.

The document on this subject which he sent to the Academy of Sciences shows that, in the choice of a healthy locality for invalids, people are too exclusively influenced by a warm temperature, disregarding the more formal indications of nature in distributing the maladies of the human race over the surface of the globe. For instance, phthisis exists in the tropical zone. In Brazil, it causes one fifth of the cases of mortality; in Peru, three tenths, and in the Antilles, from six to seven, in every thousand inhabitants. In the East Indies, the greater part of the English physicians report, among the causes of death, two cases from phthisis to every thousand people. In the temperate zones, phthisis is one of the most devastating of diseases. It generally attacks from three to four in every thousand inhabitants. The three countries in which it was not to be found, Algiers, Egypt, and the Russian steppes of Kirghis, have also been invaded by it, although in a smaller proportion, In Algeria, the deaths from phthisis are, to those from other causes, in the proportion of one to every twenty-four or twenty-seven; in Egypt, in the proportion of one to eight.

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This old malady becomes more rare as we approach the higher latitudes. It is supposed not to exist at all in Siberia, in Iceland, and in the Faroe Islands. Thus, diseases of the lungs seem to be more rare in certain cold countries than in warm countries. It is also observed that at a certain altitude the number of cases greatly diminish, and even completely disappear. Brockman testifies that phthisis is rare on the plateaux of the Hartz mountains at the height of two thousand feet above the level of the sea; and C. Fuchs, stating the same fact concerning certain elevations in Thuringia and the Black Forest, was the first to advance the theory that phthisis diminishes according to certain altitudes.

Dr. Brüggens, also, has since testified to the infrequency of this disease in the Swiss Alps, at the height of 4500 to 6000 feet in the Engaddine; nor is it found among the monks of the Great Saint Bernard at the altitude of 6825 feet. According to M. Lombard, it completely disappears among these mountains at the height of 4500 feet.

The populous cities of the American continent, which are situated in the tropical zone at an altitude of six thousand feet above the level of the sea, are exempt from lung diseases; although, in the same latitude, phthisis is common in lower regions, This immunity exists on the other hemisphere in the same zone--on the elevated plateaux of Hindostan and the Himalaya. In examining the state of the climate on the heights in which phthisis is seldom or never found, we find there, even on the equator, a medium temperature sufficiently low throughout the year; between twelve and fifteen degrees on the heights below 9000 feet; between three and five degrees on those between 9000 and 12,000 feet.

In the temperate zone it is still lower. But the warmest months upon tropical heights do not vary more than six or eight degrees from the medium temperature. It is the same on the plateaux of the Alps and in Iceland, and is a general and common characteristic of the regions in which phthisis is not found. The deviations below the annual medium, appear even to increase this immunity. If sufficient observations have not been made to decide upon the degree of comparative humidity on the heights above 12,000 feet, we know that the elevation at which phthisis is wanting, is in a hygrometrical condition more nearly approaching saturation than the lower regions, and that the rains are also more abundant there.

It is desirable that the heights of Cévennes, the Pyrenees, the Alps, and, above all, the elevated parts of our Algerian possessions should be carefully studied, with a view to the treatment of lung diseases, which are the great scourge of the human race, and which annually cause the death of more than three millions of its number.

It is useful, not only to study different countries with respect to their salubrity, but also to observe the different situations in the same locality, and the different quarters of the same city. M. Junod presented to the Academy of Sciences, some years since, an essay on this subject, which is full of interest. In considering the distribution of the population in large cities, we are struck by the tendency of the wealthy class to move toward the western portions, abandoning the opposite side to the industrial pursuits, It seems to have divined, by a kind of intuition, the locality which would have the greatest immunity in the time of sore public calamities. {79} For example, let us speak first of Paris. From the foundation of the city, the opulent class has constantly directed its course toward the west. It is the same in London, and generally, in all the cities of England. At Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and, indeed, in all the capitals of Europe, this same fact is repeated; there is the same movement of the rich toward the west, where are assembled the palaces of the kings, and the dwellings for which only pleasant and healthy sites are desired.

In visiting the ruins of Pompeii and other ancient cities, I have observed, as well as M. Junod, that this custom dates from the highest antiquity. In those cities, as is seen at Paris in our day, the largest cemeteries are found in the eastern parts, and generally none in the western. M. Junod, examining the reason of so general a fact, thinks it is connected with atmospheric pressure. When the mercury in the barometer rises, the smoke and injurious emanations are quickly dispelled in the air. When the mercury lowers, we see the smoke and noxious vapors remain in the apartments and near the surface of the earth. Now every one knows that, of all winds, that from the east causes the mercury in the barometer to rise the highest, and that which lowers it most is from the west. When the latter blows, it carries with it all the deleterious gases it meets in its course from the west. The result is, that the inhabitants of the eastern parts of a city not only have their own smoke and miasmas, but also those of the western parts, brought by the west wind. When, on the contrary, the east wind blows, it purifies the air by causing the injurious emanations to rise, so that they cannot be thrown back upon the west. It is evident, then, that the inhabitants of the western parts receive pure air from whatever quarter of the horizon it comes. We will add, that the west wind is most prevalent, and the west end receives it all fresh from the country.

From the foregoing facts, M. Junod lays down the following directions: First, persons who are free to choose, especially those of delicate health, should reside in the western part of a city. Secondly, for the same reason, all the establishments that send forth vapors or injurious gases should be in the eastern part. Thirdly and finally, in erecting a house in the city, and even in the country, the kitchen should be on the eastern side, as well as all the out-houses from which unhealthy emanations might spread into the apartments.

M. Elie de Beaumont has since mentioned some facts which tend to prove the constancy and generality of the rule laid down by M. Junod. He noticed in most of the large cities this tendency of the wealthy class to move to the same side--generally, the western--unless hindered by certain local obstacles. Turin, Liége, and Caen are examples of this. M. Moquin-Tandon has observed the same thing at Montpellier and at Toulouse. Paris and London also present analogous facts, although the rivers which traverse those two great centres flow in a diametrically different direction. Paris increased in a north-easterly direction at the time when the Bastille, the Palais des Tournelles, the Hotel St. Paul, etc., were built; but the inhabitants were then influenced by fear of the aggressive Normans, whose fleets ascended the Seine as far as Paris, and were only arrested by the Pont-au-Change. At that time, and as long as this fear lasted, they must have felt unwilling to live in Auteuil or Grenelle, But since the foundation of the Louvre, and especially since the reign of Henri Quatre, the current has resumed its normal direction. {80} M. Elie de Beaumont is inclined to believe that, among the causes of this phenomenon, we should reckon the temperature and the hygrometrical state of the air, which is generally warmer and more moist during the winds from the west and south-west than during the east and north-east winds.

What most contributes to prolong existence is a certain uniformity in heat and cold, and in the density and rarity of the atmosphere. This is why the countries in which the barometer and thermometer are subject to sudden and considerable changes are never favorable to the duration of life. They may be healthy, and man may live a long time there; but he will never attain a very advanced age, because the variations of the atmosphere produce many interior changes which consume, to a surprising degree, both the strength and the organs of life.

Too much dryness or too much humidity are equally injurious to the duration of life; yet the air most favorable to longevity is that which contains a certain quantity of water in dissolution. Moist air being already partly saturated, absorbs less from the body, and does not consume it as soon as a dry atmosphere; it keeps the organs a longer time in a state of suppleness and vigor; while a dry atmosphere dries up the fibres and hastens the approach of old age. It is for this reason, doubtless, that islands and peninsulas have always been favorable to old age. Man lives longer there than in the same latitude upon continents. Islands and peninsulas, especially in warm climates, generally offer everything that contributes to a long life: purity of air, a moist atmosphere, a temperature often at one's choice, wholesome fruit, clear water, and a climate almost unvariable. I had an opportunity, long desired, of traversing the ocean as far the Tristan Islands, and of returning to the Indian Ocean by doubling the Cape of Good Hope with a captain who wished to observe the different islands on the way. I was thus able, in going as well as returning, to visit these numerous islands, and I can speak of them from reasonable observation. But it is sufficient to mention, from a hygienic point of view, the Isle of Bourbon, (where I lived for many years,) to give an idea of the sanitary condition of islands in general. Like most isles, the Isle of Bourbon has a form more or less pyramidal. The shore, almost on a level with the sea, is the part principally inhabited. There are few villages in the interior of the island, but many private residences. The temperature on the shore, though very high, is less intense than is supposed: the medium temperature being between 40° and 50°. The sea and land breezes, which succeed each other morning and evening, refresh the atmosphere and maintain a healthy moisture. It hardly ever rains except during the winter, Besides, it is very easy to choose the temperature one prefers. As the mountains are very lofty, they afford every season at once. On the summit are seen snow and ice, while at the foot the heat is tropical; so that it is sufficient to ascend for ten or fifteen minutes to find a marked change of temperature, And the colonists of but little wealth are careful to profit by this precious favor of nature. They select two or three habitations at different heights, in order to enjoy a continual spring, During the cool season, they reside on the sea-shore. Then they go to their dwelling a little above, where the temperature is mild. And in the hot season, they ascend to still higher regions.

It is impossible to express the pleasure of thus having several dwellings at one's choice, in some one of which desirable temperature can be enjoyed in any season. {81} I had three: one at St. Denis, capital of the colony, one at La Rivière-des-Pluies, and another at La Ressource. La Rivière-des-Pluies, belonging to M. Desbassayns, a venerable old man and president of the general council, is the finest situation on the island. It was formerly called the Versailles of Bourbon. I inhabited a summer-house above which the surrounding trees crossed their tufted branches, forming a dome of verdure in which the birds came to warble. Regular alleys, extending as far as the eye could reach, formed by superb mango-trees, were enclosed by parterres, groves, gardens, woods, and all the surroundings of a small village. Each large habitation in the colony had every resource within itself, and was the faithful copy of the old feudal castles.

La Ressource, a dwelling for the hottest season, belonging also to M. Desbassayns, presented another kind of beauty. There was less artistic luxury about it, but nature had lavished on it all her splendor. After dinner, admiring the panorama which was spread out as far as the horizon, I remarked to M. Desbassayns that I did not believe it possible for the entire world of nature to furnish a more beautiful perspective. "I have travelled a great deal," said he, "and in truth I have never seen anything like it, not even from the most magnificent points of view in America." The venerable old man then took me by the arm and invited me to visit his estate. He made me first look at his woods, with their tufted foliage; the cane-fields; the deep ravines; the streams, with their windings rising one above the other in such a manner that the lower ones were perfectly visible, and extending in successive circuits more or less varied to the shore of the sea, which gleamed like a mirror as far as the eye could reach, and upon the azure surface of which stood clearly out, like silver clouds, the white sails from all parts of the world which had given each other rendezvous here, and were constantly approaching this isle of lava, flowers, shadows, and light, which they had taken as the centre of réunion.

He made me afterward notice the verdant fields which had formerly belonged to the parents of Virginia, the heroine of the romance of Bernardin de St. Pierre. He related to me the true history of Virginia, who was his cousin. Her death happened nearly as described by the celebrated romancer. He made me notice, upon his genealogical tree, the branch that bore upon one of its leaves the name of Virginia!

M. Desbassayns had promised me some reliable notes respecting her, and I was glad to offer them to my illustrious friend, Count Alfred de Vigny, who, in giving me a farewell embrace, had commissioned me to bear his most tender expressions of love to the region which had inspired the touching narrative of St. Pierre. But alas! remorseless death warns us to remember the uncertainty of life, even when everything disposes us to forget it.

He took me to one after another of the most interesting trees, particularly to the arbre du voyageur, a kind of banana, the leaves of which are inserted within one another like those of the iris, so as to form, at the height of eight or nine feet, a vast fan. Rain-water, and particularly dew, accumulates at the bottom of these leaves, as in a natural cup, and is kept very fresh; and if the base is pierced with a narrow blade, the liquid will flow out in a thread-like stream, which it is easy to receive in the mouth. The venerable old man opened one of their vegetable veins by way of example, and I soon lanced a great number of these providential trees, and refreshed myself with their limpid streams.

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Finally, he conducted me by a narrow path to the edge of a deep ravine in which flowed an abundant torrent, forming capricious cascades as it wound its way. After passing over a rustic bridge, an admirable spectacle was presented to our view. An alley was formed through a wilderness of bamboos, so sombre, so narrow, and high, that it would be difficult to give an idea of it. It was as if pierced through a forest of gigantic pipes; and when they were agitated by a storm, they produced a harmony so plaintive, so languid, and at the same time so terrible and full of poetry, that I often passed the entire night in listening to it. I am not astonished by what is related of these tall and sonorous culms.

In those fortunate countries that are shaded by the bamboo, it is said that happy lovers and suffering souls make holes in these long pipes and combine them in such a way that, when the wind blows, they give out a faithful expression of their joy or their grief. Nothing is sweeter than the tones that are thus produced by the evening breeze which attunes these harmonious reeds, rendering them at once aeolian harps and flutes. As soon as I found out this magical pathway, I betook myself there every day at the dawn, to read, to meditate, and to take notes till the hour of dinner. The next day after this visit, I had the curiosity to destroy one of the arbre du voyageur. It inundated me with its fresh stream, but I came near being punished for this profanation of nature, at the moment I expected it the least. A most formidable centipede escaped from the splinters which I made fly, and only lacked a little of falling directly on my face. M. Desbassayns was greatly astonished to see it; for it is generally believed, he said, that these venomous insects avoid this beneficent tree.

The enchanting heavens of that privileged region are always serene, and the air is so pure that no gray tint ever appears on the horizon; the mountains, hills, meadows, every remote object indeed, instead of fading away in a dim atmosphere, beam out against a sky of cloudless azure. This is what renders the equatorial nights so resplendent. The astonished eye thinks it beholds a new heavens and new stars. How charming is the moonlight that comes in showers of light through a thousand quivering leaves which murmur in the breath of the perfumed breeze! and when to that is joined the far-off moan of the sea, and the sounds that escape from the ivory keys or resounding chords, which accompany the sweet accents of a Creole voice, we feel as if in one of those islands of bliss which surpass the imagination of the poets.

One of the things that travellers have not sufficiently noticed, and which gives us a kind of homesickness for that beautiful region, is the enchanting harmony which results from the noise of the sea and the murmur of the breeze in the different kinds of foliage, a harmony which calms the agitation of the soul as well as the fever of the body. As there is every variety of temperature, so there is a great variety of trees. There is one especially remarkable, namely, the pandanus, which resembles both the pine and the weeping willow, Its summit is lost in the blue sky, and its numerous branches, borne by a pliant and elegant stem, support large tassels of leaves, long, cylindrical, and fine as hair; and when the breeze makes them tremble in its breath, they murmur in plaintive melancholy notes that, when once heard, we long to hear again and again.

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The cocoanut or palm-trees, with their leaves long, hard, and shining like steel, give out a sound like the clash of arms. The gigantic leaves of the banana are the echo of the voice of an overflowing torrent, piercing the air like the vast pipes of an organ. The bamboos, with their tall reeds which moan and grind as they bend, uttering long groans which, mingling with the tones, the wailing, and the murmurs of a thousand other kinds of foliage, with the deep roar of the agitated sea afar off, and the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, form an immense natural orchestra, the varied sounds of which, rising toward heaven, seem to bear with them, in accents without number, all the joys and all the griefs of the world.

These trees with their tall, slender stems, and thick foliage, are continually bending in the incessant breeze, In the brilliant light of that climate their shadow looks black; and, as it is continually moving, you would think everything animate, and that sylphs and fairies were issuing forth on all sides.

There is a constant succession of flowers with the strongest perfume; and when those of the wood are in bloom, you would think that every blade of grass, every leaf and every drop of dew gave out an essence which the wind, in passing, absorbed in order to perfume with it the happy dwellers in this Eden.

Those enchanted regions have inhabitants worthy of their abode. The hospitality of the Creoles is proverbial. Every family is glad to receive the stranger and soon considers him as a friend and brother. The Creole women have the elegance of their palm-trees. They are as fresh and blooming as the corolla that expands at the dawn. Their kind courtesy envelops you like the penetrating odors which come from the wonderful vegetation that surrounds them. A Frenchman who meets another Frenchman in these far-off countries regards him as a part of France which has come to smile an him, and the intimacy, which is formed, is indissoluble.

The traveller can never forget the touching scenes of the varangue, the enchanting evenings passed there, and the joyous cup of friendship there interchanged; sweet emotions contributing to longevity more than is commonly believed.

One finds one's self in that fortunate land surrounded by hygienical influences which are most favorable to a long life. Let us add that the alimentary productions are of the first quality. The water in the stony basins is limpid, and the succulent fruits are varied enough to almost suffice for the nourishment of the inhabitants. How can one be a favorite of fortune and a prey to spleen without going to visit these places, which exhale a sovereign balm?

Nevertheless, under that sky brilliant with pure light, in that atmosphere of freshness of perfume and of harmony, it seemed to me that a tint of infinite melancholy was everywhere diffused. I regarded the glorious sky, I listened to the trembling foliage, I breathed the penetrating odors, but something was everywhere wanting. When I sought what it was that I missed, I found it was the trees of my native land, which do not grow in every zone, and where they do grow are not so fine as here. I instinctively sought the wide-spreading oak, the lofty walnut, the chestnut with its tender verdure, the tall slender poplar, the modest willow, and the birch with its light shadow. I recalled the odor of their foliage, associated with my dearest remembrances, but in vain. I felt then an immense and inexpressible void that nothing could fill, and tears naturally sprang from these vague and profound impressions. {84} I hungered, I thirsted for the odor of the trees that had overshadowed my infancy--an insatiable hunger, a thirst nothing could satisfy. On returning from that remote voyage, especially during the first weeks, I went to the nursery of the Luxembourg, (alas! poor nursery!) I sought the fresh shades of the Bois de Boulogne, and there, during long rambles, I crushed the leaves in my hands and inhaled the perfume they gave out. I felt my lungs expand, as if a new life was infused into them with the odor I breathed. This invisible aliment which we derive from the exhalations of the plants to which we have been accustomed from infancy, had become for me an absolute necessity, a condition of health.

A climate, a country may not at all times be favorable to longevity, or at all times unhealthy. The predominance of one industrial pursuit over another, the choice of one material instead of another for building houses, or a sudden change in the general habits, necessarily modifies, in a great degree, the conditions of longevity. This is what has happened in the Isle of Bourbon. Till within a few years, no epidemic or contagious malady was known in that fortunate island; no fever, no cholera, no throat complaints, no small-pox, etc. But all these diseases have attacked its inhabitants since our manures, our materials for building, and our products in general, have been used by them in large quantities.

The drying up of a marsh, the cutting down of a forest, the substitution of one crop for another, may effect atmospheric changes through an extended radius, which will strengthen or weaken the vitality of the people. Some years since, there was a marsh behind the city of Cairo, which was separated from the desert by a hill. It was always noticed that the pestilential epidemics appeared to spring from that unhealthy spot and finally to spread throughout the east. The Pacha of Egypt, without thinking of this coincidence, noticed, on the other hand, that the hill behind the marsh entirely concealed the fine view which he would have from his palace, if it were removed. He gave orders to cut the hill down and to fill up the marsh with its débris, so that the winds which were formerly checked, had free circulation and purified the atmosphere, while the soil, thoroughly modified, ceased to emit the pestilential effluvia, Since that event the plague has not reappeared. A caprice of the Pacha effected more than all the quarantines and all the efforts of science, He has freed the world, perhaps for ever, from the most terrible of scourges.

It is known that the cholera comes from India. It is engendered in the immense triangular space formed by two rivers: the Ganges and the Brahmapootra. It is the East India Company according to M. le Comte de Waren, that should be accused of treason to humanity. It is that power which has destroyed the canals and the derivations of the two finest rivers in the world. During the last twenty-five years of English occupation the number of pools in a single district, that of Nort Arcoth, which burst or were destroyed, amounted to eleven hundred. In the time of the Mogul conquerors, a fine canal, the Doab, extending from Delhi, fertilized two hundred leagues in its course. This canal is destroyed, and the lands, once so fertile and healthy, are now the infectious lair of wild beasts, having been depopulated by disease and death.

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The hygienic condition of different countries, then, may be modified in various ways. In 1698, Bigot de Molville, president à mortier of the Parliament of Normandy, found, after careful research, that, of all the cities of France, Rouen possessed the greatest number of octogenarians and centenarians. Toward the middle of the last century this superiority was claimed by Boulogne-sur-mer, which retained it for nearly fifty years, and was then called the patrie des vieillards.

In a recent communication to the Academy, M. de Garogna remarked that, in the printed or manuscript accounts we possess respecting the former eruptions of Santorin, many very interesting details are found concerning the different maladies occasioned by these eruptions, and observed at that epoch in the island, which support what we have said of the variable hygienic state of different places. According to these reports, the pathological result of the different eruptions included especially alarming complications, serious cerebral difficulties, suffocation, and derangement in the alimentary canal. He proved that morbid influences were only manifest when the direction of the wind brought the volcanic emanations. The parts of the island out of the course of the wind showed no trace of the maladies in question. Moreover, the sanitary condition of the places within reach of the wind became worse or improved according to the rise and fall of the wind. It should also be noticed that the morbid influence of the volcanic emanations extended to islands more or less remote from Santorin.

From this report the following conclusions are to be drawn:

1. The eruption in the Bay of Santorin, while in action, had a manifest influence on the health of the people in that island.

2. It especially occasioned complicated diseases, throat distempers, bronchitis, and derangement of the digestive organs.

3. The acidiferous ashes were the direct cause of the complications, while the other morbid complaints should be attributed to sulphuric acid.

4. Vegetation was likewise affected by the eruption while active, and particularly plants of the order Siliaceae.

5. The changes in the vegetation were probably produced by hydrochloric acid, at the beginning of the eruption.

6. The hydro-sulphuric emanations appear, on the contrary, to have had a beneficial effect on the diseases of the grape-vine. It perhaps destroyed the oidium.

It is evident that the question of local influences upon the duration of life is a most comprehensive and fruitful one. Nature gives us some formal indications, in dividing the maladies of the human race; and the study of places and climates in a hygienic point of view, although in its infancy, has already brought to our notice many valuable facts. This study is full of interest. We shall doubtless arrive at a knowledge of the exact relation between such a malady, such an epidemic, and such a place, or site, or position with respect to the points of the compass, as well as of the beneficial and special influence exercised upon our principal organs by the exhalations from different places, which might well be called the genii of those regions.

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The Bishops of Rome. [Footnote 42]

[Footnote 42: Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The Bishops of Rome. New York: Harper and Brothers, January, 1869.]

Harper's Magazine, we are told, has a wide circulation, and some merit as a magazine of light literature; but it does not appear to have much aptitude for the scholarly discussion of serious questions, whatever the matter to which they relate, and it is guilty of great rashness in attempting to treat a subject of such grave and important relations to religion and civilization, society and the church, as the history of the bishops of Rome. The subject is not within its competence, and the historical value of its essay to those who know something of the history of the popes and of mediaeval Europe is less than null.

Of course, Harper's Magazine throws no new light on any disputed passage in the history of the bishops of Rome, and brings out no fact not well known, or at least often repeated before; it does nothing more than compress within a brief magazine article the principal inventions, calumnies, and slanders vented for centuries against the Roman pontiffs by personal or national antipathy, disappointed ambition, political and partisan animosity, and heretical and sectarian wrath and bitterness, so adroitly arranged and mixed with facts and probabilities as to gain easy credence with persons predisposed to believe them, and to produce on ignorant and prejudiced readers a totally false impression. The magazine, judging from this article, has not a single qualification for studying and appreciating the history of the popes. It has no key to the meaning of the facts it encounters, and is utterly unable or indisposed to place itself at the point of view from which the truth is discernible. Its animus, at least in this article, is decidedly anti-Christian, and proves that it has no Christian conscience, no Christian sympathy, no faith in the supernatural, no reverence for our Lord and his apostles, and no respect even for the authority of the Holy Scriptures.

The magazine, under pretence of writing history, simply appeals to anti-Catholic prejudice, and repeats what Dr. Newman calls "the Protestant tradition." Its aim is not historical truth, or a sound historical judgment on the character of the Roman pontiffs, but to confirm the unfounded prejudices of its readers against them. It proceeds as if the presumption were that every pope is antichrist or a horribly wicked man, and therefore every doubtful fact must be interpreted against him, till he is proved innocent. Everything that has been said against a pope, no matter by whom or on what authority, is presumptively true; everything said in favor of a Roman pontiff must be presumed to be false or unworthy of consideration. It supposes the popes to have had the temper and disposition of non-Catholics, and from what it believes, perhaps very justly, a Protestant would do--if, per impossibile, he were elevated to the papal chair, and clothed with papal authority--concludes what the popes have actually done. It forgets the rule of logic, Argumentum a genere ad genus, non valet. The pope and the Protestant are not of the same genus. We have never encountered in history a single pope that did not sincerely believe in his mission from Christ, and take it seriously. {87} We have encountered weakness; too great complaisance to the civil power, even slowness in crushing out, in its very inception, an insurgent error; sometimes also too great a regard to the temporal, to the real or apparent neglect of the spiritual, and two or three instances in which the personal conduct of a pope was not much better than that of the average of secular princes; but never a pope who did not recognize the important trusts confided to his care, and the weighty responsibilities of his high office.

We have studied the history of the Roman pontiffs with probably more care and diligence than the flippant writer in Harper's Magazine has done, and studied it, too, both as an anti-papist and as a papist, with an earnest desire to find facts against the popes, and with an equally earnest desire to ascertain the exact historical truth; and we reject as unworthy of the most fanatic sectarian the absurd rule of judging them which the magazine adopts, if it does not avow and hold that the presumption is the other way, and that everything that reflects injuriously on the character of a bishop of Rome is presumptively false, and to be accepted only on the most indubitable evidence. We can judge in this matter more impartially and disinterestedly than the anti-catholic. The impeccability of the pontiff, or even his infallibility in matters of mere human prudence, is no article of Catholic faith. The personal conduct of a pontiff may be objectionable; but unless he officially teaches error in doctrine, or enjoins an immoral practice on the faithful, it cannot disturb us. There are no instances in which a pope has done this. No pope has ever taught or enjoined vice for virtue, error for truth, or officially sanctioned a false principle or a false motive of action. With one exception, we might, then, concede all the magazine alleges, and ask, What then? What can you conclude? But, in fact, we concede nothing. What it alleges against the bishops of Rome is either historically false, or if not, is, when rightly understood, nothing against them in their official capacity.

The exception mentioned is that of St. Liberius. The magazine repeats, with some variations, the exploded fable that this Holy Pope, won by favors or terrified by threats, consented to a condemnation of the doctrine of Athanasius, that is, signed an Arian formula of faith. It has not invented the slander, but it has, after what historical criticism has established on the subject, no right to repeat it as if it were not denied. We have no space now to treat the question at length; but we assert, after a very full investigation, that St. Liberius never signed an Arian formula, never in any shape or manner condemned the doctrine defended by St. Athanasius, and consequently never recanted, for he had nothing to recant. The most, if so much, that can be maintained is, that he approved a sentence condemning the special error of the Eunomians, in which was not inserted the word "consubstantial," because it was not necessary to the condemnation of their special error, and the error they held in common with all Arians had already been condemned by the council of Nicaea. Not a word can be truly alleged against the persistent orthodoxy of this great and holy pontiff, who deserves, as he has always received, the veneration of the church.

The magazine repeats the slander of an anonymous writer, a bitter enemy of the popes, against St. Victor, St. Zethyrinus, and St. Callistus, three popes whom the Church of Rome has held, and still holds, in high esteem and veneration for their virtues and saintly character. {88} It refers to the Philosophoumena, a work published a few years ago by M. E. Miller, of Paris, variously attributed to Origen, to St. Hippolytus, bishop of Porto, near Rome, to Caius, a Roman Presbyter, and to Tertullian. The late Abbé Cruice--an Irishman by birth, we believe, but brought up and naturalized in France, where he was, shortly before his death, promoted to the episcopate--a profoundly learned man and an acute critic, has unanswerably proved that these are all unsustainable hypotheses, and that historical science is in no condition to say who was its author. Who wrote it, or where it was written, is absolutely unknown, but from internal evidence the writer was a contemporary of the three popes named, and was probably some Oriental schismatic, of unsound faith, and a bitter enemy of the popes. The work is not of the slightest authority against the bishops of Rome, but is of very great value as proving, by an enemy, that the papacy was fully developed--if that is the word--claiming and exercising in the universal church the same supreme authority that it claims and exercises now, and was as regular in its action in the last half of the second century, or within fifty or sixty years of the death of the apostle St. John, as it is under Pope Pius IX. now gloriously reigning. [Footnote 43]

[Footnote 43: Vide Histoire de l'Eglise de Rome sous les Pontificats de St. Victor, de St. Zephirin, et St. Calliste. Par L'Abbé M. P. Cruice. Paris: Didot Frères. 1856.]

When the magazine has nothing else to allege against the popes, it accuses them of "a fierce, ungovernable pride."

"The fourth century brought important changes in the condition of the bishops of Rome. It is a singular trait of the corrupt Christianity of this period that the chief characteristic of the eminent prelates was a fierce and ungovernable pride. Humility had long ceased to be numbered among the Christian virtues. The four great rulers of the Church, Bishop of Rome, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria, were engaged in a constant struggle for supremacy. Even the inferior bishops assumed a princely state, and surrounded themselves with their sacred courts. The vices of pride and arrogance descended to the lower orders of clergy; the emperor himself was declared to be inferior in dignity to the simple presbyter, and in all public entertainments and ceremonious assemblies the proudest layman was expected to take his place below the haughty churchman, As learning declined and the world sank into a new barbarism, the clergy elevated themselves into a ruling caste, and were looked upon as half divine by the rude Goths and the degraded Romans. It is even said that the pagan nations of the west transferred to the priest and monk the same awestruck reverence which they had been accustomed to pay to their Druid teachers. The Pope took the place of their Chief Druid, and was worshipped with idolatrous devotion; the meanest presbyter, however vicious and degraded, seemed, to the ignorant savages, a true messenger from the skies."

There was no patriarch of Constantinople in the fourth century, and it was only in 330 that the city of Constantinople absorbed Byzantium. The bishop of Byzantium was not a patriarch, or even a metropolitan, but was a suffragan of the bishop of Heraclea. It was not till long after the fourth century that the bishop of Constantinople was recognized as patriarch, not, in fact, till the eighth general council. There was no struggle in the fourth nor in any subsequent century, for the supremacy, between Rome and Antioch, or Rome and Alexandria; neither the patriarch of Antioch nor the patriarch of Alexandria ever claimed the primacy; but both acknowledged that it belonged to the bishop of Rome, as do the schismatic churches of the East even now, though they take the liberty of disobeying their lawful superior. In the fifth Century, when St. Leo the Great was pope, the bishop of Constantinople claimed the second rank, or the first after the bishop of Rome, on the ground that Constantinople was the new Rome, the second capital of the empire. {89} St. Leo repulsed his claim, not in defence of his own rights, for it did not interfere with his supremacy, or primacy, as they said then, but in defence of the rights of the churches of Antioch and Alexandria. He also did it because the claim was urged on a false principle--that the authority of a bishop is derived from the civil importance of the city in which his see is established.

It is not strange that the magazine should complain that the pontifical dignity was placed above the imperial, and that the simple presbyter took the step of the proudest layman; yet whoever believes in the spiritual order at all, believes it superior to the secular order, and therefore that they who represent the spiritual are in dignity above those who represent only the secular. When the writer of this was a Protestant minister, he took, and was expected to take, precedence of the laity. The common sense of mankind gives the precedence to those held to be invested with the sacred functions of religion, or clothed with spiritual authority.

That St. Jerome, from his monastic cell near Jerusalem, inveighs against the vices and corruptions of the Roman clergy, as alleged in the paragraph following the one we have quoted, is very true; but his declamations must be taken with some grains of allowance. St. Jerome was not accustomed to measure his words when denouncing wrong, and saints generally are not. St. Peter Damian reported, after his official visit to Spain, that there was but one worthy priest in the whole kingdom, which really meant no more than that he found only one who came, in all respects, up to his lofty ideal of what a priest should be. Yet there might have been, and probably were, large numbers of others who, though not faultless, were very worthy men, and upon the whole, faithful priests. We must never take the exaggerations of saintly reformers, burning with zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls, as literal historical facts. St. Jerome, in his ardent love of the church and his high ideal of sacerdotal purity, vigilance, fidelity, and zeal, no doubt exaggerated.

There can be nothing more offensive to every right and honorable feeling than the exultation of the magazine over the abuse, cruelties, and outrages inflicted on a bishop of Rome by civil tyrants. The writer, had he lived under the persecuting pagan emperors, would have joined his voice to that of those who exclaimed, Christianos ad leones; or had he been present when our Lord was arrested and brought as a malefactor before Pontius Pilate, none louder than he would have cried out, Crucifige eum! crucifige eum! His sympathies are uniformly with the oppressor, never, as we can discover, with the oppressed; with the tyrant, never with his innocent victim, especially if that victim be a bishop of Rome. He feels only gratification in recording the wrongs and sufferings of Pope St. Silverus. This pope was raised to the papacy by the tyranny of the Arian king Theodotus, and ordained by force, without the necessary subscription of the clergy. But after his consecration, the clergy, by their subscription, healed the irregularity of his election, as Anastasius the Librarian tells us, so as to preserve the unity of the church and religion. He appears to have been a holy man and a worthy pope; but he was not acceptable to Vigilius, who expected, by favor of the imperial court, to be made pope himself, nor to those two profligate women, the Empress Theodora and her friend Antonina, the wife of the patrician Belisarius. {90} Vigilius and these two infamous women compelled Belisarius to depose him, strip him of his pontifical robes, clothe him with the habit of a monk, and send him into exile; where, as some say, he was assassinated, and, as others say, perished of hunger. The magazine relates this to show how low and unworthy the bishops of Rome had become! Vigilius succeeded St. Silverus, and it continues:

"Stained with crime, a false witness and a murderer, Vigilius had obtained his holy office through the power of two profligate women who now ruled the Roman world. Theodora, the dissolute wife of Justinian, and Antonina, her devoted servant, assumed to determine the faith and the destinies of the Christian Church. Vigilius failed to satisfy the exacting demands of his casuistical mistresses; he even ventured to differ from them upon some obscure points of doctrine. His punishment soon followed, and the bishop of Rome is said to have been dragged through the streets of Constantinople with a rope around his neck, to have been imprisoned in a common dungeon and fed on bread and water. The papal chair, filled by such unworthy occupants, must have sunk low in the popular esteem, had not Gregory the Great, toward the close of sixth century, revived the dignity of the office."

We know of nothing that can be said in defence of the conduct of Vigilius prior to his accession to the papal throne. His intrigues with Theodora to be made pope, and his promises to her to restore, when he should be pope, Anthemus, deposed from the see of Constantinople by St. Agapitus for heresy, and to set aside the council of Chalcedon, were most scandalous; and his treatment of St. Silverus, whether he actually exiled him and had a hand in his death or not, admits, as far as we are informed, of no palliation; but his conduct thus far was not the conduct of the pope; and after he became bishop of Rome, at least after the death of his deposed predecessor, his conduct was, upon the whole, irreproachable. He conceded much for the sake of peace, and was much blamed; but he conceded nothing of the faith; he refused to fulfill the improper promises he had made, before becoming pope, to the empress, confessed that he had made them, said he was wrong in making them, retracted them, and resisted with rare firmness and persistence the emperor Justinian in the matter of the three chapters, and fully expiated the offences committed prior to his elevation, by enduring for seven long years the brutal outrages an indignities offered him by the half-savage Justinian, the imperial courtiers, and intriguing and unscrupulous prelates of the court party--outrages and sufferings of which he died after his liberation on his journey back from Constantinople to Rome.

We have touched on these details for the purpose of showing that the principal offenders in the transactions related were not the bishops of Rome, but the civil authorities and their adherents, that deprived the Roman clergy and the popes of their proper freedom. If the papal chair was filled with unworthy occupants, and had sunk low in the public esteem, it was because the emperor or empress at Constantinople and the Arian and barbarian kings in Italy sought to raise to it creatures of their own. They deprived the Roman clergy, the senate, and people of the free exercise of their right to elect the pope; and the pope, after his election, of his freedom of action, if he refused to conform to their wishes, usually criminal, and always base. Yet Harper's Magazine lays all the blame to the popes themselves, and seems to hold them responsible for the crimes and tyranny, the profligacy and lawless will of which they were the victims. If the wolf devoured the lamb, was it not the lamb's fault?

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St. Gregory the Great was of a wealthy and illustrious family, and therefore finds some favor with the magazine; yet it calls him "a half-maddened enthusiast," and accuses him of "unsparing severity," and "excessive cruelty" in the treatment of his monks before his elevation to the papal chair. But his complaisance to the usurper Phocas, which we find it hard to excuse, and especially his disclaiming the title of "Universal Bishop," redeem him in its estimation.

"A faint trace of modesty and humility still characterized the Roman bishops, and they expressly disclaimed any right to the supremacy of the Christian world. The patriarch of Constantinople, who seems to have looked with a polished contempt upon his western brother, the tenant of fallen Rome and the bishop of the barbarians, now declared himself the Universal Bishop and the head of the subject Church. But Gregory repelled his usurpation with vigor. Whoever calls himself Universal Bishop is Antichrist,' he exclaimed; and he compares the patriarch to Satan, who in his pride had aspired to be higher than the angels."

John Jejunator, bishop of Constantinople, did not claim the primacy, which belonged to the bishop of Rome, nor did Gregory disclaim it; but called himself "oecumenical patriarch." The title he assumed derogated not from the rights and privileges of the apostolic see, but from those of the sees of Antioch and Alexandria. It was unauthorized, and showed culpable ambition and an encroaching disposition. St. Gregory, therefore, rebuked the bishop of Constantinople, and alleged the example of his predecessor, St. Leo the Great, who refused the title of "oecumenical bishop" when it was offered him by the Fathers of Chalcedon. It is a title never assumed or borne by a bishop of Rome, who, in his capacity as bishop, is the equal, and only the equal, of his brother bishops. All bishops are equal, as St. John Chrysostom tells us. The authority which the pope exercises over the bishops of the Catholic Church is not the episcopal, but the apostolical authority which he inherits from Peter, the prince of the apostles. St. Gregory disclaimed and condemned the title of "universal bishop," which was appropriate neither to him nor to any other bishop; but he did not disclaim the apostolic authority held as the successor of Peter. He actually claimed and exercised it in the very letter in which he rebukes the bishop of Constantinople. The magazine is wholly mistaken in asserting that Gregory disclaimed the papal supremacy. He did no such thing; he both claimed and exercised it, and few popes have exercised it more extensively or more vigorously.

The magazine is also mistaken in asserting that St. Leo III. crowned Charlemagne "Emperor of the West." Charlemagne was already hereditary patrician of Rome, and bound by his office to maintain order in the city and territories of Rome, and to defend the Holy See, or the Roman Church, against its enemies. All the pope did was to raise the patrician to the imperial dignity, without any territorial title. Charles never assumed or bore the title of Emperor of the West. His official title was "Rex Francorum et Longobardorum Imperator." The title of "Emperor of the West," or "Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire," which his German successors assumed, was never conferred by the pope, but only acquiesced in after it had been usurped. The pope conferred on Charlemagne no authority out of the papal states.

We have no space to discuss the origin of the temporal sovereignty of the bishops of Rome, nor the ground of that arbitratorship which the popes, during several ages, unquestionably exercised with regard to the sovereign princes bound by their profession and the constitution of their states to profess and protect the Catholic religion. {92} We have already done the latter in an article on Church and State in our magazine for April, 1867. But we can tell Harper's Magazine that it entirely misapprehends the character of St. Gregory VII., and the nature and motive of the struggle between him and Henry III., or Henry IV., as some reckon, king of the Germans, for emperor he never was. Gregory was no innovator; he introduced, and attempted to introduce, no change in the doctrine or discipline of the church, nor in the relations of church and state. He only sought to correct abuses, to restore the ancient discipline which had, through various causes, become relaxed, and to assert and maintain the freedom and independence of the church in the government of her own spiritual subjects in all matters spiritual.

"His elevation was the signal for the most wonderful change in the character and purposes of the church. The pope aspired to rule mankind. He claimed an absolute power over the conduct of kings, priests, and nations, and he enforced his decrees by the terrible weapons of anathema and excommunication. He denounced the marriages of the clergy as impious, and at once there arose all over Europe a fearful struggle between the ties of natural affection and the iron will of Gregory. Heretofore the secular priests and bishops had married, raised families, and lived blamelessly as husbands or fathers, in the enjoyment of marital and filial love. But suddenly all this was changed. The married priests were declared polluted and degraded, and were branded with ignominy and shame. Wives were torn from their devoted husbands, children were declared bastards, and the ruthless monk, in the face of the fiercest opposition, made celibacy the rule of the church. The most painful consequences followed. The wretched women, thus degraded and accursed, were often driven to suicide in their despair. Some threw themselves into the flames; others were found dead in there beds, the victims of grief or of their own resolution not to survive their shame, while the monkish chroniclers exult over their misfortunes, and triumphantly consign them to eternal woe.

"Thus the clergy under Gregory's guidance became a monastic order, wholly separated from all temporal interests; and bound in a perfect obedience to the church. He next forebade all lay investitures or appointments to bishoprics or other clerical offices, and declared himself the supreme ruler of the ecclesiastical affairs of nations. No temporal sovereign could fill the great European sees, or claim any dominion over the extensive territories held by eminent churchmen in right of their spiritual power. It was against this claim that the Emperor of Germany, Henry IV., rebelled. The great bishoprics of his empire, Cologne, Bremen, Treves, and many others, were his most important feudatories, and should he suffer the imperious pope to govern them at will, his own dominion would be reduced to a shadow. And now began the famous contest between Hildebrand and Henry, between the carpenter's son and the successor of Charlemagne, between the Emperor of Germany and the Head of the Church."

This heart-rending picture is, to a great extent, a fancy piece. The celibacy of the clergy was the law of the church and of the German empire; and every priest knew it before taking orders. These pretended marriages were, in both the ecclesiastical courts and the civil courts, no marriages at all; and these dispairing wives of priests were simply concubines. What did Gregory do, but his best to enforce the law which the emperors had suffered to fall into desuetude? The right of investiture was always in the pope, and it was only by his authority that the emperors had ever exercised it. {93} The pope had authorized them to give investiture of bishops at a time of disorder, and when it was for the good of the church that they should be so authorized. But when they abused the trust, and used it only to fill the sees with creatures of their own, or sold the investiture for money to the unworthy and the profligate, and intruded them into sees, in violation of the canons, and sheltered them from the discipline of the church--causing, thus, gross corruption of morals and manners, the neglect of religious instruction, and dangers to souls--it was the right and the duty of the pontiff to revoke the authorization given, to dismiss his unworthy agents, and to forbid the emperors henceforth to give investiture.

The magazine says that if the emperor should suffer the imperious pope to be allowed to govern at will the great bishoprics of Cologne, Bremen, Treves, and many others, which were the most important feudatories of his empire, his own dominion would be reduced to a shadow. But if the emperor could fill them with creatures of his own, make bishops at his will, and depose them and sequester their revenues if they resisted his tyranny, or sell them, as he did, to the highest bidder--thrusting out the lawful occupants, and intruding men who could have been only usurpers, and who really were criminals in the eye of the law, and usually dissolute and scandalous in morals--where would have been the rightful freedom and independence of the church? How could the pope have maintained order and discipline in the church, and protected the interests of religion? At worst, the imperious will of the pontiff was as legitimate and as trustworthy as the imperious will of such a brutal tyrant and moral monster as was Henry. The pope did but claim his rights and the rights of the faithful people. It was no less important that the spiritual authority should govern in spirituals than it was that the secular authority should govern in temporals. The pope did not interfere, nor propose to interfere, with the emperor in the exercise of his authority in temporals; but he claimed the right, which the emperor could not deny, to govern in spirituals; and resisted the attempt of Henry to exercise any authority in the church, which, whatever infidels and secularists may pretend, is of more importance than the state, for it maintains the state. He never pretended to any authority in the fiefs of the empire, or to subject to his will matters not confessedly within his jurisdiction.

Does the writer in the magazine maintain that the Methodist General Conference would be wrong to claim the right of choosing and appointing its own bishops, and assigning the pastors, elders, and preachers to their respective circuits; and that it could justly be accused of seeking to dominate over the state if it resisted, with all its power, the attempt of the state to take that matter into its own hands, and appoint for all the Methodist local conferences, districts, and circuits, bishops and pastors, itinerant and local preachers, and should appoint men of profligate lives, who scorned the Book of Discipline, Unitarians, Universalists, rationalists, and infidels, or the bitter enemies of Methodism; those who would neglect every spiritual duty, and seek only to plunder the funds and churches to provide for their own lawless pleasures, or to pay the bribes by which they obtained their appointment? We think not. And yet this is only a mild statement of what Henry did, and of what Gregory resisted. The pope claimed and sought to obtain no more for the church in Germany than is the acknowledged right of every professedly Christian sect in this country, and which every sect fully enjoys, without any let or hindrance from the state. Why, then, this outcry against Gregory VII.? Do these men who are so bitter against him, and gnash their teeth at him, know what they do? {94} Have they ever for a moment reflected how much the modern world owes for its freedom and civilization to just such great popes as Hildebrand, who asserted energetically the rights of God, the freedom of religion, and made the royal and imperial despots and brutal tyrants who would trample on all laws, human and divine, feel that, if they would wear their crowns, they must study to restrain their power within its proper limits, and to rule justly for the common good, according to the law of God?

What Germany thought of the conduct of Henry is evinced by the fact that when Gregory struck him with the sword of Peter and Paul, everybody abandoned him but his deeply injured wife and one faithful attendant. The whole nation felt a sense of relief and breathed freely. An incubus which oppressed its breast was thrown off. The picture of the sufferings of Henry traversing the Alps in the winter and standing shivering with cold in his thin garb, as a penitent before the door of the pontiff, is greatly exaggerated, and the attempt to excite sympathy for him and indignation against the pontiff can have no success with those who have studied with some care the history of the times. Henry was a bad man; a capricious, unprincipled, tyrannical, and brutal ruler, and his cause was bad. The pope was in the right; he was on the side of truth and justice, of God and humanity, pure morals and just liberty. Leo the historian, a Protestant, and Voigt, a Protestant minister, both Germans, have each completely vindicated Gregory's conduct toward Henry of Germany, though Harper's historian is probably ignorant of that fact, as he is of some others.

As to the pope's subjecting Henry to the discipline of the church, and depriving him of his crown, all we need say is, that all men are equal before God and the church, and kings and kaisers are as much amenable to the discipline of the church, acknowledged by them to be Christ's kingdom, as the meanest of their subjects. The pope assumed no more than the kirk session assumed when it sent their King Charles II. to the "cuttie stool." The revolutionists of Spain have just deprived Isabella Segunda of her crown and throne, with the general applause of the non-Catholic world, and no pope ever deprived a prince who denied his jurisdiction, or his legal right to sit in judgment on his case, nor, till after a fair trial had been had, and a judicial sentence was rendered according to the existing laws of his principality. We see not why, then, the popes should be decried for doing legally, and after trial, what revolutionists are applauded for doing without trial and against all law, human and divine--unless it be because the pope deprived only base and profligate monsters, stained with the worst of crimes; and the revolutionists deprive the guiltless, who violate no law of the state or of the church, The pope deprived for crime; the revolutionists usually for virtue or innocence, only under pretence of ameliorating the state, which they subvert.

But our space is nearly exhausted, and we must hurry on. Innocent III. is another of those great bishops of Rome that excite the wrath of Harper's Magazine--probably because he was really a great pope, energetic in asserting the faith, in removing scandals, in enforcing discipline on kings and princes as well as on their subjects; in repressing sects, like the Albigenses, that struck at the very foundations of religion and society, or of the moral order; in defending the purity of morals and the sanctity of marriage, and in espousing the cause of the weak against the strong, of oppressed innocence against oppressive guilt. {95} This is too much for the endurance of the magazine. It indeed does not say that Innocent did not espouse the cause of justice in the case of Philip Augustus and his injured queen, Ingeburga; but it contends that he did it from unworthy motives, for the sake of extending and consolidating the papal authority over kings and princes. Though he admits John Lackland was a moral monster, and opened negotiations with a Mohammedan prince to the scandal of Christendom, offered to make himself a Mussulman, and would have embraced Islamism if the infidel prince had not repelled him with indignation and contempt; it yet finds that Innocent was altogether wrong in taking effective measures to restrain his tyranny, cruelty, licentiousness, and plunder of the churches and robbery of his subjects. His motive was simply to monopolize power and profit for the papal see. He also, for like reasons, was wrong in resisting Frederic II. of Germany, who, he says, preferred Islamism to Christianity, as itself probably prefers it to Catholicity.

The article closes with a tirade against Alexander VI., and his children, Caesar and Lucretia Borgia, Roscoe, a Protestant or rationalist, has vindicated the character of Lucretia, that accomplished, capable, and most grossly calumniated woman, who, in her real history, appears to have been not less eminent for her virtues than for her beauty and abilities. Caesar Borgia we have no disposition to defend, though we have ample grounds for believing that he was by no means so black as Italian hatred and malice have painted him. Alexander was originally in the army of Spain, and his manners and morals were such as we oftener associate with military men than with ecclesiastics, He lived with a woman who was another man's wife, and had two or three children by her. But this was while he was a soldier, and before he was an ecclesiastic or thought of taking orders. He was called to Rome for his eminent administrative ability, by his uncle, Pope Callixtus III.; took, in honor of his uncle, the name of Borgia; became an ecclesiastic; was, after some time, made cardinal, and finally raised to the papal throne under the name of Alexander VI. After he was made cardinal, if, indeed, after he became an ecclesiastic, nothing discreditable to his morals has been proved against him; and his moral character, during his entire pontificate, was, according to the best authorities, irreproachable. The Borgias had, however, the damning sin of being Spaniards, not Italians; and of seeking to reduce the Italian robber barons to submission and obedience to law, and to govern Italy in the interests of public order. They had, therefore, many bitter and powerful enemies; hence, the aspersions of their character, and the numerous fables against them, and which but too many historians have taken for authenticated facts. The alleged poisonings of Alexander and his daughter Lucretia are none of them proved, and are inventions of Italian hatred and malice. Yet, though Alexander's conduct as pope was irreproachable, and his administration able and vigorous, his antecedents were such that his election to the papal throne was a questionable policy, and Savonarola held it to be irregular and null.

The magazine indulges in the old cant about the contrast between the poverty and humility of Peter and the wealth and grandeur of his successors; the simplicity of the primitive worship, and the pomp and splendor of the Roman service. {96} There is no need of answering this. When the Messrs. Harper Brothers started the printing business in this city, we presume their establishment was in striking contrast to their present magnificent establishment in Cliff street. When the world was converted to the church, and the supreme pontiff had to sustain relations with sovereign princes, to receive their ambassadors, and send his legates to every court in Christendom to look after the interests of religion--the chief interest of both society and individuals--larger accommodations than were afforded by that "upper room" in Jerusalem were needed, and a more imposing establishment than St. Peter may have had was a necessity of the altered state of things. Even our Methodist friends, we notice, find it inconvenient to observe the plainness and simplicity in dress and manners prescribed by John Wesley their founder. He forbids, we believe, splendid churches, with steeples and bells; and the earliest houses for Methodist meetings, even we remember, were very different from the elegant structures they are now erecting. We heard a waggish minister say of one of them, "Call you this the Lord's house? you should rather call it the Lord's barn."

The Catholic Church continues and fulfils the synagogue, and her service is, to a great extent, modelled after the Jewish, which was prescribed by God himself. The dress of the pontiff, when he celebrates the Holy Sacrifice, is less gorgeous than that of the Jewish high-priest. St. Peter's is larger than was Solomon's temple, but it is not more gorgeous; and the Catholic service, except in the infinite superiority of the victim immolated upon the altar, is not more splendid, grand, or imposing than was the divinely prescribed temple service of the Hebrews. The magazine appears to think with Judas Iscariot, that the costly ointment with which a woman that had been a sinner anointed the feet of Jesus, after she had washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair, was a great waste, and might have been put to a better use. But our Lord did not think so, and Judas Iscariot did not become the prince of the apostles. We owe all we have to God, and it is but fitting that we should employ the best we have in his service.

Here we must close. We have not replied to all the misstatements, misrepresentations, perversions, and insinuations of the article in Harper's Magazine. We could not do it in a brief article like the present. It would require volumes to do it. We have touched only on a few salient points that struck us in glancing over it; but we have said enough to show its animus and to expose its untrustworthiness. Refuted it we have not, for there really is nothing in it to refute, It lays down no principles, states no premises, draws no conclusions. It leaves all that to be supplied by the ignorance and prejudices of its readers. It is a mere series of statements that require no answer but a flat denial. It is not strange that the magazine should calumniate the popes, and seek to pervert their history. Our Lord built his church on Peter, being himself the chief cornerstone; and nothing is more natural than that they who hate the church should strike their heads against the papacy. The popes have always been the chief object of attack, and have had to bear the brunt of the battle. Yet they have labored, suffered, been persecuted, imprisoned, exiled, and martyred for the salvation of mankind. What depth of meaning in the dying words of the exiled Gregory VII., "I have loved justice, and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile." Alas! the world knows not its benefactors, and crucifies its redeemers!

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March Omens. [Footnote 44]

[Footnote 44: From Irish Odes and other Poems, by Aubrey De Vere, just Issued by the Catholic Publication Society.]

ON ivied stems and leafless sprays The sunshine lies in dream: Scarcely yon mirrored willow sways Within the watery gleam.

In woods far off the dove is heard, And streams that feed the lake: All else is hushed save one small bird, That twitters in the brake.

Yet something works through earth and air, A sound less heard than felt, Whispering of Nature's procreant care, While the last snow-flakes melt.

The year anon her rose will don; But to-day this trance is best-- This weaving of fibre and knitting of bone In Earth's maternal breast.

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Translated From The German By Richard Storrs Willis.

Emily Linder.

A Life-portrait.

The circle of those who were witness to the blossom-period of the city of Munich, that glorious epoch of twenty or thirty years which dawned upon the Bavarian capital when Louis I. ascended the throne, is gradually narrowing, and every year contracts it still further. The name of her to whom this sketch is dedicated belonged to this circle, and is closely associated with the best of those who aided in inaugurating this brilliant epoch, and rendering Munich a hearthstone of culture which attracted the gaze of the educated world. Sunny period of old Munich! They of that time speak of it with the same enthusiasm as of their own youth. Yet to a future generation will their testimony sound like some beautiful tradition.

To not a few, the name of Miss Emily Linder appeared for the first time, as the intelligence of her death passed through the public journals of February, 1857. Yet was her life no ordinary one; and though it never tended to publicity, she accomplished more in her great seclusion than many a noisy and feted celebrity. Hers was a quiet and unassuming nature; she belonged to those who speak little and accomplish much. It is therefore befitting, now that she has gone to her home, here to speak of her. Not so much to praise her, for she shrank from all earthly praise; but to keep her memory fresh among her friends and to present to a selfish, distracted age, poor in faith, the animating example of a pure, faith-inspired, and symmetrical character a life full of fidelity, unselfishness, and enthusiasm.

Swiss by birth and unchangeably devoted to her circumscribed home, Emily Linder little dreamed, probably, when in early life she wandered to Munich, that she would yet close a long life there. But over this life, swiftly as it glided along, there watched a special, directing Providence; and no one could more cheerfully have recognized this Providence than did she. What originally attracted her to Munich was Art: she probably contemplated, at first, only brief and transient visit there; but the metropolis of German art became a second home to her--even more than this.

Emily Linder belonged to a wealthy mercantile family of Basle, and was born at that place on the 11th of October, 1797. She received a careful religious education, (in the reformed faith of her parents,) and that varied instruction which rendered her unusually wakeful mind susceptible to topics of deeper import. She seemed to have inherited from her grandfather, who was a lover and collector of artistic objects, a fondness for fine art. Following this predilection, the gifted girl decided to seize the pallet and devote herself to painting as an occupation. Such was her entirely independent position as to fortune, that nothing but inward enthusiasm could have led her to this step, or have confined her from thenceforth to the easel.

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The home of Holbein's genius offered her at first, doubtless, inspiration enough. But a new star had arisen in German art, and the youthful Swiss was drawn powerfully by its leading away from home--to Munich. The modest city on the verdant Iser began at that period to prove the goal of pilgrimage to every ambitious disciple of art. Miss Linder also heard of it, and, instead of going to Dresden, as she had intended, she turned for her further improvement to Munich. On her arrival in this city she had attained to an age of twenty-seven years; but her devotion to her chosen profession was so earnest, that she entered as a simple pupil the Academy of Fine Arts. In the catalogue of the academy, Emily Linder is inscribed as historical painter, on the 4th of November, 1824. But she frequented the studios only a few weeks. At that time it was customary to accept ladies as pupils; but she soon perceived that the position was hardly a becoming one, surrounded by so many young people of various characters, and all beginners like herself. She therefore had recourse to Professor Schlotthauer for private instruction. Under the guidance of this excellent master, "a veritable house-father in the painter's academy," as Brentano characteristically termed him, she pursued her studies in good earnest, and, according to the representation of her teacher, made rapid progress in the severer style of drawing, in which she had hitherto been less practised than in painting. She soon perfected herself to such an extent that she was enabled to complete her own compositions, and thus derived double satisfaction from her profession.

It was indeed a pleasure in those days, competing with so many enthusiastic young artists and with the newly-appearing works in constant view, to labor and strive onward with the rest. This was the time, too, when Cornelius assumed the directorship of the Munich Academy and inaugurated, in grand style, the new era of German art. A wondrous life dawned upon Munich art at that period. Cornelius himself, in his old age, recalled with emotion and enthusiasm this youthful period of new German art. At Rome, thirty years later, on the occasion of the Louis festival of German artists, 20th May 1855, while he was delivering an address so celebrated for its many piquant flashes, he thus painted the joyous industry of those days:

"But when King Louis ascended the throne of his fathers, then began the sport. Zounds! what moulding, building, drawing, and painting! With what eagerness, with what hilarity each went to his work! But it was an earnest hilarity: ... nor was Munich at that time a mere hot-house of art. The warmth was a healthy and vital one, born of the flaming fire of inspiration, the evidence of which every work, whatever its defects, bore upon its very face. Those men who worked together in brotherly unity knew that there confronted them the art tribunal of posterity and of the German nation. It concerned them, now, that German genius should open a new pathway in art, as it had already so gloriously done in poetry, in music, in science."

In this glorious time of youthful aspiration, bold conception, and joyful industry, Miss Linder began her artistic career in Munich. Is it a wonder then that the city pleased her daily better, and imperceptibly gained a home-like power over her? Nor had she, by any means, a lack of intellectual incitement. Her independent position and rare culture secured to her the most agreeable social position. In the family of Herr von Ringseis, to which she had brought an introduction from Basle, and where gathered the nobility of the entire fatherland, she came into contact with the most eminent artists and scholars. {100} Chief among these was Cornelius, who welcomed her to his family circle. The old master of German art remained a life-long friend of hers and warmly attached to her. Among her more intimate companions, she numbered also the two Eberhards, Heinrich Hess, Franz von Baader. Somewhat later, by the transfer of the university to Munich, were added to these Schubert, Görres, Schelling, Lasaulx. Also the two Boiseree, who in the autumn of 1827 came to Munich with their art collection, which had been purchased by King Louis, were soon numbered among her nearer acquaintances.

Amid so choice a circle there unfolded itself for the young artist a spiritual and intense life, to which she abandoned herself with all the joyous simplicity and freshness of an artistic nature; a nature which was susceptible also to the beautiful and the grand in other things--in poetry, in music, and in science. The quiet, friendly lady-artist became everywhere a favorite.

But, amid all these manifold occupations, there was ever a certain earnestness, a striving out of the temporal into the eternal. Even art was not to her a mere amusement. Genuine art possesses an ennobling power, and she experienced what Michael Angelo once said to his friend Vittoria Colonna, "True painting is naturally religious and noble; for even the struggle toward perfection elevates the soul to devotion, draws it near to God and unites it with him." Attracted by the pure and lofty in art, Miss Linder gave preference to religious painting, a taste which was encouraged by her sterling master: and it caused her, though a Protestant, special gratification, while ever seeking the best studies, to paint or copy, whenever she could, devotional church pictures.

In order to become acquainted, through actual observation, with the principal works of Christian art, she determined on a journey to Italy. Her first visit she decided to confine to the cities of upper Italy, and in company with Professor Schlotthauer and his wife, this plan was carried out during the summer and autumn of 1825. Milan, Verona, Padua, Venice, Bologna, were visited, and, led by the hand of her intelligent master, they all passed under her examination. The goal of her travel was to be Florence. But the long-continued, fine autumn weather attracted the travellers further and further, and at length they came to Perugia, the middle point of the Umbrian school, and thence to the neighboring, picturesque-lying Assisi. At this place a little circumstance occurred which became of deep significance in the after life of the artist.

The vetturino, familiar with the land and the people, called the attention of the travellers to the fact that in Assisi there was a monastery of German Franciscan nuns. A colony of poor German women in the middle of Italian lands! That was enough to decide the party to visit the monastery and greet their pious countrywomen in the language of home. But they found the sisterhood in evident distress. As they stood before the lattice, the history of the monastery was briefly related to them by the superior. It owed its origin to the patrician family Nocker of Munich, and according to the terms of its establishment was intended only for Germans, and more particularly for Bavarian maidens. Under Napoleon I. it was suspended, and the nuns were cared for in private dwellings, where, hoping for better times, they still continued, as well as they could, the practice of their vocation. These better times came. After the fall of the Napoleonic dynasty, the purchasers of the monastery consented to relinquish it, and the poor Franciscans could at least reoccupy the building. {101} But it went so hard with them, that they were sometimes obliged to ring the distress-bell, and the number of inmates diminished. At the time of the arrival of our three travellers, they numbered but twelve. An increase of numbers under such circumstances was hardly to be hoped for, and the existence of the monastery seemed again endangered. Municipal abolishment was threatened, with the unavoidable prospect to the nuns of being distributed among the various Italian monasteries. Now to maintain themselves as a German order was everything to these Franciscans; and thus the superior represented it to her travelling country-people, with all simple-heartedness, closing her narration with the entreaty that, on their return to Munich, they would not forget the little German monastery in Assisi, but care for it as they might be able, and cause younger sisters to come to them from Bavaria, in order to save the establishment from utter extinction.

The three travellers took their leave filled with sympathy, and promising to bear in mind the petition of the superior. They commenced their homeward travel from Assisi, passed through Genoa and reached Munich again in November. Miss Linder vigorously recommenced her artistic occupations, filled with animation at her new experiences. But during the winter evenings the Italian trip often formed the topic of conversation in the Schlotthauer family, and generally closed with the question, How shall we manage to increase the number of candidates in the monastery at Assisi? But at that period this was not so easy. The secular spirit had spread itself broadly in German lands: the current of fresh, Catholic life flowed mostly in hidden courses. But with surprise they soon learned of its continued activity. Through one of those invisible channels which Providence avails itself of, in its own good time--in every-day life termed accident--the cry for help of the superior at Assisi penetrated to to a village where pious hearts were prepared for it. One day there came a letter for Professor Schlotthauer from Landshut, addressed to him by an unknown maiden of the humbler class named Therese Frish, stating that she had heard of the monastery at Assisi, and the request of the superior: in Landshut was a goodly number of young girls who had long cherished the desire in their hearts for convent life, and only waited for an opportunity to realize their wishes: several of them, some possessed of means, were ready at any moment to leave for Assisi. This was welcome intelligence, and the friends of the superior in Munich were not backward in performing their part. Thus in the spring they had the happiness of seeing a little band of candidates departing for Assisi. The monastery was rescued, and commenced from that time, through the ever-increasing sympathy in Germany, a new and beneficent career. From year to year, assisted by the people of Munich, there wandered true-hearted though indigent maidens to this quiet asylum of piety, to reach which, as Brentano wrote twelve years later, (1838,) was the dearest wish of these pious children.

Her art trip had thus recompensed the maiden of Basle in a manner little dreamed of or counted on. The impression which this peculiar experience made upon her susceptible nature could not well be a transient one. The little monastery at Assisi--what could be more natural?--from thenceforth lay very closely to her heart, and its memories became most dear to her. The personality of the superior herself, her simple worth and naturalness, gratefully appealed to her; and several years later, on making her second Italian trip, she gladly revisited Assisi. {102} A friendly relation resulted, which, fostered by a regular correspondence, became more intimate every year. She now began to understand the true meaning of a voluntary Christian poverty: the contemplation of which must naturally make a profound impression upon a nature like hers. She had frequent occasion, by active assistance, to prove herself a warm friend of the monastery. Particularly at the time of the great earthquake, (1831,) when this monastery of women was in great want and distress, she stood by the nuns most generously. Ever after, indeed, she remained a constant benefactress of the German daughters of the holy St. Francis; and there, in the birth-place of the saint, was she most assiduously prayed for. In Assisi lay the earliest germ of her quietly-ripening, late-maturing conversion.

In the year 1828, Miss Linder returned to her native city, Basle, in order to prepare for a more lengthened visit to Rome. Like every genuine artist-heart, a powerful influence attracted her to the ancient capital of art, to the eternal city. On her journey thither, she touched at Assisi, having the happiness to escort to the monastery of the Franciscans a new candidate from Munich and to find the nuns there in happiest tranquillity. Cornelius and Schlotthauer reported the same of them, when they passed through, a year and a half later. They received permission from the bishop to hold an interview with the German sisters in the claustral. The innocent joyousness and deep peace of the German nuns was very touching to them. The bishop gave the two artists the best testimony of them in his assurance that he constantly presented these pious Germans to their Italian sisters as an example for imitation.

Accompanied with the nuns' blessing Miss Linder hastened toward the eternal city, where a new world opened itself to her. Bright, blissful days did she pass in Rome, and so well did it please her, that she remained there nearly three years. Here again her associates were the brightest spirits of the German art circle, and their similarity of aim induced a friendly geniality which in many ways enhanced the pleasure of her stay. Scholars and artists of the German colony sought her society with equal delight. Here she met Overbeck--that St. John among the artists--whose friendship to her and to her subsequent life was of such significance. Neher and Eberle received from her commissions. With the painter Ahlborn she read Dante. The venerable Koch was charmed with the society of the genial Swiss, and passed many a winter's evening with her. Also Thorwaldsen, Bunsen, and Platen were among her intimate acquaintance in Italy.

From Rome Miss Linder made a trip to Naples and Sorrento. With a party of Germans, among whom was Platen, she passed there the summer of 1830. The wondrous poetry of the landscape and skies of Sorrento impressed with their fullest power the sensitive soul of the artist. All three arts, poetry, music, and painting, were brought into requisition to give adequate expression to her enchantment and delight. She became herself a poetess under the influence of all these glories, and described to her friends, who remained behind at Rome, with veritable southern warmth of coloring, her "captivating paradise." As in Rome she listened with the veneration of an intelligent musician to the ancient classic music of the Sistine chapel, so at the Bay of Naples she bestowed her attention upon the popular Italian ballads. Theirs was a genial company, and they sang much together; of their songs and melodies she made a collection, and took home with her. {103} Platen, in his subsequent letters, reminded her of those days, and, writing from Venice, requested of her the music of "triads and octaves," which they had sung together in Sorrento.

On her return to Rome, late in the autumn of the same year, she found Cornelius and his family there, and the friendly relations which subsisted in Munich were warmly renewed. The presence of the honored master created, in the Roman art world, an animated and exhilarating activity, and the rest of her stay was thus enlivened in the most agreeable manner. The following year, in company with Cornelius, she started for home. It was hard parting, as finally, in July, 1831, with a wealth of beautiful and deep impressions, she bade farewell to the Hesperian land which had become so dear to her, to return to Basle; and we must not censure the artist that she found it difficult, as her letters indicate, to forget the blue skies of Italy and accustom herself again to the gray hues of the German heaven. The sharpness of the contrast gradually softened, however, and the old home feeling asserted itself. But the life in Rome remained a bright spot in her memory, and even in later years, when the conversation turned upon it, the habitually quiet lady became warm and animated.

In Rome, on the other hand, the artists were equally loth to part with the aesthetic Swiss. The venerable Koch sent her word, through the the painter Eberle, how much he regretted that he could no longer pass his winter evenings with her. Overbeck and others held with her an animated correspondence. But she remained in hallowed remembrance with the German art-colony, from the assistance she rendered to youthful talent, and her encouragement by actual commissions. The historical painter Adam Eberle, particularly, a pupil of Cornelius, friend and countryman of Lasaulx--a highly gifted and lofty mind, but struggling in the deepest poverty--to him she proved a generous benefactress; and we can truly say, that through her goodness his last days--he died at Rome, 1832--were illumined with a final gleam of sunshine. The letters which she received from the youthful departed, partly during her stay in Rome, partly after her departure, give ample testimony of this, and indicate the manner, generally, of her benevolence in such cases. Immediately on their first meeting in Rome, and learning of his condition, she gave him a commission for an oil painting; with deep emotion he thanked the friendly lady "for the confidence she had thus reposed in a nameless painter." Subsequently she purchased also several drawings of Eberle, each, like the oil painting, of a religious nature; among others, one that she particularly prized, and afterward caused to be engraved, "Peter and Paul journeying to the Occident."

On forwarding this drawing to Basle, together with another, the subject of which was taken from the Old Testament, "as the product of his muse since her departure," Eberle thus writes:

"What chiefly attracts me to these Bible subjects is the healthy and unaffected language, which I endeavor to translate into my art. Regard this work of mine as a study which is necessary for my taste. That which is lacking in it, I know full well, without the power of supplying it. Accept it, therefore, as it is. Altogether bad it is not. At a very sad period was it undertaken, and many a tear has fallen upon it, which, like a vein of noble metal, seven times purified in its earthen crucible, glistens through it. I have, indeed, some assurance that I have not fruitlessly worked, in Overbeck's judgment upon it, whom you saw at Bunsen's: and this not a little cheers me."

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Her generous watchfulness wearied not in rescuing him, at the times of his greatest need, and Eberle, with overflowing gratitude, testified to these constant proofs of her goodness, and, even more, to the great delicacy and the kindly words which accompanied every act.

Her personal intercourse at Rome seemed also to have exerted a favorable influence upon his religious sentiments. The taste for mystical writings which, encouraged by Baader, she was cultivating at that period, grew also upon him; and when, shortly after her departure, Lasaulx came to Rome, Eberle was very happy that he could continue with him this favorite and elevating study. He writes to her at Basle on the 25th of September, 1831:

"An old friend of my youth and countryman of mine, C. Lasaulx, is now my almost exclusive companion: he will probably remain the winter here and share my dwelling with me. He is, as you know, a zealous disciple of Schelling, is deeply versed in the new philosophy, and, what to me is of still more value, in the mysticism of the middle ages. I rejoice to have gained in him some compensation for the loss of your society; yet I cannot share the expectations which he bases upon the new philosophy. Although my acquaintance with him has divested me of many a former prejudice, I find myself, nevertheless, attracted only the more to the 'one thing needful,' assured that only at the fountain of living waters, Jesus Christ, can our thirst be quenched."

He adds, however, concerning his friend:

"Lasaulx has nevertheless a very substantial Christian basis, and if ever his Knowing goes hand in hand with his Willing, and his Willing with his Knowing, we may certainly expect something very sterling from him."

It was Lasaulx himself who communicated the news to their mutual friend, in Germany, of the sudden death of Eberle. Eberle's plan had been to pass yet a year in Rome, then return to Germany, and, seeking again the sheltering wing of his master, Cornelius, in Munich, there to close his art-wanderings. Thus he himself wrote in a letter of the 7th of March, 1832. But a month later he was no more. He succumbed to a disease of the stomach. Shortly before his death, Miss Linder had cheered the invalid by a remittance. On the 24th of April, 1832, Lasaulx thus wrote from Rome:

"Our friend Adam Eberle, at five o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th of April, after a hard death-struggle, recovered from the malady of this life. Good-Friday morning we bore him home. Three days before his death he had the great joy of receiving your last letter, and that which your love enclosed with it. He was one of the few whose souls are washed in the blood of the Lamb, offered from the beginning of the world. The Lamentations and the Miserere of the divine old masters Palestrini and Allrgri which you begged our friend to listen to for you, I have listened to for both of you."

Munich had now so grown upon the affections of the artiste that she again removed thither from Basle in 1832. After her life in Rome, a residence in the German art-metropolis could not but be a necessity to her, and the Bavarian capital was thenceforth her home. Her house became more and more the peaceful abode of the fine arts. Her fortune enabled her, by a succession of commissions, gradually to collect a wealth of pictures and drawings in which the Corypheans of Christian art were represented. Among these Overbeck took the foremost place with a series of subjects from the Evangelists, the choicest of drawings, which during a period of thirty years gradually came into her possession. A beautiful oil painting by Overbeck, which she esteemed most highly, "The death of St. Joseph," was also produced at this time, an elevated delineation of the death of the just. From Cornelius she secured three cartoons of the wall pictures in the Louis-church, ("The Creation,") in which this mighty intellect was worthily represented. {105} In like manner an altar-piece by Conrad Eberhard, one of the most thoughtful compositions of this admirable master, and intended originally for one of the new church edifices of King Louis, took its place among the gems of this house--just as the venerable master himself, in all his purity of soul and pious simplicity, took his place high in the friendship of the hostess.

Next to painting, the two sister arts, poetry and music, were specially cultivated in the home of the artist. She had a clear perception of the true and elevated in poetry, and kept pace, even to old age, with the literary productions of the new era. Her own poetic effusions were confined to the eye of her more intimate friends; but there were some poems upon which Brentano himself placed high value. Her library was a choice one, and her knowledge of languages kept her acquainted with the best productions of the modern cultivated nations. Her aesthetic and scientific acquirements became her well, inasmuch as the cultivation of the mind and of the heart with her kept even pace.

Miss Linder applied herself to music in full earnest. She not only practised several instruments--the aeolodicon and harp were always seen in her drawing-room--but she had herself instructed by Ett in thorough-bass and the history of music. She followed his instructions in harmony with practical exercises. In musical history it was the religious department again which most appealed to her: her researches went back to the earliest times, the development of the true church style, and for the unfolding of this subject she had found in Ett the right man. Moreover, she stood in friendly exchange of views with Proske of Regensburg, a profound student of ancient church music. Sometimes musical gatherings were held, to which Ett brought singing-boys from the choir of St. Michael's Church: ancient religious cantatas, the compositions of Orlando di Lasso, Handel, Abbé Vogler's hymns, and the like, were performed. Conrad Eberhard, an enthusiastic admirer of music and of the master Ett, who with Schlotthauer regularly attended the historical lectures on music, in his ninetieth year spoke with loving recollection of these ennobling evenings at Miss Linder's.

By this varied and earnest devotion to art, as well as artistic and scientific enterprises, to which she constantly brought willing and generous offerings, her life began to assume more and more an ideal significance, and to gain that expansiveness of horizon and completeness which secured for her a position in society as peculiar as it was agreeable. If we would ask what it was that identified this quiet spirit with so distinguished a circle and made her house a rendezvous for scholars and artists, in which the most brilliant and the most profound so gladly met, the explanation would be just this--it was the awakened intelligence which she brought to all intellectual topics, the simple-hearted abandonment to the views of great minds, the readiness with which she recognized and admired the true and the beautiful in all things. It was equally the unselfish, uncalculating enthusiasm, and the perfect purity of soul, which compelled the respect of all. An unvarying geniality blended with a quiet earnestness; a clear intelligence with a golden goodness; a profound view of life in all its phases, from the very heights of a sunny existence--herein resided the gentle attractiveness with which she drew to herself the sympathies of the noblest souls and held them fast.

{106}

A character of such a type is best reflected in its friends. Her life for the most part flowed on so quietly and evenly that it rose clearly to the view of only those who were nearest to her. It seems, therefore, befitting that from among her many friends we should select a few who, like her, are now at rest, and mention some of their salient characteristics.

The foremost place is due to the painter-prince of the new art-epoch himself, Cornelius--who was a friend from her very youth, and only a few months after her, even in these latter days, closed his earthly pilgrimage. The fame of the man and the sense of his loss, still so freshly felt, will justify us in dwelling somewhat more at length on him and his letters. It was, indeed, the opinion of Emily Linder, toward the close of her life, that the letters which she had received from Cornelius might some day be of use in his biography.

At the time Miss Linder started from Munich upon her journey to Switzerland and Italy, her relations with the family of the celebrated painter had already become so intimate, that it was continued in correspondence. Ordinarily it was an Italian-German or double letter, from Carolina and Peter Cornelius, which greeted her; they both recall, with friendly warmth, her residence in Munich, and the message, "We miss you!" was repeatedly wafted after her as she remained longer away. Frau Carolina Cornelius evinced for her a very tender attachment. The genial master himself honored her with confidences from time to time, as to his artistic plans and undertakings. Particularly was this the case when he was commissioned to prepare designs for the Louis-church in Munich, whereby he saw the early realization of a long-cherished and favorite idea of his; when the history of mankind in grand outline, the creation, the redemption, the sending of the Holy Ghost to the church, the last judgment, presented itself to his mind. Then he felt impelled to open his heart to his absent friend, and the postscript, which he appended to a letter of his wife, rises into a veritable dithyrambic. He writes on the 20th of January, 1829:

"I cannot better close this letter than by communicating a thing which transports me and in which you, my dear friend, will sympathize. Fancy my good fortune! After completing the Glyptothek, I am to paint a church. It is now sixteen years that I have been going about with the idea of a Christian epic in painting--a painted comoedia divina--and I have had hours, and longer periods, when it seemed I had a special mission for this. And now my heavenly love comes like a bride in all her beauty to me--what mortal after this can I envy? The universe opens itself before my eyes: I see heaven, earth, and hell; I see the past, the present, and the future; I stand on Sinai and gaze upon the new Jerusalem; I am inebriated and yet composed. All my friends must pray for me, and you, my dear Emily. With brotherly love greets you CORNELIUS."

The artistic heroism of this soul--this man whose ideas grasped the world--breathes in these lines with certainly wonderful freshness. In other letters of this happy period his natural humor gains the ascendant, and he indulges in sallies of mirth, afterward begging her indulgence and a friendly remembrance of "the crazy painter Peter Cornelius." Her replies were in a simpler and graver tone, but full of that refreshing independence, which appeared to a nature like his more than aught else. She allowed his geniality full play without compromising her sincerity, or her dignity. He is thus both "charmed and edified" by her letters, and once made the remark of them, "All that your personality led me to fancy of the beautiful and the good finds more artless, more forcible and vivid expression in your letters. {107} It becomes you uncommonly well, whenever you fairly assert yourself."

In the year 1831 the cholera threatened, for a time, to visit Munich. The preparations of the sanitary authorities to meet this uncomfortable guest were already completed. Miss Linder was in Basle, and sent thence a friendly invitation to Cornelius and his family to take refuge at her domestic hearth. The knightly response of the master, dated Munich, 15th of November 1831, is as follows:

"Your friendly suggestion from the shelter of your hospitable hearth to laugh at the cholera, and by the same opportunity, perhaps, to reproduce a Decameron, corresponding thereto, has an indescribable attraction for me, and I should have acted upon it had I not been afraid to be afraid. From sheer cowardice at the possible death of my honor, I must stand the cartridges of the cholera. From the spot where my king and so many admirable and honorable men stand their ground, must Cornelius never run away. You will take in good part the informality of this letter from your fanciful friend, yet he craves of you an indulgenza plenaria while he ends with the bold declaration that he indescribably loves and honors you. P. V. CORNELIUS."

At this period an idea seized Cornelius, which long occupied his attention, namely, to record the noteworthy incidents of his own eventful artist-life; a plan which certainly would have enriched literature by at least one original work and have proved of inestimable value to the history of modern art. Unfortunately, the plan was never carried out; but it affords a proof of his high esteem for his friend that Cornelius intended the memoirs to be written in the form of letters addressed to her, as will appear from the two following letters. They are written under the influence of the same exuberant spirits in which the grand conception of his "Christian epic" had placed him:

"Munich, February 12, 1832. "Very Dear Friend: This is not meant as an answer to the welcome and beautiful letter which you sent me through H. Hauser; it is only a slight expression of my gratitude and my great delight at the kindliness and the loyal friendship which your dear letter breathes for me, unworthy. I have lately been asking myself why this letter-writing, which, as you and all the world knows, is a horror to me, since my correspondence with you has set me back into that happy period when one can write an entire library and yet not be satisfied. Had I more leisure, I would carry out an old project to write the history of my life in letter-form, after the manner of many French memoirs, and addressed to you. Although for the present this is not to be thought of, I by no means abandon the plan.

"Heroes and artists--in the most liberal way of viewing it--have their truest and clearest appreciation in the pure souls of women. Only Hebe might serve the nectar to Alcides; only Beatrice conducts the singer into Paradise; Tasso's delirium is a vague searching in a labyrinth where Ariadne's thread is broken; Michael Angelo would have been as great a painter as was Dante a poet had Beatrice opened heaven to him; Raphael's thousand-feathered Psyche bore a material maiden into the realm of the stars; her human blood enkindled his and slew him. When I write my memoirs, you will see how it has gone with me in this respect. In the mean time I allow you a peep through the keyhole of my private drawer--it is a poor poem of my youth, which as penance you must read, because you mockingly called me a poet. [Footnote 45]

[Footnote 45: It is truly a very youthful poem, addressed "To the Muse," commencing: "Confided have I alone in thee, O Muse," etc. ED.]

"I know not why I send these poor stanzas to you; it appears to me as though you exercised some charm over the spirits of my life, who must perforce appear before you. Perhaps one of these days this letter might serve for a dedication to the book in question, because, like an overture, it contains in itself the leading motive. Now farewell, and take no offence at this gay carnival-arabesque, The ladies of my family heartily greet you: we have good news from Rome. Heaven bless you, vouchsafe you cheerfulness and bliss, and bring you soon to us. Meantime, however, write soon, and often send tidings to your most devoted friend, "P. Cornelius."

{108}

Four months later, he reverts to the same subject, on the occasion of sending to her, while at Basle, a sketch of his latest composition for the walls of the Louis-church, ("The Epiphany,") accompanying which he writes:

Munich, June 21, 1832. "Herewith you find a little sketch of a drawing just completed for a large cartoon (the corresponding piece to the Crucifixion,) and instead of interpreting it to you, I beg your own interpretation of it; it would have such a charm for me to read in your mind my own conceptions ennobled and beautified. What coquetry! I hear you laughingly say; and yet I hope to be pardoned. If it be true that artists have many feelings in common with women, those which prompt us to try to please those we love should meet with some indulgence.

"I occupy myself often, on my lonely walks, with the plan of my intended memoirs; the material begins to assume shape; but unless you apply to it the finishing touch, it will not be presentable. I never could bring myself to entrust it to other hands. In the retrospect of my life I find the material more abundant than I had supposed. Very difficult will be the shaping of much of it. How easily does many a tie and relation in this life lose its true coloring and significance by omissions; and yet must these very often occur, if the work is to appear during my lifetime. Before beginning to write, I shall communicate to you, orally, dearest friend, some portions of the memoirs, and we can then discuss them at leisure--a welcome plan to me, for thus will the undertaking fairly ripen. With inmost respect and love, your devoted "Peter Von Cornelius."

Finally, it may be allowable to make mention of a letter which he addresses to her from Rome, on the 12th of October, 1833, while he was working on his drawing of the Last Judgment. In this letter we recognize his playful, working humor--and does he not term these periods of creative activity his wedding time? In several remarks, however, we discern both sides of his nature.

"My Noble Friend: It is really too bad! has he not yet written? not even answered that charming letter from Salzburg? Well, I must say, I am curious to see how he will justify himself.

"Thus I hear Schlotthauer exclaim; even Schubert ominously shakes his head; but you are silent and thoughtful. I should be in despair for an excuse for myself, having already shot off my best arrows at you on similar occasions, exhausted my adroitest terms--my best rhetoric. I say I should be in despair, if that stupendous, that tremendous thing, 'The Last Judgment,' did not take me under its protecting wing. Never has a man, probably, with more sublimity asked pardon of a lady! And now, laying the universe at your feet, I await composedly my sentence. From this moment is my tongue loosed; and I can say to you that I am celebrating my blissfullest time--my wedding time--the harvest season of my holiest aspirations. How few mortals attain to such happiness! and how ill-calculated is this world to afford it!

"Gladly would I show you the work I am at present engaged upon. Yet for a nature so quiet as yours, you appear to me far too forcible and positive. Overbeck must love you a thousand fold more than I: with me you suffer indulgence to take the place of impartial justice. How I once fretted about such things!

"What a treasure is a deep, positively incurable pain! Better than the most unalloyed bliss which this poor world has to offer, it brings us near to the Holy One. It is more faithful, far less variable. It draws us into solitude, into ourselves.

"You surmise, doubtless, what I mean. Daily do I thank Heaven that through you such knowledge was to come to me. This is bitter medicine; administered, to a child, upon sweet fruit. But why do I entertain you with such trivialities? In all books of all nations we read the same thing; and yet when the poor human heart is pressed with its heavy burthen, it feels just as profoundly and acutely as in the very days of Troy itself; and the utterances of joy and of love, like those of pain, are ever new and their method inexhaustible; ever does one cast himself upon the breast of a loving, sympathetic soul.

{109}

"Accept for the moment this confused scribble and remain friendly and well-disposed toward me. Continue to peep through my fingers, and leave me just five of them. I claim to myself, however, the privilege of an unlimited love and veneration for you. My entire household and all your friends send heartfelt greeting; foremost of all, however, your P. V. CORNELIUS."

The correspondence was interrupted when Cornelius removed to Berlin; but not the friendship, which endured to the end. Nor did the exchange of letters cease entirely; so that the ink-shy master once asserted in Berlin, that he had written to no lady so often as to her.

Among the earliest acquaintances of Emily Linder, was Father Franz von Baader; as the nine letters indicate, which were addressed to her, and published in the complete works of Baader. The first of these was dated as early as the 25th of May, 1825, therefore at the commencement of her residence in Munich; and the contents indicate the immediate cause of their mutual attraction. This letter has somewhat the nature of a memorial, in which the philosopher draws a parallel between the art of painting and the God-like art of benevolence; closing with the following words:

"Herewith commends himself to Miss Emily Linder--she who rendered her memory so dear, so imperishable to him by an act kindness performed at his request to a poor family-- Franz Baader."

The tie between them therefore lay in the admirable activity of that quality by which Emily Linder quietly accomplished so much--a high-hearted love for her neighbor.

From that time forward Baader regularly sent her his pamphlets and works, and we can appreciate to what extent he tasked her intellect when he forwarded her a copy of his Speculative Dogma or, Social-Philosophic Treatise. He regarded it as a pleasant duty to acquaint her from time to time with his literary labors: and she spared herself to no trouble to follow even such grave and abstruse topics. He succeeded in specially interesting her in Jacob Böhme. Her intelligent remarks on Baader's article upon the doctrine of justification led him to remark that her letter afforded him a more satisfactory proof than many a criticism that he had succeeded in reaching both the head and the heart. In the year 1831, Baader dedicated to her a philosophic paper entitled Forty Propositions from a Religious Exotic," (Munich: Franz, 1831.) In the brief dedication of this "little work on great subjects" we read, "While you in ancient Rome are dedicating heart, soul, eye, and hand to art, it may not be unwelcome to you to hear over the stormy Alps a friendly voice, reminding you of that holy alliance of the three graces of a better and eternal life, Religion, Speculation, and Poetry, adding to these also, Painting." In the letter which accompanies this pamphlet he places before her the leading thoughts of the little work in a lucid manner:

"When the teachers of religion say that the whole Christian faith rests upon the knowledge and conviction that God is love; and that in this religion the love of God, of man, of nature, is made a duty; so that, in fact, a oneness of love and duty is announced, it would seem seasonable this unloving and duty-forgetful age so to present the identity of these two, love and duty, that mankind can discern the laws of religion in those of love, and those of love in religion; which, I trust, has been done in this pamphlet in a new, albeit rather a homoeopathic manner."

Next to Baader is to be named his intellectual son-in-law, Ernst von Lasaulx. He started, in the same year that Emily Linder left Rome, upon his long journey through Italy and Greece, to the Orient. They met in Florence, the 27th of July, 1831, and he promised the artist a description of his travels. {110} In conformity with this promise ensued a series of letters recording his experiences and impressions in Greece and the promised land, fresh and warm to a degree seldom found, and full of classic beauty. By whom could antiquity be better realized to this art-enthusiast than by Lasaulx, the zealous student of Grecian art-history, and equally a master of artistic prose! Poetic sensibility and literary clearness go refreshingly hand in hand in these letters; now in a description of his rides to that "eloquent rock-architecture" of Cyclopean edifices, the Titanic walls of the Acropolis of Tiryns and Mikene; or his solitary wanderings among the prostrate, ruined glories strewn from Corinth to Magara and Athens. At the first view of distant Athens, the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the temple of Theseus and the city behind the dark olive-woods he exclaims:

"Here is Greece, all of a departed glory worthy of the name, which the noiseless waste of time and the insane fury of man has left to the after-world. Never in my experience, and in no other city, have I known such emotions. It is as though my heart were turned into an AEolian harp, and the night winds were sighing through its broken strings."

Despite all his predilections, however, for the classic land, he did not suffer himself to be deceived as to a new Greece by the occasion of the 12th of April, 1833, when he was present at the formal surrender of the Acropolis to the Bavarian troops, when Osman Effendi withdrew the Turkish forces, and the Bavarian commander, Baligand, planted the Greek flag upon the northern rampart. He remarks, in this description:

"It was a remarkable spectacle; the noisy, confused crowd of Turks, Greeks, Bavarians and whatever other inquisitive Franks had collected in the dusky colonnades of the Parthenon. As I could not bring myself to any faith in the regeneration of Greece, the rampant irony of this insane funeral wake only added to my deep depression."

Written in the year 1833, and, hardly ten years later, what confirmation!

Glorious passages does the traveller indite to his distant friend over his pilgrimage through Palestine; profound melancholy at the present condition of the holy land; devout emotions amid holy places. On entering Jerusalem, Sunday, September 15. 1833, he says:

"Burning tears and a cold shudder of the heart were the first, God grant not the only, tributes which I offered for his love and that of his Son."

His delineations inspired his friend with a holy longing, and she entertained for some time afterward the idea of a journey to the holy land. She had, indeed, made preparations (1836) for a pilgrimage thither in company with Schubert, and only considerations of health compelled her at last to abandon the plan.

Subsequently, at the close of his life, Lasaulx crowned his friendship for Miss Linder with a special literary tribute. He dedicated to her his last great work, The Philosophy of the Fine Arts, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Poetry, Prose, (Munich, 1860.) As though from a presentiment of his death, he felt impelled to bring his esthetic studies to a close, sensible as he was that here and there were still omissions to supply. But the book is the thoughtful labor of many years, and a masterwork of style. In the dedication, which serves as preface, and which was written in the Bavarian inn, at Castle Lebenberg, in the Tyrol, on the 25th of September, 1859, after speaking of the origin of the work, he refers, in the following words, to his friend:

{111}

"That I dedicate this work particularly to you will be found natural enough on a moment's self-examination. I met you, for the first time, thirty years ago, at Munich, in a delightful circle of friendly men and women, so many of whom are constantly departing from us, that those who are still left have to move nearer and nearer to each other at your hospitable table. A few years later, I saw you in Florence again, as you came from Rome and I went thither. The death of our early-maturing friend, Adam Eberle, resulted in an association with you as a correspondent, and since then you have proved to me, my wife and daughter, both in bright and gloomy days, so dear and true a friend, that it is now a necessity with me to express my gratitude to you, even with this very work, whose subjects are so akin to your own studies, and in writing which, at this fortress of Lebenberg, I have so often thought of you and our mutual friends, dead and living, chiefest among whom should to yourself this book be a tribute."

A year and a half later, the noble and true soul of Lasaulx had passed, and his grateful friend founded for him a memorial after her own peculiar taste, the pious memorial of a stated mass for his soul.

An early friend, also, and one true till death, was Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, who met Miss Linder shortly after he was called to the University of Munich. The amiable personality of this savant of child-like nature particularly appealed to her. His fundamental views of religion accorded with her own; and therefore, the elements of a spiritual harmony were already at hand. Miss Linder was associated with his family during the period of an entire human life, in the closest and purest friendship, which particularly one test safely withstood--that of her conversion. In his autobiography, Schubert alludes, in a few words, to this friend of his household; and the comparison he draws between her and the Princess Gallitzin shows how high a position he accorded her. Speaking of the circle of friends in which he chiefly moved, he mentions the names of Roth, Puchta, Schnorr, Cornelius, Ringseis, Schlotthauer, Boisseree, Schwanthaler, and then remarks:

"The gathering-point of many of these friends was the house of the noble Swiss, Emily. At all times and in all places, in larger as in smaller social circles, will each with pleasure thus recall that grand life-picture, which was similarly presented to a former generation at Münster, in the fair friend of Hamann, of Stolberg, of Claudius."

Emily Linder was certainly the first, in her deep humility, to deprecate such a comparison; but it is for both equally creditable that the venerable sage felt constrained to bear such testimony, even after her union with the Catholic Church.

Next to the testimony of scholars and artists, we will finally quote an opinion from a female writer, a literary lady of the higher walks of life. In the summer of 1841, came Emma von Niendorf to Munich. She was in friendly relation with Schubert and Brentano, and, several years later, recorded her reminiscences of those sunny days at Munich in a lively and imaginative little work. At Schubert's she formed the acquaintance of Emily Linder, and was attracted closely to her. She refers to her in glowing and expressive terms, depicting this art-loving woman in the repose of her home:

"A noble Swiss, and for this reason remarkable, that, fortified by exterior means and the most positive convictions, she presented to me an ideal existence in a ripe and unwedded old age, having achieved happiness. She lived only for science, for art, for all that is beautiful and good. But everything was illumined with the glory of a genuine Christian spirit. And how this spirit reflected itself in all her surroundings! {112} I shall never forget it; the sitting-room, with work-basket, books, flowers, harp, drawings by Overbeck; a drawing-room separating these from a little house-chapel, which a painting of Overbeck also embellished. And, where the organ awaited the skilful fingers, a Madonna of the school of Leonardo da Vinci smiled from the wall, while the little side-altar encased a drawing of Albrecht Dürer. I found, also, in the house of this lady a portrait of Maria Mori, in the Tyrol, admirably drawn by her friend, the well-known lady artist, Ellenrieder, somewhat idealized; a profile, with folded hands; long, brown, down-flowing hair; the large, dark eye full of devotion, full of sensibility, the stigmata in the hands not to be forgotten. ... This lady is a Protestant. The deepest coloring of her soul is, perhaps, shading toward Catholicism; yet she doubtless finds satisfying harmonies in the Gospel. By one of those wonderful providences which life is so full of, this earnest soul was planted between two strongly pronounced natures--two opposite polarities of friendship, both deep and sincere--Clemens Brentano and Schubert, who were on equal terms of intimacy with her."

At the very time Emma von Niendorf put her work to press, she knew not that the lady to whom these lines referred had already attained that toward which "the deepest coloring of her soul seemed to be shading." Emily Linder had sought and found "satisfying harmonies" in the faith of the one, universal, apostolic church.

Conclusion In The Next Number.

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Xavier De Ravignan. [Footnote 46]

[Footnote 46: The Life of Father de Ravignan, of the Society of Jesus. By Father de Ponlevoy, of the same Society. Translated at St. Beuno's College, North Wales. 12mo, pp. 693. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1869.]

Father De Ponlevoy's life of his friend and colleague, the celebrated orator of Notre Dame, violates many of the canons of biographical composition, and is nevertheless an admirable book. As a narrative, it lacks clearness and symmetry; but as a picture of the interior of a great and beautiful soul, it is wonderfully vivid. It could only have been written by one who sympathized completely with the subject, and understood the interior illuminations and trials, and the complete detachment from the world, which distinguished the illustrious preacher whose fame at one time filled all Catholic Europe. Father de Ponlevoy has given us therefore a valuable work. He has looked at De Ravignan's life from the right point of view--the only point in fact from which it offers any important material to the biographer. In a worldly sense, the life was not an eventful one. He came of a noble yet hardly a distinguished family, who preserved their faith in the midst of the storm of revolution, and brought up their children to love the church. Gustave Xavier was born at Bayonne on the 1st of December, 1795. As a child he was remarkable for a gravity and intelligence far beyond his years, a warm affection for his parents, and a very pious disposition. After completing his school and college education in Paris, he resolved to devote himself to the law, and at the age of eighteen entered the office of M. Goujon, a jurist of some distinction at the capital. He had scarcely begun his studies, however, when France was thrown into confusion by the return of Napoleon from Elba. {113} The young man threw down his books, enlisted in a company of royalist volunteers, and after preparing himself for the campaign by receiving holy communion, marched with his command toward the Spanish frontier. His company belonged to that unlucky detachment under General Barbarin, which was surprised and cut to pieces at Hélette, in the Lower Pyrénées. General Barbarin fell, severely wounded, and would have fallen into the enemy's hands, when De Ravignan rushed forward through the fire and attempted to carry him off the field. It was a generous but desperate act, which would have led to the sacrifice of both. Barbarin saw the danger of the young hero, and, freeing one of his arms, shot himself through the head. Covered with the blood of his unfortunate commander, Gustave sought safety in flight, wandered afoot and alone through the Basque country, in the disguise of a peasant, and, after many hardships and escapes, rejoined the army on Spanish soil. He now received a commission as lieutenant of cavalry, and was attached to the staff of the Count de Damas, who sent him on a confidential mission to Bordeaux. Before he had any further opportunity of winning distinction, the war was over, and although tempting offers were made him to continue in the army, he determined to adhere to the law, and was soon hard at work again. The indomitable resolution, amounting even to sternness, which distinguished him in after life, was already one of his most remarkable characteristics. Whatever he did, was done with all his might. He studied with the most intense application, and, not satisfied with the reading necessary for his profession, applied himself closely to the German and English languages, and such lighter accomplishments as drawing and music. In due time he was appointed a conseiller auditeur in the royal court of Paris, then under the presidency of Séguier. The influence of the Duke d'Angoulême got him the appointment--not, however, without some difficulty--and his colleagues received him coldly. He awaited his time in patience, beginning each day by hearing Mass, and studying thoroughly, systematically, and indefatigably. At last, one day when the advocates happened to be out of court, a civil cause of a very tedious nature was unexpectedly called. The president turned, rather maliciously, to De Ravignan, and handed him the papers, saying, "Let us see for once what can be done by this young gentleman, whose acquaintance we have yet to make." On the appointed day the "young gentleman" presented a clear and logical report, and delivered it with a perfection of utterance which caused the whole court to listen with astonishment. His success at the bar was assured from that moment, and soon afterward he was appointed deputy procureur général.

His life at this time presents a curious and instructive study. He devoted a part of each day regularly to religious exercises; he was a zealous member of a Sodality of the Blessed Virgin; he had already in fact formed the idea of entering the priesthood, if not of joining the Society of Jesus. But while he remained in the world, he never neglected his professional pursuits, he mingled freely in society, and showed himself, in the true sense of the term, an accomplished gentleman. He was a great favorite in company. "In him," says Father de Ponlevoy, "interior and exterior were in perfect harmony. It would be impossible to imagine a more perfect type of a young man: the expression of his countenance was excellent, his forehead high and full of dignity, his features fine and characteristic, his eyes deep and blue, by turns animated and affectionate, his figure slight and graceful. {114} To this picture must be added scrupulous attention to person and dress, perfect politeness, and a nameless something, the reflection of a lofty mind, a great intellect, and a pure and affectionate heart." Many years afterward, when he visited London, to preach at the time of the World's Fair, one of the principal Protestant noblemen of England said of him, "He is the most finished gentleman I ever saw." His modesty, like many of his other virtues, leaned toward severity. At a great dinner-party one day, before he had embraced the religious life, he was placed next a young lady whose dress was rather too scanty. He sat stiff and silent until the unlucky girl ventured to ask, "M. de Ravignan, have you no appetite?" He replied in a half-whisper, "And you, Mdlle., have you no shame?"

He was twenty-six years of age when, after a retreat of eight days, he entered the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. The resolution had been gradually formed, yet it took everybody except his mother and his spiritual director by surprise. His professional friends and associates did all they could to draw him back to the world. They sought out his retreat, and went after him in crowds. "Ah!" he exclaimed, when he saw them, "I have made my escape from you."

De Ravignan remained only six months in the seminary, and then removed to the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, for which he had made no secret of his preference. The life of a novice offers little matter for the biographer. We are only told that his course here was distinguished by a devotion which approached heroism, a zeal that tended toward excess, and a strictness that was often too hard and stern. Throughout his life, severity toward himself, far more than toward others, was his principal defect; but as years went on, this rigidity of character, always more apparent than real, disappeared little by little in the sunshine of divine love. He never spared himself in anything. He surpassed all in his ambition for humiliation and suffering; the only trouble was, that he sometimes went too far in attempting to lead weaker brethren by the hard path he himself had trodden. A novice once asked somebody for advice, and was recommended to apply to Brother de Ravignan. "In that case," he rejoined, "I know beforehand what I must do: I have only to choose the most difficult course." In the scholasticate, he was known by the sobriquet of "Iron Bar." When the time came for his admission to holy orders, after nearly four years passed in the scholasticate at Paris and at Dôle, he was sent with five other candidates to the Diocesan Seminary at Orgelet, where the sacrament of ordination was to be administered. Before the party set out, Brother de Ravignan was appointed superior for the journey. His companions were seized with fear when they heard who had been placed in charge over them; but their alarm was groundless. "Nothing," said one of the company, "could exceed the kindness, the affability, the attentiveness to small wants, the simple joy of the young superior. He availed himself of his character only to claim the right of choosing the last place, and of making himself the servant of all." He was ordained priest on the 25th of July, 1828.

The war against the Jesuits in France was approaching its crisis, and the ordinance which deprived them of the liberty of teaching and shut up all their colleges was promulgated just about the time of Father de Ravignan's ordination. {115} Cut off from the privilege of secular instruction, the society resolved to devote itself more zealously than ever to the theological training of its own members. Father de Ravignan was assigned a chair of theology at Saint Acheul, near Amiens; for he was not only a thorough scholar, but he possessed a rare talent for teaching, and according to the testimony of his pupil, Father Rubillon, fully realized "the idea of a professor of theology such as is depicted by St. Ignatius." The poor fathers, however, were not to be left here in peace. In 1829, they received notice to suspend their classes; but Father de Ravignan hastened to Paris, saw the Minister of Public Instruction, and caused the order to be set aside. The next year came the revolution of July. Late in the evening of the 29th, a mob, led by an expelled pupil, attacked the college, burst in gates, and with cries for "The King and the Charter!" "The Emperor!" "Liberty!" and "Down with the priests!" and "Death to the Jesuits!" proceeded to sack the building. While some of the fathers took refuge in the chapel, and others, expecting death, were busy hearing one another's confessions, Father de Ravignan went upon a balcony, and tried to make himself heard by the rioters. He persisted until a stone struck him on the temple, and he was led away bleeding. To what lengths the fury of the mob would have gone it is impossible to say; but fortunately, in the course of their devastation they stumbled into the wine-cellar, and all got drunk. The arrival of a troop of cavalry dispersed the reeling crowd in the twinkling of an eye, and the Jesuits were left to mourn over the ruins. The next day it seemed certain that the attack would be renewed. The college was deserted, and its inmates scattered in different directions, Father de Ravignan being sent to Brigue in Switzerland to resume his courses of theological instruction.

It was not until the close of 1834 that he came back to France. Then we find him once more at Saint Acheul, where, since classes were prohibited, a house had been opened for fathers in their third year of probation. Three years later, he was appointed superior of a new house at Bordeaux. There he remained until 1842.

In the mean time he had entered, imperceptibly, so to speak, upon the great work of his life. He had preached many retreats at different times to his own brethren, and to other religious communities, but had rarely been heard in a public pulpit until, during the Lent of 1835, while he was living at Saint Acheul, he was selected to preach a series of conferences in the cathedral of Amiens. He was forty years of age when he began this apostleship, and he had been withdrawn from the world ever since he was twenty-seven; yet he had not been forgotten. There was a lively curiosity among his old friends to hear him; the members of the bar in particular were constant in their attendance; and the impression produced in Amiens was not only deep, but rich in spiritual fruit. In Advent, he was appointed to preach a similar course at the same place; and in Lent of the next year, we find him preaching in the church of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Paris. Nothing exactly like these conferences and courses of sermons, so common in France, has ever been known to our country, and some of our readers may find it difficult to appreciate the magnitude and importance of the labor in which Father de Ravignan was now engaged. {116} The audiences whom he had to address were not only poor, unlettered sinners, whose consciences needed arousing; to these of course he must speak, but with them came hundreds of the most cultivated and critical listeners, who studied the speaker's language and manner as they would a literary essay or an exercise in elocution. The court, the army, the learned professions, and the leaders of fashionable society crowded around the Lent and Advent pulpits. The appearance of a new preacher was the sensation of the metropolis. The newspapers criticised the performance as they would criticise a play at the theatre. To satisfy the exactions of such an audience as this, and yet to preserve that unction without which preaching is a waste of breath--to please the critical ear, and yet to move the callous heart, required qualifications which few men combined. The most famous of all the series of conferences had been those in the great cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Father Lacordaire had there roused an extraordinary enthusiasm, and at the height of his fame had abandoned the pulpit and gone to Rome for the purpose of restoring the Dominican order to France. He earnestly desired that Father de Ravignan should be his successor at Notre Dame, and it is interesting to know that it was partly through Lacordaire's agency, that the Jesuit was obliged in 1837 to begin that grand series of discourses, extending over ten years, by which he will be chiefly remembered. "No one could claim to be the apostle of such an assembly as met in Notre Dame," says Father de Ponlevoy,

"unless he were first of all a philosopher. The subject chosen for the first year was accordingly a kind of Catholic philosophy of history, depicting the broad outlines of the struggle between truth and error. This idea is analogous to that which inspired the City of God of St. Augustine; it was carried on in the station of 1838 by an explanation of fundamental doctrines, beginning with the personality and action of God, in opposition to the abstractions of the pantheists, the ill-defined forms of deism and fatalism; proceeding on to liberty, the immortality of the soul and the end of man, against materialism. For all this, it was necessary to go to first principles, to recall slumbering belief to life, and again to establish doctrines which had been corrupted by numberless errors. Some portion of the hearers were from this time forward led to embrace the last practical conclusions, and already F. de Ravignan had some consoling returns to the faith to report. At the end of the station of 1838, he wrote:

"'The attendance has been large and remarkable for the great number of distinguished persons, members of the present and former ministries, peers, deputies, academicians, well known Protestants, foreigners of rank, and a troop of young men.

"'There have been symptoms of approval, sometimes too freely manifested; conversions, a few, but not many. Moreover, no expressions of hostility, either in the newspapers or among the audience. God be praised!

"'I have been forced to have some intercourse with a great many people, and some of them persons of note. M. de Chateaubriand paid me a visit; two interviews were arranged for me with M. de Lamartine; several physicians and men of science have sought to see me; some have been to confession. How many great men there are ignorant of the faith, and sick in mind and heart.

"'God has supported me. I have felt his grace, his help to our society, and the benefit of the prayers offered for my work. I took care that none of the journals should employ short-hand writers, that my words might not be published in a distorted form.'"

From the very outset, Father de Ravignan had contemplated the establishment of an annual retreat by way of a complement to his conferences; but wishing to give his influence time to work before he carried out this plan, he waited until 1841, and then resolved to begin in the small church of the Abbaye-aux-Bois, which with great crowding holds no more than 1000 or 1200 people. {117} Should the attendance be too large for this church, it was arranged that he should remove to St. Eustache. He describes the result of his experiment as follows:

"I gave notice of a retreat for men during Holy Week, only on Palm-Sunday at Notre Dame before the conference; an instruction every evening at eight o'clock till Holy Saturday inclusively. On the Monday evening I went to the Abbaye-aux-Bois about half-past seven. I found an extraordinary crowd, and difficulty in getting places; and there was not a single woman. I had kept them all out. For nearly two hours the whole church had been full, and already a hundred people had gone away unable to get in. I wanted to cross the bottom of the church, but I could not get along. I was recognized, and with great earnestness, but without uproar, I was asked to adjourn elsewhere. I promised to do so. From the pulpit I was struck by this throng of men, almost all young, who filled the doorways, the altars and no disturbance. After having warmly congratulated them, I appointed Saint-Eustache for the next day. Then I bade them all rise for prayer. They all rose like one man. We recited the Veni Creator, and the instruction followed on these words: Venite seorsum et requiescite pusillum--Come aside, and rest a little. I advised them all to remain for benediction. All remained.

"Next day Saint-Eustache was filled five hours before the service, and the following days they came even earlier.

"My heart is full of gratitude to God. His help has been plain. I do not know that such a churchful of men was ever seen. The iron gates at the doors, the bases of the pillars, the rails, everything, was covered with people hanging on; the nave and aisles filled and crowded beyond conception, and the deepest, most religious silence--not one disturbance, no police--3000 or 4000 men's voices singing the Miserere, the Stabat Mater. The sight affected me deeply.

"I at once adopted perfect apostolic freedom of language, and, without preface, began to speak of sin, of hell, of confession, etc. I delivered my address, and appointed six hours every day which I would devote to men who might wish to see me. They have come in shoals. I have been hearing confessions all the week, six or seven hours a day, of men of all ages and positions in life--all very much behindhand. God has given me consolation. The prayers offered on all sides for this work have had a visible effect. There has been a marked movement in Paris. More Easter Communions everywhere. Our fathers have received many more confessions of men. I have not declined a single one, and I am still busy in finishing them.

"A good many came to tell me of their difficulties, and I said to them, 'Well, believe me, there is but one way; take your place there;' and all, with a single exception, made their confessions.

"On Good-Friday the Passion sermon exhausted my strength; the following day I had no voice left. I was unable to give the closing instruction of the retreat on Holy Saturday. I wrote a scrap of a note to inform the Curé of Saint-Eustache, and he bethought him of reading it from the pulpit. All went off quietly; the people waited for benediction and went home."

Lacordaire was a far more brilliant and poetical preacher than De Ravignan, but the styles of the two men were so entirely different that there can be no comparison between them. The conferences of the Jesuit orator, studied in the cold light of print, lack color and imagination; but they can only be judged fairly by those who heard them delivered. The principal characteristic of his delivery we should judge must have been force--a force which amounted to majesty. He spoke with a commanding air of authority, as one whose convictions were as fixed as the everlasting hills. His power of assertion was tremendous; with all this he was animated and impassioned, although he generally commenced with a slow and measured cadence. His style was a little rough, but nervous and striking. He did not captivate, but he conquered. His gestures were dignified and impressive; his attitude was modest but commanding; his personal presence was noble. When he entered the pulpit, he remained a long time motionless, with eyes cast down, waiting until the assemblage became perfectly still. Then he made the sign of the cross with a pomp and stateliness which became famous. {118} A Protestant minister who witnessed this solemn exordium exclaimed, "He has preached without speaking a word!" It used to be said, "When Father de Ravignan shows himself in the pulpit, no one can tell whether he has just ascended from earth or come down from heaven." One day he had been describing the wilful misery of the unbeliever--his doubts, fears, melancholy, repinings, and despair; the picture was drawn with a terrible force; the audience sat as if paralyzed. Suddenly, want of breath compelled the orator to pause. He folded his arms, and with inimitable emphasis brought the climax to an end with these words: "And we-- we are believers!" The effect was overpowering. The people forgot themselves, and a signal of applause ran through the church. The priest was indignant. With glowing countenance and arm raised in air, he cried, "Silence!" in a voice of awful reproof, and the assembly was instantly hushed.

Still more effective, though less celebrated than the conferences, were Father de Ravignan's retreats. In these he was unapproached. He followed strictly the exercises of St. Ignatius, to which he gave such unremitting study that he might well be called a man of one book. His conferences were prepared with great elaboration, but the retreats were improvisations. As years went on, he devoted himself more and more closely to these latter exercises, until they became at last his proper work in the ministry; and when sickness, and the loss of his voice had compelled him to abandon formal preaching, he continued to conduct the retreats at Notre Dame, while Lacordaire resumed his place in the pulpit.

It must not be supposed that the success of the Jesuit's oratory was any indication of a growing favor for the society in France. The opposition to its existence was still active, and the government refused to acknowledge that as a society it had any existence in the kingdom at all. The wildest stories about it were published and believed. One day, in the midst of a distinguished party assembled at the Tuileries to celebrate the king's birthday, a person of influence disclosed a horrible plot: the Jesuits had arms stored in the cellars of Saint Sulpice, and only the day before, Father de Ravignan had been there concerting measures with his accomplices. "Oh! yes," interrupted a lady of the court, "I was at that meeting. We were drawing a raffle for the poor. There were two or three hundred families so lucky as to be set up with a coffee-pot or a sauce-pan." As a general thing, however, whatever might be said of the society, Father de Ravignan was treated with respect. Guizot made no secret of his esteem for him, and Royer-Collard used to say, "Father de Ravignan is artless enough to imagine himself a Jesuit." In the little book which De Ravignan accordingly wrote about this time--On the Existence and the Institute of the Jesuits--there was a double purpose to be gained. He wished to identify himself as thoroughly and as publicly as he could with the society to which he had given his heart, and he wished to share in the gallant battle which Lacordaire was fighting for the right of the religious orders to exist in France under the protection of the laws. The opposition in the legislative chambers had been insisting that they ought not to exist; the ministry replied that they did not exist; and right in the midst of the dispute appears Father de Ravignan, like the poor prisoner who called a lawyer to get him out of jail. {119} "But this is preposterous," said the counsel; "you can't be arrested on such a charge as that!" "I don't know," said the prisoner, "but I am arrested." "Why, I tell you, you can't be: it is not legal; they have no right to put you in jail." "Well, I only know that I am in jail, and I want you get me out." Father de Ravignan showed clearly enough that they did exist, and had a right to legal protection. If they were to be driven out of the kingdom, the government must face the responsibility, and do it openly. A few days after the appearance of the book, Lacordaire, being present at a meeting of the Catholic Club under the presidency of the Archbishop of Paris, exclaimed, "If we were in England, I should propose three cheers for Father de Ravignan." The cheers were given with a will.

We have no space to follow Father de Ravignan in the varied occupations of the next ten years. His health, always precarious, broke down completely in 1847, and for the rest of his life he was condemned to alternations of intense suffering, and of forced inaction which was worse to him than pain. He was tormented with chronic neuralgia, with dropsy on the chest, and a severe affection of the larynx, that for long periods deprived him entirely of the power of preaching. During these ten years of suffering, he wrote his history of "Clement XIII. and Clement XIV," a book which under the guise of an apology for the course of the latter pontiff in the suppression of the Jesuits was in reality an apology for the society, and a reply to the recently published work of Father Theiner on the same subject. He founded the sodality known as the Children of Mary, assisted in the establishment of the Congregation of the Oratory, and was zealously and constantly employed in the direction of souls and the guidance of converts--gathering up, as Father de Ponlevoy well expresses it, the fruit of his ten years' preaching. There is hardly a distinguished name in the history of France at that day which does not appear in connection with his. Madame Swetchine was one of his co-laborers. Madame de la Ferronnays, whose charming life has recently been told under the title of A Sister's Story, was his devoted friend. Chateaubriand, Count Molé, Walckenaër, Camper the celebrated navigator, Marshal St. Arnaud, General Cavaignac, Prince Demidoff, Montalembert, De Falloux, and Bishop Dupanloup--these are some of the illustrious names which occur most frequently in his correspondence. A celebrity of a very different sort with whom he had some intercourse is thus alluded to in Father de Ponlevoy's Life:

"We cannot conclude this chapter without making some mention of that well-known American Medium, who possessed the unfortunate talent of turning other things besides tables, and of calling up the dead for the amusement of the living. Much has been said, even in the newspapers, about his close and pious intimacy with F. de Ravignan; and it seems that an attempt has been made to use an honored name as a passport to introduce into France, and establish there, these wonderful discoveries of the new world.

"The facts, in all their simplicity, are as follows: It is quite true that, after the young foreigner had been converted in Italy, he was furnished at Rome with an introduction to F. de Ravignan; but by this time he had given up his magic at the same time that he gave up his Protestantism, and he was received with the interest which is due from a priest to every soul ransomed with the blood of Jesus Christ, and especially, perhaps, to a soul which is converted and brought back to the bosom of the church. On his arrival in Paris, he was again absolutely forbidden to return in any way to his old practices. F. de Ravignan, agreeably to the principles of the faith which proscribe all superstition, prohibited, under the severest penalties he could inflict, all participation in or presence at these dangerous and sometimes guilty proceedings. {120} Once the unhappy Medium, beset by I know not what man or devil, was unfaithful to his promise; he was received with a severity which prostrated him; I chanced at the time to come into the room, and I saw him rolling on the ground, and writhing like a worm at the feet of the priest, so righteously indignant. The father was touched by a repentance which led to such bodily agony, raised him up, and pardoned him; but, before dismissing him, exacted a written promise confirmed by an oath. But a notorious relapse soon took place, and the servant of God, breaking off all connection with this slave of the spirits, sent him word never again to appear in his presence."

We shall not undertake, in the brief space that remains, to describe the beauty of Father de Ravignan's character--his touching humility, his rare sweetness of soul, his complete detachment from earth, his patience, his charity, and his unflagging zeal. He was once asked how he had attained such mastery over himself. "There were two of us," he replied; "I threw one out of the window, so that only I remained where I was." Father de Ponlevoy applies to him the description which St. Francis Xavier gave of St. Ignatius: "His character is made up of three elements; a humility of mind which we can scarcely understand, a force of soul superior to all opposition, and an incomparable kindness of heart."

In the spring of 1857, a severe attack of sickness obliged him to remove to Saint Acheul. He came back to Paris in the autumn, apparently restored to as good health as he had experienced of recent years, but he was already far gone in consumption. On the 3d of December, he passed a long time at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, conversing with a poor person who wanted to enter the church. Then he went into the confessional, and remained there until physically exhausted. One of his penitents on that occasion remarked that he spoke more than ever like a man who no longer belonged to this world. He got home with great difficulty. This was the last of his ministry. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, he celebrated mass for the last time; but it was not until the 26th of February that he passed to that blessed rest for which he had yearned so long with an eagerness that he used to call "homesickness." The account of his last days is too beautiful to be abridged. With the awe inspired by the sublime narrative, we prefer to drop our pen at the opening of this final chapter, wherein the gates of heaven seem to stand ajar, and our eyes are dazzled by the awful light which streams from the divine presence.

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The Educational Question.

The articles upon popular education which have heretofore appeared in this journal seem to have produced the effects which were anticipated by the writer. The public interest has been unusually excited by the discussion; and two classes of antagonists have ventured to make an issue with the advocates of a just distribution of the school fund. The first in order, but much the least important in all other respects, is that confessed fossil, the "no-popery" party, which ever and anon intrudes itself upon the unwilling attention of our republican society, braying itself hoarse with rage because it can neither command the confidence of enlightened and liberal Protestants nor escape the galling ridicule of six millions of its Catholic fellow-citizens. This class is well represented in an elaborate tract lately issued from the office of the American and Foreign Christian Union, 27 Bible House, New York City, and purporting to be a review of the article in the January number of The Educational Monthly, presenting The Roman Catholic View of Education in the United States. It requires no great amount of logical acumen to enable the least intelligent of men to see that this tract affords the most apt illustration of one of the principal arguments we have advanced in support of the Catholic claim. We have remained silent for the last three months, resting satisfied that it would be impossible for "the stereotyped class of saints and philosophers" to rush to the rescue of a cherished injustice, without forthwith exposing its odious features in their struggle to carry it victoriously through the battle-field of a public controversy. The veil of Mokanna has fallen even before the false prophet had time to secure a victim! or, to speak more in accordance with scriptural analogies, the cloven foot has discovered itself under the clerical robe and the wickedness of the heart has burst out from the tongue. Quare fremuerunt gentes! Why, indeed, shall they rage and devise vain things? Have they not fulfilled this prophecy of the royal David for three hundred years; and have they not suffered the derision threatened in the fourth verse of the second Psalm? Where shall we find a more convincing proof than this very tract of what the enemies of the Catholic faith and people design to accomplish by a school system which they insincerely profess to advocate on account of its intrinsic merits, in the face of the historical fact that, wherever and whenever they have had the power to control the state--as the early days of all New England and of several of the other American States--they never failed to use the school-room as an ante-chamber to the conventicle! After they had been stripped of this power by such men as Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and the liberal founders of American institutions, they still struggled for many years to accomplish by indirect means the injustice and iniquity which could not be openly maintained under the constitutions and the laws of the federal government and the several States. We all well remember how the poor Catholic boys and girls of the free schools were harassed by colporteurs and proselytizers, who carried baskets filled, not with bread for the hungry children of poverty, but with oleaginous tracts, cunningly devised to destroy in those little pupils of the state the faith of their fathers and the religious practices of their devout mothers. {122} Teachers were selected with especial regard to their bitter hatred of the Catholic Church and their zeal for "Evangelical" propagandism. When this failed to make any very perceptible impression upon the numerical strength of the Catholic people, then commenced the wholesale child-stealing, under the pious pretext of cleaning out the moral sewers of society; and tens of thousands of little children, stolen or forcibly wrested from the arms of Catholic parents--too poor and friendless to protect the natural and legal rights of themselves and their offspring--were hurried off to the far West, their names changed, and their temporal and eternal hopes committed to the zealous charge of pious and vigorous haters of the popish anti-Christ! In spite of all this, the Catholic population of the United States continued steadily to rise like a flood tide, not only through foreign immigration, but by reason of virtuous wedlock and the watchful and severe faith and discipline of a church which forbids and effectually prevents child-murder! The reader will find this matter discussed in an article elsewhere in this number, entitled, "Comparative Morality of Catholic and Protestant Countries."

The writer of the tract issued from 27 Bible House is annoyed by the comparison which the author of the article in The Educational Monthly instituted between the violent crimes of our ancestors and the stupendous sins which have supplanted them in modern times. The comparison was close-fitting as the shirt of Nessus, and quite as uncomfortable. The Bible House replies to this with a contrast between the intellectual, material, moral, and religious advancement of the masses in England, the United States, and every other Protestant country, in the nineteenth century, and the debasement of the people of Spain, Italy, Mexico, and South America. In the first place, we reply that our present controversy concerns popular education in the United States now and for a hopeful future, and not the past nor the present of European or South American nations. In the next place, we say that this is but another evidence of the malignant spirit to which we are required to intrust the training of our Catholic youth. They are to be taught that the church of their fathers is the nursery of ignorance and vice; and that all the knowledge, civilization, and virtue which the world enjoys are the offspring of the so-called Reformation. They are to learn nothing of the true history of Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, and the Catholic principalities of Continental Europe. They are never to hear of the vast libraries of Catholic learning; the rich endowments of Catholic education all over the world for ages; the innumerable universities, colleges, academies, and free schools established by their church, or by governments under her auspices, throughout Christendom. They are not to be told how Oxford and Cambridge were founded by their Catholic forefathers and plundered from their lawful possession. The Bible House tractarian would not willingly read to them from the Notes of a Traveller by that eminent Scotch Presbyterian, Samuel Laing, such passages as these:

"The comparative education of the Scotch clergy of the present generation, that is to say, their education compared to that of the Scotch people, is unquestionably lower than that of the Popish clergy compared to the education of their people. This is usually ascribed to the Popish clergy seeking to maintain their influence and superiority by keeping the people in gross ignorance. {123} But this opinion of our churchmen seems more orthodox than charitable or correct. The Popish clergy have in reality less to lose by the progress of education than our own Scotch clergy; because their pastoral influence and their church services being founded on ceremonial ordinances, come into no competition or comparison whatsoever in the public mind with anything similar that literature or education produces; and are not connected with the imperfect mode of conveying instruction which, as education advances, becomes obsolete and falls into disuse, and almost into contempt, although essential in our Scotch church. In Catholic Germany, in France, Italy, and even Spain the education of the common people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and morals is at least as generally diffused, and as faithfully promoted by the clerical body, as in Scotland. It is by their own advance and not by keeping back the advance of the people, that the Popish priesthood of the present day seek to keep ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort on our Presbyterian clergy, and ask if they, too, are in their countries at the head of the intellectual movement of the age? Education is in reality not only not repressed but is encouraged by the Popish Church, and is a mighty instrument in its hands and ably used. In every street in Rome, for instance, there are at short distances public primary schools for the education of the children of the lower and middle classes in the neighborhood Rome, with a population of 158,678 souls, has 372 public primary schools with 482 teachers; and 14,099 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many public schools for the instruction of those classes? I doubt it. Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has only 264 schools. Rome has also her university with an average attendance of 660 students; and the Papal States with a population of 2,500,000 (in 1846) contain seven universities. Prussia with a population of 14,000,000 has but seven."

Neither would our Bible House tractarian teach his Catholic pupils to discriminate between times, circumstances, opportunities, characteristics of race, influences of climate, ancient traditional habits, and the complicated causes which affect the life and development of each nation; so as to contrast Protestant England with Protestant Denmark, and Catholic France with Catholic Portugal; or, again, to compare each of these with itself at different epochs of its own history. They are not to be told that Spain was never as powerful, covering the seas with her commerce and the earth with her conquests, and lighting up Europe by her genius, as at the time when she was the most thoroughly Catholic and the least tainted with that revolutionary infidelity which was born of Calvin and has grown to be a giant destroyer under Mazzini and Garibaldi. They are to be told, however, that the glory of a Christian nation is to be measured by its national debt, its fleets and armies, its opium trade, its Coolie traffic, its bankrupt laws, its work-houses, its prodigious fortunes mocking squalid poverty, its twenty millions of people who own no foot of land and its vicious nobles and gentry who firmly grasp it all, its telegraphic wires and cables, its huge ships and thundering factories, its luxurious merchants who toil not, and its starving able-bodied paupers who can find no work to do, its grotesque mixture of the beautiful and the vile, of the grand and the infamous, of the light of the skies and the darkness of the obscene coal-pits, of the pride of science and the ignorance of barbarism, of the perfume of fashionable churches and the stench of gin-shops, of the industrial slavery of great towns and the rotting idleness of vast lazar-houses, which make up the boasted civilization of haughty England, and extort from the Bible House the prayerful cry, "Thank God, we are not like unto these Romish Publicans!" Happy Pharisees! we certainly do not desire to disturb their self-complacency; but we wish to teach our Catholic children that the simple habits, the earnest piety, the manly truth and courage of the little Catholic Republic of San Marino, which has preserved its liberties and independence for over eight hundred years without losing its religion, are for the citizens of this great democratic empire a more profitable study than the doctrines of Malthus or the history of cotton-gins. {124} As we have said in our former articles, we already have here quite enough of the material, and a superabundance of animal spirits and vigor; and that what we stand in need of is a well-defined faith, moral duties clearly understood, and habits of practical virtue firmly fixed in the daily life of all the people, Without that, even temporal prosperity must be evanescent; as it was with all heathen nations that have successively ruled the world and perished. Without that, temporal prosperity is a curse, and not a blessing; for what will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Men make nations; and nationalities are of no value before God, except only in so far as they conduce to the end of each individual man's creation. The Indian who goes to heaven from his wigwam in the forest attains his end. The philosopher who goes to hell from his palace in London or Paris has wofully miscalculated the worth of all human philosophy, statesmanship, and national grandeur, as the idols of his worship. The pagans measured human life and society by the standard of the Bible House, No. 27, if we are to judge it by this tract!

So also, according to this tract, our Catholic children should be taught in the schools that Voltaire became an infidel because he had been a Catholic and was trained at a Jesuit college. It will nowhere appear in the lesson that he became an infidel because he rebelled against the teachings of his church, and renounced the maxims of his Jesuit tutors. When he so zealously defended his thesis in vindication of Julian the Apostate, his own apostasy was foretold by his master. His death was the answer to his life. In his agony he called for a priest; but three-score years of blasphemy had won to him the avenging disciples who then encircled his bed like a wall of fire; and no priest could reach the dying enemy of Christ!

This tract would also teach our children in the schools that it was the teachings of the "Romish Church" which drove revolutionary France from the altars of God. It would not be explained to them how that revolutionary rage was but the outburst of a volcano of passion which had smouldered during ages of long suffering under the rule of kings and nobles; and that the instincts of the people remained so true, that in the very same generation they returned, like the people of Israel, to the worship of God; and rushed to the altars of their fathers with tears of repentance and joy. They did not become Protestants! How has it been with the descendants of the godly men of Plymouth Rock? Quietly and with exquisite decorum they have settled down into deists, pantheists, freethinkers, free-lovers, spiritualists, and philosophers! Will they go back to Puritanism?

"Facilis descensus Averni!"

The tract tells our children that Gibbon left the Protestant Church for the Catholic, and finally landed in infidelity. Why did he not go back to Protestantism?

The tract also tells our children that this is a Protestant country; which means that all its glories are Protestant, and that the Catholic, with Italy and Spain before his eyes, should be thankful that he is tolerated here. Are our children to learn this lesson at the schools? {125} Now, in the first place, if Bishop Coxe and other Protestant witnesses are reliable,[Footnote 47] our Bible House friends may as well begin to prepare their nerves to see our great country become Catholic, at least as much of it as will remain Christian at all. Perhaps they will then value the wisdom and liberality of that admonitory sentence in the article of The Educational Monthly which reads thus:

[Footnote 47: See page 61 of this number.]

"We are quite sure that if the Catholics were the majority in the United States, and were to attempt such an injustice," (as that involved in this school question.) "our Protestant brethren would cry out against it, and appeal to the wise and liberal examples of Prussia and England, France and Austria! Now, is it not always as unwise as it is unjust to make a minority taste the bitterness of oppression? Men governed by the law of divine charity will bear it meekly and seek to return good for evil; but all men are not docile; and majorities change rapidly and often, in this fleeting world! Is it not wiser and more politic, even in mere regard to social interests, that all institutions intended for the welfare of the people should be firmly based upon exact and equal justice? This would place them under the protection of fixed habit, which in a nation is as strong as nature; and it would save them from the mutations of society. The strong of one generation may be the weak of the next; and we see this occurring with political parties within the brief spaces of presidential terms. Hence we wisely inculcate moderation and of retribution."

In the next place, although the present majority of the American people are non-Catholic, we deny that they are Protestants, as a nation, in a political sense. The institutions of the country are neither Catholic nor Protestant. They recognize no one faith more than another. Christian morality is accepted as the basis of public and private duties by common consent; that is all. Religious liberty was not born of the theocracy of New England. Hancock and Adams, under the lead of Jefferson, departed very far from the instincts of Calvinism and the traditions of Plymouth Rock when they laid the foundations of this government; and this is one of the things which we certainly intend to have our children taught. We do not intend that they shall be "poor boys at the feast," humbly thankful for such crumbs as our Bible House friends may magnanimously bestow upon the "Romish aliens;" but they shall be told to hold up their heads, with the full consciousness that they are American citizens, the peers of all others, and in no way disqualified, by the doctrines or morals of their church, to perform every duty as faithfully and as ably as any other men of any other creed. They shall not be terrified with the "raw head and bloody bones" of "degraded Italy," "besotted Spain," and the other terrible examples of the destroying influence of their old mother church. We shall teach them not to trust any morality which does not rest upon a clear faith; and we shall show them how that faith commands obedience to lawful authority, purity of motive in all public acts, and universal charity for all men.

Some of our readers may be surprised that we have devoted so much space to this tract. Our motive should be apparent. We said, in the beginning of this article, that this tract sounds like the voice of one of the two classes of opponents who are arrayed against us on this question; and that in itself it affords a perfect illustration of our main argument, which is this, clearly stated in the following paragraph from the article in The Educational Monthly:

"And more than this, Catholics know by painful experience that history cannot be compiled, travels written, poetry, oratory, or romance inflicted upon a credulous public, without the stereotyped assaults upon the doctrines, discipline, and historical life of their church. {126} From Walter Scott to Peter Parley, and from Hume, Gibbon, and Macaulay to the mechanical compilers of cheap school literature, it is the same story told a thousand times oftener than it is refuted; so that the English language, for the last two centuries, may be said without exaggeration to have waged war against the Catholic Church. Indeed, so far as European history is considered, the difficulty must always be insurmountable; since it would always be impossible for the Catholic and Protestant to accept the same history of the Reformation or of the Papal See, or the political, social, and moral events resulting from or in any degree connected with those two great centres and controlling causes. Who could write a political history of Christendom for the last three hundred years and omit all mention of Luther and the pope? And how is any school compendium of such history to be devised for the use of the Catholic and Protestant child alike?"

Now, it is very well understood that, with all their doctrinal differences and sectarian antipathies, all the Protestant sects can nevertheless, as a general rule, accept any Protestant history of the so-called Reformation, and of the wars, diplomacies, public events, and moral results springing from or connected with that episode in the religious annals of our race; but can Catholics accept such? Will you compel Catholic parents to accept for their children histories written in the spirit of this Bible House tract, which tells us (p. 3.) that the Catholic faith "taught the people that a Romish priest is to them in the place of God; that a Romish priest can create his Creator!"

The very encyclopedia, quoted by our tractarian is another Roundhead trooper armed against the papal anti-Christ! And so, the bright Catholic boy will be amused with the antics of the feasting and fighting monk in Ivanhoe; whilst graver calumnies will convince him that the church of his fathers, and of the great-grandfathers of her modern revilers, is truly a den of thieves and a house of abominations.

It may as well be distinctly understood, once and for all, that we cannot consent that our children shall receive secular education without religious training; and that we understand very well that such religious knowledge as we desire them to possess cannot be imparted by those who are hostile to us. We intend also to teach them to respect and uphold all the rights, social, political, and religious, of their fellow-citizens, upon the plain injunction of the Scriptures that they shall do unto others precisely as they would have others do unto themselves. At the same time we will teach them to love and revere their ancient mother church, as the custodian for fifteen hundred years of that Bible which she is falsely accused by this tract of "fearing;" as the munificent patroness of every art and the mistress of every science; as the friend and supporter of liberty when united to order and justice; as the enemy of pride, license, and disobedience to lawful authority; as the guardian of the sanctity of marriage against the pagan concupiscence of the divorce courts; as the sword of vengeance uplifted over the heads of the child-murdering destroyers of populations; in fine, as the hope and future salvation of this republic and all its precious endowments of personal manhood, honor, virtue, and faith, and all its national institutions of self-governing popular sovereignty, equal rights, and faithful citizenship, based, not upon infidel revolutionary "fraternity," but upon a noble Christian brotherhood. Certainly, even if we were mistaken in our estimate of the fruitfulness and power of the Catholic faith, it would be no less an evidence of our sincere patriotism, that we are anxious to impress upon the children of the church the conviction that in faithfully serving their country they are only obeying the commands of their religion.

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As we do not intend that our children shall be either untaught or mistaught in regard to this sublime knowledge and duty, we shall insist on educating them ourselves, with or without receiving our just share of the public taxes, to which we do contribute very largely, the declaration of the Bible House tract to the contrary notwithstanding.

We have devoted more space to this first, class of objectors than they could claim from our courtesy, because we believe that they nominally represent many honest men who will cheerfully admit the truth when they see it.

There is another and a far different class of persons who take issue with us upon this question, and for whom we entertain a perfect respect--first, because they treat the subject with evident fairness and commendable civility; and secondly, because from their stand-point, there would appear to be much good reason in their objections to our claim. It gives us very great pleasure to use all our honest endeavors to remove their difficulties. This class is represented by the editorial articles which appeared in The Chicago Advance, The Troy Daily Press, and several other papers, criticising the article of The Educational Monthly. The objections may be summed up as follows:

First, (and the most important.) That denominational education would prevent the complete amalgamation or "unification" of American citizenship, and tend to increase sectarian bitterness, to the prejudice of republican institutions.

Secondly. That it would destroy the harmony and efficiency of the general school system.

Thirdly. That the Catholic people are richer in the jewels of the Roman matron, their children, than they are in the images of Caesar, the coin of the country! and that therefore they would draw from the common fund an amount much in excess of the taxes paid by them; which would not be just.

We shall candidly consider these objections in the order in which we have stated them.

As to the first: It would be fortunate, in a temporal point of view, if all the people were of one mind in religion, especially if they happen to have the true faith; inasmuch as nothing so conduces to the general harmony and good will as the total absence of all religious strife. But we see that such a state of things cannot be hoped for here. Not only is the community divided into Protestants, Catholics, and a large body of citizens professing no faith at all, but the Protestant community itself is subdivided into innumerable conflicting sects. In defiance of any system of public education, these various religious organizations will always be widely separated from each other, and from the Catholic Church, on questions of doctrinal belief. The issue then remains nakedly before us, Shall public education be entirely divorced from revealed religion, and shall we commit the morals of our children to the saving influences of a little "reading, writing, and arithmetic;" or, shall we have them educated in some form or another of practical Christianity? The arguments on this point have been so fully elaborated in our articles heretofore published, that it would be superfluous to repeat them now. We may, however, recall to mind the conclusive evidence afforded us of the correctness of our theory by the actual experience of such governments as those of England, France, Prussia, and Austria; under which, as we have shown in those articles, the denominational system is carried out to the fullest extent, producing harmony, instead of discord, in populations composed, as here, of numerous religious bodies. It is an old adage that one fact is worth a dozen arguments.

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We find that, after long years of earnest study of this difficult question, and after exhausting every half-way expedient, the statesmen of the countries we have named adopted with singular unanimity the views which we are presenting for the serious and candid consideration of the American public. We shall quote briefly from a few of those statesmen who are well-known leaders of opinion in the European Protestant world.

Lord Derby: "Public education should be considered as inseparable from religion;" the contrary system is declared by him to be "the realization of a foolish and dangerous idea."

Mr. Gladstone: "Every system which places religious education in the background is pernicious."

Lord John Russell insisted that in the normal schools, which he proposed to have established, "religion should regulate the entire system of discipline."

M. de Raumer: "They have acquired in Prussia a conviction, which becomes daily more settled, that the fitness of the primary school depends on its intimate union with the church." In 1854, he writes that "education should repose upon the basis of Christianity, the true support of the family, of the commune, and of the state."

M. Guizot, the former very eminent Protestant prime minister of France, deserves to be specially quoted, although we are but repeating the extracts which we gave in another article. His words should be written in letters of gold. Let the enemies of religious education, if they can, present a satisfactory answer to this superb declaration:

"In order to make popular education truly good and socially useful, it must be fundamentally religious. I do not simply mean by this, that religious instruction should hold its place in popular education, and that the practices of religion should enter into it; for a nation is not religiously educated by such petty and mechanical devices. It is necessary that national education should be given and received in the midst of a religious atmosphere, and that religious impressions and religious observances should penetrate into all its parts. Religion is not a study or an exercise to be restricted to a certain place, and a certain hour; it is a faith and a law, which ought to be felt everywhere, and which after this manner alone can exercise all its beneficial influence upon our minds and our lives."

The first Napoleon, the restorer of order and religion in France, influenced, at the time, merely by human considerations, and speaking only as a wise lawgiver, and not as a practical Christian, insisted upon the necessity of making the precepts of religion the basis of education in the university, whose halls had echoed the blasphemous unbelief of the disciples of Voltaire.

At our very door, we have likewise the judgment and example of our Canadian neighbors, demonstrating the feasibility of connecting secular education with the most thorough instruction in the doctrines and practices of the different churches. Such opinions and facts should have some weight with our friends here who are fearful of the proposed experiment.

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We know, by our own personal experience, that young men educated at the exclusively Catholic College of Mt. St. Mary's, in Maryland, and other young men, graduates of Yale and Princeton, where Catholics are rarely if ever seen, meet afterward in the world of business or politics, and immediately learn to value each other according to intrinsic personal worth, and to exchange all the mutual courtesies and discharge all the reciprocal duties of social life. It is the same with Catholics and Protestants educated together at the many Catholic colleges in the United States, where the Catholic pupils are nevertheless invariably instructed, with the utmost exactness, in all the doctrines and practices of their church. There are thousands of such living witnesses throughout the country, ready to attest the correctness of our statement. It proves this, (what we know to be true without the proof,) that the education received by Catholics at their own schools, whilst rigidly doctrinal, uniformly inculcates charity, urbanity, and every duty of good citizenship. There is not, therefore, and never can be any difficulty, on the part of Catholics, to meet their Protestant fellow-citizens in all the relations of life, private and public, with the utmost frankness, fraternity, and confidence, provided that they are not repelled by harshness or chilled by distrust. Their religion teaches them that such is their duty. Certainly, if such happy results are realized even in England, Prussia, and Austria, where all barriers, whether social or religious, are traditionally more difficult to surmount, how can it be that we must expect animosities to be engendered under the free action and the liberal intercourse of our republican society?

We must, therefore, consider the fear expressed by this first objection as wholly groundless. But even were it otherwise, what then? Should we, therefore, sacrifice to such an apprehension the far more momentous considerations that our republican, self-governing community can never safely trust itself in the great work of perpetuating the liberties of a Christian nation without planting itself upon the morality of the Gospel; that the revealed doctrines of Christ are the foundation of his moral code, and that to practise the one faithfully the people must be taught to believe the other firmly; and that religion so taught, as M. Guizot admirably expresses it, "is not a study or an exercise, to be restricted to a certain place and a certain hour; it is a faith and a law which ought to be felt everywhere;" and that "national education should be given and received in the midst of a religious atmosphere!"

What would the advantage of a more perfect amalgamation or unification of citizenship avail us, if, to obtain it, we were to strike from under our institutions the only solid basis upon which they can rest with any hope whatever of being able to withstand the rude shocks of time, to which all mortal works are subject, and which destroyed the grandest structures of pagan power, solely because they rested upon human wisdom and human virtue, unaided by revealed religion and supernatural grace? We cannot, therefore, admit any force in the first objection.

As to the second: How can the harmony or efficiency of the school system be disturbed by permitting a school to be organized for Catholic children in any district or locality where the requisite number may be found to render it practicable, in accordance with the general policy of the law? It is presumed that the law contemplates the education of all these children, and we cannot see that the harmony of the system consists in putting them into any one school-room rather than another. It is not proposed to withdraw them from the general supervision of the state, or to deny to the state the authority to regulate the standard of education, and to see that its requirements are complied with. This is done in every one of the countries of which we have spoken. {130} No one is so unreasonable as to expect that separate schools shall be organized where the number of pupils may be below a reasonable uniform standard; as it is not proposed to increase the expense of the system. On the contrary, as far as concerns the education of our Catholic children in the city of New York, we propose to reduce the cost considerably, as we shall explain before we close this article. It is said that the several Protestant denominations may demand the same privilege. Suppose that they do. If they have a sufficient number of children in any particular locality for the proper organization of a separate school under the law, and are willing to fulfil its requirements, how can the general system be impaired by allowing them to do so? This is the condition annexed to the privilege in all those countries which have adopted this liberal policy. The proposition seems too plain for argument. When a college contains five hundred boys, two hundred may be classed in the higher division, three hundred in the lower, and each may have separate playgrounds and recitation halls. So, if a district contains two hundred of one faith, and three hundred of another, or of several other creeds, surely the two hundred may be organized into one school and the three hundred into another, or into several others, according to the standard of numbers, as may be required by the law. The whole question, therefore, is purely one of distribution, not at all above the capacity of a drill-sergeant! The same number of children would be educated, probably in the same number of schools, and at the same cost, as now. The course of secular education prescribed by the state could be rigidly enforced in all such schools without assailing the conscience of any one, because we suppose that the state would not object that Catholics should learn English history from Lingard, whilst others might prefer Hume and Macaulay. We presume that there would be no disagreement in regard to reading, writing, arithmetic, mathematics, natural philosophy, and those things which constitute the general studies of primary and high schools. It is only with such that the state has any right to intermeddle, and it is only such that the state professes to secure to its pupils. The state may say, "The public welfare requires that the citizens of a self-governing nation shall receive sufficient intellectual culture to enable them to discharge their duties understandingly;" but the state has no right to say that its pupils shall take their knowledge and form their opinions of the great moral events of history from D'Aubigné or from Cardinal Bellarmin. It was this that troubled the great Catholic and Protestant governments of Europe, until experience discovered to them the simple solution of the difficulty which we are so earnestly endeavoring to commend to the acceptance of the American people. Have we not at least a right to expect that our motives will not be misrepresented; and that we shall be believed when we say that we are not hostile to the public schools, but, on the contrary, most earnestly anxious to secure for them the widest usefulness and the greatest efficiency. We know that that cannot be if religion be excluded; and that it must be excluded where so many conflicting creeds confront each other.

As to the third: If it were true that the Catholic people contributed almost nothing to the school fund, as is no doubt sincerely believed by some who are not disposed to do us injustice, a very serious question would, nevertheless, be suggested by such a statement as this, which we copy from the article in The Chicago Advance already referred to: {131} "Our American population is principally Protestant, partly Romish, slightly Jewish, and increasingly rationalistic or infidel." Now, it is unquestionably true that the infidels in this country can count but very few amongst their number who ever knelt at a Catholic altar. Still, it is the theory of our opponents that ignorance is, in itself, the source of all evil, and the parent of impiety. It would certainly, therefore, be a terrible calamity for the country if the children of six millions of Catholics were deprived of education because their fathers paid no taxes! To educate them would be unanimously regarded as a public necessity; just as our police authorities remove contagion at the public expense. If this view of public economy be true, (and we need not dispute it in this argument,) then it follows that the question of educating the Catholics is altogether independent of what they do or do not contribute to the treasury. Educated they must be; but suppose that they steadily refuse to receive the knowledge offered, except upon the condition that their consciences shall not be violated, and their parental responsibilities disregarded, by subjecting their children to a training inconsistent with the spirit of their religion; how then? Will you consign the six millions to what you call the moral death of ignorance, and suffer their carcasses to putrefy upon the highway of your republican progress, poisoning the fountains of your national life? Or will you prefer, in the spirit of your institutions, to respect their conscientious opinions, and to enable them, in the manner we have already indicated, to coöperate with you in the full development of your great and noble policy of universal popular education?

But, is it true that the Catholic people have no substantial claim as tax-payers? Such might have been the case twenty-five years ago; but every well-informed man knows that it is not so now. Wealth, amongst the Catholic population, may perhaps be less perceptible, because it is more diffused than it is amongst some other bodies of our citizens; but no man who is familiar with the cities of New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and all others, from the sources of the Mississippi to the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or with the Catholic farm-settlements of the Western States, can shut his eyes to the fact that our Catholic people are thrifty and well-to-do in the world; and that very many of them possess large wealth. A member of the British Parliament, in a recent work upon the Irish in America, has demonstrated this by undeniable statistics. The same is true of Catholics here of all other nationalities. We have not the time nor space, neither is it necessary, to go into the details of this question. We suppose our readers to be intelligent and well-informed, and that they can readily recall to their minds the facts which substantiate the truth of our assertion.

Are there those, sharp at a bargain, who will say, "Well! the Catholics have the resources to educate themselves, and are doing so now; let them continue the good work without calling upon the state for any portion of the public funds, to which they contribute by their taxes"? The dishonesty of such a proposition is shown in the simple statement of it. It is true, as we have said over and over again, that the Catholic people, after paying their taxes to the state, have, with a generous self-sacrifice amounting to heroism, established all over this country more universities, colleges, academies, free schools, and orphan asylums than have ever been founded by all the rest of the nation through private contributions. {132} A people capable of such great deeds in the cause of civilization and religion are not to be despised, can never be repressed, and certainly should not be denied justice, when they ask no more!

We hope that we have satisfactorily answered the objections of those honest adversaries, with whom we will always be happy to interchange opinions in a spirit of candor and sincere respect.

In order that our readers may obtain some idea of what the Catholic people, unaided by the state, have done and are doing for popular education in this country, we shall now present a brief summary or synopsis from Sadlier's Catholic Directory for 1868-9.

In the archdiocese of Baltimore, there are ten literary institutions for young men, twelve female academies, and nine orphan asylums. We shall include the latter, in all instances, because they invariably have schools attached for the instruction of the orphans. There are in the same archdiocese about fifty parish and free schools, the average attendance at which, male and female, exceeds ten thousand.

In the archdiocese of Cincinnati, comprising a part of the State of Ohio, there are three colleges, nine literary institutes for females, two orphan asylums, and seventy-six parochial schools, at which the average attendance is about twenty thousand.

In the archdiocese of New Orleans, there are twenty academies and parochial schools for females, and ten academies and free schools for males; attended by seven thousand five hundred scholars; and one thousand four hundred orphans in the asylums.

The archdiocese of New York comprises the city and county of New York, and the counties of Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster, Sullivan, Orange, Rockland, and Richmond. We have lately examined a carefully prepared list of schools, more complete than that given in the directory, by which it appears that there are forty-nine, with a daily attendance of upward of twenty-three thousand children. Of these schools, twenty-six are in the city and county of New York, and have a daily attendance of over nineteen thousand pupils. We shall have occasion to speak more particularly of New York City at the close of this article.

In the archdiocese of San Francisco, there are three colleges, three academies, thirty-two select and parochial schools, and two orphan asylums, providing for nearly seven thousand children, of whom about four hundred are orphans in the asylums, and upward of three thousand are free scholars.

In the archdiocese of St. Louis, there are three literary institutions for males, nine for females, and twenty parochial or free schools, with seven thousand five hundred pupils in daily attendance, besides nine hundred orphans in four asylums.

In the diocese of Albany, comprising that part of the State of New York north of the forty-second degree and east of the eastern line of Cayuga, Tompkins, and Tioga counties, there are six academies for males, and six for females, seven orphan asylums, ten select schools, and fifty-eight parochial schools, with an average attendance of between ten and eleven thousand.

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The diocese of Alton, comprising a portion of the state of Illinois, has two colleges for males and six academies for females, one orphan asylum, and fifty-six parochial schools, with an attendance of about seven thousand five hundred scholars.

The diocese of Boston comprises the State of Massachusetts, and has two colleges, three female academies, thirteen parochial or free schools, five thousand eight hundred scholars, and five hundred and fifty orphans in the asylums.

The diocese of Brooklyn comprises Long Island, and has one college in course of erection, eight female academies, nineteen parish schools, attended by over ten thousand scholars, and three asylums, and one industrial school, containing seven hundred orphans.

The diocese of Buffalo comprises twelve counties of the State of New York, and has five literary institutions for males, sixteen for females, three orphan asylums, and twenty-four parochial schools, the attendance on which is specifically set down at something over eight thousand; but it is stated (page 137) that between eighteen and twenty thousand children attend the Catholic schools of that diocese.

The diocese of Chicago comprises a portion of the State of Illinois, and has eight academies for females, seven colleges and academies for males, two orphan asylums, and forty-four parochial schools, attended by over twelve thousand children.

The diocese of Cleveland, comprising a part of Ohio, contains one academy for males and six for females, four asylums sheltering four hundred orphans, and twenty free schools educating six thousand scholars.

The diocese of Columbus, comprising a part of Ohio, has one female academy, twenty-three parochial schools, with over three thousand pupils; the exact number is not given.

The diocese of Dubuque comprises the State of Iowa, and contains twelve academies and select schools, and parochial schools at nearly all the churches of the diocese, educating ten thousand children.

The diocese of Fort Wayne comprises a part of Indiana, and has one college, one orphan asylum, eleven literary institutions, and thirty-eight parish schools.

The diocese of Hartford comprises Rhode Island and Connecticut, and contains three literary institutions for males and six for females, twenty-one male and twenty-three female free schools, the former attended by forty-two hundred, and the latter by fifty-one hundred scholars, besides four hundred orphans in four asylums.

The diocese of Milwaukee has two male and four female academies, and thirty-five free schools, attended by between six and seven thousand children, and four orphan asylums, containing over two hundred orphans.

The diocese of Philadelphia contains eight academies and parochial schools, under the charge of the Christian Brothers, with twenty-five hundred scholars; forty-two other parochial schools, attended by ten thousand pupils; twenty-four academies and select schools for females; three colleges for males; and five asylums, now containing seven hundred and seventy-three male and female orphans.

The above statement embraces but nineteen of the fifty-two dioceses and archdioceses in the United States, as it would extend this article to an unreasonable length were we to undertake to give the statistics of each; which, in regard to many of them, are not sufficiently full in the Directory to enable us to present satisfactory results. {134} Although in many of them the Catholic population is small and sparse, our readers would nevertheless be surprised, no doubt, to see how each one has struggled to supply itself with schools and charitable institutions; and how amazingly they have succeeded, when we consider the comparative scantiness of their resources. We have, however, given enough to afford some idea to our Protestant brethren of the vast interest which their Catholic fellow-citizens have in this question of the public-school fund, and of the great claim to the sympathy and good-will of the country which they have established by their unparalleled efforts in the cause of popular education.

As we have shown above, the Catholics of the archdiocese of New York are educating twenty-three thousand of their children, nineteen thousand within the city limits. The value of their school property is placed at eleven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. For the education of these twenty-three thousand, it is estimated that their annual expense does not exceed one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. The actual cost of the Catholic free schools in New York City is put down at $104,430 for nineteen thousand four hundred and twenty-eight scholars; which is about five dollars and a half for each. We have before us the Report of the Board of Education for 1867, from which it appears that "the cost per head for educating the children in the public schools under the control of the Board of Education for the year ending 1867, based upon the cost for teachers' salaries, fuel and gas, was $19.75 on the average attendance, or $8.50 on the whole number taught." Adding the cost of books and stationery, each pupil cost $21.76 on the average attendance, or $9.40 on the whole number taught. The basis of the above calculation is: Teachers' salaries, $1,497,180.88; fuel, (estimated in a gross amount of expenses,) $163,315.12, and gas, $13,998.96, making a total of $1,674,496.96. But in fact the actual expenditures for 1867 were $2,973,877.41; which cover items that enter equally into the estimate we have given of the Catholic expenditures for school purposes. In that year New York City paid to the state as its proportion of school tax $455,088.27; out of which it received back by apportionment $242,280.04, a little more than one half, the rest being its contribution to the counties; at the same time the city raised for its own schools nearly $2,500,000; being the ten-dollar tax for each scholar taught, and the one twentieth of one per cent of the valuation of the real and personal property of the city. From this our readers will gather some idea of what popular education can cost, even with the best management.

It is well known that the Catholic people, through their church organizations, and by the unpaid assistance of their religious orders, such as the Christian Brothers, possess peculiar advantages, which enable them to conduct the largest and best-arranged schools at the smallest possible cost. Why will not the state permit us to do it? Or, rather, why will not the state do us the justice to reimburse the actual expenses which we make in doing it? For it is a thing which we have already accomplished to a great extent. Suppose that the city of New York was now educating the nineteen thousand children who attend our schools; at $19.75 each, it would cost $375,250; or at $8.50 each it would cost $161,500, this last sum being sixty thousand dollars more than we pay for the same! {135} We have shown, however, that this calculation cannot be made to rest upon the basis given by the board, when you come to institute a comparison between the expenditures for the public schools and for ours. We are willing, nevertheless, to rest our claim even upon such a contrast as those figures show; and we ask the tax-payers of New York whether they are willing to follow the lead of our adversaries and add a few hundred thousand dollars extra to the annual taxes, for the satisfaction of doing us injustice?

It is universally conceded that the school-rooms of New York are dangerously over-crowded; and the Board of Education finds it almost impossible to meet the growing necessities of the city. There are still thousands of Catholics and Protestants unprovided for. Give us the means, and we will speedily see that there is no Catholic child in New York left without the opportunity of education. We will do this upon the strictest terms of accountability to the state. We will conduct our schools up to the highest standard that our legislators may think proper to adopt for the regulation of the public school system. We shall never shrink from the most rigid official scrutiny and inspection. We shall only ask that, whilst we literally follow the requirements of the state as to the course of secular education, we shall not be required to place in the hands of our children books that are hostile to their faith, or to omit giving to their young souls that spiritual food which we deem to be essential for eternal life.

In all sincerity and truth we must say, that we have not yet heard an argument which could shake our faith in the justice of our cause; and that it will ultimately prevail, by the blessing of Providence, we cannot possibly doubt; for, we have an abiding confidence in the integrity and generosity of the American people.

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The Omnibus Two Hundred Years Ago.

"I allays thought till to-day," remarked elegant John Thomas to Jeames, as they were clinging to the back of their mistress's carriage during a shopping drive in Bond street, London, "that them 'air nuisances the 'busses was inwented in this 'ear nineteen centry."

"I allays thinked so," responded Jeames sententiously.

"Not a bit," resumed John Thomas, "them air celebrated people the Romans, the same as talked Lat'n, you know, 'ad plenty of 'em.

"'Ow d'you know that?" inquired Jaemes.

"I seed it this blessed morning in one o' master's Lat'n books. I was a tryin' what I could make out of Lat'n, and I seed that word 'omnibus' ever so many times; and that's the correc' name for 'bus--' bus is the wulgar happerlation."

"I know that," growled Jeames.

"'Ow true it is, as King David singed to 'is 'arp, there's nothing new under the sun!" exclaimed John Thomas enthusiastically.

The carriage stopped at this moment and the interesting conversation was interrupted.

{136}

But although people who understand more Latin than John Thomas have not yet discovered that the Romans were acquainted with that cheap and convenient mode of conveyance, they may have believed, like him, that omnibuses were a modern invention, and may be surprised to learn that, more than two hundred years ago, in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, Paris possessed for a time a regular line of these now indispensable vehicles.

Nicolas Sauvage, at the sign of St. Fiacre, in the Rue St. Martin, had been accustomed for many years to let out carriages by the hour or day; but his prices were too high for any but the rich; and so in the year 1657, a certain De Givry obtained permission to "establish in the crossways and public places of the city and suburbs of Paris such a number of two-horse coaches and caleches as he should consider necessary; to be exposed there from seven in the morning until seven in the evening, at the hire of all who needed them, whether by the hour, the half-hour, day, or otherwise, at the pleasure of those who wished to make use of them to be carried from one place to another, wherever their affairs called them, either in the city and suburbs of Paris, or as far as four or five leagues in the environs," etc., etc.

This was a decided step in advance; but the prices of these hackney coaches were still too high for the public generally, and they consequently did not meet with the success anticipated. At length, in 1662, appeared the really cheap and popular conveyance--the omnibus--under the patronage of the Duke of Roanès the Marquis of Sourches, and the Marquis of Crenan. These noblemen solicited and obtained letters patent for a great speculation--carriages to contain eight persons, at five sous the seat, and running at fixed hours on specified routes.

"On the 18th of March, 1662," says Sauval, in his Antiquities of Paris, "seven coaches were driven for the first time through the streets that lead from the Porte St. Martin to the palace of the Luxembourg; they were assailed with stones and hisses by the populace."

This last assertion is much to be doubted; more especially as Madame Perier, the sister of the great Pascal, has described in an interesting letter to Arnauld de Pomponne, the general joy and satisfaction that the appearance of these cheap conveyances gave rise to in the people; a state of feeling which seems far more probable than that which stones and hisses would manifest.

Madame Perier writes as follows:

"PARIS, March 21, 1662. "As every one has been appointed to some special office in this affair of the coaches, I have solicited with eagerness and have been so fortunate as to obtain that of announcing its success; therefore, sir, each time that you see my writing, be assured of receiving good news.

"The establishment commenced last Saturday morning, at seven o'clock, with wonderful pomp and splendor. The seven carriages provided for this route were first distributed. Three were sent to the Porte St. Martin, and four were placed before the Luxembourg, where at the same time were stationed two commissaries of the Chatelet in their robes, four guards of the high provost, ten or twelve of the city archers, and as many men on horseback. When everything was ready, the commissaries proclaimed the establishment, explained its usefulness, exhorted the citizens to uphold it, and declared to the lower classes that the slightest insult would be punished with the utmost severity; and all this was delivered in the king's name. {137} Afterward they gave the coachmen their coats, which are blue--the king's color as well as the city's color--with the arms of the king and of the city embroidered on the bosom; and then they gave the order to start.

"One of the coaches immediately went off, carrying inside one of the high provost's guards. Half a quarter of an hour after, another coach set off, and then the two others at the same intervals of time, each carrying a guard who was to remain therein all day. At the same time the city archers and the men on horseback dispersed themselves on the route.

"At the Porte Saint Martin the same ceremonies were observed, at the same hour, with the three coaches that had been sent there, and there were the same arrangements respecting the guards, the archers and the men on horseback. In short, the affair was so well conducted that not the slightest confusion took place, and those coaches were started as peaceably as the others.

"The thing indeed has succeeded perfectly; the very first morning the coaches were filled, and several women even were among the passengers; but in the afternoon the crowd was so great that one could not get near them; and every day since it has been the same, so that we find by experience that the greatest inconvenience is the one you apprehended; people wait in the street for the arrival of one of these coaches, in order to get in. When it comes, it is full; this is vexatious; but there is a consolation; for it is known that another will arrive in half a quarter of an hour; this other arrives, and it also is full; and after this has been repeated several times, the aspirant is at length obliged to continue his way on foot. That you may not think that I exaggerate I will tell you what happened to myself. I was waiting at the door of St. Mary's Church, in the Rue de la Verrerie, feeling a great desire to return home in a coach; for it is pretty far from my brother's house. But I had the vexation of seeing five coaches pass without being able to get a seat; all were full: and during the whole time that I was waiting, I heard blessings bestowed on the originators of an establishment so advantageous to the public. As every one spoke his thoughts, some said the affair was very well invented, but that it was a great fault to have put only seven coaches on the route; that they were not sufficient for half the people who had need of them, and that there ought to have been at least twenty. I listened to all this, and I was in such a bad temper from having missed five coaches that at the moment I was quite of their opinion. In short, the applause is universal, and it may be said that nothing was ever better begun.

"The first and second days, there was a crowd on the Pont-Neuf and in all the streets to watch the coaches pass; and it was very amusing to see the workmen cease their labor to look at them, so that no more work was done all Saturday throughout the whole route than if it had been a holiday. Smiling faces were seen everywhere, not smiles of ridicule, but of content and joy; and this convenience is found so great that every one desires it for his own quarter.

"The shopkeepers of the Rue St. Denis demanded a route with so much importunity that they even spoke of presenting a petition. Preparations were being made to give them one next week; but yesterday morning M. de Roanès, M. de Crenan, and M. the High Provost (M. de Sourches) being all three at the Louvre, the king talked very pleasantly about the novelty, and addressing those gentlemen, said,' And our route, will you not soon establish it?' {138} These words oblige them to think of the Rue St. Honoré, and to defer for some days the Rue St. Denis. Besides this, the king, speaking on the same subject, said that he desired that all those who were guilty of the slightest insolence should be severely punished, and that he would not permit this establishment to be molested.

"This is the present position of the undertaking. I am sure you will not be less surprised than we are at its great success; it has far surpassed all our hopes. I shall not fail to send you exact word of every pleasant thing that happens, according to the office conferred on me, and to supply the place of my brother, who would be happy to undertake the duty if he could write.

"I wish with all my heart that I may have matter to write to you every week, both for your satisfaction and for other reasons that you can well guess. I am your obedient servant, G. PASCAL."

Postscript in the handwriting of Pascal, and very probably the last lines he ever traced: he died in August of the same year:

"I will add to the above, that the day before yesterday, at the king's petit coucher, a dangerous assault was made against us by two courtiers distinguished by their rank and wit, which would have ruined us by turning us into ridicule, and would have given rise to all sorts of attacks, had not the king answered so obligingly and so dryly with respect to the excellence of the undertaking, so that they speedily put up their weapons. I have no more paper. Adieu--entirely yours."

Sauval affirms that Pascal was the inventor of this cheap coach, and Madame de Sévigné seems to allude to the enterprise in a passage of one of her letters which commences "apropos of Pascal." It is certain that he and his sister were pecuniarily interested in the speculation, and it is more than probable that it was he who induced his rich friend the Duke of Roanès, to take so prominent a part in the undertaking. But we must not consider Pascal in the light of a vulgar speculator--earthly interests affected him but little personally--deeds of charity, the many ills and pains of premature old age, and the sad task of watching over a life always on the brink of extinction, almost wholly engrossed his thoughts during his last years. He saw in this affair an advantage to the public in general, and if any pecuniary profits resulted, his share was intended for the benefit of the poor, as is very evident by the following extract from the little work Madame Perier dedicated to the memory of her brother.

"As soon as the affair of the coaches was settled, he told me he wished to ask the farmers for an advance of a thousand francs to send to the poor at Blois. When I told him that the success of the enterprise was not sufficiently assured for him to make this request, he replied that he saw no inconvenience in it, because, if the affair did not prosper, he would repay the money from his estate, and he did not like to wait until the end of the year, because the necessities of the poor were too urgent to defer charity. As no arrangement could be made with the farmers, he could not gratify his desire. On this occasion we perceived the truth of what he had so often told me, that he wished for riches only that he might be able to help the poor; for the moment God gave him the hope of possessing wealth, even before he was assured of it, he began to distribute it."

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In the ninth volume of the Ordonnances de Louis XIV., we find, concerning the establishment of coaches in the city of Paris, that these cheap conveyances are permitted "for the convenience of a great number of persons ill-accommodated, such as pleaders, infirm people, and others, who, not having the means of hiring chairs or carriages because they cost a pistole or two crowns at least the day, can thus be carried for a moderate price by means of this establishment of coaches, which are always to make the same journeys in Paris from one quarter to another, the longest at five sous the seat, and the others less; the suburbs in proportion; and which are always to start at fixed hours, however small the number of persons then assembled, and even empty, if no person should present himself, without obliging those who make use of this convenience to pay more for their places," etc.

These regulations are similar to those of our modern omnibus; but the quality of the passengers was more arbitrary; for in the tenth volume of this same Register, we find it enacted that "Soldiers, Pages, Lacqueys and other gentry in Livery, also Mechanics and Workmen shall not be able to enter the said coaches," etc., etc.

The first route was opened on the 18th of March; the second on the 11th of April, running from the Rue Saint Antoine to the Rue Saint Honoré, as high as St. Roch's church. On this second opening, a placard announced to the citizens that the directors "had received advice of some inconveniences that might annoy persons desirous of making use of their conveyances, such, for instance, when the coachman refuses to stop to take them up on the route, even though there are empty places, and other similar occurrences; this is to give notice that all the coaches have been numbered, and that the number is placed at the top of the moutons, on each side of the coachman's box, together with the fleur de lis--one, two, three, etc., according to the number of coaches on each route. And so those who have any reason to complain of the coachman, are prayed to remember the number of the coach, and to give advice of it to the clerk of one of the offices, so that order may be established."

The third route, which ran from the Rue Montmartre and the Rue Neuve Saint Eustache to the Luxembourg Palace, was opened on the 22d of May of the same year. The placard which conveys the announcement to the public, gives notice also, "that to prevent the delay of money-changing, which always consumes much time, no gold will be received."

Every arrangement having thus been made to render these cheap coaches useful and agreeable, they very soon became the fashion; a three act comedy in verse, entitled, "The intrigue of the coaches at five sous," written by an actor named Chevalier, was even represented in 1662 at the Theatre of the Marais. An extract from this play is given in the history of the French Theatre, by the Brothers Parfaict.

But the ingenious and useful innovation on the old hackney-coach system, though so well conducted and so well administered, so highly protected, and so warmly welcomed, was not destined to live long. After a very few years, the undertaking failed, and the omnibus was forgotten for nearly two centuries! Sauval tells us that Pascal's death was the cause of this misfortune; but the coaches continued to prosper for three or four years after that event.

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"Every one," says Sauval, in a curious page of his Antiquities, "during two years found these coaches so convenient that auditors and masters of comptes, counsellors of the Chatelet and of the court, made no scruple to use them to go to the Chatelet or to the palace, and this caused the price to be raised one sou; even the Duke of Enghien [Footnote 48] has travelled in them. But what do I say? The king, when passing the summer at Saint-Germain, whither he had consented that these coaches should come, went in one of them, for his amusement, from the old castle, where he was staying, to the new one to visit the queen-mother. Notwithstanding this great fashion, these coaches were so despised three or four years after their establishment that no one would make use of them, and their ill success was attributed to the death of Pascal, the celebrated mathematician; it is said that he was the inventor of them, as well as the leader of the enterprise; it is moreover assured that he had made their horoscope and given them to the publicunder a certain constellation whose bad influences he knew how to turn aside."

[Footnote 48: Henri-Jules de Bourbon-Condé, son of the great Condé.]

We can give no description of this ancient omnibus; no drawing or engraving of it is believed to exist; but it is probable that it resembled the coaches represented in the paintings of Van der Meulan and Martin.

It is impossible to attribute to any other cause than that of the arbitrary choice of passengers, the failure of an undertaking which appeared to possess every element of success. The people who needed the cheap coach were debarred from the use of it; the tired artisan returning from his hard day's work; the jaded soldier hurrying to his barrack before the beat of the tattoo that recalled him had ceased; the pale seamstress with her bundle; each was refused the five sous lift, and had to foot the weary way; while the aristocracy and rich middle class enjoyed the ride, not as a social want, but as a fashionable diversion, and tired of it after a time, as fashionable people even now tire of everything fashionable. It was reserved for the marvellous nineteenth century, so fruitful in good works, to endow us with the true omnibus, that is, a carriage for the use of every one indiscriminately, in which the gentleman and the laborer, the rich man and the poor man can ride side by side. This really popular conveyance has now become in all highly civilized communities so veritable a necessity and habit that it can never again fall and be forgotten like its faulty forerunner, or the omnibus of two hundred years ago.

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New Publications.

TRAVELS IN THE EAST-INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. By Albert S. Brickmose, M.A. With Illustrations. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 553. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1869.

This elegantly got up volume of travel the author tells us, in his preface, is taken from his journal, "kept day by day," while on a visit to the islands described, the object of which visit was to re-collect the shells figured in Rumphen's Pariteit Kamer. The author travelled from Batavia, in Java, along the north coast of that island to Samarang and Surabaya; thence to Macassar, the capital of Celebes; thence south through Sapi Strait, between Sumbawa and Floris, and eastward to the southern end of Timur, (near the northwestern extremity of Australia;) thence along the west coast of Timur to Dilli, and north to the Banda Islands and Amboina. {141} Having passed several months in the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, he revisited the Bandas, and ascended their active volcano. Returning to Amboina, he travelled in Ceram and Buru, and continued northward to Gilolo. Thence he crossed the Molucca Passage to the Minahassa, or northern end of the Island of Celebes, probably the most beautiful spot on the surface of our globe.

Returning to Batavia, he proceeded to Padang, and thence made a long journey through the interior of the island to the land of the cannibals. Having succeeded in making his way for a hundred miles through that dangerous people, he came down to the coast and returned to Padang. Again he went up into the interior, and examined all the coffee-lands. From Padang he came down to Bencoolen, and succeeded in making his way over the mountains and down the rivers to the Island of Banca, and was thence carried to Singapore. This work opens a new field, hitherto but little known, to the reader of books of travel and adventure. His descriptions, if not always very vivid, are told in a clear, unaffected manner, without that egotism so often found in books of travel.

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The Instruments Of The Passion Of Our Lord Jesus Christ. By the Rev. Dr. J. E. Veith, Preacher at the Cathedral of Vienna. Translated by Rev. Theodore Noethen, Pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross. Albany, N. Y. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

Dr. Veith, a convert from Judaism, is one of the most distinguished writers and preachers of Vienna. The present work is rich in thought and original in style. It is one of a series which the translator proposes to bring out in an English dress, if he receives encouragement, as we hope he may. F. Noethen, although a German, writes English remarkably well, and deserves great credit for his zeal and assiduity in translating so many excellent and practical works of piety. In point of excellence in typography and mechanical execution, this book deserves to be classed with the best which have been issued by the Catholic press.

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The Life And Works Of St. AEngussius Hagiographus, or Saint AEngus the Culdee, Bishop and Abbot at Clonenagh and Dysartenos, Queens County. By the Rev. John O'Hanlon. Dublin: John F. Fowler, 3 Crow street. 1868. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.

This tract is a treatise on the life and writings of an humble and laborious monk of the early ages in Ireland, who published, if we may use the expression, his Felire, Fessology, or Calendar of Irish saints, as long ago as 804. From the biographical and historical value of this poetical work, St. AEngus ranks among the very earliest of the historical writers of modern Europe. In this view, no less than to draw attention to one whose holy life induced the Irish church to ascribe his name on the dyptics, it is well that the present generation should be asked to pause and look upon this life, so humble, laborious, and holy, and which so strongly commended him to the veneration of succeeding ages. The Rev. Mr. O'Hanlon treats his subject systematically, displaying great research and sound criticism, and it is to be hoped that his treatise will induce some of the publishing societies in Ireland to issue an edition of the works of this venerated father of the Irish church.

The Felire of St. AEngus consists of three distinct parts: the first, the Invocation, containing five stanzas, implores the grace of Christ on the work; the second, comprising 220 stanzas, is a preface and conclusion to the main poem; the third part contains 365 stanzas, one for each day of the year. They comprise not only the saints peculiar to Ireland, but others drawn from early martyrologies. This poem was regarded in the early Irish church with great veneration, and the copies that have descended to us have a running gloss or commentary on each verse, making it a short biography of the saint briefly mentioned in the poem. {142} In this form its value has long been known to scholars, whose frequent use of it shows the light it frequently helps to throw on Irish history and topography. We trust that the work of the Rev. Mr. O'Hanlon will not be fruitless.

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Essays And Lectures on, 1. The Early History of Maryland; 2. Mexico and Mexican Affairs; 3. A Mexican Campaign; 4. Homoeopathy; 5. Elements of Hygiene; 6. Health and Happiness. By Richard McSherry, M.D., Professor of Principles and Practice of Medicine, University of Maryland. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1869. Pp. 125.

The Early History Of Maryland.

The sketch of colonial Maryland is drawn with a masterly hand, showing, in the first place, the author's thorough knowledge of its history; and, secondly, the poetic language in which his ideas are couched tell plainly how completely his heart is imbued with love for his native Terra Mariae.

Dr. McSherry is right when he calls his State "the brightest gem in the American cluster." To the Catholics of this broad land it is surely so; and the names of Sir George Calvert and his noble sons, the founders of this "Land of the Sanctuary," should be enshrined with love and reverence in the hearts of all who profess the old faith and appreciate our religious liberty.

Mexico And Mexican Affairs.

The article on "Mexico and Mexican Affairs" was written at the suggestion of the editor of The Southern Review, and is a synopsis of the political history of Mexico from the time of the conquest to the tragical end of the ill-fated Prince Maximilian.

As a colonial possession of Spain, Mexico enjoyed a more quiet existence and a more stable government than either before or since that period of its history. "Churches, schools, and hospitals were distributed over the land; good roads were made, and, without going into detail, industrial pursuits were generally in honor, and were rewarded with success."

Political revolution again agitated the country in the commencement of this century, followed by the establishment of an empire under Iturbide; this in turn gave place to a republican form of government in 1824.

No stronger proof of the belief of our order-loving and law-abiding neighbors in the republican doctrine of rotation in office can be given than the fact that during the forty years of the Republican government "the record shows forty-six changes in the presidential chair." The accounts of revolution and counter-revolution among the dominant spirits of that time beggar description, and leave us to conclude that a frightful condition of strife, desolation, and misery reigned throughout the entire period. "The rulers of Mexico kept no faith with their own people; none with foreigners or foreign nations. They gave abundant cause for the declaration of war made against them by England, France, and Spain, and for the provocation of the war by France, when the other powers withdrew." The author describes the inducements held out by the assembly of notables to Maximilian, after the French occupation, to accept the throne; and how at last he unfortunately acceded to the request, and sailed for Vera Cruz in May, 1864. The subsequent career of this nobleman, who had thus linked his fate with that of Mexico is feelingly depicted. It was but a short period of three years from his "splendid reception at Guadalupe, when about entering his capital, to his fall by Mexican treachery, and subsequent murder on the 19th of June, 1867." The author blames ex-Secretary Seward for not preventing this tragical end of the amiable and highly cultivated prince, and thinks that as the Indian Juarez had been enabled to prosecute his illegal claim to the presidency by the support and comfort derived from the United States, he would not have dared refuse a claim for this boon, made in a proper spirit, by Mr. Seward.

The names of Maximilian and his devoted, beautiful Carlotta will always bring moisture to the eyes of those who can sympathize with the afflictions and sufferings of their fellow-beings.

Mexico has commenced a new chapter of her history. True, the preface so far is not encouraging; but let us hope her experience in the past may cause a better record for the future.

{143}

A Mexican Campaign Sketch.

This is an interesting account of the author's travels, as surgeon, with the army which, in 1847, under General Scott, fought its way through the historical battles of Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, to Chapultepec: and the final entrance, on the 14th of September, to the Mexican capital. The description of the appearance of the valley of Mexico, as the army descended the mountain side, is very beautiful. The author says, "The valley or basin of Mexico lay spread out like a panorama of fairy land; opening, closing, and shifting, according to the changing positions of the observers. At times nothing would be visible but dark recesses in the mountain, or the grim forest that shaded the road; when in a moment a sudden turn would unfold, as if by magic, a scene that looked too lovely to be real. It was an enchantment in nature; for, knowing as we did that we beheld bona fide lakes and mountains, plains and villages, chapels and hamlets, all so bright, so clear, and so beautiful, it still seemed an illusion of the senses, a dream, or a perfection of art--nay, in the mountain circle we could see the very picture-frame."

How long the mixed races of this beautiful country are to continue their tragical and at times ludicrous efforts at self-government is a problem to be solved in the future.

An Epistle On Homoeopathy.

The doctor's logical arguments in this article we would recommend to the perusal of our friends who prefer the more palatable medicine of that school,

Lecture On Hygiene. A Lecture On Health And Happiness.

These lectures contain many sound practical hints for the general reader whereby he may avoid many causes of disease, and prolong his life to a natural limit. We give the doctor's testimony on two interesting points. He says:

"Excesses at table are disastrous enough, and in this they are worse than over devotion to Bacchus; namely, that they undermine more slowly and more insidiously; but otherwise, strong drinks are vastly worse. There are persons who think wines and liquors essential to health; but as the rule, they are useless at best; and at worst, destructive to soul, and body, and mind. Strict total abstinence is generally, I might say universally safe; while even temperate indulgence is rarely safe or salutary." (P. 119.)

"Tobacco deserves the next place. It is most marvellous how this nauseous weed has taken hold upon the affections of man. It surely is of no benefit to health, but I dare not say it conduces nothing to happiness. When I see an old friend take his pipe, or cigar, after the labors of the day, and the evening meal; when his good honest face beams beneath the fragrant smoke which rises like incense, making a wreath around his gray hairs; when his heart expands, and he becomes genially social and confidential, I can hardly ask Hygeia to rob him of his simple pleasure. A good cigar is almost akin to the 'cup that cheers, yet not inebriates.' But honestly, tobacco is pernicious in all its forms; not like whiskey, indeed, but still pernicious." (P. 121.)

As an entirety, the doctor's book presents a charming diversity of subjects, each in itself of sufficient interest to chain the earnest attention of the reader, and well repay him for its perusal.

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John M. Costello; Or, The Beauty Of Virtue Exemplified In An American Youth. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1869.

This neat little volume contains a well-written memoir of a young aspirant to the priesthood who died a few years ago at the preparatory seminary of St. Charles.

There is a peculiar charm about the life of a pious Catholic boy whose heart has always yearned after the realization of the highest type of Christian virtue. Such a life presents a picture of simple beauty, in which the smallest details present points of more than common interest. One sees here how truly the supernatural life of grace illumines and adorns the commonest actions of the Christian, and clothes them with a merit that purely human virtue would never gather from them. There is nothing in the life of a St. Aloysius or a St. Stanislaus, however insignificant or commonplace in the eyes of the world, that can be deemed trivial or unworthy of record. {144} Whatever they do is a saintly act. Their words are the words of a saint. This is the secret of the wonderful influence which the history of these pure souls has exerted on the minds and hearts of the thousands and tens of thousands to whom it has become known. This thought was constantly before us while perusing the present beautiful tribute to the memory of young Costello. It is impossible to read the description of the most ordinary events of the life of this holy child of God without emotion. What in others of his age and general character might justly be unworthy of note in him becomes worthy to be written in letters of gold. We would say to all Catholic parents, among the hundreds of volumes standing on the bookseller's shelves inviting purchase by their gay bindings and prettily illustrated pages, and almost forcing themselves into your hands as birthday or holiday presents to your darling children, choose this one, and teach them, by the winning example of such virtue as they will here see presented to them, to emulate, not the daring exploits of some lion-killer or wild adventurer, or, it may be, the imaginary success of some fortunate youth in the pursuit of riches, but rather the heroism, the piety, the humility, the chastity, the self-renunciation of the Christian saint. All who love God and have the spiritual interests of our Catholic youth at heart will feel deeply grateful to the reverend author for having given to the world his knowledge of a life so well calculated to edify and inspire its readers with admiration of what is, after all, the highest and best within the sphere of human aim, to lead a holy life, and die, though it be in the flower of youth, the death of a saint. Let us have more books like this one, that, with God's blessing on the lessons they impart, we may have more such lives.

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P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, is about to publish The Montarges Legacy, and The Life of St. Stanislaus.

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Books Received.

From John Murphy & Co., Baltimore:

New editions of the following books:

Practical Piety set forth by St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and Prince of Geneva. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 360, $1.

A Spiritual Retreat of Eight Days. By the Right Rev. John M. David, D.D., 1 vol. 12mo. $1.

Kyriale; or, Ordinary of Mass: a Complete Liturgical Manual, with Gregorian Chants, etc.; in round or square notes, each $1.25.

The Holy Week: containing the Offices of Holy Week, from the Roman Breviary and Missal, with the chants in modern notation. $1.25.

Roman Vesperal: containing the complete Vespers for the whole year, with Gregorian Chants in modern notation. $1.50.

From W. B. Kelly, Dublin:

The Catholic Church in America. A Lecture delivered before the Historical and AEsthetical Society in the Catholic University of Ireland. By Thaddeus J. Butler, D.D., Chicago. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street. 25 cents.

From KELLY, PIET & Co., Baltimore:

The Wreath of Eglantine, and other Poems: Edited and in part composed by Daniel Bedinger Lucas. 1 vol. 12mo, $1.50.

Eudoxia; a Picture of the Fifth Century. Translated from the German of Ida, Countess Hahn Hahn. 1 vol. 12mo, $1.50.

From D. & J. Sadlier & Co.:

St. Dominic's Manual; or, Tertiary's Guide. By two Fathers of the Order. 1 vol. 18mo, pp. 533.

From C. Darveau, Quebec, C. E.:

St. Patrick's Manual, for the use of Young People, prepared by the Christian Brothers. 1 vol. 24mo, pp. 648.

From Leypoldt & Holt, New York:

The Fisher Maiden: a Norwegian Tale. By Bjornstjerne Bjornson. From the author's German edition, by M. E. Niles. 12mo, pp. 217, $1.25.

The Gain of a Loss: a Novel. By the author of The Last of the Cavaliers. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 439, $1.75.

From Clark & Maynard, New York:

A Manual of General History: being an Outline History of the World from the Creation to the Present Time. Fully illustrated with maps. For the use of academies, high-schools, and families. By John J. Anderson, A.M. Pp. 400.

From Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., New York: A

Dictionary of the English Language, Explanatory, Pronouncing, Etymological, and Synonymous. Counting-House Edition. With an appendix containing various useful tables. Mainly abridged from the latest edition of the Qutarto Dictionary of Noah Webster, LL. D. By William G. Webster and William A. Wheeler. Illustrated with more than three hundred engravings on wood. Pp. 630.

From Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, London:

The Formation of Christendom. Part II. By T. W. Allies. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 495. The Catholic Publication Society having made arrangements with Mr. Allies to supply his book in America, will soon have this volume for sale. Price, $6.

From James Duffy, Dublin:

The Life and Writings of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary. By the Rev. M. B. Buckley. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 410.

From W. W. Swayne, New York and Brooklyn:

The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott. Vol. 1, paper, 25 cents.

From Harper & Brothers:

The Poetical Works of Charles G. Halpine. With a Biographical Sketch and Explanatory Notes. Edited by Robert B. Roosevelt. 1 vol. pp. 352.

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The Catholic World.

Vol. IX., No. 50.--May, 1869.

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The Woman Question. [Footnote 49]

[Footnote 49: 1. The Revolution: New York. Weekly. Vol. III. 2. Equal Rights for Women. A Speech by George William Curtis, in the Constitutional Convention at Albany, July 19, 1868. 3. Ought Women to learn the Alphabet? By Thomas Wentworth Higginson.]

The Woman Question, though not yet an all-engrossing question in our own or in any other country, is exciting so much attention, and is so vigorously agitated, that no periodical can very well refuse to consider it. As yet, though entering into politics, it has not become a party question, and we think we may discuss it without overstepping the line we have marked out for ourselves--that of studiously avoiding all party politics; not because we have not the courage to discuss them, but because we have aims and purposes which appeal to all parties alike, and which can best be effected by letting party politics alone.

In what follows we shall take up the question seriously, and treat it candidly, without indulging in any sneers, jeers, or ridicule. A certain number of women have become, in some way or other, very thoroughly convinced that women are deeply wronged, deprived of their just rights by men, and especially in not being allowed political suffrage and eligibility. They claim to be in all things man's equal, and in many things his superior, and contend that society should make no distinction of sex in any of its civil and political arrangements. It will not, indeed, be easy for us to forget this distinction so long as we honor our mothers, and love our wives and daughters; but we will endeavor in this discussion to forget it--so far, at least, as to treat the question on its merits, and make no allowance for any real or supposed difference of intellect between men and women. We shall neither roughen nor soften our tones because our opponents are women, or men who encourage them. The women in question claim for women all the prerogatives of men; we shall, therefore, take the liberty to disregard their privileges as women. They may expect from us civility, not gallantry.

{146}

We say frankly in the outset that we are decidedly opposed to female suffrage and eligibility. The woman's rights women demand them both as a right, and complain that men, in refusing to concede them, withhold a natural right, and violate the equal rights on which the American republic professes to be based. We deny that women have a natural right to suffrage and eligibility; for neither is a natural right at all, for either men or women. Either is a trust from civil society, not a natural and indefeasible right; and civil society confers either on whom it judges trustworthy, and on such conditions as it deems it expedient to annex. As the trust has never been conferred by civil society with us on women, they are deprived of no right by not being enfranchised.

We know that the theory has been broached latterly, and defended by several political journals, and even by representatives and senators in Congress, as well as by The Revolution, the organ of the woman's rights movement, that suffrage and eligibility are not trusts conferred by civil society on whom it will, but natural and indefeasible rights, held directly from God or nature, and which civil society is bound by its very constitution to recognize, protect, and defend for all men and women, and which they can be deprived of only by crimes which forfeit one's natural life or liberty. It is on this ground that many have defended the extension of the elective franchise and eligibility to negroes and the colored races in the United States, and hold that Congress, under that clause of the Constitution authorizing it to guarantee to the several States a republican form of government, is bound to enfranchise them. It may or may not be wise and expedient to extend suffrage and eligibility to negroes and the colored races hitherto, in most of the States, excluded from the sovereign people of the country; on that question we express no opinion, one way or the other; but we deny that the negroes and colored men can claim admission on the ground either of natural right or of American republicanism; for white men themselves cannot claim it on that ground.

Indeed, the assumption that either suffrage or eligibility is a natural right is anti-republican. The fundamental principle, the very essence of republicanism is, that power is a trust to be exercised for the public good or common weal, and is forfeited when not so exercised, or when exercised for private and personal ends. Suffrage and eligibility confer power to govern, which, if a natural right, would imply that power is the natural and indefeasible right of the governors--the essential principle of all absolutism, whether autocratic, aristocratic, monarchical, or democratic. It would imply that the American government is a pure, centralized, absolute, unmitigated democracy, which may be regarded either as tantamount to no government, or as the absolute despotism of the majority for the time, or its right to govern as it pleases in all things whatsoever, spiritual as well as secular, regardless of vested rights or constitutional limitations. This certainly is not American republicanism, which has always aimed to restrain the absolute power of majorities, and to protect minorities by constitutional provisions. It has never recognized suffrage as a personal right which a man carries with him whithersoever he goes, but has always made it a territorial right, which a man can exercise only in his own State, his own county, his own town or city, and his own ward or precinct. If American republicanism recognized suffrage as a right, not as simply a trust, why does it place restrictions on its exercise, or treat bribery as a crime? If suffrage is my natural right, my vote is my property, and I may do what I please with it; dispose of it in the market for the highest price I can get for it, as I may of any other species of property.

{147}

Suffrage and eligibility are not natural, indefeasible rights, but franchises or trusts conferred by civil society; and it is for civil society to determine in its wisdom whom it will or will not enfranchise; on whom it will or will not confer the trust. Both are social or political rights, derived from political society, and subject to its will, which may extend or abridge them as it judges best for the common good. Ask you who constitute political society? They, be they more or fewer, who, by the actual constitution of the state, are the sovereign people. These, and these alone, have the right to determine who may or may not vote or be voted for. In the United States, the sovereign people has hitherto been, save in a few localities, adult males of the white race, and these have the right to say whether they will or will not extend suffrage to the black and colored races, and to women and children.

Women, then, have not, for men have not, any natural right to admission into the ranks of the sovereign people. This disposes of the question of right, and shows that no injustice or wrong is done to women by their exclusion, and that no violence is done to the equal rights on which the American republic is founded. It may or it may not be wise and expedient to admit women into political, as they are now admitted into civil, society; but they cannot claim admission as a right. They can claim it only on the ground of expediency, or that it is necessary for the common good. For our part, we have all our life listened to the arguments and declamations of the woman's rights party on the subject; have read Mary Wollstonecraft, heard Fanny Wright, and looked into The Revolution, conducted by some of our old friends and acquaintances, and of whom we think better than many of their countrymen do; but we remain decidedly of the opinion that harm instead of good, to both men and women, would result from the admission. We say not this because we think lightly of the intellectual or moral capacity of women. We ask not if women are equal, inferior, or superior to men; for the two sexes are different, and between things different in kind there is no relation of equality or of inequality. Of course, we hold that the woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman, and that the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, not the wife of the husband; but it suffices here to say that we do not object to the political enfranchisement of women on the ground of their feebleness, either of intellect or of body, or of any real incompetency to vote or to hold office. We are Catholics, and the church has always held in high honor chaste, modest, and worthy women as matrons, widows, or virgins. Her calendar has a full proportion of female saints, whose names she proposes to the honor and veneration of all the faithful. She bids the wife obey her husband in the Lord; but asserts her moral independence of him, leaves her conscience free, and holds her accountable for her own deeds.

Women have shown great executive or administrative ability. Few men have shown more ability on a throne than Isabella, the Catholic, of Spain; or, in the affairs of government, though otherwise faulty enough, than Elizabeth of England, and Catharine II. of Russia. The present queen of the British Isles has had a most successful reign; but she owes it less to her own abilities than to the wise counsels of her husbands Prince Albert, and her domestic virtues as a wife and a mother, by which she has won the affections of the English people. {148} Others have shown rare administrative capacity in governing religious houses, often no less difficult than to govern a kingdom or an empire. Women have a keener insight into the characters of men than have men themselves, and the success of female sovereigns has, in great measure, been due to their ability to discover and call around them the best men in the state, and to put them in the places they are best fitted for.

What women would be as legislators remains to be seen; they have had little experience in that line; but it would go hard, but they would prove themselves not much inferior to the average of the men we send to our State legislatures or to our national Congress.

Women have also distinguished themselves in the arts as painters and sculptors, though none of them have ever risen to the front rank. St. Catharine of Egypt cultivated philosophy with success. Several holy women have shown great proficiency in mystic theology, and have written works of great value. In lighter literature, especially in the present age, women have taken a leading part. They almost monopolize the modern novel or romance, and give to contemporary popular literature its tone and character; yet it must be conceded that no woman has written a first-class romance. The influence of her writings, speaking generally, has not tended to purify or exalt the age, but rather to enfeeble and abase it. The tendency is to substitute sentiment for thought, morbid passion for strength, and to produce a weak and unhealthy moral tone. For ourselves, we own, though there are some women whose works we read, and even re-read with pleasure, we do not, in general, admire the popular female literature of the day; and we do not think that literature is that in which woman is best fitted to excel, or through which she exerts her most purifying and elevating influences. Her writings do not do much to awaken in man's heart the long dormant chivalric love so rife in the romantic ages, or to render the age healthy, natural, and manly. We say awaken; for chivalry, in its true and disinterested sense, is not dead in the coldest man's heart; it only sleepeth. It is woman's own fault, more than man's, that it sleeps, and wakes not to life and energy.

Nor do we object to the political enfranchisement of women in the special interest of the male sex. Men and women have no separate interests. What elevates the one elevates the other; what degrades the one degrades the other. Men cannot depress women, place them in a false position, make them toys or drudges, without doing an equal injury to themselves; and one ground of our dislike to the so-called woman's rights movement is, that it proceeds on the supposition that there is no inter-dependence between men and women, and seeks to render them mutually independent of each other, with entirely distinct and separate interests. There is a truth in the old Greek fable, related by Plato in the Banquet, that Jupiter united originally both sexes in one and the same person, and afterward separated them, and that now they are but two halves of one whole. "God made man after his own image and likeness; male and female made he them." Each, in this world, is the complement of the other, and the more closely identified are their interests, the better is it for both. We, in opposing the political enfranchisement of women, seek the interest of men no more than we do the interest of women themselves.

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Women, no doubt, undergo many wrongs, and are obliged to suffer many hardships, but seldom they alone. It is a world of trial, a world in which there are wrongs of all sorts, and sufferings of all kinds. We have lost paradise, and cannot regain it in this world. We must go through the valley of the shadow of death before re-entering it. You cannot make earth heaven, and there is no use in trying; and least of all can you do it by political means. It is hard for the poor wife to have to maintain a lazy, idle, drunken vagabond of a husband, and three or four children into the bargain; it is hard for the wife delicately reared, accomplished, fitted to adorn the most intellectual, graceful, and polished society, accustomed to every luxury that wealth can procure, to find herself a widow reduced to poverty, and a family of young children to support, and unable to obtain any employment for which she is fitted as the means of supporting them. But men suffer too. It is no less hard for the poor, industrious, hardworking man to find what he earns wasted by an idle, extravagant, incompetent, and heedless wife, who prefers gadding and gossiping to taking care of her household. And how much easier is it for the man who is reduced from affluence to poverty, a widower with three or four motherless children to provide for? The reduction from affluence to poverty is sometimes the fault of the wife as well as of the husband. It is usually their joint fault. Women have wrongs, so have men; but a woman has as much power to make a man miserable as a man has to make a woman miserable; and she tyrannizes over him as often as he does over her. If he has more power of attack, nature has given her more power of defence. Her tongue is as formidable a weapon as his fists, and she knows well how, by her seeming meekness, gentleness, and apparent martyrdom, to work on his feelings, to enlist the sympathy of the neighborhood on her side and against him. Women are neither so wronged nor so helpless as The Revolution pretends. Men can be brutal, and women can tease and provoke.

But let the evils be as great as they may, and women as greatly wronged as is pretended, what can female suffrage and eligibility do by way of relieving them? All modern methods of reform are very much like dram-drinking. The dram needs to be constantly increased in frequency and quantity, while the prostration grows greater and greater, till the drinker gets the delirium tremens, becomes comatose, and dies. The extension of suffrage in modern times has cured or lessened no social or moral evil; and under it, as under any other political system, the rich grow richer and the poor poorer. Double the dram, enfranchise the women, give them the political right to vote and be voted for; what single moral or social evil will it prevent or cure? Will it make the drunken husband temperate, the lazy and idle industrious and diligent? Will it prevent the ups and downs of life, the fall from affluence to poverty, keep death out of the house, and prevent widowhood and orphanage? These things are beyond the reach of politics. You cannot legislate men or women into virtue, into sobriety, industry, providence. The doubled dram would only introduce a double poison into the system, a new element of discord into the family, and through the family into society, and hasten the moment of dissolution. When a false principle of reform is adopted, the evil sought to be cured is only aggravated. The reformers started wrong. {150} They would reform the church by placing her under human control. Their successors have in each generation found they did not go far enough, and have, each in its turn, struggled to push it farther and farther, till they find themselves without any church life, without faith, without religion, and beginning to doubt if there be even a God. So, in politics, we have pushed the false principle that all individual, domestic, and social evils are due to bad government, and are to be cured by political reforms and changes, till we have nearly reformed away all government, at least, in theory; have well-nigh abolished the family, which is the social unit; and find that the evils we sought to cure, and the wrongs we sought to redress, continue undiminished. We cry out in our delirium for another and a larger dram. When you proceed on a true principle, the more logically and completely you carry it out the better; but when you start with a false principle, the more logical you are, and the farther you push it, the worse. Your consistency increases instead of diminishing the evils you would cure.

The conclusive objection to the political enfranchisement of women is, that it would weaken and finally break up and destroy the Christian family. The social unit is the family, not the individual; and the greatest danger to American society is, that we are rapidly becoming a nation of isolated individuals, without family ties or affections. The family has already been much weakened, and is fast disappearing. We have broken away from the old homestead, have lost the restraining and purifying associations that gathered round it, and live away from home in hotels and boarding-houses. We are daily losing the faith, the virtues, the habits, and the manners without which the family cannot be sustained; and when the family goes, the nation goes too, or ceases to be worth preserving. God made the family the type and basis of society; "male and female made he them." A large and influential class of women not only neglect but disdain the retired and simple domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied down to the modest but essential duties--the drudgery, they call it--of wives and mothers. This, coupled with the separate pecuniary interests of husband and wife secured, and the facility of divorce a vinculo matrirmonii allowed by the laws of most of the States of the Union, make the family, to a fearful extent, the mere shadow of what it was and of what it should be.

Extend now to women suffrage and eligibility; give them the political right to vote and to be voted for; render it feasible for them to enter the arena of political strife, to become canvassers in elections and candidates for office, and what remains of family union will soon be dissolved. The wife may espouse one political party, and the husband another, and it may well happen that the husband and wife may be rival candidates for the same office, and one or the other doomed to the mortification of defeat. Will the husband like to see his wife enter the lists against him, and triumph over him? Will the wife, fired with political ambition for place or power, be pleased to see her own husband enter the lists against her, and succeed at her expense? Will political rivalry and the passions it never fails to engender increase the mutual affection of husband and wife for each other, and promote domestic union and peace, or will it not carry into the bosom of the family all the strife, discord, anger, and division of the political canvass?

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Then, when the wife and mother is engrossed in the political canvass, or in discharging her duties as a representative or senator in Congress, a member of the cabinet, or a major-general in the field, what is to become of the children? The mother will have little leisure, perhaps less inclination, to attend to them. A stranger, or even the father, cannot supply her place. Children need a mother's care; her tender nursing, her sleepless vigilance, and her mild and loving but unfailing discipline. This she cannot devolve on the father, or turn over to strangers. Nobody can supply the place of a mother. Children, then, must be neglected; nay, they will be in the way, and be looked upon as an encumbrance. Mothers will repress their maternal instincts; and the horrible crime of infanticide before birth, now becoming so fearfully prevalent, and actually causing a decrease in the native population of several of the States of the Union as well as in more than one European country, will become more prevalent still, and the human race be threatened with extinction. Women in easy circumstances, and placing pleasure before duty, grow weary of the cares of maternity, and they would only become more weary still if the political arena were opened to their ambition.

Woman was created to be a wife and a mother; that is her destiny. To that destiny all her instincts point, and for it nature has specially qualified her. Her proper sphere is home, and her proper function is the care of the household, to manage a family, to take care of children, and attend to their early training. For this she is endowed with patience, endurance, passive courage, quick sensibilities, a sympathetic nature, and great executive and administrative ability. She was born to be a queen in her own household, and to make home cheerful, bright, and happy. Surely those women who are wives and mothers should stay at home and discharge its duties; and the woman's rights party, by seeking to draw her away from the domestic sphere, where she is really great, noble, almost divine, and to throw her into the turmoil of political life, would rob her of her true dignity and worth, and place her in a position where all her special qualifications and peculiar excellences would count for nothing. She cannot be spared from home for that.

It is pretended that woman's generous sympathies, her nice sense of justice, and her indomitable perseverance in what she conceives to be right are needed to elevate our politics above the low, grovelling and sordid tastes of men; but while we admit that women will make almost any sacrifice to obtain their own will, and make less than men do of obstacles or consequences, we are not aware that they have a nicer or a truer sense of justice, or are more disinterested in their aims than men. All history proves that the corruptest epochs in a nation's life are precisely those in which women have mingled most in political affairs, and have had the most influence in their management. If they go into the political world, they will, if the distinction of sex is lost sight of, have no special advantage over men, nor be more influential for good or for evil. If they go as women, using all the blandishments, seductions, arts, and intrigues of their sex, their influence will tend more to corrupt and debase than to purify and elevate. Women usually will stick at nothing to carry their points; and when unable to carry them by appeals to the strength of the other sex, they will appeal to its weakness. When once they have thrown off their native modesty, and entered a public arena with men, they will go to lengths that men will not. {152} Lady Macbeth looks with steady nerves and unblanched cheek on a crime from which her husband shrinks with horror, and upbraids him with his cowardice for letting "I dare not wait upon I would." It was not she who saw Banquo's ghost.

We have heard it argued that, if women were to take part in our elections, they would be quietly and decorously conducted; that her presence would do more than a whole army of police officials to maintain order, to banish all fighting, drinking, profane swearing, venality, and corruption. This would undoubtedly be, to some extent, the case, if, under the new régime, men should retain the same chivalric respect for women that they now have. Men now regard women as placed in some sort under their protection, or the safeguard of their honor. But when she insists that the distinction of sex shall be disregarded, and tells us that she asks no favors, regards all offers of protection to her as a woman as an insult, and that she holds herself competent to take care of herself, and to compete with men on their own ground, and in what has hitherto been held to be their own work, she may be sure that she will be taken at her word, that she will miss that deference now shown her, and which she has been accustomed to claim as her right, and be treated with all the indifference men show to one another. She cannot have the advantages of both sexes at once. When she forgets that she is a woman, and insists on being treated as a man, men will forget that she is a woman, and allow her no advantage on account of her sex. When she seeks to make herself a man, she will lose her influence as a woman, and be treated as a man.

Women are not needed as men; they are needed as women, to do, not what men can do as well as they, but what men cannot do. There is nothing which more grieves the wise and good, or makes them tremble for the future of the country, than the growing neglect or laxity of family discipline; than the insubordination, the lawlessness, and precocious depravity of Young America. There is, with the children of this generation, almost a total lack of filial reverence and obedience. And whose fault is it? It is chiefly the fault of the mothers, who fail to govern their households, and to bring up their children in a Christian manner. Exceptions there happily are; but the number of children that grow up without any proper training or discipline at home is fearfully large, and their evil example corrupts not a few of those who are well brought up. The country is no better than the town. Wives forget what they owe to their husbands, are capricious and vain, often light and frivolous, extravagant and foolish, bent on having their own way, though ruinous to the family, and generally contriving, by coaxings, blandishments, or poutings, to get it. They set an ill example to their children, who soon lose all respect for the authority of the mother, who, as a wife, forgets to honor and obey her husband, and who, seeing her have her own way with him, insist on having their own way with her, and usually succeed. As a rule, children are no longer subjected to a steady and firm, but mild and judicious discipline, or trained to habits of filial obedience. Hence, our daughters, when they become wives and mothers, have none of the habits or character necessary to govern their household and to train their children. Those habits and that character are acquired only in a school of obedience, made pleasant and cheerful by a mother's playful smile and a mother's love. {153} We know we have not in this the sympathy of the women whose organ is The Revolution. They hold obedience in horror, and seek only to govern, not their own husbands only, not children, but men, but the state, but the nation, and to be relieved of household cares, especially of child-bearing, and of the duty of bringing up children. We should be sorry to do or say anything which these, in their present mood, could sympathize with. It is that which is a woman's special duty in the order of providence, and which constitutes her peculiar glory, that they regard as their great wrong.

The duty we insist on is especially necessary in a country like ours, where there is so little respect for authority, and government is but the echo of public opinion. Wives and mothers, by neglecting their domestic duties and the proper family discipline, fail to offer the necessary resistance to growing lawlessness and crime, aggravated, if not generated, by the false notions of freedom and equality so widely entertained. It is only by home discipline, and the early habits of reverence and obedience to which our children are trained, that the license the government tolerates, and the courts hardly dare attempt to restrain, can be counteracted, and the community made a law-loving and a law-abiding community. The very bases of society have been sapped, and the conditions of good government despised, or denounced under the name of despotism. Social and political life is poisoned in its source, and the blood of the nation corrupted, and chiefly because wives and mothers have failed in their domestic duties, and the discipline of their families. How, then, can the community, the nation itself, subsist, if we call them away from home, and render its duties still more irksome to them, instead of laboring to fit them for a more faithful discharge of their duties?

We have said the evils complained of are chiefly due to the women, and we have said so because it grows chiefly out of their neglect of their families. The care and management of children during their early years belong specially to the mother. It is her special function to plant and develop in their young and impressible minds the seeds of virtue, love, reverence, and obedience, and to train her daughters, by precept and example, not to be looking out for an eligible parti, nor to catch husbands that will give them splendid establishments, but to be, in due time, modest and affectionate wives, tender and judicious mothers, and prudent and careful housekeepers. This the father cannot do; and his interference, except by wise counsel, and to honor and sustain the mother, will generally be worse than nothing. The task devolves specially on the mother; for it demands the sympathy with children which is peculiar to the female heart, the strong maternal instinct implanted by nature, and directed by a judicious education, that blending of love and authority, sentiment and reason, sweetness and power, so characteristic of the noble and true-hearted woman, and which so admirably fit her to be loved and honored, only less than adored, in her own household. When she neglects this duty, and devotes her time to pleasure or amusement, wasting her life in luxurious ease, in reading sentimental or sensational novels, or in following the caprices of fashion, the household goes to ruin, the children grow up wild, without discipline, and the honest earnings of the husband become speedily insufficient for the family expenses, and he is sorely tempted to provide for them by rash speculation or by fraud, which, though it may be carried on for a while without detection, is sure to end in disgrace and ruin at last. {154} Concede now to women suffrage and eligibility, throw them into the whirlpool of politics, set them to scrambling for office, and you aggravate the evil a hundred fold. Children, if suffered to be born, which is hardly to be expected, will be still more neglected; family discipline still more relaxed, or rendered still more capricious or inefficient; our daughters will grow up more generally still without any adequate training to be wives and mothers, and our sons still more destitute of those habits of filial reverence and obedience, love of order and discipline, without which they can hardly be sober, prudent, and worthy heads of families, or honest citizens.

We have thus far spoken of women only as wives and mothers; but we are told that there are thousands of women who are not and cannot be wives and mothers. In the older and more densely settled States of the Union there is an excess of females over males, and all cannot get husbands if they would. Yet, we repeat, woman was created to be a wife and a mother, and the woman that is not fails of her special destiny. We hold in high honor spinsters and widows, and do not believe their case anywhere need be or is utterly hopeless. There is a mystery in Christianity which the true and enlightened Christian recognizes and venerates--that of the Virgin-Mother. Those women who cannot be wives and mothers in the natural order, may be both in the spiritual order, if they will. They can be wedded to the Holy Spirit, and be the mothers of minds and hearts. The holy virgins and devout widows who consecrate themselves to God in or out of religious orders, are both, and fulfil in the spiritual order their proper destiny. They are married to a celestial Spouse, and become mothers to the motherless, to the poor, the destitute, the homeless. They instruct the ignorant, nurse the sick, help the helpless, tend the aged, catch the last breath of the dying, pray for the unbelieving and the cold hearted, and elevate the moral tone of society, and shed a cheering radiance along the pathway of life. They are dear to God, dear to the church, and dear to Christian society. They are to be envied, not pitied. It is only because you have lost faith in Christ, faith in the holy Catholic Church, and have become gross in your minds, of "the earth, earthy," that you deplore the lot of the women who cannot, in the natural order, find husbands. The church provides better for them than you can do, even should you secure female suffrage and eligibility.

We do not, therefore, make an exception from our general remarks in favor of those who have and can get no earthly husbands, and who have no children born of their flesh to care for. There are spiritual relations which they can contract, and purely feminine duties, more than they can perform, await them, to the poor and ignorant, the aged and infirm, the helpless and the motherless, or, worse than motherless, the neglected. Under proper direction, they can lavish on these the wealth of their affections, the tenderness of their hearts, and the ardor of their charity, and find true joy and happiness in so doing, and ample scope for woman's noblest ambition. They have no need to be idle or useless. In a world of so much sin and sorrow, sickness and suffering, there is always work enough for them to do, and there are always chances enough to acquire merit in the sight of Heaven, and true glory, that will shine brighter and brighter for ever.

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We know men often wrong women and cause them great suffering by their selfishness, tyranny, and brutality; whether more than women, by their follies and caprices, cause men, we shall not undertake to determine. Man, except in fiction, is not always a devil, nor woman an angel. Since the woman's rights people claim that in intellect woman is man's equal, and in firmness of will far his superior, it ill becomes them to charge to him alone what is wrong or painful in her condition, and they must recognize her as equally responsible with him for whatever is wrong in the common lot of men and women. There is much wrong on both sides; much suffering, and much needless suffering, in life. Both men and women might be, and ought to be, better than they are. But it is sheer folly or madness to suppose that either can be made better or happier by political suffrage and eligibility; for the evil to be cured is one that cannot be reached by any possible political or legislative action.

That the remedy, to a great extent, must be supplied by woman's action and influence we concede, but not by her action and influence in politics. It can only be by her action and influence as woman, as wife, and mother; in sustaining with her affection the resolutions and just aspirations of her husband or her sons, and forming her children to early habits of filial love and reverence, of obedience to law, and respect for authority. That she may do this, she needs not her political enfranchisement or her entire independence of the other sex, but a better and more thorough system of education for daughters--an education that specially adapts them to the destiny of their sex, and prepares them to find their happiness in their homes, and the satisfaction of their highest ambition in discharging its manifold duties, so much higher, nobler, and more essential to the virtue and well-being of the community, the nation, society, and to the life and progress of the human race, than any which devolve on king or kaiser, magistrate or legislator. We would not have their generous instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted? or their warm, sympathetic nature chilled, nor even the lighter graces and accomplishments neglected; but we would have them all directed and harmonized by solid intellectual instruction, and moral and religious culture. We would have them, whether rich or poor, trained to find the centre of their affections in their home; their chief ambition in making it cheerful, bright, radiant, and happy. Whether destined to grace a magnificent palace, or to adorn the humble cottage of poverty, this should be the ideal aimed at in their education. They should be trained to love home, and to find their pleasure in sharing its cares and performing its duties, however arduous or painful.

There are comparatively few mothers qualified to give their daughters such an education, especially in our own country; for comparatively few have received such an education themselves, or are able fully to appreciate its importance. They can find little help in the fashionable boarding-schools for finishing young ladies; and in general these schools only aggravate the evil to be cured. The best and the only respectable schools for daughters that we have in the country are the conventual schools taught by women consecrated to God, and specially devoted to the work of education. These schools, indeed, are not always all that might be wished. {156} The good religious sometimes follow educational traditions perhaps better suited to the social arrangements of other countries than of our own, and sometimes underrate the value of intellectual culture. They do not always give as solid an intellectual education as the American woman needs, and devote a disproportionate share of their attention to the cultivation of the affections and sentiments, and to exterior graces and accomplishments. The defects we hint at are not, however, wholly, nor chiefly, their fault; they are obliged to consult, in some measure, the tastes and wishes of parents and guardians, whose views for their daughters and wards are not always very profound, very wise, very just, or very Christian. The religious cannot, certainly, supply the place of the mother in giving their pupils that practical home training so necessary, and which can be given only by mothers who have themselves been properly educated; but they go as far as is possible in remedying the defects of the present generation of mothers, and in counteracting their follies and vain ambitions. With all the faults that can be alleged against any of them, the conventual schools, even as they are, it must be conceded, are infinitely the best schools for daughters in the land, and, upon the whole, worthy of the high praise and liberal patronage their devotedness and disinterestedness secure them. We have seldom found their graduates weak and sickly sentimentalists. They develop in their pupils a cheerful and healthy tone, and a high sense of duty; give them solid moral and religious instruction; cultivate successfully their moral and religious affections; refine their manners, purify their tastes, and send them out feeling that life is serious, life is earnest, and resolved always to act under a deep sense of their personal responsibilities, and meet whatever may be their lot with brave hearts and without murmuring or repining.

We do not disguise the fact that our hopes for the future, in great measure, rest on these conventual schools. As they are multiplied, and the number of their graduates increase, and enter upon the serious duties of life, the ideal of female education will be come higher and broader; a nobler class of wives and mothers will exert a healthy and purifying influence; religion will become a real power in the republic; the moral tone of the community and the standard of private and public morality will be elevated; and thus may gradually be acquired the virtues that will enable us as a people to escape the dangers that now threaten us, and to save the republic as well as our own souls. Sectarians, indeed, declaim against these schools, and denounce them as a subtle device of Satan to make their daughters "Romanists;" but Satan probably dislikes "Romanism" even more than sectarians do, and is much more in earnest to suppress or ruin our conventual schools, in which he is not held in much honor, than he is to sustain and encourage them. At any rate, our countrymen who have such a horror of the religion it is our glory to profess that they cannot call it by its true name, would do well, before denouncing these schools, to establish better schools for daughters of their own.

Now, we dare tell these women who are wasting so much time, energy, philanthropy, and brilliant eloquence in agitating for female suffrage and eligibility, which, if conceded, would only make matters worse, that, if they have the real interest of their sex or of the community at heart, they should turn their attention to the education of daughters for their special functions, not as men, but as women who are one day to be wives and mothers--woman's true destiny. {157} These modest, retiring sisters and nuns, who have no new theories or schemes of social reform, and upon whom you look down with haughty contempt, as weak, spiritless, and narrow-minded, have chosen the better part, and are doing infinitely more to raise woman to her true dignity, and for the political and social as well as for the moral and religious progress of the country, than you with all your grand conventions, brilliant speeches, stirring lectures, and spirited journals.

For poor working-women and poor working-men, obliged to subsist by their labor, and who can find no employment, we feel a deep sympathy, and would favor any feasible method of relieving them with our best efforts. But why cannot American girls find employment as well as Irish and German girls, who are employed almost as soon as they touch our shores, and at liberal wages? There is always work enough to be done if women are qualified to do it, and are not above doing it. But be that as it may, the remedy is not political, and must be found, if found at all, elsewhere than in suffrage and eligibility.

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Daybreak.

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