I. THE WAGER…

I. THE WAGER

The balcony of the palais Greifmann contains three persons who together represent four million florins. It is not often that one sees a group of this kind. The youthful landholder, Seraphin Gerlach, is possessor of two millions. His is a quiet disposition; very calm, and habitually thoughtful; innocence looks from his clear eye upon the world; physically, he is a man of twenty-three; morally, he is a child in purity; a profusion of rich brown hair clusters about his head; his cheeks are ruddy, and an attractive sweetness plays round his mouth.

The third million belongs to Carl Greifmann, the oldest member of the group, head pro tem. of the banking-house of the same name. This gentlemen is tall, slender, animated; his cheeks wear no bloom; they are pale. His carriage is easy and smooth. Some levity is visible in his features, which are delicate, but his keen, glancing eye is disagreeable beside Seraphin’s pure soul-mirror. Greifmann’s sister Louise, not an ordinary beauty, owns the fourth million. She is seated between the young gentlemen; the folds of her costly dress lie heaped around her; her hands are engaged with a fan, and her eyes are sending electric glances into Gerlach’s quick depths. But these flashing beams fail to kindle; they expire before they penetrate far into those depths. His eyes are bright, but they refuse to gleam with intenser fire. Strange, too, for a twofold reason; first, because glances from the eyes of beautiful women seldom suffer young men to remain cool; secondly, because a paternal scheme designs that Louise shall be engaged and married to the fire-proof hero.

Millions of money are rare; and should millions strive to form an alliance, it is in conformity with the genius of every solid banking establishment to view this as quite a natural tendency.

For eight days Mr. Seraphin has been on a visit at the palais Greifmann, but as yet he has yielded no positive evidence of intending to join his own couple of millions with the million of Miss Louise.

Whilst Seraphin converses with the beautiful young lady, Carl Greifmann cursorily examines a newspaper which a servant has just brought him on a silver salver.

“Every age has its folly,” suddenly exclaims the banker. “In the seventeenth century people were busy during thirty years cutting one another’s throats for religion’s sake--or rather, in deference to the pious hero of the faith from Sweden and his fugleman Oxenstiern. In the eighteenth century, they decorated their heads with periwigs and pigtails, making it a matter of conjecture whether both ladies and gentlemen were not in the act of developing themselves from monkeydom into manhood.

“Elections are the folly of our century. See here, my good fellow, look what is written here: In three days the municipal elections will come off throughout the country--in eighteen days the election of delegates. For eighteen days the whole country is to labor in election throes. Every man twenty-one years of age, having a wife and a homestead, is to be employed in rooting from out the soil of party councilmen, mayors, and deputies.

“And during the period these rooters not unfrequently get at loggerheads. Some are in favor of Streichein the miller, because Streichein has lavishly greased their palms; others insist upon re-electing Leimer the manufacturer, because Leimer threatens a reduction of wages if they refuse to keep him in the honorable position. In the heat of dispute, quite a storm of oaths and ugly epithets, yes, and of blows too, rages, and many is the voter who retires from the scene of action with a bloody head. The beer-shops are the chief battle-fields for this sort of skirmishing. Here, zealous voters swill down hogsheads of beer: brewers drive a brisk trade during elections. But you must not think, Seraphin, that these absurd election scenes are confined to cities. In rural districts the game is conducted with no less interest and fury. There is a village not far away, where a corpulent ploughman set his mind on becoming mayor. What does he, to get the reins of village government into his great fat fist? Two days previous to the election he butchers three fatted hogs, has several hundred ringlets of sausage made, gets ready his pots and pans for cooking and roasting, and then advertises: eating and drinking ad libitum and gratis for every voter wiping to aid him to ascend the mayor’s throne. He obtained his object.

“Now, I put the question to you Seraphin, is not this sort of election jugglery far more ridiculous and disgusting than the most preposterous periwigs of the last century?”

“Ignorance and passion may occasion the abuse of the best institutions,” answered the double millionaire. “However, if beer and pork determine the choice of councilmen and mayors, voters have no right to complain of misrule. It would be most disastrous to the state, I should think, were such corrupt means to decide also the election of the deputies of our legislative assembly.”

The banker smiled.

“The self-same manœuvring, only on a larger scale,” replied he. “Of course, in this instance, petty jealousies disappear. Streichein the miller and Leimer the manufacturer make concessions in the interest of the common party. All stand shoulder to shoulder in the cause of progress against Ultramontanes and democrats, who in these days have begun to be troublesome.

“Whilst at municipal elections office-seekers employed money and position for furthering their personal aims, at deputy elections progress men cast their means into a common cauldron, from which the mob are fed and made to drink in order to stimulate them with the spirit of progress for the coming election. At bottom it amounts to the same--the stupefaction of the multitude, the rule of a minority, in which, however, all consider themselves as having part, the folly of the nineteenth century.”

“This is an unhealthy condition of things, which gives reason to fear the corruption of the whole body politic,” remarked the landholder with seriousness. “The seats of the legislative chamber should be filled not through bribery and deception of the masses, nor through party passion, but through a right appreciation of the qualifications that fit a man for the office of deputy.”

“I ask your pardon, my dear friend,” interposed the banker with a laugh. “Being reared by a mother having a rigorous faith has prompted you to speak thus, not acquaintance with the spirit of the age. Right appreciation! Heavens, what naïveté! Are you not aware that progress, the autocrat of our times, follows a fixed, unchanging programme? It matters not whether Tom or Dick occupies the cushions of the legislative hall; the main point is to wear the color of progress, and for this no special qualifications are needed. I will give you an illustration of the way in which these things work. Let us suppose that every member is provided with a trumpet which he takes with him to the assembly. To blow this trumpet neither skill, nor quick perception, nor experience, nor knowledge--neither of these qualifications is necessary. Now, we will suppose these gentlemen assembled in the great hall where the destinies of the country are decided; should abuses need correction, should legislation for church or state be required, they have only to blow the trumpet of progress. The trumpet’s tone invariably accords with the spirit of progress, for it has been attuned to it. Should it happen that at a final vote upon a measure the trumpets bray loudly enough to drown the opposition of democrats and Ultramontanes, the matter is settled, the law is passed, the question is decided.”

“Evidently you exaggerate!” said Seraphin with a shake of the head. “Your illustration beats the enchanted horn of the fable. Do not you think so, Miss Louise?”

“Brother’s trumpet story is rather odd, ’tis true, yet I believe that at bottom such is really the state of things.”

“The instrument in question is objectionable in your opinion, my friend, only because you still bear about you the narrow conscience of an age long since buried. As you never spend more than two short winter months in the city, where alone the life-pulse of our century can be felt beating, you remain unacquainted with the present and its spirit. The rest of the year you pass in riding about on your lands, suffering yourself to be impressed by the stern rigor of nature’s laws, and concluding that human society harmonizes in the same manner with the behests of fixed principles. I shall have to brush you up a little. I shall have to let you into the mysteries of progress, so that you may cease groping like a blind man in the noonday of enlightenment. Above all, let us have no narrow-mindedness, no scrupulosity, I beg of you. Whosoever nowadays walks the grass-grown paths of rigorism is a doomed man.”

Whilst he was saying this, a smile was on the banker’s countenance. Seraphin mused in silence on the meaning and purpose of his extraordinary language.

“Look down the street, if you please,” continued Carl Greifmann. “Do you observe yon dark mass just passing under the gas-lamp?”

“I notice a pretty corpulent gentleman,” answered Seraphin.

“The corpulent gentleman is Mr. Hans Shund, formerly treasurer of this city,” explained Greifmann. “Many years ago, Mr. Shund put his hand into the public treasury, was detected, removed for dishonesty, and imprisoned for five years. When set at liberty, the ex-treasurer made the loaning of money on interest a source of revenue. He conducted this business with shrewdness, ruined many a family that needed money and in its necessity applied to him, and became rich. Shund the usurer is known to all the town, despised and hated by everybody. Even the dogs cannot endure the odor of usury that hangs about him; just see--all the dogs bark at him. Shund is moreover an extravagant admirer of the gentler sex. All the town is aware that this Jack Falstaff contributes largely to the scandal that is afloat. The pious go so far as to declare that the gallant Shund will be burned and roasted in hell for all eternity for not respecting the sixth commandment. Considered in the light of the time honored morality of Old Franconia, Shund, the thief, the usurer and adulterer, is a low, good-for-nothing scoundrel, no question about it. But in the light of the indulgent spirit of the times, no more can be said than that he has his foibles. He is about to pass by on the other side, and, as a well-bred man, will salute us.”

Seraphin had attentively observed the man thus characterized, but with the feelings with which one views an ugly blotch, a dirty page in the record of humanity.

Mr. Shund lowered his hat, his neck and back, with oriental ceremoniousness in presence of the millions on the balcony. Carl acknowledged the salute, and even Louise returned it with a friendly inclination of the head.

The landholder, on the contrary, was cold, and felt hurt at Greifmann’s bowing to a fellow whom he had just described as a scoundrel. That Louise, too, should condescend to smile to a thief, swindler, usurer, and immoral wretch! In his opinion, Louise should have followed the dictates of a noble womanhood, and have looked with honest pity on the scapegrace. She, on the contrary, greeted the bad man as though he were respectable, and this conduct wounded the young man’s feelings.

“Apropos of Hans Shund, I will take occasion to convince you of the correctness of my statements,” said Carl Greifmann. “Three days hence, the municipal election is to come off. Mr. Shund is to be elected mayor. And when the election of deputies takes place, this same Shund will command enough of the confidence and esteem of his fellow-citizens to be elected to the legislative assembly, thief and usurer though he be. You will then, I trust, learn to understand that the might of progress is far removed from the bigotry that would subject a man’s qualifications to a microscopic examination. The enlarged and liberal principles prevailing in secular concerns are opposed to the intolerance that would insist on knowing something of an able man’s antecedents before consenting to make use of him. All that Shund will have to do will be to fall in under the glorious banner of the spirit of the age; his voting trumpet will be given him; and forthwith he will turn out a finished mayor and deputy. Do you not admire the power and stretch of liberalism?”

“I certainly do admire your faculty for making up plausible stories,” answered Seraphin.

“Plausible stories? Not at all! Downright earnest, every word of it. Hans Shund, take my word for it, will be elected mayor and member of the assembly.”

“In that event,” replied the landholder, “Shund’s disreputable antecedents and disgusting conduct at present must be altogether a secret to his constituents.”

“Again you are mistaken, my dear friend. This remark proceeds from your want of acquaintance with the genius of our times. This city has thirty thousand inhabitants. Every adult among them has heard of Hans Shund the thief, usurer, and companion of harlots. And I assure you that not a voter, not a progressive member of our community, thinks himself doing what is at all reprehensible by conferring dignity and trust on Hans Shund. You have no idea how comprehensive is the soul of liberalism.”

“Let us quit a subject that appears to me impossible, nay, even unnatural,” said Gerlach.

“No, no; for this very reason you need to be convinced,” insisted the banker with earnestness. “My prospective--but hold--I was almost guilty of a want of delicacy. No matter, my actual friend, landholder and millionaire, must be made see with his eyes and touch with his fingers what marvels progress can effect. Let us make a bet: Eighteen days from now Hans Shund will be mayor and member for this city. I shall stake ten thousand florins. You may put in the pair of bays that won the best prizes at the last races.”

Seraphin hesitated.

“Come on!” urged the banker. “Since you refuse to believe my assertions, let us make a bet. May be you consider my stakes too small against yours? Very well, I will say twenty thousand florins.”

“You will be the loser, Greifmann! Your statements are too unreasonable.”

“Never mind; if I lose, you will be the winner. Do you take me up?”

“Pshaw, Carl! you are too sure,” said Louise reproachfully.

“My feeling so sure is what makes me eager to win the finest pair of horses I ever saw. Is it possible that you are a coward?”

The landholder’s face reddened. He put his right hand in the banker’s. “My dear fellow,” exclaimed he jubilantly, “I have just driven a splendid bargain. To convince you of the entire fairness of the transaction, you are to be present at the manipulation that is to decide. Even though you lose the horses, your gain is incalculable, for it consists in nothing less than being convinced of the wonderful nature and of the omnipotence of progress. I repeat, then, that, wherever progress reigns, the elections are the supreme folly of the nineteenth century; for in reality there is no electing; but what progress decrees, that is fulfilled.”

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II. THE LEADERS

The banker was seated at his office table working for his chance in the wager with the industry of a thorough business man. Whilst he was engaged in writing notes, a smile indicative of certainty of success lit up his countenance; for he was thoroughly familiar with the figures that entered into his calculations, and, withal, Hans Shund invested with offices and dignity could not but strike him as a comical anomaly. “Happy thought! My father travels half of the globe; many wonderful things come under his observation, no doubt, but the greatest of all prodigies is to be witnessed right here: Hans Shund, the thief, swindler, usurer, wanton--mayor and law-maker! And it is the venerable sire Progress that alone could have begotten the prodigy of a Hans Shund invested with honors. My Lord Progress is therefore himself a prodigy--a very extraordinary offspring of the human mind, the culminating point of enlightenment. Admitting humanity to be ten thousand million years old, or even more, as the most learned of scientific men have accurately calculated it, during this rather long series of years nature never produced a marvel that might presume to claim rank with progress. Progress is the acme of human culture--about this there can be no question. Yes, indeed, the acme.” And he finished the last word in the last note. “Humanity will therefore have to face about and begin again at the beginning; for after progress nothing else is possible.” He rang his bell.

“Take these three notes to their respective addresses immediately,” said he to the servant who had answered the ring. Greifmann stepped into the front office, and gave an order to the cashier. Returning to his own cabinet, he locked the door that opened into the front office. He then examined several iron safes, the modest and smooth polish of which suggested neither the hardness of their iron nature nor the splendor of their treasures.

“Gold or paper?” said the banker to himself. After some indecision, he opened the second of the safes. This he effected by touching several concealed springs, using various keys, and finally shoving back a huge bolt by means of a very small blade. He drew out twenty packages of paper, and laid them in two rows on the table. He undid the tape encircling the packages, and then it appeared that every leaf of both rows was a five-hundred florin banknote. The banker had exposed a considerable sum on the table. A sudden thought caused him to smile, and he shoved the banknotes where they came more prominently into view.

The blooming double millionaire entered.

“Sit down a moment, friend Seraphin, and listen to a short account of my scheme. I have said before that our city is prospering and growing under the benign sceptre of progress. The powers and honors of the sceptre are portioned among three leaders. Everything is directed and conducted by them--of course, in harmony with the spirit of the times. I have summoned the aforesaid magnates to appear. That the business may be despatched with a comfortable degree of expedition, the time when the visit is expected has been designated in each note; and those gentlemen are punctual in all matters connected with money and the bank. You can enter this little apartment next to us, and by leaving the door open hear the conversation. The mightiest of the corypheuses is Schwefel, the straw-hat manufacturer. This potentate resides at a three-minutes walk from here, and can put in an appearance at any time.”

“I am on tiptoe!” said Gerlach. “You promise what is so utterly incredible, that the things you are preparing to reveal appear to me like adventures belonging to another world.”

“To another world!--quite right, my dear fellow! I am indeed about to display to your astounded eyes some wonders of the world of progress that hitherto have been entirely unknown to you. Within eighteen days you shall, under my tutorship, receive useful and thorough instruction. This promise I can make you, as we are just in face of the elections, a time when minds put aside their disguises, when they not unfrequently shock one another, and when many secrets come to light!”

“You put me under many obligations!”

“Only doing my duty, my most esteemed! We are both aware that, according to the wishes of parents and the desired inclinations of parties known, our respective millions are to approach each other in closer relationship. To do a relative of mine in spe a favor, gives me unspeakable satisfaction. I shall proceed with my course of instruction. See here! Every one of these twenty packages contains twenty five-hundred florin banknotes. Consequently, both rows contain just two hundred thousand florins--an imposing sum assuredly, and, for the purpose of being imposing, the two hundred thousand have been laid upon this table. Explanation: the mightiest of the spirits of progress is--Money.

“All forces, all sympathies, revolve about money as the heavenly bodies revolve about the sun. For this reason the mere proximity of a considerable sum of money acts upon every man of progress like a current of electricity: it carries him away, it intoxicates his senses. The leaders whom I have invited will at once notice the collection of five-hundred florin notes: in the rapidity of calculating, they will overestimate the amount, and obtain impressions in proportion, somewhat like the Jews that prostrated themselves in the dust in adoration of the golden calf. As for me, my dear fellow, I shall carry on my operations in the auspicious presence of this power of two hundred thousands. Such a display of power will produce in the leaders a frame of mind made up of veneration, worship, and unconditional submissiveness. Every word of mine will proceed authoritatively from the golden mouth of the two hundred thousands, and my proposals it will be impossible for them to reject. But listen! The door of the ante-room is being opened. The mightiest is approaching. Go in quick.” He pressed the spring of a concealed door, and Seraphin disappeared.

When the straw-hat manufacturer entered, the banker was sitting before the banknotes apparently absorbed in intricate calculations.

“Ah Mr. Schwefel! pardon the liberty I have taken of sending for you. The pressure of business,” motioning significantly towards the banknotes, “has made it impossible for me to call upon you.”

“No trouble, Mr. Greifmann, no trouble whatever!” rejoined the manufacturer with profound bows.

“Have the goodness to take a seat!” And he drew an arm-chair quite near to where the money lay displayed. Schwefel perceived they were five-hundreds, estimated the amount of the pile in a few rapid glances, and felt secret shudderings of awe passing through his person.

“The cause of my asking you in is a business matter of some magnitude,” began the banker. “There is a house in Vienna with which we stand in friendly relations, and which has very extensive connections in Hungary. The gentlemen of this house have contracts for furnishing large orders of straw hats destined mostly for Hungary, and they wish to know whether they can obtain favorable terms of purchase at the manufactories of this country. It is a business matter involving a great deal of money. Their confidence in the friendly interest of our firm, and in our thorough acquaintance with local circumstances, has encouraged them to apply to us for an accurate report upon this subject. They intimate, moreover, that they desire to enter into negotiations with none but solid establishments, and for this reason are supposed to be guided by our judgment. As you are aware, this country has a goodly number of straw-hat manufactories. I would feel inclined, however, as far as it may be in my power, to give your establishment the advantage of our recommendation, and would therefore like to get from you a written list of fixed prices of all the various sorts.”

“I am, indeed, under many obligations to you, Mr. Greifmann, for your kind consideration,” said the manufacturer, nodding repeatedly. “Your own experience can testify to the durability of my work, and I shall give the most favorable rates possible.”

“No doubt,” rejoined the banker with haughty reserve. “You must not forget that the straw-hat business is out of our line. It is incumbent on us, however, to oblige a friendly house. I shall therefore make a similar proposal to two other large manufactories, and, after consulting with men of experience in this branch, shall give the house in Vienna the advice we consider most to its interest, that is, shall recommend the establishment most worthy of recommendation.”

Mr. Schwefel’s excited countenance became somewhat lengthy.

“You should not fail of an acceptable acknowledgment from me, were you to do me the favor of recommending my goods,” explained the manufacturer.

The banker’s coldness was not in the slightest degree altered by the implied bribe. He appeared not even to have noticed it. “It is also my desire to be able to recommend you,” said he curtly, carelessly taking up a package of the banknotes and playing with ten thousand florins as if they were so many valueless scraps of paper. “Well, we are on the eve of the election,” remarked he ingenuously. “Have you fixed upon a magistrate and mayor?”

“All in order, thank you, Mr. Greifmann!”

“And are you quite sure of the order?”

“Yes; for we are well organized, Mr. Greifmann. If it interests you, I will consider it as an honor to be allowed to send you a list of the candidates.”

“I hope you have not passed over ex-treasurer Shund?”

This question took Mr. Schwefel by surprise, and a peculiar smile played on his features.

“The world is and ever will be ungrateful,” continued the banker, as though he did not notice the astonishment of the manufacturer. “I could hardly think of an abler and more sterling character for the office of mayor of the city than Mr. Shund. Our corporation is considerably in debt. Mr. Shund is known to be an accurate financier, and an economical householder. We just now need for the administration of our city household a mayor that understands reckoning closely, and that will curtail unnecessary expenses, so as to do away with the yearly increasing deficit in the budget. Moreover, Mr. Shund is a noble character; for he is always ready to aid those who are in want of money--on interest, of course. Then, again, he knows law, and we very much want a lawyer at the head of our city government. In short, the interests of this corporation require that Mr. Shund be chosen chief magistrate. It is a subject of wonder to me that progress, usually so clear-sighted, has heretofore passed Mr. Shund by, despite his numerous qualifications. Abilities should be called into requisition for the public weal. To be candid, Mr. Schwefel, nothing disgusts me so much as the slighting of great ability,” concluded the banker contemptuously.

“Are you acquainted with Shund’s past career?” asked the leader diffidently.

“Why, yes! Mr. Shund once put his hand in the wrong drawer, but that was a long time ago. Whosoever amongst you is innocent, let him cast the first stone at him. Besides, Shund has made good his fault by restoring what he filched. He has even atoned for the momentary weakness by five years of imprisonment.”

“’Tis true; but Shund’s theft and imprisonment are still very fresh in people’s memory,” said Schwefel. “Shund is notorious, moreover, as a hard-hearted usurer. He has gotten rich through shrewd money speculations, but he has also brought several families to utter ruin. The indignation of the whole city is excited against the usurer; and, finally, Shund indulges a certain filthy passion with such effrontery and barefacedness that every respectable female cannot but blush at being near him. These characteristics were unknown to you, Mr. Greifmann; for you too will not hesitate an instant to admit that a man of such low practices must never fill a public office.”

“I do not understand you, and I am surprised!” said the millionaire. “You call Shund a usurer, and you say that the indignation of the whole town is upon him. Might I request from you the definition of a usurer?”

“They are commonly called usurers who put out money at exorbitant, illegal interest.”

“You forget, my dear Mr. Schwefel, that speculation is no longer confined to the five per cent. rate. A correct insight into the circumstances of the times has induced our legislature to leave the rate of interest altogether free. Consequently, a usurer has gotten to be an impossibility. Were Shund to ask fifty per cent. and more, he would be entitled to it.”

“That is so; for the moment I had overlooked the existence of the law,” said the manufacturer, somewhat humiliated. “Yet I have not told you all concerning the usurer. Beasts of prey and vampires inspire an involuntary disgust or fear. Nobody could find pleasure in meeting a hungry wolf, or in having his blood sucked by a vampire. The usurer is both vampire and wolf. He hankers to suck the very marrow from the bones of those who in financial straits have recourse to him. When an embarrassed person borrows from him, that person is obliged to mortgage twice the amount that he actually receives. The usurer is a heartless strangler, an insatiable glutton. He is perpetually goaded on by covetousness to work the material ruin of others, only so that the ruin of his neighbor may benefit himself. In short, the usurer is a monster so frightful, a brute so devoid of conscience, that the very sight of him excites horror and disgust. Just such a monster is Shund in the eyes of all who know him--and the whole city knows him. Hence the man is the object of general aversion.”

“Why, this is still worse, still more astonishing!” rejoined the millionaire with animation. “I thought our city enlightened. I should have expected from the intelligence and judgment of our citizens that they would have deferred neither to the sickly sentimentalism of a bigoted morality nor to the absurdity of obsolete dogmas. If your description of the usurer, which might at least be styled poetico-religious, is an expression of the prevailing spirit of this city, I shall certainly have to lower my estimate of its intelligence and culture.”

The leader hastened to correct the misunderstanding.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Greifmann! You may rest assured that we can boast all the various conquests made by modern advancement. Religious enthusiasm and foolish credulity are poisonous plants that superannuated devotees are perhaps still continuing to cultivate here and there in pots, but which the soil will no longer produce in the open air. The sort of education prevailing hereabout is that which has freed itself from hereditary religious prejudices. Our town is blessed with all the benefits of progress, with liberty of thought, and freedom from the thraldom of a dark, designing priesthood.”

“How comes it, then, that a man is an object of contempt for acting in accordance with the principles of this much lauded progress?” asked the millionaire, with unexpected sarcasm. “We are indebted to progress for the abolition of a legal rate of interest. Shund takes advantage of this conquest, and for doing so citizens who boast of being progressive look upon him with aversion. A further triumph secured by progress is freedom from the tyranny of dogmas and the tortures of a conscience created by a contracted morality. This beautiful fruit of the tree of enlightened knowledge Shund partakes of and enjoys; and for this he has the distinction of passing for a vampire. And because he displays the spirit of an energetic business man, because his capacity for speculating occasionally overwhelms blockheads and dunces, he is decried as a ravenous wolf. It is sad! If your statements are correct, Mr. Schwefel, our city ought not to boast of being progressive. Its citizens are still groping in the midnight darkness of religious superstition, scarcely even united with modern intellectual advancement. And to me the consciousness is most uncomfortable of breathing an atmosphere poisoned by the decaying remnants of an age long since buried.”

“My own personal views accord with yours,” protested Schwefel candidly. “The subversion of the antiquated, absurd articles of faith and moral precept necessarily entails the abrogation of the consequences that flow from them for public life. For centuries the cross was a symbol of dignity, and the doctrine of the Crucified resulted in holiness. Paganism, on the contrary, looked upon the gospel as foolishness, as a hallucination, and upon the cross as a sign of shame. I belong to the classic ranks, and so do millions like myself--among them Mr. Shund. Viewed in the light of progress, Shund is neither a vampire nor a wolf; at the worst, he is merely an ill-used business man. They who suffer themselves to be humbugged and fleeced by him have their own stupidity to thank for it. This exposition will convince you that I stand on a level with yourself in the matter of advanced enlightenment. Nevertheless, you overlook, Mr. Greifmann, that, so far as the masses of the people are concerned, reverence for the cross and the holiness of its doctrines continue to prevail. The acquisitions of progress are not yet generally diffused. The mines of modern intellectual culture are being provisionally worked by a select number of independent, bold natures. The multitude, on the other hand, still continue folding about them the winding-sheet of Christianity. The views, customs, principles, and judgments of men are as yet widely controlled by Christian elements. Our city does homage to progress, pretty nearly, however, in the manner of a blind man that discourses of colors.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

A HISTORY OF THE GOTHIC REVIVAL IN ENGLAND.[103]

We purpose giving in this article a sketch, as far as our limited space will allow, of a costly and beautiful work published in London under the above title. Many of our readers will perhaps turn willingly to the history of a movement which is not without its echo in America, and which the future bids fair to foster and popularize wherever the Anglo-Saxon tongue and spirit have sway. A work treating of such very modern and recent events in the history of art is not easily reducible to salient divisions; yet, having to be brief, we must necessarily endeavor to be clear, and we will, therefore, pick out a few prominent ideas, which, we hope, will be more interesting to the general reader than the mass of technical detail in which Eastlake’s book naturally (and very properly) abounds. We have also to promise that we wish only to state and quote facts, or such anecdotes and professional opinions as give our history an individual interest, not to drag up the vexed questions which have made the venerable words “Gothic” and “mediæval” signs of warfare and contradiction. This is a pure chronicle of accomplished facts, and addresses itself only to such as already lean to the æsthetic principles of those “dark ages” of spiritual light which gave us along with Monasticism the great conservative power. Feudalism--the progressive power, the check on royal autocracy, the guardian of Magna Charta, the parent of constitutional liberty.

Passing by the history and literature of Gothic art since its decay in the sixteenth to its full revival in the nineteenth century, we are attracted by the subject of its symbolism, over which such fierce and sometimes ludicrous battles have been fought; but, even before the symbolism of the art, its very origin was made a subject of curious dispute. For instance, the author of this work says: “In the beginning of this century, various arguments were rife. The style was Gothic; it was Saracenic; it had been brought to England by the crusaders; it had been invented by the Moors in Spain; it might be traced to the pyramids of Egypt. One ingenious theorist endeavored to reconcile all opinions in his comprehensive hypothesis that the style of architecture which we call cathedral or monastic Gothic was manifestly a corruption of the sacred architecture of the Greeks and Romans, by a mixture of the Moorish or Saracenesque, which is formed out of a combination of Egyptian, Persian, and Hindoo!”

Of symbolism, and the intimate union of the religious and artistic spirit, Eastlake says: “In modern days, we have unconsciously drawn a distinction between religious art and popular art. In the middle ages, they were thoroughly blended;” but he goes on to infer from this blending that, according to the old adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” there was no reverential and spiritual idea whatever embodied in the work of the mediæval carvers and architects. We, by the light of our faith, the heirloom of the very times we speak of, believe him to be either unconsciously prejudiced or mistaken. He seems to scout the idea of the deviation of the line of the chancel from the line of the nave, an occasional feature in some old churches (for instance, the Abbey of St. Denys, near Paris), being a symbol of the inclination of Our Lord’s head upon the cross. It is but a tradition, a pious belief, it is true; but why throw doubt upon it? If it really was meant as a symbol, he asks why was it not so in all churches? And if the triplet window typified the Trinity, why were two or five light windows used? Simply because the symbol was optional, yet none the less a symbol. From the old symbolism of the forgotten artists of past days, we come to the miscalled “Pre-Raphaelite” naturalism of modern architects. Ruskin with all his merits, of which we will speak more fully further on, had an exaggerated tendency to find in carving an exact copy from nature, and to condemn anything in that line that did not absolutely reproduce some organic form. Eastlake himself expresses his own views on the subject in the following words: “In the gable [of St. Finbar’s, Cork], ... a seated figure of Christ is to occupy a vesica-shaped panel, with angels censing on each side. Of these works, executed by Mr. Thomas Nicholls from Mr. Burges’ design, it is not too much to say that no finer examples of decorative sculpture have been produced during the Revival. They exactly represent that intermediate condition between natural form and abstract idealism which is the essence of mediæval, and indeed of all noble art.” From this subject we are led to the kindred one of the contrast between old work and new. Our author repeatedly returns to this point. Here are some amusing sayings about the deplorable ‘tameness’ of modern sculpture: “The Roman Catholic churches erected at this period (1850) had one decided advantage over those designed for the Establishment, viz., the richness of their interiors.... A tamely carved reredos, generally arranged in panels to hold the Ten Commandments (!), a group of sedilia and a piscina, with perhaps a few empty inches in the clerestory, were, as a rule, all the internal features which distinguished an Anglican church from a meeting-house.” So that wherever art is concerned, an unconscious tribute is naturally offered to the church! Again and again, our author vigorously denounces the dead imitation of living and forcible models, which is in the spirit of a “Chinese engraver who should undertake to imitate, line for line and spot for spot, a damaged print.” “Every one,” he says, “who has studied the principles of mediæval art, knows how much its character and vitality depend upon the essential element of decorative sculpture, of the spirit of what Ruskin has called ‘noble grotesque,’ in its nervous types of animal life and vigorous conventionalism of vegetable form.... To copy line for line, even when sound and fresh from the chisel, and yet preserve the spirit of the original, would have been difficult in the best ages of art. The mediæval sculptors never--to use an artistic phrase--repeated themselves. If the conditions of their work required a certain degree of uniformity in design, they took care to aim at the spirit, but not the letter, of symmetry.... They took the birds of the air and the flowers of the field for their study, but seemed to know instinctively the true secret of all decorative art, which lies in the suggestion and symbolism, rather than the presumptuous illustration of natural form.” “Since,” continues Eastlake, “we cannot ‘restore’ the thoughts and stamp of the artists of old, we should the more sedulously watch what we have left of such traces, and prop up and secure that which a little common care might long preserve to us.” Of an unfortunate modern carver, he says: “Impartial critics who compare the mediæval carving with its modern substitute will probably consider the neat finish and anatomical correctness of Westmacott’s groups a poor exchange for the earnest and vigorous, though somewhat rude, treatment of the old design. King George’s loyal subjects thought they knew better than those of King Edward; ... their work was not clever; it was not interesting; it was not lifelike; it was not humorous; it was not even ugly after a good honest fashion--it was deplorably and hopelessly mean.... All these accidents combine not only to deprive the building of scale, but to give it a cold and machine-made look. In a far different spirit the mediæval designers worked.... Fifty years ago, ... there was naturalistic carving and there was ornamental carving, but the noble abstractive treatment which should find a middle place between them, and which was one of the glories of ancient art, had still to be revived.” In whimsical pursuance of his subject, he says elsewhere that before Pugin’s days “an architect would no more have thought of introducing a porch on the south aisle which had not its counterpart on the north, than he would have dared to wear a coat of which the right sleeve was longer than the left.” Ruskin, too, seems to have thought a coat a very effective instrument of illustration: here is his version of the likeness between the tailor’s and the modern architect’s occupations. “A day never passes,” he says in his Seven Lamps of Architecture, “without our hearing our English architects called upon to be original, and to invent a new style; about as sensible and necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags enough on his back to keep out the cold to invent a new mode of cutting a coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself about the fashion afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who wants a new style of painting or of sculpture? But we want some style.” To return to Eastlake’s strongly accentuated views of mediæval carving: he has summed them up in one sentence, as terse and vigorous as the old sculptural handiwork itself. “During the Revival,” he says, “it took a decade of years to teach workmen to carve carefully. It took another to get them to carve simply. We may expect more than a third to elapse before they have learnt to carve nobly.” With one more quotation which is too humorous to miss, we will close this part of the history of the Revival: “There is no want of manipulative skill or of imitative ability, but from some cause or another there is a great want of spirit in the present carver’s work. The mediæval sculptor, with half the care and less than half the finish now bestowed on such details, managed to throw life and vigor into the capitals and panel subjects that grew beneath his chisel. The ‘angel choir’ at Lincoln is rudely executed compared with many a modern bas-relief, but the features of the winged minstrels are radiant with celestial happiness. There are figures of kings crumbling into dust in the niches of Exeter Cathedral which retain even now a dignity of attitude and lordly grace which no ‘restoration’ is likely to revive. Our nineteenth century angels look like demure Bible-readers, somewhat too conscious of their piety to be interesting. Our nineteenth century monarchs seem (in stone, at least) very well-to-do pleasant gentlemen, but are scarcely of a heroic type. The roses and lilies, the maple foliage and forked spleenwort, with which we crown our pillars or deck our cornices, are cut with wonderful precision and neatness, but somehow they miss the charm of old-world handicraft.... The truth is, that in the apparent imperfections of some arts lies the real secret of their excellence. For instance, the superior quality of color which long distinguished old (stained) glass from new was due in a great measure to its streakiness and irregularity of tint.” We would here submit to the talented and enthusiastic author that the spirit of ancient art, the loss of which he so vehemently deplores, is intimately connected with that Catholic symbolism he so cavalierly dismisses. The Reformation took away the reality of faith from the souls of modern Christians; it could not but weaken likewise the realization of faith which for so many ages had inspired the hands of Christian artists. A noble orator, who is as much an artist in soul as he is a priest in fact, and in whom Ireland and Irish America claim equal pride, said from the pulpit very recently, and in a church of New York, that animal painting, the lowest of the products of brush or pencil, was hardly known in its present development before the famous Reformation. The first painter who took to this earthy style was a German Lutheran in Naples, an emissary of the growing intellectual “disfranchisement” of the sixteenth century; and his fellow-artists, who hitherto had never looked lower than heaven itself for their models, would not speak to him, nor recognize him as one of themselves, saying in a tone of contempt, “There goes the man who paints cows and horses!” As the old spirit died away, the forms of art grew downwards more and more till we were reduced to roots and herbs, onions and cabbages, and foaming tankards of beer, and were expected to find for these some words of praise on account of their fidelity (shall we not rather say servility?) to nature. Even now, the correct texture and pattern of a bed-quilt or a woman’s dress is a thing strained after by modern painters of supposed merit. In the face of this three hundred years old debasement of art, who could expect to revive the spirit of mediæval carving without first reviving that of mediæval faith? And here we are naturally led to speak of Pugin, the great apostle of the Gothic Revival, the most mediæval-spirited of all its known leaders; the man whose art, in fact, was the instrument of his conversion. Although Eastlake tends towards depreciating the part and influence of our religion in this artistic crisis, and although, as he most truly and fairly says, our ceremonial, like our faith, can associate itself indifferently to any style, and therefore is sovereignly independent of any, yet it remains no less true that the Catholic Church is so exclusively the real patroness of art that no artist-soul can fail to be attracted and won by her. Overbeck, the great German painter, who established in Rome a school that revives and rivals the glories of Perugino, Giotto, Mantegna, and Fra Angelico, was an artist before he became a Catholic, but he found himself unable to teach his art-ideal without the spirit which of old had created that ideal. So it was with Pugin.

France and England have an equal claim to the honor of being the mother of the noblest, most earnest, truest artist, who has shared the vicissitudes and anxieties of our modern (and more beneficial) Renaissance. His father was a French refugee, an architect of great merit, who had been associated in the early part of this century with Nash, the reigning architect of that time. Pugin’s youth seems to have been very adventurous; at all events, it shows the irrepressible energy of his nature. He was an enthusiast of the noblest type; his life was influenced by the purest motives. So, with all his genius and, as far as the educated public was concerned, his popularity, he was not overburdened with this world’s goods. His work on Contrasts (of which we have had the privilege of seeing some of the original illustrations in etching) is thus noticed by Eastlake:

“In 1836, Pugin published his celebrated Contrasts--a pungent satire on modern architecture as compared with that of the middle ages. The illustrations by himself afford evidence not only of great artistic power, but of a keen sense of humor. To the circulation of this work, we may attribute the care and jealousy with which our ancient churches and cathedrals have since been protected and kept in repair. In estimating the effect which Pugin’s efforts, both as an artist and as an author, produced on the Gothic Revival, the only danger lies in the possibility of overrating their worth. The man whose name was for at least a quarter of a century a household word in every house where ancient art was loved and appreciated--who fanned into a flame the smouldering fire of ecclesiastical sentiment--whose very faith was pledged to mediæval tradition--such a writer and such an architect will not easily be forgotten so long as the æsthetic principles which he advocated are recognized and maintained.... Notwithstanding the size and importance of some of his buildings, it must be confessed that in his house and the church at Ramsgate one recognizes more thorough and genuine examples of Pugin’s genius ... than elsewhere.”

The list of his works is really so extensive that we must confine ourselves by preference to one or two whose beauties we have had personal opportunities of admiring.

Of these, happily, that of Ramsgate is one. “The whole church,” says our author, “is lined with stone of a warm color, the woodwork of the screens, stalls, etc., being of dark oak. The general tone of the interior, lighted as it is by stained glass, is most agreeable, and wonderfully suggestive of old work.... The church of St. Augustine may be regarded as one of Pugin’s most successful achievements. Its plan is singularly ingenious and unconventional in arrangement. The exterior is simple but picturesque in outline. No student of old English architecture can examine this interesting little church without perceiving the thoughtful, earnest care with which it has been designed and executed down to the minutest detail.”

Omitting the technical description, which would be unintelligible to the non-professional reader, we will merely remark upon one or two interesting circumstances which combine to make St. Augustine’s Priory doubly dear to the Catholic and artist heart. The founder lies buried in one of its side chapels, beneath a lovely mediæval tomb, his figure carved in the monumental repose which characterizes the shrines of former days. And truly before these calm effigies of death, which modern taste calls stiff, and for which it has substituted the nude and affected statues of weeping nymphs and cupids, no Christian can fail to be reminded of the solemnly triumphant question, “O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” The church that Pugin loved is now served by the old monastic order, whose history is identified in England with most of the wonderful productions of the art he followed--the Benedictines. The plain chant, so intimately associated with that ancient art, is alone used at all the services of the church; and near the Pugin Chantry is an image of Our Lady, before which, on an iron stand of exquisite design, are constantly burned the tapers of the faithful. Were it not for the modern dress of the worshippers, nothing in the church would indicate the change between the fourteenth and the nineteenth century. Close to it stands the architect’s own house, a gem of domestic Gothic architecture, now occupied by Pugin’s widow and son, himself an enthusiastic artist. It is impossible to describe the house, save by a comprehensive expression. It has a sympathetic and Catholic air: one is reminded of the days when artists loved their faith and their art in themselves, without after-thoughts and without interest; when they saw God in their work instead of a patron or a human encourager; when they would no more sell their principles and compromise their æsthetic beliefs, than they would sell their soul to the Evil One. We have had the pleasure of experiencing familiar intercourse with this truly Christian household, and of partaking of its graceful hospitality. We have seen the very dining-room etherealized into a fane of art, as the table appeared laden with silver flagons of antique design, and decked in the centre with the virginal blossoms of lily and jessamine. This purity of taste and absence of vulgar redundancy or vanity in ornament produced upon us a most indelible and quaint impression. If it be true that the surroundings of home refine the mind and open it to the most perfect sense of the beautiful, these neighbors of St. Augustine’s Priory should consider themselves among the most favored in this age of almost hopeless utilitarianism.

St. George’s Catholic Cathedral at Southwark, London, is also one of Pugin’s great works. The ceremonies of the church are performed with more precision in this cathedral than in almost any modern one in England, and the building wonderfully lends itself to their performance. During Holy Week, all the Protestant world of art and fashion crowd its aisles, and admire equally its architectural solemnity and suggestiveness, and the impressive ritual to which it forms so noble a frame. The Church of St. Michael’s Priory, near Hereford, also a Benedictine foundation, is most beautiful and most “Puginesque” (to quote the appropriate word-coin of our author, Eastlake). The simplicity of its nave and aisles contrasts well with the richness of its choir; the stone reredos, a true “carven dream of angels,” represents the adoration of the Divine Host by the winged inhabitants of heaven; the altar is rich with marble columns and small sculptured capitals of most ingenious workmanship; the stalls rival those in the old Flemish churches (and Flanders was the birthland of perfect carving); and the peculiar arrangement which leaves a free space between choir and nave, separated from each by a vaulted arch, has a very happy effect. There are fully thirty monks in the monastery, and the plain chant is heard in all its glory at the prescribed hours of the divine office.

We have lingered too long over these reminiscences, and will now hasten on to the few other points of interest, which our limited space has allowed us to make note of, in Mr. Eastlake’s book.

A few quotations that carry one from the consideration of the dry, technical aspect of the Revival to that of its spirit and vitality will not be unacceptable, we believe, to the general reader. Here are two contrasting portraits of modern and mediæval life: “Seen in their present state, some half-modernized, some damaged by time and wilful neglect, others spoilt by injudicious restoration, many of these ancient mansions are but dimly suggestive of their former magnificence. It was Nash’s aim to represent them as they were in the days when country life was enjoyed by their owners, not for a brief interval in the year, but all the year round; in days when there were feasting in the hall and tilting in the court-yard; when the yule-log cracked on the hearth, and mummers beguiled the dulness of a winter’s evening; when the bowling-green was filled by lusty youths, and gentle dames sat spinning in their boudoirs; when the deep window recesses were filled with family groups, and gallant cavaliers rode a-hawking; when, in short, all the adjuncts and incidents of social life, dress, pastimes, manners, and whatnot formed part of a picturesque whole, of which we, in these prosaic and lack-lustre days, except by the artist’s aid, can form no conception.” On the other hand, here is what the shocked vision of a modern artist has suggested to the author of the Gothic Revival:

“Mr. Ruskin looked around him at the modern architecture of England ... and saw public buildings copied from those of a nobler age, but starved and vulgarized in the copying. He saw private houses, some modelled on what was supposed to be an Italian pattern, and others modelled on what was supposed to be a mediæval pattern, and he found too often neither grandeur in the one nor grace in the other. He saw palaces which looked mean, and cottages which looked tawdry. He saw masonry without interest, ornament without beauty, and sculpture without life. He walked through the streets of London, and found that they consisted for the most part of flaunting shop-fronts, stuccoed porticoes, and plaster cornices. It is true there were fine clubs and theatres and public institutions scattered here and there; but, after making due allowance for their size, for the beauty of materials used, and for the neatness (!) of the workmanship, how far could they be considered as genuine works of art?”

And here let us stop to point out how it has been invariably the aim of the Revival to banish the false and the meretricious from art; how it has waged relentless war against shams, against the aping in perishable clay of that which the ancients, Greek as well as mediæval, always carved in indestructible stone or marble. Unfortunately, the only residue of mediævalism that has as yet filtered its way down to the masses of the population is strongly tinged with a taste for showiness at the expense of intrinsic worth, and the flimsiness of “Gothic” sea-side lodges and Cockney villas has become a by-word. Eastlake deplores the rigid adoption in such hybrid edifices of the bands of colored brick (chiefly red and yellow), which should be used with great discretion, but which obtained a too quick popularity when Ruskin first pointed out their prominent part in Italian decorative Gothic. In a foot-note, he says: “In the suburbs this mode of decoration rose rapidly into favor for Cockney villas and public taverns, and laid the foundation of that peculiar order of Victorian architecture which has since been distinguished by the familiar but not altogether inappropriate name of the Streaky Bacon Style.”

With how many such buildings are we unhappily acquainted! In this city, we have seen counterparts to the villas here mentioned--nay, churches and public halls, with iron-work that calls itself Gothic, and does not know that it is but modern “Franco-Assyrian!” But let us not do injustice to the more enlightened disciples of Pugin and of Ruskin, who are covering this new land with buildings which, if they last two or three hundred years, will rival those of the lands from whose cathedrals they were copied. A sister to the marble cathedral of Milan will soon be finished for the Catholics of New York, not so elaborate, perhaps, but purer in style and spirit. Others are eagerly competing in this new race of art, and the city of the Dutch emigrants will one day hold fanes that will remind their children of Flanders and of Holland.

Although the Catholic Church can afford to dispense with outward ceremonial, or adapt herself to a different arrangement of church architecture, and yet remain, in custom, in doctrine, essentially immutable, such is not the privilege of the dominant church in England. Therefore it will not be surprising to any one to know how much the revived taste for art contributed some time ago to the revived sense of decorum in the services of the Episcopalian denomination. Eastlake gives us a graphic description of spiritual desolation in the ante-Gothic days in the country parishes of England:

“In country districts, a bad road or a rainy day sufficed to keep half the congregation away even from Sunday services. Of those who attended, two-thirds left the responses to the parish clerk.... Cracked fiddles and grunting violoncellos frequently supplied the place of the church organ. The village choir--of male and female performers--assembled in the western gallery (!). When they began to sing, the whole congregation faced about to look at them; but to turn towards the east during the recitation of the creed, or to rise when the clergy entered the church, would have been considered an instance of abject superstition. No one thought of kneeling during the longer prayers. Sometimes the Litany was interrupted by thwacks from the beadle’s cane as it descended on the shoulders of parish schoolboys, who devoted themselves to clandestine amusement during that portion of the service. When the sermon began, all, except the very devout, settled themselves comfortably to sleep. The parson preached in a black gown, and not unfrequently read the communion service from his pulpit.”

We have seen in a country church in Rutland--one of the midland counties of England--some lingering tokens of this curious state of things. Most of the other churches of that neighborhood have been magnificently restored, and very much Catholicized, at least in externals. This exception to the rule is in a small parish, and is noticeable for a very curious ancient monument, half sunk in the earth, and covered by a recess of the church wall itself. It is supposed to be that of the founder, who chose this position as typical of his having been a support to the building: at least this was the suggestion of a friend of ours, an architect of the type of Pugin--a Christian artist in the true sense of the word. The interior of the church was a sad contrast to its beautiful outward proportions: high whitewashed pews filled it, hiding the base of the columns, thrusting their wooden cornices into and over the piscinæ, and covering from view the old brasses and monumental slabs on the stone floor. A row of hat-pegs (will it be believed?) ran round the whole church at a convenient height, and rare must have been the decoration appended to them on a Sunday. The “altar plate”--pewter pots hardly a stage better, and certainly a degree duller, than those highly-polished vessels which were no doubt in more constant use in the neighboring tavern--was kept in a worm-eaten old oak chest at the bottom of the church. The communion table was a table; and indeed Cromwell himself might have walked in and felt satisfied that there lurked no “Popery” there. By the bye, why does ignorance always call beautiful art “Popery”? Is it not through some higher and unconscious knowledge which forces itself into expression, like the sibyl’s prophecies, upon reluctant and unbelieving lips?

Eastlake speaks of Westminster Abbey as liable to many of the abuses which he deplores in country churches. “Westminster,” he says, “was not then (1826) as now guarded by circumspect vergers, who are stimulated to additional vigilance by the sixpences of the faithful. There was scarce a monument in the place which had not suffered from ruthless violence, for at that time or not long before, the choristers made a playground of the venerable abbey, and the Westminster scholars played at hockey in the cloisters.”

It is time to mention a few of the architects of the more modern phase of the Revival, and of some of their works, those especially which find a place among the fine engravings of Eastlake’s valuable book. Butterfield is selected as one of the foremost, and as the only leader after Pugin whose influence is yet appreciably felt. He is thus eulogized by our author. “It is especially characteristic of Mr. Butterfield’s design that he aims at originality, not only in form, but in the relative proportion of parts.... This indeed is the secret of the striking and picturesque character which distinguishes his works from others which are less daring in conception and therefore less liable to mistakes. Mr. Butterfield has been the leader of a school, and it is necessary for a leader to be bold.” Of the church of All Saints, in London, built by the same architect, Eastlake says: “The truth is that the design was a bold and magnificent endeavor to shake off the trammels of antiquarian precedent, which had long fettered the progress of the Revival, to create not a new style, but a development of previous styles; to carry the enrichment of ecclesiastical Gothic to an extent which even in the middle ages had been rare in England; to adorn the walls with surface ornament of a durable kind; to spare, in short, neither skill, nor pains, nor cost in making this church the model church of its day--such a building as should take a notable position in the history of modern architecture.” Further on he says of him that there is “a sober earnestness in his work widely different from that of some designers, who seem to be tossed about on the sea of popular taste.... He does not care to produce showy buildings at a sacrifice of constructive strength. To a pretty, superficial school of Gothic and fussy carving, he never condescended.... His work gives one the idea of a man who has designed it not so much to please his clients as to please himself. In estimating the value of his skill, posterity may find something to smile at as eccentric and much that will astonish as daring, but they will find nothing to despise as commonplace or mean.” Several engravings are given of details of his work on the church of St. Alban’s (a high ritualistic stronghold in London) and at All Saints’ and Balliol Chapel (Oxford). Of Carpenter, an architect who died in his prime, we find the following flattering notice: “No practitioner of his day (1840-50) understood so thoroughly the grammar of his art.... As a pupil he appears to have given remarkable attention to the character and application of mouldings.... A knowledge of the laws of proportion, of the conditions of light and shade, and the effective employment of decorative features are arrived at by most architects gradually and after a series of tentative experiments. Carpenter seems to have acquired this knowledge very early in his career, so that even his first works possess an artistic quality far in advance of their state, while those he executed in later years are regarded even now with admiration by all who have endeavored to maintain the integrity of our old national styles.” Mr. Beresford Hope was a true and enthusiastic patron of Carpenter’s artistic career. Of the many works of this talented man, whose life was unfortunately so short, our author chooses a large college in Sussex as the one most worthy of an engraving. Its proportions truly denote a mediæval spirit. Eastlake places Goldie among the later revivalists of note, and gives a fine engraving of his Abbey of St. Scholastica at Teignmouth. The building certainly looks massive and extensive enough for an ancient monastic structure, though the use of the before-mentioned bands of colored brick seems too profuse for that chasteness of design which is surely the highest standard of taste. Goldie is the architect of St. Mary’s Cathedral at Kensington, London, the Pro-Cathedral of the Archiepiscopal See of Westminster. Although we have heard many criticisms passed upon this specimen of his skill, we are by no means capable of giving any opinion, especially as we have not had the opportunity of seeing it. Eastlake gives a view of its western doorway, and goes on to say that the “interior is remarkable for the height of its nave,” a detail which receives but too little attention in many modern buildings. “The roof,” he says, “is ceiled, and follows the outline of a trefoil-headed arch--a form not often adopted, but here peculiarly effective. There are many incidents in the design of this church which are very ingenious and original.... Every detail throughout the work, even to the novel gas-standard, bears evidence of artistic care.”

We fear that, beyond naming these few artists, the richness of our remaining material will not allow us to go deeper into their merits. Yet there are many others, as well or less known, whose conscientious, enthusiastic carrying out of their beautiful principles lends powerful aid to their theory. Hanson and Hadfield, among Catholic architects, and Street and Scott among Anglicans, are well worthy of mention, and since Barry was the ostensible restorer of the Houses of Parliament, we must of course give him a place in this short review. But there is one name which from intimate and pleasant acquaintance we would fain single out, and which is honorably mentioned by Eastlake as belonging to one who with several of his Catholic brethren “have done their best, each in their several ways, to secure honest and substantial work, and to keep clear of that tawdry, superficial style of design which brings discredit on the Gothic cause.”

This is Charles Buckler, the son and successor of John Chessel Buckler, a most finished artist and wonderful draughtsman, who, it may be said with peculiar significance, has let his mantle fall on the heir to his name and art. If any one would see in modern days that oneness of being between faith and art, let him look for it in the life and works of this gifted architect. The most rigorous purist could find no fault in a man who takes for his model the simplicity of the thirteenth century, and in whose manner and address a corresponding simplicity and sweetness are ever manifest. A priest by the vocation of art, as his two brothers are by the vocation of faith and by union with one of the most art-loving orders in the church, he works more willingly for churches and other ecclesiastical buildings than for the houses of the great, and finds his highest gratification in offering to each church he designs some spontaneous gift of his genius, the carving of a piscina or the pedestal of a font. His little church of St. Thomas à Becket, at Exton in the county of Rutland, is a specimen of his design which we believe he himself would not be unwilling to call a representative one. It is the only Catholic Church in the county, and so may claim to interest those who otherwise might not care to examine it. The foundress, as devoted a lover and patroness of art as she was a holy and noble-minded Christian matron, lies buried near the high altar. The church is built in the traditional cross-shape, and has an absidal end pierced by several beautiful windows, the stone tracery of which is in the style of the thirteenth century. The rose-window at the west end is copied from one in the (now Protestant) cathedral of Lausanne, where the writer saw the sketch of it made at the foundress’ desire, by the architect to whom the future building of the church was to be entrusted. The beautiful and simple porch to the north of the church, the little belfry where an old bell found among the ruins of the old manor-house of Exton rings the daily Angelus of restored Catholic belief, the spacious and massive vault, where a plain stone altar is erected for Masses for the dead; the side chapel of St. Ida, the patron saint of the foundress; the Lady chapel, with its more elaborate yet chastely traceried window; the soft surroundings of garden, plantation, and terrace, with the view on the opposite hill of the old church, once Catholic, which three hundred years of false belief have only surrounded with a more touching pathos, as of a noble captive chained to a meaner rival’s car--all this, and the knowledge that within the Tudor mansion which has replaced the ruined manor dwell the family of the foundress, and especially the one destined to finish her church and enshrine her memory therein, makes this personal recollection of St. Thomas’ fane and its charming architect very hallowed and sweet to think on. Many pray in this church, of which the stone interior with its carven and arched tribune, and its broad oak-panelled western recess, is as lovely as its exterior with its high roof and broken outline--many pray there to whom this recollection is as dear and as holy. May those who have prayed with us remember us in their prayers, both he who has borne the burden of the day and its heat, and they to whom he has taught the way of taking up the same cross and bearing it to the same fruitful and happy end!

John Chessel Buckler, the father of our friend, was the second of the three designers chosen out of the hosts of competitors on the occasion of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament. Eastlake says of him: “The especial merit of Buckler’s design--second only to that of Barry in the opinion of the judges--was that it avoided the multiplication of detail.... The plan in general arrangement was considered picturesque.... Mr. Buckler obtained credit for the purity of his ornamental details.” He also built Cossey Hall for Lord Stafford, and his son is now continuing his work. No wonder that the spirit of mediæval days should have descended on this favored family, since their dwelling-place for a long time was the matchless old city of Oxford. There is a magic in that name that has a creative artistic suggestion in its very sound.

The late controversy as to Pugin’s part in the Houses of Parliament must be too well known to be revived here. Suffice it to say that the volume published by Barry’s sons as a vindication of their father’s genius was of itself conclusive, and proved too much for his reputation. Hardly a single engraving illustrative of his unassisted efforts was such as could commend itself to a purist in Gothic art, while the one part of the Houses of Parliament which was entirely his own (the unbroken front on the Thames River), though imposing at first sight, was the weakest point of the work as regards the true principles of art. Still, as Eastlake observes, it was a great victory for the Revivalists, and an important fact in the history of the Revival, that such a characteristically national work should have been confided to Gothic architects. It gave the cause both weight and popularity, and threw more in the way of the masses what before had been too much of a luxury and fancy of privileged intellectual orders. And yet, before the old style could be really popularized, it was necessary that the taste for it should be carefully educated by the firm hand of uncompromising art. Eastlake descants thus on the liberty left in the architect’s hands: “He may make an art of his calling, or he may make it a mere business; and in proportion as he inclines to one or the other of these two extremes, he will generally achieve present profit or posthumous renown.” Further on he stigmatizes one of the earlier Gothic Revivalists in these terms: “In instances where he ought to have led, or at least to have tempered and corrected the vitiated taste of his day, he simply pandered to it.” Let the reader pause to apply this to the great majority of modern artists, and to deplore the interested and debased motives which have robbed God of so much glory and the moral world of so much support. And without travelling into the region of other arts, we find among the adjuncts of architecture sufficient proof of degeneracy. Eastlake very justly remarks that the interior of houses is given up to upholsterers and decorators who too frequently are allowed to execute their work independently of the architect’s control. “We enter,” he says, “a Renaissance palace or a Gothic mansion, and find them respectively fitted up in the style of the nineteenth century, which is in point of fact no style at all, but the embodiment of a taste as empirical, as empty, and as fleeting as that which finds expression in a milliner’s fashion-book.” And again: “There is perhaps no feature in the interior of even an ordinary dwelling which is capable of more artistic treatment than the fire-place of its most frequented sitting-room, and yet how long it was neglected! The Englishman’s sacred ‘hearth,’ the Scotchman’s ‘ain fireside,’ the grandsire’s ‘chimney-corner,’ have become mere verbal expressions, of which it is difficult to recall the original significance as we stand before those cold, formal slabs of gray or white marble enclosing the sprucely polished but utterly heartless grate of a modern drawing-room.”

Of course, like all arts, especially those of a more directly spiritual tendency, architecture has suffered from caricatures, sometimes hostile, sometimes blunderingly friendly. The ancient Gregorian chant and the real “Pre-Raphaelite” school of Christian painting have likewise suffered in this way. One might quote the well-known saying, “Defend me from my friends!” Eastlake puts the same thought into these words: “The barbarous and absurd specimens of modern architecture which have been erected in this generation under the general name of Gothic, have done more to damage the cause of the Revival than all that has been said or written in disparagement of the style.”

Of the many buildings of merit hidden away in poor and remote localities, Eastlake makes cheering mention. He says:

“There are, perhaps, few professions, and certainly none within the realm of art, exposed to such unequal chances of that notoriety which should attend success, as the profession of architecture.... One man’s practice may take him for years of his life into remote rural parishes where, except by the squire or parson, his work may long remain unappreciated.... There are districts in London in which, if a new building is raised, it stands no more chance of being visited by people of taste than if it had been erected in Kamschatka. Yet those outlying regions ... contain some of the most remarkable and largest churches which have been built during the Revival.... It was required to make those structures the headquarters of mission-work in poor and populous localities. Mr. James Brooks had no easy task before him; there was but little money to spend on them, yet they were to be of ample size, and, for obvious reasons, dignified and impressive in their general effect.... It must be admitted that the effect in each case is extremely fine. There is much in the character of Mr. Brooks’ work which reminds one of Butterfield. An utter absence of conventionality, ... a studied simplicity of details, ... a tendency to quaint outlines and unusual subdivisions of parts--such are the chief characteristics which distinguish the design of both these architects, who manage to attain originality without condescending to extravagance, and to secure for their works a quiet grace, in which there is less of elegance than of dignity.”

A view of the interior of St. Chad’s, in one of the London suburbs, is given, in which one can trace even a certain richness of altar decoration allied to the noble proportions of the massive pillars and tall arches. This church seems to bear a monastic look about it.

The church of St. Columba, in the same neighborhood, presents many of the same characteristics, and Eastlake says of it that the “real excellence of this work consists in grand masses of roof and wall, planned and proportioned with true artistic ability.” It is curious--and ridiculously realistic--to see in the engraving given of this church the contrast of the grand abbey-like pile with the wooden walls of an enclosed but unoccupied piece of ground, covered with the obstreperous advertisements of popular London papers, of Horniman’s “best black tea,” of theatres and bill-posters, and contemplated by a few shabbily-dressed women, a mason carrying a hod of mortar, and a very old cart-horse standing with his ungainly vehicle at the door of the vestry.

These hidden churches have their touching meaning for Christian minds--a twofold meaning indeed--and one which is often overlooked in this utilitarian age. There they stand, beautiful and unvisited, built for the glory of God more than for the admiration of men, and no less solid, no less symbolical, no less perfect in proportion and distribution because the silent God is their only visitor. How much does this all-absorbing reference to the great Master of all art govern the work of the success-hunting generations of our day? Again, these beautiful churches stand as representatives of God’s sacraments, God’s graces, God’s invitations, unheeded by those to whom they are offered, unfelt even by many who live in their very shadow, and coldly received at best by those who grudgingly take advantage of them. Or, again, they are the symbol of the hidden soul, beauties scattered in seemingly desert places in the spiritual world, of the hearts that watch with God in the midst of the turmoil of earth, of hearts whose unbroken hymn of love is never silent, because of the babel of tongues that, to all but the ear of God, seems so resolutely to drown it.

There are two more remarks to be made, with which we will close this sketch, which we have perhaps prolonged beyond the bounds of the kind reader’s patience. It has been said--we know not with what technical truth, but certainly with a beautiful suggestiveness of truth--that one of the great principles in Gothic architecture is that every curve should be the perfect segment of a circle--that is, that every curve, if continued, should inevitably describe a perfect circle. If this be so--and we have always assumed that it is--is not this meaning deducible from it, that it is the mission of art to tend to the highest perfection, and the mission of grace--the heavenly art--to fashion every single insignificant action in such a mould that it should visibly be but a part in one grand perfect whole of heroic sanctity?

And the second remark is this:

The Gothic revivalists have been accused of retrogression towards so-called barbaric forms of art. Exactly the same reproach was once made to an eminent convert--we believe a German. “My dear friend,” said an anxious companion to him, “how could you abandon the religion of your fathers?” “Simply, my dear fellow,” was the quick and humorous response, “that I might embrace that of my grandfathers.”

We leave the application to the public, pointing out to them at the same time that to denounce the civil and ecclesiastical architecture handed down to them by the founders of civic liberty in Flanders and Germany, and the founders of Christian morality in France and England, Spain and Lombardy, would be to lay themselves open to the reproach of another witty convert, who said to his father, when the latter was lamenting his son’s change of faith: “Take care, or you will make out that three hundred years ago our ancestors were nobodies.” The reply silenced the proud bearer of a proud--and Catholic--name.

FOOTNOTE:

[103] A History of the Gothic Revival in England. By Charles L. Eastlake, F.R.I.B.A., Architect. London: Longman & Green.

THE LAST DAYS BEFORE THE SIEGE.

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