The International Congress Of Prehistoric Anthropology And Archæology
From La Revue Generale De Bruxelles
Concluded.
The sessions of August 25 began with fresh discussions concerning the troglodytes of Menton and the so‐called tertiary skull from California already spoken of. M. Desor entered into extensive details concerning the hatchets of nephrite and jade found in the Alps, and apparently of Oriental origin. “I do not believe,” said he, as he ended, “that these hatchets were utensils, but merely objects of display, like the dolmens(!)—precious memorials and relics of the first ages of humanity.” M. de Quatrefages thought these hatchets a proof of ancient commercial relations with the East. A great deal was said in this discussion of the use of stone knives by the Egyptians in embalming the dead, and among the Jews for circumcising. Only one thing was forgotten—neither the Egyptians nor the Jews ever attached any religious importance to the use of stone, and they likewise made use of bronze and iron knives in these operations. The instrument of circumcision at the present day is a steel blade.(275) M. Leemans, director of the museum at Leyden, thought these hatchets came from Java. He reminded us that there has always been constant intercourse between Switzerland and that island, and that the majority of the soldiers of the East India Company were traditionally recruited in Switzerland. The Abbé Delaunay refuted M. Desor’s opinion by merely referring to the collection at Pont‐Levoy, where there are fourteen hatchets of jade found in that vicinity. It was thought desirable to ascertain the as yet unknown source of jade. They now returned to the hiatus mentioned by M. de Mortillet at the previous session, in order to oppose it by bringing forward an intermediary race, for whom M. Broca was the sponsor, though without flattering it much. He engaged in a long, subtile argument on the way tertiary flints were introduced into the valleys and caverns. They were not agreed on this question, which is one we can only regard with speculative interest.
The excursions to the ateliers of Spiennes and Mesvin were not as pleasant as the one to the Lesse. For that, the country around Mons should be as charming as that of the Meuse—and the people likewise. There is a very complete work by M. Dupont concerning these excavations, in which have been found millions of rough flints, to which he does not hesitate to assign a quaternary origin of the mammoth period. When one has a taste of the mammoth, he cannot get too much of it. I know of sceptics and controversialists who through speculations of another kind are plunged into foolish incredulity. Here is an instance: from time immemorial our forefathers made use of flints for striking fire, and many of us can still remember the custom, which may not have wholly disappeared. For centuries, households had to be supplied with flints for the tinder‐box, and in abundance, for this stone is soon worn out by iron; it becomes furred and smooth, and is soon unfit for use. If we compare the considerable traffic in flints that must have been carried on with the enormous consumption that supports the fabrication of chemical matches, we can easily see that the sites of the workshops where flints for striking fire were cut must have been heaped with millions of rough ones—nodules, chips, and débris of all kinds; that excavations must have been made by pits, which necessarily extended to considerable depth, and crossed very old geologic strata, for silex is found imbedded in chalk at a depth of thirty or forty metres in some places; that to argue from the stratification of surrounding formations, in order to decide on the synchronism of the excavations, would expose us to conclude post hoc, ergo propter hoc. And I have not mentioned all the common uses made of flints in a household. For many years they were used for firearms, and silex is still used in ceramic manufactures, the origin of which is lost in the darkness of ages. A great many of the flints that appear cut are only fragments that may have been owing to spontaneous fracture. Now, whence came all the flints used for striking fire during the historic periods that go back from our time to the middle ages and to antiquity? Has it been proved that these remains, so‐called prehistoric, do not come within the domain of history; nay, even of modern history? At all events, the age of the quaternary deposits is by no means established, and it is on the mere presence of human remains, or of the productions of human labor among these deposits, that certain anthropologists found the millions of ages they attribute to our species. These remains do not indicate the site of ancient settlements; they have been washed away from those settlements by currents of water, and the question is, What epoch produced these changes?—a question not solved, and perhaps never will be.
Besides, the primary defect of the whole prehistoric system is the indissolubly confounding of two orders of very evident facts, but which may by no means have any correlation as to time. Wrought flints show evident traces of human labor, and there is no unprejudiced person who cherishes the least doubt about it. The evidence of design shown by the examination of two or three specimens is in itself a proof of some value, but this proof makes an irresistible impression on the mind when, in addition, we see an accumulation of specimens. It is, then, no longer possible to attribute the uniform shape of the flints to a mere accident. But were they fashioned at the time of the formation of the terrains in which they are embedded? That is another problem, the solution of which is liable to controversy. Mr. Taylor, who is very respectable authority in such matters, declares, after much conscientious research, that the gravel‐beds of St. Acheul were deposited in the earlier part of the Christian era. People of the historic period, such as the first inhabitants of Umbria and the Egyptians, made flints precisely like those of St. Acheul. The prodigious antiquity of man must be greatly shaken by these observations. At Sinai, flint has been used to effect immense excavations in the rock; it is again utilized under the form of hammers and chisels in the ancient copper mines of the Aztecs, in Canada, Spain, Wady‐Maghara, and Bethlehem, as well as on Lake Superior, in Tuscany, and in Brittany. The Bedouins of Africa and the Indians of Texas still make use of them; and M. Reboux, who gave the Congress a practical demonstration of the mounting and use of the utensils of the stone age, received his inspiration from those savages. They make the handles out of the sinews of the bison, covered with a wide strip of the animal’s skin recently taken off. This band is wound around grooves made in the middle of the hammer. The skin, as it dries, contracts, and the stone, the extremities of which alone are uncovered, is enclosed in a sheath so tight that it cannot be drawn out.(276) It must be acknowledged, then, that the authenticity of these beds at Spiennes, as prehistoric ateliers, appears exceedingly doubtful, and there is a tinge of similar incredulity in the behavior of the people around the Camp des Cayaux: “Countrymen, and even little peasant girls,” says a reporter of one of our principal journals, “were selling the finest stones to the travellers, making superhuman efforts to repress smiles that threatened to explode into loud laughter. A singularly ironic expression was legible in the large eyes of these fillettes and broke through their pretended seriousness. It was very evident that the benighted villagers in the vicinity of Mons were not sufficiently initiated into the new gospel of science, and by no means had implicit faith in it. The irreverence of the population was still more evident at the entrance of the hamlet, where a group of young women manifested quite an uncivil merriment at the sight of some of the princes of science who were toiling along under the heavy burden of quaternary flint.” As an example of moral contrasts, I will merely allude to Hennuyer and the peasant of Furfooz, one sceptical and contemptuous of everything, and the other with genuine respect for the traditions of his beloved valleys.
The morning of the twenty‐seventh was mostly taken up with a report from General Faid’herbe on the dolmens of Algeria. A burst of applause greeted the illustrious and genial hero of Lille. Popular sentiment seemed an embodiment of the
“Placuit victrix causa diis, sed victa Catoni”
in the very teeth of the Borussians.(277)
General Faid’herbe assigned a historic epoch to the origin of the dolmens. These monuments, which are tombs, were the work of one race found on every shore from Pomerania to Tunis, and which, according to him, proceeded from the north to the south. The dolmens of Africa are like those of Europe. But what race was this? A blonde race from the shores of the Baltic, as the speaker proved by three facts: 1. Blondes are still to be found in Barbary. 2. Ancient historians speak of the blonde people who lived there before the Christian era. 3. Fifteen centuries before Christ the blonde inhabitants of that country attacked Lower Egypt. M. Faid’herbe stated that when he lived in Senegal there were two powerful negro tribes in the countries on the upper Niger having a political organization of relative advancement. The complexion of the royal family was somewhat clear, and they prided themselves on their descent from white ancestors. Etymological indices lead us to believe that this dynasty descended from the blonde race of the dolmens.
M. Worsaae opposed the general’s opinion, and maintained that the builders of the dolmens, on the contrary, proceeded from the south to the north, where they attained the height of their civilization. M. Cartailhac, however, stated an important fact that weakens this objection: the dolmens of the South of France contain metallic objects whose place of fabrication could not have been far off; those of the interior and the North only contained articles of polished stone.
A small man now sprang into the tribune, fierce as Orestes tormented by the Eumenides, with black eyes, long streaming hair, and a person of incessant mobility. It is one of the princes of oriental philology—M. Oppert, who began a demonstration of the chronology of remote historical times, which he continued in the afternoon session. He assured us, as he began, that he did not intend to offend any one’s religious convictions, or to discuss the chronology of the Bible, which, in his eyes, is eminently respectable. In his opinion, the difference of the dates pointed out in different chronological tables can be explained without any difficulty. M. Oppert showed us how the chronologies of Egypt and Chaldea, which were calculated by cycles of unequal length, begin with the same date—the 19th of January, Gregorian (the 27th of April, Julian), of the year 11542 B.C.!
He therefore concluded that the people of those regions must have observed the important astronomical phenomena of that time, the risings of Sirius perhaps, which would indicate a degree of civilization somewhat advanced for a period still ante‐historic. I like to recall the very words he used; they are full of meaning.
M. Ribeiro had made researches in Portugal that appeared to him conclusive as to the existence of pliocene man, and he produced tertiary flints which he believed to be cut. The Abbé Bourgeois, who could not remain indifferent to any proof of tertiary man, allowed an unexpected declaration to escape his lips. “I should like,” said he, “to consider these fragments as authentic proofs of the truth of my theory, but the truth obliges me to declare that I cannot discover any evidence of human labor in them.” M. Ribeiro sank into his seat under this coup de hache‐ polie, and tertiary man was properly buried, after a later correction from M. Bourgeois, who admitted that one of M. Ribeiro’s flints bore marks of human labor, but he had doubts as to its bed.
Anthropology and ethnography had the honors during the greater part of this session.
M. Lagneau said the researches made in Belgium showed there were three perfectly distinct species of men in this country, and he opposed M. Dupont’s opinion that the skulls of Furfooz belong to the Mongoloid race. M. Hamy demonstrated anatomically that a particular race, the Australioid, is spread throughout Europe. The jaw from Naulette appears to belong to this race; the skull from Engis belongs to another. M. Hamy thought he discovered some of the characteristics of the Australioid race in certain inferior types in Belgium and France. These primitive races are not extinct. They still peep out in isolated cases of atavism, and he exhibited a curious instance—the hideous portrait of a boat‐woman of the neighborhood of Mons, with all the characteristics of the Australioid race of the mammoth period. In this selection of a Montois type there was a spice of revenge evident to every one. M. Virchow found a manifest difference between the skulls at the British Museum and those of criminals in the collection at the university. The Flemish skulls present the same prognathism as those of Furfooz, and certain types have characteristics that might cause them to be classed with the Mongoloid race.
As to the size of the skull, it is not owing to the development of the psychical faculties, and we should be cautious about drawing premature conclusions concerning the primitive races of this country. M. Virchow cited the example of the two skulls found in a Greek tomb of the Macedonian epoch, the form and size of which induced him to class them unhesitatingly with the Mongoloids of the caverns of the Lesse. Now, one of these skulls was that of a Greek woman of great distinction, both as to her social condition and intellectual culture. The learned professor from Berlin expressed a doubt as to the Germanic origin of the Flemings. M. Lagneau also thought we should not decide too hastily about the races that first inhabited Belgium. He could not see why the Flemings and Germans should have the same origin. In Germany, Belgium, and France the races are excessively mixed up. Germany was repeatedly invaded by people from Gaul. Prognathism alone is not typical any more than the temperament, color of the hair, etc.
M. Vanderkindere thought the Flemish of Germanic origin, and the Walloon of Celtic. Blondes do not belong to the Aryan races. Prognathism is more common in them than in the dark people of the country, in which the speaker finds Ligurian traces, as in the basin of the Loire (Liger‐ Liguria). Now, the blonde race, has always thought itself superior, and this belief was so strong in Flanders in the heart of the middle ages that the mother of Berthulphe de Ghistelles, displeased at the alliance her son had contracted with the beautiful Godelive, a native of Boulonnais, whom her contemporaries reproached solely on account of her black hair and eyebrows, expressed her contempt in these significant terms: “Cur, inquit, cornicem de terra aliena eduxisti?” She thought it disgraceful to defile the pure blood of her antique Germanic race (alti tui sanguinis) by such an alliance.
In a subsequent session, this question of races came on the carpet again. M. Dupont, combining the observations made in the three excursions (that to Namur had taken place the day before), established a filiation between the different peoples who inhabited Belgium in different periods of the stone age. The people of Mesvin, the Somme, the Tamise, and the Seine were contemporaries. The race of Mesvin inhabited Hainault at the same time as the troglodytes, whom they did not know. It might have been the people of Mesvin and the Somme, who, gradually attaining to polished stone, invaded the country occupied by the less advanced people of the caverns. M. Virchow could not recommend too much prudence to those who are investigating the science of anthropology. In prehistoric times, as in our day, there were variations of the same race, but that is not accounted for by atavism. It must be concluded that men were simultaneously created or born in several places, and different types sprang from the commingling of the actual races. We take pleasure in collecting these indirect acknowledgments from the lips that dared say, “There is no place in the universe for a God, nor in man for a soul.” M. de Quatrefages thought, like M. Virchow, that all the various races cannot be owing to atavism. Crossing has a good deal to do with it. It is allowable to refer the variety of types to the more or less commingling of the ancient races, as they are everywhere mingled now. We can hardly deny, however, that the present population partly descended from the troglodytes. The people of Furfooz must still have some representatives in Belgium, especially among the women. Science proves that woman retains the type of the race to which she belongs longer than man. At a later day we shall doubtless succeed in deciphering the origin of the human races. In these researches we must also consider the action of les milieux. Mlle. Royer expressed a disbelief in the unity of the human species. Unfortunately, the inevitable crossing is always obstructing her observations. She absolutely refuses to admit that the white man is Aryan, or at least Asiatic. She hopes, however, some day to obtain a solution of these great problems. How far, madame, your knowledge extends, and how astonishingly you have retained the persistent type of madame la guenon from whom you flatter yourself to have descended! After other discussions concerning the bronze utensils found in various parts of Europe, and the influence of Etruscan art, which extended even to the North, M. Baudre undertook the demonstration of a point singular enough. Primitive man, he said, doubtless possessed the musical faculty, and it is impossible with his knowledge of the flint he daily used that it should not have occurred to him to apply the sonorousness of that stone to some practical use. No one can positively declare this was so, but who can deny it? M. Baudre has constructed an instrument composed of accordant flints—a prehistoric piano—on which he executed a brabançonne that would have excited the envy of the Moncrabeaux. It is neither more nor less insupportable than the modern instrument of torture of which some unideal creature, with bent body and a prey to convulsive jerks, strikes the senseless ivory with his skinny phalanges till it shrieks under the touch.
Of the excursion to Namur we will only allude to what bore on the scientific labors of the Congress; that is, the visit to the Camp of Hastedon. The delightful, cordial reception given us in that pleasant town, the banquet and concert which followed, will not soon be effaced from the memory of the excursionists. The plateau of Hastedon, close to Namur, rests on a solid mass of dolomite, and is surrounded by a bastion composed of fagots calcined—it is not known how, huge boulders, and a thick layer of earth and stones. The Romans occupied it for a certain time, but the parapets that surround it are much more ancient. It is an immense plain, eleven hectares in extent, strewed with flints, both wrought and polished, that came from Spiennes, while those of the caverns of the Lesse came from Champagne. The troglodytes of the Lesse and the people of Spiennes were contemporaries in the age of cut stone, but there was no intercourse between them. During the age of polished stone, on the contrary, the importation of flints from Champagne ceased in the region of the caverns, and the flint of Spiennes was diffused among the plateaux of upper Belgium. The inhabitants of Spiennes extended their former bounds, penetrated to that region, and fortified it. According to M. Dupont, the Camp of Hastedon must have been one of their fortresses.
The final séance of the Congress opened with a very interesting and animated discussion as to the first use of bronze and iron. Where did the bronze come from? M. Oppert thought it of European origin. The Phœnicians went to England for tin rather than to the East. M. Worsaae was convinced it came from Asia, and that a bronze age will be discovered in Egypt. M. Leemans was of the opinion that the iron age preceded the bronze in India and Ceylon. M. Conestabile was inclined to think the Phœnicians obtained their tin from the Caucasus rather than England. M. Franks said they might have found it in Spain and Portugal, and M. Waldemar‐Schmidt thought the Egyptians obtained theirs from Africa.
M. de Quatrefages afterwards summed up the character of the Congress of Brussels: it appears from scientific evidence in every direction that certain existing types have an incontestable resemblance to the people of the quaternary period. In the second place, it now seems established that man of the stone age travelled much more than has been supposed.
The close of the session was marked by two occurrences that produced a strong impression on the assembly. The two workmen who so ably assisted M. Dupont in the exploration of the caverns had, at the solicitation of the committee, the décoration ouvrière conferred on them by Messrs. de Quatrefages and Capellini. Then a letter from M. G. Geefs was read, stating that he had made a bust of M. d’Omalius unbeknown to the latter, which he offered as a mark of homage to the Congress. This bust, concealed at the end of the apartment, was uncovered and presented to the venerable president, old in years but youthful in feeling, whose fine noble career M. de Quatrefages retraced in an address sparkling with wit. Then, after some isolated communications, the Congress passed a resolution to hold its seventh meeting at Stockholm, in 1874, under the effective presidency of Prince Oscar of Sweden, and the Congress was declared adjourned.
We cannot better end this report, which I should have liked to make more complete, than by quoting M. Dupont’s résumé (a little indefinite, in my opinion) of the labor of the Sixth International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archæology:
“After the weighty discussions that have taken place at the Congress of Brussels,” says M. le Secrétaire Général, “it is proper to lay before the public the chief problems discussed by the learned assembly. These problems have not all been definitely solved. That was not to be expected, for the result of such scientific meetings is seldom the decision of questions, but rather stating them with clearness and precision. The discussions at such meetings lead to the opening of new paths, and preparing the way, by throwing new light on it, for calm and persevering labor in the study. There alone is it possible to weigh the value of arguments, elucidate obscure points, and arrive at conclusions. In this spirit six principal points have been drawn up:
“1. Did man really exist in the middle of the tertiary period? Several of the specialists present at the Congress declared in the affirmative. But it appeared, especially from the flints discovered by the Abbé Bourgeois, that further researches should be undertaken before science can decide on a point so important in the history of mankind. The bed of the flints in question was ultimately regarded as incontestable.
“2. The formation of the valleys and the filling of the caverns were regarded as the result of fluvial action. The study of these phenomena may be considered as the fundamental point of research respecting man of the quaternary epoch.
“3. The bones of goats, sheep, and oxen, discovered in the deposits of the mammoth age in the Belgian caverns, were acknowledged to be similar to our goats, sheep, and certain species of our domestic cattle. An opinion was advanced that perhaps they originated these domestic species, whose origin has often been sought in vain.
“4. Communications between different tribes of the stone age in Western Europe were for the first time distinctly stated. The people of the quaternary epoch were divided into two classes, one of which, by the regular development of its industrial pursuits, arrived at such a degree of progress that it was thought they must have invaded the region of the Belgian caverns in the age of polished stone, and subjugated our troglodytes.
“5. The discovery at Eygenbilsen gave occasion for recognizing the Etruscan influence in our region previous to the Roman conquest. There was a disposition to admit that the intercourse between Italy and the Scandinavian countries must have been much later.
“6. The opinion that the anthropological types of the quaternary epoch have survived, and constitute an essential element of existing European nations, was admitted in principle by all the anthropologists who expressed any opinion on the subject. The problem of the origin of European races is thus placed in an entirely new light.”
Atlantic Drift—Gathered In The Steerage
By An Emigrant.
Concluded.
The generally fortunate voyage of our vessel was varied by two or three days of very rough weather, and the miseries of our first night at sea were intensified by a violent gale. The fast steamer, built with lines calculated for excessive speed, cut through rather than breasted the waves. Tons of clear water washed over the whaleback, knocking over one or two hapless wights, and drenching many others. Her wind‐ward side was incessantly swept by blinding showers of heavy spray. To pass from the shelter of the main deck to the entrance of our steerage was a veritable running the gauntlet. You watched till the ship rose, and then ran at full speed for the shelter of the whaleback, happy if you reached it without being rolled by a sudden lurch into the scuppers, or losing your balance and clinging to the nearest rope or stanchion, being soused by the spray from the next wave that struck her.
The storm raged more fiercely as the evening advanced, and from timid lips came stories of the lost City of Boston and the hapless London, while more experienced hands regretted their precipitancy in selecting a vessel of a line in which every other quality was said to have been sacrificed to that of excessive speed, and indulged in uncomfortable surmises as to the consequences of the shaft snapping or the engines breaking down. When the damp and chill of the advancing night drove us to our bunks, we clambered down‐stairs, and, staggering away into our respective streets, crawled in. To realize my first impression of the steerage of our vessel at night, when its cavernous space was lit, or rather its grim darkness made visible, by a single lantern, would require the pen of Dickens or the graphic pencil of Gustave Doré. Crouching between those bunks and the roof grotesque forms, dimly seen in the obscure light, threw weird shadows on the cabin sides. Here one busily engaged, under innumerable difficulties, in making up a neat bed of sheets and blankets, into which he afterwards burrows by an ingenious backward movement, like a shore crab hiding himself in the sand left uncovered by the receding tide; while his next neighbor retires to rest by the simple process of kicking off his boots, pulling his battered night‐cap over his eyes, and stretching himself on the bare boards, with a muttered string of curses on the ship, the weather, and the world in general, for his evening orisons. At a corner of one of the tables appear a group of players poring over their cards in a chiaro‐oscuro that recalls a scene of Teniers or Van Ostade, while at another a group are gathered round a young vocalist who quavers out in a dull monotone a curious medley of sentimental ditties and music‐hall vulgarities. Gradually all drop away into their bunks, and everything is still, save the deep breathing of some hundred souls, and the groans of the sufferers from the malady of the sea. Occasionally the heavy plunge of the ship, as she dashes into some mountainous wave, extinguishes the lamp with the shock, and buries the little windows under water, leaving the cabin for a few seconds in profound darkness. In the gale during the first night of our voyage, one tremendous billow struck the ship, burying us in black night, and rolling trunks, tins, and clothes cluttering to leeward with the lurch of the vessel, and awakening all in a moment from their slumbers. A general consternation prevailed, and while some called in angry tones for the lamp to be relighted, others could be heard muttering the unfamiliar words of a half‐forgotten prayer. As the great ship shook in her conflict with the raging sea, and we heard overhead the rush of many feet and the swash on deck of a heavy mass of water, I felt nervous enough till she rose again and, creeping to the little window, I could see the cold moon throwing a silvery track across the waste of raging, wind‐ lashed surges.
I thought of the great ships that had gone down, crowded with hundreds of unprepared and unthinking souls, into the cruel bosom of the great ocean; perhaps their unknown fate was to sink in the darkness of the night, crushed in a moment by an iceberg, or, maimed and helpless, battered to pieces and submerged by the angry waves. What a horrible death‐agony must be that of the doomed, who, after the sudden crash of a collision, or battened down in their dark prison in a raging storm, heard the cataract of water roar down the hatchway, greedy to engulf them! For a few moments what fearful struggles would take place in the crowded cabin to mount the bunks and gain the last mouthful of the retiring air, until the flood buried all in the bosom of the deep, in a silence to be broken only by the trumpet of the Judgment Day! Should I, I pondered, in such a dark hour, have the strength of mind or grace of God to lie still on my bed and let the rising water cut short the prayer on my lips, or, hoping against hope, with angrily raging heart die fighting to breathe a few seconds longer the vital air? Of a truth, to die suffocated in the darkness, without a last look at the great vault of heaven, a last breath of the pure air, seemed to me to be to doubly die.
If I suffered some discomfort and perhaps a little anxiety from the occasional anger of the mighty main, it was far more than compensated for by its aspect in its calmer and more peaceful moods. I cannot understand how in a few days voyagers can learn to complain of the monotony of the sea; to me, its different moods in calm and storm, the snowy crests of the dancing waves, the foaming and often phosphorescent wake of the great steamer, and the ever‐changing aspects of the cloud‐laden heavens, were objects of untiring interest. If I had the magic pen of the author of the Queen of the Air, I would write a book on the cloud‐scenery of the Atlantic. Never, even in the purest Italian sky or the cloudless heavens above the vast expanse of a Western prairie, have I seen Diana so purely fair, Lucifer so bright, or Aurora clad in such varied garments of purple and rose; such a wonderful vault lined with innumerable flakes of spotless wool left by the dying wind; such masses of cumulus, sometimes as solidly white as Alpine summits, sometimes before the rain‐storm luridly gray‐ black with the gathered water, like the massive bulk of Snowdon seen through a driving rain; and, once or twice, the pall of the thunder‐storm rising over the leeward heaven and advancing towards us, its ragged edge momentarily lit up with the blazing tongues of the lightning, until it rolled over, deafening with its dread artillery and hiding all around in mist and blinding rain. The grandeur of sunset and of sunrise, when not obscured by the mistiness of a moist atmosphere, was indescribable. Every night, with renewed pleasure, we watched the god of day sink beneath the western horizon. Turner, in his wildest dreams of those gorgeous heaven‐ pictures that he had not seen on earth but felt that he would love to see, imagined no greater luxury of gold, carmine, purple, crimson, rose, and rose‐tinged snow, than was afforded by some of the spectacles of the setting sun. One evening still holds my memory entranced: the heavy curtain of dull gray mist that all day had lain low over the sea rolled eastward before the evening breeze; the emerging sun, low on the horizon, dyed the receding masses of cloud with a thousand shades of livid purple; the peaks and shoulders of the eastern range of mountains of dark vapor caught the light, while between them sank valleys and depths more sombre by the contrast. Westward, below the rosy, almost blood‐red sun, ran two long narrow filaments of purple cloud, dark across the glow of the heavens, like bars across a furnace. A few moments, and the shining orb sinks beneath them, fringing their edges with refulgent gold, then falls into a sea of liquid fire. A little longer the crimson hues linger on the eastern curtain of clouds, then grow fainter and fainter, and die away into the gray hues of a moonless night.
Among the five hundred emigrants our good ship carried there were, it is needless to say, many men of different speech, and almost every diversity of occupation and character. Besides the four nations of Great Britain, we had Germans, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians in considerable numbers, a few French, Poles, and Russians, a Levantine Jewess and her children, and a solitary American. With the Teutons my ignorance of their language prevented me holding further converse than to learn their nationality and their destination—generally Illinois, Minnesota, or Wisconsin. Unlike the Irish, with whom New York seemed to fulfil all their notions of America, the Germans and Scandinavians appeared all westward bound, in large parties, organized for agricultural life; and while they were in a considerable minority on the vessel, they formed much the larger proportion of the passengers in the emigrant cars. The amount of their baggage was something prodigious. Nearly all apparently peasants in their native land, they seemed on leaving it to transport everything they possessed except the roof over their heads to their adopted country. What would not break they enclosed in immense bags of ticking and rough canvas, and the residue of their property in arklike chests, the immense weight and sharp iron‐bound corners of which moved the sailors to multiform blasphemy. For my part, I had read so much of the contented prosperity of the peasantry in Norway and Sweden that I speculated not a little as to what cause could lead them to make the long and expensive migration from Christiania or Gottenburg to the so far off shores of the Mississippi.
With the Germans, who came principally from the neighborhood of Mannheim, the case was different. Several of them could speak a little French, nor were they reticent as to the principal cause that led them to desert their fatherland: it was the man tax, levied by the empire of blood and iron on their youth and manhood, that drove them from their farms in the sweet Rhine valley to seek abodes in the new and freer world. Several of them had followed the Bavarian standard under Von Tannen through the hardships and carnage of the Franco‐German war; but to the shrewd sense of the peasant the halo of military glory and the pomp of wide empire meant but conscription and taxation, fields untilled, and wife and children starving, while the blood of father and son was poured out to indite a new page in the gory annals of warlike fame.
By the way, one of them assured us that never in the fiercest time of that deadly strife, even when, in long forced marches, driving Bourbaki’s broken bands through the snows of Jura, had they fared so badly as he did then, to which I may add the experience of an Englishman—whose sinister countenance and shabby attire gave increased weight to his testimony—who averred that we fared little better than in a workhouse and worse than in a jail.
Amongst us there were many mechanics, principally Irish, who were returning from visits to their friends; nor can I omit to chronicle their uniform and emphatic testimony as to the benefit they had received from their emigration. In New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Chicago, they were sure of work, could live and dress comfortably, and lay by a large proportion of their earnings, while in England, and still more in Ireland, they were happy when their earnings kept them in lodging, food, and clothing, and saving was neither thought of nor possible. From what I could learn, the position of the unskilled laborer appeared by no means so bright. The different system of hiring in America made the nominally higher wages more precarious than in the old country; and I suspect that everywhere the untaught man, who, ignorant of any distinct branch of industry, brings only his thews and sinews to market, is, and will ever be, but “a hewer of wood and drawer of water”—an ill‐paid and little valued drudge.
For one class of the Irish emigrants, of whom we had a certain number on board, their countrymen entertained a profound and not unfounded contempt. Youths from Cork or Dublin shops or offices, whom dissipation or misconduct had thrown out of place, or the desire of novelty or adventure had attracted to the New World—unfit for manual labor, and without any special qualification for commerce—their heads were turned with tales of the giddy whirl of New York life, in their notions of which gallantry, whiskey, politics, calico balls, and rowdy patriotism made a curious medley. Their general ambition was to be bar‐tenders, and with some exceptions their usual behavior showed them to be little fitted for any better avocation.
One of the characters that most attracted my attention, though I elicited but little response to my advances from his taciturn nature, was a miner from Montana—a man of short stature but powerful build, with, a determined, weather‐beaten face, and a decidedly sinister squint, who had rambled over the greater part of California, Nevada, Utah, Washington, and Montana, and apparently returned no richer from his wanderings. Having been a seaman before he took to a mountain life, his gait had acquired an indescribably curious mixture of the out‐kneed walk of a man constantly on horseback with the roll of a sailor, while he had, too, a curious habit of involuntarily working the fingers of his right hand as if they held a six‐ shooter. He usually restricted himself to the bachelor society under the whaleback, and, chary of his words, amused himself with an amateur surveillance of the operations of the men, or occasionally exchanged reminiscences in brief sentences with two or three other returned Californians: how he and his mates had killed a grizzly at the foot of Mount Helena; how he had made £1,200 in eight months from a claim in Siskiyou County, and lost it all in working another in El Dorado County, at which he persevered fruitlessly for three years, while the claims on each side brought heavy piles to their workers; how he had seen twenty‐six “road agents” hanged together in Montana; and other tales of far West mining, murder, and debauchery. Once only his hard face relaxed into a laugh at a story he told of two men who quarrelled in a California saloon, and, dodging round the table, while the rest of the company made for the door or skulked behind the beer barrels, emptied their revolvers at each other with no worse effect than one slight scratch. That twelve barrels should go off and no one be killed seemed to be too ridiculous, and his risible faculties overcame him accordingly. Strangely enough, while he spoke with the most hearty enthusiasm as to the pleasures of a mountaineering life, which he declared, with a good horse, a trusty rifle, and staunch mates, was the finest in the world, and to judge from appearances had certainly not made his pile, he never intended to return westward, but was bound for some city of the South. Possibly some episodes in his checkered existence had caused him to bear in mind the shortened career of the twenty‐six road agents with a distinctness that determined his preference for this side of the Rocky Mountains.
The most lively time of the day was the evening after the five o’clock tea; the sailors during the dog‐watches—from four to eight—do not turn in, but remain on deck, and they amused or persecuted the female passengers with a coarse gallantry that generally made the more modest women remain below; the cooks, engineers, and firemen stood at their doors in the deck‐ house and greeted with horse‐banter the passers‐by; while on the open space before the wheel‐house a few couples danced to the music of an accordion, or tried to tire each other out to the whistled tune of an Irish jig. A pair of professional singers, husband and wife, to whose retinue I usually attached myself, used to sit at the door of the saloon and favor us with selections from their repertory, often with a success that brought metallic appreciation from the gentlemen in the neighboring smoking‐room; till after sunset—generally interpreted with extreme liberality—one of the stewards of the after‐steerage literally hunted the women down‐stairs; and then often on fine nights the sailors would cluster round the open hatchway and sing for or banter with their favorites below.
The behavior of the sailors towards the women was the subject of constant complaint by the more respectable of the passengers throughout the voyage; in the evening, no woman without her husband was safe from their persecution, and not always with him at her side; as they stood by each other, and always had the sheath‐knife at their side, the men were not very ready to commence a quarrel with them; if their advances were resented, they were apt to change from coarse good‐humor to the most revolting and obscene abuse. Hence, as I have mentioned, many of the women would not return to the deck after the evening meal. In short, if other steamers are like the one in which we made the passage, no young woman could cross in the steerage without her modesty being daily shocked, and, if she was unprotected, running great risk of actual insult. I have mentioned that the deck bar was at the head of our staircase and consequently near the sailors’ cabin; one night it was broken open and cleared of its contents; whether the culprits were either sought for or detected, I never heard; but certainly the seamen next day were in a state of extreme conviviality: and, under the emboldening influence of liquor, one lively young mariner put his arm round the waist of a very handsome young Englishwoman, whose ladylike dress and appearance had so far prevented her from being molested in this way. A fight between her husband and the delinquent was with difficulty prevented by the bystanders, and the former went to complain to the chief officer; he mustered the watch and read them a lecture on their not interfering with the female passengers, and told the culprit he would hand him over to the authorities at Castle Garden on his arrival at New York, who would certainly send him for six months to prison. The latter did not seem much discomposed at the intimation, and the day I landed in the Empire City he appeared at our boardinghouse on Washington Street in a state of great hilarity and beer, and informed us with much blasphemy that he had cut his connection with the ship.
The emigrant passengers on board our ship suffered much annoyance and discomfort; but I do not hesitate to say that most of our troubles arose from the crew and attendants rather than the arrangements of the ship itself. Much of the accommodation provided—for instance, in the case of the wash‐houses and fresh‐water pumps—was made useless by the negligence or surliness of the men by whom they were controlled; the victuals seemed generally to be of good quality, and, except in the case of the fresh bread and sugar, were provided with lavish if not wasteful abundance, but they were usually carelessly cooked, if not actually uneatable, and served in the roughest and most heedless manner. The crew were a most disorderly set—quarrels were of constant occurrence. I saw two fights—one between the interpreter attached to the after‐steerage and one of the stewards; and another, which took place between the head‐cook and the butcher in the saloon galley; and I heard of several others. The cooks and bakers in the steerage galley were changed once or twice during the voyage, but no change for the better resulted. I attribute this want of anything like discipline or attentiveness to their duties to the constant change of the men on board these steamers; they only sign articles for the run out and home, rarely remaining more than one or two voyages in the ship, and many go the westward voyage merely to get to New York and desert the ship the moment they arrive there. I was told the chief officer called the milors together and promised them, as the ship was short‐handed (she had seven less than her complement of 28 seamen), they should receive £5 10_s._ per month instead of the £4 10_s._ for which they had shipped; but in spite of this, nearly half of them would desert when the ship came to her moorings. The cooks, bakers, and stewards are engaged in the same way, and the consequence is, before they can all be got to understand their positions and work well together, they are paid off and a new set come on board. If the companies could form a permanent staff for their vessels, and go to the same care and expense over their organization as they give to the material equipment of their splendid vessels, an immense change for the better would be effected in the comfort and convenience of the emigrant. As to the distribution of provisions, the passengers might be arranged in messes of ten or twenty, some of whose number would fetch their food from the galley for allotment among themselves, and thus give them an opportunity of eating their meals at table in a more Christianlike and less piggish manner than the majority are at present compelled to do. Nor do I see any great difficulty or additional expense in a different arrangement of the bunks, by which, at the sacrifice of the wide space in the middle of the steerage, they could be grouped on each side of a central table, so that each twenty or thereabouts would form a partially separated room, with its own table and its own mess.
At last, early on the second Sunday morning, the thunderlike roll of the cable paid out over our heads awoke us as the ship came to anchor off Staten Island, and later in the day she moored alongside the company’s wharf in New Jersey. In sight of the promised land, the fatigue and annoyance of the voyage were soon forgotten. A liberal meal of fresh and unusually well‐cooked beef and plum‐duff, eaten undisturbed by the vessel’s motion, made the memory of the disgusting messes we had endured or revolted at less poignant. The entire passengers went on shore in the forenoon, but none of the emigrants were allowed to leave, or any one to come on board the ship. Boatfuls of friends of the passengers came alongside, and the word passed along the deck that Mrs. Brady’s husband or Mary Cahill’s brother was seeking her. Numberless inquiries were shouted as to Mike, or Mary, or the children, until the gray twilight hid the spires and streets of the great city across the river. The chief officer came round early with a lantern, and summarily dismissed all the women below, and all went quietly to rest. Often, I believe, the last night on board the emigrant ship is a scene of wild revelry, if not actual debauchery; but the want of liquor—none was sold after the vessel came to her moorings—and the absence of the fairer sex, effectually quenched any convivial tendencies.
At an early hour next morning the luggage was run out of the hold, and tumbled pell‐mell on deck; and the youth of either sex, hitherto contented with the shabbiest and most negligent of attire, watched eagerly for their boxes, dragged them to a convenient corner, and made an elaborate toilette, either for the benefit of their American friends or to give the coup de grâce to the sweethearts they had encountered on the voyage. It was like the transformation scene in a pantomime, and I could hardly recognize my lady acquaintances in their gay bonnets and neat dresses. Much of their finery, however, suffered serious damage before they emerged on the Bowery. In the afternoon, the custom‐house officer came on board and took his place near the gangway, alongside of which lay a tender for the passengers and a barge for the luggage. The boxes were scattered all over the deck, and to get them examined one had to drag them to the officer, open them and close them, obtain a Castle Garden check from an official at the head of the gangway, and then they went over the side on to the barge, and the passenger on to the tender. Every one was anxious to be off, and all scrambled at once towards the gangway, dragging boxes and bundles with them. Never did we see such a scene of tumult and confusion. Such a babel of tongues; such despair at boxes that either would not open, or more frequently, being opened, would not shut; such lamentations over their often hopelessly shattered contents—the married women imploring some one to mind their children while they dragged their boxes to the gangway; the single ones begging quondam admirers to help them to move their heavy trunks—appeals to which the latter, sufficiently engrossed with their own struggle to be off, generally turned a deaf and unkind ear. The custom‐ house officer seemed to discharge his duty with as much good‐humor as the necessity of examining some thousand boxes in a limited time would allow. We got off with the first tenderful, and after waiting an hour or two in Castle Garden, where we at once cleared the refreshment stall of what we then thought delicious coffee and pies, we were told to fetch our luggage on the following day, and then passed out into Broadway to seek our various fortunes.
In the boarding‐house where I spent the night in New York, I met passengers from most of the other lines. All complained of their accommodations, and affected to believe that they had unfortunately selected the most uncomfortable service. For my own part, I believe that on the whole there is but little to choose between the accommodations and provisions supplied by the different companies, and that the description I have given of the arrangements of one line would generally apply to the rest.
Martyrs And Confessors In Christ
Nor let any of you be sad, on the ground that he is less than those who, before you having suffered torments, have come by the glorious journey to the Lord, the world being conquered and trodden down. The Lord is the searcher of the reins and heart, he sees the secret things, and looks into things hidden. The testimony of him alone, who is to guide, is sufficient for earning the crown from him. Therefore each thing, O dearest brethren, is equally sublime and illustrious. The former, namely, to hasten to the Lord by the consummation of victory, is the more secure; the latter is more joyful, to flourish in the praises of the church, having received a furlough after the gaining of glory. O blessed church of ours, which the honor of divine condescension thus illumines, which in our own time the glorious blood of martyrs thus makes illustrious! Before, it was white in the works of the brethren; now, it is made purple in the blood of martyrs. Neither lilies nor roses are wanting to its flowers. Let all now contend for the most ample dignity of both honors. Let them receive crowns, either white from their works, or purple from their martyrdom. In the heavenly camp peace and war have their respective flowers, by which the soldier of Christ is crowned for glory. I pray, bravest and most blessed brethren, that you be always well in the Lord, and mindful of us. Farewell.—S. Cyprian.
The Roman Empire And The Mission Of The Barbarians
Third Article.
So the great Roman world sinned on to the last. Christianity, with a cry of fear and alarm, pointed to the stormful North, and exhorted to repentance; but her voice was drowned in the mad shouts of revelry and the wild din of reckless passion. The mistress of nations would not consent to show signs of fear or alarm. She cast her far‐seeing eye over her wide, rich provinces towards the frowning horizon, and she had some knowledge of what sort of elements were hidden behind the black cloud‐wall there. Never yet had the whole terrible ferocity of latent wrath burst forth; but still, from time to time, as she had watched for some centuries back, the storm‐cloud had opened for a moment, and the low thunder‐peal had been heard, and the lightning‐fires had scathed her frontiers, and sometimes even had touched the very heart of some of her outlying provinces. But the fiery sword had been sheathed. The rent seemed to close again, and the thunder‐murmurs died away. Still no brightness tinged the angry North. But darker, wilder, more fiercely threatening the storm‐cloud grew. There was an angry God behind it, with his warrior hosts, hidden, and biding the solemn, predetermined moment. If the queen of empire felt, at times, a thrill of alarm, she tried to shake it off again. For proudly she gazed around on her widespreading dominions, and counted her almost countless monuments of conquest and glory, and appealed to the long past for her claim to live on immortally; and then took consolation and confidence to herself that the pillars of the firmament would crumble to dust, and the heavens fall, before she could be moved from her everlasting foundations. But still there were hearts that trembled for fear, conscious that something terrible was coming upon the world. The cry of the rapt seer of Patmos seemed still to be rising from the bosom of the Ægean Sea, and ringing in the ears of those who had faith in a God of justice. All those terrible woes foretold in the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of the Apocalypse seemed about to be accomplished. With strange wailing sound, as of a warning archangel’s trumpet, the prophetic voice appeared to repeat: “Thou art just, O Lord, who art, and who wast, the holy one, because thou hast judged these things: for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink.... And great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the indignation of his wrath.” Louder still that voice seemed to rise in tones of merciful warning: “Go out from her, my people; that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and the Lord hath remembered her iniquities.... She saith in her heart: I sit a queen, and am no widow; and sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be burned with fire; because God is strong, who shall judge her.” So appeared to sound out clear the sad, wailing voice of the prophet in these sorrowful days. And the people of God took warning. Full of fear and dread, they fled from the “great Babylon” and the other principal cities of the empire, and hid themselves from the wrath that was to come. Those who remained behind laughed with mocking incredulity at their fears, and, as if in defiance of a mighty God, drained the sparkling goblet with an intenser relish, and the din of revelry waxed louder, and the Circensian games were applauded with a wilder joy. Countless numbers of Christians, who still had faith in God’s Word and fear of his justice, hurried with rapid steps from these scenes of reckless dissipation and pleasure. They went to kneel with uplifted hands amid the sands of the Libyan Desert, or the wooded mountains of Lebanon; to implore mercy on a wicked world, amid the islets of the Tyrrhenian Sea, or in the rocky caves of the Thebaid.
At intervals another warning voice is heard, sounding, with the vehemence of the Baptist’s cry, from the holy precincts of Bethlehem. S. Jerome is meditating and commenting, in his convent cell, on the prophecy of Ezekiel. As he ponders on the judgments of God on Jerusalem of old, he cannot but think of Rome in his own day. As the images of ruin and destruction grow before his mind, and his great heart burns with compassion for sinful, sinning man, he pauses in his reading, and lifts his voice in warning of the vials of wrath that are about to be poured out upon the empire. Through the voluptuous palaces of Rome which he once knew so well, the loud warning voice of the holy anchoret of Bethlehem pierces with an awakening sound, and helps to persuade many a patrician beauty “to exchange the dream of pleasure, so soon to be interrupted by the clangor of the Gothic trumpet, for the sacred vigils and austerities of the Holy Land.” “Read,” he cries out, “the Apocalypse of S. John: mark what is written of the woman clothed in scarlet, with the mystic inscription on her forehead, and seated upon seven hills, and of the destruction of Babylon. ‘Go out of her, my people,’ saith the Lord; ‘that you be not made partakers of her crimes, and partners in the plagues that shall afflict her.’ Leave the proud city to exult in everlasting uproar and dissipation, satiating her bloodthirstiness in the arena, and her insane passion in the circus. Leave it to her to trample under foot every sense of shame in her lascivious theatres.” After these words of startling vehemence, he attunes his voice to gentler accents. And pours out his enthusiastic soul in language of sweetest music, winning and captivating both ear and heart. He throws a ravishing fascination and sweetness around his life at Bethlehem that must have been irresistible to souls in which yet lingered any purity of sentiment or love for the holy and beautiful. “How different,” he exclaims, “the scenes that invite you hither! The most rustic simplicity is characteristic of the natal village of our Redeemer, and sacred hymns and psalmody are the only interruptions of the heavenly stillness and serenity which reign on every side. Walk forth into the fields: you startle with mingled astonishment and delight to find that ‘Alleluia’ is the burden of the ploughman’s song; that it is with some inspired canticle the reaper recreates himself, in reposing at noontide from his overpowering toil; and that it is the royal Psalmist’s inspiration that attunes the voice of the vine‐dresser, as, scroll in hand, he plies his task all day.” Thus does he paint in charming colors the immediate neighborhood in which he lived so happily. His words take us back to the days of Eden, and make us realize what unfallen and sinless mankind would have been. Then he passes on to those scenes and names which are interwoven into the history of our Lord’s life, and round these again he casts the fascination of his poetical outpourings. We are carried on as by a magic spell, and we feel ourselves drawn captives after the mighty heart that glows with such a fiery heat of love in that grotto of Bethlehem. We cannot wonder that many souls felt the wondrous spell of that clear, sweet voice, as it broke with its music‐tones of penetrating power into the palaces of Rome. The loud‐wailing trumpet‐tones of the Apocalyptic seer, as they rose with terrific warning from the bosom of the Ægean, and the melodious music of the anchoret of Bethlehem, as it was carried westward on the breeze, both conveyed a message from a merciful God to the children whom he yet loved. But we will listen again to that winning voice from Bethlehem, as it pleads on, trying to draw Christians from the perils that were so near: “Oh! when shall that blessed day arrive,” it continues, “when it shall be our own delight to conduct you to the cave of the Nativity; together to mingle our tears with those of Mary and of the Virgin Mother in the sepulchre of our Lord; to press the wood on which he redeemed us to our throbbing lips; and, in ardent desire, to ascend with him from Mount Olivet?” We will hasten thence to Bethany to see Lazarus come forth in his winding‐sheet, and to the banks of that blessed stream sanctified by the baptism of the Word made flesh. Thence to the huts of the shepherds who heard the canticle of “Glory to God on high” and “Tidings of great joy,” as they were keeping their night‐watch over their flocks. We will pray at the tomb of David, and meditate under the steep precipice where inspiration used to come on the prophet Amos, until we hear again the living clangor of his shepherd‐horn. In Mambre, we shall commune in spirit with the great patriarchs and their consorts who were buried there; visit the fountain where the eunuch was baptized by Philip; and in Samaria honor the relics of S. John the Baptist, of Abdias and Eliseus, and devoutly explore the caverns where the choirs of the prophets were miraculously fed, in the days of famine and persecution. We will extend our pilgrimage to Nazareth, and, as the name implies, behold the flower of Galilee. Hard by is Cana, where he changed water into wine. Thence to Mount Tabor, where our prayer shall be that our rest may not be with Moses and Elias, but in the eternal tabernacle, where we shall enjoy the beatific vision of the Father and the Holy Ghost. Thence returning, we shall see the Lake Genesareth, and the wilderness where the merciful Jesus feasted the multitudes; and Naim shall not be passed by unheeded, where he gave back to the disconsolate mother “her only son.” Hermon shall be pointed out, and the torrent of Endor where Sisera was overcome; and Capharnaum, the theatre of so many miracles. Thence going up to Jerusalem, as it were in the retinue of our Lord, as the disciples were wont to do, we will pass through Silo and Bethel; and having made the circuit of so many scenes, consecrated by the presence, the preaching, and the miracles of the Son of God, to that grotto where he was born to us a Saviour, we shall at last return; perpetually to hymn his praises, to deplore our trespasses with frequent tears; to give our days and nights to holy orisons, as if smitten with the same love which exclaimed, “Him whom my soul hath yearned for, have I found. I will hold him, and will not let him go.”(278) Such wondrous music did the spiritual enchanter pour forth from his lonely grotto. In such words as these, throbbing with love and holy zeal, did the great heart of the worn ascetic of Bethlehem gush forth. And they depicted in such vivid colors the sweet peace and purity and happiness of a new earthly paradise far away in the Eastern land, that many souls were lured away by the charmer’s voice out of the great Western Babylon in time to escape the tempest that was just about to descend upon it. Many illustrious names appear among the fugitives. Paula forgot her lofty pedigree and her more than princely fortune, and fled eastward, and S. Melania and many others of patrician rank hurried away to Bethlehem to escape the impending doom. And there, whilst the mighty God thundered, and hurled his flaming arrows of vengeance, and the great sinful empire tottered and crashed under the awful blows of his wrath, did those favored Christians tremble and pray amid holy scenes and sweet associations, round the grand spiritual figure of S. Jerome.
But it was not only among the believers in God’s Word, and those who observed the signs of the times from their watch‐towers in the heart of the empire, that the belief in the imminent catastrophe had taken a strong hold. The idea that vengeance was close at hand was agitating with fierce intensity the barbaric nations themselves. Whence that idea came, they themselves could not have told. It had long been working in their minds like a living fire; it had gone on inflaming their souls till they felt their whole being on fire with an ungovernable passion for destruction and vengeance. They had been kept for long centuries by an overruling power in their northern forests, waiting for an unknown moment in the future. But that moment, they felt, was now at hand. They were ready for it, for they knew they were the scourges of wrath in the hands of a mighty God.
But before that fierce, black storm‐cloud up yonder in the North pours out its fiery wrath upon the doomed empire, we will try to get a glimpse behind it to see what elements are hidden there.
Let the reader open his historical atlas, and follow with his eye the boundaries of the Roman Empire in the West. He will see that the east, west, and south of Europe are lying at the feet of Rome, the heart and centre of the world. As he casts his glance over his chart, he will be struck by the countless names that cover the face of Italy and Gaul and Spain, and all those countries that are comprehended within the rule and civilization of the great capital of the empire. But as he raises his eye northwards, he marks the outlines of Roman power. He might say that the Rhine and the Danube are the boundaries in that direction of imperial dominion. And what does he see beyond? Nothing that denotes that civilization has ever set a firm foot there. The great Hercynian forest begins at the Rhine, and stretches far away, with its dense, impenetrable blackness, as far as the Vistula. It looks like a long, broad line of fortification thrown up by nature to guard the North from Roman ambition. Beyond this, again, is a wild unknown land. The student becomes bewildered as he tries to gain an accurate knowledge of it. It is a dreary wilderness of forest, and swamp, and vast tracts of land that have known no tillage. He finds no name of city or town, but only the hard names of countless barbaric tribes. These seem to fill, without order or defined limit of dominion, the vast area from the borders of the Rhine and Danube to the Baltic Sea, and the mainland and innumerable islets of Scandinavia. If he cast his eye towards the North‐east, the prospect is of a land still less known, and, at the same time, less thickly peopled. But the barbaric names are there, though few in number, and the wild waste seems to stretch away interminably into the darkness. The map calls it Scythia, and that is almost all the student can gather from looking at it; but it seems to him that it is the high‐road by which the countless barbarian tribes have come into Europe. We may well believe Gibbon when he tells us that this vast, unknown northern land, cut off from the Roman Empire by the Rhine and the Danube, and shrouded in gloom and darkness by its widespreading forests, extended itself over a third part of Europe.(279) Tacitus describes it as a country under a gloomy sky, rude, dismal in aspect and cultivation; more humid than Gaul, more stormy than Noricum and Pannonia.(280) It was a country where the waters were often covered with thick ice, and the mountains with snow, where the air was cold and sharp, and the storms blew fierce and strong. It was, in a word, a country where no delicate, soft races could have lived, but where only men of stalwart frame and hardy natures could have their home; men who could bound up the snowy mountain heights with a feeling of luxury, could hunt with delight among the frozen swamps, and run in the teeth of the sharp blast through thick forests where the warm sun‐rays never penetrated. And what was this strange, unknown land, so dark and impenetrable, so vast in its extent, so defended by rivers and ocean and far‐reaching fortification of Hercynian forest, so wild and uncultivated, so dismal and cold, and overhanging with its savage, frowning aspect the empire of Rome? It was the camp of the God of battles. With a divine purpose of his own, he had kept it free from Roman conquest. He had marked it off for himself by those wide rivers and stormy seas, and planted that thick long line of forest trees on its frontier, and shrouded its vast area in secrecy and mystery by widespreading woods. And under the shadow of these thick forests he had, for long generations, been gathering his warrior‐bands. The great empire had been growing for centuries in power and riches, and had piled up her monuments to tell the ages of her glories, and had come to think herself everlasting; but whilst she thus developed her power so mightily, her destroyers were being gathered together in secret in that Northern land. It was not by chance that the Roman Empire had built herself up in such glory and imposing magnitude on the ruins of the great empires that had preceded her, and not for a barren purpose. God had marked with his finger the boundary‐line of her dominions long before she extended her power so far, and he had appointed her the work which she was to do for him. But he had marked out, also, the term in the future whereunto she should endure, and had chosen beforehand the instruments which he would use for her destruction. As she was to be the most mighty of all empires which the world had ever seen, so would her destroyers have to be mighty and terrible in their powers of destruction. And those destroyers God will have ready at the right moment. No human eye could see what was going on under that dense darkness in the North; its mysterious depth was impenetrable to mortal kin. It was the secret laboratory of God, where he was fashioning his instruments of wrath. He had long been there amidst the terror and gloom beckoning the wild races of the earth to come to him, and they had obeyed his call, though they knew not why. Far back in the ages of time, before history had taken up her pen, there was a great breaking up of the Aryan family in the Eastern land, and they divided themselves into two great sections. They moved in opposite directions, one towards the East, the other towards the West. Though that breaking up seems, at first sight, to have nothing providential about it, yet it was no accidental separation. Bringing our Catholic principles to bear upon it, we soon see that it was the work of God. The wild tribes wandered on, they knew not whither. But they had a guide as real and definite as the Israelites in after‐times. It was, perhaps, no pillar of fire nor mysterious moving cloud, but yet as unerring in its leading. The Eastern Aryans took possession of Persia, and, invading India, gradually made themselves masters of the country as far as the Ganges. In this rich and fertile region they soon advanced, with rapid steps, to a high state of civilization. When we first meet them in history, they are a powerful nation, with well‐disciplined armies, and arts and sciences highly cultivated. Of those who took the westerly course, some settled down in the southern parts of Europe, and at the opening of history are found in a state of civilization. One section of them, wild, bold, and free, remain in a nomadic state. They wander on towards the Northwest, never settling down, ever restless. They feel themselves drawn ever onward, as by some mysterious power which they cannot resist. That strange, unseen power is he who dwells amid the darkness of the Scandinavian and Suabian forests. And as they pour into that weird gloom, band after band, they are lost to view. God wants them there for a time. They are one day to rush forth again, at his bidding, wild and fierce as ever, to do their appointed work.
Of these multitudinous tribes, hidden under the dark covering of those Northern forests, we cannot undertake to give any detailed account. The student who has ever pored over his historical chart representing the home of the barbarians, knows well how impossible it is to obtain accurate ideas about them. He is simply bewildered with the number of tribes, and the hard names by which they are designated. He is content to let Dr. Latham and Mr. Kingsley dispute at their pleasure as to whether the Goths were Teutons or a separate tribe. Some authors, with Gibbon, would make the Teutons the great tribe which included and absorbed almost all the rest, whilst Dr. Latham insists that they were far less in numbers than is commonly supposed. It is not now our purpose to enter on a question of this nature. Our view of them is simply as a fourmillement des nations, confused, indistinguishable, undefinable. We cannot pretend to speak with accuracy as to what territory was occupied by each tribe. What they do we can only guess at. They do not regard themselves as in their settled home. They wander about restless, and unsatisfied in their wild forest lands. They have only an indistinct idea whence they came, but they have a mysterious instinct whither they are to go when the appointed day comes. At one time they are on the Baltic shore, at another on the Danube bank. They never think of marching back Eastward, whence they came; their faces are turned towards the South, and they dream of a rich, golden city in which they are one day to revel and feast to their heart’s content.
It is something bewildering to pause over and think upon, in our historical studies, is this Northern land of darkness, with its hidden millions of wild savages silently wandering about in their gloomy forest, under the eye of God, and waiting for the signal to rush forth upon the sin‐laden empire of Rome! There never was anything more mysterious in history. They hang for long years, like a suspended curse, over a sinful world. They would have come down thundering like a crushing avalanche long before they did, if God had not held them back. It is wonderful to think how really they were in the hand of the great Over‐ruler. Suddenly it had entered into their minds, as we have seen, to break up their home in the far East, in prehistoric times, and they had obeyed the instinct. They moved away from their native land, and set out upon their wanderings. They knew no land beyond their own, nor had they reason to expect that they would discover anything better than what they enjoyed in the country of their birth. But still they wandered on. Whither they were journeying they had no knowledge, but they were obeying an overmastering power. They found themselves, at last, gathered together in a mysterious land of darkness, and there they paused. They felt they were at the rendezvous to which they had been called. They were at the feet of him who had beckoned to them to leave their homes in the Eastern land. Their instinct now was to remain hidden there for a time behind the great fortification of the Hercynian forest. From beginning to end all through their history these barbarians are in the hand of God, under his generalship, and used to execute his designs. Such teaching as this will, no doubt, appear puerile to the sneering atheism of men like Herbert Spencer. He and those of his school have discovered that God has nothing to do with the course of human events or the government of the universe.(281) Social Science has led them far beyond the old‐world ideas of God and divine government; but, thanks to the sound and safe teaching of Catholic principles, there are yet men in these days who refuse to run after the ignis fatuus of Spencerian philosophy.
But when we consider how the great civilized world of the Roman Empire and this world of the barbarian tribes bordered so close on one another for so long a time, and when we think what conquests Christianity had made wherever civilization had set its foot, we wonder how that dark Northern land could remain still heathen. Were not the citadels of the Christian religion planted all along the borders of the Roman Empire? Did no gleams, then, of Christian light shoot forth into the darkness beyond? We know that such certainly was the case in the Northwestern portion, where the Goths dwelt, for we read of Ulphilas and his apostolic labors among that tribe. But for the most part, the darkness was unpenetrated, and we are struck by the sight of two worlds running so close up to one another and yet remaining so isolated in a religious point of view. The fact was, the time for the conversion of the Northmen had not yet come. Their apostles were to be a race of heroes born on the mountain‐heights, and nourished in the pure, bracing air of monastic solitude. The barbarians were waiting for the monks. It is true that these wild tribes had already a worship of their own, and deeply religious in their way they certainly were. It was a religion quite in keeping with their wild, free character. Men who were so restless and active in their disposition, who delighted in storm and mountain and roaring torrents, would have no temple of wood or stone for their place of worship. Their temple was out in the open air, under the driving clouds, within hearing of the tumbling waterfalls, in sight of nature’s face; for nature to them was God. They saw him in the great mountain towering up on high, in the rocking forest‐trees, in the wide‐ stretching plain, in the flowing river, in the gushing fountain. He was in every object around them; in every speck of light in the overarching heavens; in the glistening streamlet; in the variegated flowers bedecking nature’s face; in the rock that stood out to break the power of the rushing sea‐waves; in the very stones scattered around them on the plain. There was a divinity of some kind in everything they saw.(282) It would, perhaps, be more true to say that their religion was polytheism rather than pantheism. We find, moreover, that the tendency of their religious belief was to keep alive in their souls the warlike spirit. The greatest and highest of their gods were beings of mighty power and terrible violence. “Woden, or Odin, as he was called in Scandinavia, was the omnipresent, the almighty creator, the father of gods and men; who ruled the universe, riding on the clouds, and sending rain and sunshine; in whom were centred all godlike attributes, of which he imparted a share to the other gods; and from whom proceeded all beauty, wisdom, strength, and fruitfulness, the knowledge of agriculture and the arts, the inspirations of music and song, and all good gifts. He was the giant hunter, who in the darkest nights rushed through the air on his white charger, clad in a brown mantle, his white locks streaming from beneath his slouching hat, followed by a train of wild huntsmen, the horses snorting fire, the bloodhounds baying, announcing war and carnage, danger and distress, as he passed along with lightning speed. But he was in a more special way the god of war, revelling in blood and slaughter, giving courage and victory to his votaries, and admitting to his Valhalla, or hall of bliss, none but those who died by the sword.
“Next to him was his son Thor, who rode on the thunder‐cloud and whirlwind, whose hammer was the thunderbolt, whose arrows were the lightning flashes, and whose wagon dashed through the heavens with crashing noise and ungovernable fury.”(283)
Then there was Saxnôt, another son of Woden, who occupied the third place among the gods. His name is afterwards associated with those of Woden and Thor in the abjuration of paganism made by those who were converted to Christianity. He is designated under many different names. He is Eor, or Are, or Ere, or Cheru, Tyr, Zio, Tuisco, or Tuis. He was the god of war, fierce and terrible, rushing to battle, at Woden’s side, and bearing down whole hosts with his mighty sword of iron or stone.
War, blood, and violence, then, were ever, in the minds of the barbarians, associated with the greatest of those beings whom they worshipped and admired. The character and the deeds of these gods were the highest and the noblest they could conceive. To be mighty in battle like them; to wield their war‐weapon as Thor wielded his huge hammer; to mow down enemies as Tuisco did with his terrible sword, would be the grand object of their soul’s desire. We may judge how little there was in their religious worship to tone down their fierce natures. Everything symbolized war; their deities were almost all warlike. Even Freyja, the Northern Venus, was pictured to their imagination as delighting in war. She was believed to be ever present in the battle‐field, wielding her flaming sword, with frantic joy, over the heads of their enemies, and ready to bear off the souls of the slain to Odin’s Valhalla. In that imaginary Elysium the joys of their fallen heroes were also of a warlike and savage character. They revelled there in “constantly massacring visionary foes, and drinking without satiety, out of the skulls of the slain, brimming ale‐cups presented by lovely Valkyrja.” What shall we expect, then, when these wild warriors are turned loose upon the Roman Empire?
But is it possible to obtain a further glimpse behind that vast, dark line of pine‐trees? Can we, by any means, get a glance at the wild indwellers of the mysterious land beyond? What are those men like whom God has so long kept hidden there? From time to time they have come forth from their forest homes and stood on the boundaries of the civilized world, and rolled their glaring eyes around over the rich empire that was to be their booty. But that has been, as it were, only for a moment. They have plunged again into their native darkness. Yet such writers as Apollinaris and Ammianus Marcellinus have told us something of them. By their aid we can picture to ourselves what those terrible hosts of avengers will be like, who will presently come down with such a headlong sweep upon the doomed empire of Rome.
All that we can imagine savage and terrible and extraordinary in figure and habit is found in real fact among those barbaric hordes. There are among them tribes who are small of stature, and thin and brawny, but quick and fierce as the wild‐cat. There are, too, men of giant height and strength, who can wield their huge clubs like playthings, and shiver the hard rock like glass. They have blue, flashing eyes, and bathe their flaxen hair in lime‐water, and anoint it with the unsavory unguent of rancid butter. Some of them roam about nude and uncovered as the wild animals of the forest, proud of their iron necklaces and golden bracelets; others are partially clothed with the skins of savage beasts, cut and shaped after the most odd and fantastic fashions. Some give additional terror to their appearance by wearing helmets made to imitate the muzzles of ferocious beasts. Plutarch tells us that all the Cimbrian horsemen wore helmets made in the form of the open jaws and muzzles of all kinds of strange and savage animals, and surmounted these by plumes shaped like wings, and of a prodigious height. This gave them the appearance of monstrous giants. They were armed with cuirasses of most brilliant metal, and covered with bucklers of uniform whiteness. Some shaved their chins, and, what must have added much to their hideousness, the back of their heads, whilst their hair was drawn to the front and hung down over their eyes like the forelock of a horse. So says Apollinaris,
“Ad front em coma tracta jacet, nudata cervix Setarum per summa nitet.”(284)
Others, again, allowed their hair to grow, and wore long mustachios and beard. Their weapons of war were various and strange as their own appearance. Some fought on foot, wielding with savage fury the huge club, or crushing mallet, or heavy‐headed hammer; or they did fierce work with their rude sword, or long javelin with its two points, or double‐edged hatchet; or they were skilful in the use of the sling or the arrow pointed with sharp pieces of bone. Others rushed to battle on high war‐steeds barded with steel, or on small horses, ugly and wretched to look at, but swift as eagles in their course. If they fought on the level plain, these barbarians were sometimes scattered over a large space, or they formed themselves into cuneiform bodies, or they pressed together into compact, impenetrable masses. If the contest was waged in the forests, they clomb the trees, which they worshipped, with the agility of monkeys, and there combated their enemies with wild ferocity, thus borne on the shoulders and in the arms of their gods. If they were conquerors in the battle, they abandoned themselves to acts of the most savage cruelty. To illustrate this we need only think of the tragic deeds that were done amid the swamps and the wooded hills of the Teutoberger Wald in the latter days of Augustus. It is sad, indeed, to read in Tacitus and the pages of Dio of the fate of that noble Roman army over which Varus held command. Yet we cannot regret to see the well‐concerted rising of the German tribes, under the splendid military genius of Arnim, to throw off the Roman yoke. We hold in deepest horror the wrongs, the oppressions of the Romans from the first ravages of Cæsar to the judicial murders of Varus. We think with feelings of indignation of the treachery and the bloody cruelty of Cæsar when the Usipetes and the Teuchteri were all but annihilated on the banks of the Rhine, and the Roman general rejoiced at his own unprovoked atrocity. We recall with sorrow all that the barbarians had had to suffer from their Roman conquerors through succeeding years, and our souls are on fire at the recollection of it. When, then, we see that the day of deliverance is at hand, we carrot but rejoice with Arnim and his brother Adelings at the prospect of future freedom. Our sympathies are with the Germans, not with their Roman oppressors. Whilst the Romans, then, are hungry and starved in the long, boggy valley between the sources of the Ems and the Lippe, and the rain falls in torrents through the cold night, and the soldiers’ spirits sink as they find themselves hemmed in by the enemy on all sides, we are, meantime, in imagination and feeling with the barbarian chiefs holding high festival as they recall the memory of ancient freedom and the deeds of former days, and we join in the war songs as they echo among the wild, dreary hills, and swell above the howlings of the storm. And when the morning breaks ominously and darkly over the Teutoberger Wald, and the tempest rises higher, and the heavy‐armed Romans cannot advance, and find it difficult, even, to keep their footing in the wet and slippery swamp; when we see their bows now useless from the wet, and their spears and shields no longer glittering in military pride, and their entire armor and clothing drenched and made too heavy for the poor benumbed and hunger‐stricken soldiers to bear, we can scarcely feel one pang of sorrow. On the contrary, our heart leaps with gladness when Arnim from his watch‐eminence gives the signal, and the trumpets ring out and the war‐weapons clang, and the terrible Barritum described by Tacitus(285) is heard rising above the howlings of the storm. We know how that tragic day ended, and how the evening saw the Roman host covering, with their dead bodies, the length and breadth of the battle‐field. Never had there been, in the annals of military warfare, such a terrible massacre of Roman legions. The news of it seized upon Augustus like a madness, and the old man, during the short remainder of his life, wandered sad and disconsolate through the apartments of his palace, sometimes dashing his white head against the walls, and murmuring, Quintili Vare, legiones redde!(286) But the barbarians were not content with such terrific slaughter as nearly annihilated the Roman army; their wild ferocity and cruelty showed themselves in their treatment of the captives. Tacitus in his Annals tells us(287) that in the neighboring woods the barbarians had altars erected to their gods, and there the surviving Roman tribunes and the centurions of the first class were offered in sacrifice. Around Varus’s camp Roman heads were fixed, in cruel mockery, on the trunks and branches of trees, and in the midst arose a huge mound of Roman bones, left to be stripped of their flesh by the wild birds of prey, and then to whiten under that northern sky into a long enduring monument of a great barbarian victory.
If, on the contrary they were conquered, their fury was boundless, and was even turned against each other. When Marius overcame the first Cimbrian league, those who composed it were found on the field of battle bound fast to each other, so that they could not fall back before the enemy, and thus were compelled to conquer or die. Their wives were armed with swords or hatchets, and, shrieking and gnashing their teeth with rage and grief, they struck both Cimbrians and Romans. They rushed into the thickest of the fight, snatching with their naked hands at the sharp‐cutting Roman sabres; they sprang upon the legionaries like tigers, tearing from them their bucklers, and thus purposely drawing upon themselves their own destruction. It was a dreadful sight also to witness some of them when the fortune of the day had turned against them, rushing to and fro with dishevelled hair, their black dresses all torn and bloody, or to see them mounted like mad fiends on the chariots, killing their husbands and brothers, fathers and sons, strangling their new‐born infants and casting them under the horses’ hoofs, and then plunging the dagger into their own bosoms.(288)
Some of the barbarians delighted in eating human flesh. Ammianus Marcellinus gives us a picture in his history which freezes our blood and haunts us with its horrid memory. He tells us that, after the defeat of Valens under the walls of Constantinople, a barbarian was seen rushing among the imperial troops, naked down to his waist, sword in hand, and uttering a hoarse, lugubrious cry. He sprang with savage fury upon an enemy whom he had slain, and, applying his lips to his throat, sucked out his life‐blood with a wild beast’s relish. The Scythians of Europe were amongst those who showed this same instinct of the weasel and the hyena. We have the authority of S. Jerome for believing that the Atticoti also were accustomed to feed on human flesh. When they were wandering about in the woods of Gaul, and happened to meet herds of swine or other cattle, they cut off the breasts of the shepherdesses, and large pieces from the bodies of the shepherds, and ate them as dainty bits.(289) The Alans tore off the heads of their enemies, and caparisoned their horses with the skins of their bodies. The Budini and Geloni were accustomed to do much the same, being particular in reserving their enemies’ heads for themselves. The appearance of the Geloni was a sickening sight to look upon. They were accustomed to have their cheeks cut and gashed; and their proudest distinction was a face all covered with wounds that were scaly, and livid and crowned with blood‐red crests.
But if there is something terrible in the appearance and customs of the barbarians whom we have mentioned, it is surpassed by what we are told of the Huns. We shall not be able to form a true idea of the dreadful avengers who are to come down out of that Northern gloom, unless we look for a moment at this most terrible of the barbaric tribes. The Goths themselves, the stalwart giants of the Scandinavian forests, who knew no fear of men, could not but be terrified when they first fixed eyes on the hideous forms of the Huns. Jornandes, the Gothic historian, tells us that “the livid color of their skin had in it something shocking to the sight; theirs was not a face, but a deformed mass of flesh, provided, instead of eyes, with two black sinister spots. Their cruelty wreaked itself even upon their own new‐born offspring, whose cheeks they lacerated with iron before they had tasted their mother’s milk; and from this cause no down graced their chin in youth, no beard gave dignity to their old age.” We are told by Ammianus that “they looked not like men, but like wild beasts standing on two legs, as if in mockery of the human species.” They were, in truth, the wildest and most savage of all the barbarian hordes. They loved to be free and unrestrained as the wandering blasts of their native solitudes. They ate and slept on the ground under the open sky. They took their food raw and uncooked, like the tigers of the forest. No temples of worship had they; their God was a naked sword fixed in the ground. They were devoured by an insatiable thirst for gold, which they were ever ready to procure through blood, and smoke, and wholesale ruin. But the characteristic of their race was a ferocious delight in cruel massacre, and they gloried in pillaging, burning, and levelling down to the ground every monument of civilization that came in their path, till the regions over which they swept bore a resemblance to their native deserts. The rest of the barbarians were amazed at their inhumanity, and looked upon them as fiends under the likeness of men.
But we need say no more. We have caught some few glimpses of what is behind the dark storm‐cloud, and we can form some idea of the horrors that are hidden there. Well may men tremble as they look northwards in the Vth century. Well may Christians think they hear now again, ringing out more clearly than ever, the warning voice of S. John, and flee to far‐off hiding‐places. The sinful empire herself feels, at times, as if under the horrors of a nightmare; in her frightful dreams she thinks she is trampled upon, and crushed under the feet of fierce, wild men of terrible aspect, and torn and hacked by their strange weapons of war. As the tempest lowers over her darker and darker, and threatens to become all‐enveloping in its wrath, a deep shudder runs through her mighty frame. And well may she stagger and quake for fear. The reckoning‐day is close at hand, so long waited for by the holy martyrs of foregone centuries. And a day of dreadful destruction it will be.
But lo! the hour has already struck. God has given the signal to his warrior‐hosts. The Goth has given a ringing blast on his horn, and the German has shouted the first notes of his terrible war‐song, and the pine‐ trees of the Hercynian forest are trembling at the sound. The avengers of the martyrs and the Christian name are coming, and the whole North is shaking under their tread. At last the storm‐cloud bursts, and fiery destruction sweeps down upon the doomed empire of Rome.
New Publications
IRELAND’S CASE STATED: IN REPLY TO MR. FROUDE. By the Very Rev. T. N. Burke, O.P. New York: P. M. Haverty. 1873.
Ireland’s case has been stated, argued, vindicated, and, so far as the verdict of the American people is concerned, adjudicated. Mr. Froude has given his last scowl and his last growl, and gone back to his own country—which he has damaged by his foolish escapade—the most badly beaten man of the present decade. It is rather late in the day to revert to the topic of F. Burke’s combat with this obstinate champion of bad characters and bad causes, and we will, therefore, let it pass with these few words. We are hoping to see soon issued Mr. Haverty’s promised second volume of F. Burke’s Discourses and Lectures, and we once more express our regret that any should be found so unmindful of propriety and courtesy, to say the least, as to interfere with F. Burke’s control of the publication of his own works. The eloquent Dominican preacher may be assured that the respect and sympathy not only of all Catholic Irishmen, but of all other Catholics of the United States, will be his while he remains here as our honored guest, and will follow him when he returns to his native land, or to his own beloved and imperial Rome.
KEEL AND SADDLE: A RETROSPECT OF FORTY YEARS OF MILITARY AND NAVAL SERVICE. By Joseph W. Revere. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 1872.
We are so often disgusted, in reading books of entertainment, with a revelation of positive rascality and impiety, or at least of a want of high moral and religious principle in the author, that it is a relief to meet sometimes with a happy disappointment. This is a lively, entertaining book of varied adventures on field and flood. Yet we always find the author, when his personality comes into view, not only a bold and brave soldier, but a gentleman, an honorable man, and a frank, staunch Catholic Christian, who never obtrudes yet never hides his faith and his principles of virtue. His views of Spanish affairs strike us as rather defective, and occasionally there is a narrative concerning persons of depraved morals which would have been better omitted for the sake of his youthful readers. The “Golondina” episode in chapter xxiv. relates an adventure whose lawfulness, we suspect, though perhaps admitted by quarter‐deck theology, would not stand the test of a strict examination. Sometimes we are at a loss to discover whether the author intends us to understand his narrative as historical, or is merely relating a conte for our amusement. In his own personal adventures and the descriptions he gives of what he has seen, we discover at once that his narrative is real as well as picturesque. And it is certainly most interesting. The off‐hand, unstudied, and unaffected style reveal the character of the true, genuine, frank sailor and soldier; while at the same time, the refinement of taste and the cultivation of mind which are manifest throughout give these sketches from the diary of a long and adventurous life the literary finish which belongs to the work of a scholar. Notwithstanding certain exceptions we have made, we reiterate our commendation of the high tone of moral principle, the unaffected religious reverence, and the generally healthful and invigorating spirit which pervades the book which the gallant General Revere has given to the public as the retrospect of his forty years of naval and military service.
HYMNS AND POEMS: ORIGINAL AND TRANSLATED. By Edward Caswall, of the Oratory. Second Edition. London: Burns, Oates & Co.; Pickering. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Father Caswall’s hymns are as well known as Father Faber’s. Indeed, if we mistake not, many of them are popularly attributed to the departed writer. In the present volume we have a complete collection of the Breviary hymns, in the first place. This is especially valuable as the only one in the language (as far, at least, as we are aware). And the author deserves the more praise for this labor of love, because of the great difficulty of rendering the terse, stiff Latin. Then, secondly, we have “Hymns and Sequences of the Roman Missal”; followed by “Hymns from Various Offices and other Sources.” Thus the translated portion of the volume is quite sufficient to make it worth possessing. The execution, too, is very happy, on the whole. No one who has attempted to translate these hymns himself will insist overmuch on the absence of phrases commonplace or prosaic.
The second portion of the volume, “Original Hymns and Meditative Pieces,” also contains much that entitles it to a place in every household. The devout Catholic, and more especially the convert, will find many things said for him which have come into his mind, but without his being able to express them. Moreover, several pieces turn on topics which are generally supposed themes for the dryest meditation. They are here proved suggestive of true poetry.
The only fault we have to find with Father Caswall’s verse is the same that we find with Wordsworth’s: the too frequent sacrifice of poetic diction and the use of too many long Latin words. But this defect is unimportant compared with the value of the thoughts and teachings conveyed, and we fervently thank Father Caswall for his contribution to our scanty Catholic poetry.
THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST‐TABLE. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872.
“Once I wrote because my mind was full; But now I write because I feel it growing dull,”
or,
“I have lived long enough,”
or,
“Poor old man, thou prun’st a rotten tree That cannot so much as a blossom yield In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry,”
or some such saw, this Poet at the Breakfast‐table should have affixed to these four hundred pages of incomparable drivelling.
“I talk half the time,” says the poet, in his opening paragraph, “to find out my own thoughts, as a schoolboy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them.”
And what does the schoolboy find there?
Rusty nails, old shoe‐strings, copper pennies, dead bugs, crumbs of bread, broken knives, and other trash neither beautiful nor useful. The similitude is just. The contents of the Poet’s brain are as precious as those of the boy’s pocket; and if we wish to push the comparison further, the wares of both are often of doubtful ownership. The only serious thing in the book is its humor.
“I don’t suppose my comic pieces are very laughable,” writes this poet, philosopher, sage; “at any rate, the man who makes a business of writing me down says the last one I wrote is very melancholy reading; and that if it was only a little better, perhaps some bereaved person might pick out a line or two that would do to put on a gravestone.” He has a most infallible instinct for the right comparison; as, for instance: “I love to talk, as a goose loves to swim. Sometimes I think it is because I am a goose.” This is the first evidence of intelligent thought in the whole book. “My book and I,” he informs us, “are pretty much the same thing. Sometimes I steal from my book in my talk, without mentioning it, and then I say to myself: ‘Oh! that won’t do; everybody has read my book, and knows it by heart.’ And then the other I says: You know there are two of us, right and left, like a pair of shoes! The other I says: ‘You’re a—something or other—fool.’ ” The other I is evidently a sensible fellow. “They haven’t read,” continues the other I, “your confounded old book; besides, if they have, they have forgotten all about it.”
Again, the other I says: “What a Balaam’s quadruped you are to tell ’em it’s in your book; they don’t care whether it is or not, if it’s anything worth saying; and if it isn’t worth saying, what are you braying for?” This is the question the reader asks himself all along, as the evidence that the poet has nothing to say worth the saying becomes more and more overwhelming. This kind of criticism, we know, is little better than trifling; but the performance deserves no other treatment, for we candidly think that a sorrier book could not proceed from a mind untouched.
Why did this Poet, when he meant to write a book, seat himself at the breakfast‐table? Did he not know that a full stomach does not argue a mind replete? Had not Shakespeare said long ago that fat paunches have lean pates, or was he not physician enough to know that the mens divinior is not to be found in hot rolls and coffee?
We shall conclude with one other brief quotation from the Poet:
“What do you do when you receive a book you don’t want from the author? said I: ‘Give him a good‐natured adjective or two if I can, and thank him, and tell him I am lying under a sense of obligation to him. This is as good an excuse for lying as any, I said.’ ”
As we do not believe there can be an excuse for lying, and as we are certain that in this case there is no obligation under which to lie, we cannot give the author “a good‐natured adjective or two”; but we shall thank him to give us no more such nonsense.
YOUNG AMERICA ABROAD. Second Series: Cross and Crescent; or, Young America in Turkey and Greece. A Story of Travel and Adventure. By William T. Adams (Oliver Optic), author of “Outward Bound,” “Shamrock and Thistle,” “Red Cross,” “Down the Rhine,” etc. Boston: Lee & Shepard, Publishers. New York: Lee, Shepard & Dillingham. 1873.
This is the third volume of the second series of Young America Abroad, and, like all the rest of the series, is most instructive and entertaining.
THE TREASURE OF THE SEAS. By Prof. James De Mille, author of “The B. O. W. C.,” “The Boys of Grand Pre School,” “Lost in the Fog,” “Fire in the Woods,” “Among the Brigands,” etc. Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard, publishers; New York: Lee, Shepard & Dillingham. 1872.
This is one of the best of the “B. O. W. C. Series,” and will certainly be a favorite with the boys.
THE POLYTECHNIC: A Collection of Music for Schools, Classes, and Clubs. Compiled and written by U. C. Burnap and Dr. W. J. Wetmore. New York: J. W. Schermerhorn & Co.
THE ATHENÆUM: A Collection of Part‐Songs for Ladies’ Voices. Arranged and written by U. C. Burnap and Dr. W. J. Wetmore. New York: J. W. Schermerhorn & Co.
The best criticism of both these musical publications is found in the preface to the first one cited:
“Collections of school music are already sufficiently numerous and bulky, but too often they are found to contain very little that is available for the ordinary or the extraordinary occasions of school life.”
HART’S MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATURE—A MISTAKE CORRECTED.—Since writing the brief notice of this really valuable work which appeared in our December number, we have observed a very serious misstatement in it respecting a distinguished convert to the Catholic faith, the late Dr. Ives, formerly Protestant Bishop of North Carolina. Prof. Hart states that he returned to the Episcopal Church. He never dreamed of such an act of superlative folly. He died, as he had lived, a most fervent and devout Catholic, we might almost say—a saint, and was buried with all the rites and all the honors of solemn obsequies in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York. Prof. Hart, who always endeavors to be fair, and whose notices of Catholic writers are marked by their courtesy, would never have made this incorrect statement unless he had been misled by some false information, and we rely on his rectifying it in his next edition.
The following circular has been sent to us, and we publish it because we think there is nothing more hostile to such nefarious projects than free and early ventilation. Why does not Mr. Abbot renounce his popish name, in his zeal to abolish every vestige of Christianity? Our readers will not fail to see how apposite an illustration this document furnishes of some of the remarks in our first article. We have also received an article from the Cincinnati Gazette advocating the persecution of Catholics in this country, with a trenchant reply by F. Callaghan.
(From THE INDEX, January 4, 1873.)
Organize!
Liberals Of America,
The hour for action has arrived. The cause of freedom calls upon us to combine our strength, our zeal, our efforts. These are
The Demands Of Liberalism.
1. We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempted from just taxation.
2. We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in state legislatures, in the navy and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all other institutions supported by public money, shall be discontinued.
3. We demand that all public appropriations for sectarian, educational, and charitable institutions shall cease.
4. We demand that all religious services now sustained by the government shall be abolished; and especially that the use of the Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a textbook or avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall be prohibited.
5. We demand that the appointment, by the President of the United States or by the Governors of the various states, of all religious festivals and feasts, shall wholly cease.
6. We demand that the judicial oath in the courts and in all other departments of the government shall be abolished, and that simple affirmation under pains and penalties of perjury shall be established in its stead.
7. We demand that all laws directly or indirectly enforcing the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed.
8. We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of “Christian” morality shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of natural morality, equal rights, and impartial liberty.
9. We demand that not only in the constitutions of the United States and of the several States, but also in the practical administration of the same, no privileges or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis; and that whatever changes shall prove necessary to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and promptly made.
Liberals! I pledge to you my undivided sympathies and most vigorous co‐operation, both in The Index and out of it, in this work of local and national organization. Let us begin at once to lay the foundations of a great national party of freedom, which shall demand the entire secularization of our municipal, state, and national government.
Let us boldly and with high purpose meet the duty of the hour. Rouse, then, to the great work of freeing America from the usurpations of the church! Make this continent from ocean to ocean sacred to human liberty! Prove that you are worthy descendants of those whose wisdom and patriotism gave us a constitution untainted with superstition! Shake off your slumbers, and break the chains to which you have too long tamely submitted.
FRANCIS E. ABBOT.
TOLEDO, OHIO, Jan. 1, 1873.
Liberals Of New York,
Shall the coming “National Association to secure a Religious Amendment to the United States Constitution,” to be held in New York in February, find us unorganized for resistance? Let us at once form a “Liberal League,” in which we may arrange a campaign offensive and defensive for our liberties. Send me at once the addresses of those who sympathize with us, that a meeting may be called at an early day: remember that “he who is not for me is against me,” and that our liberties are threatened.
E. F. DINSMORE, 36 Dey Street, New York, Agent of The Index.
[Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected.]
FOOTNOTES
1 Alfred de Musset.
2 The Life and Labors of S. Thomas of Aquin. By the Very Rev. Roger Bede Vaughan, O.S.B., Cathedral‐Prior of S. Michael’s, Hereford. 2 vols. London: Longmans; Hereford: James Hull. 1871‐2.
3 Proverbs vi., vii.
4 Adv. Prax., c. 2.
5 Bishop Wilson, Sacra Privata.
6 Homil., in S. Ignat., vii. p. 593.
7 Οὐχ ὡς Πέτρος καὶ Παῦλος διατάσσομαι ὑμῖν· ἐκεῖνοι Ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἐγὼ δὲ ἐλάχιστος.
8 Κλήμης ἐν ἕκτῳ των Ὑποτυπώσεων παρατέθειται την ἱστορίαν· συνεπιμαρτυρει δὲ αυτῷ καὶ ὁ ἱεραπολίτης ἐπίσκοπος ὀνόματι Παπίας. Τοῦ δὲ Μάρκου μνημονεύειν τὸν Πέτρον ἐν τῇ προτέρᾳ ἐπιστολῇ, ἦν καὶ συντάξαι φασὶν ἐπ᾽ αὐτῆςς Ῥώμης· σημαίνειν τε τοῦτο αὐτὸν τὴν πόλιν τροπεκώτερον Β βυλῶνα προσειπόντα, διὰ τούτων· Λοπαζεται ὑμᾶς, κ.τ.λ.
9 Eusebius’ Eccl. Hist., l. 2, c. 25.
10 Τοῦ Πέτρου καὶ τοῦ Παύλου εν Ρώμηλ εὐαγγελιζομένων καὶ θεμελιούντων τὴν ἑκκλησιαν.—Eusebius, l. 5, c. 8; also, S. Irenæus, Adv. Hæreses, l. 3, c. 3.
11 Ἐγω δε τα τρόπαια των Ἀποστόλων ἔχω δεῖζαι, κ.τ.λ.—Eusebius, l. 2, c. 25.
12 Eusebius, l. 3, c. 1.
13 “Edant ergo origines ecclesiarum suarum; evolvant ordinem episcoporum suorum, ita per successiones ab initio decurrentem, ut primus ille episcopus aliquem ex apostolis, vel apostolicis viris, qui tamen cum apostolis perseveraverit, habuerit auctorem et antecessorem. Hoc enim modo ecclesiæ apostolicæ census suos deferunt: sicut Smyrnæorum Ecclesia Polycarpum ab Joanne collocatum refert; sicut Romanorum, Clementum a Petro ordinatum itidem.”—Tertulliani, De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, c. 32.
14 “Si autem Italiæ adjaces, habes Romam, unde nobis quoque auctoritas præsto est. Ista quam felix ecclesia, cui totam doctrinam apostoli cum sanguine quo profuderunt! ubi Petrus passioni Dominicæ adæquatur; ubi Paulus Joannis exitu coronatur.”—Tertulliani, De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, c. 36.
15 “Videamus quod lac a Paulo Corinthii hauserint; ad quam regulam Galatæ sint recorrecti; quid legant Philippenses, Thessalonicenses, Ephesii; quid etiam Romani de proximo sonent, quibus evangelium et Petrus et Paulus sanguine quoque suo signatum reliquerunt.”—Tertulliani, Adv. Marcionem, l. 4, c. 5.
16 1 S. Peter v. 13: “The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus, my son.”
17 S. John xxi. 18: “Verily, verily I say unto thee, when thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldst: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not.” Also, 2 S. Peter i. 14: “Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me.”
18 “Seven Roman cities strove for Homer dead Through which the living Homer begged his bread.”
19 “Veteres omnes in errorem abrepti sunt.”
20 Instit., l. 4, c. 6, n. 15.
21 “De Babylone dissident veteres et novi interpretes. Veteres Romam interpretantur, ubi Petrum fuisse nemo verus Christianus dubitavit: novi, Babylonem in Chaldea. Ego veteribus assentior.”
22 Prof. Stuart, Andover Biblical Repository, Jan., 1833, vol. iii. p. 153.
23 Lectures on Ecclesiastical History.
24 Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures, vol. ii. p. 361.
25 A New Literal Translation, from the Original Greek, of all the Apostolic Epistles; with a Commentary and Notes.
26 Prior Vaughan, S. Thomas of Aquin, i. 464.
27 S. Thomas of Aquin, Introduction.
28 Christian Schools and Scholars, ii. 20, 21.
29 S. Thomas of Aquin, i. 369.
30 Christian Schools and Scholars, ii. 325.
31 Ibid.
32 Christian Schools and Scholars, i. 9‐11.
33 S. Thomas of Aquin, i. 134.
34 Montalembert, Monks of the West, i. Edin. ed.
35 Monks of the West.
36 Ibid.
37 Monks of the West.
38 Christian Schools and Scholars, ii. 426.
39 Monks of the West, ii.
40 Christian Schools and Scholars, i.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Christian Schools and Scholars.
44 Christian Schools and Scholars, i.
45 Montalembert’s Monks of the West, iii. 195, 197.
46 Monks of the West.
47 Monks of the West.
48 Monks of the West.
49 Monks of the West.
50 Ibid.
51 Christian Schools and Scholars.
52 Christian Schools and Scholars.
53 Ibid.
54 Christian Schools and Scholars.
55 Christian Schools and Scholars.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 Christian Schools and Scholars.
59 Monks of the West.
60 Gladstone.
61 Christian Schools and Scholars.
62 Monks of the West.
63 Monks of the West.
64 S. Thomas of Aquin.
65 Christian Schools and Scholars.
66 “All the more reason.”
67 Term for the peasants and workingmen.
68 “Go, my son, there are now no Pyrenees.”
69 The queen’s bed‐chamber.
70 The king’s bed‐chamber.
71 “I am the state!”
72 “An instant more, and I should have had to wait!”
73 “The king is dead, long live the king.”
74 The Duchesse de Polignac.
75 Louis only knew how to love and to forgive; had he known how to punish, he would have known how to reign.
76 Bancroft.
77 Bancroft.
78 Shea.
79 Lake George.
80 Caughnawaga.
81 Christian Schools and Scholars, i. 327.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 Christian Schools and Scholars.
85 Life of S. Thomas of Aquin.
86 S. Thomas of Aquin.
87 Ibid.
88 S. Thomas of Aquin.
89 Christian Schools and Scholars.
90 Ibid.
91 Christian Schools and Scholars.
92 Ibid.
93 Christian Schools and Scholars, ii. 370.
94 See S. Thomas of Aquin, i. 42.
95 Montalembert, Monks of the West, v. 159.
96 Ibid., v. 97.
97 Christian Schools and Scholars.
98 Ibid.
99 Christian Schools and Scholars.
100 For all these and the following details, see Christian Schools and Scholars.
101 Christian Schools and Scholars.
102 Ibid.
103 The Condition of the Catholics under James I. Father Gerard’s Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot. Edited, with his Life, by John Morris, Priest of the Society of Jesus. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1871. New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.
Her Majesty’s Tower. By William Hepworth Dixon. Second series. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1869. Reprinted.
104 “The great house then rising at Charing Cross was said, in reference to these gifts, to be plated with King Philip’s gold. Much of Don Juan’s money passed in Cecil’s pocket.... Northampton and Suffolk also obtained the most princely sums.”—Her Majesty’s Tower, pp. 59, 60.
105 History of England, ix. 36.
106 Statutes of Elizabeth, chap. i., v., xiii., xxi., xxiii., xxvii., xxviii., xxix., xxxv.
107 The Life of Father John Gerard, xcvii.‐ix.
108 Fifth Examination of Fawkes, November 9th and 10th, State Paper Office, No. 54.
109 Life of Father John Gerard, p. clxxviii.
110 Page 221.
111 A Narrative, etc., pp. 76‐77.
112 Told to the writer as a fact.
113 This incident is authentic, and occurred at No. 13 Rue Royale.
114 The Life and Labors of S. Thomas of Aquin. By the Very Rev. Roger Bede Vaughan, O.S.B. 2 vols. London: Longmans; Hereford: James Hull. 1871‐2.
115 xiv. 15, 16.
116 “Stop, traveller.”
117 “Behold, traveller.”
118 “Farewell,” or “Hail, for ever.”
119 Sit tibi terra levis.
120 Locus, loculus.
121 Matt. xii. 32.
122 1 Cor. iii. 13, 15.
123 1 Pet.
124 Apocalypse xxi. 27.
125 2 Mach. xii. 43‐46.
126 xvi. 14.
127 xxxv. 19, 20.
128 2 Chron. xxi. 19.
129 “Les morts ne sont pas les oubliés: ils ne sont que les absents.”
130 Sismondi, His. Ital. Rep.
131 See CATHOLIC WORLD, vol. xiii., No. 73, April, 1871, p. 1.
132 The Following of Christ, b. iii. chap. v.
133 Following of Christ, b. iii. chap. v.
134 The Marquisate or March of Ancona was then governed by Charles of Valois, who held Naples.
135 That is, in the territory of Padua, founded, as the student will remember, by the Trojan Antenor, whose tomb is shown in Padua to this day.
136 That is to say, the hermitage of the Camaldolites in Milton’s Vall’ombrosa.
137 Oriental and Linguistic Studies. The Veda; The Avesta; The Science of Language. By William Dwight Whitney, Prof. of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Yale College. One vol. 8vo, 416 pp. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1873.
138 Oriental and Linguistic Studies. The Veda; The Avesta; The Science of Language. By William Dwight Whitney, Prof. of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Yale College. One vol. 8vo, 416 pp. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1873.
139 Title of the work given at head of this article.
140 Still stronger in the original: “Vielleicht ist noch kein Europäer so tief in diese Sprache eingedrungen als er.”—Mithridates, vol. i. p. 134.
141 Sidnarubam seu Grammatica Samscrdamica, cui accedit dissertatio historico‐critica in linguam Samscrdamicam, vulgo Samscret dictam, in qua hujus linguæ existentia, origo, exarati critice recensentur, et simul aliquæ antiquissimæ gentilium orationes liturgicæ paucis attinguntur et explicantur autore Paulino a S. Bartolomæo. Romæ, 1790.
142 Catalogo de las Lenguas de las Naciones conocidas. Madrid, 1800‐1805. Six large 8vo volumes.
143 These lectures, printed in book‐form at London, were soon after first published in the United States by the Presbyterian College of Andover.
144 “Wouldst thou the young year’s blossoms and the fruits of its decline, And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed, Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name combine? I name thee, O Sakuntula, and all at once is said.”
145 L’Aryanisme, et de la trop grande part qu’on a faite à son influence, etc.
146 How such information could have been had from the Fasti Consulares is difficult to say; the suppression was probably a lapsus memoriæ for Josephus Flavius. The date of S. Paul’s coming to Rome is too uncertain to be fixed at 61, yet we accept this year on the authority of those who put it forward in the discussion.
147 See Op. S. Irenæi, Ed. Cong. S. Mauri, Ven. an. 1734.
148 De Viris Illustribus, c. i.
149 Ap. Eusebium, H. E. lib. iii. c. i.
150 Via Appia da Porta Capena a Boville. Descritta dal Commendatore L. Canina. 2 vols. Roma. 1853.
151 La Roma Sotterranea Christiana. Descritta ed illustrat dal Cav. G. B. de Rossi. Roma. 1864.
152 Defense de l’Esprit des Lois, 3e partie.
153 Aringhi, Roma Subterr. lib. iii. c. 2.
154 Ner. 48.
155 Pro Cluent. 13.
156 I cimeteri sotteranei di Roma sono stati scavati dai cristiani fossari tranne pochissime eccezioni, le quali importanti per la storia, nell’ampiezza però della sotteranea escavazione scompajono; e possono veramente dirsi quello, che i matematici appellano una quantitià infinitesima e da non essere tenuta a calcolo.—App. p. 39.
157 Psalm xxiii.
158 S. John x. 14‐16.
159 O præclarum diem, cum ad illud divinum animorum concilium cœtumque proficiscar, cumque ex hac turba et colluvione discedam! Proficiscar enim, non ad eos solum viros, de quibus ante dixi, sed etiam ad Catonem meum.—De Senectute, 25.
160 Coleridge’s Piccolomini, scene iv.
161 xii. 40.
162 Newman’s Church of the Fathers, Introduction.
163 Jonas iv. 2.
164 S. Augustine says:—“Love the men, destroy the errors: be bold without pride in the maintenance of truth; strive for the truth without harshness; pray for those whom you rebuke and confound.”—Contra lit. Petiliani, l. i.
165 xx. 23.
166 Romans vi. 3, 4.
167 S. Augustine, Serm. 296, p. 1195, tom. v.
168 Tertullian, Scorpiace, p. 628.
169 1 Epist. iii. 2.
170 Am. ed. p. 82.
171 An Eirenicon, Eng. ed., p. 101.
172 “If there be one writer in the Anglican Church who has discovered a deep, tender, loyal devotion to the Blessed Mary, it is the author of The Christian Year. The image of the Virgin and Child seems to be the one vision upon which both his heart and intellect have been formed; and those who knew Oxford twenty or thirty years ago say that, while other college rooms were ornamented with pictures of Napoleon on horseback, or Apollo and the Graces, or Heads of Houses lounging in their easy‐chairs, there was one man—a young and rising one—in whose rooms, instead of these, might be seen the Madonna di Sisto or Domenichino’s S. John—fit augury of him who was in the event to do so much for the revival of Catholicism.”—Newman’s Essays, vol. ii. p. 453.
173 Memoir of Keble. By Sir J. T. Coleridge, Eng. ed., p. 305.
174 Dr. Nevin, one of the leaders of religious thought in the German Reformed communion, of which the Mercersburg Review is the organ, has said: “The man cannot be right at heart in regard to the faith of the Incarnation, whose tongue falters in pronouncing Mary Mother of God!”
175 A Letter to Dr. Pusey on his recent Eirenicon, p. 59.
176 The late Dr. Faber, when an Anglican, said: “Thus I hold it pious to believe that in pagan times many a wandering beam, many a pitying angel, many a rent in heaven, many a significant portent, many an overflow of the appointed channels of grace, were vouchsafed, whereon a poor glimmering faith might feed, and grow, not wholly of itself, into a feeble yet steady light, acceptable for his sake who sent such faith its food.”—Foreign Churches and Peoples, p. 535.
177 Horace, De Arte Poetica, 391.
178 Keble’s Christian Year—Easter Eve.
179 Lib. iv. c. 4.
180 A Hist. de l’Art.
181 Page 36.
182 Page 30.
183 The scourge used by one of the executioners at the pillar was amongst the number, and is now to be seen in the cathedral of Aachen. It is composed of narrow leathern thongs, terminated by an iron point, the whitish color of the leather bearing manifest stains of the precious blood that bespattered it. Constantine’s signet, the eagle and ciphers, is distinctly visible on the time‐worn, faded seal, that looks like a sort of hard chalk. The reliquary is a crystal vase, encased in gold and gems.
184 It is not within the limits of this sketch to follow the “Saint Suaire” through its subsequent translations, but it may interest such of our readers as are not acquainted with the fact, that it is now at Aix‐la‐Chapelle, where every seven years it is opened by the chief prelates of Catholic Germany, and in the presence of princes and bishops exposed to the veneration of the faithful for three days, the church bells ringing all the time, and the cathedral crowded day and night.
185 The Russian Clergy. Translated from the French of Father Gagarin, S.J. By Ch. Du Gard Makepeace, M.A. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
186 “L’ouvrage s’ouvre par une introduction majestueuse sur le treizième siècle.”
187 Memoir of Count De Montalembert, Peer of France, Deputy for the Department of Doubs. A Chapter of recent French History. By Mrs. Oliphant, author of The Life of Edward Irving, S. Francis of Assisi, etc. In two volumes. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1872.
188 The Anitchkoff Palace, on the Nevskoi Prospekt.
189 In 1859, Le Second Empire; in 1860, La France, l’Autriche et l’Angleterre; in 1865, France et l’Allemagne.
190 Particularism here means the tendency and policy on the part of Bavaria and the Southern States of Germany to resist absorption of their autonomy in certain matters by Prussia.—Translator.
191 The town where Henry IV., of Germany, performed a penance imposed by Pope Gregory VII.—Trans.
192 In the work, published in 1865, which procured me the honor of being made the subject of a parliamentary debate, I had dwelt upon the two‐fold danger to be feared, whether from an alliance which might reopen the Belgian question, or from a war on our frontiers, it might be, on our invaded territory. I advised appeasing our political discords, the better to resist this double peril. This sums up in a few words the purport of my pamphlet.
My adversaries in the tribune and in the press denied the existence of these dangers which they asserted were merely imaginary; they charged me with having got up a sham Belgian question, and with having, in that way, spread the knowledge of it abroad.
“With what have I charged the Honorable M. de Champs?” said M. Dolez. “It is with having pretended that our nationality was environed by perils, and that a Belgian question was on foot in which our independence might be taken away from us.”
M. Frère‐Orban ridiculed in a pleasant way my forebodings. He said that I was “a lookout man who, in his tower, descries that which no one else can possibly see, ... who imagines that he has discovered that which nobody had seen before. To‐day,” he added, “when there is nothing, absolutely nothing, of a nature to cause uneasiness to the country, we are told, in consequence of a party scheme: Let us hold our tongues and appease our discords. The liberal party must, in order to save Belgium from a danger which does not exist, cease resisting the pretensions of the clerical party.”
Well, what does M. Frère‐Orban think now? While he, as minister, was uttering in the tribune the above quieting and optimist statements, M. Benedetti had entered with M. von Bismarck into a parley, the subject of which was the Belgian question. This was the diplomatic peril. The other peril has been clearly revealed to us after Sedan. General de Wimpfen has stated to General Chazal that the question of invading or not the territory of Belgium had been earnestly discussed at Sedan. This would have been bringing the war on our violated soil.
193 Priests and religious, men and women, numbering together 1,909, have given corporeal and spiritual attendance to 21,000 sick and wounded, and this only out of love for God and their neighbor.
194 Referring to the very bitter attack on the definition of infallibility and the doings of the council which appeared about that time in pamphlet form from a writer under the nom de plume of Janus.—Translator.
195 The bien‐aimé of the Almanac is no more the bien‐aimé of France, He does everything ab hoc and ab hac, puts all in the same sack, Justice and finance, this bien‐aimé of the Almanac, etc., etc.
196 Zamore was a negro who repaid by the basest treachery the favors lavished on him by Madame du Barry; he was the immediate cause of her execution, having betrayed her hiding‐place to the convention. She is the only woman of that period who died like a coward, struggling to the last.
197 “Let our hearts be light and gay, Glory’s hour is here to‐day; The blood‐red blade is raised on high, We conquer when we die— Rally to victory. ’Neath the flag of a dying God! We tread the path he trod; We run, we fly To glory nigh. Behold our ardor rise, Our hearts are in the skies, Arise, arise! The scaffold mount—and God’s the victory.”
198 Blue is the color of knowledge.
199 Der liebe Gott, the received formula in Germany, as the “good God,” le bon Dieu, in French, and Almighty God in English.
200 Exod. xv. 11.
201 Matt. vi. 33.
202 Eccl. xx. 9.
203 Lam. iii. 31.
204 Is. xxix. 18.
205 Matt. v. 10.
206 Rom. xi. 33.
207 Ps. xlii. 1.
208 Baruch v. 6.
209 The Arno, Chiana, and Mugnone.
210 London Times, Feb. 3.
211 As was shown in THE CATHOLIC WORLD last month, excommunication is not only recognized by the law in the case of Protestant excommunicators, but has been sanctioned and confirmed by law, on an actual case being brought into court. Of course we shall be met by the objection that the formal declaration of Papal Infallibility has altered the connection between the Catholic Church and the state. Unfortunately for this easy method of explaining away difficult matters, excommunication has not been a whit altered in force, relation, or form from the days of the Apostles to Pius IX.
212 In proof of which read the declaration of Count Andrássy to the Austrian Parliament that, notwithstanding the friendly assurances with which the three emperors parted at the breaking up of their recent conference at Berlin, he could not guarantee peace even up to Christmas. Observe also the significant rearming of all the great European powers and the recent order from Berlin of 3,000,000 rifles of a new pattern.
213 Witness Bavaria’s remonstrance, which was disregarded, at the sudden imposition of the severe military code of Prussian service without allowing it time to recover. As a more recent comment on that, read the very able and interesting letters which appeared in the New York Herald, Nov. 22, on the European situation, a short extract from which, of a Bavarian view on German unity, we give: “Germany accepts it, because it in some respects realizes the German dream of unity. That, of course, every German wants. But no one wants a united despotism, a military code that turns the whole nation into a camp, and takes half a million able‐bodied men away from the farms and industrious callings. We want a Germany for the good of the fatherland, not for the glory of a little upstart Prussian prince whose name is not much older than the Bonapartes’ crown.”
214 “Desine fata deûm flecti sperare precando.”—Virg. Æn. vi. 376.
215 In Germany.
216 “Divorce Legislation in Connecticut,” and “The Indissolubility of Christian Marriage.”
217 For this and the following references, see Rohrbacher’s Histoire Universelle de l’Eglise Catholique. This work is so comprehensive, and so full of the most learned and accurate researches, that we have relied entirely upon its lengthened narratives for the facts mentioned in this article. The work is excessively voluminous (28 vols 8vo), and to verify personally each separate reference given by the author would be almost impossible, besides being a very tedious undertaking. We have preferred, therefore, to rely upon the single authority of one who is confessedly the best modern church historian.
218 History of the Reformation.
219 E. Dally.
220 “It is an error to suppose that the Catholic faith limits the existence of man to about six thousand years. The church has never decided this delicate question, and this abstention is full of wisdom. Nothing positive, in fact, has been revealed to us on this point. The various chronological systems are the work of man; they rest on bases often hypothetical. Nevertheless, we cannot admit even the possibility of the arbitrary theories of several distinguished geologists who date the appearance of man on the earth twenty and even thirty millions of years back. Good‐sense alone should incline one to be moderate on this point.”—Mgr. Meignan, Le Monde et l’Homme primitif, chap. vi.
221 L’Homme pendant les Ages de la Pierre dans les Environs de Dinant‐ sur‐Meuse. 2e édition. Bruxelles: Muquardt. 1872.
222 This is true, at most, of the formations previous to the quaternary deposits; in the latter, the synchronism of the fauna becomes wholly uncertain, and only founds the emigration or disappearance of certain species of animals on inductions that have a hypothetical basis. As to their emigration, we have had too many instances in the historic period, as M. Chabas justly observes, to make us regard that necessarily the index of vast chronological intervals. Where are the elephants that abounded in Mauretania Tingitana, according to Solinus’ Polyhistor; the hippopotami of Lower Egypt, the boas of Calabria, the lions, aurochs, and bears of Macedonia, the beaver, etc.? In the XVIIth century of our era, the stag, roebuck, wild boar, wolf, and bear still formed a part of the fauna of the Cevennes. The reindeer lived in the Black Forest in the time of Cæsar, who describes this animal from hearsay, but characterizes it sufficiently by the peculiarity of the male and female having the same kind of horns. M. Lartet is also inclined to the opinion that the age of the reindeer is perhaps not so ancient as was once supposed. The mammoth is no longer found alive, but has been discovered with its flesh and skin still remaining, embedded in ice, and affording nourishment to dogs and other animals. Struck with this preservation, M. d’Orbigny expresses a doubt as to the antiquity of the mammoth. He thinks it may have existed five or six thousand years ago, and believes it may still live in some unexplored locality. At least, it lived in America till a comparatively recent period. Its remains, and those of the mastodon, have been found in the auriferous deposits of California, among remarkable traces of human labor. At the Congress of Copenhagen, M. Schaffhausen expressed the opinion that the lost species should rather be regarded of a more recent date than that the antiquity of man should be extended to hundreds of thousands of years. As to the wretchedness and inferiority evident from the primitive pursuits of man and the conformity of his organs, the enemies of Christianity triumph over the discovery. We believe with Mgr. Meignan that “a proof of the authenticity of the Bible has been lightly transformed into an objection against it. The revolt and disobedience of man explain the wretched state in which he at first lived; and the hardships he underwent during the period he inhabited caverns and lacustrine dwellings prove to all who believe in the goodness of God that a great crime must have armed His justice.”
223 “In the year of the Nativity of our Lord 710, the sixth day of the month of December, under the reign of Eudes, most pious King of the French, during the ravages of the perfidious Saracen nation, the body of the most dear and venerable Marie Madeleine was secretly and by night transferred from its alabaster sepulchre into the present one, which is of marble, and whence the body of Sidonius has been withdrawn, in order that the other may be better concealed and be beyond the reach of the above‐named perfidious nation.”
224 Seven years later, when the head was taken to Rome by Charles, Boniface VIII. sent to S. John of Lateran for a relic which had long been venerated there as the maxillar bone of Magdalen; on adjusting it to the broken part, it fitted in so exactly as to leave no doubt as to where it had originally been taken from.
225 Shea.
226 See the narrative and map in Shea’s History of the Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi.
227 Pronounced Ac‐o‐ma—the accent on the first syllable.
228 “This way, gentlemen.”
229 Red pepper; chile verde, green pepper.
230 This estimate, which was considered as too high by some of the clergymen present, is given only as conjectural. It is based on the census of 1870, according to which there are in the state, in round numbers, 203,000 persons of foreign parentage at least on one side, of whom 113,000 are foreign‐born. It would seem probable that we might allow out of this number 83,000 foreign‐born and 67,000 native‐born Catholics. It is certain, from other evidence, that the number is over 100,000, and, whatever the correct number may be, nine‐twentieths is very near the proportion of the native‐born to the whole number. The entire population of the state is 537,000. Nearly two‐fifths of the whole are, therefore, of foreign parentage.
231 Eugénie de la Ferronnays.
232 “The Church the Champion of Marriage,” CATHOLIC WORLD, February, 1873.
233 Deut. xxi 16, 17.
234 Gen. xxiv. 39, 57, 58.
235 Numb. xxvii. 8; xxxvi. 3, 8.
236 S. John i. 13.
237 Jeremy Taylor’s “On the Marriage Ring,” besides many modern ones, especially by the Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix, New York.
238 Matt. vii. 21.
239 Matt. xxii. 29, 30; Mark xii. 24, 25.
240 Considérations sur la France, chapter x. et alibi passim.
241 M. de Maistre is sometimes quoted as taking a different view; for example, in an article in the Correspondant for Nov. 10, Joseph de Maistre declared revolution an epoch and not an event. But this by no means signifies that the illustrious publicist meant that revolution was about to prevail. He says: “The French Revolution is an important epoch, and its manifold consequences will be felt far beyond the time of its outbreak and the limits of its original sphere.... If there is not a moral revolution throughout Europe, if the religious spirit is not strengthened in this part of the world, the bonds of society will dissolve.” The clergy of France, in particular, are called to “the essential work” of reacting against the influence of the Goddess of Reason. See Considérations sur la France, chap. ii.
242 Etudes sur l’Italie contemporaine, and Notes d’un Voyageur. Première Etude, June, 1871; Seconde Etude, July, 1872. Paris: Amyot.
243 Première Etude, p. 3.
244 “Except the Univers, which has a correspondent at Rome, and keeps up constant communications with that city in other ways, and, on the other side, the Journal des Débats, which is supplied with information by the Italian government, and, as we have been assured, receives a handsome subsidy for the patronage accorded, most of the French papers have no other source of supplying their readers with news than the conjectures, more or less unreliable, of the Havas agency, a succursale, as to what concerns Italy, of the Stefani agency at Florence. It is supposed, however, that nothing is easier than to obtain information about a country at our very doors.”—M. Ed. Dulaurier, member of the Institute, “Impressions et Souvenirs de Rome,” in the Gazette du Languedoc for Sept. 19. I take the liberty of recommending to M. Dulaurier, and all who wish to know the state of affairs in Italy, the valuable Correspondance de Genève. The Journal of Florence, recently combined with the Cattolica of Rome, affords instructive reading. Besides information peculiar to itself, this paper reproduces in each number interesting extracts from various Italian journals.
245 “The French, under Napoleon I., introduced the idea of centralization into Italy and the code of the Revolution which the restored princes had the want of foresight to retain. The old municipalities were destroyed, and never recovered their former independence even in the States of the Church. Piedmont, of all the states of the Peninsula, was the longest under the poisonous influence of foreign ideas. Hence it became the centre of the Revolution.”—Quel est l’Avenir de l’Europe? pages 40‐41. Geneva: Grosset, 1871. The author of this remarkable work is of the school of the Count de Maistre, and worthy of his master.
246 Première Etude, pp. 6, 12, 13, 15; Seconde Etude, pp. 4, 10, 11.
247 Première Etude, p. 10.
248 Journal d’un Diplomate en Italie.—See the Etudes for July, 1872.
249 Journal d’un Diplomate en Italie, pp. 305, 306.
250 Journal d’un Diplomate en Italie, pp. 116, 117.
251 Les Diplomates Français sous Napoléon III., by B. d’Agreval. Paris: Dentu. 1872. A work we recommend to all publicists who wish to add to their knowledge.
252 Première Etude, p. 10.
253 Première Etude, pp. 5, 10, 11; Seconde Etude, p. 4.
254 Première Etude, p. 7.
255 The minister has laid before the Parliament the account of the expense of opening the breach in the walls of Rome. This crime cost nearly forty‐eight millions.
256 Première Etude, p. 11; Seconde Etude, p. 12.
257 Cf. Première Etude, p. 10.
258 See a forcible and eloquent article in the Civiltà Cattolica on the Caresses de la Providence. Sér. viii. vol. v., No. 519, Feb., 1872.
259 (Première Etude, pp. 7, 8, 27; Seconde Etude, pp. 11, 12.) “The invaders take the stand of masters, but the people have not joined them. They remain isolated in their midst in the position of a military and administrative colony, about as favorably regarded and received as the Prussians in those departments of our country where they are still encamped. The Romans, it cannot be denied, love their Pope.”—M. Ed. Dulaurier, loc. cit.
260 Union, Nov. 26.
261 “We continue to be regarded at Berlin with the most favorable dispositions, as the demonstrations of which our princes were the object prove.”—Speech of M. Visconti‐Venosta in the Chamber of Deputies, Nov. 27, 1872.
262 Seconde Etude, p. 13.
263 Address, April 28, 1872.
264 Correspondance Diplomatique in the year 1815.
265 Première Etude, p. 17; Seconde Etude, pp. 4, 14, 15, 16, 17.
266 Première Etude, pp. 25, 26; Seconde Etude, pp. 15, 16, 26.
267 See, in the Etudes for Oct., 1871, the article by Fr. Ch. Clair, who, in an address to the government of M. Thiers, carries on a vigorous argument ad hominem respecting the “necessary liberties” of the Pope.
268 P. Toulement, La Providence et les Chàtiments de la France, ch. xvii.
269 Première Etude, pp. 24, 25, 26: Seconde Etude, pp. 17, 22, 34.
270 Journal d’un Diplomate en Italie, pp. 17, 18.
271 This alludes to the indication of superhuman power by the budding horns which Michael Angelo has represented upon the head of Moses, adopting the Jewish symbol of strength so frequent in Scripture.
272 Ecclus. xlviii. II.
273 So soon accepted!
274 “I, the undersigned, parish priest of the most holy Constantinian Basilica of the Twelve Apostles of Rome, certify that in Register XII. of the dead, letter N, page 283, is to be found the deed of which the following is the copy, word for word.
“The twenty‐second of December, eighteen hundred and sixty‐six, Mademoiselle Claire‐Françoise‐Amélie Lautard, of Marseilles, daughter of M. Jean Baptiste Lautard, a most pious virgin, while offering last Sunday her life to God for the Holy Father, Rome, and the church, was seized on the spot by illness, and having received most piously the sacraments of the church, in the full possession of her faculties, in prayer, and surrounded by several priests and virgins, gave up her soul to Jesus Christ, her spouse, with the greatest serenity, Wednesday the 19th, at half‐past nine in the morning, in the house Rue Ripresa‐dei‐Barberi 175, at the age of fifty‐nine years. The following day, the 20th, her body was carried, after the completuum, accompanied by a great number of religious, to this basilica, and was here exposed during the morning after the manner of nobles, the office of the dead and a solemn Mass being performed; in the afternoon it was conveyed to the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Cœli, and there interred in the tomb of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition.
“Given at Rome,” etc.
275 This mistake is awing to a wrong meaning given to a word in the Book of Joshua in the Septuagint; where the word tsorim is translated knife of stone, when it also means a sharp knife; tsor only means stone in the sense of rock or block.
276 Simonin, La Vie Souterraine.
277 Ancient name of the Prussians.—Trans.
278 S. Jerome’s Epist. 44, 45.
279 Hist. of Decline and Fall of Rom. Emp., vol. iv. ch. ix. p. 262, 1st ed.
280 Germania, i. 5.
281 “The Study of Sociology,” by H. Spencer, in the May No. of The Contemporary Review, 1872.
282 See Mrs. Hope’s Conversion of the Teutonic Race, ch. i.
283 Conv. of Teut. Race, p. 20.
284 Apollin., Paneg. Major.
285 Germania, iii.
286 Suet., in Oct. xxiii.
287 I. 61.
288 Plutarch, Vita Marii.
289 S. Jer. adv. Jovin. ii.