Anglican Orders. II…

Anglican Orders. II

The Validity Of The Edwardine Rite.

Before entering upon the theology of the question, we must meet an initial objection of Anglicans to our attempting to criticise the Edwardine rite. They insist that the question has been settled long ago, and in their favor, by no less an authority than the Holy See and its legate, Cardinal Pole. The cardinal, they say, in accordance with instructions from Rome, admitted all the schismatical bishops and clergy, who were not irreconcilables, in the orders they had received in schism, whether according to the Pontifical or according to the Edwardine rite. Great stress has been laid upon this by Anglican controversialists from Bramhall down to Mr. Haddan; and certainly, if it be a true statement of the case, the value of the objection can scarcely be overrated. Its truth must be decided by an appeal to the Papal briefs and to the official acts of the legate.

The bull of March 8, 1553‐4, granting full legatine faculties to Pole, authorizes him to deal with two classes of the bishops and clergy—viz., of the clergy, those who have not received orders at all, and those who have received them ill; that is to say, orders null and orders irregular (ordines quos nunquam, aut male susceperunt). The bishops, in like manner, who have received cathedral churches from Henry or Edward are divided into those on whom “the gift of consecration has been heretofore conferred,” and “those on whom it is not yet conferred” (munere consecrationis eis hactenus impenso vel si illud eis nondum impensum exstiterit). The cases in which the ordination or consecration had been validly though irregularly conferred are also described as “received from heretical or schismatical bishops, or in other respects unduly” (quod iis ab episcopis hæreticis et schismaticis aut alias minus rite et non servatâ formâ ecclesiæ consuetâ impensum fuit). By these last words power is given “to consider cases in which the ancient form of the sacrament had not been observed, and, if the form used was sufficient for validity, to admit it as such, and to admit a person ordained in such a manner to exercise the orders so received.”

Canon Estcourt shows that the “minus rite” cannot be intended to designate, as Mr. Haddan and others have maintained, the Edwardine orders. He appeals to the dispensations granted to no less than eight bishops, all ordained according to the Pontifical in Henry VIII.’s time, wherein their orders are referred to as received “ab episcopis hæreticis et schismaticis aut alias minus rite.”

In the faculties granted by Pole to his bishops for the absolution and rehabilitation of priests, he carefully explains their limitation to cases in which “the form and intention of the church have been preserved.” Thus it is clear “that though the cardinal had power to recognize ordinations in which some departure had been made from the accustomed form, yet that, on examination, he found no other form in use which could be admitted by the church as valid.” In the same faculties he permits the ordination, if they are otherwise fit, of those whose orders are “null.” He describes them as persons holding benefices without being ordained.

In 1554, Bonner, Bishop of Bath and Wells, gave a commission to his vicar‐ general “to deal with married laics who, in pretence and under color of priestly orders, had rashly and unlawfully mingled themselves in ecclesiastical rights, and had obtained de facto parochial churches with cure of souls and ecclesiastical dignities, against the sacred sanctions of the canons and ecclesiastical rights, and to deprive and remove them from the said churches and dignities.” It is impossible to conjecture who else these unordained beneficiaries can be, if they are not the Edwardine clergy.

Anglicans, on the other hand, have made a great deal of a certain testimonial letter granted by Bonner to Scory, which speaks of the latter’s sin and repentance, and of his subsequent rehabilitation by Bonner, and restoration to the public exercise of the ecclesiastical ministry within the diocese of London. As Scory is spoken of as “our confrère, lately Bishop of Chichester,” it is urged that the ministry to the exercise of which he was restored must have been that of a bishop. Canon Estcourt, after pointing out certain grounds for suspecting the authenticity of this letter, remarks that Bonner’s faculties only extended to the case of priests, “so that Scory must have acknowledged the nullity of his consecration, in order to enable Bonner to deal with him at all”; and, after all, “the letter does no more than enable him to celebrate Mass in churches within the diocese of London”—in fact, to exercise that office, and that office only, which he had received “servatâ formâ et intentione ecclesiæ.” So much for the Holy See’s approval of the Edwardine orders.

Anglicans have tried to make out a charge of inconsistency against the Holy See, on the ground that it did not recognize the episcopate of Ridley, Latimer, and Ferrer—who were all three supposed to have been consecrated according to the Roman Pontifical—but degraded them from the priesthood and inferior orders only. Canon Estcourt admits that Ferrer was treated merely as a priest, but he shows that his consecration had been a medley rite, in which the order of the Pontifical was not followed. As to Latimer, he remarks that there is no pretence for saying that he was not degraded from the episcopate; and that, with regard to Ridley, the great weight of authority makes for his having been degraded from the episcopate. Cardinal Pole, in his commission, ordered that both Ridley and Latimer should be degraded “from their promotion and dignity of bishops, priests, and all other ecclesiastical orders.” The Bishop of Lincoln, in his exhortation to Ridley, says: “You were made a bishop according to our laws.” Heylin says that they were both degraded from the episcopate. The only authority for the contrary opinion is Foxe, who makes the acting commissioner Brookes, Bishop of Gloucester, conclude an address to Ridley thus: “We take you for no bishop, and therefore we will the sooner have done with you.” Foxe then proceeds to describe the actual ceremony as a degradation from the priesthood. Canon Estcourt’s reviewer in the Dublin Review of July, 1873, maintains that Foxe was right. The reviewer thinks that Ridley and Latimer were not degraded from the episcopate, because the status episcopalis was not recognized in those who, though validly consecrated, had not received the Papal confirmation. Upon this we remark, 1st, that the ceremonies of degradation came into use when it was a very common opinion in the church that degradation destroyed the potestas ordinis. 2. That the form of degradation, in so many words, expresses the taking away the potestas ordinis—“amovemus a te,” “tollemus tibi,” “potestatem offerendi,” “potestatem consecrandi”—and this in contradistinction to another form of perpetual suspension—“ab executione potestatis.” The ceremony aims at effecting the destruction of orders, so far as this is possible. It may be called a “destruction of orders,” in the same sense that mortal sin is called the crucifixion of Christ anew. Indeed, in one place, the clause, “quantum in nobis est,” is introduced. 3. Degradation does not depend upon previous confirmation; for Innocent II. (1139) thus deals with those who had been consecrated bishops by the antipope Peter Leo, who therefore assuredly had never been confirmed or acknowledged in any way by the pope. After exclaiming, “Quoscunque exaltaverat degradamus,” etc., etc., “he violently wrested their pastoral staffs from their hands, and ignominiously tore from their shoulders the pontifical palls in which their high dignity resides. Their rings, too, which express their espousals with the church, showing them no mercy, he drew off.”(140) If the Bishop of Gloucester really acted as Foxe describes, he did so on his own responsibility, and in the teeth of ecclesiastical precedent.

Perhaps the most important and interesting portion of Canon Estcourt’s book is that in which he discusses the theological value of the Edwardine form. It is not merely of controversial importance, but is really calculated to throw light upon the theology of orders, which, as a Catholic contemporary well observes, is still in course of formation.

Canon Estcourt, following Benedict XIV., De Syn. Dioc., lib. viii. cap. 10, maintains, as the more probable opinion, 1, that, in the case of the priesthood, the second imposition of hands, with the prayer for the infusion “of the virtue of the sacerdotal grace,” is all that is really necessary for validity; although, in practice, we of the West must ordain again sub conditione, if the tradition of the instruments has been omitted. 2. That in the case of priests, the third imposition of hands, with the words, “Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins thou dost remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose sins thou retainest, they are retained,” is not essential, and, if omitted, is to be supplied without repeating the rest. 3. That as to the episcopate, the “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” with the imposition of hands, is all that is essential; and, finally, he allows, in deference to the Holy Office (vide infra), that the form—i.e., the prayer immediately accompanying the imposition of hands—need not express the specific character or work of the order conferred, as, for instance, the Holy Sacrifice in the ordination of a priest.

Consistently with these principles, Canon Estcourt admits that, so far as words go, “Receive the Holy Ghost” is a sufficient form both for the episcopate and the priesthood. As regards the episcopate, this has been long a common opinion. As regards the priesthood, the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, in 1704, decided that certain Abyssinians had been validly ordained priests by imposition of hands and the words, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.” From this it follows that the Anglican forms for ordaining priests and bishops are, so far as words go, sufficient. They are as follows, from 1549 to 1662, for the priesthood: “Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained; and be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God and of his holy sacraments, in the name of the Father, etc.” For the episcopate: “Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is in thee by imposition of hands; for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and soberness.” In 1662, certain changes were introduced by the High Church party. In the form for the priesthood, after the words “Holy Ghost” was added, “for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.” For the form of the episcopate was substituted, “Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a bishop in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands, in the name of the Father, etc.”

Of course the value of Anglican orders “secundum formam” must depend upon the value of the form as it originally stood. The subsequent alterations are important as marking, 1st, the dissatisfaction of the High Church party with the forms upon which their orders depended; 2d, the low theological standard which satisfied them, after all.

So far as the material words of the Edwardine forms go, they are sufficient—i.e., they are words capable of being used in a sense in which they would be sufficient—but the words are ambiguous. The form of ordination, although it need not express, must signify or mean, the essential idea of the order. Where it does not carry its meaning on the face of it, we must look for it in the rite and liturgy of which it forms a part. This is not an appeal to the mere subjective intention of the minister, but to the objective meaning of the words. Upon this principle we must, in order to get at the value of the Anglican forms, discover, 1st, by an examination of the various admittedly valid rites of ordination, what such words should mean; 2d, by an examination of the Anglican rite, what these words, in the position which they occupy in that rite, do or do not mean.

Canon Estcourt examines the numerous rites which the Roman Church acknowledges to be valid, whether fallen out of use, and only to be found in the pages of ancient sacramentaries, or still living and operative, in East or West, among Catholics or among those who have separated from Catholic unity. He finds three qualities in which they all unite: 1st, a recognition of the divine vocation or election of the ordained; 2d, a recognition of the “virtus sacramentalis” of orders, as something quite distinct from and beyond the grace which is also given to the ordained to acquit himself worthily in the duties of his calling; 3d, a constant recognition of, and appeal to, the main scope and duty of orders—the offering of the Holy Sacrifice.

Canon Estcourt next proceeds to examine the Anglican liturgy and ordinal with special reference to these three points: 1. The divine election. 2. The sacramental virtue. 3. The Holy Sacrifice. And he finds that both the liturgy and the ordinal are the result of a deliberate manipulation of the ancient Catholic ritual previously in use, in order to the exclusion of these three points, which contain the essential idea of holy orders.

Ordination in the Anglical ritual no longer appeals to a divine election, of which it is the expression and the fulfilment. It is merely the public expression of the approval of the authorities of church and state. For the “virtus sacramentalis” it has substituted a mere grâce d’état. From this it only naturally follows that episcopal ordination cannot be of indispensable necessity, or more than a matter of regulation and propriety which, in an emergency, may be abrogated. This is the express teaching of many of the early Anglican reformers. Even when engaged in defending their episcopal succession, they are careful to say that they do not regard it as indispensable. Hooker, who is in many respects so much more orthodox than his predecessors and contemporaries, allows “that there may be sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination to be made without a bishop.”

Canon Estcourt prints considerable portions of the Anglican ordinal and liturgy in parallel columns, with the corresponding text of the Sarum and Exeter pontificals and missals. We see with what an unerring sacrilegious instinct everything bearing upon the Holy Sacrifice, and even upon the Real Presence, is either cut out or perverted.

As regards the Second Book of 1552, it is clear that it was the work of sacramentarians who disbelieved in the Real Presence in any sense, and was undertaken for the express purpose of purging the ritual of what previous handling had still allowed it to retain of the impress of that Presence. Mr. Cardwell, in his comparison of the “Two Books of Edward VI.,” pref. xxvii., admits that Cox and Taylor, who were probably the working members of the commission, appear to have looked upon the oblation of the Eucharist as consisting merely of “prayer, thanksgiving, and the remembrance of our Saviour’s passion.” Of Cranmer, the most influential member of the commission, we are told that “about a year after the publication of King Edward’s First Book, Archbishop Cranmer abandoned his belief in the Real Presence—a change which seems to have been very acceptable to the young king and his favorites.”(141) In the revision of 1662, an apparent attempt was made to attain to the expression of a higher doctrine, both as regards orders and the Holy Eucharist; but even if the expressions introduced were in themselves adequate, as Canon Estcourt fairly shows they were not, of what avail could have been so tardy a restoration? But if we examine these restorations and emendations, we can hardly avoid coming to the conclusion that they were not really dictated by any conception of, or aspiration after, a higher doctrine, but were the genuine fruits of a conservative reaction fired by controversial pique. The First Book substituted for the Catholic faith a hazy Lutheranism; the Second Book for this again a hazy sacramentarianism; and the revision of 1662, a hazy compound of the two, with the addition of a Catholic phrase or so in order to support claims to a wider sweep of church authority. Thus the revisers of 1662 introduced the words “priest” and “bishop” into the ordination form, whilst doing absolutely nothing toward restoring the idea of sacrifice to the liturgy.

But, it may be urged, there is one portion of the Anglican form for making priests which expresses the Catholic doctrine of priestly virtue—the power of forgiving sins. Unfortunately for Anglicans, whatever force may lie in this expression—and all precedents are against its being regarded as a sufficient form—is neutralized by the Lutheran new form of absolution which had been introduced in addition to the two Catholic forms. At best, one is left in doubt whether the mighty words have not shrivelled into a Lutheran sense, in which sins are not forgiven, but the forgiveness of sin is merely declared.

It is impossible to do justice in a review to the exhaustive completeness of Canon Estcourt’s treatment of this portion of his subject. His conspectus of the Catholic missals and the different editions of the Book of Common Prayer in parallel columns enables us, as it were, to detect the pulsations of each several heresy, and to appreciate its share in what may be called the passion of the Catholic liturgy in England. A quotation from each of his parallels may serve as examples of, 1st, the action of the Lutheran First Book upon the missal; 2d, the Zuinglian Second Book upon the First Book; 3d, the compromise of 1662.

The Sarum Missal.

We thy servants, and likewise thy holy people, do offer to thy excellent Majesty, of thy gifts and bounties, a pure victim, a holy victim, the holy bread of eternal life, and the chalice of everlasting salvation.

The Book Of Common Prayer, 1549.

We, thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before thy divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, the memorial which thy Son hath willed us to make.

1549.

He hath left us in those holy mysteries, as a public pledge of his love, and a continual remembrance of the same, his own blessed body and precious blood for us to feed upon spiritually, to our great and endless comfort.

1552, Untouched In 1662.

He hath instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love, and for a continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless comfort.

The Sarum Missal.

“The body of our Lord Jesus Christ [1549: which was given for thee] preserve thy body and thy soul unto everlasting life.”

1552.

“Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart with thanksgiving.”

(This form was substituted for that of 1549, in 1552, and was appended to it in 1662.)

Canon Estcourt’s argument against the validity of Anglican orders is no argument from lack of sufficient intention on the part of Anglicans. Neither do we think that such an argument could be maintained, in accordance with the commonly‐accepted principles of theology. If it is a sufficient intention for valid baptism to intend to administer the form of Christian initiation, it is sufficient, in the case of orders, to intend to administer the form of Christian ordination, although the ceremony in either case may be regarded as merely an external form without any intrinsic value. It is only as a witness to the sense of the form that the intention of Anglicans is brought into court; and it is not the intention with which they ordain at which we demur, but the intention with which they have altered the ordination service and liturgy—i.e., the form of ordination and its context. Had these alterations been merely the result of an antiquarian leaning towards a more primitive though less perfect utterance of the same truth, or of a puritanic craving after simplicity, the irreverence would have been of the extremest kind, but still there would have been no grounds for disputing the orthodox sense, and so the validity of the form. But, on the contrary, the very object of the alterations, as Canon Estcourt has shown, was the elimination of the orthodox doctrines of priesthood and sacrifice, and therefore of the significance upon which the validity of the form depends.

The doubts which should beset the minds of honest Anglicans on the subject of their orders, if they have the least scruple as to the orthodoxy of their position, are simply overwhelming. If they turn to the early church, they find that there are at least as many precedents and authorities for regarding as null the ordinations of heretics and schismatics as for accepting them. Morinus’ opinion is that such ordinations are invalid, except where the church has thought fit to dispense with the impediment; and Morinus is a genuine student of antiquity, and no mere controversialist. True it is Anglicans may appeal to what is undeniably the more common doctrine in the Roman Church—viz., that such ordinations are valid—but then she unflinchingly condemns Anglicans, whereas she has never condemned Morinus. It is nothing to the purpose to say that the practice of the church prevents her using Morinus’ opinion against Anglicans—which is begging the question against Morinus; the point is, Can Anglicans escape using it against themselves? Again, when they direct their attention to the special facts of their own history, their view is to the last degree discouraging. Their latest antagonist, Canon Estcourt, has notoriously given up to them every point to which they could make the remotest claim, and has broken and thrown away every weapon to which the least exception could be taken; and yet it has come to this: that their only title to orders is a succession probably broken by the non‐ consecration of Barlow, and an ambiguous form which, when read in the light of their mutilated ordinal and liturgy, is unlike any that has been accepted as even probably adequate either by East or West.

Even if Anglicans could find their identical form, as far as words go, in approved ordinals, they could not argue from this the sufficiency of their own form. Mutilation and involution, although they contract within the same span, can never be identical. You might as well pretend that there is no difference between a stamen from which you have plucked the leaves and an undeveloped bud.

It is true that originally different portions of the church were allowed, in regard to orders, to give expression to the same truth in various forms with various degrees of explicitness; but this can afford no precedent to an individual church for mutilating a common form in order to deny a common truth.

The Abyssinian Decision.

We cannot conclude our review without noticing an important criticism made upon our author in the shape of a letter to the Month, November‐ December, 1873, by the Rev. F. Jones, S.J. F. Jones, whilst expressing his thorough concurrence with Canon Estcourt in every other particular, thinks that he has attached an undue force to the decision of the holy office upon Abyssinian orders.

Canon Estcourt has understood the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, in their decree in 1704, to have ruled that the form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” understood in the sense of the Abyssinian liturgical books, is valid for the priesthood, although, in the particular case, no further expression is given to this sense, at least no expression within the limits of the form strictly so called—i.e., the verbal formula synchronous with the matter. The decree which he so understands is as follows:

Question: “The ordainer passed hurriedly along a line of deacons, laying his hands upon the head of each, and saying, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum’; are they validly ordained in tal modo e forma, and admissible to the exercise of their orders?” Answer: “The ordination of a priest with the imposition of hands and utterance of the form as in the question is undoubtedly valid.”

F. Jones, whilst allowing that Canon Estcourt’s interpretation is the natural one according to ordinary canons of criticism, insists that the decree, “when interpreted in the light of certain rules which arise out of what is called the stylus curiæ,” asserts, indeed, the sufficiency of the imposition of hands as matter, when used with the form, but does not define the sufficiency of the particular form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.”

The rules in question are as follows: 1. The meaning of the answer depends upon the meaning of the dubium. 2. Nothing but what is directly stated is decided. 3. “If there is anything in the wording of a decision which appears inconsistent with the teaching of an approved body of theologians—such teaching as amounts to a true theological probability—the decision is to be interpreted so as to leave such teaching intact, unless the decision should itself show that it intended to condemn that teaching, and to take away that probability.” 4. Such decisions are formed on the presumption that every point except the one in question is correct, on the maxim, “Standum est pro valore actûs.” 5. When the validity of an ordination is the subject‐matter of a decision, it must be assumed that the decision has been made after an inspection of the ordinal. 6. “It is hardly safe to allege the authority of a decision (I speak merely of a curial decision), particularly when the details of the case are but imperfectly known to us, without having ascertained the sense in which, after its promulgation, it was understood by those who were most competent to measure its importance.” We shall examine these rules when we come to consider the worth of F. Jones’ application of them to the case in hand. But first it will be well to see what effect the elimination of the Abyssinian decision would have upon Canon Estcourt’s controversial position.

Pp. 158‐163. Canon Estcourt considers various objections made by Catholic controversialists to the Anglican form of the priesthood. He is considering the question of the form in its strict sense—viz., that portion of the ordination formulary which is synchronous with the matter, whether this last consist in the tradition of the instruments or in the imposition of hands. One objection urged by Lequien, amongst others, is grounded upon the very common doctrine that the form of priestly ordination must express the principal effect of the sacrament of order by making mention of the priesthood in relation to the sacrifice, which is its principal object. Now, if, as F. Jones suggests was the case, the unmutilated Coptic rite was in use in Abyssinia up to 1704, and the examples given by Ludolf and Monsignor Beb are merely imperfect copies; and if no decision as to the form was given in 1704, then, so far as anything has been shown to the contrary, Lequien’s objection holds good that no approved form for the priesthood fails to make an appeal to the Holy Sacrifice.

And now as regards F. Jones’ rules for interpreting the “stylus curiæ,” and their application to the Abyssinian decision. We have no criticism to make upon Rules 1 and 2. They are sufficiently obvious even to a non‐ expert. Rule 3 cannot, we think, be admitted without qualification. It is no doubt an important principle that the presumption is in favor of an interpretation which leaves intact a probable opinion, supposing that this is not the formal subject of the decision; but we must not do violence to the natural sense of words, and it is quite possible that such a decision might completely evacuate the probability of an opinion of which it took no direct cognizance whatever. The Council of Florence did not directly intend to condemn the opinion requiring as absolutely necessary the tradition of the instruments, yet effectively it has done so. As to Rule 4, “Standum est pro valore actûs,” its application to the case before us must depend upon whether the course indicated is equivalent to the introduction of a new “actus.” To ask, as the dubium does, concerning the validity of “tal modo e forma,” implies that this is given in its integrity. In the Abyssinian case, it was a question whether certain persons were to be allowed to say Mass and perform other priestly functions, and the Sacred Congregation allowed them. As to Rule 5, no doubt an inspection of the ordinals is to be presumed; but here the very contention of the questioner is that the ordinal had not been followed. Moreover, there was ample evidence, in the sacred books quoted by Ludolf and Monsignor Beb, accessible to the Sacred Congregation, and which, according to F. Jones’ principle, we may assume it had before it, that in Abyssinian hands the Coptic ritual had been seriously tampered with. The translation from the Abyssinian, as given by the above‐named writers, is certainly not an imperfect version of the Coptic, but a deliberate compilation from the Coptic form and that of the apostolic constitutions, which would hardly have been made except for ritual purposes.

If we may accept the earliest and most precise evidence as to actual practice in Abyssinia—that of the missionary Francis Alvarez (1520), the one prayer used by the Abuna, with the imposition of hands, is not the form “Respice,” but, in the Coptic tongue, the prayer “Divina gratia quæ infirma sanat.”(142) But these words, as Canon Estcourt points out, p. 181, “in the Coptic and Jacobite rites, are said by the archdeacon or one of the assisting bishops. In the Nestorian and ancient Greek, they are said by the bishop without imposing his hands; and only in the modern Greek, the Maronite, and the Armenian are they united with the imposition of hands.” This looks as if the Abyssinian ritual was a complete medley.

This view is borne out by F. Godigno, S.J. (De Abyssin. Rebus, p. 224), who tells us that the Jesuit Patriarch of Abyssinia, Oviedo, as long as he lived in Æthiopia, always doubted very much, and with good reason, if the Abyssinian priests had been duly and lawfully ordained, inasmuch as the forms of consecration used by the Abuna were so uncertain that they seemed to have been corrupted. On which account, in those matters which belong to orders, and which require in the minister a real character, he never could persuade himself to use their offices, lest haply the sacraments should be rendered void.

F. Jones thinks that Assemani would certainly have noticed these corruptions, had they existed, in his Controversia Coptica, composed for the information of Propaganda in 1731. But Assemani was not called upon to consider the corruptions of Abyssinia; for, as he tells us in his preface, the occasion of his writing was the conversion of two Egyptian monks of the Alexandrian Church, of whose reordination there was question.

As to Rule 6, obviously nothing can be more important than the estimate of a decision expressed by contemporary theologians; but it is very easy to misinterpret their silence. In his defence of the Coptic rite, urges F. Jones, Assemani ought to have quoted the authorization of a form which à fortiori authorized the Coptic. We reply that Assemani had no lack of far more obvious and splendid instances of the recognition of the Coptic rite; that he had no need of such indirect support. The examination of the Abyssinian monk Tecla Maria, in 1594, sufficiently shows that it was impossible to judge of Abyssinian ordinations by the Coptic rite. Assemani himself acknowledges, p. 227, that either Tecla Maria’s memory failed him, or his ordainers must have been “poco pratici del rito Coptico o l’avessero in qualche parte alterato.” F. Godigno (l. c.) says that the reason of Tecla Maria’s reordination was the corruption of the rite. On the other hand, it is clearly a great exaggeration to say that the missionaries made nothing of Abyssinian orders, and that the motive of reordination was the non‐tradition of the instruments. Of John Bermudes, the first of the Jesuit patriarchs, Ludolf (pars. ii. p. 473) tells us that he (Bermudes) has recorded in so many words, that he received all the sacred orders, including the episcopate, with right of succession to the patriarchate, from the Abuna Mark, under condition that the pope would confirm it, and that the pope confirmed and ratified all Mark’s acts. Again, the Portuguese De Francia, one of the negotiators for the Jesuits, tells the Abyssinian king that he had been taught that, if he is in danger of death, and cannot get a Catholic priest, he must ask the Abyssinians for communion.(143)

Certainly, this Abyssinian decision has not as yet made much mark in theology. Canon Estcourt is able to mention one work in which it occurs—a certain edition of the theology of Antoine, a Jesuit, and Prefect of Propaganda under Benedict XIV. But then there is a vast technical difference, anyhow, between a decision taking the shape of a practical rule of procedure and a speculative definition. For more than a century after the Council of Florence, its recognition of Greek orders had no perceptible influence upon the language of theologians concerning the matter of the priesthood. It takes time to translate from the language of action into that of speculation; but who can deny that in any fair controversy such action must be discounted.

It remains to be determined whether, everything considered, the decision of the Sacred Office admits of F. Jones’ interpretation; whether the dubium can be understood, as he suggests (p. 456), to turn exclusively upon these two points: the non‐tradition of the instruments and the deviation from the Coptic rite which prescribes that the bishop’s hands should be imposed upon each ordinandus during the whole of the form Respice, instead of during the one phrase, “Repleeum Spiritu Sancto,” which F. Jones thinks the missionaries paraphrased by “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.” Now, we must say that it is hardly probable that in 1704 the missionaries should be seriously exercised about the non‐tradition of the instruments. Neither is it likely that they should have proposed, in the same breath, the two difficulties suggested by F. Jones; for why should deviation from a rite, the substantial validity of which they doubted, be a difficulty? They ask about the validity of a form and a manner of imposing hands, which they describe “talmo do e forma.” There may have been other prayers used in the service from the Coptic ordinal and liturgy, but the dubium excludes them from “tal forma.”

F. Jones’ notion that the “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum” is a mistranslation of the Coptic “Reple eum Spiritu Sancto”—which is not found in the Abyssinian version—is, we think, quite untenable. No distinction was more thoroughly appreciated on both sides than that between an imperative and a precatory form. The Patriarch of the Maronites, in 1572, informs the pope: “In our Pontifical, the orders are conferred without a form by way of prayer.”(144) In 1860, the missionaries inform the Sacred Congregation “that the Monophysites believe the essence of ordination consists in the expiration (insuflazione) the ordainer makes in the act of saying, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.’ ”(145) Amongst the various deviations from the Coptic rite which Assemani notes in the evidence of Tecla Maria, the Abyssinian says of his ordainer, “Insufflavit in faciem meam.” This “insufflatio” almost implies an imperative form, and so far isolates the words from any precatory formularies that may precede and follow them. Most probably this form was obtained from the missionaries with whom the Abyssinians had been so long in intercourse.

Doubtless the Sacred Congregation did not sanction the form “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum” taken by itself simply, but specificated in the sense of the Abyssinian liturgy; but this is exactly Canon Estcourt’s contention against Anglicans.

In spite of F. Jones’ shrewd and interesting observations, we are of opinion that Canon Estcourt’s appreciation of the Abyssinian decision is the true one. At any rate, his interpretation is sufficiently probable to make it most important to show that, even so understood, it cannot sanction Anglican orders.

Postscriptum

Since the above was written, the discussion has been continued in the Month by an answer from Canon Estcourt in January, and an elaborate rejoinder by F. Jones in February. Something of what we have written has been anticipated; but, on the whole, we have thought it better to leave our article as it stands, and content ourselves with appending such further remarks as may seem called for.

F. Jones, in his second letter, insists that Canon Estcourt has mistaken what the missionaries proposed as a solitary deviation from a well‐known and approved rite for the whole form used on the occasion. He proceeds to support his position by italicizing the concluding words of the answer of the Holy Office allowing the missionaries to admit the person so ordained “to the exercise of his orders according to the rite, approved and expurgated, in which he was ordained.” “The Holy Office, then,” he argues, “did not suppose that the Abyssinians were ordained with only the words, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,’ but presumed that some rite, and that an approved rite, had been followed.”

Now, it is quite certain that the schismatical Abuna did not make use of a rite expurgated and approved by the Holy See; therefore the word “rite” must refer to the sacerdotal rite to the exercise of which the person in question was ordained, which rite he might use in its expurgated and approved form; but whether the bare words, Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, were used, or the fuller Abyssinian or Coptic forms, the priest would have been ordained in that rite with a view to the exercise of which he had been ordained.

As to the question whether the Æthiopic liturgy, as distinct from the Coptic, was approved, we cannot admit that a conclusion in the negative can be drawn from the passage F. Jones quotes from the encyclical of Benedict XIV. The pope lays down that the Oriental churches in communion with Rome consist of four rites—Greek, Armenian, Syrian, and Coptic; but he is clearly only giving general heads. The Æthiopic, if approved, might well have been included under the Coptic. The Melchite and Chaldaic liturgies are approved; but in this enumeration they are not distinguished from the Syrian and the Greek, of which they are respectively slight variations. Further on in this encyclical, the pope says that “Greeks, Maronites, Armenians, Copts, and Melchites had been given churches in Rome, in order that they may perform their sacred offices each according to his rite.” We know that the Abyssinians also had a church in Rome, where we may assume that they were allowed the same privilege. The fact that an expurgated edition of the Æthiopic liturgy was brought out in Rome in 1549 goes some way to show that the liturgy was approved.(146) This was the first of the Oriental liturgies published in Rome, and may be found in various editions of the Bibliotheca Patrum (Paris, 1624, tom. vi.), together with the Æthiopic rite of baptism and confirmation. This rite of confirmation affords a curious example of the unprincipled variations of Æthiopic ritual. It is almost the same as the Coptic rite published by Assemani, to which F. Jones refers, but it carefully eliminates the direct form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” wherever it occurs in the Coptic.

We are inclined to believe that the Abuna sometimes ordained in the Coptic, sometimes in the Abyssinian, tongue; but we must confess that the only direct testimony we have met with on this point is in favor of the Coptic. Still, whatever was the language used, there is ample evidence to show that the Abyssinians were in the habit of materially diverging from the Coptic ordinal. To the testimonies of Oviedo and Alvarez, already quoted, we may add that of F. Soller. Referring to F. Bernat’s correspondence, he says that that father discusses “the different rite of ordination and other points of difference between the Copts and Abyssinians.”(147)

We submit that the Holy Office had no grounds for assuming the use of the Coptic, or, indeed, of any specific ritual in the case brought before them.

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On The Wing. A Southern Flight. V

“Les Dieux étaient alors si voisins de la terre Qu’ils y venaient souvent avec ou sans mystère.”(148)

“There is no sense of desolation greater than that produced by the sight of a dismantled palace and a deserted garden.” These were the words with which Don Emidio broke a long and somewhat sad silence which had fallen on our little party the day we went to Portici.

It is a long drive of four miles on the rough pavement of huge slabs common to Naples and its environs. We passed over the bridge where S. Januarius had gone forth with cross and banners, incense and choristers, to meet the torrents of burning lava from Mount Vesuvius, and arrest the destruction of the city by prayer. It made me shudder to think how very near that destruction we had then been. For, of course, if the lava had once gone so far, there was no natural reason why it should not do so again, and even pass on further still. That bridge is now hardly outside the town. Indeed, town succeeds town, and the whole way from Naples to Portici is one long street, chiefly consisting of villas and handsome palaces, now sadly neglected, but probably still containing many treasures, and all with more or less of garden ground attached.

Portici is a royal palace; but for years none of the royal family have resided there, and it is used chiefly for public offices. It is sad to see these magnificent buildings left nearly empty; and we can only wonder at the extraordinary wealth of the past when we reflect that Portici is one only of many other beautiful royal residences which are no longer kept up. Even Caserta, which is said to be the largest palace in Europe, is all but deserted. Don Emidio was telling us an anecdote in connection with it. Just before the revolution of 1860 the palace had been put in order, partially refurnished, and redecorated, for the reception of Francis II. and his bride, the ex‐King and Queen of Naples.

Amongst other valuable ornaments, in one room the walls had hangings attached with massive gold fleurs‐de‐lis. When the revolution broke out, a Neapolitan duke, one of the very few of the really noble families who turned traitor to their king, was appointed to adapt and readjust the palace for the usurper. The whole matter was put into his hands, in perfect confidence, no doubt, that he would see it properly carried out. For some time the palace was closed to the public. When again it was opened on certain days, and those who had known it before saw it again, they observed that all the gold fleurs‐de‐lis had disappeared. Of course the fact provoked enquiry; but no account of them was ever rendered, and all researches proved fruitless. No one doubted but that they had been “annexed” by the liberal aristocrat, but, equally, no one dared call him to task. For as annexation on a large scale was the order of the day, it did not answer to look too closely into minor examples of the same. Nevertheless, the story got whispered abroad, and his reputation, in consequence, was far less golden than the missing fleurs‐de‐lis.

One day the duke was standing at a window in his own palace overlooking the courtyard, when a poor artisan, who had already sent in his bill more than once, came to request payment. The duke, who thought, or pretended to think, the charges in the bill were exorbitant, began to upbraid and scold the man from the window. At the same moment the wife of one of the men‐ servants of the establishment was crossing the yard. The duke called to her, exclaiming, “It is a downright theft. But these artisans are all thieves, are they not, Donna Rafaele?”

“Your excellency is a better judge of that than I am,” was the reply, “since the greater ought to know the lesser.”

“I wonder how the duke took it?” said I.

Don Emidio gave me a knowing look, and shook his right hand under his left elbow. We all laughed; but no description can convey the inimitable drollery of Neapolitan pantomime. It is a thousand times more eloquent than words. What expression, such as “to make yourself scarce,” or “to skedaddle,” could convey what is indicated by that wagging of the straightened hand under the elbow? You see the thief escaping. It is the same in everything else. There is a gesture for all the emotions and most of the casualties of daily life. No beggar tells you he is hungry; but standing silently before you, with a perfectly immovable expression, he opens his mouth, and points downwards with his finger. A woman and half a dozen children gathering round you, and all doing the same thing, produces an effect so curiously divided between the ludicrous and the pathetic that it is far harder to refuse an alms than if the request were made in downright words. It is the same with the coachmen of the hired public carriages. You are driving rapidly along, and your coachman passes another whom he knows. In less than a second he has conveyed to his friend full information of where he comes from, where he is going, and how soon he will be back, probably concluding with the amount of the fare for which he has agreed to do the distance; and all without a word being uttered.

The Neapolitans carry the same extraordinary pantomimic power into all scenes and all places, including the pulpit, or, more likely, the platform, from which the priest delivers his Lenten or Month of Mary discourses. He walks to and fro in the heat of his argument, he sits down, and starts up again, he weeps, and he even laughs. It is often very striking; and it is so natural, it belongs so essentially to the genius of the people, that it is never ridiculous, nor does it seem out of place. Of course sometimes it is done less well and gracefully than at others; but it is too thoroughly in unison with the language and habits of the people ever to appear incongruous.

We were sitting on the low wall of the outer steps leading to the tower entrance of a building at the end of the Portici pleasure‐grounds when this conversation occurred. The tower belongs, I believe, to an observatory, and all around are the stables, the barracks, and the appurtenances of the palace, now empty and silent. The grass grew high and thick in the courtyard. The deep‐red blossoms of the wild sorrel, with the sunlight shining through them, looked like drops of blood among the grass. The ox‐eyed daisies boldly faced the blue, glaring sky. The low, long building used for stables was in front of us. Then a dark, dense wood of ilex and cork‐trees, like a strong, black line. And beyond that no middle distance was visible, but stark and sudden rose the seamed and barren sides of Mount Vesuvius. No beneficent and tender white cloud broke the intense, monotonous blue of all the wide heavens. The sky, the grim mountain, the black wood, and the deserted stables—that was all; bathed in sunshine, sparkling with intense light, silent with brooding heat, and unspeakably desolate with a broad, unmodulated, horrific beauty like the face of the sphinx.

Suddenly there came over me a dim, weird feeling of the ancient pagan world. There was an inner perception and consciousness that in some undefined way it was homogeneous to the scene around me and to unredeemed man. It was cruel in its beauty; as poetic, but not picturesque, beauty so often is.

I started up, and exclaimed, “Let us get back. The old gods are about this place, and I cannot stay.”

Time has not effaced the impression, and I can recall the inner vision at any moment. Frank declared we should come again, and have a picnic there with the Vernons. But I protested I would not be of the party. “By the bye, Jane,” said Frank, “why did Elizabeth not come?”

“Because little Franceschiella was buried this morning, and neither Ida nor Elizabeth would leave the poor mother; while Helen remained to keep Mrs. Vernon company.”

Franceschiella was a lovely child of six years who had died of a fever the day before. She was the only child, and that fact, added to her quite extraordinary beauty, had made the trial doubly hard to bear for her adoring parents. For, indeed, it was little less than adoration that Franceschiella received, not only in her own home, but from all her neighbors. We were very much struck in this instance by the poetic nature of the Italians. The father was a vignaiuolo, the mother did a little needle‐work, or took in washing; but no nobleman’s child was ever more carefully bathed and dressed and nourished than this one darling, and that partly in consequence of her angelic beauty and her infantine charm. The little creature ran every risk of being entirely spoilt by the amount of petting and flattery that she received on all sides. On Sundays and holidays they always dressed her in white with a red coral necklace; and the mother or the cousins would weave a wreath of flowers to crown her beautiful, golden hair, that fell below her waist. She had deep violet eyes with black lashes, and a milk‐white skin. She was very forward for her age, and singularly intelligent. But she was surely never meant to live long in this rough world. She came to it like a stranger, and she remained a stranger all the time of her brief sojourn—as though some princess from the distant lands of poetry and romance had come for a brief visit to dwell with common mortals. There was an inexpressible refinement in all the little creature’s ways which would have become a real cross to her and the occasion of endless trials had she lived long enough to find the harsh side of life ruffling her angel wings. It was in mercy the child was taken away before the period of white frocks and fresh flowers had come to an end. Life could have brought to her nothing but temptation and anguish. But of course in proportion to her exceptional nature was the despair of the poor parents in seeing her fading before their eyes. As little Franceschiella had been unaccustomed to restraint or coercion of any kind, it was exceedingly difficult, during her short illness, to induce her to take the necessary remedies. And nothing could be more touchingly beautiful than the arguments used by the distracted parents to persuade her to swallow the nauseous draughts. As usual, there was a crucifix near the bed, and an image of the Mater Dolorosa—the devotion of the Neapolitans being very specially to the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin. They would beg the poor little darling to take her medicine in honor of Our Lord’s thirst on the cross, or of Our Lady’s anguish when His dead form was laid in her arms. And these were not unmeaning or merely mystical phrases, to which the child could attach but little sense. They were as household words to her; familiar to her childish thoughts from the moment she could lisp, and woven into her life as the mysteries of the faith only are in lands altogether Catholic. But nothing was to avail to keep the pretty human flower from fading fast. And before a week had past little Franceschiella had taken flight ere any of the ugliness of mortal life had tarnished her sweet loveliness. They crowned her with roses, and laid her, dressed in white, in the little wooden coffin filled with flowers. Then they flung handfuls of colored sugar‐plums over her, and placed a white camellia between her still red lips, saying, as they did so, “She breathes flowers.” And so they carried her, in the open bier, the uncovered, lovely face turned towards the heavens, and thus laid their darling in the dark grave, but in the full hope of a bright resurrection.

The mother’s anguish was extreme. The Neapolitan women are an excitable and highly nervous race; which arises, no doubt, in great measure from the climate, as every stranger knows who finds the effect produced on his nerves by this intoxicating atmosphere, which I have heard compared to drinking champagne. As in the case of the peasantry much self‐control has not been inculcated, the result is the frequency of terrible nervous attacks producing convulsions—what we should probably designate as very aggravated hysteria. After Franceschiella’s death the mother became subject to these attacks, and seemed incapable of receiving any consolation till heaven granted her the hope of again becoming a mother. On the day we went to Portici the Vernons had hardly left her. And it was very charming to see the Christian sense of equality on their side, and the deference and gratitude shown them by their peasant neighbors on the other.

But why did Frank so particularly ask why Elizabeth had not come, instead of asking equally about Ida and Helen?

“You have, then, seen Medusa in the woods of Portici, Miss Jane?” said Don Emidio suddenly to me, as we were driving home in absolute silence.

I looked up out of my brown study to find his eyes fixed upon me. “Do you mean that I am changed to stone?”

“You are as silent as one.”

I laughed, and said, “At least, thank heaven, I am not malheureuse comme les pièrres,(149) as the French say, though I may be as silent as they. I did not, however, see anything in those dark ilex groves. I only suddenly felt the awfulness of nature when you look at her in all her inexorable beauty, with the rhythm of her apparently changeless laws and her sublime disdain of man. She breathes and blossoms, she burns and thunders, she weeps and smiles, utterly independent of us all. She knows no weakness; no decay touches her but such as she can repair. She embraces death, that she may produce life. She is ever fertile, ever lavish of herself and of her gifts. But she never cares. Her mountains are granite even to the feet of her Creator, as he climbs the heights of Calvary. Her noontide heavens are brass to the cravings of man’s heart in his midday toil. She will not pause in the twenty‐four hours of her inevitable day, though sundown should bring death to one and despair to many again and again. She treads her ever‐victorious march over ruined nations, buried cities, and broken hearts. Oh! I could hate her—cruel power, terrible Pythoness; mocking me with sunshine, scaring me with storms; ever rejoicing in her strength, ever regardless of me. I cannot explain why these thoughts came to me, as across the dark wood I traced the violet scars on awful Vesuvius, and heard the low whispers of the wind in the long grass at our feet. Suddenly faith seemed to die out of me. I forgot what I believe; and back came trooping the pagan gods and the pagan world, with the strong feeling that pantheism is the inevitable religion of the natural man, and that were I not, thank God, a Christian and a Catholic, some form of it would grow into my mind, as the impress left by the face of nature. For a moment a dark cloud overshadowed me while I looked into the depths of the old pagan belief; and it became so real to me that I shuddered. It has left me silent; that’s all.”

“That’s all!” repeated Don Emidio with a sly smile, and imitating my voice in a way that I half thought was rather impertinent. “Allow me to tell you that I think that is a great deal. I do not imagine there are many young ladies who come out for a day’s pleasuring to the gardens of Portici or elsewhere, and indulge in such profound reflections as you do.”

I looked round, and saw that Frank and Mary were listening.

Frank said: “I believe Jane is quite right; and she has so well described the effect which the aspects of nature produce on the mind of man that I am convinced her words embody and express the riddle of the sphinx. The laws of nature, taken without the doctrine of the Incarnation, which alone is the keystone to the whole creation, form the enigma which is put before us to understand and answer; failing which, we perish.”

“But all paganism was a falsified adumbration of the Incarnation; the gods for ever assuming a human form, and the men becoming gods,” said Mary. “It had that germ of truth in it which every system must have to be built at all, no matter in what monstrous form. But it required revelation to tell us that the ‘Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst men.’ And that alone explains nature. She is the herald, the servant, or rather the slave, of Him by whom and for whom all things were created. She speeds on her way in the full vigor of those laws which were impressed upon her as she first sprang from the hand of her Creator. She does not stop to share our griefs or our joys, for she has a higher mission. But she has ceased to be terrible to us, for faith has unveiled her face, and her harmonious forces no longer scare us by their inexorable relentlessness. Her one mission is to sing of God, and repeat to Time the refrain of Eternity.”

“Why, then, do we sometimes pine for her sympathy?” said I.

“Ah! Miss Jane,” exclaimed Don Emidio, “that is because we are for ever looking for sympathy in the wrong place and from the wrong people.”

“Not always,” I replied. What made me say so? And why did Don Emidio change color and look at me so fixedly? I was still wondering when we reached home.

Mary and I were, as usual in the evening, sitting in the loggia. But Frank was not with us, and I missed his genial talk and the odor of his cigar.

“What has become of Frank this evening, Mary?”

“He has gone down to see the Vernons, and said he should persuade them to come to us.”

“I hope he will succeed, for I do not like his spending his evenings away from us. This is not the first nor the fourth time he has gone to Casinelli as soon as he got up from dinner.”

“Ah! well, Jane, we must not be selfish. He has his life to live, as you have yours; and I must expect one day to lose you both.”

I felt my heart stop, and then beat violently. What did Mary mean? And why did some veil seem suddenly to fall from my eyes? It was some moments before 1 spoke; and then I tried to say in my ordinary voice: “You have some presentiment about Frank, Mary. What is it?”

“I have presentiments about both of you. But I do not want to force your confidence.”

In a moment I was kneeling by her side. “Dearest Mary, do you suppose I have any secrets from you? I tell you everything. If I do not tell you more, it is because I know no more.” It was a sudden impulse, dim but overwhelming, which made me add those strange words. Mary looked at me intently. “Has it never struck you that Frank has a reason for going so often to the Villa Casinelli, as Emidio has a reason for coming so often here?”

Our eyes met for one moment. Then I hid my face in my hands, and burst into tears.

“O Mary! what bitter‐sweet things are you saying? I do not want to lose Frank, and I do not want to leave you, or to tread in other paths than those I have known since my childhood. Are you sure it is so? Why have I not known it till now? And even now I doubt.”

“That is because you were not in the least looking out for it, and were absorbed in other thoughts, preventing that retrospection which would have shown you that Emidio’s manner towards you has been intensifying with every day of our stay here. And now what answer will you give when the time comes?”

“Do not ask me yet, dear Mary. I must have leisure to reflect. At this moment my heart is more full of Frank and Elizabeth than of anything else.”

“Ah! my dear, he could not have made a wiser choice; she is a girl after my own heart, so true, so tender, so good, and so utterly unselfish.”

“I only hope she will not spoil Frank.”

“I am not afraid of that, for she has a high sense of duty for herself and for all who approach her.”

“And what is to become of Ida and of you, Mary?”

“I cannot think,” said Mary with a sweet, sad smile. “But I suppose we shall both of us be happy in the happiness of those who are so dear to us. It is worse for me than for her. She loses a sister. I lose a brother and sister both.”

“You don’t know that, Mary. Nobody has proposed to me, and, if somebody did, I am not certain what answer I should give.”

“But I am,” rejoined Mary.

I clapped my hand over her mouth, exclaiming, “Don’t say it, Mary dear. Let me be free and feel free. I am frightened at the thought of promising myself to any one, even where I may feel I could love.”

“Be free, dear sister, until the moment has come when you are sure it is God’s will you should enter on another phase of woman’s destiny.”

“And may I never do so, except to accomplish his will!” I replied; and with one long kiss on dear Mary’s brow I turned away, for we heard approaching footsteps.

Frank and Elizabeth entered first. Ida and Padre Cataldo followed. I looked to see if there were a fifth figure behind, and was rather relieved to find Don Emidio was not there. I needed time to collect my thoughts before I saw him again. Perhaps, after all, Mary was mistaken, and attached more importance to this matter than was necessary. At any rate, I was in no hurry to see Don Emidio again.

Frank seemed in high spirits, and Elizabeth looked serenely, calmly happy. Her soft manner and her slow, graceful movements had long ago won for her the nickname of Pussy; particularly as her velvet ways were not unmixed with a playful slyness; so that from time to time she came out with some remark far more acute and incisive that at first you would have given her credit for. It was a relief to me when I heard Frank say that he had been particularly anxious to induce Padre Cataldo to join us, because he had promised to give us the account of an unfortunate man whose execution he had attended some years ago in the course of his priestly ministrations. Ida was looking as thoughtful as Mary; and I saw her eyes constantly wandering to where Frank and Elizabeth were sitting together. We were all too preoccupied to talk, but were very glad to listen to a long story.

“Frank tells us, reverend father,” began Mary, “that some twenty years ago you attended the execution of a poor criminal. It would interest us very much if you would give us the particulars. In what part of Italy did it occur?”

“It took place in the Basilicata,” replied the father, “and the whole province was filled with consternation; for the culprit did not belong to the lower ranks of life, but was a gentleman by birth, education, and position. He was the proprietor of a château and a considerable patrimony near one of the towns of the province, and his crime was the murder of his own brother. For many generations the family had had an undesirable reputation for deeds of violence and sudden acts of rage or revenge. It was not the first time that the history of the family chronicled some bloody act; though it was the first time, at least in modern days, that any member of this unfortunate house had suffered the utmost penalty of the law. I am unable to tell you what gave rise to the violent feeling of hatred which the elder brother entertained for the younger. There had been many quarrels and disputes between them from their boyhood upwards. Frank told me the other day you had been talking about the extraordinary power the Italian, and especially the native of Southern Italy, has of following out one design through all obstacles and difficulties, silently and secretly, for years. If they possess this tenacity of character in the search for wealth, I am afraid they have it equally in questions of revenge. And for some reason or other this had been the sentiment of Conte Falcone for his brother, Don Carlo. One day Don Carlo was found stabbed through the heart, and suspicion immediately fell on Conte Falcone. He was arrested, but the trial was a long one, and some months were passed in collecting evidence. At length he was convicted, and from the moment of his condemnation made no attempt to deny his guilt. At that time the prison at Potenza, where he was to await his execution, was under the direction of a Jesuit father, whose efforts were ceaseless for the good of the unfortunate criminals under his charge.

“Naturally, Conte Falcone was a special object of care and anxiety, from the enormity of his crime, and from the fact that his position and circumstances are generally in themselves a guarantee against offences of so deep a dye.

“No efforts were wanting on the part of the Jesuit priest. He was with his prisoner day and night, endeavoring to bring him to a true repentance of his sin against God and against humanity. And he succeeded. He found the count from the first overwhelmed with remorse, and his object was to prevent this remorse degenerating into despair, and thus excluding the light of faith. Happily, Conte Falcone, grievously as he had offended against the laws of God, had never given place to rationalistic or scoffing doubts. It needed but to transform the awful bitterness of human remorse into the tenderness of perfect contrition; and this great work in the culprit’s soul was happily accomplished in time to give him courage to bear the dreadful intelligence that all efforts made at the Court of Appeal to get the sentence commuted had entirely failed. This was an unusual and remarkable fact, for capital punishment is very rarely carried out in Italy; many would tell you not sufficiently for the protection of society. Probably in this case the judges were urged to unusual severity by the position of the criminal, lest it should appear that, being a nobleman, he was less severely dealt with than a common man might have been. Moreover, it was not forgotten that this was the third time one of his unfortunate family had taken the life of a relation, and it was thought necessary an example should be made. The priest accordingly announced to him that his fate was sealed, and that the next morning he must proceed on the terrible journey which was to be his last.

“In the kingdom of Naples, as well as in some other parts of Italy, it is the law that the execution of a criminal should take place on or near the spot where the deed was done.”

“What a terrible law of retribution!” exclaimed Mary.

“Yes, and one strictly in conformity with many passages of the Holy Scriptures, and with the Biblical spirit generally.”

“Has it not been supposed, father,” asked Frank, “that possibly after death the souls in purgatory, as also the lost, suffer for their errors there where they were guilty of them?”

“It is a common opinion, and it goes far towards explaining the accounts of strange noises and spectral forms in places where it is known there has been a murder. The very sound of the fatal blow is repeated through the hours of the night, as though the disembodied spirit were condemned for ever to re‐enact the semblance of that crime which has grown into one idea, one all‐absorbing memory of the past. The soul becomes, as it were, the personification and essence of its fatal crime.”

“What a fearful verification of the worm that dieth not!” said Mary.

“But surely,” I exclaimed, “we may have softer and happier feelings about the souls in purgatory?”

“Of course we may,” replied the father, almost smiling at my look of horror and anxiety. “If they frequent the scenes of their past, it is not to inspire us with fear; for of that dreadful passion they are now themselves no longer capable, the blessed security of their future annihilating all touch of apprehension. If they reappear to the living, it is either to remedy some evil or to solicit our prayers. I never could understand the terror people have of what they call ghosts.”

“It would be strange indeed,” said Mary, “not to wish to see again those we have loved and lost, even their disembodied souls.”

“And yet it is not lawful to desire it with ardor or to entreat for it; because it is outside the bounds of God’s usual dealings with his creatures to permit the dead to revisit the living, or rather to reappear to them; for I believe they revisit us constantly, and probably mostly dwell amongst us, unseen and, alas! generally forgotten.”

“Oh! no, not forgotten, dear father,” said Mary, the tears filling her eyes.

“Not forgotten by such as you, figlia mia.(150) But we have entered on a subject which might keep us discussing till midnight. I go back to my poor penitent.”

“Was he your penitent from the first, father? Were you the director of the prison?”

“You have robbed me of my disguise, cara figlia.(151) I meant to have told you a story, but not to talk of myself. However, it does not matter, and I will lay aside all disguise. The journey the unhappy count had to make to his native place was perhaps the most terrible part of his punishment. But I had the satisfaction of seeing him receive the announcement with the greatest resignation, once more offering it as an atonement for his crime. As he was a man of considerable refinement and education, his resignation arose from no lack of power to appreciate the dreadful contrast between his present position on returning to his home and that which he had once filled. It would be impossible to put into words what he felt on arriving to meet an ignominious death at the place where he had been the great man and the most influential person. Early in the morning of the dreadful day on which we began our long journey he was led out of the prison, and mounted on an ass—such being the law in that part of Italy. The slow paces of the beast added considerably to the torture of the count’s feelings, it being impossible to hasten a progress every hour of which seemed an age. He had made his general confession to me before that fatal morning, and constantly on the road he would turn to me for a word of consolation and encouragement, or to renew his frequent acts of contrition. I need hardly say I never left his side for a moment. Poor fellow! what an agony the whole journey was to him, and, from sympathy, hardly less so to me; for he was bound hand and foot, and the animal was led by one of the guards, the others following and surrounding him on horseback. You know enough of us Italians to be aware that, physically and morally, we are more sensitively constituted than any other European nation. Our feelings are extraordinarily keen, and our imaginative powers excessive; and these two qualities combine to give us a most intense love of life. All the incidents of our journey, which occupied the entire day, must have been, and indeed I can bear testimony that they were, the perfection of anguish to the count, such as seldom can fall to the lot of any man, taking his whole life together. The sun poured its scorching rays on his uncovered head; he, being bound, could not in any way help himself; and several times he turned so faint that the guards had to fetch water to revive him. I obtained permission at last for his poor head to be covered—all the more so as I apprehended a sun‐stroke. I held the cup for him to drink from, and sometimes supported him for a few seconds in my arms to relieve him as well as I could from the restraint of his painful position. It was nightfall when our awful and melancholy procession reached the prison of the count’s native town. His own château was not far distant! I had written to have a chapel prepared in the prison; and in that chapel, kneeling at the foot of the altar, he whom I had come to love as the very child of my soul spent the entire night. Naturally, his first thought on arriving was for his wife and his two little children. And he entreated to be allowed to see them once more. I was not then aware of what was the custom on such melancholy occasions, and I applied for permission to send for the countess and her children. But I found that they had been removed from their home by the order of the magistrates, and were already at a considerable distance. This had been done from motives of humanity, that the poor wife might not be almost within hearing of the dreadful event which was to take place on the morrow, or his children grow up with a full knowledge of their father’s fate. It was almost more than I myself could bear when I had to return to him in the prison, and tell him of the ill‐success of my request. It was the last drop of extreme bitterness. It was the vinegar and the gall; the absolute isolation from all that he had loved, the utter desolation of his human affections. A spasm of agony passed over his face; but the only words he spoke were, ‘The will of God be done.’ ”

“In the morning he again made his confession with the ardent contrition and fervor of a saint. He heard a Mass as preparation for his last communion. He received the Blessed Sacrament at the second Mass, and assisted at a third in thanksgiving.

“The dreadful moment was now at hand. The horrid black limbs of the fatal guillotine stood stark and rigid against the bright morning sky in the great public square of the town.

“Every church in the place was thronged with worshippers, praying and offering their communions for the salvation of the poor soul so soon to be wrenched from sweet life, and sent to its everlasting doom. The public square was also filled with spectators—a silent, awe‐struck throng, while occasionally a prayer would seem to quiver on the air from the suppressed voice of a hundred people.

“At length the count appeared, supported by the guards; for by that time he was in a very exhausted state. His last act was to press my hand in silence. It was the signal for me to give him the last absolution. I had just turned aside, hardly conscious myself from excess of feeling, when the fatal knife fell. A cry of horror ran through the crowd; and then immediately they dispersed, many of them repeating aloud the De profundis, as they retired to their homes.

“I always remember poor Falcone in my daily Mass; though I cannot say I think he is in any further need of prayers, but is, I hope, long since in a position to benefit me by his.”

“What is your opinion, father,” asked Mary, “of public executions?”

“In the present state of feeling in Italy they are beneficial rather than otherwise. I attended the execution of two soldiers a few years ago at Terracina. The whole town was crowding to the church the evening before, and at an early hour on the day itself, to pray for the poor men. It was like the general communion at the close of a mission; and those who actually witnessed the execution seemed to do so with no other object than to assist the poor criminals by their prayers. Many of the women were on their knees in the public place. And I do not believe but that such a fervor of devotion had a beneficial effect upon all. It is, or at least it was, the same thing in Rome. But where, as in London and Paris, that idea of intercessory prayer has died out with the faith of which it forms a part, and the vilest rabble collects from a brutal curiosity to see a man hung or guillotined, then I am convinced that public executions are demoralizing, and tend to increase the crimes they are meant to repress.”

“All I know is,” said Frank, suddenly starting up, “if a fellow could only have the good‐luck to be hung in the presence of a large Italian crowd, I think he would have a better chance of going straight to heaven than by any other death. I think I should like to go in for that sort of thing myself.”

“O Frank! what do you mean?”

“Why, this is what I mean: If you have a long illness, you get weak in mind and in the power of volition, as well as weak in body. I know, if I have only a headache, how difficult it is to say my prayers. Fancy, then, what it must be through a long, painful illness. Whereas, if you are going to be hung, you have all your faculties about you; you are in no doubt of when you are going to die; the time is fixed to the minute. You have made your last confession; and I can imagine being able then to make such an act of perfect contrition, with all the forces of one’s mind and soul, that would land one safe past the realms of purgatory. I often feel as if it would be my only chance, and not a bad one, either.”

Padre Cataldo looked amused. Elizabeth did not appear quite to like it, and I overheard her say to him: “I think you might manage to end an honorable life in a more honorable way, and secure heaven all the same.” I thought I heard something in reply about “with your help and your example”; but I did not listen, as I wanted to induce Padre Cataldo to tell us about his wonderful escape during the revolution of 1860. I said something to him about it; but he turned it off, and Mary whispered to me that he never liked to talk about it, but that Don Emidio knew all about it, and we could ask him to tell us the next time we met. Padre Cataldo now took leave, Frank accompanying him back, and promising to return for the Vernons later.

As soon as they had left, Ida told us that all their troubles and anxieties in reference to the Casinelli and the chapel bell had been renewed. There had been an interregnum of comparative peace, and we had entertained the hope that all was likely to go on quietly. But it turned out that one of the sisters some days previously had called on Mrs. Vernon and her daughters to explain that the bell ringing for Mass was such a cause of annoyance to the other lodgers that she really must request that it should be entirely given up. Of course Mrs. Vernon refused. The chapel had been conceded to them; Mass was said there daily by the express permission of the cardinal archbishop, and was of the greatest benefit to the neighborhood; and she and her daughters absolutely declined to sanction such an insult to religion. Signorina Casinelli proposed that the bell should be hung somewhere in the garden at a considerable distance. But this also was refused. It was not rung at an early hour. It was not a large bell, and it was absurd to have the chapel in one place, and the chapel bell an eighth of a mile away, to say nothing of the trouble of sending some one to ring it. Signorina Casinelli left the house in high dudgeon; and the next day she waylaid Padre Cataldo, as he was returning through the garden from visiting the sick. She flew into a violent rage the moment she saw him, and told him that, rather than offend their other tenants, they would, the house being their property, shut up the chapel entirely.

Unfortunately, no written agreement respecting the use of the chapel existed between the Vernons and the Casinelli; and it had never entered any one’s head that they could be guilty of such a transaction. The threat was, however, only too well carried out. That same evening the bell was cut down and carried away. The Vernons learnt from the vignaiuoli in their neighborhood that the Casinelli had had some difficulty in finding any workmen who would undertake the job. They had first sent for a mason in their own employ; but he had absolutely refused to have anything to do with a work which he considered as sacrilegious; and turning to the padrona, the eldest sister, he exclaimed, “Judas also sold his Master for money, but I will have nothing to do with conduct which resembles his. You may manage your own affairs in your own way.”

The following Saturday they completed their evil work by literally doing as they threatened. A message was sent to the Vernons to warn them that they had better take out of the chapel anything therein which belonged to them without loss of time, as that night it was to be locked and the keys withdrawn.

It was a sad office indeed for the Vernons to have to strip the little chapel of all its ornaments, the work of their hands and their hearts. They did it in silence, and in silence they bore the heavy trial; for had they allowed themselves any expressions which would have served as a cry for the peasantry around, it would have been difficult to restrain the grief and indignation of these poor people at finding themselves deprived of their Mass and of the instructions of a priest whom they all loved as a father. Ida’s delicate health made it very difficult for her to walk to any church up the high hill at the foot of which Casinelli is situated. Padre Cataldo had to go elsewhere to say his Mass, to the great inconvenience of himself and others. But that was as nothing compared to the grief of seeing all his little flock dispersed.

Signore Casinelli informed his tenant, in the presence of several persons, that henceforth he might consider himself master of the situation. And so he has remained. But the Casinelli have never since been able to command the slightest respect from the vignaiuoli and peasantry of the neighborhood. They have lost all prestige. And long before these pages see the light the Vernons will have left Casinelli to establish themselves in one of the many villas whose doors were open to them from that moment. All in the neighborhood wanted to let their apartments to them and Padre Cataldo; and if anything could console them for all they had had to sacrifice, it might be the amount of sympathy and respect which met them on all sides and from all classes; while the incident, far from diminishing Padre Cataldo’s field of usefulness, seemed to have opened out fresh spheres for him to work in, and to have extended his influence far and wide.

The garden in which our villa of R—— R—— stood led by steps and winding paths to a tiny bay and to a long series of rocks and large natural caves. There was more than one bath, fed by the fresh sea‐water, in whose limpid depths we not unfrequently saw brilliant sea‐anemones, and even small fish which sometimes forced their way through to the openings left in an artificial dike to supply the bath with water. Here and there a wooden bridge was thrown over some part where the water broke the communication from one cave to another. The views from the wide, arched openings of the caves were very lovely; Naples and the bay on one side, and the flower‐ clad, precipitous rocks of the coast of Posilippo on the other. At night the fishermen’s boats which had been moored in these caves, and in others like them, came gliding out with a lighted torch at the prow. And all through the night many of them might be seen, with the black figures of two or three fishermen dimly distinguished from time to time; though more generally all that can be seen is the dark, shadowy form of the boat and the flaring torch, intended to attract the unwary fish into the net.

I should have liked the caves better had they not been disfigured by the stuffed, gaunt forms of a hippopotamus and some alligators and similar monsters, which were placed in all sorts of unexpected places, and seemed to meet you round the corner with gaping jaws. These caves had formed part of a public place of resort some years ago, but were now deserted and forgotten, with all the monsters rapidly falling into dusty decay.

We had been for some time at the villa before my curiosity had ever led me to explore this strange place. When I did so, it was in company with Don Emidio. But as I protested that I did not like crocodiles and hippopotami, he suggested that we should climb the rock outside the cave to the pretty little pink and green kiosk which crowned it, and which commanded a lovely view from where it stood embedded in aloes and cacti, opuntias and zoccas, besides many varieties of climbing plants. Nothing could be prettier than the winding paths, protected on one side by a rustic fence, while every cranny in the rock on the other side bore some tuft of blossom or afforded roothold for the wild tresses of some flowering creeper.

Mary and Frank had remained in the lower garden, while we wandered into every nook and corner, and finally sat down to rest inside the kiosk, which, with windows all round, presented to us a wide and lovely scene.

It was here I consented to become Don Emidio’s wife.

That effected, no matter how or in what words—for those things seldom read wisely—I suggested that we should rejoin Mary and Frank. Don Emidio took the latter by the arm, and walked with him a little way apart. I remained silent, sitting at Mary’s feet. When Don Emidio joined us, it was without Frank. I asked where he was. “Gone down to Casinelli,” was the reply. I knew why. He was determined to have his fate also decided that same day, that same hour. I had no doubts for him. I knew that Elizabeth would consent; and I felt partly glad, and partly saddened at the thought that our life, hitherto so united and bound up in each other, was about to divide and separate, each following his or her own destiny, and weaving a new web of life’s joys and sorrows. Don Emidio left us soon. But long after, I saw him leaning over the parapet of the road, waiting for Frank to return from Casinelli, that he might learn whether his wishes also were to be crowned with success. I could see the meeting from my window, as the tall figures of the two friends stood dark against the deep blue of an Italian starlight night. I could have no doubt of the nature of the intelligence conveyed by Frank to his friend; for, to my horror, Don Emidio threw his arms around him and kissed him, as Italians do. Poor Frank! thought I, how will he put up with such an un‐English proceeding? No doubt it had happened to Frank before; for he did not, so far as I could judge at that distance, start with astonishment. But it set me thinking about my future husband’s foreign ways. And the next morning, when Frank and I had talked over the more serious questions in our affairs, I found myself drifting into that part of the matter. “I wonder, Frank, if I shall ever get quite reconciled to his Italian customs, so as either not to notice, or to prefer them?”

“It is to be hoped so, since he will be your husband. But what do you mean in particular?”

“Why, you know he will call me Miss Jane; any one else would say Miss Hamilton.”

“That is an evil which is already at an end. No doubt for the future he will call you simply Jane, and speak of you a short time hence as la Contessa Gandolfi.”

“Then I wish he would not embrace you, Frank.” Frank laughed aloud.

“He would be hurt if I repulsed him. They all do it. He will soon see that in England it is not the custom, and then he will give it up—at least while there.”

“Another thing is, I do not like his wearing a large ring—though I own it is a handsome one—on his forefinger. We think that vulgar in England.”

“And it does not happen to be vulgar here; that is all about it, my dear Jane. I am afraid I cannot help you in that matter. But possibly in time you will succeed in bringing him round to your views; though I doubt your ever being able to break him of occasionally transferring that ring from his finger to his thumb whenever he is particularly anxious to remember something. When you see his palazzo in Rome, you will find that he possesses a beautiful portrait, by Vandyke, of an ancestor on his mother’s side. That very ring is on the forefinger of the portrait. Emidio is the living image of that picture. And you can hardly blame a man for carrying out a likeness he has such reason to be proud of.”

“There is one other thing, Frank, which strikes me as odd. If he is sitting in the arm‐chair when Mary or I come into the room (and you know we are not rich in arm‐chairs here), he never gives either of us that chair, but fetches us another, and goes back to the arm‐chair himself.”

“Jane, you are a little fool. Do you not know that in Italy, at least in the south, it is the height of ill‐breeding to offer any one the chair you have just occupied yourself? A cool seat is always a desideratum in this climate, even though it may be a less luxurious one.”

“Shall I ever, do you think, be able to take back to England with me a husband with such a name as Emidio? What a pity he was not christened Paul, or Stephen, or even Anthony! But Emidio!” By this time we were both laughing—Frank at me, I at myself.

“You need never call him Emidio in public. We call him so because, when we have been travelling about Italy alone together, we found it convenient to drop his title. But you know he is il Conte Gandolfi. His mother was the only child of a noble Roman family, and consequently a great heiress. She married a Neapolitan Conte Gandolfi; and that is how it happens that with a Neapolitan name his chief residence is in Rome, in the palazzo that belonged to his mother. His father was not a man of very considerable fortune, and his only property here is his villa at Capo di Monte, where he spends the summer. A nobler heart and a finer nature I never saw. There is the simplicity of a child, the honor of a true‐born gentleman, the delicacy of a woman, the courage of a hero, and the piety of a saint.”

The tears stood in my eyes; and taking dear Frank’s hand in mine, I said, “Thank you, dear old fellow, for saying that. And, thank God, you too have drawn a prize!”

A Discussion With An Infidel.

IV. Immortality Of Matter.

Reader. And now, doctor, what other argument do you allege against creation?

Büchner. The immortality of matter, and the immortality of force.

Reader. The immortality of matter?

Büchner. Yes, sir. “Matter is immortal, indestructible. There is not an atom in the universe which can be lost. We cannot, even in thought, remove or add an atom without admitting that the world would thereby be disturbed, and the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter interfered with. It is the great merit of modern chemistry to have proved in the most convincing manner that the uninterrupted changes of matter which we daily witness, the origin and decay of organic and inorganic forms and tissues, do not arise, as was hitherto believed, from new materials, but that this change consists in nothing else but the constant and continuous metamorphosis of the same elementary principles, the quantity and quality of which ever are, and ever remain, the same” (p. 9). “The atoms are in themselves unchangeable and indestructible; to‐day in this, tomorrow in another form, they present by the variety of their combinations the innumerable forms in which matter appears to our senses. The number of atoms in any element remains, on the whole, the same; not a single particle is formed anew; nor can it, when formed, disappear from existence” (p. 11).

Reader. Do you say in the same breath that no particle of matter can be formed anew, and that, when formed, it cannot disappear? When is it formed, if it cannot be formed at all?

Büchner. The phrase may be incorrect, but the idea is sound, and the argument conclusive.

Reader. Poor doctor! the idea is as inconsistent as the phrase is incorrect; and the argument is not worthy of the name. Let us admit that matter, elements, and atoms have been observed to remain always and everywhere the same. Does it follow that matter, elements, and atoms are indestructible? By no means; it only follows that, be they destructible or not, they have not been actually destroyed. You say that by the destruction or addition of an atom “the world would be disturbed.” Let it be disturbed; what then?

Büchner. Then the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter would be interfered with; which cannot be admitted. The laws of nature are unchangeable. What has been constantly true for the past must be true for ever.

Reader. You are utterly mistaken, doctor. The world may be disturbed by the creation or the annihilation of matter without the laws of nature being interfered with. I admit that the laws of nature are unchangeable; they have been true for the past, and they will be true for ever. But what is the object of these laws? Nothing but the mode of production of the phenomena of the material world. Hence you have a law of gravitation, a law of propagation of sound, a law of impact, a law of reflection and of refraction, and generally laws of motion, but you have no law of existence and no law of substance. Whence it is clear that all your laws of nature would remain exactly the same whether any new portion of matter were brought into being or any portion of existing matter annihilated. Suppose that your own body were annihilated; would any law of nature be upset? Would the sun cease to illuminate the earth? Would the earth cease to revolve round its axis or to attract bodies? Would the ocean cease rolling its waves to the shore? Would fire cease to burn? In one word, would any law of statics or of dynamics cease to be true?

Nor can you decline this supposition by saying that annihilation itself would be against the laws of nature. For all your laws of nature, as I have just remarked, regard the movements, and not the substance, of the material world. Your laws suppose the existence of matter in the same manner as civil laws suppose the existence of civil society; and as these latter are not modified by an increase or a decrease in the number of the individuals subject to them, so neither would the former be modified by any increase or decrease in the number of material elements. There would be, of course, a change in the phenomena themselves, because the execution of the laws would be carried on suitably to the new condition of the case; but the laws would remain the same. Consequently any amount of matter could be annihilated without the least change in the laws of nature. Let the moon be annihilated; the ebb and flow of the ocean will be altered, but the laws of motion will remain the same; for the ebbing and flowing of the waters will still be proportional to the action of the disturbing causes. Let a stone be annihilated in the act of its falling to the ground; the law of attraction will remain unaltered, as it will still be true that every falling body must acquire, under gravitation, a uniformly increasing velocity. Hence the unchangeableness of natural laws cannot be alleged as a proof of the indestructibility of matter; and your argument is worthless. The utmost you can be allowed to assume is that matter, whether destructible or not, has hitherto continued to exist, and no particle of it has ever been annihilated.

This last assertion, however, is admitted by natural philosophers, not because there is any scientific proof of it, but simply because science has no grounds for denying it. Science has no means of ascertaining, for instance, whether any remote star has been annihilated, or any new star created, in the last thousand years; and if the common belief is that no new matter has been created, and no portion of matter annihilated, we owe it, not to science, but to the teaching of the Bible, which represents the work of creation as long ago completed, and the conservation of all created substances as the effect of design. But you, who laugh at revelation, and pretend to substantiate all your assertions by facts, have no right to assume that no matter has ever been annihilated. Hence not only are you unable to show that matter is indestructible, but you cannot even maintain that no particle of matter has ever been destroyed.

But I will no longer insist on this point. I admit that no atom of matter can ever be lost to the world by natural processes. My reason is that the natural actions of bodies, whether physical or chemical, tend merely to the production, modification, or neutralization of movement, and that no amount of change in the movement of an atom can cause the atom to vanish. This is not, however, a discovery of modern chemistry, as you seem to believe. The scholastic philosophers had not the fortune to know modern chemistry; yet they never believed that new compounds were made of new materials, though you recklessly assert that “it was hitherto believed”; but they always uniformly taught that matter was ingenerable and incorruptible. There was therefore scarcely any need of modern chemistry to teach us that no portion of matter can be lost by natural processes. Yet this is not the real question. What we want to know is whether an atom, or any number of atoms, has a necessary existence and cannot be annihilated by God. This is your assumption; and this is what you are unable to show. Your argument is, in fact, nothing but a vicious circle. You say: “There is no God; and therefore matter cannot be annihilated”; and at the same time you say: “Matter cannot be annihilated; and therefore there is no God.” This is, in reality, the covert drift of your argumentation, when from the assumed indestructibility of matter you conclude, first, that matter could not have been created, and, further, that the existence of a Creator is a gratuitous hypothesis. On the other hand, you cannot make good your assertion that matter is indestructible without first denying the existence of a Creator. Such is your nice logic in what you probably consider to be one of your best arguments.

And let me here make a passing remark on the word “immortality,” which you have chosen to designate the pretended indestructibility of matter. Immortality is not simply “existence without end,” but “life without end.” Hence living beings alone can be immortal. Do you assume, then, that a grain of dust or an atom of matter is a living being? If you say yes, where are the facts that will lend a support to such an unscientific doctrine? If you say no, then the immortality of your matter is nothing indeed but a new form of what you would style “philosophical charlatanism.”

To conclude: the indestructibility of matter is a ridiculous invention of ignorant empiricists, who know neither what matter is nor what is philosophical reasoning. They make, indeed, a great deal of noise with their scientific publications; but their ephemeral celebrity is due to an organized system of mutual laudation and to Masonic support, as you know. Let only twenty years pass, and you may be sure that our children will laugh at your celebrities: and if your Force and Matter is to reach them, they will laugh at you too. Common sense cannot slumber for ever; and when it awakes, then will all your infidel scribes be pronounced designing knaves.

Büchner. I thought you would never end, sir; but, long as your answer has been, it has failed to convince me. The force of my argument lies in this: that what can have an end must have had a beginning. If, therefore, matter is not indestructible, it must have had a beginning.

Reader. Certainly.

Büchner. But a beginning of matter is inconceivable. For how could matter come into existence?

Reader. By creation out of nothing.

Büchner. This is what I deny. For out of nothing nothing can arise. This is an axiom. Hence “never can an atom arise anew or disappear; it can only change its combinations.... Matter must have existed from eternity, and must last for ever” (p. 12).

Reader. I am not in the least surprised to hear that my long talk did not convince you. It is always difficult to convince a man against his will. My object, however, was not to give you a positive demonstration of the fact of creation, but only to show that the reasons which you were parading against creation amount to nothing. Of this I hope I have not failed to convince you. But now you come forward with a new argument, which indeed is very old, consisting in a pretended axiom, that out of nothing nothing can arise. Suppose, doctor, that I deny your axiom. How would you show that I deny a truth?

Büchner. “How can any one deny the axiom that out of nothing nothing can arise?” (p. 12).

Reader. You must know, doctor, that what you assume to be an old axiom is only an old error. In fact, why do you say that out of nothing nothing can arise? Simply because natural energies can do nothing without pre‐ existing materials. Hence your argument amounts to this. “Natural energies never make anything out of nothing; therefore out of nothing nothing can be made.” That this conclusion is a great blunder I need not prove, I presume, as logic teaches that no conclusion can be more general than its premises. Where is, then, the ground of your pretended axiom?

Nor can you reply that the natural energies are the only energies known to us, and that, if these cannot make anything out of nothing, the axiom is unexceptionably true. This would be to assume what you are bound to prove, to wit, that there is no power above the natural forces; and to assume this is what logicians call Petitio principii. On the other hand, you cannot maintain that such natural forces are the only ones we know; for you cannot limit the range of human knowledge within the narrow sphere of mere empiricism without denying human reason.

Büchner. We have no notion of supersensible forces.

Reader. You talk without reflection, doctor. If you have no such a notion, what is it, then, that compels you to admit any demonstrated truth? Is it attraction, heat, electricity, or any of your physical or chemical forces? No; it is the force of demonstration, it is the force of truth. This is no vain theory; I appeal to your own experience. Your intellect is obliged to yield to the force of evidence and demonstration just as inevitably as the pendulum is obliged to yield to the force of gravitation. And since a real effect requires a real cause, hence whatever thus really compels your intellect to yield must have a real power, and that evidently supersensible.

But reverting to your pretended axiom, I have yet to remark that, strictly speaking, it does not even hold in the case of natural causes; in other terms, I say that nothing is ever produced by natural causes except out of nothing. Of course no tailor ever made a coat without cloth, and no carpenter ever built a ship without pre‐existing materials. This I admit; but if you closely examine the point, you will see that to make a coat or a ship is not to produce it, and that the action of the tailor and the carpenter wholly consists in modifying and arranging the materials so as to give them a form. It is, therefore, this form alone that is produced. Now, clearly, this form, before its production, was nothing; for it had no existence. And therefore the work of the tailor or the carpenter is a production of something out of nothing.(152) And thus either you must deny that anything is ever produced, or you must give up your axiom that nothing can be produced out of nothing.

Büchner. I cannot give up my axiom without inconsistency. I will rather deny that anything is ever really produced. In fact, “Those are children, or persons with a narrow sphere of vision, says Empedocles, who imagine that anything arises that has not existed before, or that anything can entirely die and perish” (p. 15).

Reader. These are empty words.

Büchner. On the other hand, “the immortality of matter is now a fact scientifically established, and can no longer be denied” (p. 13).

Reader. Indeed?

Büchner. Yes; “Its actual proof is given by our scales and retorts” (p. 13).

Reader. I thought I had already shown that your scales and retorts are incapable of giving such a proof.

Büchner. “Sebastian Frank, a German who lived in 1528, says: Matter was in the beginning in God, and is on that account eternal and infinite. The earth and everything created may pass away, but we cannot say that that will perish out of which matter is created. The substance remains for ever” (p. 14).

Reader. Do you endorse these words?

Büchner. Certainly.

Reader. Then you catch yourself in your own trap. For if matter is created, as your German writer says, surely there is a Creator.

Büchner. But if matter was in the beginning in God, and was eternal, it is plain that matter could not be created.

Reader. Perfectly true. And therefore, since matter, according to your German authority, has been created, surely matter was not in the beginning in God. But, after all, can you endorse Frank’s words without admitting a God? And can you admit a God and a Creator while fighting against creation and the existence of God? Be honest, doctor, and confess that bad indeed must a cause be which cannot be maintained but by clumsy sophistry and shameful contradiction.

V. Immortality Of Force.

Reader. In your theory, doctor, force is immortal. This I cannot understand. Would you tell me how you come to such a conclusion?

Büchner. “Indestructible, imperishable, and immortal as matter is also its immanent force. Intimately united to matter, force revolves in the same never‐ending cycle, and emerges from any form in the same quantity as it entered. If it be an undoubted fact that matter can neither be produced nor destroyed, but merely transformed, then it must also be assumed as an established principle that there is not a single case in which force can be produced out of, or pass into, nothing; or, in other words, can be born or annihilated. In all cases where force is manifested it may be reduced to its sources; that is to say, it can be ascertained from what other forces a definite amount of force has been obtained, either directly or by conversion. This convertibility is not arbitrary, but takes place according to definite equivalents, so that not the smallest quantity of force can be lost” (p. 16).

Reader. How do you account for this theory?

Büchner. “Logic and our daily experience teach us that no natural motion or change, consequently no manifestation of force, can take place without producing an endless chain of successive motions and changes, as every effect becomes immediately the cause of succeeding effects. There is no repose of any kind in nature; its whole existence is a constant cycle, in which every motion, the consequence of a preceding motion, becomes immediately the cause of an equivalent succeeding one; so that there is nowhere a gap, nowhere either loss or gain. No motion in nature proceeds from or passes into nothing; and as in the material world every individual form can only realize its existence by drawing its materials from the immense storehouse of matter, so does every motion originate from the equally immense storehouse of forces, to which sooner or later the borrowed quantity of force is again returned. The motion may become latent—i.e., apparently concealed; but nevertheless it is not lost, having merely been converted into equivalent states, from which it will escape again in some shape. During this process force has changed its mode; for force may, though essentially the same, assume in the universe a variety of modes. The various forms may, as already stated, be converted into others without loss, so that the sum‐total of existing forces can neither be increased nor diminished, the forms only changing” (pp. 17, 18).

Reader. What do you mean by “forms of forces”?

Büchner. Physics, as I stated to you on another occasion, “makes us acquainted with eight different forces—gravitation, mechanical force, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, affinity, cohesion, which, inseparably united to matter, form and give shape to the world. These forces are, with few exceptions, mutually convertible, so that nothing is lost in the process of conversion” (p. 18).

Reader. “With few exceptions”? I fear that any exception will prove fatal to your theory. But go on, doctor; I wish to hear more about your conversion of forces.

Büchner. “We may cite a few instances of transformation or convertibility of forces. Heat and light are produced by combustion. Heat again is converted into mechanical power in steam, and mechanical force can again by friction be reconverted into heat, and, as in the electro‐ magnetical machine, into heat, electricity, magnetism, and light. One of the most frequent conversions of force is that of heat into mechanical force, and vice versa” (pp. 18, 19).

Reader. What conclusion do you draw from these and similar facts?

Büchner. I draw the conclusion that in speaking of forces “the word lost is an incorrect expression; for in all these and similar cases there is not a minim of power lost as regards the universe, but merely as regards the immediate object. The expended force has in reality only assumed different forms, the sum‐total of which is equivalent to the original force. Innumerable examples may be adduced to establish this law, which is expressed in the axiom that force can neither be created nor destroyed—an axiom from which results the immortality of force, and the impossibility of its having a beginning or an end. The consequence of this recently‐discovered natural truth is the same as that deduced from the immortality of matter, and both form and manifest from eternity the sum of phenomena which we term world. The cycle of matter sides, as a necessary correlate, with the cycle of force, and teaches that nothing is generated anew, that nothing disappears, and that the secret of nature lies in an eternal and immanent cycle, in which cause and effect are connected without beginning or end. That only can be immortal which has existed from eternity; and what is immortal cannot have been created” (pp. 21, 22).

Reader. I have heard with great attention all you have said, doctor, and I am sorry to see that you are as wrong as ever. Your argument is altogether ludicrous.

Büchner. It is, however, a mere statement of known facts.

Reader. I question this very much. But even if the alleged facts were unquestionable, and could not receive any other interpretation than that which you give of them, your conclusion about the “immortality of force” would still be groundless. In fact, the forces of which you speak are all material, and have their existence in matter alone. It is therefore vain and preposterous to argue about the immortality of such forces when you have already failed to show the immortality of matter itself. You boast that your argument is a mere statement of facts; and so do all modern sciolists, more or less awkwardly, when pushed to the wall. But what are the facts? Is heat a form of force? Is it a form convertible into another form? I perceive from your style that you never studied this subject; you only repeat like a parrot what other parrots have learned to say, without the least notion of the true state of things. Tell me, what is a form of force? What is force itself?

Büchner. It is not my duty to define force. I accept the definition of the physicists.

Reader. This is exactly what I expected to hear. Yet when a man undertakes to philosophize on anything, he ought to know very distinctly what that thing is. Do you make any difference between “forces” and “powers”?

Büchner. No, sir, as is evident from my terminology.

Reader. Do you discriminate between “force” and “quantity of action”?

Büchner. No, sir.

Reader. Do you identify “force” with “quantity of movement”?

Büchner. Yes, sir.

Reader. Then it is evident that you confound force, power, quantity of action, and quantity of movement.

Büchner. All these terms are substantially identical in science.

Reader. True, the lowest school of physicists considers them as substantially identical, and in this manner they succeed in persuading themselves and many others that the quantity of living force existing in the world is always invariably the same. But, after all, those physicists speak very incorrectly, and are not to be followed in their blundering terminology. A quantity of movement is not an action, but the result of action; and a quantity of action is not a power, but the exertion of power. In fact, the same power acts with different intensity in different conditions; and equal actions produce different movements in bodies actually subject to different dynamical determinations. Hence it is impossible to admit that powers, actions, and movements are synonymous.

And now, which of these three notions do you choose to identify with force? If you say that force is “a quantity of movement,” then it will be false that no force is ever lost; for any quantity of movement can be lost without compensation. Thus a stone thrown up vertically loses its quantity of movement without compensation.(153) If you say that force is “a quantity of action,” it will again be false that no force is ever lost; for all successive actions successively pass away, and continually change their direction and their intensity, according as the distances and positions of the bodies acted on are altered. Lastly, if you say that force is “power,” then it is false that forces are transformed or convertible; for the power of each element of matter remains unalterably the same, as you yourself acknowledge, throughout all the vicissitudes of time. “A particle of iron,” you say with Dubois‐Reymond, “is and remains the same, whether it crosses the horizon in the meteoric stone, rushes along in the wheel of the steam‐engine, or circulates in the blood through the temples of the poet.”

Büchner. Would you, then, repudiate science?

Reader. By no means. I love and respect true science. I only repudiate that false and presumptuous dogmatism which prompts a class of physicists to draw general conclusions from particular, and often questionable, premises.

Büchner. Do you, then, condemn the method of induction?

Reader. Not at all. I condemn the abuse of that method. What right have modern scientists of extending the principle of the “conservation of force” beyond the boundaries marked by observation and experiment? All they have a right to say is that _in the impact of bodies an equal quantity of movement __ is lost by one body and acquired by another_. This is the fact. But does it follow that therefore the movement lost by the one body passes identically into the other? This is what they imagine; and this is what cannot be proved, because it is absurd. Movement is an affection of matter, and has no independent existence, as you well know. It cannot, therefore, pass identically from body to body any more than a movement of anger can pass identically from man to man. And yet it is on this absurd notion of nomadic movement that the whole theory of the conservation of force, as now held by your advanced thinkers, has been raised. They say: “The quantity of movement which is lost by one of the bodies, and that which is acquired by the other, are perfectly equal; therefore a quantity of movement passes identically from one body to another.” In other terms they say: “There is equality; therefore there is identity.” Is this legitimate induction? Good logic would lead us to argue in the following manner: The actions of the two struggling bodies, being equal and opposite, must produce equal and opposite quantities of movement; hence the quantity of movement which is destroyed in the impinging body must equal the quantity of movement produced in the body impinged upon. Such is the only logical view of the subject; it agrees both with reason and with fact, and it strikes your theory at the root. For what is destroyed is no more; and what is produced had no existence before its production.

We might allow you to talk of the “conservation” and “conversion” of forces, were you reasonable enough to consider such expressions as mere conventional technicalities suited to explain the relations of effects to effects rather than of effects to causes. But you construe the technical phrases into real and absolute principles, and try to explain causation by substituting the effect for the cause; which is as ridiculous an abuse of the word “force” as if a carpenter pretended that his iron square is the square spoken of in the treatises of geometry. But this is not all. What right have you to apply such a theory, whether right or wrong, to gravitation?

Büchner. “The pendulum of every clock shows the conversion of gravitation into motion” (p. 21).

Reader. Indeed? What do you mean by gravitation? The attractive power of the earth, or its action, or the weight of the pendulum? Surely the attractive power of the earth is not converted into movement; for it remains in the earth, and it continues its work. Neither is the weight of the pendulum converted into movement; for the pendulum does not cease, while moving, to have weight, nor does it weigh more when, at rest; and at the end of its oscillation is not found to have expended or consumed any portion of its weight. You are therefore obliged to say that it is the action of the earth that is converted into movement. But such an expression can have no meaning; because the action is the production of an act, and it is the act itself, not its production, that constitutes the formal principle of the movement. On the other hand, a production which becomes the thing produced is such an absurdity that not even a lunatic could dream of it. Thus it is quite evident that in no imaginable sense can gravitation be considered as converted into movement. It produces movement, but is not converted into it. You see, doctor, that your so boasted theory has no foundation either in reason or in fact.

Büchner. But we cannot deny that mechanical movement is convertible into heat, that heat may become light, and that all other such forces can be transformed.

Reader. I repeat, and, on the strength of the reasons which I have brought forward, I maintain that the term “conversion of forces” may be admitted as a conventional phrase, but not as exhibiting a philosophical notion. A real conversion of mechanical movement into heat would require that a movement of translation should be transformed into a movement of vibration by being distributed among the molecules of the body which is heated. This I have already shown to be impossible. Things follow a different course. When the hammer falls upon the anvil, its action (and not its movement) shakes the first range of molecules which it encounters. These molecules are thus constrained to approach the following set of molecules lying immediately under them, and to trouble their relative equilibrium. These latter, in their turn, trouble the equilibrium of the following set, and so on till all the molecules of the anvil partake in the movement, each molecule undergoing alternate compression and dilatation, the first through the violent action of its neighbors, and the second by the reaction due to its immanent powers. The consequence of all this is that a rapid succession of vibratory movements is originated in each molecule; and thus, as soon as the movement of translation of the falling hammer is extinguished, the movement of vibration is awakened in the molecules of both the anvil and the hammer. Now, what is this but a case of impact? For just as the hammer impinges on the surface of the anvil does each molecule of the anvil impinge on its neighbor; and therefore what you call a transformation of mechanical into vibratory movement is not a real transformation of the one into the other, but the extinction of the one and the production of the other. Thus heat is generated by percussion; and in a similar manner it would be generated by friction and by other mechanical processes. Whenever heat is produced, molecules are set into vibrations of a certain intensity, and their relative equilibrium disturbed. Evidently, such a disturbance of the molecular equilibrium is due to interaction of molecules—that is, to molecular impact. Now, I have already shown, and you have understood it, I hope, that, in the case of impact, the movement never passes identically from this matter to that, but is produced in the one at the same rate as it is extinguished in the other.

I might say a great deal more on this subject, but here I stop, as I almost regret having said so much. Your theory of the conservation of force does not bear out your “immortality of force,” and is so destitute of proof that it does not deserve the honor of a longer refutation.(154)

VI. Infinity Of Matter.

Reader. How do you account, doctor, for your assertion that “matter is infinite”?

Büchner. In a very simple manner: “Whether we investigate the extension of matter in its magnitude or minuteness, we never come to an end or to an ultimate form of it. When the invention of the microscope disclosed unknown worlds, and exhibited to the eye of the investigator the infinite minuteness of organic elements, the hope was raised that we might discover the ultimate organic atom, perhaps the mode of its origin. This hope vanished with the improvement of our instruments. The microscope showed that in the hundredth part of a drop of water there existed a world of animalcules, of the most delicate and definite forms, which move and digest like other animals, and are endowed with organs, the structure of which we have little conception of” (p. 23). “We term the most minute particle of matter, which we imagine to be no longer capable of division, an atom, and consider matter to be composed of such atoms, acquiring from them its qualities, and existing by their reciprocal attraction and repulsion. But the word atom is merely an expression for a necessary conception, required for certain purposes. We have no real notion of the thing we term atom; we know nothing of its size, form, composition, etc. No one has seen it. The speculative philosophers deny its existence, as they do not admit that a thing can exist which is no longer divisible. Thus neither observation nor thought leads us, in regard to the minuteness of matter, to a point where we can stop; nor have we any hope that we shall ever reach that point” (p. 24, 25).

Reader. That point has been reached, doctor. The theory of primitive, unextended elements is well known and advocated by good scientists and thoughtful philosophers. But let this pass, as I long for your demonstration of the infinity of matter.

Büchner. “Like the microscope in respect to the minuteness, so does the telescope conduct us to the universe at large. Astronomers boldly thought to penetrate into the inmost recesses of the world; but the more their instruments were improved, the more worlds expanded before their astonished eyes. The telescope resolved the whitish nebulæ in the sky into myriads of stars, worlds, solar and planetary systems; and the earth with its inhabitants, hitherto imagined to be the crown and centre of existence, was degraded from its imaginary height to be a mere atom moving in universal space. The distances of the celestial bodies are so immense that our intellect wonders at the contemplation of them, and becomes confused. Light, moving with a velocity of millions of miles in a minute, required no less than two thousand years to reach the earth from the galaxy! And the large telescope of Lord Rosse has disclosed stars so distant from us that their light must have travelled thirty millions of years before it reached the earth. But a simple observation must convince us that these stars are not at the limit of space. All bodies obey the law of gravitation, and attract each other. In assuming, now, a limitation, the attraction must tend towards an imagined centre of gravity, and the consequence would be the conglomeration of all matter in one celestial body. However great the distances may be, such an union must happen; but as it does not happen, although the world exists from eternity, there can be no attraction towards a common centre. And this gravitation towards a centre can only be prevented by there being, beyond the bodies visible to us, others still further which attract from without—and so forth ad infinitum. Every imagined limitation would render the existence of the world impossible” (pp. 25, 26).

Reader. Is this the whole of your argument?

Büchner. Yes, sir.

Reader. I should like to know how could the large telescope of Lord Rosse disclose stars so distant from us that their light must have travelled thirty millions of years before it reached the earth? Do you not know that in thirty millions of years light travels two million millions of times over the distance from the earth to the sun? And do you hope the world will believe that, thanks to Lord Rosse’s telescope, it has been possible to determine the parallax of a star two million millions of times more distant from us than we are from the sun? The world indeed is ignorant and credulous; but when the lie is too impudent, it is apt to cry you down as a charlatan. You are most imprudent, doctor. You had no need of Lord Rosse’s telescope for your argumentation; and your mention of the distant stars disclosed by it was therefore an inexcusable blunder. But the argument itself has no foundation. You imagine that, if the world were not infinitely expanded in all directions, all matter, by universal gravitation, would have conglomerated into one celestial body. But tell me, Does the moon gravitate towards the earth?

Büchner. Of course it does.

Reader. How do you account, then, for the fact that the moon has not fallen, nor is likely to fall, on the earth? Is it because the moon is attracted by some matter lying outside its orbit?

Büchner. It is on account of centrifugal force accompanying its curvilinear motion.

Reader. I am delighted to see that you can explain the fact without appealing to the infinity of matter. Let us go on. As the moon gravitates towards the earth, so do all satellites towards their planets, and all planets towards the sun. And yet none of the satellites have fallen into their planets, and none of the planets into the sun. Is this owing to the matter which lies outside of the planetary and solar system? I presume, doctor, that the enormous distance of fixed stars from us will not encourage you to believe that their attraction on any planet can cope with its gravitation towards the sun. On the other hand, this gravitation is not neutralized by the action of any exterior matter; for all planets actually obey the solar attraction, as their orbital movement conclusively shows. This same orbital movement implies also a centrifugal tendency; and this tendency sufficiently prevents the falling of the planets on the sun. This is unquestionable doctrine.

Büchner. I admit the doctrine.

Reader. Accordingly it is evident there is no need of infinite matter to prevent the celestial bodies from clustering into one central body. Centrifugal forces, in fact, are sufficient, even by your own admission, to remove all danger of such a catastrophe; and centrifugal forces are to be found wherever there is curvilinear movement around a centre of attraction, that is, throughout all the world, according to astronomical induction. Consequently your argument in favor of the infinity of matter is a mere delusion.

Büchner. “If we can find no limit to minuteness, and are still less able to reach it in respect to magnitude, we must declare matter to be infinite in either direction, and incapable of limitation in time or space. If the laws of thought demonstrate an infinite divisibility of matter, and if it be further impossible to imagine a limited space or a nothing, it must be admitted that there is here a remarkable concordance of logical laws with the results of our scientific investigations” (p. 27).

Reader. Your great scientific investigations give no result that favors the infinity of matter. This we have just seen. Logical laws give no better results. It is idle, doctor, to assume that there is any law of thought which demonstrates the infinite divisibility of matter; and it is as capricious to assert the impossibility of imagining that the space occupied by matter is limited. You say that outside that space there would be nothing, and therefore there would be no space except that occupied by matter; whence you conclude that space would be limited. Do not fear, doctor, for the fate of space. Outside the space which is occupied by matter there is yet infinite space unoccupied by matter. Space is not made up of matter. Move the matter; you will not move space. Remove all matter; space will not disappear. Of course you cannot understand this, because whoever blots God out of the world extinguishes the source of his intellectual light, and is therefore doomed to grope for ever in the dark. But we Christian philosophers, who admit a God infinite and immense, have no great difficulty to understand how there can be space not occupied by matter. Wherever God is, there is space which can be occupied by matter; for wherever God is, there he can create any amount of matter; and wherever matter can be placed, there is space; for space is nothing but the possibility of locating matter.

It is not my intention to dilate on this topic, nor is it necessary. To answer your difficulty I need only say that space, though void of matter, is always full of God’s substance, to whose immensity alone we must resort, if we desire to account at all for the existence of infinite space.

VII. Dignity Of Matter.

Reader. I scarcely expected, doctor, that you would devote a chapter of your book to such a trifling and unscientific subject as the dignity of matter. Is not matter, as such, the lowest of all known substances? What is the dignity of matter?

Büchner. You belong to the old school, sir. I will tell you what is the modern view of matter: “To despise matter and our own body because it is material, to consider nature and the world as dust which we must endeavor to shake off, nay, to torment our own body, can only arise from a confusion of notions, the result of ignorance and fanaticism” (p. 28).

Reader. You begin with a false assumption, doctor. We of the old school do not despise the body “because it is material.” God created matter; and whatever proceeds from God is very good. We, however, consider the body as of a lower nature than our rational soul, and try to put a check to its unruly appetites—a thing which you, being a physician, will surely approve and commend as conducive to the preservation of health, not to say of morality.

Büchner. “Matter is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit; the one cannot exist without the other; and matter is the vehicle of all mental power, of all human and earthly greatness” (p. 28).

Reader. This is, doctor, the most abject and degrading materialism.

Büchner. I am not afraid of this word, sir. “We frequently hear those persons contemptuously called materialists who do not share the fashionable contempt for matter, but endeavor to fathom by its means the powers and laws of existence; who have discerned that spirit could not have built the world out of itself, and that it is impossible to arrive at a just conception of the world without an exact knowledge of matter and its laws. In this sense the name of materialist can nowadays be only a title of honor. It is to materialists that we owe the conquest over matter and a knowledge of its laws, so that, almost released from the chains of gravitation, we fly with the swiftness of the wind across the plain, and are enabled to communicate, with the celerity of thought, with the most distant parts of the globe. Malevolence is silenced by such facts; and the times are past in which a world produced by a deceitful fancy was considered of more value than the reality” (p. 29).

Reader. You commit blunders upon blunders, doctor. We do not call materialists those who do not share “the fashionable contempt for matter,” but those who deny the existence of a spiritual soul, or teach that matter is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit, and that the one cannot exist without the other, just as you teach. And therefore your definition of materialism is your first blunder. Again, contempt for matter is not, and never has been, “fashionable”; second blunder. That materialists endeavor “to fathom the powers and laws of existence” is a third blunder; for they are not even capable of fathoming their own ignorance, as our present discussion shows very clearly. A further blunder is to speak of “the powers and laws of existence,” as if there were any law of existence. A fifth blunder is to give credit to the materialists for having discerned “that spirit could not have built the world out of itself.” This was discerned long ago by Christian philosophers; whereas your materialists have even failed to discern that spirit could create the world out of nothing. A sixth blunder is contained in your assertion that “it is to materialists that we owe the conquest over matter and a knowledge of its laws.” Indeed, you might as well say that we owe light to darkness, and wisdom to dolts. Go and study, O great doctor and president of the medical association of Hessen‐Darmstadt! and then tell us whether Newton, Volta, Galileo, Galvani, Biot, Ampère, Cuvier, Faraday, Liebig, and scores of other great scientists were materialists. To such men we owe modern science; but what does science owe to your materialists? What law did they discover? What conquests have they achieved? It is absurd for them to complain of “malevolence” when they are treated with the contempt they deserve. They are, in fact, mere plunderers and traitors of science.

But I wonder, doctor, whether your love of materialism is much calculated to show the dignity of matter. You have not adduced as yet any reason why we should think of matter very highly. You have said, indeed, that matter is “the peer of spirit”; but this is mere twaddle, as you admit of no other spirit than what would be a result of material combination. I want something better—something like a good argument—before I can appreciate the dignity of matter.

Büchner. “Pretended worshippers of God have in the middle ages carried their contempt for matter so far as to nail their own bodies, the noble works of nature, to the pillory” (p. 29).

Reader. What do you mean?

Büchner. “Some have tormented, others crucified themselves ...” (ibid.)

Reader. Who crucified himself? When? Where? Can any one nail himself to a cross any more than he can raise himself by his belt?

Büchner. “Crowds of flagellants travelled through the country, exhibiting their lacerated backs. Strength and health were undermined in the most refined manner, in order to render to the spirit—considered as independent of the body—its superiority over the sinful flesh” (p. 29).

Reader. The flagellants were a set of fanatics; but their excesses do not prove the dignity of matter. After all, had they been materialists, they would surely have done something worse than to scourge themselves. They may have undermined their strength and their health, as you remark; but how much greater is the number of materialists who shorten their lives by shameful disorders, since they have lost all hope of a future and better life? Do you pretend that what is done by your adepts for the sake of worldly or sensual pleasure cannot be done by Christians for the sake of eternal salvation? We believe in eternal salvation, and we know what we believe. Strength and health are goods of a lower order than morality, and no true man would hesitate to endanger them for a superior good. But on what authority do you assume that in the middle ages strength and health were undermined “in the most refined manner”?

Büchner. “Feuerbach relates that S. Bernard had, by his exaggerated asceticism, lost his sense of taste, so that he took grease for butter, oil for water” (p. 30).

Reader. You know that Feuerbach is no authority; and yet I should like to know, how can a man lose his sense of taste by asceticism? Does asceticism affect the tongue or the palate? S. Bernard lived sixty‐three years, in spite of continuous intellectual and corporal work, so that you can scarcely say that his manner of undermining his strength and health was “most refined.” As to grease and butter, I have the honor to inform you that S. Bernard seldom tasted either, as they were excluded from the Cistercian table. What do you say to that?

Büchner. “Rostan reports that in many cloisters the superiors were in the habit of frequently bleeding their monks, in order to repress their passions” (p. 30).

Reader. Bosh.

Büchner. “He further states that injured nature avenged itself, and that rebellion, the use of poison and the dagger against superiors, were by no means rare in these living tombs” (p. 30).

Reader. And you believe such lies? Of course there is no reason why they should not be circulated among the ignorant and superstitious. They are fond of believing such things, and they are served according to their taste. The supply always meets the demand. Oh! how truly right was S. Paul when he said that those who turn a deaf ear to truth are doomed to swallow fables! Those who do not believe the Catholic Church, the highest authority on earth, by just judgment stupidly believe the lies of a Rostan and of a hundred other charlatans of modern times. But let us not forget the real point at issue. Your object was to show the dignity of matter. Where are your proofs? Do you think that the dignity of matter can be established by defamation? Every intelligent reader will infer, on the contrary, that it is from lack of reasons that you are obliged to disgrace your work with libel and slander.

Büchner. I am not a forger, after all. I have cited my authorities. But the dignity of matter appears from the fact that it is to matter that we owe science. “Have those who start from God and not from matter ever given us any clue as to the quality of matter and its laws, after which they say the world is governed? Could they tell us whether the sun moves or is at rest? whether the earth is a globe or a plain? what was God’s design? No! That would be an impossibility. To start from God in the investigation of nature is a phrase without meaning. The unfortunate tendency to proceed in the investigation of nature from theoretical premises, and to construe the world and natural truths by way of speculation, is long abandoned; and it is by pursuing an opposite course of scientific investigation that the great advance of our knowledge of nature in recent times must be ascribed” (pp. 31, 32).

Reader. It is evident that all our knowledge begins in sensible representations, and therefore depends on matter. But how can you infer from this the dignity of matter? When you ascend a ladder, the first step is always the lowest; which shows the contrary of what you wish to prove. Matter is the lowest of all objects of knowledge, while the highest is God. From matter we start, and in God we must end. This every one admits; you, however, assume that some philosophers “start from God, and not from matter.” Who are they? Are they, forsooth, those who teach that matter has been created by God? Then you are unjust to them, and falsify the history of science, by giving us to understand that they could not tell us whether the sun moves or is at rest, and whether the earth is a globe or a plain. It was not the atheist or the materialist that taught us astronomy and geography. The materialist can only tell us, as you do, that “all natural and mental forces are inherent in matter” (p. 32), which is no science at all; and that “in matter alone forces can manifest themselves,” or that “matter is the origin of all that exists” (ibid.), which is the reverse of science. This they can prate; but as for the great laws of nature, they had to learn them from us—I mean from men who did not preach the dignity of matter with the foolish and ignoble purpose of dethroning God. You condemn those who “construe the world and natural truths by way of speculation.” This I have already answered; but I may remind you that by condemning speculation you condemn yourself. Experimental knowledge is very good; but it is by speculation alone that our knowledge acquires its scientific character. Hence your view of science without speculation is as absurd as your assumption of matter without spirit and without God. This may suit materialists, for they stop supinely at the lowest step of the ladder; but intellectual men have a mind to ascend the ladder to the very top. What is the use of knowing matter, if you know nothing else? Matter is the alphabet of science; to study matter, and to ignore the methods of rising from matter to spirit, and from the world to God, is to study the alphabet alone during all your life, and to die an abecedarian. This is what you crave; this is what you adorn with the venerable name of science; whereas we believers not only study the alphabet, but also read the great book of the universe, and know that the book has an Author, whose thoughts it reveals. You have vainly labored to establish the dignity of matter. Had you known how to read the book of nature, you would have discovered that matter has no natural dignity but that of being the lowest work of Him whose works are all perfect.

To Be Continued.

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Who Will Remember?

Like as a pebble on the salt sea‐sands That some wave washes to an unknown shore, So shall we quietly be swept away From out the millions to be seen no more.

Who will remember, who will say “dear friend”? Who will walk sadly seeking yet a trace Of well‐known footsteps, of caressing hands, Of some remembrance of a lost, dead face?

Ask not too much of human hearts that wait; Fresh buds will blossom for their eyes at last, And flowers dead, however sweet they were, Are, like the whole of earth’s dead treasures, past.

Church Music.(155)

I.

From the earliest times music has had a place in the public worship of all peoples—among the pagans, among the Jews, among Christians. Its use in this connection has been dictated by God himself in the act of constituting the human mind; it has, moreover, received his express sanction, as we learn from the ordinances of the Jewish people. In the new law it has even been consecrated by his own divine example, since we read that our Lord and his apostles sang hymns together. His birth was heralded to the world by the song of his angels, and heaven is represented to the Christian as a place where we shall sing for ever the praises of God.

Church music, therefore, dates from the origin of Christianity, and has constituted ever since an integral, though not an essential, part of public worship among Christians.

The church has her simple offices and her solemn offices, and she has made the use of music one of the chief marks by which they are distinguished.

Church music grew with the growth of the church. As Christians increased and prospered, music was more and more cultivated, and was more largely introduced into their solemn exercises of worship.

The extent to which sacred music was cultivated in the early church cannot be easily determined; we have no reason to think it was very great.

When Europe emerged from that sad state of confusion which came over it with the invasion of the northern barbarians, and music was revived as a science and an art, it was, like the other branches of learning, at first confined mostly to the clergy, and its productions were for a long time almost exclusively of a sacred character.

The church being an indestructible institution, her traditions are handed down by one generation of her children to another. It was thus that in a dark day of confusion and destruction she preserved for us the treasures of ancient learning and the arts; and the world to‐day owes to her not only the modern developments of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture, but also the beautiful and varied combinations of modern music.

At first, as we have just said, there was no music but that which was dedicated to holy purposes, except such rude melodies as nature in all ages teaches the most uncultivated.

The musical drama did not exist; and music does not seem to have made any essential part of the pageants or spectacles destined for the public entertainment.

It was from the church that music was introduced into the chamber, the hall, and the street, and in the beginning secular music imitated and borrowed the forms of that which was sacred.

The music used in the sacred offices at first and during many centuries was the plain chant. How much of this chant was taken from pagan or Jewish sources cannot be determined, for authorities differ widely; but in any case it was so modified and improved by the fathers of the Eastern Church, and afterwards in the West by SS. Ambrose and Gregory, when they adapted it to the purposes of Christian worship, that it is now frequently called the ecclesiastical chant, though it is oftener called Gregorian, from the pope just mentioned.

In the beginning it was what its name indicates—plain and simple. It was sung in unison, and its melodies did not exceed the compass of the most ordinary voices.

But unison was found monotonous, as also the uniformity of time or measure generally observed in plain chant. The first departure from the old and severe forms was made when, about the middle of the IXth century, they introduced a sort of rude harmony constructed on the chant.

But this did not satisfy the craving for change, and the love of novelty, once indulged, led the way to many excesses.

Baini gives us an example of the abuses that then became prevalent. “They would write, for example, a Mass,” he says, “taking as a subject the melody of the Gregorian Ave Maria. Three parts in the harmony would sing portions of the Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo at the same time, while a fourth would take up at intervals the entire Ave Maria.”

Not merely were the sacred words of the composition itself “shaken together in most admired confusion,” but, as we have just said, the words of other sacred pieces were foisted among them, so that they no longer expressed any one idea. Worse far, the gaps were even sometimes filled up “with snatches of old songs,” the ballads of the day, and those not always of the most unexceptionable character.

Attempts were also made to vary the stately measure of the chant.

Indeed, all sorts of devices were introduced in the search for novelty, and so great had become the abuse about the period of the Council of Trent that a celebrated cardinal declared that some of the church music of his day was so unfit to be offered to God that nothing but invincible ignorance could excuse from mortal sin those who offered it.

At this juncture arose the illustrious Palestrina.

Born in an age of the most vitiated taste, and himself not quite exempt from its unfavorable influences at the opening of his professional career, his exalted and discriminating genius was guided to disentangle the sweet spirit of song from the mazes in which it was well‐nigh lost, and to rescue his art from the merited reproaches which it was receiving on every side. He was encouraged and assisted in his task by two saints, S. Charles Borromeo and S. Philip Neri. When his celebrated Missa Papæ Marcelli was first heard in 1565, it at once banished from the churches all the profane novelties that had preceded it, and became the model for church compositions during the next hundred years, when with Carissimi began the change to what is modern.

When Pius IV., the reigning pontiff, heard it, he declared it satisfied all the requirements of sacred music; in fact, so charmed was he by its exquisite strains that he compared it to the melodies that the Apostle S. John had heard in the heavenly Jerusalem, saying that another John (Palestrina’s Christian name was John) had given us in the earthly Jerusalem a foretaste of the music in heaven.

From that day to this the use of Palestrina’s music has been retained in the Pope’s own choir, to the exclusion of all other except the simple plain chant, with which it is made to alternate. Even when the Pope officiates or presides at any celebration outside his own chapel, his choir accompanies him and sings the same music.

It is this music, alla Palestrina, that travellers go to Rome to hear, especially during Holy Week. One generation has thus followed another to Rome for three hundred years; and the harmonies of Palestrina, though ever ancient, are, like the beauty of divine truth, found to be ever new.

Though Palestrina has retained his hold on the Papal choir at Rome, music far different in character from his has been introduced into the other choirs, even of Rome.

The perfection of the organ and of other instruments used to accompany the voices of singers, and the consequent discovery of other and more scientific complications in the art of harmony, especially since the introduction of the natural discord, the development of melody, joined with much greater skill in execution and the incessant thirst for novelty, have led to the introduction into nearly all the churches of compositions in which the voices and instruments are heard together in every variety of combination.

Add to this that about two centuries ago the opera took its rise, and the dramatic style, followed in it and developed by it, made its influence felt in the church.

For kings and princes then began the practice of selecting the same musician to preside over the performances of their theatres and of their chapels; nay, the whole staff of the theatre was brought into the chapel on Sundays, as is done to‐day in Dresden. Nothing better and nothing different was required for the chapel, except the substitution of other words and a toning down of the measures of the drama, and thus the chapel became merely a sort of sacred concert‐room.

But the maîtres de chapelle at these courts were the first musicians of their day, and their success in operatic music, sounded over all Europe, caused their sacred compositions to be looked on with undiscriminating favor by the public. And as the weakness of human nature is such that inferiors naturally imitate their superiors, and sometimes even copy their faults, it became the fashion to sing in churches the sacred music used in court‐chapels, especially as this was more easily obtained, being printed at the expense of the courts.

Besides this, the modern composers of opera seem to have the ambition of composing also for the church. But they generally forget how very different the church and the theatre are, and they seldom care to follow a different method in the church from that which gains them applause in the theatre; and the public are frequently as forgetful in this matter as the composers.

It must be added that the directors of choirs seem to have a fatal habit of following, even in church, if they are allowed, the _prevailing __ style_ set by the latest and most popular writers for the stage.

When the model so successfully set by Palestrina was first departed from, and instrumental music used in conjunction with vocal, there may have been a certain gain, as the chant became more melodious and less monotonous without losing its depth and solemnity. Gradually, however, the grave style of the older musicians disappeared, and the music of the church has become, at least in some places, almost as light and as airy as that of the theatre.

This music sometimes seems written in derision or contempt of the sacred words; as, 1, when a prayer of supplication, such as the Kyrie eleison and Dona nobis pacem, is set to numbers as lively as those of a jig (frequently the case with Haydn). 2. When the words are omitted, even though they be of importance; as the words of the Creed, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit (nearly always omitted, even in the longest Masses of Haydn). 3. When they are interminably repeated or senselessly inverted. In Mozart’s Twelfth Mass we have: Crucifixus, et homo factus est.

What shall we say of the operatic solos, duos, trios, etc., instrumental interludes, sincopations, etc., which, to any one who reflects, are in direct contradiction to all our notions of what is reverent and appropriate to the church?

II.

From what has been said in the preceding pages, there are three general forms of church music: the plain chant, the music termed alla Palestrina, and modern figured music.

(a.) Plain chant is the old and original song of the church, of which the forms, like those of a dead language, are fixed and immutable. Long, long ago the secret of plain chant composition was lost, and it is probable that we have lost in great measure also the secret of its proper execution.

“The leading idea which is represented by plain chant,” says Canon Oakeley,(156) “and in no degree by any other style of music, except that which consists in bare recitative, is that in certain cases music best discharges her office by retreating, as it were, in despair before certain divine words, and contenting herself with merely providing a vehicle for their utterance, so simple as not by any studied beauty of its own to detract from their intrinsic majesty and power. This, I think, will be admitted to be the leading idea of plain chant, though I am far from denying that accidentally this idea produces some of the most attractive charms of the divine art in its results.... In many of these accidental instances plain chant not only excels other music, but absolutely sets it at defiance in its own particular line.” Hence a celebrated musician is reported to have said that he preferred the plain chant of the Preface and the Pater Noster to all he himself had ever written.

In the beginning this chant was not even harmonized. It was plain and unadorned, as its name implies—cantus planus.

(b.) The music of Palestrina is the last and triumphant result of the efforts that were made in his time and before it to vary, to modify, and to adorn the plain chant, which all had found too simple and too monotonous.

Pope John XXII., elected in 1316, complains of the novelties introduced into the execution of plain chant in his day. These innovations he condemns as unbecoming and undevotional, especially the attempts to vary the measure; but he immediately adds: “We do not intend by this to prohibit that occasionally, especially on festival days, either at the solemn Masses or the other divine offices, some harmonious combinations (consonantiæ quæ melodiam sapiunt), viz., harmonies of the octave, the fifth, the fourth, and such like, on the simple ecclesiastical chant, be sung; in such manner, however, that the integrity of the chant remain untouched, and nothing of this grave and stately music (musica bene morata) be changed, especially since these harmonies delight the ear, excite devotion, and prevent the spirit of those who sing to God from drooping” (torpere non sinunt). (Extr. Comm., lib. iii., cap. 1, Docta Sanctorum.) This Constitution is the earliest utterance of the popes concerning church music—at least since innovations were attempted—that we possess. The abuses of which Pope John XXII. complained continued to exist, and even to increase, till the time of the Council of Trent, when Palestrina produced that style of music which is known by his name, and which, though built upon the plain chant, is as unlike it as Grecian is unlike Italian architecture. It is equally unlike modern music. It differs from plain chant, being an unbroken series of artistically‐constructed harmonies, in which unison is unknown. It differs from modern music by the absolute disuse of instruments of any kind (even the organ), by the exclusion of all passages for soli, and by being written in plain chant tonality. “With the grave Gregorian melody, learnedly elaborated in rigorous counterpoint, and reduced to greater clearness and elegance without any instrumental aid,” says Picchianti, “Palestrina knew how to awaken among his hearers mysterious, grand, deep, vague sensations that seemed caused by the objects of an unknown world, or by superior powers in the human imagination.”(157)

(c.) Modern music differs essentially from all that went before it, and this difference is attributable to two principal causes: 1. The improvement in the manufacture and the use of instruments, and their introduction into the church; and, 2, The influence of theatrical music on that of the church, before alluded to. Modern music could not be in ancient times, for the want of modern instruments. As the perfection of the art of vaulting gave us that advance on the simple lines and heavy masses of Grecian architecture which we have in Gothic and Italian architecture, so the modern developments in orchestration have changed the whole character of music in the church and out of it.

The influence of operatic music on that of the church is seen in the attempt of modern composers of church music to make it dramatic. Church music, as Palestrina and the other great masters of the old Roman school had conceived it, had been treated as an emanation of pure sentiment, stripped of all human passion—as something ideal. The modern composers, on the contrary, pretend by their music to express dramatically the sense of the text. They say that, to be dramatic, it is not necessary to be theatrical, and they point to certain compositions of Cherubini, Beethoven, Hummel, and even Haydn, in which they say the contrary is practically demonstrated.(158)

It must, however, be confessed that modern composers, by trying to be dramatic, have more frequently fallen into the great fault of being theatrical than they have avoided it.

The use of instrumentation and of dramatic expression has given them immense scope, but their success bears no proportion to their talents, their opportunities, their numbers, and the immense quantity of their compositions.

Like the Athenians of old (Acts xvii.) spoken of by S. Paul, they incessantly crave something new, and, in their search for novelty, more often give us what is novel and strange than what is beautiful and appropriate, so that their compositions hardly ever continue to be used for a long time; they are soon thrown aside and forgotten; and, indeed, we think it no exaggeration to say that, if all their compositions, except a very few, were burned, or should otherwise perish, the church would suffer no loss.

In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, though their music has been introduced into our churches and given every chance of trial, complaints against it are heard on every side. We grumble about it in our conversations; we write against its excesses in the public journals; bishops complain of it in pastoral letters; provincial councils are forced to issue decrees about it; the Sovereign Pontiffs themselves not unfrequently raise their voices, sometimes in warning, sometimes in threats—in a word, the evil seems to have attracted general attention, as a similar evil did in the time of John XXII. and at the period of the Council of Trent, and a remedy is called for.

I. On account of the unsatisfactory character of most modern compositions, some have proposed that we should go back plainly and simply to the original or plain song. This was proposed in two able articles in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec., 1869, and Feb., 1870, and the Paulists of New York have actually made the experiment.

The reasons in favor of the resumption of plain chant and the exclusion of all other music may be stated thus:

1. It is the original song of the church; it is of venerable antiquity; it was originated under ecclesiastical influences, and has been sanctified by having been always associated with what is best and holiest in the history of the church.

2. It is so dissimilar from the music of the world that it is recognized at once and by everybody as ecclesiastical, and can never be confounded with secular music.

3. It possesses, when well sung, an air of stateliness and solemnity which is never reached by all the refinements and artifices of modern music. If it is less dramatic than figured music, it is also more expressive, because in it the words of the ritual speak for themselves naturally and without affectation, and therefore most eloquently; whereas in figured music the words are made so subservient to the musical numbers, are so senselessly repeated and so jumbled together, that their meaning is disguised rather than conveyed, and they cannot speak intelligibly to the mind, especially of the uneducated. Now, S. Paul says that psalmody should speak to the understanding; and Benedict XIV., speaking of S. Augustine, who used to be moved to tears by the Ambrosian chants he heard at Milan, says: “The music moved him indeed, but still more so the words he heard. But he would weep now also for grief; for although he heard the singing, he could not distinguish the words.”

No one will dare to say that to the ninety‐nine one‐hundredths of every congregation the Requiem of Mozart, with all its beauty of melody and its wealth of harmony, would be as expressive and as provocative of the feelings proper to the funeral service as the old and ever‐charming plain chant Requiem.

4. Plain chant is the best safeguard against vainglorious display and its host of attendant evils, because it allows no scope for personal exhibition, and does not give undue prominence to individuals.

5. It is the only chant used in many places, and is found sufficient for the purposes of worship.

6. It alone has had the express authorization of the church.

This is a fair exposition of the arguments in favor of plain chant.

We admit the full force of the arguments derived from the venerable antiquity of plain chant, its Christian origin, its long and exclusive connection with the rites of religion, its dissimilarity with the music of the world, its simplicity, its impressiveness, and its incompatibility with individual display; but it must be remembered against it that it requires for its execution, especially here, where the knowledge of it and the taste for it are to be acquired, conditions not easily fulfilled; that its range is very limited; and that, however grand the impression it sometimes creates, its resources are soon exhausted; whence to those who for a long time hear it and nothing else it becomes extremely monotonous, and burdens the ear with a dull weight of sound not always tolerable. This will be admitted by all who in seminaries and monasteries have been most accustomed to hear it.

In those countries where plain chant is exclusively used every sort of device is resorted to on festival days to escape its monotony, e.g., by harmonies on the chant which are out of all keeping with it, as also by interludes on the grand orgue, by which one‐half of the words of the text are absolutely omitted, and the recollections of the world are frequently as vividly brought to mind as by any modern vocal compositions.

No one will deny the appropriateness and impressiveness of plain chant on certain solemn occasions, especially those of sorrow, but it is confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of Christian joy and triumph. If the plain chant Requiem is superior to Mozart’s, the Masses of Haydn are far more suitable to the joys of Easter‐ day than anything we can find in plain chant.

The writer in THE CATHOLIC WORLD before alluded to tells us that plain chant prays. Give me, he says, the chant that prays. But prayer is fourfold, like the Sacrifice of the Mass; viz., it is latreutic—that is, the homage of adoration; it is propitiatory, inasmuch as it tries to appease God’s anger; it is impetratory—that is, it asks and supplicates for what we need; but it is also eucharistic—that is, it gives God praise and thanksgiving. Now, if plain chant expresses better our feelings of adoration and supplication, it certainly must borrow from figured music the triumphant strains of praise and thanksgiving.

However, if the argument from authority for plain chant held good, notwithstanding all we have said, we should instantly waive further discussion. But the force of this argument we absolutely deny.

Dr. Burney has created the impression that the Council of Trent was at one time on the point of banishing figured music from the church. This was not the case. Benedict XIV. (l. xi., c. 7, De Syn. Diœc.), following Cardinal Pallavicini, the historian of the council, says: “It was proposed by some bishops, zealous for ecclesiastical discipline, that musical chant should altogether be banished from the churches, and the plain chant alone retained; [but] as others observed that this novelty [sic] would give rise to innumerable complaints and immense trouble, it was finally resolved, not that musical chants should be prohibited, but that they should be reformed, according to certain rules, to the requirements of piety and gravity.” And, in fact, the Council of Trent merely decreed that Ordinaries should banish from their churches that music in which, either by the organ or by the chant, “anything lascivious or impure is introduced, in order that the house of God may seem to be and may be a house of prayer” (Sess. xxii., Decr. de obs. et ev. in cel. Missæ.) The other decree (Sess. xxiv., cap. 12, De Ref.) adds nothing to this.

The teaching of the theologians is much more lenient than that of many of our modern dogmatists.

The great theologian, Suarez (De Orat. Voc., lib. iii., c. 8), arguing against Navarre, a rigorist of his day, says: “It is a sufficient argument that this use (of organic or figured music) is retained throughout the church, and that in the very church of Rome itself, and in the chapel of the Sovereign Pontiff, the divine offices are sung after this manner.” He then proceeds to comment as strongly as any one on the danger of excesses and abuses; only he does not seem to feel, either with the objectors of his day or with some writers of the present time, that figured music is intrinsically mischievous, any more than that it is ecclesiastically irregular.

A later and better authority, Benedict XIV., speaking as a theologian in his work De Synodo Diœc., loco cit., and as Pope, in his Constitution Annuus; 19th Feb., 1749, addressed to the bishops of the Pontifical States, says that it would be an extreme measure to banish figured music from the church, and that he considers it sufficient to banish such music as is theatrical (modi theatrales).

Much has been made of the plea that plain chant is the only chant that has ever been expressly authorized.

Now, it must be remembered, 1, that when plain chant originated, music was not used outside of the church, and that in the dark ages churchmen were the only ones who knew music, and that the church was necessarily its guardian; and, 2, that for three hundred years the church has treated her authorized version with strange incuria; for of this chant there is now no version commanded (though the differences of versions are very remarkable indeed), and till within a year or two there was no version to which any special authorization or even recommendation was given by the popes. Even the version now being prepared under the supervision of the Roman Congregation of Rites is merely recommended.

We must be excused for this long argument about plain chant, but we have been forced into it by the exaggerations of the advocates of this chant, who are, like some of the advocates of Gothic architecture, extremists, and in their zeal fear not to censure the whole church, and even the Pope himself.

They indeed censure the church; for the use of figured music has penetrated everywhere with episcopal sanction and Papal toleration, and, say what we may, it must be admitted that all the theories advanced for the exclusive use of plain chant have invariably fallen to the ground under the hand of practice.

We deny, then, the obligation of confining ourselves to plain chant, if we except that which is in the Missal and the Pontifical, and which contains what is sung by the priest or bishop at the altar.

But while we deny the obligation of using the plain chant exclusively, we would retain a large portion of it, 1, because there are parts of it so appropriate to special services that we can invent nothing better; such as the Requiem, the Lamentations, the Veni Creator, and many hymns, and the incomparable psalm tones, as charming to‐day as when heard by S. Augustine, who says of them: “As the voices flowed into my ears, truth was instilled into my heart, and the affections of piety overflowed in tears of joy.” 2. Because, like our vestments and other appendages of our ceremonial, it carries us back to the never‐to‐be‐forgotten past. 3. Because by being used alternately (as in the Papal choir) with music of a different and more modern character, it contributes most powerfully, by the effect of contrast, to the dignity and grandeur of church celebrations.

To Be Concluded Next Month.

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Comparison Of Waves With Flowers

Certainly, no more am I gladdened by the emulous reflections which the earth and sea, with dark shades and distant projections, form; when alike in charms and powers the sparkling foam competes with snow‐white flowers, for the garden, envious of the curling waves of ocean, loves to imitate their motion, and the amorous zephyr gives back the perfumes which it drinks in by blowing over the shining waters, and makes the waving leaves an ocean of bright flowers; when the sea, sad to view the natural beauties of the garden, while it tries to adorn its own realm, destroys its majestic mien, and, subject to second laws, blends with sweet effect fields of blue with waves of green; colored now like heaven’s blue dome, now plumed with various hues, the garden seems a sea of flowers, and the sea a garden of bright foam.—Calderon.

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A Glimpse of the Green Isle. III—Concluded

I return to some incidents in our journey to and arrival at Dublin. Goold’s Cross is the nearest station to the Rock of Cashel, from which it is distant about five miles. We alight here. We go to visit one who is kin and more than kind. His lares are enshrined at Mora House. An Irish conveyance, called a covered car, takes us thither pretty comfortably. There are three kinds of cars for the transportation of travellers in Ireland, not including the “low‐backed car” which is, or was, designed for the movement of farm produce, and, according to Sam Lover, of rustics on ante‐nuptial expeditions intent. Apropos, I did not see a specimen of the “low‐backed car” from Queenstown to Kingstown. That time‐honored and poetical vehicle seems to have given place to a modern box‐cart, in the East and South at least. The three varieties of car above mentioned belong to the genus known as jaunting‐cars. First, there is the “outside car,” on which the passengers are seated facing outward and back to back. The space between the backs of the sitters is railed off into a place for baggage—or, Anglicé, luggage—called the “well.” It is one of the wells in which truth is not always to be found. At the front end of “the well” is a raised seat for the driver. The “outside car” furnishes seats for from two to three persons on each side. When the seats are not full, the driver usually sits on a side “to balance the cyar.” The “inside car” is the converse of the “outside.” In the former the sitters face each other; their legs are in a space between the wheels, instead of outside them, as on the latter. It is entered by a small door at the back. The driver occupies a raised seat in front. The “covered car” is an “inside” with a high, square covering of black oil‐cloth. It is used in rainy weather. It has some disadvantages. You can see only through the curtain at the back. There are no openings at the sides, and the small glazed apertures in front are placed too high to admit even of an occasional glimpse of the face of Nature. You can only see the dame from behind. Both the “inside” and the “covered car” have a tendency to tilt backwards. You are eternally slipping down the seat toward the door. A sudden start may drop you out like a too well‐warmed plate from the hand of a greedy guest. I came near dropping out once or twice in a ride of a few miles. In one of these conveyances it is wise to take a double hitch around infant America.

A hearty welcome meets us at Mora House. It is situated in the heart of a most lovely country. The house is embowered in trees and shrubbery. The walls, offices, and outhouses are covered with ivy. Along the front of the house is a conservatory. Around it are parterres with evergreens and early flowers, and borders of dark‐green box. Broad pastures, spreading their green slopes into the distance, are relieved here and there by clumps of tall oaks. Cattle and sheep dot the landscape, giving it life without taking from its beautiful repose. In the background the Rock of Cashel, with its ruins and lofty round tower, rears its grim silhouette against the evening sky. The frame of the picture is completed by the mountains of misty blue in the far distance. Among them towers the peak from which, according to tradition, his sable majesty—in a very hungry moment doubtless—is said to have taken a “Devil’s Bit.” Over all this is spread a sky half blue, half cloud, with the softest of clare‐obscures. What a feeling of peace steals over my soul as I look upon this sweet landscape! What a lovely spot for that retirement, “friend to life’s decline,”

“To husband out life’s taper at the close, And keep the lamp from wasting by repose”!

Alas! there is no such gentle decline for us, poor nomads of the New World! We must work with tongue, or pen, or sword, or pencil by the failing light of the lamp until the last of its flickering rays dies into darkness for ever.

After luncheon our gentle cousin takes us to look at his horses and his dogs. One is a Mount St. Bernard, a colossal brute and a prime favorite. Then we visit his kitchen garden, and his cows, and his bee‐hives, and, in short, everything that is his. Next we examine the paintings and the photographs; among the former a life‐size oil‐painting, by O’Keefe, of an uncle, a university man, a brilliant scholar, who sat in more than one professor’s chair.

Thus we occupied the time until dinner was announced. Then we sat down to one of those long‐drawn‐out, old‐fashioned dinners which commence at six in the evening and end any time before midnight. Gentle cousin, having heard the Lady from Idaho express a desire to see an Irish turf‐fire, had one made in the dining‐room; and a bright, pleasant, cheerful, cleanly fire it is. We persuaded the ladies to honor in the breach, for this once, the absurd British custom of withdrawing from the table after the dessert. What a pleasant evening we spent!

Next morning we found rain still falling. It softened the atmosphere without obscuring it. The Rock of Cashel loomed up grimly but distinctly in the distance.

There is now little that is regal about “Cashel of the Kings.” It has its ruins, but nothing else. The approaches to the ruins show more of poverty and discomfort than I remember to have seen in any other town in Ireland. There is a majesty about the ruins. The rock on which they stand is about three hundred feet high. There is a lofty round tower in a good state of preservation. The frescos in one of the halls, said to have been the council‐chamber, are in a state of wonderful freshness. The floors of some of the apartments in the second story seem as perfect as ever they could have been. The carved stone‐work over the porch of one of the entrances—to Cormac’s Chapel, I think—is the admiration of connoisseurs. Every foot of this ground awakens a historical remembrance. I see the rude rulers of ancient Ireland assembled in their regal state. The second Henry and Edward Bruce pass before my mind’s eye. I see that fierce and unscrupulous nobleman, the eighth of the Geraldine earls of Kildare, and think of his astonishing ideas of right and wrong. When Mormon Harry took him to task for burning the Cathedral of Cashel, he pleaded as his excuse that when he fired the church he thought the bishop was in it! What a pleasant neighbor Lord Gerald must have been!

We have a delightful drive to the little old town of Thurles. The green of the fields and the hedges is enhanced by the contrast of thousands of soft, yellow primroses. How purely fresh those primroses look! Here bunches of violets peer forth bashfully, their modest little faces freshly washed by the gently‐dropping rain!

Thurles is a station on the Great Southern and Western Railway. There we take rail for Dublin. It is an old town with a quaint old ivy‐mantled tower which dates from the XIIIth century. The tower stands by a bridge, and watches over an infant stream that becomes a broad river before it reaches the sea. It is a relic of the time when Thurles was a walled town. Thurles is the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel. There are two convents, the Presentation and the Ursuline. The Sisters of the former institution devote themselves to the education of the poor. The Ursuline Sisters have an academy for young ladies of the wealthier and more aristocratic classes. The Presentation school gets a share of the Government educational fund, and is subject to the supervision of the Government inspectors. The mode of teaching in the Presentation school is very similar to that of the public schools in New York. The children sang in chorus remarkably well. There is also a collegiate institution for the education of candidates for the priesthood. We visited both convents, and were kindly and hospitably received.

Among the objects most worthy of a visit is the cathedral, which in taste and magnificence of decoration promises to surpass all modern ecclesiastical buildings in Ireland. It has rich marbles from Italy, fine specimens of native marble, lapis lazuli and verd‐antique, in stones that are worth their weight in gold. Some of the work on the altars is exquisite. The cathedral will be a superb memorial of the piety and taste of the present archbishop, Dr. Leahy. We had the pleasure of visiting, and being visited by, that distinguished ecclesiastic and most refined and courteous gentleman. Very kindly and hospitably did he entreat us.

About four or five miles from Thurles are the ruins of Holy Cross Abbey. Our ride thither was through a delightful country in all the humid beauty of an Irish spring. The ruins are not extensive. They have been so often and so minutely described that a detailed description is not necessary here. Besides, I am not writing a guide‐book. I must mention, however, a stone balustrade which is quite artistic in its effect. The principal window is a splendid piece of work. It is in excellent preservation. There are a number of tombs of considerable age in the abbey. Near the principal window is one to which a singular legend is attached. It was related to us by the guardian of the place, an old woman of eighty, but hale and hearty, chatty and cheerful—such a pleasant female Old Mortality as the immortal Sir Walter would have loved to study and depict. I have often wondered at the cheerfulness with which the old among the Irish poor bear the burden of lengthened existence. The tomb is of stone, and in its upper surface is a hollow. The old woman told us that it was worn by a rain‐drop which for many years fell unceasingly from the roof until the constant dropping wore into the stone the hollow that we saw. The drop began to fall on the commission of some crime, or some offence against the church—she did not recollect which—by “one of the family”—“perhaps some trouble with the priest of the parish.” It continued to fall, drip, drip, drip, rain or shine, year in and year out, until the crime was atoned for, or the offence pardoned, or the family sold out and left the country. Then the drop ceased to fall, and has never fallen since.

“Do you think the story is really true?” asked the Lady from Idaho of the old custodian.

“Do I think its thrue, ma’am?” said the old woman, giving her territorial ladyship a diplomatic look. “Shure, it isn’t for the likes o’ me to be denyin’ the likes of that. And shure, ma’am, can’t you see the hole for yourself?”

“Of course. There is no better proof than that.”

“And don’t you see, ma’am, that it’s rainin’ now at the very minnit that I’m talkin’ to ye?”

“There certainly can be no doubt about that,” replied the Lady from Idaho, glancing upwards at the umbrella which Cousin George held over her head.

“And don’t you see, ma’am, that niver a dhrop falls on the tomb where the hole is, now?” added the old woman triumphantly.

“I do indeed,” replied Mme. Idaho. “That last argument is conclusive. Even if it were not, I am of easy faith in such matters.”

“And wisely so,” chimed in Cousin George. “Doubting Thomas makes a miserable traveller. He loses the pleasures of travel in the search for proofs that he is not enjoying himself without proper warrant. If he finds evidence for us that our pleasures of association are not justified by fact, that we have no right to be pleased by legends he can disprove, we tell him he is a fool for his pains. We do not want his facts. We are determined to believe in our favorite legends, in spite of him and all the Gradgrinds in the world.”

The old woman looked at Cousin George with rather a puzzled air. She had listened most attentively, leaning her old head forward, and with withered forefinger pushing back her mob‐cap from her time‐dulled ear; but Cousin George’s harangue was evidently Greek to her. She instinctively divined, nevertheless, that George was talking on her side of the question; for she said, nodding her head approvingly the while:

“Faith, and shure it’s mighty right ye are, yer honor!”

A gratuity, calculated according to the American standard, resulted in a series of blessings and a succession of antique “dips,” known as “courtesies” by the Irish peasant women of a past generation.

We took the cars again at Thurles on our way Dublin‐ward.

There is an air of comfort and solidity about the few farm‐houses we notice on our route, but they were indeed few. The proportion of land under tillage was comparatively very small. The country seemed generally to be in pasturage. Large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were to be seen. The small proprietors and farmers had disappeared. We saw a couple of women working in the fields. This annoyed the Lady from Idaho very much. She said that no matter how beautiful the landscape might be, that blot destroyed all her enjoyment of it. Our travelling companion, Viator, bade her season her admiration for a while until she reached the interior of Germany, where she would see many a team of wayward sisters harnessed to the plough and driven by a beery lord of the creation. Mme. Idaho said she did not want to go where such sights could be seen.

We pass Kildare, with its world‐famed “Curragh,” an extensive flat, on which a few thousand British troops were encamped at the time. At every station we find a policeman or two casting argus eyes over things in general. Physically, the policemen—the “Royal Irish Constabulary”—are among the finest specimens of the genus homo I have seen. They are tall, generally over six feet, and magnificently moulded. Their uniform, though somewhat sombre, is in good taste: a dark, green tunic and trousers, with a small, visorless forage‐cap ornamented in front with a harp in scarlet.

Clondalkin, which is within a few miles of Dublin, possesses a round tower in excellent preservation. It is about eighty feet high. The entrance is about twelve feet from the ground. It has four openings or windows some ten feet below the roof.

We are in Dublin, at King’s Bridge terminus, so called from being near the bridge erected over the Liffey to commemorate the visit to Dublin of the fourth of the royal personages so unflatteringly designated by the author of Childe Harold. A charming Irish landscape greets the eye as you approach the city; on the left the prettiest portion of the Liffey and the Phœnix Park; on the right a gently‐undulating expanse of green fields bordered by old trees and dotted with ancient churches and picturesque cottages, bounded in the distance by the soft outline of the Wicklow Hills.

One of our party expected to meet a brother whom he had not seen since they were both boys nearly a quarter of a century ago. Arrived at the terminus, and once more restored to liberty by the unlocking of the carriage‐doors, he looked around anxiously for the individual he expected to find waiting for him. He could pick out no one in the crowd whom he could claim as a brother.

“I do not think there is any one here,” said Mr. Hibernicus with an air of disappointment, after vainly peering into the faces of a dozen gentlemen, who seemed rather surprised by his close scrutiny.

“What kind of a brother do you expect, Mr. Hibernicus?” asked the Lady from Idaho.

“I assure you, my dear madam,” replied Mr. Hibernicus, “I have not the remotest idea what Jack looks like now. He was quite a boy when we parted, and I have not seen even a photograph of him since. I hoped that instinct would reveal to me, as to honest Jack Falstaff, the ‘true prince.’ ”

We stood irresolute for a moment, when a gentleman with a long beard à l’Américaine approached our group. Raising his hat, and acknowledging the presence of ladies by a bow, he said to Mr. Hibernicus, who was still endeavoring to bring his instinct into play:

“May I ask, sir, if you are looking for anybody?”

“I am looking for my brother, sir,” replied Mr. Hibernicus. “Permit me to inquire if you expect any one?”

“I expect my brother,” returned the gentleman.

“Are you Jack?”

“I am Jack.”

“How are you, Jack?”

And the brothers, after a vigorous hand‐shake and some inquiries after “So‐and‐so,” took things as coolly as if they had only been parted a quarter of an hour instead of a quarter of a century.

Decidedly, people born to the English tongue have a horror of anything approaching to demonstrative sensibility. They have nothing dramatic about them. What a scène two Frenchmen or two Italians would have made out of such a meeting after many roving years! During the days when a generous and romantic credulity gave me undeserved credit for burning the midnight oil over Homer and Horace, I had a French student‐friend named l’Orient—an ami intime of six months’ standing. L’Orient made a six weeks’ trip to England, and I was at the station to receive the great traveller when he returned.

“Te revoilà toi! Comment vas‐tu?” said I, putting forth my hand for a friendly shake. But l’Orient was not to be put off with anything so commonplace as the usual English pump‐handle reception.

“Enfin, je te revois!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms around me, “ce cher ami! Ce brave Jeem! Ce vieux de la vieille!” And putting a hand behind each of my ears, thus rendering escape impossible, he kissed me vigorously on both cheeks. Then we walked toward our hotel, l’Orient holding my hand in his. We met Jules; and l’Orient left me, and threw himself on Jules: “Ce cher Jules! Ce brave Jules!” etc., etc., and performed a double osculation on Jules. Next we met Victor, and then Benoit and several others, each of whom was accosted by l’Orient and embraced in the same effusive manner. Our two brothers meet after a separation of half a century with a simple “How are you, Jack?” and a hand‐shake. What demonstration would be lively enough for my old friend l’Orient under such circumstances? Yet l’Orient did not feel a tithe of what Jack and his brother felt. I often think it would be better for us if we were more demonstrative. We should perhaps be better satisfied with ourselves, and perhaps others would be better satisfied with us also.

I had directed my telegram from Queenstown to a wrong number, but the telegraph people took the trouble to find the person to whom it was addressed. I have had occasion frequently to use the postal telegraph. I have found its management admirable. The post‐office department is also excellently well conducted. If there is any possibility of delivery, a letter is sure to be delivered. One of my friends writes a hand so hard to decipher that I can generally achieve most success in unravelling its mysteries by turning his missives upside down and studying his hieroglyphics in an inverted position. He wrote to me at Dublin, and addressed me at a street unknown to the Dublin directory. In New York this would have been the last of the letter. The Dublin post‐officials referred the letter from one postal district to the other until the person to whose care it was addressed was found, and it was forwarded to Paris, where I happened to be at the time.

Dublin occupies both sides of the Liffey. The river runs through the city from east to west. The streets along its banks are subdivided into “quays.” The banks are faced with granite, of which the parapets are also constructed. The river is spanned by nine handsome bridges, seven of stone and two of iron. The river streets extend about three miles on either side. Each block, as we would say in New York, has a different name. Thus there is Usher’s Quay, Merchants’ Quay, Wellington Quay, etc., on the north side, extending from the Phœnix Park gate to the North Wall Lighthouse. On the south side are Arran Quay, King’s Inn Quay, where the Four Courts are situated, Upper Ormond Quay and Lower, Eden Quay, Custom‐ House Quay, etc. The entire street reaches from King’s Bridge to the end of the South Wall at Dublin Bar Lighthouse. The Liffey may be considered as the diameter of a circle in which Dublin is contained; the circular roads which run around it describe the circumference. West of Carlisle Bridge, which is the head of navigation, the Liffey is a dull and uninviting stream, especially at low water. It is not more than eighty yards wide. The mouths of the sewers which empty into it are some feet above low‐water mark. Their contributions to its by no means pellucid flood are not agreeable to contemplate either from an æsthetic or from a sanitary point of view. I should suppose the quays to be unhealthy places for residence. One must have the suicidal mania very strong indeed who would throw himself into the Liffey between King’s and Carlisle Bridges. Beyond King’s Bridge you get into the country, where the stream is not defiled by the filth of the city.

Sackville Street is the principal street of Dublin. It is about twice as wide as Broadway, but is not longer than from Canal Street to Houston Street. Its shortness takes away from its impressiveness. At the foot of Sackville Street stands Nelson’s Pillar, a Doric column about a hundred and twenty feet high, with a figure of the great admiral leaning against a capstan on the summit. A fine view can be had on a clear day (which is not always to be had) from the top of the monument, to which you may ascend by a spiral staircase in the interior on payment of a small fee. The steps at the base of the column are generally occupied by squatting idlers of all ages. On a fine day—i.e., when it does not rain—every inch of sitting space is occupied. Belated “squatters” may be seen waiting for hours until place is made by the retirement of some of the sitting members. Then a general rush is made for the vacant place. Here the politics of the nation and of the universe are discussed by the unwashed politicians of the Irish capital. I endeavored to ascertain how these squatters manage to live; but I was told that it is one of those mysteries which no one can penetrate.

The General Post‐Office and the Rotunda are near the monument. The Post‐ Office is a fine structure of stone with a portico of Ionic pillars five feet in diameter. Its pediment is surmounted by three statues: Ireland at the apex, Fidelity on the left, and Mercury on the right. In certain post‐ offices that we wot of Mercury would indeed be the right statue in the right place, and might be considered to have a double significance—as a celestial messenger and a patron of thieving post‐office clerks.

Certain tourists have claimed for Sackville Street the proud pre‐eminence of being “the finest thoroughfare in Europe.” I do not think the claim well founded. I do not consider it equal to some of the new boulevards in Paris, or even to some of those in Brussels. It is certainly grand and imposing as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Sackville Street, however, presents a lively scene on a fine afternoon. Beautiful women, well‐dressed gentlemen, rich toilets, and magnificent equipages may then be seen; the toilets superior to anything to be seen out of Paris, the equipages not to be equalled out of London. Nothing that I have seen on the Continent of Europe can compare with the “turn‐outs” and “cattle” driven in Dublin. The most beautiful equipage I have noticed, and at the same time the chastest in its elegant simplicity, was that of Earl Spencer, the present viceroy; four dark bays—blood‐horses—with postillions and outriders in a dark livery almost black, with white buckskin breeches and top‐boots. Not a brass button or strip of tawdry gold lace to be seen. Compared with this equipage, the state carriages at Buckingham Palace and those at Versailles looked like circus wagons.

Carlisle Bridge, the embouchure of Sackville Street, being considerably narrower than the street, is generally the scene of something like a “Broadway jam.” On a busy day it reminds one of the Fulton Street crossing—even to the policeman.

The élite of Dublin, however, will be found in Grafton Street about four P.M. This street, though narrow—narrower even than Broadway—is the brightest, cheeriest street in Dublin. It is laid with asphaltum, and is delightfully free from mud or noise. It is the fashionable shopping‐ street. Equipages in the very perfection of good taste may be seen in long lines at both sides of the street in front of the principal shops, while ranks of magnificent “Yellowplushes,” in rich liveries and powdered heads, wait, with the grand imperturbability of flunky dignity, to open the carriage‐door for madame or “my lady.”

I have already said that the Irish in Ireland are becoming a serious people. I did not meet a single specimen of the Irish joker, indispensable to the tourist in Ireland a quarter of a century ago. If he ever existed as they represented him, the railways have killed him. Now there is no time for display of wit, so called. I think the extinction of the genus “joker” is something to be grateful for. I did not see any evidence of suffering among the laboring classes or any more raggedness than in England, France, or Germany. Artisans are becoming scarce, and can command good wages. It is hard to get agricultural laborers; they can almost set their own terms. Those who may be obtained cannot be kept very long; they work merely to save enough to join their relatives and friends in the Land of the Free.

The traditional costume of the stage Irishman is as rarely seen in Ireland as the short‐waisted, long‐tailed coat, and striped trousers of the stage Yankee in the United States. I saw but one pair of “knee‐breeches” between Cork and Kingstown.

I did not encounter a single shillelah.

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