The Veil Withdrawn…

The Veil Withdrawn

Translated, By Permission, From The French Of Madame Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story,” “Fleurange,” Etc.

XIII.

That evening we went to the opera, the next night to the theatre; then came invitations without number to a series of dinners, matinées, and soirées that succeeded each other without intermission. I refrain from enumerating them, for I am writing the history of my soul rather than my exterior life. I will merely say, therefore, that after continuing this course several weeks, I found myself in a most singular and unhappy frame of mind. My thoughts, imagination, and whole mind became too much absorbed in the amusements and pleasures the young are often carried away with through curiosity and a superabundance of life and activity, which might be satisfied more completely, however, and in a less dangerous way, than by a career of pleasure, the almost inevitable effect of which is to produce a kind of intoxication. This intoxication overpowered me to a certain degree, but it left me, however, the faculty of realizing the change that had come over me, and I felt a painful desire to be what I once was. I had no peace of mind. I could not reflect or pray, even in my short intervals of leisure, and, in order to avoid the irksomeness of solitude, I gladly returned to the round of pleasure into which my husband liked to draw me. I had, it is true, the double safeguard of his love for me and my indifference to any other admiration but his. A vague uneasiness sometimes crossed my mind like an ominous cloud, but I did not dream there could possibly be any danger for either of us in the enervating atmosphere of flattery and frivolity which we breathed more and more constantly.

Lorenzo continued to hover around me in public, or, if he remained at a distance, to watch me with an attention that was disagreeable because it seemed inexplicable. Nothing could have pleased me more than to have his eyes always meeting mine, and to find him everywhere near enough to speak to; but this was quite a different thing, for, even when I was not looking towards him, I could feel his persistent eyes fastened on me, and as soon as I raised my head he would turn away as if to avoid encountering my glance. Was it with love or pride that his eyes thus followed me? Was it not rather as if he expected to take me by surprise, or was mistrustful of me? When this doubt occurred to my mind, I felt the blood rush to my face, and love and pride revolt in my heart.

One day we were invited to a large dinner‐party in one of those magnificent houses in Paris which have the now rare advantage of a fine garden. It was past the season for full dress, and I merely wore a white muslin trimmed with lace, and a wreath of flowers whose colors harmonized with that perfect taste shown in everything at Paris. When I made my appearance, the whole company united in exclaiming that my fresh toilet was wonderfully becoming. Perhaps they were right. I was of an age that flowers suited better than jewels, and my complexion could bear the light of day without any danger. The days were now at their longest, so, in spite of the interminable length of a grand dinner, the delicious twilight hour was not quite gone when we rose from the table, and all issued forth through the windows into the garden. If ever the sight of the green grass, the leaves on the trees, the perfume and brilliancy of the flowers, and the varied hues of the sky as day declines, are more attractive and grateful at one time than another, it is certainly when contrasted with the stifling atmosphere, the air impregnated with the odor of dishes, and the brilliant artificial light, at a grand dinner in mid‐summer. Therefore it was with inexpressible relief and an almost child‐like joy I flew down the steps into the garden as soon as the master of the house left my movements free, and strolled along the broad alley that divided the lawn, inhaling with delight the freshness of the balmy air.... My life of pleasure had never quenched the ardent love of solitude that sometimes came over me, and I now longed to be alone. I desired this the more because I felt uneasy about a new change in Lorenzo’s manner, and wished to reflect undisturbed on the inference I should draw from it.

For the first time since our arrival at Paris he had not, to my knowledge, watched one of my movements, though I had received more flattery that day, perhaps, than ever before.... During the dinner he appeared devoted to his neighbors—on one side, a lady who was still beautiful, though no longer in the bloom of youth; and on the other, a young gentleman with a thoughtful, striking face, who grew animated whenever Lorenzo addressed him, and seemed to reply with much interest. I was told that the former was Mme. de B——, the other the young Count Gilbert de Kergy, “a great traveller also,” added the master of the house, beside whom I was seated. “And it was solely the hope of meeting the Duca di Valenzano that induced him to accept my invitation to dine with us to‐day. He does not care for the grand monde; and when he returns from one of his extensive journeys, he shuts himself up at home, or plunges into the charitable world, which is another grand monde little suspected by strangers who only come to Paris for a time.”

All this might perhaps have interested me at some other time, but my mind was now occupied in trying to ascertain the reality of the change I had remarked. It was now my turn to give sly glances towards the other side of the table, but I did not once detect Lorenzo looking towards me. And yet it was not owing to the interest he took in the conversation. How many times I had seen him apparently absorbed in conversation, while a rapid glance of the eye convinced me he had been constantly attentive to every movement I made. There was nothing of this kind to‐day. I knew him too well not to perceive the difference, but I did not know what to think of it, or if I had any reason to rejoice at it.

These thoughts beset me during the trifling conversation that varies the ennui of a large dinner, and even prevented me from perceiving that our host was a gentleman of superior intelligence, and profiting by it. Before leaving the table, I stealthily turned my eyes once more in the direction they had so often taken within an hour. It was evident that Lorenzo did not trouble himself any more about me to‐day than any other husband about his wife in public. But this time I perceived his young neighbor looking at me rather attentively, though with a look of seriousness almost amounting to austerity, very different from the glances so often encountered in the world which always made me lower my eyes. His inspired me with a kind of sympathy, and did not give me the slightest embarrassment.

I had, however, no opportunity for reflection during my walk, for I was almost immediately surrounded by friends, and I soon turned back to hunt for Lorenzo. Daylight was almost gone, which made it difficult to recognize any one; but at last I discovered him on the steps by means of his lofty stature and noble features, which were distinctly defined against the light of the salon within. Near him sat his next neighbor at dinner, holding a fan in her hand, and talking in an animated manner. Lorenzo appeared to be listening without making any attempt to reply. Once or twice he turned his head towards the garden. He was looking for me, perhaps....

It had now grown entirely too dark to distinguish any one around me. I was standing motionless near a bench on which sat two or three gentlemen talking together.

“Mme. de B—— looks almost as handsome as ever this evening,” said one of them. “One would really think she was trying to regain her ascendency!...”

“It would be very difficult, however, to supplant that lovely, golden‐ haired Sicilian.”

“Impossible, certainly, in the eyes of any other man; but in those of her husband, who knows?”

This was one of those speeches that are always flying at random, and striking the ear on every side in the world—speeches which one hears without listening to, but which weaken the moral sense, as physical diseases are produced by breathing dangerous miasmata too frequently. Since I had lived in this atmosphere many things of a similar nature had been said in my presence. Alas! it was sufficient to hear Lorenzo and Lando’s conversation to learn how far light words of this kind can go. I therefore tried to attach no importance to the gossip I had thus accidentally overheard. Even if Lorenzo did formerly pay homage to this now somewhat faded beauty, why should I care? That did not trouble me for the moment. My only anxiety was to ascertain if his happening to meet her was the cause of the change I had observed, or if I must seek some other. In a word, ought I to be anxious or to rejoice?

Having escaped, in the almost utter darkness, from those who tried to detain me, I was slowly advancing towards the steps when I suddenly met Lorenzo.... He was in search of me, for he had on his arm my thin mantle of white cashmere, which he wrapped around my shoulders. I joyfully seized hold of his arm, and said in a low tone: “Pray do not go in yet, Lorenzo. Let us walk awhile in this beautiful covered alley.”

He began to laugh. “That would be very sentimental,” said he, “for people who are no longer in their honey‐moon; but no matter, I consent. Honi soit qui mal y pense. Besides, I see yonder an illuminated tent, where, I am told, they are preparing a musical surprise for us. Let us go in that direction.”

We walked a short distance without speaking. There was nothing absolutely calculated to wound me in what he said, but his light, indifferent tone was not what I longed to hear. Amid all the excitement of fashionable society, I felt that his love constituted the only happiness of my life; and if I had supposed that to be the only cause of his vigilance and anxiety concerning me, I should never have sought to escape from it. But I had been doubtful about this, and felt so still. And I was too open, too confiding, and perhaps too petulant, to remain in doubt any longer.

“Let us stop here, Lorenzo,” I said when we arrived at the end of the covered walk. “I see people coming this way. We can follow them into the tent, and it will be supposed we came with the crowd.”

In fact, a brilliant soirée succeeded the dinner. The salons and garden were filled with company. The light from the tent extended to the place where we were standing, though we were out of sight. I sat down on a bench against a tree, and Lorenzo took a seat beside me.

“I have a question to ask you,” said I suddenly. “Promise to give me a sincere reply.”

He seemed surprised. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and his smiling face became clouded.

“I do not much like to be questioned, Ginevra, I forewarn you.”

“But you always seem to like to have me answer your questions.”

“Yes, but without depending on it; for I know how to question and obtain an answer without giving you the trouble to reply.”

“And is that why you look at me instead of speaking, and your eyes are always following me so attentively?”

He smiled, and made no reply for a while.

“Perhaps that has been the cause of my doing so till to‐day.”

“Till to‐day?”

“Yes; since you ask me, I confess it without any hesitation. Love does not always, among its privileges, possess the faculty of seeing clearly. Therefore I have been mistrustful of mine, and have not allowed it to influence me in the least in studying you.”

I made a slight gesture of surprise.

“Listen, Ginevra. One never knows what a young soldier is till his first battle. Neither can one tell what a young woman of your age is till she appears on the terrible battle‐field of the fashionable world. But if I have any faculty, it is, I believe, that of not being deceived in a study of this kind. Be assured, Ginevra, that from this time I shall watch you no more.”

“Then, Lorenzo,” said I, somewhat hurt, “you really watched me through suspicion, and all this time was necessary to convince you I am to be trusted?”

“I wished to see you under fire,” said he, resuming his jesting tone. “Do not complain of this, ma belle Ginevra. You have come out of the trial victorious—victorious to such a degree that, though I thought you more charming to‐day than ever, I have not once thought of watching you. And yet,” continued he in a tone he tried to render playful, but which was bitter in spite of himself, “those flowers that are so becoming to you are not all calculated to reassure me.” And plucking a red carnation from my wreath, he held it up before me with a smile that seemed cruel, and was about to put it in his button‐hole when, pale as death, I snatched it from his hand, and threw it as far as I could.

“Lorenzo!” I said in a trembling voice, “you are ungenerous!... and you are very unjust!...”

I should have done better to say, as well as think, that he did not know what he was doing. No; he little knew what had taken place in my soul since the day he thus recalled, which was so sanguinary, so fatal in its results. No; he could not conceive the intolerable pain he gave me by thus suddenly reviving my regret, my sorrow, and my shame!...

He could read my heart to a certain extent, but how far he was—alas! how incapable he was—of penetrating to the bottom of my soul, and fully comprehending, or even suspecting, the radical change which that one day had wrought in my nature.

He saw with surprise and alarm my agitation and the sudden paleness of my face, and endeavored to calm me; but I noticed he was at once anxious and annoyed about the emotion he had excited.

I made a violent effort to regain my self‐control, and soon succeeded in allaying the throbbing of my heart. But I felt as if an icy wind had crossed my path, chilling too soon the opening flowers of my dawning happiness, and causing them to droop their heads.

XIV.

From that day Lorenzo, as he promised, ceased to manifest any interest in what I did in society. But this apparent confidence afforded me no pleasure. I remained painfully wounded at what had passed between us. I considered his suspicions even more humiliating than those of my father, and began to feel that the fault I had so greatly deplored had not merited so long and cruel a chastisement.

Moreover, I was only relieved from the anxiety caused by his vigilance to experience another which was soon to increase and reveal to me at last my true destiny. It did not, in fact, require a long time to discover that Lorenzo’s new attitude was sometimes less like confidence than indifference. It frequently happened that I searched a long time for him in the different salons where we were accustomed to spend all our evenings, without being able to find him. One day I perceived him talking in a very animated manner with Mme. de B——, and, when I approached, I fancied there was a slight expression of displeasure in his face, which, though promptly concealed, was sufficient to cause me a painful sensation of embarrassment.

When we were alone, however, I found him unchanged. His manner towards me had lost nothing of its charm; he seemed as affectionate as ever, and yet an invisible barrier had risen between us, which was constantly increasing, and I began to experience a feeling of solitude that was especially painful in society, but from which I was nowhere completely exempt.

But the success of my first appearance in the world had now given way to that of fashion. The arrival of some foreign prince, whose name I no longer remember, prolonged the gay season at Paris this year, and one reunion succeeded another as if it were carnival time. There was not one to which I was not invited, and, though an undeniable need of rest began to overpower the feverish activity that for some time had come over me, I was unable to stop, for I began to perceive that a quiet, tranquil life was insupportable to Lorenzo unless in his studio. Out of that, he wished to be incessantly in motion, and, as he could not now seriously resume his artist life, he gave himself up entirely to that of the world, and was not yet indifferent to the pleasure of having me accompany him.

It was therefore impossible for me to extricate myself from the giddy round of which I had grown so weary, and I sometimes envied those who were satisfied with the mere pleasure of attracting attention. I felt astonished then, and I still am, at the wonderful part played by vanity in these gayeties, which are so different to those who participate in them from what they seem to the crowd who are excluded. The music, the dancing, the splendid apartments, the gayety of youth requisite to enjoy all this, and, to crown the whole, the pleasure of meeting those who are dear, are the chief attractions and keenest enjoyments which cause those who have the power of exhausting them to be envied by all who are deprived of them. If this were really all, such a life would be ennobled to a certain degree in my eyes, for its dangers and its pleasures would at least be commensurate with the love and the disapprobation of which they are the object. But the seductions of the world consist chiefly in the satisfaction of eclipsing others, and the intoxication it causes is almost always produced, not by the pleasure it gives, but by the vanity of those who mingle in it. This seems strange when we reflect upon it, and we can see, without rising very high, that not only happiness, but pleasure, and even amusement, can find a better source; and consequently those who really possess these envied blessings are the people who are supposed to be the most debarred from them.

As for me, I was no longer light‐hearted, but I tried to appear so in society; for the sad expression I could not always disguise had excited some observations that wounded my pride.

“What! the fair Ginevra really melancholy?” said Lando Landi, sitting down beside me one evening at a concert, and speaking in the familiar tone authorized by his relationship, but which was none the less displeasing. “I have always denied it, because you are so invariably cheerful when I see you out of this everlasting din, as I do every day. I only supposed you a little weary of so gay a life—a thing conceivable, even in your case, for one gets tired of everything, even of turning people’s heads; but this evening you really have the air of a tragic muse.”

“I am a little fatigued, that is all.”

“Listen to me, cousin, and do not treat me so badly. I see you do not like me, which proves I am not self‐conceited; and I am not angry with you, which proves I am not malicious. Moreover, I greatly admire and love you, and yet (give me some credit for this) I do not pay court to you.”

“Come, Lando, no more of such jests, but come to the point.”

“I was about to beg you to show some confidence in me. You are sad, and I will tell you why: you have heard some nonsensical gossip about Lorenzo. Now, cousin, let me tell you....”

“What gossip?” I asked, turning red with an air of displeasure.

“You understand me perfectly well. I am certain I tell you nothing new. It may seem presuming to speak of this, but I must justify Lorenzo. Believe what I say, and do not attach any importance to a passing politeness in memory of former times, which means nothing, and really does not, on my word of honor, merit such a flash from your beautiful eyes.”

He had indeed found the means of making them flame up.

“Really, Lando,” said I haughtily, “it would serve you right if I never spoke to you again.”

But he was evidently so seriously astonished that I saw I was wrong. He had been presuming without knowing it or intending it. I therefore continued in a milder tone:

“I assure you, you are absolutely mistaken. I am neither sad nor anxious, ... only a little ennuyée, that is all. And to‐night I am sleepy, and wish to return home as soon as possible. Give me your arm, and let us go in search of Lorenzo.”

“It is not much after midnight,” he said; “you must really remain a while longer to hear the last two pieces.”

“No, I tell you I have had enough of it. But if you wish to remain here, you need not feel obliged to escort me. The first person I meet will render me that service.”

“Ma cher!” said he, rising and shaking his head, as he concluded to give me his arm.

We began our voyage of discovery through the long row of salons, but could not find Lorenzo anywhere. Lando said nothing, but I noticed he cast a quick, mistrustful glance around every room we entered, and it occurred to me he had not told the truth, but merely wished to reassure me when he knew Lorenzo was having a tête‐à‐tête it was as humiliating for me to be ignorant of as to discover. Lando had touched a sorer spot than I was willing he should see. For in spite of an apparently very frank explanation on this point from Lorenzo himself a few days before, suspicion had entered my heart, and I was in constant need of being reassured. Was not this acknowledging I already had reason to tremble?

At length we arrived at the last salon. Lorenzo was not there. There was only a small room beyond, not as well lighted as the rest.

“That is the library,” explained Lando in his way; “or, at least, a cabinet full of books, where no one ever goes.”

An almost imperceptible movement of his arm made me feel he wished to prevent me from entering. This was enough to induce me to go straight to the door, where I stopped short, at once reassured and amazed. Four men were there by themselves, sitting around a card‐table with a green covering. Two of them were playing, and Lorenzo was one of them; the others followed the game with the most intense interest. I remained leaning against the door, motionless, and my eyes fastened on him. Was that really Lorenzo?... What a change in his countenance!... What a strange expression in his mobile face! He did not perceive me, and I felt that my voice would have sounded in his ear in vain. He neither saw nor heard anything around him. His looks, his attention, his mind, and his whole being seemed absorbed in the cards he held in his hand. He was calm, but his slightly‐compressed eyebrows showed that luck was against him.

In a few minutes he drew a roll of gold pieces from his pocket, and threw them on the table. His opponent rose, but Lorenzo remained in his seat, and began a new game with one of those who had been watching the old one.

“Take a seat here,” said Lando, leading me towards one of the sofas in the room where we were. “I am going to tell Lorenzo you are waiting for him. Do not go in yourself.”

I made a sign of assent, and for the first time gave Lando credit for some tact. His usually smiling face had, moreover, an air of anxious solicitude that not only surprised me, but redoubled the strange, unexpected shock I had just experienced. He went into the next room, and, after waiting a long time, I at last saw him come out; but he was alone.

“It is impossible to speak to him till the end of the game,” he said in a tone of vexation. Then, after a moment’s silence, he added with a forced laugh: “My dear cousin, you would have done much better to follow my advice and wait for Lorenzo in the concert‐room instead of coming here after him. But since you persisted in doing so, allow me to give you one bit of advice, now you have caught him falling into his old bad habit again.”

“Again?” I said with an air of surprise.

“Well, yes.... For a year he did not touch a card, he told me, for he well knew that for him the mere touch was like a spark that kindles a fire. He vowed—not to play moderately, for he is incapable of moderation in anything—but never to touch a card again, and he expressed great satisfaction some days since that he had kept his promise so faithfully. But to‐day he has broken it. Who knows what will happen to‐morrow? Make use, therefore, of the influence you still have over him; use all the persuasive powers you possess to induce him to resolve once more on a wise course. It is a thing, you may be sure, that threatens your happiness, as well as his, a thousand times more than all the fair ones in the past, present, or future who should attempt to rival you!”

In spite of all that was displeasing in Lando’s manner, language, and sentiments, and even in the expressions he made use of in giving me this advice, I felt it was dictated by sincere interest, and it touched me. I felt weighed down by this new trouble. This was a fear I had never experienced before. It was absolutely foreign to everything that had crossed my mind. Was this to live, love, and be happy? Everything around me looked dark, and the night seemed to penetrate to my very soul.

The time I had to wait seemed interminable. The concert was over, the rooms were growing empty, and we were to be the last. I rose with an impatience I could no longer control, and went again to the cabinet. Lorenzo was rising from the table just as I entered. I saw him slip another roll of money into his opponent’s hands. Then he came towards me with his usual expression. It was evident he had no suspicion of my having been so near him for more than an hour.

“Excuse me, Ginevra,” said he. “What! is the concert over? And you had to search for me?... It is unpardonable; but I had no idea they would get to the end of that interminable programme so early.”

“But it is nearly two o’clock,” said I.

He glanced towards the clock, and looked surprised. Lando, meanwhile, had hurried away to get my cloak; but he soon returned with it, saying the carriage was waiting for us. I entered it with Lorenzo, after giving my hand more cordially to his cousin than I had ever done before.

On the way home Lorenzo, after a long silence, thought proper to explain that he had got tired of the concert, and for amusement had had recourse to a game of écarté. Lando’s words were still in my ears. My heart, too, was filled with inexpressible anxiety and profound affection for this dear partner of my life who was so charming in manner, and whom it would have been so sweet to love in peace! I leaned my head against his shoulder, and, passing my arm through his, said:

“Lorenzo, if I take the liberty of giving you one word of advice, will you follow it? If I beg you to make me one promise—a promise that will render me happy—will you not grant it?”

He made so abrupt a movement that I was almost frightened. But he immediately resumed his self‐control, and, softly kissing my hand and forehead, said in a tone that was not rude, but which seemed to forbid all reply:

“Ginevra, I think I told you the other day that I do not like to be questioned, and I now tell you that I like advice still less, and, above all, I cannot bear to make promises. So let this warning suffice. Avoid these three shoals, if you wish to remain in my eyes what I now consider you—the most charming of women.”

XV.

The following day was Sunday. Notwithstanding so fatiguing an evening, the lateness of the hour when I retired, and the restless night that followed, I was ready for Mass at the usual hour. But for the first time since my marriage Lorenzo sent me word not to wait for him. Of course I had never been under any great illusion as to his religious sentiments. I supposed that habit, rather than piety, induced him to accompany me to church; but I was far from suspecting that he had hitherto made it a point to do so because he thought it necessary to keep an eye on me there as well as elsewhere. Above all, I little expected the habit to be laid aside as soon as he was reassured or became interested in something else. I consoled myself on this occasion by thinking he would go to a later Mass; and for the first time I went out alone and on foot, the distance being so short between our hotel in the Rue de Rivoli and the Church of S. Roch.

The life I had led for two months was not precisely adapted to dispose my soul for prayer. Besides, accustomed as I had been to the churches of Italy, those at Paris seemed destitute of all beauty, and I found it difficult to get used to so different an aspect. But other impressions soon modified this. The goodness and piety that so thoroughly impregnated the atmosphere which surrounded my childhood were rather the spirit of our family than of the land that had providentially given me birth. And yet there is, in Sicily, as well as all Southern Italy, a great deal of faith, though it cannot be denied that, at this time, great moral relaxation and religious indifference were too prevalent, especially among those who belonged to the upper classes. There, more than anywhere else even, holy souls led hidden lives, and edification was rather to be found in the obscurity of certain firesides than in the world at large, or even in the usages of public worship. All the religious exercises of our family were performed in the chapel of the old palace we occupied. This chapel was spacious, richly ornamented, and architecturally beautiful. We not only heard Mass there on Sundays, but every day, and two or three times a week Don Placido gave us an instructive, edifying discourse. My father, mother, Livia, Ottavia, Mario (who, in spite of his faults, retained his respect for holy things), and several faithful old servants constituted the attentive, devout congregation. My childhood was not wanting in any of those influences that have so powerful an effect on after‐life. Ottavia often took Livia and myself to the evening Benediction in one of the neighboring churches, and my heart still throbs at the remembrance of the pious transport with which I knelt before the illuminated tabernacle on which stood the monstrance. The church used to be filled solely by people of the humbler classes, even on festivals. It was a rare thing to find a single person belonging to the upper classes. What struck me, therefore, above all, at Paris, was the complete difference of the churches in this respect. I was at first even more surprised than edified. For if I had often remarked the absence of the wealthy in Sicily, here I was struck with the absence of the poor. I looked around for the people clothed in rags, whose fervor had so often redoubled mine, and did not like to feel that I was separated from them. This separation is much more marked where the custom of private chapels has been established. Christian equality calls the rich and great to the foot of the altar, no less than the poor and lowly; and if they do not all meet there, whether in France or Italy, we cannot blame those whose attendance at church is an example to the absent, whatever rank they may belong to.

But to return to this Sunday morning. I knelt down and heard Mass with much less distraction than usual. I was, it is true, rather sad than devout at the time, but I prayed more fervently than I had done for a long time, and, when I slowly and reluctantly left the church, the inner soul, that resounds like a lyre under the divine hand, had received a slight touch, and for the first time for a long while I felt the movement of one of those hidden chords that cannot be sounded without causing all the others to vibrate.

As I approached the door of the church, I noticed a young girl kneeling on a chair, whose face did not seem wholly unknown to me. She held a purse in her hand, and was soliciting contributions for orphans. I deposited my offering, and received her smiling thanks in return. As I passed on, I heard her whisper my name to a lady of noble and distinguished appearance beside her (whom I supposed to be her mother), who, with her eyes fastened on her book, had not observed me. As I went on, I recollected having met this pretty girl two or three times in company, but did not know her name. I felt surprised that she should know mine, though this often happens to strangers who are pointed out as objects of curiosity, while they only know a few of those around them.

I had no time, however, to dwell on this accidental meeting, or quietly enjoy the impressions left by the services at church; for Lorenzo’s first words immediately revived all the recollections of the morning.

“You are late, Ginevra,” said he. “It is half‐past eleven. Breakfast is waiting, and I am in a hurry.”

We took seats at the table in silence, but he soon resumed:

“You have scarcely time to dress. Have you forgotten that we are going to the races? Lando Landi is to come for us before one o’clock.”

Yes, I had completely forgotten it. I felt an earnest desire to withdraw from the engagement. I wanted one day of peace and quiet repose. I felt the need of drinking in more deeply the breath of pure air I had just tasted. Could I not have a few hours to myself? Must I at once go where I should inhale a different atmosphere? And what an atmosphere!...

Seeing that I remained silent and had a pensive air, he said in an impatient tone:

“Well, Ginevra, what is it? What have you to tell me or ask me?...”

I replied without any circumlocution: “I have nothing to say, except that I am tired to death of those races, and beg you to excuse me from accompanying you to‐day.”

His face immediately cleared up. “Is that all?” said he. “As to that, you are at perfect liberty to do as you please. You may be sure,” continued he, laughing, “that I shall only contradict you on great occasions.... But what will you do with yourself this afternoon, if you do not go to the races?”

“I shall do like everybody else in France—go to Vespers.”

He gave a derisive laugh that was horrible.

“Everybody else, do you say? It would be very difficult to tell how many in Paris even go to Mass!”

I looked at him, as he said this. He understood my meaning, and appeared displeased.

“Come, Ginevra,” said he in an ill‐humored manner, “are you going to insist that I must always agree with you?”

“By no means, Lorenzo, you know very well.”

“But you did not like it because you had to go to church without me this morning.”

I hesitated an instant, but at last replied with some emotion:

“Of course I love to have you with me wherever I go, and more especially there; but it would be better, however, for you to go to church always without me than ever to go solely for me.”

This reply increased his displeasure, and he said in a tone he had never used before:

“Unfortunately, the truth is, my dear child, if I should consult my own inclinations, I might perhaps never go at all.”

Tears came into my eyes, and my heart ached with the strongest feeling of grief I had ever experienced!...

O my God!... I must have had some love for thee, even at that time, since the very thought of any one’s not loving thee caused me so much pain!...

Lorenzo’s tone, look, and whole manner not only showed his utter indifference, but the complete incredulity he felt. I had never suspected it before, because it was something foreign to my experience. I knew it was possible to violate the law of God, but did not know it could be denied. I understood lukewarmness and negligence, for I had seen both in others as well as in him; but I had never before encountered lack of repentance and ignorance of duty. This cold denial of any love for God and of all belief in him Lorenzo, of course, had not expressly declared, but it had been betrayed by his manner doubtless even more than he would have wished. With all the inconsistencies of my character and the faults of my age, he must have seen that I had too lively and profound a faith not to be displeased at anything that jarred on it, and heretofore he had been circumspect without being hypocritical.

He saw the effect he had produced, and, as he had not become indifferent to me, he regretted it; but he knew he could not at once repair his mistake, and contented himself for the moment by trying to divert my mind from it by a change of subject. And I likewise felt it would be better to talk of something else. This prudence was by no means natural to my disposition, but I began to understand his. Besides, his injunctions of the evening before were still too recent to be forgotten.

The conversation did not last long, for Lando, punctual to his engagement, arrived at half‐past twelve with a beaming face, a flower in his button‐ hole, and in his hand an enormous bunch of violets destined for me.

“What!” he exclaimed when he learned my intentions for the afternoon.... “But that is impossible! Not go to the races? Why, you must. Remain at home when the weather is the finest in the world? I never heard of such a thing.... Deprive me of the pleasure of taking you in my calèche, and making everybody envy me?... That is the most cruel caprice that ever entered a woman’s head!...”

Here Lorenzo left the room an instant to look for his hat, and Lando suddenly began in another tone: “I am in earnest, cousin. You would do much better to go.”

What did he mean? I remained doubtful and troubled, but Lorenzo immediately returned, and I had no time for reflection. As they were leaving the room, my husband approached, and, taking me by the hand, looked at me with an expression his eyes now and then assumed, and which always dispersed, as by some enchantment, the clouds that rose too often between us. He slightly caressed my cheek with the glove in his hand, and whispered with a smile:

“Come, Ginevra mia, do not be angry. Let me see you smile again.”

Then turning towards Lando, “It is not yet one o’clock,” he said. “Let us start, and, before going to the Bois de Boulogne, we will stop at the Madeleine.”

His looks, as well as his words, allayed my anxiety; but a thousand different ideas crossed my mind, and after they were gone I remained thoughtfully leaning on the balustrade of my balcony, where I followed them with my eyes to the end of the street, wondering what Lando meant, and if I had really done wrong not to accompany them.

The weather at that time was fine. The clearness of the sky, as well as the verdure of the trees, attracted my attention more than the aspect of the street, and of the garden already filled with the crowd of animated, happy, and gayly‐dressed people, that give every pleasant summer day at Paris the appearance of a festival. But I was absorbed in my own thoughts, and looked at it all without noticing anything. I had a vague feeling that, among the dangers that seemed to encompass me in the new life into which I had been thrown, there were two I had special reason to dread. The first—the greatest—would have broken my heart, and on that I could not dwell for an instant.... The second threatened the loss of our property, and would diminish our income, if not absolutely ruin us. This, too was alarming, but much less so than the other in my eyes, though just the contrary in Lando’s estimation, if I read him aright. After considerable reflection, I concluded that he merely referred to something of the same nature he had alluded to the evening before, and I put it aside to ask myself with far deeper anxiety if I had really had a glimpse of Lorenzo’s heart, as he looked at me on leaving the room, or whether he was playing a part, and deliberately deceiving me. The heavenly expression that sometimes beamed from his eyes always inspired me with a confidence in him that was equal to my affection. I had just experienced its effect. The look, however, was so transient that it rather resembled the reflection of a distant light than any actual, real feeling. Whereas his mocking laugh and the tone that to‐day for the first time accompanied it were—alas! I could not doubt it—the expression of his real sentiments, and this contradiction terrified me.... He seemed to possess two natures, and my head grew weary in trying to decide which of the two was his real one—a question I frequently had occasion to ask afterwards, and to wait a long time for the reply—as doubtful to him then as it was to myself....

I left the window, and, buried in an arm‐chair, I allowed the time to pass away in reflections of this kind without opening the book I held in my hand, or noticing the gradual obscurity of the sky, that a short time before had been so clear. It was not threatening enough, however, to hinder me from going on foot to Vespers, which it was nearly time for, the hour not being as late at S. Roch’s as elsewhere. I started without any delay, giving orders for my carriage to be at the church door at the end of the service.

The salutary impressions of the morning and the excessive anxiety and sadness that I afterwards experienced had somewhat counteracted the more or less unhealthy influences that result from a continued life of pleasure. I was now in that frame of mind when it is easy to collect one’s thoughts; when the soul, so to speak, flies to the first place of refuge in which it is sure of repose.... Who has not experienced the strange, mysterious, refreshing influence of prayer, even when mute and inarticulate?... Who has not, in this way, laid down for an instant all his sorrows, all his fears, all his sufferings, and afterwards taken up the load again with a renewed strength that seemed to have lightened the burden?...

I had suffered but little at that time in comparison with what life still had in reserve for me. But after a while we learn to suffer, and in this science, as in all others, it is the beginning one always finds the most difficult. A fearful storm, it is true, had assailed the first flower of my spring‐time, and spread darkness and gloom over the heavens of my sixteenth year; but spring‐time and the sun returned, and at an age when others only begin life I was commencing mine the second time. But this new life of happiness was, I now felt, threatened in a thousand ways. Apprehension, a worse torture than sadness; a vague, undefined fear, more difficult to endure than the woes it anticipates; the uncertainty, doubt, and suspicion, so much more intolerable to one of my nature than any positive suffering, rendered my heart heavy and depressed, and I felt it would be a relief to weep as well as to pray.

I knelt on the only vacant chair in the church, and remained a long time motionless, my face buried in my hands, unable to give utterance to my wants, but knowing God could read my heart, as, when we meet a friend after a long separation, we are often silent merely because we have so much to communicate, and know not where to begin. In this attitude I heard Vespers sung for the first time in my life, this office of the church being, as is well known, much less frequently used in the south of Italy than in other places. I have already mentioned the public religious observances of my childhood. I had, therefore, never heard Vespers chanted in this way. The voices of the choristers were harmonious, and the responses were no less so. A large number of the congregation joined in the chant. There was something monotonous rather than musical in it, but it was more musical than reading, and it produced a strangely soothing influence on me. I laid aside all thought of myself, and attentively followed the admirable lines of the Psalmist; and when the Magnificat was intoned, I rose with the whole congregation to chant this divine hymn with a sensation of joy and hope that, for the moment, made me forget the painful impressions I felt when I entered beneath these arches now resounding with its words....

Benediction followed, recalling the earliest, dearest remembrances of my childhood, and increasing the emotion I already felt. When the monstrance containing the divine Host was placed above the altar, I lost all thought of where I was. I forgot whether it was Paris, Rome, or Messina, and whether the arches above me were those of some magnificent church, or some humble chapel, or a mere oratory like that in which I had prayed from my childhood. What difference did it make? The sun shines everywhere alike, and diffuses equal light in all places. How much more truly shines throughout the whole Catholic world the living, uncreated Light, present on all our altars! Time and place were forgotten. I was once more with my beloved mother, once more with Livia, my sweet, saintly sister, and the faithful Ottavia; and when, at the end of one of those hymns that are usually sung before the Blessed Sacrament, a young voice, pure and clear, uttered the word Patria,(164) it seemed at that moment to have a double meaning, and designate, not only my earthly, but my heavenly country.

To Be Continued.

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Pius VI

Those were terrible days. Even the faithful quailed, and asked each other timidly whether it was possible that God’s enemies had at last prevailed, and that the Rock had been shaken and the Word passed away. Voltaire had come and done his work, and gone, leaving a new generation behind him to fight the devil’s cause, to flaunt his standard over Christendom, to revile “the Galilean,” and wage war against his church—the subtle, deadly, persevering war of envious hatred, conquered impotence, malignant fury. There was a shout of hellish triumph throughout the ranks of Voltaire’s disciples; it seemed as if their victory was now secure; the old man of the Vatican, who for generations had remained unconquerable as fate, was in the power of the soldier who had conquered fate, who held Europe in the hollow of his hand, who raised up kings with a nod, and overthrew dynasties with a word. He had overcome the world, why should he not overcome the pope? He had demolished a score of thrones, why should he not annihilate this fisherman’s chair that for seventeen centuries had defied the combined forces of the world? Poor fools! Why not!

Jean Angelo Braschi was born at Cesena on the 27th of December, 1717, of a noble but poor family. His parents left him all the patrimony they had, a faith of the royal antique sort, and an education worthy of the name he bore. He was little more than a boy when Clement XIV. saw of what stuff the young cleric was made, and appointed him his secretary. This was Braschi’s first step on the ladder which was to lead him to the perilous heights of the purple—“the dye of empire and of martyrdom.”

When Clement XIV., pursued by the entreaties and threats of European potentates, yielded a weak concession to their cabals, and spoke of “reform” to the general of the Jesuits (who answered, Loyola‐like, in royal scorn of the implied calumny: Sint ut sunt, aut non sint), Braschi, then cardinal, took his stand by their side, resented every outrage offered to the sons of Ignatius, those courtiers of martyrdom in all ages, and thus vindicated his future claim to a place in the palm‐ bearers’ ranks. He opened his house to the persecuted Jesuits; he braved everything in his unswerving, uncompromising fidelity to their order. What else could befall him but the crown of the confessor or the martyr?

Europe hailed his accession with delight. The pulses of the rising monster, Revolution, were beginning to beat, and the nations were growing afraid, they knew not yet of what; but all eyes were turned to Rome, as to the rock where the safety of the world was anchored. The advent of a man like Pius VI., firm as adamant, who could brave death, not merely for the faith, but for every tittle of principle which the uttermost integrity of the faith included—a man whom his enemies likened to Moses for his meekness, and to Solomon for his strong wisdom; who lived like an anchorite and officiated with the splendor of the prophet king, who loved the beauty of God’s house and the place where his glory dwelt—the advent of a priest like this to the papal throne gave joy all over Christendom.

Pius VI. was elected on the 15th of February, 1775. Seldom has the weight of that unearthly crown fallen more heavily on its wearer’s brow than it fell on that of the new pontiff. In the temporal order he saw before him a mountain to be uplifted; in the spiritual order no far‐seeing eye could fail to detect the ominous signs of the coming storm. Pius lost not a moment in designing and carrying out vast schemes of material improvement in his dominions. In those days the Pontine marshes were swamps of poison that had hitherto defied all petty attempts at reclaiming them.

“How do you live in this dreadful place?” inquired a traveller of one of the inhabitants of the dismal soil.

“Signor, we do not live; we die!” was the answer.

Pius VI. declared that henceforth they should live. Colossal works were set on foot, and, if the pestilential marshes were not radically purified, they were so much improved as to justify the people in proclaiming the energetic pontiff as the worker of that miracle. During his pontificate the draining was so successful that Pius himself declared this alone was ample reward for all his sufferings. The port of Ancona was repaired, and its entrance adorned with a light‐house; works of art were sought for, revealed, and cherished. Spiritual works were founded and fostered with royal munificence and paternal care. The Christian Brothers were called to Rome and a noble school built for them, on the front of which was inscribed the title so glorious and so dear to the Vicar of Christ: “Pius VI., the Father of the Poor.”

But not even the wisdom and prestige of this ideal pontiff could suffice to shelter him from the tempest that was slowly but steadily travelling towards the Holy City. The infidel philosophers of France and Germany had done their work; they had sown, and now the time had come for reaping. Austria first showed symptoms of disaffection. Joseph II., who was too cowardly to rescue his own sister(165) from the hands of the torturers, had become the tool of his minister, Kaunitz, whose delight it was to worry the pope with the small artillery of a cunning and treacherous diplomacy. These weapons, however, were not the ones that could move Pius VI. They glided off from the shield of his unalterable patience, humility, and truth like arrows from a marble surface. Nor could the weak monarch withstand the charm of the saintly pope when he came within its influence. He rallied to his side when he visited Rome in 1783, and promised to be faithful to him. But it was a broken reed, the friendship of the vacillating Joseph.

Spain, Tuscany, and Venice next came to sadden the Holy Father’s heart and strengthen his growing fears. His gentleness held them captive for a time; but they too were of the tribe of broken reeds. When friends prove false, then is the time for the treason of foes to flourish. Catherine of Russia, the woman with the wily head of the snake joined to the cruel heart of the tiger, came with honeyed words of reverence to tender offers of service, nay, even of allegiance, to Pius. A far‐sighted woman, this tiger queen who was stealing into Poland, and sucking the nation’s blood, as she crawled into its heart. Then there was Frederick of Prussia, more honest than many a self‐styled son of the church in those days; he was grateful to the prince who first assigned him his title of king. Gustavus III. came to do homage to the man who had drained the Pontine marshes, and made a noble road through that region, so long the tomb of all who dwelt within its poisonous area. Pius received these marks of courtesy with his accustomed gentle grace; he knew what they were worth, and was grateful without being beguiled. They were, in truth, the last rays of the sun that was soon to set in darkness over his reign, and to close it in sufferings unparalleled for fourteen centuries in the annals of the church.

France was to give the signal, and she was now ready. France, that had so often raised the standard of the church, and defended it with the blood of her fairest chivalry—France was to sound the war‐cry hounding on the fanatics to the destruction of her own purest glory. The Reign of Terror was inaugurated. The Constituent Assembly had decreed the civil constitution of the clergy. Bishops were no longer to be what they had hitherto been; they were henceforth to be the nominees of an unbelieving mob; the beautiful structure of the spiritual hierarchy was to be destroyed. To legalize the crime, an oath was exacted from the priesthood; those who refused to take it—and their name was legion—were deprived of the pittance allotted them by the state, and turned away to starve. Sixty thousand preferred starvation to the bread thus bought at the price of perjury. Of one hundred and thirty‐eight bishops, four only took the oath. Monasteries were dissolved; scandals arose on all sides. The papal nuncio, Cardinal de Bernis, was insulted and compelled to fly from Paris. The pope was burned in effigy. Thus did France sound the tocsin that was to herald in the earthquake—“a great horror of darkness and shakings of the world, and a cup of trembling which all the nations shall drink.” Faith is being driven out, and “philosophy” is riding in like a conqueror on her ruins. Peace and the brave pageant of virtue and all goodly things are banished, and in their place enter decay and chaos and unbelief; and then the Revolution is ready. The world is wheeling round, humanity is going mad, nothing is stable on the earth—nothing but the rock of Peter, against which the storm beats in foolish and impotent rage. Pius raises his voice above the whirlwind, and those who hearken hear it: “God is unchangeable. Truth is immutable. The church can make no compromise. Let us stand faithfully by the cross. God will save his own and redeem his word.” Avignon exhibited a hecatomb of murdered priests. On the 24th of October, 1791, over two hundred were butchered in the Glacière of that city. In September of the following year three bishops and three hundred priests were on one day massacred in Paris. Numbers fled to Rome for protection. The fragments of the altar and the throne met in the Eternal City—Mesdames de France and the King and Queen of Sardinia, proscribed prelates and priests; and Pius opened his fatherly arms to all. This shelter was, however, soon to be torn from them.

On the 15th of February, 1793, the commandant of the French fleet at Naples walked into the Roman consulate, and ordered the consul to hoist the red flag and the cap of liberty over the building. The consul refused; a row ensued; blood was shed. The French government declared itself insulted, and threatened the pope in violent language. Meantime, the Directory succeeded to the Convention, and people drew a long breath, and hoped a change had come for the better. But, as Carnot said: “If now there was less blood shed, there were more tears.” The guillotine was still erect, and its work only slackened because the arms of the executioners were weary. The republican armies were progressing in their triumphal marches. Italy still remained to be conquered. Bonaparte was entrusted with the expedition. A series of victories brought him quickly to the gates of Rome. He proposed the most humiliating conditions to the Sovereign Pontiff. Pius was summoned to cancel every bull, brief, and pastoral that the Holy See had issued from the beginning of the Revolution to the present time. The pope firmly refused to comply. Bonaparte was at first full of insolent fury, and threatened to annihilate Rome and the Vatican. He relented, however, not out of deference to Pius, but to show his defiance of the home government, and drew up a treaty of his own invention, which, ruinous as it was, the Holy Father meekly signed, in order to save his people and prevent bloodshed. This treaty of Tolentino, as it was called, secured to Bonaparte the sum of thirty‐one millions of francs, sixteen hundred cavalry horses, and a portion of the Romagna. The Roman treasury was drained by this monstrous ransom; the people were starving, the misery was terrible. Pius was broken‐hearted, but his courage, fed by a faith that was anchored in God, never faltered. His conduct all through these dreadful days was that of a saint. He found his only solace in prayer and in fortifying the faith of his suffering flock. But he had as yet only tasted the first drops of his chalice. The Directory had resolved to get possession of Rome. A pretext must be created, since Pius would not furnish even the semblance of one, for breaking the iniquitous treaty, which had thus far secured to him the integrity of the Holy City. General Duphot was fired on by the Roman troops acting in discharge of their duty. Berthier was at once ordered to leave Ancona, where he was stationed with the French army, and to march on Rome and encamp under its walls. His first step was to issue a proclamation exciting the citizens to revolt, insulting and calumniating the pope and his government, and announcing himself as the liberator of an oppressed people. He entered the city next day, and took possession by placing seals on the museums and galleries, which were “henceforth the property of the grande nation that had come to set free the Roman people.” A tree of liberty was planted on the capitol; tricolor flags floated on the public monuments, and tricolor ribbons decked the ears of Marcus Aurelius’ horse. The Holy Father was outraged in his own house; his furniture was taken from him, and his jewels; he was despoiled even of his pontifical robes; his private library, a valuable collection of 40,000 volumes, was seized and sold to a dealer for 12,000 crowns. The deliverers of Rome crowned these proceedings by inviting their victim to wear the tricolor cockade by way of a badge of authority from France. Pius VI. replied with majestic meekness: “I can wear no livery but that with which the church has clothed me.” This answer was distorted into an insulting challenge to the French government, and Haller immediately received orders to convey the pope by force out of Rome. Pius gently pleaded his age and many infirmities, and entreated the poor grace of being allowed to die in the midst of his people. “Oh! for that matter, you can die wherever you are,” was the brutal retort, and measures were commenced for carrying him away by force, in case he made any resistance. This was not likely; but the old pontiff’s heart was breaking. “God’s will be done!” he murmured. “Let us bow to whatever he sees good to ordain!”

Forty‐eight hours were all that was allowed him to prepare for this sudden departure. He devoted the short time entirely to the affairs of the church and to the performance of his religious duties. The night of the 20th of February was fixed for the departure. It was late when Haller brusquely entered the Holy Father’s room, and found him prostrate before the crucifix, bathed in tears. “It is time to go,” he said, and the French escort entered and rudely hurried the old man down the Vatican stairs and into the carriage that was waiting for him. In it were seated his physician and his groom of the chambers, and two other officers of his household. The people followed the carriage, loudly lamenting, and invoking all blessings on their beloved pastor. At Viterbo many French priests flocked round him with the Italian crowds, and fell on their knees for a last benediction. The first halt of the travellers was in Tuscany. The Directory would fain have sent their august prisoner to Sardinia, but they were deterred in this by fear of the English government, and so proceeded to Sienna, where for three months the Augustinian convent had the privilege of harboring the persecuted Vicar of Christ. Whilst here the finger of Providence showed visibly its protecting care of him. The Holy Father had just left his room one morning when the ceiling fell in, and crushed everything beneath it; the house was violently shaken by an earthquake, and suffered much damage. This event forced Pius to seek hospitality at the Monastery of Chartreuse, in Florence, where he arrived on the 2d of June. Here some tender consolations awaited him. The Grand Duke of Tuscany came frequently to the feet of his venerated pastor, to assure him of his loyal attachment. The King and Queen of Sardinia also gathered round him, driven from Rome, where they had been so lovingly welcomed on being robbed of the throne which the saintly sister of Louis XVI. had adorned so nobly. Her husband had ever been a devoted son of the Holy Father, and now declared that the sight of his serenity in the midst of trials so overwhelming was enough to make him forget his own sorrows.

“I cannot regret my throne, for I find more than it gave me at the feet of your Holiness!” he once exclaimed.

“Alas! beloved prince,” replied Pius, “all is vanity here below. What examples of this are we both! Let us look up to heaven; there await us those thrones that can never perish.” They entreated him to go with them to Sardinia the moment it was possible for themselves to return there; but Pius refused. He alleged his age and suffering health as a reason for remaining where he was; but the true motive was the fear that his presence in the generous king’s dominions might prove fatal to him and his people. They parted with many tears, never to meet again on earth.

All this time the captive pope devoted his whole mind to the government of the church and the strengthening of his afflicted children. He lost no opportunity of sending messages of encouragement to those who were at a distance, exhorting them to suffer cheerfully, pointing to the day of joy and of triumph that would soon dawn after the short night of darkness. His own serenity was a fountain of hope and sweetness to all who beheld it. Like the great apostle, he seemed in deed and in truth to glory in his infirmities and in Christ crucified.

A multitude of proscribed priests and prelates had fled to England, whence they wrote eloquent letters of condolence to their captive chief, protesting their allegiance to him and to the faith, and their readiness to die for both, if needful. These proofs of devout affection deeply moved the Holy Father, and consoled him for much. The Directory began at last to feel alarmed at the attitude of foreign cabinets towards the Holy See. England spoke in fearless condemnation of the cruelty of the French government towards Pius, and made no disguise of her sympathy with the exiled priests and royalists. France commanded the Grand Duke of Tuscany to drive the pontiff out of his states; but that prince replied with royal dignity: “I did not bring the pope here, and I certainly will not drive him away.” The grand duke paid for his boldness; his dominions were forthwith invaded, and Etruria added to the French territory. Austria was next appealed to, and requested to receive the pope into custody, a convent on the Danube being named as a suitable abode; but Austria haughtily declined. Spain lastly refused to become his jailer.

Nothing, therefore, remained but to secure his person by bringing him to France. Humanity cried out against the barbarity of subjecting the venerable old man to so long and painful a journey in his present state; but France had no ears for the voice of humanity. Pius VI. was now partially paralyzed; he was covered with blisters, and unable to move without labor and acute pain. But what of that? He was dragged to Parma, where a few days’ rest was granted. The medical men even then declared they would not take the responsibility of proceeding with their prisoner, lest he should die on the road. The French commissioner, impatient of so paltry an obstacle in the way of his orders, burst into the pope’s room, flung down the bed‐clothes, and, seeing with his own eyes the truth of the report, turned on his heel with the remark, “Alive or dead, he must go on!”

The cortège started accordingly. All along the road the gentle martyr was cheered by the love and pity of the people. Multitudes ran for miles by the side of his carriage, bareheaded, weeping, and invoking the blessing of the Most High upon him. Pius was moved to tears at the sight of their courage in thus openly compassionating him, and with his suffering hand, almost disabled as it was, he made an effort to bless them again and again from the window.

On the 24th they reached Milan. The escort, in order to hide his presence from the people, and prevent similar scenes of enthusiasm and indignation, conveyed their prisoner into the citadel at three o’clock in the morning. On the 26th they hurried him out of his sleep in the dead of the night, and conveyed him secretly to Oulx, and the next morning they started to cross the Alps. Who shall describe the sufferings of Pius VI. during that transit? His body was now one wound; his feeble strength was almost spent; he seemed scarcely more than a breathing corpse. They placed him roughly in a sort of sedan‐chair, while the rest of the escort followed on mules. The road over the mountains was precipitous and stony; every step was agony to the suffering pontiff. The cold was intense. Some Piedmontese officers, touched with compassion, took off their warm pelisses, and begged him to use them; the Holy Father thanked them with emotion, but refused. “I do not suffer,” said he gently, “and I have nothing to fear; the hand of God is upholding me. Courage, my friends! Let us put our confidence in God, and all will be well with us.”

On the 30th the wayfarers reached Briançon. Pius was visibly moved on beholding the soil of France, that unhappy land where such fearful crimes were being perpetrated, but where God was already preparing miracles of repentance. He was taken to the hospital for a lodging. The people, horrified at the wretched, attenuated aspect of the Vicar of Christ, a prisoner in the hands of the men who had deluged their country in blood, were loud in expressing their pity and respect; they flocked in crowds round the hospital, calling out for the Holy Father to appear at the window and bless them. But the jailers forbade him to show himself, and forced the people to disperse. The few companions of his exile who had accompanied him so far were now taken from him, his confessor and valet being alone permitted to remain. This cruel isolation lasted for nearly a month, and would no doubt have been continued still longer if the progress of Soovorof’s army in Italy had not frightened the Directory, and decided them to send their prisoner further on to Grenoble, where he was rejoined by his faithful attendants. Watched and humiliated as he was, his journey hither was one long ovation in every village and town through which he passed. The people would not be beaten off, but flocked in thousands to greet him, falling on their knees round the carriage, rending the air with their cries, and calling down vengeance on those who persecuted Jesus Christ in the person of his vicar. The women everywhere were foremost in testifying their devotion to the Holy Father. They disguised themselves as peasants, as servants, or venders, and bribed the guards to admit them to his presence, where ladies of the highest rank were proud to perform any menial service for him.

At Grenoble a hundred young girls dressed in white came forth to meet him, singing canticles and strewing flowers in his path. Pius VI. smiled lovingly on them, and blessed them with tears in his eyes. Precautions were useless; no threats could restrain the hearts of the pastor’s children, and this sorrowful journey, in spite of its cruelties, resembled the triumphal march of a king amidst his people. They reached Valence on the 14th of July. The pope was lodged in the citadel. Close by, imprisoned in a Benedictine convent, were thirty‐two priests who had shared his hospitality in Rome, and been compelled to leave it when he had been taken away. They entreated on their knees to be allowed to go and ask his blessing; but the prayer was denied, and the Holy Father was strictly forbidden to go beyond the garden‐gate, which was guarded day and night, lest by showing himself he should excite disturbance amongst the people. All prohibitions were alike to Pius now, for he felt that the goal was at hand, and the journey would soon be ended. He was suffering terribly, and knew that the hand of death was upon him. Sweet came the summons to the pilgrim pontiff. “All journeys end in welcomes to the weary.” Pius had trod the stony path, cross‐laden like his Master, crowned, like him, with the thorny diadem of sacrifice and love, and now the promised land was in sight, and angel songs were breaking on the pilgrim’s ear: “Come, thou who hast suffered persecution for my sake; come and reign with me in my kingdom.”

For some days the Holy Father remained altogether absorbed in prayer, as if unconscious of everything around him. Often in the midst of his prayer he would break out into expressions of pardon towards his enemies, or pity for the sufferings of his children. “What are the sufferings of my body compared to what my heart endures for them?” he once exclaimed. “My cardinals, my bishops, scattered and persecuted, ... Rome, ... my people, ... the church, ... O my Saviour! in what a state am I forced to leave them all.”

The symptoms of final dissolution now rapidly increased, and the pains he endured were so terrible as to bring on long fainting fits.

On the 28th of August Pius asked for the last rites of the church. He insisted, in spite of the agonies he was suffering, on being dressed in full pontificals, and placed in a chair, so as to receive the Holy Viaticum with the greatest possible reverence. His supreme devotion all through life had been to the Blessed Sacrament. His desire was complied with, and then, placing one hand upon his breast, and the other on the Holy Gospels, he made with great solemnity his dying confession of faith according to the pontifical formula. He then repeated several times, in the most impressive tones, his free forgiveness of his enemies, invoking the mercy and pardon of God upon them; he prayed earnestly also for the conversion of France; this done, he received the Bread of Angels.

On the 29th, the following day, Extreme Unction was administered by the Archbishop of Corinth. The Holy Father seemed to rally slightly after this, and was able to turn his attention a little to temporal affairs. At midnight the palpitations of his heart and other symptoms gave warning that the end had come. The faithful little band of friends and fellow‐ captives gathered round their dying pastor, and kissed the hand that could no longer lift itself to bless them. The Archbishop of Corinth gave the papal absolution, which the Holy Father received with deep humility and fervor, and, after a faint effort to give a last blessing to those who were kneeling in tears at his feet, he breathed his last with the words of the benediction half finished on his lips. It was an hour after midnight on the 29th of August, 1799. Pius VI. was in his eighty‐second year, and had governed the church for twenty‐four years, six months, and fourteen days.

A cry of anguish and of exultation rang through Christendom when the news of his death went forth. The faithful mourned their shepherd, the brave pastor who had loved them and defended them even to death; the wicked rejoiced and clapped hands, exclaiming, “Now we have done with him! This old man is the last of the popes! He has died in a foreign land, hunted like a dog, without honors or followers. His court and his hierarchy are dispersed; we have done with Rome and Roman popes!” Short‐sighted fools, that knew not how to distinguish between defeat and victory, because they could not read the mystic scroll which the hand of God has traced above the cross: “In this sign thou shalt conquer!”

The remains of the venerable old man were exposed for several days; the crowds were so great, both day and night, that it was found impossible to remove them at once, as had been intended. The people proclaimed the martyr‐pope a saint, and flocked round the bier to gaze upon those worn and emaciated features where the majestic peace of death now sat like a golden shadow. For miles around Valence multitudes flowed in to see him, to touch the bier, to throw flowers upon it, and bear them away again as sacred relics. The authorities of the place did not even try to prevent these public demonstrations of respect and enthusiasm. The Directory thought fit to be silent regarding them, and even issued orders that the pope should be laid out with the state becoming a sovereign. Thus the victim who had been denied the commonest mercies of humanity when he was on his death‐bed was surrounded in his coffin with the pomp and paraphernalia of royalty.

The body was finally placed in the citadel of Valence, where it remained until Bonaparte, on being raised to the consulate, had it removed under a bombastic decree setting forth “the magnanimity of the grande nation to a good but weak old man who had for a while been the enemy of France, owing to perfidious advisers, etc.” This grandiloquent proclamation ended in the remains of the first sovereign in Christendom being transported to the common burial‐ground, where the charity of a Protestant courageously raised a small stone chapel over his grave. A few years later (1801) the body was brought back to Rome, and placed in the fitting shrine of a martyred pope—the Basilica of S. Peter. So does the King of Heaven overturn the designs of earthly kings, making sport of their power, and confounding their vain rebellion.

“Elias smote the waters of Jordan with his mantle, and with Eliseus passed over on dry ground.... And Eliseus said unto him: I pray thee let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.”

And as the friends went on, behold a chariot of fire and horses of fire came and parted them both asunder, and Elias went up to heaven, and Eliseus saw him no more; but he took up the mantle of the prophet that had fallen from him, and went back and stood by the banks of the Jordan, and smote the waters with the mantle, and they parted, and he went over as before.

And who are these that we behold like a cloud travelling towards us from the West? Lo! they come, a grand procession, cleaving the waters, singing glad songs, and bearing in their hands gifts of gold and frankincense. Welcome, ye goodly company of pilgrims, who “have feared neither distance nor danger” to come from the furthest ends of the earth to lay the tribute of your love at the feet of Peter. Thrice welcome! ye sons and daughters of America, who have come to clasp hands with your brethren of the Old World, and to receive the loving embrace of our common father. May ye be blessed ten thousand‐fold for the joy your love has brought to his suffering heart!

One venerable figure shines forth amidst the band; the wisdom of nigh fourscore years is on her brow, the peace of a long life spent in the service of her Lord. She gazes on the wonders of the Holy City, on its glorious shrines, its stately temples, its monasteries and convents, its brave army of priests and monks and nuns, and, filled with holy envy at the sight, her fervent spirit exclaims: “Oh! if we could but carry this away with us. If we had these riches in America!”

“Nay, lady, grudge us not our treasure! Pray rather that this likewise may not be taken from us, and give thanks to God for the great things that are being accomplished in your own wonderful land. There the faith is like the sun at daybreak, scarcely yet above the horizon, but already powerful and splendid. What has become of that sun amongst us? Oh! I will not utter it.... Verily, there is One who will blow with his breath, and the cloud shall be scattered. Let us pray only that the day be hastened.”(166)

The mystic mantle which Christ first laid upon his apostle has descended through the ages, through evil times and persecutions, to the prophet of our own days, untorn, unstained, a garment of immortality and strength. Now, as then, it bears him in safety through the flood; now, as then, does he “throw salt upon the waters,” and cure them, so that all those who come and drink thereof have life and salvation. For God changes not, nor can those who love him and love one another in his love perish, nor their hope be confounded.

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Assunta Howard

I. Juxta Crucem.

The full moon was pouring a flood of light upon the marble pavement of S. Peter’s, and, by its weird influence, increased to an almost startling immensity the vastness of that mighty work of art, worthy offspring and expression of the faith which has subdued the world. The soft radiance in the nave seemed to throw into deeper gloom and an almost immeasurable space the ever‐burning lamps which, like fixed stars, surround the central point of Christendom—the tomb of the great apostle, to whom was first given the power of the keys. No one could remain unmoved in such an awe‐ inspiring scene; certainly not two, at least, of the three persons who alone stood within the church, silently receiving impressions which come but seldom in a life‐time. And yet, as the same sunbeam, falling upon different objects, will produce different colors, so on these three minds the impressions were stamped according to their preparation to receive them. To the man, in whom the moonlight, bathing him in brightness, revealed the appearance of gentle birth and refined culture, it was merely the human, the miracle of art, the power of man to design and execute; while the pure soul of the fair young girl at his side was struggling through the human up to the divine. The patient old sacristan standing apart, keys in hand, had dwelt for years in the midst of material and spiritual greatness with a faith so simple that he never dreamed it was sublime.

“How grand!” at length exclaimed Mr. Carlisle. “What a power there is in architecture; and how well those master‐minds understood and used this power for the elevation of man!”

“Yes,” replied his young companion; “and it seems to me that in church architecture every detail should be symbolic, and the whole should convey to the soul the impression of some one of God’s attributes. S. Peter’s is so truly the home of the Christian world, and draws the heart so lovingly to itself, that it always seems to express the paternity of God. But to‐ night there is more than this. It speaks to my very soul of the Father, but ‘the Father of an Infinite Majesty.’ ”

Mr. Carlisle smiled. “Another of your pretty fancies, Assunta. One would hardly expect to find such grave thoughts beneath this shining hair, which the alchemy of the moonlight is fast turning into gold.”

The usual ready answer did not come; for any light conversation was out of harmony with the emotion inspired by such surroundings. Besides, the young girl was struggling with herself and against herself in a contest little suspected by her companion. The wonderful influence of the time and place had brought near the moment of defeat or victory. It is sometimes the way of God with the soul to prepare it gradually for some struggle, and then suddenly and unexpectedly to bring it face to face with the trial, and to permit its whole future to hang upon the decision of a moment. Thank God! to the faithful soul the strength is never wanting. It was such a crisis as this which clouded the bright face and darkened with doubt the mind of one in whom youth and innocence would seem to preclude the possibility of mental conflict.

It was but a few days since she had become convinced that the guardian who had been to her both friend and father had come to feel for her a love which indeed might include that of father and friend, as the greater includes the less, but which was something more than either. And with the consciousness there came a strange yearning of her heart to go forth and meet his heart with an equal love, to trust herself to the protecting care she knew so well, to yield to the happiness which promised to gild her life with a radiance too dazzling to be all of earth. But there arose a barrier between them, and hence the struggle.

Strange how we play the devil’s advocate against our conscience! Must she respect that barrier? What if he were almost an infidel; would it not be her sweet mission to take heaven by violence, if need be, and by her importunate prayers obtain for him the light of faith? Dangerous sophistry! And yet on this quicksand how many women wreck themselves, instead of steering the bark freighted with the loved soul into the calm waters of truth!

They two, the guardian and his ward, had entered the church while yet the setting sun was irradiating column and statue with a glowing splendor; and they had continued to walk slowly and almost in silence up and down the long nave until the light had faded and darkness had succeeded the short twilight.

They were about to leave the calm influence and the majesty of repose which this vast temple of God ever inspires, when suddenly the moon, rising to a level with the window above the porch, poured its magic‐ working beams upon the pavement. They paused, and, turning to the sacristan, who was about to close the doors for the night, begged a few moments’ delay, which he, with unusual cordiality, granted.

And what were the busy thoughts which induced so prolonged a silence during that hour’s walk, until the gathering darkness and then the rising moon warned them how the time was passing, of which they had taken so little note? Suffice it to say that the mind of each was filled with the other. With Assunta Howard, the new sentiments kindled in her heart had conjured up the memory of a scene which, associated with her first sorrow, was a living picture to her imagination. Again, as if it were but yesterday, she, a little child, entered the room of her dying mother, and saw her lying pale and beautiful upon her bed, her crucifix in her hand, and beside her the little table covered with white linen, upon which were the exquisite flowers and the still burning candles placed there in honor of her divine Lord, whom she had just received as the Viaticum of her journey home. The little Assunta thought how much her mamma looked like the beautiful S. Catherine, borne in the arms of the lovely angels, which hung above her own bed; and she wondered if the angels would come before she had time to kiss her mother once again. It was almost with a feeling of awe that she whispered in the ear of the good priest who raised her in his arms, “Is mamma a saint now?”

“My precious child,” said the mother, strengthened for this bitter parting by the divine Guest who was reposing in her heart, “mamma must leave her little Assunta, her good little girl. But before long I hope that I shall be with the dear Jesus and his sweet Mother, whom you love so much. So you will be glad for mamma, and always remember how much she loves you. I am not very strong, my darling, but put your arms around my neck, and your curly head close to mine, while I say something to you. You will not understand me now, my poor child, but I know that you will try and remember all, and one of these days you will know what I mean. My darling, when you are grown up to be as tall as mamma, some one will perhaps find a way into that loving little heart. My little daughter, if divine love claims it, and our dear Lord wishes you to be all his own, do not hesitate, but gladly give your life as a sweet offering to him who has chosen you. Give him your whole heart without a fear. But if it is a human love which seeks to make my treasure all its own, think long and well and prayerfully, my child, before you give your heart into its keeping. And, O Assunta! remember, never marry one who does not cherish your faith as you do; who cannot kneel with you before the altar, and love you in God, even as you do him. I do not ask you to promise me this, for I feel that it would not be right to bind you by a promise which you cannot understand. Yet it is your dying mother’s wish. But I must kiss the wondering expression away from those dear eyes. One of these days dear F. Joseph will remind you of my request when you are old enough to understand—will you not, father? But my little girl can remember that she is to be poor papa’s dear comfort, and never forget the little prayer for him every day, that God will give to him—tell me what you ask for papa, my darling?”

The little Assunta answered through her sobs: “I want papa to love my blessed Mother Mary, and I ask God to make him. And, mamma, you said I must say faith; but I don’t know what that means, except when I say it in the catechism, and so I ask God to make him as good as mamma is, and a saint just like S. Joseph in my picture; and I think he will, mamma, because you know he heard me once when I asked him to let me go to school to Sister Rose.”

The mother smiled, as she replied:

“How earnestly I hope so, my daughter! And papa has promised me to leave you with the good Sisters for a long time; so you must please him by being his good, obedient child. And now, my dear, precious little girl, kiss me—once again, my darling. I am very tired, and must rest. Perhaps, when I wake up, I shall see, instead of my darling’s golden curls, the golden gates of the celestial city. When I am gone, Assunta, child of Mary, say every day: ‘Dear Jesus, take mamma home soon.’ Now call papa.”

The priest, who had stood by in silence, came forward and lifted the poor bewildered child down from the bed. He saw that the strength which had until now supported the mother in this time of trial was quite exhausted. She uttered aloud the words, “Thy will, not mine”—words which, since that night beneath the olives in Gethsemane, express both the bitterness of the chalice and the ministry of the angel—then her eyes closed; and though for a short time consciousness remained, they never opened until the resplendent majesty of the glorious humanity of her divine Lord burst upon her soul’s vision.

As the child turned away to obey her mother’s request, the priest began to repeat the Proficiscere, anima Christiana, with which the church so lovingly speeds her children on their last journey; and for the first time she realized that her mother was indeed going from her. She crept softly from the room, only to rush away to her own little chamber, where, kneeling before the picture of S. Catherine, evermore associated with that great, first sorrow, she poured out the grief of her loving, childish heart in sobs and tears.

And it was this scene which was again before the mental eye of the young girl as she stood there in the moonlight, herself so fair a picture. Her sainted mother, with her look of heavenly repose, and the angel‐borne S. Catherine, blended themselves into one image in her mind, while the Holy Spirit was guiding her innocent soul. Suddenly an impulse seized her; perhaps it was what mystic writers call an inspiration. Turning to her guardian, whose eyes had for some time been wonderingly fixed upon her, she hastily exclaimed: “One moment, my friend,” and then walked quickly towards the chapel, where hung the lamp which told of the divine Presence upon the altar.

Mr. Carlisle was quite accustomed to what he was pleased to call her “pretty, graceful piety,” and so, without surprise, he turned to exchange a few words with the patient sacristan, while, on her knees before her Lord, Assunta fought and conquered in the first real battle of her life. She realized fully now the love which seemed to offer her such human happiness, and she knew what it would cost her to refuse it. But then came the remembrance of her mother’s dying words—“Unless he can love you in God”—and her heroic soul gathered up its strength for the consummation of the act of sacrifice. With one appealing, heart‐breaking prayer for help, she bowed her head, and made to God the promise which her mother had not required from the child. And those alone who know what it is to offer up the crown and joy of life in sacrifice can understand the peace and rest which came to her troubled heart, even through the vision of a life robbed of its brightness.

Absorbed as she was, she had forgotten the world outside and its distracting claims until her guardian stood beside her.

“Petite,” he whispered, “in thy orisons be all my sins remembered. But since the list is somewhat long, I think you must not wait to recall them now. Your one moment has lengthened into fifteen by my watch, and I have exhausted my powers of eloquence in my endeavors to charm that good old man into forgetfulness of the flight of time. Can you not leave heaven for earth and us poor mortals? There are so many angels up in heaven, they can afford to spare us our only one.”

Rising hastily, Assunta exclaimed: “I have been very thoughtless, and you, as always, kind and patient. We will go at once.”

Her gentle apologies to the old sacristan added value to the gift she slipped into his hand; and as he closed and locked the door behind them, he muttered to himself:

“She is a saint anyhow, if she is an American.”

As they passed down the steps towards the carriage, Mr. Carlisle suddenly stopped, exclaiming: “Why, child, what is the matter? You have the real martyr‐look on your face. I read there, as in a book, that combination of suffering and triumph which we see in pictures, representing those times when men were not so chivalrous as now, and inflicted persecutions on account of a devotion which is so natural to your sex, and which,” he added, laughing, “is so particularly becoming where the woman is young and pretty. But,” he said uneasily, “I cannot see that expression in the face of my petite. Sunshine is her element; and the cloud which should cast a shadow upon her life would burst forth in thunder over mine. But what is it? Has the moonlight enchanted you?”

“No, dear friend,” replied Assunta, endeavoring to speak gayly. “Enough that you grant me the triumph. The laurel wreath is a woman’s ambition. You need not bestow the martyr’s palm until it is deserved. And now let us go home.”

“Indeed, that is the one thing in this world which I do not intend to do, at least at present. Thanks to my good sister’s well‐timed headache, we have a rare opportunity to follow out our own sweet will in the most unconventional manner. There is no respect for the world and the propriety Clara preaches left in me to‐night. I, for one, shall take advantage of the absence of that inconvenient third party and her friend Mrs. Grundy to drive to the Colosseum. If you decline to accompany me, I will just remind you that the walk home is somewhat long and the hour somewhat late.” Saying which, he gave his order to the coachman, and took his seat beside Assunta in the barouche. After a short silence, he continued:

“The cat‐is‐away sensation takes me back to my school‐boy days. Though I confess dear Clara to be the very best of the tabby race, still she does show her claws sometimes when I propose an escapade that shocks her sense of what is becoming at the advanced age of thirty‐five. To see the Colosseum to‐night is not to be resisted. There is no dampness whatever in the air, and the moon has risen just high enough to make the shadows perfect.”

“I think,” said Assunta, “that it must be a very guilty conscience that needs so many words in its justification. I, for my part, am so strong in innocence that I will meet Clara on my return with an unblushing brow—to speak poetically—as far as the Colosseum is concerned. The evening is certainly lovely enough to reduce even your friend Mrs. Grundy to a spirit of meek acquiescence. ‘How beautiful is night!’ Do you remember the first lines of Thalaba? It must have been just such a moon as this that suggested the opening of that remarkable poem.”

“Did you not read it to me? How can you ask, then, if I remember? However, I did not hear it then for the first time. The dogs, with their human eyes, made a great impression even upon my boyish mind. But here we are.” And jumping down from the carriage, he held out his hand to her.

One moment she hesitated; for, by that instinct which is the shadow of a coming event, she felt that her trial was not yet at an end. But if it must come, why not then? She might never again be so prepared to meet it. There is a fervor of heroism which immediately succeeds a sacrifice that makes us strong to endure. If there is a step to be taken, it is better not to wait until the inevitable reaction is upon us with its enervating influence.

The hesitation was too instantaneous to be remarked, and Assunta allowed her guardian to assist her to alight; and placing her arm within his, they passed the sentinel, and entered the vast amphitheatre. It was indeed a perfect Roman night; and, to an artistic eye, nothing could be more imposing than the strong contrast between the deep gloom beneath those bewildering arches, which threw their dark shadows across the open arena, and the brightness of a winter’s moon. The two walked towards the centre, and seated themselves upon the steps of the large cross which rises in the midst of this mighty relic of heathen Rome. Assunta almost shuddered, as if at an evil omen, when she observed that she had unconsciously placed herself so that the shadow of the cross fell directly upon her, and stretched out its unnatural length at her feet. But even had she been superstitiously inclined, she might well have felt that no place could be so safe and sure as beneath the shadow of the cross; it rested so protectingly on her young head, seeming to stand between her and evil. Soon she realized this, and checked the impulse which, alas! too many of us follow when suddenly we find ourselves close under Calvary—the mount whose crown is a cross, and whose cross is salvation—the impulse to move “out of the shadow into the sun,” out of the cloud which wraps us about in love into the sunlight with which the world seeks to dazzle us into forgetfulness.

Gradually they fell into a quiet conversation, the beauty of the scene, the many associations of the past which cling to these ancient walls, furnishing ample topics. At last Mr. Carlisle, turning suddenly to Assunta, said:

“And how many years is it since your poor father summoned me to his bedside, and told me of the troublesome charge I should find in the convent, to be transferred into my hands when the patience of the nuns had reached the limit of endurance, and my young lady the age of eighteen?”

“It is five years since, my most ungracious and ungrateful guardian. But you will soon be released from duty. The fifteenth of next August will be my twenty‐first birthday. It was because I came into the world on the Feast of the Assumption that my dear mother gave me the name, at which all her good, practical American friends wondered and held up their hands. Well, on that morning I shall offer you freedom, and I shall expect to hear you exclaim, quoting your favorite Shakespeare, ‘For this relief much thanks!’ ”

“And I suppose you will think,” said Mr. Carlisle, somewhat bitterly, “that it will be enough, after all these years, to say, ‘You have been kind to me, my guardian, quite like a father; I am very grateful, and hope that we may meet again’; and with a good‐by and a pretty courtesy shake off the shackles, and take yourself, with all your sunshine, out into the world to make bright the life of others, forgetting him whose life you alone have the power to darken by absence. Ah! child,” he said, his tone changing to tender earnestness, “do you not know with what tie I would bind you to me so that no age could have the right to separate us? Do you think that it is as a father that I love you? That might have been once; but now it is the love of a man of thirty‐five, who for the first time has found his ideal of woman realized. Assunta, do I ask too much? When that day comes of which you speak, will you not give me the right to devote my life to you? You were looking forward to the day which was to give you freedom; and you hesitate to put yourself under bondage? If you knew my love for you, you would believe that I ask but the right to love and protect you always. Have I been so severe a guardian that you dare not trust me as a husband? Assunta, you do not speak. If you cannot love me now, will you not at least let me try to win your love?” And as he looked into the face which she now turned towards him, he exclaimed with a mingling of doubt and triumph, “Child, you do love me!”

It was well for Assunta that she had fought her battle beforehand, else she could hardly have hoped to conquer now. “My dear, kind friend,” she said sadly, “I would have given much to spare you this. It seems indeed a poor return for all you have been to me to reject the love for which I am very grateful. But it must be so. I cannot marry you, Mr. Carlisle.”

The triumph in his face faded; but, fortunately for his diminishing hope, doubt remained.

“Petite,” he said, “I have taken you by surprise. Do not give me your answer now. Let me take home to‐night but a hope and your promise to reconsider your hasty decision, and I will try to be content. But you are so cold, so calm, Assunta. Can it be that I have entirely deceived myself, that perhaps some other”—He paused.

“I am calm, my friend,” she answered, “because there is no struggle of indecision in my mind. There is very great regret that I must give you pain, and it costs me more than you know to do so. I entreat you to be generous—more generous than I have been to you—and end this trying conversation.”

“I cannot end it without one question more; pardon me if I am wrong in asking it. Assunta, there is something that I do not understand. You do not say that you could not love me, but that you cannot marry me. Who or what is it, then, that comes between us?”

“God!” And she spoke the word so reverently that for one moment Mr. Carlisle was subdued and silent. Then the bitterness which was always latent in his nature gained the ascendency, as he replied:

“Some interference of your church, I suppose.”

Assunta was not a saint, and her previous emotion had weakened her powers of self‐control, for she spoke with unusual spirit.

“Yes, the church does interfere, thank God, to save her children, else were she no true mother.” Then, a little ashamed of her warmth of defence, she continued, without seeming to notice Mr. Carlisle’s ironical repetition of her words “save her children”:

“You will no doubt consider me fanatical, but you have a right to know why I refuse the love which I value so much, and which, at the same time, I must beg you to forget. I can never marry one who is not of my faith. I believe that, in a true marriage, there must be more than the tie of human love—there must be the union of soul and the blessing of the church. And more than this, there is the insuperable barrier of a solemn promise made to God in consequence of my dying mother’s last request. Need I say more? And must I lose my best friend because I can only respect and love him ‘as friends love’? I had not looked for so great a sacrifice.” And for the first time the tears stood in her eyes and her voice trembled.

She waited for a few minutes, but no reply came. Then, noticing that the moon had risen above arch and wall, and, pouring its light full upon the open arena, had sent the shadows back to their hiding‐places, she said gently:

“Mr. Carlisle, it is getting late. Shall we go home?”

He started from his moody silence, and, taking in his the hand that rested on the cross, he said:

“Assunta, you are a noble girl; but,” he added with a faint smile, “this conclusion does not make your words easier to bear. But you are shivering. Is it so cold? Come, we will go at once.” And as he led the way towards the carriage, he wrapped her shawl closer about her, saying, “My poor child, how thoughtless I have been!”

Once seated, there was again silence until they reached the entrance of the villa. As they ascended the long stair‐case, Mr. Carlisle paused. His old tenderness of manner had all returned, and he was her guardian, and nothing more, as he said:

“Assunta, I have not been generous. I have taken an unfair advantage of my position, and have told you what I had not intended you should know until you were released from all obligation to me. My child, will you trust your friend and guardian to be only that until next August shall make you free? I cannot promise to give up all hope, but I will not repeat what I have said to‐night. Can you forgive me so far as to go back to our old relations? Will you trust me?”

“Most gladly,” said Assunta. “I feel as if my friend, whom I had mourned as lost, has been restored to me. And, Mr. Carlisle, the day will come when we will both look back without regret upon the decision which was made to‐night under the shadow of the cross.”

“I hope so, even while I doubt, fair prophetess.”

But his thought was of the time when he might even yet win that stern conscience to his views, and then indeed he could afford to think without regret of a past disappointment; while she was thinking of that sweet providence of God which, in compensation for sacrifice, always lets us see in the end that all things are for the best to those who can wait and trust.

Mr. Carlisle opened the drawing‐room door, and entered an apartment which had the rare combination of elegance and comfort, of art and home. Mrs. Grey, his pretty, widowed sister, was fond of what she called the “dim religious,” and therefore the candles were not lighted; but a blazing wood‐fire contributed light as well as warmth, while the silver urn upon the side table hissed out an impatient welcome.

Mrs. Grey herself was lying upon the sofa in the most charmingly artistic costume and attitude; and the injured manner she assumed rather added to her fascination. She idolized her only brother; and when, after a short wedded happiness of two years, he had offered the childless widow a home with him, she had gladly accepted; and after a few months of becoming weeds and retirement, she was so far consoled as to mitigate her crape, and allow her brother’s visitors to gaze from a distance upon her charms. The mitigating process had gone on until she was now the gayest of the gay, except when an occasional headache reminded her that she was mortal, and others that amiability is not to be found in perfection in this world any more than any other virtue. She was too frivolous to satisfy her brother’s deeper nature, but he was as fond of her as her affection for him deserved. She had taken the orphan Assunta into her heart as if she had been a sister; though she insisted that the position of matron to a beautiful young girl was no sinecure.

“Really, Severn,” she exclaimed, as he seated himself beside the sofa, “you must have thought it very entertaining for me to stay alone five mortal hours with only my poor head for company.”

“Dear Clara, if I had dreamed you would be doomed to such a dearth of companionship, I should not have gone at all.”

“Hush! No impertinence,” she said. “Where have you left Assunta?”

“Here I am,” said the young girl, entering the room at the same moment, and answering for herself. “And how is your head, Clara? I hope you have not been suffering all this time.”

“Your sympathy is very pretty and pleasing, Assunta; but, indeed, it is of too mushroom a growth to be very consoling. Confess that this is the first time I have been in your thoughts since you left the house. But,” she exclaimed, suddenly recollecting herself, “you have been out alone all this time. Dear me! I hope you did not meet any one you knew, for what would they think? Where have you been?” And as she spoke, she rose from the couch, and went about the womanly occupation of making tea.

“We went to the Colosseum,” replied her brother; “and truly the night was so lovely that if it had not been for you and your head, who knows but we might have wandered about until the Roman police lighted upon us, and committed us to the care of the Holy Office as vagabonds?”

“Nonsense! I would risk you with Assunta anywhere, as far as that is concerned. She is Papal protection in herself. She is wrapped about in the yellow and white, metaphorically speaking. Besides, I believe it is not exactly the province of the Holy Office to deal with vagabonds, but with heretics.”

“And what am I?”

“Oh! I don’t know anything about religion. Has Assunta been calling you a heretic?”

“Assunta never calls me hard names,” he answered, and he could not forbear adding under his breath: “But she has made me count the cost of unbelief.”

“Has she been trying to convert you?” asked his persistent sister.

“She has offered me every inducement,” was his reply.

“Assunta, here is your tea,” called Mrs. Grey; for the young girl had been arranging her music in another part of the large drawing‐room during the conversation.

“Yes; and she needs it very much, poor child,” said Mr. Carlisle, placing a chair for her. “I was so selfish that I did not even notice it was cold until she was quite chilled through. You find your own head such poor company that you must go with us next time, Clara, and take better care of us.”

And then they relapsed into a quiet tea‐drinking; after which, and the removal of the various articles which constitute the tea service, Mrs. Grey returned to her sofa, while Assunta went to the piano, and played some of Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words,” and Mr. Carlisle sat in deep thought before the fire.

It was a state of things which Clara could not endure long. Anything like constraint gave her the sensation of a caged bird, and she began at once to beat her wings against imaginary bars.

“I never knew such stupid people. Severn, do please light my candle. I am sure I trust my dreams will be more agreeable, or I shall die of ennui. Good‐night, dear Assunta. Do not fatigue me by your efforts to rival the larks in early rising, if you have any mercy.” And looking the very picture of lovely discontent—if so paradoxical an expression may be allowed—she retired to her own room.

Assunta extended her hand as usual to her guardian. He held it a moment, and then said: “Good‐night, petite; we will begin anew to‐morrow”; and then he returned to his arm‐chair, which he did not leave for many hours. Assunta was very tired; but it was rather with the weight of the cross she had lifted upon her shoulders than from any physical fatigue. She soon dismissed her maid, and, like a victorious soldier wearied with the conflict, she fell into a dreamless sleep, not, however, until she had returned thanks for the victory to the God of battles.

II. Cor Cordium.

It was an established custom of the household of Villa Moroni to be quite independent of each other until the twelve o’clock breakfast afforded occasion for an agreeable reunion. However pleasant an early family gathering may be in many home circles, where the habits and pursuits of all are entirely dissimilar and incongruous we escape much of the roughness of life by not attempting too early an interchange of forced courtesy. Indeed, in Mr. Carlisle’s family it would have been difficult to effect an earlier meeting than the one which suited all parties so well. Mrs. Grey declared that the morning hours with Morpheus were absolutely necessary to her peace of mind. And certainly the drowsy god must have been lavish of bright visions during those hours when the sun was so carefully excluded from the apartment of the fair sleeper; for when at last he permitted the pretty lady to awake from her dreams, she came from the hands of her maid into the outer world the very quintessence of amiability and freshness. Who would feel assured of such a result had she seen the sun rise? True, it might occur to some persons who take severe views of life to wonder what her soul was doing all that time; but it never did to her. The supernatural was to her a terra incognita. She had skimmed over her sorrow as sea‐birds over the waves of the ocean, scarcely bearing away a drop on their spread wings. The waters had never gone over her soul and forced her to cry from out of the depths to the God whom she acknowledged in theory, but persistently ignored in practice. Yet she was so lovely and affectionate, and besides, when she chose to exert herself, she had so much good sense withal, by all means let her enjoy life’s sunshine, and pluck its sweetest roses, carefully guarding her dainty fingers from contact with the hidden thorns. But why waste our time in moralizing over one who would smile in unconsciousness of our meaning if we uttered our thoughts aloud, and charm the frown from our brow by some pretty petulance?

Mr. Carlisle understood as little of the supernatural as his frivolous sister. But he had a deep, earnest nature, which could not be satisfied with the mere outside of life. Mental food he must have, though it may be a question whether the mind is ever fully nourished when the soul is starving. He therefore, after taking his coffee and smoking his cigar, devoted his morning hours to reading or writing in the cosey little room he used as a library.

The carriage was thus left at Assunta’s disposal; and she usually availed herself of it to assist at Mass, accompanied by her maid; and often an errand of mercy or charitable visit was accomplished before her return. It was her guardian’s wish that she should never walk about the city, unless accompanied by himself, else she would many times have preferred to show her American independence by taking a morning stroll with her faithful Marie.

The morning after the eventful visit to the Colosseum was Friday, and on that day Assunta was accustomed to make her confession and receive Holy Communion. She awoke with a stunned feeling, as if recovering from a blow. It was still very early, but, remembering the duties before her, she arose quickly. She was so glad that it was Friday; for good F. Joseph would certainly be in the confessional; as he always expected her, and she felt the need of his counsel. It was the same F. Joseph du Pont who had placed her beside her dying mother, but who had shortly afterwards returned to Rome. When, a few weeks since, she had arrived in the Eternal City, he had welcomed her as a dear child, and she loved and respected him as a true spiritual father. The sun was just rising when she entered the carriage and drove to the Gesù. Her confession was soon made, and after the Precious Blood had poured its healing drops upon her soul through the words of the absolution, she said: “Father, can you spare me a few minutes more this morning? I want your advice.”

“Certainly, my child,” answered the good priest. “It is nearly an hour before my Mass. How can I help you?”

“Last evening,” said Assunta in a low voice, “I did what I believed to be right; but the morning light has only confused my mind, and I see nothing clearly. Father, Mr. Carlisle, my guardian, asked me to marry him.”

“And you, my child?” questioned the priest somewhat anxiously.

“I had been prepared somewhat to expect it. I had thought of my mother’s request, and remembered that it was in accordance with the teaching of the church, and I was impelled to fortify myself by a promise to Almighty God to fulfil to the letter my dear mother’s wish. Therefore, when the question came, I could only refuse.”

“It cost you something to do this, I can see, my poor child, and this morning you are suffering from the revenge our human nature takes upon us when we have done it violence. Let us look at the matter calmly before God. I believe that you are right, but it will help you to look at both sides of the question. It is a reasonable service that God requires of us; and, be very sure, he never leads us to the altar of sacrifice without bestowing upon us the strength and generosity we need to place our offering upon it. Perhaps you were a little too impulsive in binding yourself by anything like a vow. We must always be very careful not to mistake impulse for inspiration. However, as I understand you, your mind was already decided, and the promise to God was to act as a protection to yourself against your own human weakness. Am I right?”

“Partly, father,” replied Assunta, “and yet, as I knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, I felt that the sacrifice was required of me in a way I thought I could not mistake.”

“Then, my child, doubtless the Holy Spirit has inspired it for some end that we do not now see. But, aside from that, without that additional and conclusive obstacle in the way of such a marriage, I think you acted rightly. Our holy mother, the church, is very wise, as well as very lenient; and it is with great reluctance that she risks the soul of one of her precious children by placing it under the constant influence of one without faith. It is very true that while there is wisdom in knowing how to keep a rule, there is still greater wisdom in knowing when judiciously to make the exception. And I confess that, from a human point of view, yours would seem to be an exceptional case. You are quite alone in the world; and your guardian has been, and no doubt would always be, a faithful friend. As a man, I esteem him highly for his many noble qualities. The world will unquestionably look upon such a marriage as eminently fitting; and so it would be, but for the one thing which is so important. We, however, cannot act upon human principles, as if this world were all. It was not without reason, my child, that your poor mother said those last words to you. When she was married, her faith was as strong, her life as true and pure, as yours. But your father’s intellect was powerful, and her love for him so great that she yielded to him until she nearly lost her soul. God be blessed for his mercy, she had the grace to die as a saint, and is now, as I hope, in heaven. But I have seen her in an agony of remorse such as I should grieve indeed to witness in this dear child of hers. The last two years of her life after her return to her faith were truly years of martyrdom, passed in the struggle to reconcile those duties which never should conflict—her love of God and duty to her husband. It was from the very depths of her own sad experience that she pleaded with her little girl. My child, that mother is praying for you now.”

“I believe it, father,” said Assunta, deeply moved by this story of her beloved mother, which she heard for the first time.

“So, my child, the past is all as it should be; and now for the future. May God grant you the grace to be always as good and brave as you were last night! I would not discourage you, and yet I must remind you that the sacrifice is only begun. It is not likely that your guardian, with only human motives to urge him, will give up so easily where his heart is engaged. He will, of course, do all he can to turn you from your purpose, and no doubt your own heart will sometimes plead on his side. Here lies your further trial. And yet I cannot, as under other circumstances I should do, advise you to shun the temptation. You cannot leave your guardian’s care until you are of age; therefore you must face the trial. But I trust you entirely, my child—that is, I trust to the purity of your heart and the power of grace that is in you to guide your actions, even your very thoughts. You must try to be as you have been before; try to forget the lover in the guardian. Avoid coldness of manner as a safeguard; for it would only place you in an unnatural position, and would inevitably strengthen in the end the feelings you would conquer. It is not easy to give an exact rule of conduct. Your own good sense will teach you, and God will be with you. And, my child, you must pray for your guardian, and at the same time it must be without any future reference to yourself in connection with him. Is this too hard for you? Do your best, and grace will do the rest. By remembering him before God you will learn lo purify your feelings towards him—to supernaturalize them; and by committing your future unreservedly to the loving providence of God, your prayer will be a constant renewal of the act of sacrifice you have made. Make it heroic by perseverance. Do I explain myself clearly, my child?”

“Yes, father, perfectly so; and I feel so much comforted and strengthened.”

“Well, these are but the words of your father, spoken out of his love for you. Go now, child, and prepare to receive your divine Lord, and listen for the words of peace and comfort he will speak to your soul. To him I commend you with all confidence. One thing more—remember that there is nothing which helps us so much in such a trial as acts of charity towards the poor and the suffering. I know that you never fail in this respect; but now especially I would urge you to forget yourself in sympathy for others as occasion offers, though you must always recognize those claims which your position in society entails upon you. Come to me freely whenever you feel that I can help you. God bless you! I shall remember you in the Holy Sacrifice.”

The good priest went to vest himself for Mass, while the young girl returned to the place before the altar where Marie was patiently awaiting her. She was herself a pious woman, and time spent in church never seemed long to her.

When the Mass was over and her thanksgiving ended, Assunta returned home with her heart lightened of its burden. She dressed herself for breakfast with her usual care and taste, and, finding that it still wanted half an hour or more before the great gun of Sant’ Angelo would boom out the mid‐ day signal, she seated herself at the piano, and song and ballad followed each other in quick succession. Her voice and manner were in harmony with herself. Her music soothed, but never excited. It had not the dangerous power to quicken the pulse and thrill the heart with passionate emotion, but it roused the better feelings, while it conveyed to the listener a restful, satisfied impression which ambitious, brilliant performers rarely impart. She was just beginning Cherubini’s beautiful Ave Maria when Mr. Carlisle entered the room.

“Here is our early bird welcoming us in true songster fashion. Do not stop yet, petite,

“My soul in an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.”

But as Assunta had already left the piano to greet her guardian and his sister, he continued:

“By the way, Clara, my quotation has suggested to me an answer to your question. Assunta, my fickle sister, who a week ago was ready to live and die in a picture‐gallery, has just now assured me that the very mention of a picture or statue is a fatigue to her; and she has mercilessly compelled me to find some new and original bit of sight‐seeing for to‐day. We cannot, of course, visit any church, since the Holy Father is, unfortunately for her, not an iconoclast. But, Clara, what do you say to making a Shelley day of it? We will take Prometheus Unbound with us to the Baths of Caracalla, and there, on the very spot which inspired the poem, we can read parts of it. And when we are tired, we can prolong our drive to the cemetery, and visit Shelley’s grave, as a proper conclusion. How do you like the plan?”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Grey, “it will be deliciously sentimental; only breakfast is announced, and I am in a famished condition. I was up so early this morning. It must have been before eleven when that stupid girl called me, and it is an hour since I took my coffee.”

“Poor Clara!” said Mr. Carlisle, “your condition is truly pitiable. I should think you might find the almshouse a pleasant change.” Mrs. Grey seemed only amused at her brother’s sarcasm, when suddenly she checked her silvery laugh, and, springing from the table, at which she had just seated herself, she went towards Assunta with such a pretty, penitential air that she was quite irresistible.

“My dear child,” she exclaimed, “speaking of almshouses reminds me of something you will never forgive. Promise me not to scold, and I will devote myself henceforth to the cultivation of my memory.”

“What is it?” asked Assunta, smiling at her earnestness. “I am sure such a pleading look would force forgiveness from a stone.”

“Well, then, for my confession, since you absolve me beforehand. While you were out yesterday morning that miserable woman of yours sent word that she was sick, and something about not having a mouthful of bread in the house. I forget the whole message. My maid saw the girl who came, and I promised to tell you. But you remember my wretched headache. You forgave me, you know.”

Assunta looked both grieved and vexed for a moment, and then she controlled herself enough to say:

“I must attach a condition to my forgiveness, Clara. Will you let me drive to the house on our way to the baths? I will only detain you a few minutes.”

“Heavens! Assunta, you will not go there yourself?” exclaimed the astonished Clara. “I dare say it is some filthy hole, and perhaps the woman may have fever. Send a messenger with some money. I’ll give her five dollars.”

“Thank you. I will take the five dollars to her willingly,” replied the young girl; “but I will take myself too. I can easily walk,” she added, looking for permission to her guardian, as the occasion was exceptional.

Displeasure at his sister’s thoughtlessness was evident in Mr. Carlisle’s tone, as he said:

“You will go in the carriage, Assunta, and I will accompany you. We will return for Clara after the visit. Giovanni, order a basket of provisions to be put up before one o’clock, and be ready yourself to go with us and take charge of it; and now that the matter is settled, we will have some breakfast.”

Poor Mrs. Grey looked disconcerted; but she thought it her duty to make a further protest.

“You surely will not wear that dress, Assunta? It will never be fit to put on again.”

Mr. Carlisle laughed outright at this new objection, while Assunta said with a smile:

“Why, Clara, have you so soon forgotten your admiration of Mrs. Browning’s Court Lady, who put on her silks and jewels, and went to the hospital as to the court of the king? On the same principle I should be arrayed in purple and fine linen, for I am going to the court of the King of kings; and if I am not very much mistaken, this same poor woman, whose contact you fear so much, will find her place very near to the throne in the ranks of the celestial nobility. However, I should be sorry to ruin my new dress, as you predict, and I will be very careful.”

The breakfast was soon despatched, the carriage came punctually to the door, and Mr. Carlisle and his ward drove rapidly towards the miserable home of the poor woman, who, in the midst of her poverty, possessed a faith at which Assunta often wondered.

“You are very kind, Mr. Carlisle,” she said. “I am sorry I have given you so much trouble.”

“In this case,” he replied, “the trouble is not altogether disinterested. I must myself find out what the sickness is before I can allow you to enter the house. I cannot let you run the risk of fever or any other malignant disease. You see I came as a sort of police.”

“But,” said Assunta, touched by his thoughtful care of her, at the same time anxious not to be prevented making what amends she could, “I am so accustomed to visiting the sick, I do not think there can be any danger.”

“My child,” he said, “as long as your life can be guarded by me, it shall be done. You are under obedience still, you know.” She dared not insist; and, indeed, at the same moment they reached the wretched dwelling. After exacting from her the promise to remain in the carriage, Mr. Carlisle ascended the broken stair‐case. In a few moments he returned, and, without saying a word, he took the basket from Giovanni, and again went up the stairs. As he reappeared, he said to the coachman:

“Drive on slowly. I will walk a little. You must not go in, Assunta.”

He continued to follow the carriage at a quick pace for a quarter of a mile; then he hailed the driver, and took his seat beside the wondering girl, saying:

“I thought it would be best to give myself an airing after leaving that room. Petite, the poor woman died two hours since of a terrible fever. You could have done nothing, and, as usual, Clara was mistaken in the message. They sent word to their ‘guardian angel,’ as they are pleased to call a certain little friend of mine, of their suffering and need, but with the particular warning that she should on no account direct her flight that way, lest she should expose the unangelic part of her nature to contagion. I left the basket, and money enough to supply all the temporary wants of the children; but it was a dreadful scene,” he added with a shudder.

He had striven to speak lightly at first, because he saw the distress in Assunta’s anxious face and tearful eyes. But his own feelings were strangely stirred, and he forgot his self‐control, as he continued, in a voice low and husky from the very intensity of emotion:

“Child, I am in an agony of terror at the bare thought of what might have been the result had you been exposed to that atmosphere, whose every breath was poison. My God! when I think of the danger you have so narrowly escaped. Oh! if I might always shield this dear life at any risk to mine.”

“My life is in God’s hands,” said Assunta coldly, as she gently disengaged the hand which her guardian had clasped in his, as if he would show, by the action, the power of his love to avert any and every evil which might threaten her.

Poor child! she longed to ask more about the woman’s death, and especially to express her gratitude to Mr. Carlisle for his kindness; but she dared not face his present mood. However, as they again reached the villa, she said hurriedly and in a tone full of anxiety:

“Mr. Carlisle, you have exposed yourself to great danger, and I do not forget that it was for my sake. I shall not be satisfied unless you promise me that you will take every possible precaution to avoid any future evil consequences. I should never forgive myself if any harm came to you.”

Her eyes lowered beneath the look he for one moment fixed upon her appealing face; then, with the exclamation, “An unblessed life is of little consequence,” he sprang from the carriage, and, saying to Giovanni, “I will summon Mrs. Grey,” he dashed up the stone staircase.

Assunta sank back with a feeling almost of despair at the task before her. Even if she had not to struggle with her own heart, it would have been hard enough to steer the right, straight course between these contradictory moods in her guardian; one moment so tender and thoughtful, the next so full of bitterness. How could she reconcile them? How should she ever be able to bear her burden, if this weight were added to it day by day?

Assunta possessed the gift—which, advanced to a higher degree, might be termed the natural science of the saints—of receiving religious impressions and suggestions from the natural objects about her. Now, as in a listless manner she looked around, her eyes fell upon the snow‐crowned hills which bound the Roman horizon, and rested there. She had no thought of the classic associations which throng those mountain‐sides and nestle in the valleys. She needed strength, and instantly the words were present to her mind: “I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence help shall come to me.” And following out the consoling train of thought, she passed from those peaceful Roman hills to Jerusalem and the mountains which surround it, even “as the Lord is round about his people.” Then, by a natural transition, she turned her thoughts to the poor woman who had just left behind her poverty, privation, and suffering, and, accompanied only by that hope and love which had endured and survived them all, had entered, so she confidently hoped, into the possession of God—the Beatific Vision. What a contrast between the temporal and eternal!

Her silent requiem for the departed soul was interrupted by Mrs. Grey’s bright presence and merry voice.

“I cannot imagine what you have been doing to Severn,” she said; “but he is in one of his unaccountable conditions of mind, and declares that he will not go to drive—pressing business, etc. I am sure we can do without him very well, all but the reading part, which had been assigned to him. It is so late, at any rate, that perhaps we had better give up the baths, and drive at once to the cemetery. You see I have secured an excellent substitute for our recreant cavalier,” she added, as a gentleman emerged from the massive doorway. “Come, Mr. Sinclair, we are waiting for you.”

There was just a shade of stateliness in Assunta’s manner as she greeted the somewhat elegant man of the world, who seated himself opposite to her. She would gladly have been dispensed from the drive altogether, feeling as she did then; nevertheless, she submitted to the necessity which could hardly be avoided.

“Truly, Miss Howard,” said Mr. Sinclair, as they drove away, “I begin to believe the ancient goddesses no myths. Flora herself would find in you a worthy rival. It is not often that I have the happiness to be placed opposite two such lovely ladies.”

“Very good for a finale, Mr. Sinclair,” replied Mrs. Grey; “but if you were to speak your mind, you would be calling me Ceres, or something else suggestive of the ‘sere and yellow leaf.’ ”

“That is a gross injustice, not only to me, but to yourself,” answered Mr. Sinclair in his most gallant tone. “Have not the poets ever vied with each other in disputes as to the respective merits of spring, with its freshness, and the rich bloom of early summer? And permit me to add that neither has yet been able to claim a victory. In such a presence it would be rash indeed for me to constitute myself a judge.”

“Unwise, certainly,” rejoined Mrs. Grey, “to take into your hand such an apple of discord. Women and goddesses are pretty much alike, and the fate of Paris might be yours. Remember the ten years’ siege.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Sinclair, “there you do not frighten me. Welcome the ten years’ siege, if during that time the fair Helen were safe within the walls. After ten years one might perhaps be reconciled to a surrender and a change of scene, since even the lovely Trojan’s beauty must have lost the freshness of its charms by that time.”

“O faithless men!” said Mrs. Grey, very much as if she were pronouncing an eulogy.

“Miss Howard,” said Mr. Sinclair, “you are silent. Does our classic lore fail to enlist your interest, or are you studying antiquities?”

“Pardon me,” replied Assunta; “it was rude in me to be so abstracted. I must excuse myself on the ground of sympathy for suffering which I have been unable to alleviate.”

“By the way, Assunta,” exclaimed Mrs. Grey, “how did you find your protégée?”

“She is dead,” replied the young girl, softly.

“Oh! I am so sorry. How very sudden! Mr. Sinclair, you were telling me about the Braschi ball when Severn interrupted us. When did you say it is to be?”

“In about three weeks,” replied the gentleman. “I hope that you ladies will be there. Our American blondes are greatly in demand among so many black eyes. You are going, are you not?”

“Most certainly we shall,” answered Mrs. Grey with ready confidence, the future being to her but a continuation of to‐day. The cloud that might appear on her horizon must be much larger than a man’s hand to turn her attention to it from the sunshine immediately about her.

And so, between pleasantry and gossip, the time passed until the carriage stopped at the gate of the cemetery.

“You have chosen a very serious termination to your afternoon’s drive, Mrs. Grey,” said Mr. Sinclair, as he assisted the ladies to alight. “I always carefully avoid whatever reminds me of my latter end.”

“Let me play Egyptian coffin, then, for once,” replied Mrs. Grey, but with a merry laugh that belied her words. “I will lead you to a contemplation of the fate of genius. I dote on Shelley, and so we have made a pilgrimage to his grave.”

“You have every appearance of a pilgrim about to visit some sacred shrine,” said Mr. Sinclair with an echo of her bright laugh. “Lead on, fair pilgrim princess; we humble votaries will follow wherever your illustrious steps may guide.”

A small, horizontal slab, almost hidden beneath the pyramid of Caius Cestus—itself a tomb—is all that marks the resting‐place of the gifted, ill‐fated Shelley.

“Here is your shrine, my lady pilgrim,” said Mr. Sinclair, as he removed some of the green overgrowth from off the inscription.

“Somebody make a suitable quotation,” said Mrs. Grey. “You know we ought to be sentimental now.”

Assunta at once rejoined:

“ ‘How wonderful is Death— Death and his brother, Sleep!’

Poor Shelley! But I do not like the inscription, Clara; or rather, I do not like such an expression on such a grave.

“What do you mean, dear Assunta?” said Mrs. Grey, looking at her as if she were talking Sanscrit. “I think it is lovely. Cor cordium—the heart of hearts, is it not? I am sure nothing could be more appropriate.”

“It does not seem to me appropriate,” answered Assunta; “but then you know I always do have strange ideas—so you say. Why should Cor cordium be written over the ashes of one who was burned in true pagan fashion, and who, as I think, should rather be pitied for what he did not do, with his marvellous gifts, than loved for anything he has done?”

As she paused, a voice beside her exclaimed, “I am sure I cannot be mistaken. Is not this Miss Howard?”

Assunta turned and welcomed with a pleased surprise the young man who appeared so unexpectedly, then she presented him to her companions as Mr. Percival, of Baltimore, the brother of her only intimate school friend. He was tall and slender, not handsome, but with a manly and at the same time spiritual face. His eyes were his finest feature, but their beauty was rather that of the soul speaking through them. Assunta had not seen him since her school days at the convent, and then she had known him but slightly; so she was herself surprised at her ready recognition of him.

“And what has brought you so far away from my dear Mary?” she asked after the first greetings were over.

“I am on that most unenviable of expeditions—health‐seeking,” was his reply. “After graduating at college, the physician doomed me to a year of travel; and so we meet again at Shelley’s grave!”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Grey, “and Assunta and I were in the midst of an amiable quarrel when you found us out. I engage you on my side, Mr. Percival. It is about the inscription, which I like and Assunta does not, for reasons which are Greek to me.”

“I was just going to say,” said Assunta, “that Cor cordium seemed to me a sacred phrase wholly misapplied, though I have no doubt the irreverence was unintentional.” And turning to Mr. Percival with that sort of spiritual instinct which teaches us where to look for sympathy even in a crowd, she continued:

“I hope that I am not guilty of the same want of reverence in thinking that if those words are to be inscribed on any grave, they should be written upon that stone which was rolled against the opening of the new sepulchre in the garden, and sealed with the Roman seal; for there the true Cor cordium was enclosed.”

“Mr. Percival, I see that you have gone over to the ranks of the enemy,” said Mrs. Grey; “and if Mr. Sinclair deserts me, I shall never be able to stand my ground against two such devotees.”

“I am yours to command, Mrs. Grey,” replied Mr. Sinclair with an expression of contempt in his tone. “But perhaps it might be well to transfer our operations to another battle‐field. Allow me to offer you a souvenir of the occasion.” And he handed to each of the ladies a sprig of green from beside the marble tablet.

Assunta quite simply shared hers with Mr. Percival at his request, and then they retraced their steps. As they approached the carriage, Mrs. Grey very cordially begged Mr. Percival to occupy the fourth seat, which he reluctantly declined, as also the invitation to visit them.

“For,” said he, “to‐morrow I start for Jerusalem; and, Miss Howard, when I am kneeling, as I hope to do, in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, I shall remember you and those suggestive words of yours.”

“You could not do me a greater kindness,” replied Assunta, “than to remember me there. And when you return, what do you intend to do in the way of a profession? You see I am interested for Mary’s sake. I know what her desire is.”

An hour before, if this question had been proposed to him, Augustine Percival would have been able to give a probable answer. Though he had not yet decided, his few days’ sojourn in Rome had stirred up within him a feeling which had been latent even in his boyhood, and from the depths of the Catacombs and beneath the lofty domes he had thought he heard an interior voice which whispered to him, “Follow me.” And now a fair young face had made him hesitate, though, in justice to him, it must be added that no mere charm of beauty would have touched him for a moment. It was the purity and beauty of mind and soul, which he read and appreciated, that caused him to reply to Assunta’s question:

“The matter of my future vocation will be left, I think, until my return.”

Then, with many pleasant farewell words, they parted; and, except to mention the meeting to her friend in her next letter, Assunta thought no more of the thread of another life which had for a moment crossed hers.

That evening there were guests at the villa; and, as usual, Assunta’s amiability was taxed by the repeated demands for music. As she sat absently turning over the leaves before her in one of the intervals, Mr. Carlisle came and stood beside her.

“Petite,” he said, “I have been to see the authorities about the family of that poor woman who died to‐day, and everything will be arranged comfortably for them; so you need feel no further anxiety!”

“How good you are, dear friend!” she replied. “God bless you for it!”

“It is your blessing that I want,” said he. “It was for you that I took the little trouble you are pleased to magnify into something deserving of gratitude.”

“Please do not say so, Mr. Carlisle,” said Assunta earnestly. “You do such noble acts, and then you spoil them by your want of faith.”

The word was unfortunately chosen.

“If by faith,” Mr. Carlisle replied, “you mean your Catholic faith, I cannot force myself to accept what does not appeal to my reason. I can respect an honest conviction in others when I am in turn treated with equal liberality; but,” he added in a low tone, “I could hate the faith, so called, which comes between me and the fulfilment of my dearest wish.”

There was a call for more music, and so there was no opportunity, even had there been inclination, for a reply. But as Assunta was passing wearily to her room after the last guest had departed, Mr. Carlisle stopped her, and, after his usual good‐night, he said: “Forgive me, child. I have not been myself to‐day.”

Two weeks afterwards, when her guardian lay prostrate on his bed in the delirium of fever, Assunta remembered those few words, which at the time had given her pain, with that agony of sorrow which can only be aroused by the knowledge that the soul of one beloved may at any moment be launched upon the immeasurable ocean of eternity, rudderless and anchorless.

To Be Continued.

Church Music. Concluded.(167)

II. (Continued.)

Having settled that plain chant should have a part, and indeed a large part, in our choral service, but that figured music should not be excluded, it remains for us to say what figured music is to be used in alternation with plain chant, or substituted when plain chant is completely set aside.

Some seem to imagine that no figured music is suitable for the church but that which is termed alla Palestrina. They urge the great fitness of this species of music for church purposes; for, like the plain chant, it is ancient, can boast a long and exclusive connection with the Catholic ceremonial, admits of no personal display, is dissimilar from the music of the world, never alters the words or does violence to them, is not only distinctly ecclesiastical but papal, and quite as solemn and grave as plain chant, while it is of wider range and of far more pleasing effect. Though written in strict measure, it follows the tonality of plain chant. Its origin is holy, since S. Charles and S. Philip were intimately associated with Palestrina. Then, again, it has the best possible authorization—that of having been used for the last three hundred years by the popes, to the edification of the whole world, non‐Catholic as well as Catholic.

We admit all these claims. But against the use of this species of music amongst us there is a fatal objection.

It was written to be sung without instrumental accompaniment, which, when used in conjunction with it, always mars its effect; and hence, though nothing more suitable can be imagined for Lent and Advent, when, according to the rubrics (too often slighted), the sound of the organ should not be heard, we cannot be expected to sing it at other times; for we absolutely need the organ to make amends for our scanty numbers, our lack of proficiency in execution, to support the voices, and to give variety to the service.

The organ is regarded by us as essentially a church instrument by its nature and the associations we connect with it; indeed it never fails to arouse in us deeper feelings of reverence and devotion, and we cannot do without it.

An attempt was made in several of the German cathedrals some years ago to revive music of the Palestrina style, to the exclusion of the more modern; but circumstances, we think, have already led to some modifications of the strict rules first proposed.

III.

Practically, we can hardly hope ever to exclude from our churches modern figured music—as Benedict XIV. says, that would be an extreme measure; but we can exclude, and are bound, he says, to exclude, such compositions of it as are unsuitable for church purposes.

But how shall we determine what is suitable and what is not?

Music, it will be said, is a mere matter of taste, and the adage has it, De gustibus non est disputandum.

But there is bad taste as well as good taste. Moreover, church music is a matter of principle as well as of taste, and good taste in this case is closely allied to principle.

Taste is the instinct or habit, or rather the instinct following habit, and perfected by it, whereby we are enabled to discern and detect what is most proper and congruous in each province of art.

Now, the reason for employing music in the service of the church is religious or it is none. Unless the musical sounds, therefore, subserve the meaning of the text, they are better away. “Where the religious song is accompanied by musical instruments,” says Benedict XIV., “these must serve solely for adding to its force, so that the sense of the words penetrate deeper into the hearts of the faithful, and their spirit, being roused to the contemplation of spiritual things, be elevated towards God and the love of divine objects.” That style of music, then, will be the most religious which deals most reverently with its subject, and gives the least scope to the play of irreligious dispositions. Being the most suitable to its subject, it will also be in the truest taste.

Hence that music will be the most suitable and the best which in its construction will correspond most perfectly with the peculiar spirit of each festival and with the special character of each service; which will most naturally and reverently render the sense of the words without changing, inverting, or abridging them, or marring their sense by useless and tiresome repetitions,—which, in other words, will speak as distinctly and as religiously to the ear as the altar, the vestments of the priest, and the ceremonies speak to the eye. Music and ceremonies, and everything connected with them, should be in the most perfect harmony, reminding all that they are in the house of God, and assembled in his presence to pay him homage on earth like that rendered him by the members of the church triumphant in heaven.

Hence, 1, church music should not in any way recall the world, its temptations or its pleasures; and the prohibition made by popes and councils against the introduction into the church of compositions written originally for the theatre or the concert‐room, but with other words, or of compositions written for the church, but in a style suggestive of the stage, is so evidently just and proper that any one who objects to it must be wanting in common sense.

“Humana nefas miscere divinis” finds its application here. To carry the minds of worshippers in the church back to the theatre by the music is a crime, for it is a desecration.(168)

Hence, 2, not even the feelings of the congregation should ever tempt the director of the music of the church to admit what is not in every respect most suitable to the place, the time, and the occasion. Fortunately, we have no difficulty here in the United States with our own people. The only trouble is when we go out of our way to satisfy the expectations of non‐ Catholics who occasionally are present at our services, or of a few musicians not otherwise interested in the services.

Hence, 3, undue prominence should never be given to individual singers. It is, to say the least, very distracting.

Hence, 4, the director of the music should never be willing to sacrifice the liturgy, even the least part of it, to the exigencies of the music, whatever they may happen to be; but, on the contrary, he should be ever ready, if need be, to sacrifice even the most admirable musical numbers to the exigencies of the ceremonial.

In other words, he should never forget that music is one of the many accessories to our public worship—never the essential—and is never to be heard merely for its own sake.

This is brought out clearly and distinctly in two decrees that have for us in this section of country the full force of law—a decree of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, and another decree of the Third Provincial Council of New York:

“That all may be done according to prescribed order, and that the solemn rites of the church may be preserved in their integrity, we admonish pastors of churches to labor earnestly to remove those abuses which in our country have crept into the church chant. Let them therefore provide that the music be subservient to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the other offices, and not the divine offices to the music. Let them also bear in mind that, according to the ritual of the church, it is not lawful to sing hymns in the vernacular languages at High Mass and at solemn Vespers.”(169)

“At solemn Masses singers are prohibited from so protracting the Offertory, the Sanctus, and the Benedictus that the celebrant is obliged to delay till they have made an end of singing.”(170)

The general principles we have laid down will be still better understood if we examine the declarations made by the church through several of the popes.

The most notable and the most precious of these are the brief of Benedict XIV. already mentioned, and the rules for composers given by Pius IX.

Pope Benedict XIV., in his Constitution Annus 19, February, 1749, begins by laying down the general principle that the music of the church must be so ordered that nothing profane, nothing worldly, and especially nothing theatrical, be heard in it. He repeats this principle again and again, and says that there is no one who does not detest operatic music in the church, and who does not look for and desire a difference between the music of the church and the music of the stage.

He then reminds us of the Constitution of Pope Innocent XII., by which it is forbidden to sing at solemn Mass and Vespers motets or hymns that are not a part of the Mass or the Vespers of the day; that is, at solemn Mass, the only pieces allowed to be sung besides the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei are the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, and Communion of the Mass of the day (a single exception being made for Corpus Christi, when the O Salutaris! or other hymn of the office of the Blessed Sacrament may be sung at the Offertory), and at solemn Vespers only the Antiphons and the proper hymn with the Psalms.

He then proceeds to condemn frequent repetitions of the same words, and places the chief distinction between theatrical music and church music in this: that in the former the words are made quite subservient to the singing and the accompaniment; whereas in the latter the words are rendered intelligibly, and the music is made subservient to them.

He next instructs bishops to banish from the church absolutely all instruments except the organ; but with the organ he allows the use of violins, violas, violoncellos, contrabassos, and bassoons, because these add, he says, to the force of its tones; but he prohibits cymbals, horns, trombones, oboes, flutes—in general, all wind‐instruments, as also harps and guitars, because all these, he says, recall the theatre.

He directs that while the singing is going on the instruments must merely accompany, never take the place of, the voices.

He allows suitable symphonies when these are dissociated from the office proper—probably meaning the pieces played at the beginning and the end of service, and to fill up pauses when the choir is silent.

He closes by urging the Italian bishops to comply with these instructions faithfully, that foreign bishops coming to Rome may see in Italian, and especially in Roman, churches the public offices properly carried out, and thus be induced to imitate them.

The present vicar‐general of Pius IX., Cardinal Patrizzi, by order of the Pope, wrote two letters to composers of church music in Rome, on the 18th and 20th of November, 1856, and in them he so far supplements the directions of Benedict XIV. that we have wherewith to determine without much difficulty what music is, and what music is not, admissible in Catholic choirs.

In his first letter he says:

“The most sustained gravity is to be observed, and nothing introduced suggestive of theatrical pieces, either by the arrangement or by the melody; too many repetitions, and all changes and arbitrary inversions of the words are to be avoided.

“At Mass, Exposition, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and other sacred ceremonies, organists are forbidden to execute the whole or parts of theatrical pieces, or to play in a too florid or distracting style; and their music ought to be such as to promote the recollection and devotion of the faithful.

“As we consider an interruption between the various parts of the words of the liturgy very unbecoming, even when any verse is finished, as being an occasion of distraction and noise among the musicians and hearers, we order that every part of the offices, especially at Mass, shall be sung through continuously, so that the Kyrie, Gloria, and other parts may each have a unity of structure.”

In his second letter he teaches composers the necessity of their having for their object the praise of God and the devotion of the faithful, and shows how church music in its whole construction ought to differ from that of the stage.

“If all composers,” he says, “drew their inspirations from piety and religion, as some of them have the good spirit to do; if they always kept before their minds that their music ought to tend to praise God in his holy temple, and to excite the devotion of the faithful, there would have been but little need to make rules for musical composition. But it is only too true that, in some instances, to the great surprise of the truly religious among the faithful, there has been heard in the churches certain music unworthy of the house of God, and showing that the composer, far from having in view the service of the divine Majesty and the edification of his hearers, has only aimed at displaying his own imagination, and that he has forgotten the church and written for the theatre, not only by borrowing its style of melody, but also by introducing portions of theatrical music, to which he has sometimes violently adapted the words of the sacred liturgy. In order that so great a scandal may not be renewed, and that those who write music for the church may have a rule to keep them within due bounds, we prescribe as follows:

“1. Music destined for execution in the churches ought to be distinguishable from profane and theatrical music, not only in its melodies, but also in its whole character; hence

“2. Those movements are forbidden which would not be naturally inspired by the sacred character of the words, and which would be suggestive of the theatre.

“3. We forbid too lively or exciting movements; if the words require cheerfulness and joy, let it be expressed by the sweetness of religious mirth, and not by the unbridled liveliness of the dance.

“4. In all movements, whether slow or quick, the words of the sacred text must be pronounced clearly, and never more quickly than in ordinary discourse.

“5. The words must be put to music in the order which they occupy in the sacred text. When the sense has been entirely expressed, it will be allowable to repeat some word of it, or some phrase of it, as may be necessary, without inversion, without confusion of the sense, and with the required moderation.

“6. All the words must be sung, and none added nor any omitted. It is not allowed for one syllable of them to be changed.

“7. We forbid ariettas, duets, and trios in imitation of theatrical pieces. Recitative and everything approaching to it is forbidden; as also operatic finales, such as are known by the term cabaletta.

“8. As regards instruments, long introductions and long preludes are to be avoided, whether with full orchestra or with solos.

“9. Without depriving instrumental music of the grace and coloring which art and good taste suggest, an effeminate softness is to be avoided, as well as immoderate noise, which is always tiring and unbecoming in the house of God.

“10. The composer must not forget that the use of instrumental music in the churches is in a state of simple toleration; the object of it must be to sustain and enrich the singing, to be far from overpowering it, or from enfeebling and deadening it, or reducing it to a mere accessory.”

These rules, if adhered to, would give us music which would meet the requirements both of devotion and of art; nor do they exclude such variety as the diversity of our feelings calls for. It could, by its placid, quiet, and smooth‐flowing measures, soothe and subdue us into that mood which best fits us to offer to God reverential homage, and to make acts of resignation when we feel the hand of affliction bearing heavily upon us; but also, by more joyous and inspiriting strains, dispose us to praise God according to the immensity of his greatness, in joy and gladness, on loud‐ sounding cymbals (in cymbalis jubilationis), and send us back to the battle of life with renewed courage and strength.

IV.

But, it will be asked, can this style of music which we have just sketched be had? Most certainly.

It is true our organists do not know it; for they are lamentably ill‐read in musical lore. They seem to imagine that whatever is published as music for the service of the Catholic Church is to be regarded as “Catholic music,” and perfectly proper, and they scarcely dream of looking further than to the publications or importations of Ditson, Peters, and Novello, or of critically examining these to test their fitness for the purposes of divine worship. To take the two best composers of their class, how few organists have taken the trouble to study critically the Masses of Haydn and Mozart. Of the sixteen Masses composed by Haydn, there are only four in which the words are all correct. These are Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 9. All the others are consequently defective.

In Nos. 7, 8, and 11, although all the words are to be found in one or other of the voice parts, yet each voice is often singing different words at the same time.

In Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 16 the words Qui ex patre filioque procedit are altogether omitted. In Nos. 3 and 16 the words et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, filium Dei unigenitum, are wanting. In No. 2 the words Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur are omitted. In No. 10 the words Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis, are omitted. In the Credo all the words from et in unum Dominum as far as per quem omnia facta sunt (inclusive), and again all the last part of the Credo from et in Spiritum to the end, are altogether omitted.

In No. 12 the words Qui tollis peccata mundi (secundo) are omitted.

In No. 13 the words Jesu Christe, Domine Deus, are omitted. The words Filius Patris are immediately followed by miserere nobis, quoniam tu solus, etc.

Again, in the Credo of this same Mass, after the words et invisibilium we find the text read thus: credo per quem omnia, etc., with all the intermediate part left out. No. 14 consists of a Kyrie and Gloria only. In the Gloria the words Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe, etc., qui sedes, etc., are omitted. In No. 15 the words Qui tollis peccata mundi (secundo) are omitted. In the Credo of this Mass, beginning with Et resurrexit, different words are sung simultaneously by each part, as remarked above of Nos. 7, 8, and 11.

While it cannot be denied that much of the Mass music of Haydn is the most beautiful in the world, some of it is trivial and undevotional, and it would seem as if, by some of his movements, he wished to

“Make the soul dance a jig to heaven.”

Concerning the sacred compositions of Mozart, a recent French author, M. Felix Clement,(171) makes the following startling assertion:

“The religious musical compositions of Mozart are much less numerous than is generally believed, and the catalogues of music publishers and the repertories of maîtres de chapelle are not to be trusted. Many of these musicians frequently take the liberty of stealing from Mozart’s operas, and even from his compositions for instruments, and of adapting them to a Latin text, let the adaptations be worth what they may.... The only authentic religious compositions of Mozart are the following:

“A Stabat mater for four voices, without instruments, and very short.

“A Veni Sancte Spiritus for four voices, two violins, two hautboys, two horns, a clarinet, tympanum, alto, and violoncello.

“A solemn Mass for four voices, two violins, two hautboys, two altos, four clarinets, and tympanum, 1768.

“A short Mass for four voices and the same accompaniment, 1768.

“A Grand Offertory for four voices and similar accompaniment, 1768.

“An Ave Verum Corpus, 1791.

“The Mass of Requiem.

“Two solemn Masses in C major.”

There are adaptations in many of Peters’ publications that are simply shocking, and even our most worthy Anthony Werner forgot himself while he was compiling the Memorare and the Cantate, and inserted a few compositions that are out of rule, and therefore out of taste.

Again, few organists amongst us have a sufficient knowledge of Latin, of the structure of the ritual, and of the traditions of the church to judge of the appropriateness of compositions; and the evil is aggravated to the last degree by the custom of making the organist the director of the music as well. Hardly any of them know either the theory or the practice of plain chant.

Music of the kind we have described as fit for church use abounds in Italy, but mostly in the condition of MS. The works of the Augustan age of Italian music, from the time of Carissimi to that of Jommelli, including those of Durante, Leo, Clari, Steffani, Martini, and Pergolesi, and even of later masters, like Terziani, afford inexhaustible treasures almost entirely neglected.

The new order of things in Italy has wrought and is working mischief there in more ways than one. Thus it has already been the occasion of the loss of a great number of valuable musical manuscripts, and unfortunately the end is not yet. The revolution of 1848 caused a great deal of wanton destruction, the result of that spirit of vandalism which seems to possess all revolutionists; and the recent suppression of so many churches by the Italian government has brought about the dispersion and consequent loss of the manuscripts of as many musical libraries—a loss that can never be repaired.

If we do not resume the execution of the compositions of the older masters, we must at least recur to them for the purposes of study. In no other way can we shake off the influence of the drama.

We have learned from the instructions of Benedict XIV. and the cardinal vicar of Pius IX. that there is a distinction between the music of the stage and that of the church, and that this distinction is based on the fact that in the latter the music must be written to suit the words of the sacred text, and that the music, whilst having that serious and chastened expression which befits the language of devotion, should be distinctively vocal and choral; whereas in the former the tendency is to make the words suit the modulations of the music, to subordinate the voices to the rich and powerful instrumental symphony which accompanies them, to flatter the popular ear by light and taking airs, and to display to the best advantage the voices of individual singers and their wonderful execution.

These characteristics of secular music, due to the influence first of Mozart and afterwards of Rossini more than to that of any other composers, have been too long felt in the music of the church, and to be rid of them we must lean more towards the past, and return to the study of those grave and solemn forms which existed prior to their day, and in which the instrumental accompaniment contained no suggestion of levity, and was used to support and enrich the vocal harmony without drawing attention from it.

The celebrated Robert Franz is now editing some of the works of Durante, who flourished not long after the departure from Palestrina was made, and whose piety and exclusive devotedness to church music have given a more ecclesiastical character to his compositions than to those of any other composer of his day.

In France the war between those who advocate the exclusive use of plain chant and those who plead that music may have some share in the divine service is waged fiercely, and the consequence is that both parties go to extremes, and both assert principles with regard to the respective merits of the two styles that are utterly untenable. There is no country in the world where plain chant is so much sung, and none where so much wretched stuff is palmed off as sacred music. Nevertheless, France has composers of merit, who might achieve great results if they had a public of broader views to write for, chief among whom is Gounod, who, in his Messe Solennelle and his Ave Verum, has struck the right chord, and proved himself able to write sacred music for great occasions, in which all the resources of modern art may be combined with a solemnity and an expression of piety not less remarkable than that which we find in the compositions of Palestrina.

In England the advocates of what we may call the canonical style of church music are not inactive.

The late Cardinal Wiseman had an excellent collection of Palestrina music, published in the most elegant style by Burns.

Years ago Monsignor Newsham, at the cardinal’s suggestion, composed for smaller choirs four chorus Masses, to be sung in unison or in parts ad libitum. They are easy, flowing, and very devotional, and strictly in rule. They are published by Novello.

Mr. Richardson, an excellent musician, has revised some of the Masses of Haydn and Mozart, and, without altering substantially the music of these two great composers, reset the words with rare skill; so that we have all the beauty of the music, while the text of the Mass does not suffer. They are published by Burns & Oates.

Of late years Archbishop Manning has had a series of six Masses composed by excellent musicians, chiefly for unison singing, but they may also be sung alternately in parts. They have a full and artistic organ accompaniment, and are so arranged that the effect produced by them is scarcely inferior to that of vocal part music, while they are not hard to learn, and do not overtax the voices.

He has also had other Masses published for four voices in the highest style of art. These are by eminent composers, and have organ obbligato accompaniment. They are full without being of inconvenient length.

In these, as in the preceding Masses, the Sanctus and Benedictus in no case exceed the proper limits.

They are published by Burns & Oates.

Other compositions of the same class are promised.

Of what is being done in Belgium we cannot speak so confidently; but at the last Catholic Congress of Mechlin the subject of church music received due attention; prizes were offered for compositions that would meet the requirements of devotion as well as art, and a concursus actually took place, and the works of the contestants published.

It is in Germany that the movement in favor of the reform of church music has been the most active and has made the most progress.

We have already mentioned the introduction of the Palestrina style of music into some of the German cathedrals, and four immense volumes of music of that class have been published by Pustet, of Munich; and, as we have just said, Franz is publishing and drawing attention to the works of Durante, who represents the style that came into vogue when Palestrina was first departed from.

But they have a large and able society, called the Cecilia, extending all over Germany, which last year numbered 7,000, and is ever increasing. They have at their head F. Francis Witt, an exemplary priest of Spire, whom the Germans call “the modern Palestrina.” He is trying to achieve in our day the success that Palestrina met in his.

The number of compositions for the church published by this society or under its own influence is immense.

A writer in the London Tablet stated recently that by means of S. Cecilia’s Society a thorough reform had been effected in the church music of Germany, and that frivolous compositions in the secular style have at last been banished from the churches.

The writer of this paper remembers hearing in the autumn of 1869, in the Cathedral of Munich, two Masses of this school, which contained no passages for soli, and in which the words were treated as respectfully as in the compositions of Palestrina and his school, none being repeated or inverted. The accompaniment of the organ and the orchestra, in which no wind instruments were heard—except, perhaps, the bassoon—was so fully subordinated to the voices and so perfect otherwise that his ear has been spoiled, as it were, and every similar performance heard since in other places has been a grievous disappointment. He never heard any music more pleasing artistically, and at the same time more devotional and proper. It showed that composers can give us the best music which modern art can furnish, and yet keep strictly within the limits marked by ecclesiastical authority.

The Cecilia Society of Germany has a branch in this country, which has recently begun to publish select music, and to issue a musical journal called the Cecilia. The editor is F. Singinberger, and the publishers Fisher & Brother, Dayton, Ohio.

The publications of sacred music amongst us have not been very numerous or very remarkable for excellence. Among the very best we feel bound to notice the publications,(172) and especially the elegant compositions(173) of Mr. Falkestein, who has shown that he knows how to unite in his skilfully‐constructed and charming yet devout compositions the depth and severity of the old ecclesiastical masters with the graceful and flowing melody and orchestral effects of the modern school.

There is no lack of good‐will and talent amongst our musicians, but the trouble is that they have not the models by the study of which they may form a true ecclesiastical style. A library is as necessary to the student of music who hopes to be a composer as it is to the student of literature who has the ambition of becoming an author. Our directors of church choirs need a larger acquaintance with the great masters, especially the older ones. Above all, they need to have a better knowledge of Gregorian chant. For this chant should not only form a part of our service, as was already stated in the first part of this paper, but it should also be the source of inspiration to those who wish to compose for the church, as it was to Palestrina and his followers, as it is to‐day to Gounod. The language of Mr. Ritter may be exaggerated, but it conveys a truth to be remembered:(174) “The Gregorian chant,” he says, “runs like a red thread through the musical part of the service of the Catholic Church; this really sacred song creates in Catholic countries the first impressions which touch the soul of the young Christian on his entrance into the church, and is, as such, the indestructible echo of his first sacred associations. As Holy Writ forms the invariable foundation of the religious and moral principles of the true Christian, so the Gregorian chant ought to form the ground and invariable theme of the true church composer; and as long as composers understood and valued this inestimable, noble, and really sacred practice their works composed for the church truthfully and appropriately fulfilled their solemn office; these works were thus imbued with the sacred character derived from the themes of the sacred songs; then necessarily a distinct line of demarcation was drawn between secular and sacred music.”

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

A Week In Wordsworth’s Haunts

We had only a week to spare, but we were not long in choosing where to spend our holiday. At that time the Lake Country was accessible, but not yet crossed through and through, by railroads. The cars took us from London almost through to Windermere, but, that being the gate of the sanctuary, they went no further. We had to cross the “Black Country,” a weird region of coal‐mines and furnaces, where scarcely a blade of grass meets the eye; interminable plains, strewn with gaunt machinery and bristling with tall brick chimneys or low, wide, oven‐like buildings, stretch from the track of the railroad as far as the horizon; a muffled noise, rumbling and crackling, is the only sound besides the shrill whistle of the engine; the sky is black as with the promise of ten thousand thunder‐storms, the murky air hangs like a pall over the earth, and tongues of flame shoot up now and then from the mouths of the furnaces. At night the scene is gloomily splendid; everywhere lurid flashes leap up from these openings, for the work is incessant here; half‐ naked forms stalk from chimney to pit, wheeling giant barrows or pushing forward heavy trucks on tramways; no sound but the never‐ceasing rumble of wheels and crackle of flames—apparently a silent Pandemonium or Dantesque city of Dis; at any rate, a sight that one does not easily forget.

Windermere is the largest, the most fashionable, and the best known of the English lakes. It was Saturday night when we reached it and went to an inn overlooking the calm sheet of water. The moon was up, and streaked the shadows of the great mountains that lay across the lake with her shimmering silver pathway; the little boats moored by the various landings rocked to and fro in the gentle breeze, and the wavelets came with a “swish” against the pebbly shore. Next morning, on inquiring for the Catholic church, we were told that there was a private chapel in the house of a Catholic gentleman who lived on an island in the lake, and allowed any respectable tourist to come on Sunday. We rowed over to the island, and found it all a garden: smooth lawns to the water’s edge, broad gravel‐ paths through groves of elm and chestnut, a glowing parterre, rustic seats, fountains and marble balustrades, and by the boat‐house a little group of gay skiffs dancing up and down on the blue water. The chapel was up‐stairs, and there was an outside stair‐case leading to it, down which we saw a familiar figure coming slowly towards us. It was that of a London priest whom we knew, and who, like us, was spending a brief holiday among the lakes. He had come over to say an early Mass; the master of the house was not at home, he said, but the chaplain would be glad to welcome all Catholics, many of whom came during the touring season. After Mass we strolled for an hour about the garden, admiring the vistas contrived between the trees, at the end of which glimpses of the blue sky and sparkling water, with some gray or purple peak cleaving the line of the horizon, could be seen. From every point of the lake itself these mountains strike the eye; for the most part bare of trees, their lower ledges covered with green pasture‐land, and seamed here and there with the foamy streak of a beck or stream; their summits sheer rock. Their names all have a grand, free sound that suits their craggy, majestic beauty—Helm Crag, Hammar Scar, Silver How, Skiddaw. This one is the monarch of the lake country. Great How is a single, conspicuous peak rising at the foot of Lake Thirlmere, to the west of the lovely vale of Legberthwaite, near the high‐road between Ambleside and Keswick. Ambleside is a favorite resort of students; young men from the two universities often come to spend the long vacation here, where reading, walking, and boating can be combined. The scenery is very beautiful; the valleys are broken up into a thousand nooks where fern and heather grow, and some tiny rivulet trickles beneath the broad‐arched fronds of the bracken; every old wall wears a golden crown of celandine, or, in native dialect, pilewort; the “ghyll”—i.e., a short, steep, narrow gorge, a miniature cañon—is traversed by the foamy brook, leaping to the waterfall called in Cumberland a “force”; the birch, the rowan, the oak, cling to the rocky ledges that jut out over the little cataract, and everywhere above the greenery lies the shadow of the great lonely hills. Black Comb in Cumberland Wordsworth calls a spot fit for a “ministering angel” to choose, for from its summit, on a tolerably clear day, England, Scotland, and Ireland are all three visible. Many of the mountains, both in Cumberland and Westmoreland, have traces of inscriptions on the native rock which have by some learned men been supposed to be Runic, but which it is now generally agreed to call Roman. They are very rude, and much effaced by time and the action of the weather; hence the uncertainty.

It was by the shores of Windermere that a party of young men, all enthusiastic Tractarians, spent a vacation in one of the first years of that movement now called Puseyite and ritualistic, but then known as the Young England movement. In those days ladies washed and ironed the church linen, and wore their dainty fingers to the bone sewing surplices and embroidering altar‐cloths; while others would take it by turn to sweep the churches and dust the pews; and others again, intent on doing penance, would kneel for hours on stone floors, and even use the discipline unsparingly, until the doctor’s verdict put an end to their misguided zeal. Blindly they were beating about for the truth, and thought they had found it in practices of self‐denial. It was a touching blindness—one that God often and often enlightened during those fruitful years. Young men made a point of exercising bodily mortification, even in vacation time, and, when thrown by circumstances amid unsympathizing companions, would carry their zeal into the commonest actions, and make a silent boast of their new‐found faith. One Friday, for instance, a few young members of Parliament, assembled in the lobby of the House of Commons, called for “tea and toast” instead of the unfailing mutton‐chop of tradition, and the mild protest created quite a sensation. On going home they were received by their several households as champions of a holy cause who, from humble beginnings, were going to bring about a mighty revolution, a national awakening. It was very beautiful, this child‐like faith in their own ideal—so beautiful that God rewarded many of those who held it by leading them into the everlasting reality of the great universal, apostolic church. The athletic young hermits of Ambleside were not left out of the reckoning. One day one of them strayed out alone over the hills, with some old volume of the fathers under his arm, and his questioning young soul eager for the knowledge which the wonderful serenity of this mountain region seemed at the time to typify so well. He was out a long time, and, when he came home to his companions, he seemed to them transfigured. A new peace and yet a more ardent enthusiasm had come to him, and he spoke in words almost incomprehensible to them:

“I have found the man who has the idea!”

What had happened to him was this: In his walk he had met a young stranger, and spoken to him. Kindred thoughts and aspirations had led them into a long and eager conversation, wherein it soon appeared that the stranger, with his fair, girlish face and dreamy blue eyes, was the master, and his new friend only the humble disciple. They had talked on into the twilight, and the latter, entranced, at last asked the name of him who in a few short hours had taught him to see things in a clearer, diviner light than all the patristic reading had been able to do during his college course. The young man opened the book he had with him, and showed him his name written on the fly‐leaf. It was Frederick William Faber.

From Windermere we started on our real tour. The native conveyances are called “cars,” and hold four people sitting opposite each other, but sideways and parallel with the horses. From a rough, square box, painted dark blue or green, up to a real town‐made carriage in the same shape, this conveyance is universally in use over the north. Everywhere the same beautiful scenery—moist nooks, a natural fernery, tumbling waterfalls, walls covered with wild flowers; here and there an old‐fashioned inn with an old‐fashioned landlord, waiting himself on his customers, and sitting down to tell them at his ease all the gossip and the guide‐book lore of the neighborhood, the best time to go up the mountain, when it was safe to take a boat out on the mere, the accident in the lead‐mine last year, etc., etc. At such an inn, “The Swan,” we passed one night, and had an excellent and abundant rustic supper, not a hundred yards from the brand‐ new tourist hotel, “The Prince of Wales,” gas‐lighted and high‐priced, with saucy waiters and London upholstery, and each floor exactly the counterpart of the other, like a penitentiary.

Ullswater is a stormy lake, a sort of caldron enclosed in steep, forbidding rocks rising perpendicularly from the water. Above them is a wooded table‐land, with old houses hidden up the slopes beyond, one a ruined monastery, with a modern home fashioned out of a few available fragments of strong mediæval masonry, and a sort of museum or armory contrived among the standing arches of a less useful portion of the building. It was a steep climb to get to it, and for miles on either side of the pathway, that was half a natural staircase, there was no other road to it. The view over the dark lake was impressive; the waters, calm enough now, lay beneath us like a floor of black marble, with a fringe of heavy shadows along the edge where the cliffs overhung it.

Now and then we would pass detached hamlets with their sturdy, grave population all astir, the women fine specimens of their sex, with that frank expression and grand physical development which are bred of mountain training and open‐air life. Together with all the people of the north, they have many peculiar customs, and altogether form a race apart from the inhabitants of other English counties. The accents of their nervous, expressive dialect, the names of their mountains and lakes, the flavor of quaintness and individuality that hangs about their life, somehow suggest the old times of early Christianity when S. Wilfrid ruled in York, or struggled inch by inch for his invaded territory and ignored rights. Stopping to water your horses in one of these hamlets, you may see a knot of men standing silently and expectantly round the door of a clean, home‐ like cottage, and just outside, laid on the porch seat, a basin filled with sprigs of box‐wood. The men are waiting for a coffin to be borne out, and, when it comes, they will all fall into line behind it, and each, taking a sprig from the basin, will throw it into the grave after the prayers have been said. Of course this is a Catholic reminiscence of the days when the box sprigs were used to sprinkle the coffin with holy water, as they are now in most countries on the Continent; but, besides this, box‐wood is an evergreen, and therefore a symbol of the immortality of the soul.

Sometimes we would come to a little mountain tarn, across which we were ferried, car, horses, and all. The regular travelling in these regions is done by stage‐coaches, of which we availed ourselves for sending forward our slender baggage, so as to be quite independent and unencumbered in our movements. The mountain lakelets, that are never mentioned in guide‐books, are very beautiful with their fringe of rushes and boggy earth starred with white and golden flowers, and their flocks of teal and wild duck dwelling in peace in these undisturbed wildernesses.

Grasmere, a village on one of the larger lakes bearing the same name, was Wordsworth’s home for eight years, the first eight of this century. He was born in Cumberland, and the home‐passion that has gained him his title of Lake Poet never left him. Fortunate in his worldly circumstances, he went to Cambridge, and, though a desultory reader, took a fairly creditable degree after four years’ study. He made tours on foot through Wales and Germany, and published his poetical reminiscences, though with little success; but through their medium he gained the friendship of Coleridge, his fellow‐poet and life‐long companion. He settled at Grasmere in 1799 with his sister, who was throughout his life, even after his marriage, his guiding star—the kindred spirit whose approval and sympathy were the secret sources of his intellectual life. Of her he says, speaking of a peak which they could see from their “orchard‐seat”:

“There is an eminence, of these our hills, The last that parleys with the setting sun.

The meteors make of it a favorite haunt; The star of Jove, so beautiful and large In the mid‐heavens, is never half so fair As when he shines above it. ’Tis, in truth, The loneliest place we have among the clouds. And she who dwells with me, whom I have loved With such communion that no place on earth Can ever be a solitude to me, Hath to this lonely summit given my name.”

Of his wife he wrote, after three years of marriage, words contrasting his first impressions as a lover with the sweet, solemn experience of a husband. Then “a phantom of delight, ... a lovely apparition, ... a dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay,” but now

“A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller betwixt life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect woman, nobly plann’d, To warn, to comfort and command; And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.”

Song seemed to gush from Wordsworth’s soul as naturally and copiously as water from a mountain spring. Some of his verses were written with a slate‐pencil on stones in lonely places; for instance, in a deserted quarry on one of the islands at Rydal, on a stone half way up the grim mountain of Black Comb, in Cumberland, or with a common pencil on a stone in an outhouse on the island at Grasmere. He lived poetry. Everything with him was a pretext for verse; neither the commonest household occurrence nor the sublimest spectacle of nature up there among those rocky fells and green valleys lying under awful shadows of coming storms, was a stranger to his ready pen. He says of himself that

“The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms were then to me An appetite, a feeling, and a love.”

There are few places so thoroughly fitted for a poet’s home as the lake country of Cumberland and Westmoreland, yet more so then than now, when it has become the fashion to make a tour among the lakes, even as one does down the Rhine. England has wakened to the consciousness of her own beauty within the last forty years, and a home‐tour often takes the place of a foreign one; yet to those who first visited these Eden‐spots the rare charm is gone, for sight‐seers have taken the place of the “wanderer,” and regular guides usurp the simple escort of a stray shepherd whom in old times you might have happened to meet by some force, on the cool banks of which he would have told you, in his racy dialect, the old traditions and legends of the neighborhood—the legend of the horn of Egremont Castle, for instance, a Cumberland tale, telling how Sir Eustace Lucie and his brother Hubert rode away to the Holy Land, and the former, pointing to the “horn of the inheritance” that hung by the gate‐way, and which none could sound,

“Save he who came as rightful heir To Egremont’s domains and castle fair,”

said to his brother: “If I fall, and Christ our Saviour demand my sinful soul, do thou come back straight‐way, and sound the horn, that we may have a living house in thee.” And Hubert promised. But out in Palestine Sir Eustace disappeared, and, when the news was brought to Hubert that his elder brother lay “deep in Jordan flood,” he said darkly to the messengers: “Take your earnings. Oh! that I could have seen my brother die.” He went home, and whether he sounded the horn or not none knew; it was never heard, but Sir Hubert lived in glee for years, with wife and sons and daughters, until one day

“A blast was uttered from the horn Where by the castle gate it hung forlorn,”

and Sir Eustace came back safe and unsuspecting. Hubert rose up and fled in silence, and it was years before he was again heard of; then he came and asked forgiveness, and obtained it, and ended his penitent life in the cloister; so that Eustace’s “heirs of heirs, through a long posterity, sounded the horn which they alone could sound.” The same legend is told of the Hall of Hutton John, an old house of the Huddlestones in a lonely valley on the river Dacor, also in these parts.

Or it might be the tradition of Henry, Lord Clifford, the shepherd‐boy, whose father lost his title and estates during the wars of the Roses. Henry was restored, after twenty‐four years of shepherd life, in the first year of the reign of Henry VII., and it is recorded that, when called to Parliament, he behaved nobly and wisely, but otherwise came seldom to London or the court, and rather delighted to live in the country, where he repaired several of his castles, which had gone to decay during the late troubles. “There is a tradition,” says Wordsworth himself, “current in the village of Threlkeld (in Cumberland, where lay the estate of his father‐ in‐law, Sir Lancelot Threlkeld), that in the course of his shepherd life he had acquired great astronomical knowledge.” The poet clothed this incident (as he did every other that struck his fancy in that poetic land of the north) in verse, singing a lay of the Red Rose, revived at last, the flower of Lancaster, and weaving in the tale of the boy’s wanderings on “Carrock’s side,” in “Rosedale’s groves,” and “Blencathara’s rugged coves.” The common name of this last‐mentioned mountain is Saddle‐Back. Near Threlkeld, hidden in the gorges of the purple hills, lies Bowscale Tarn, where the people of the country still believe two immortal fish to dwell. Tarn signifies, in north‐country dialect, a small mountain mere, or lake. Wordsworth’s descriptions of scenery are exquisite; everywhere you find the traces of that personal love of the places he paints, that patient, detailed minuteness of touch which only comes of long gazing on a favorite scene, and of familiarity with its every aspect, in winter and summer, in storm and sunshine, in mist and rainbow. Every place has some tender associations in his memory; the stately fir‐grove whither he was wont

“To hasten, for I found beneath the roof Of that perennial shade a cloistral place Of refuge, with an unencumbered floor,”

reminds him of a dear friend, “a silent poet” but a sailor by profession, after whom he called the pathway to the grove, whence

“The steep Of Silver How, and Grasmere’s placid lake And one green island”

could be distinctly seen. That friend never returned, but perished by shipwreck in the discharge of his duty. Here, too, in this beautiful lake country, both at Grasmere and at his later and more celebrated home, Rydal Mount, in Westmoreland, Wordsworth lost others dearer yet—two of his children, who died young, and Dora, his favorite daughter, who died six years after her marriage. When on his own death‐bed, three years later, his wife, brave and self‐forgetting to the last, comforted him by whispering: “William, you are going to Dora.” His poems are so complete a guide‐book to the lake country, as well as a series of living sketches of the people of the north, that it is almost unavoidable to treat them as tourists in Scotland do The Lady of the Lake, or tourists at Rome Childe Harold. In his day, however, many popular traits were in full vigor which now have almost disappeared. For instance, he says himself that “the class of beggars to which the old man here described belongs will probably soon be extinct. It consisted of poor and mostly old and infirm persons, who confined themselves to a stated round in their neighborhood, and had certain fixed days, on which, at different houses, they regularly received alms, sometimes in money, but mostly in provisions.” In his verse he describes the “Old Cumberland Beggar” thus:

“Him from my childhood have I known; and then He was so old, he seems not older now.

He travels on, a solitary man— His age has no companion.”

The passing horseman does not throw him a careless alms, but stops, lingers, and drops a coin safely into the old man’s hat; the toll‐bar keeper sees him from a distance, and leaves her work to lift the latch for him; the post‐boy slackens his horse’s speed, and turns with less noisy wheels out of his path; the very dogs do not bark at him.

“But deem not this man useless. Statesmen! ye Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye Who have a broom still ready in your hands To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud Heart‐swoln, while in your heart ye contemplate Your talents, power, and wisdom, deem him not A burden of the earth.”

No; he is “a record binding together past deeds and offices of charity”; “a silent monitor” to those who sit sheltered “in a little grove of their own kindred”; an object to call forth that blessed feeling that you have, though “poorest poor,” been “the fathers and dealers‐out of some small blessings”; a prompter to “tender offices and pensive thoughts.” See this picture:

“Such pleasure is to one kind being known, My neighbor, when with punctual care, each week, Duly as Friday comes, though press’d herself By her own wants, she from her chest of meal Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip Of this old mendicant, and from her door, Returning with exhilarated heart, Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven.”

And the poet, the lover of nature, the child of the mountain, ends by a warning and a prayer:

“Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness Gives the last human interest to his heart. May never House, misnamed b‘of Industry,’ Make him a captive! For that pent‐up din, Those life‐consuming sounds that clog the air, Be his the natural silence of old age!”

Though we have quoted Wordsworth’s poetry, it is not as a poet but as a man that we speak of him here, not desiring to criticise his verse or to enter into discussions concerning the judgment given of it by critics of his own time. In the Lake Country his personality strikes you with the same sense of reality and continued presence as do the everlasting hills and the changeless lakes themselves. He died only a quarter of a century ago, though his principal poems all belonged to the first and second decades of this century. In 1814 The Excursion was published, and the poem which has made his chief fame was so severely criticised at the time that one of the reviewers boasted that he had crushed it. A brother poet, Southey, exclaimed: “He crush The Excursion! He might as well fancy he could crush Skiddaw!” If his verse was coldly received at first, it was chiefly because emotional, passionate poetry, such as Byron’s, Moore’s, Scott’s, and Campbell’s, was the fashion then. Wordsworth’s was calm as nature herself, and concerned itself little with man’s history, past or present. When he did mingle the deeds of men with the loving touches of his scenery descriptions, he would choose pure, white lives, such as would not jar with the calmness of lake and fell, of opal sky and shimmering water. Here is what the legend of the ruined hermitage on S. Herbert’s Island, on Lake Derwentwater, suggested to him. The story of the holy friends is told also in Montalembert’s Monks of the West.

“This island, guarded from profane approach By mountains high and waters widely spread, Is that recess to which S. Herbert came In life’s decline, a self‐secluded man, After long exercise in social cares And offices humane, intent t’ adore The Deity with undistracted mind, And meditate on everlasting things.

But he had left A fellow‐laborer whom the good man loved As his own soul; and when within his cave Alone he knelt before the crucifix, While o’er the lake the cataract of Lodore Peal’d to his orisons, and when he paced Along the beach of this small isle, and thought Of his companion, he would pray that both (Now that their earthly duties were fulfilled) Might die in the same moment. Nor in vain So prayed he; as our chronicles report, Though here the hermit number’d his last day, Far from S. Cuthbert, his beloved friend: Those holy men both died in the same hour.”

Derwentwater is the most picturesque of all the lakes in point of smiling landscape. It has several little wooded islands dotting its surface; its waters are clear and more blue than those of the other lakes, and the mountains round the shore are less abrupt and naked. Lodore Force tumbles almost perpendicularly into it from the steep, shelving rocks that jut out from the dense forest growth, like the backbone of a huge black snake wriggling through the underbrush. These are the same waters whose sound swept over the lake and smote the ears of the hermit‐saint twelve centuries ago. It is, except one, the most romantic waterfall in the Lake Country. Below this wooded hill, and on the very margin of Derwentwater, stands a little old‐time inn, as clean as a Dutch house, with a rustic porch and a little lawn before it, ringed in with chains hung in festoons from four or five low posts. In the middle is a miniature gun, which is fired off every now and then for the amusement of the tourists. The echoes thus awakened among the surrounding hills are almost endless.

This beautiful North Country has another interest not so romantic—that of its mines, which are mostly of lead. Just across Derwentwater there is a fine mine, which, from its convenient position, is often visited. We rowed across the lake to see it; but if you have seen one mine, you will scarcely care to see a second—at least if you have no better motive than curiosity. To us on that first expedition it was simply fun. Luckily, there was no proposition made to don male attire for the only woman of the party; a huge oilskin coat with an ample hood quite wrapped her up and protected her for the downward journey. We got into a rough box or “basket,” preferring this quicker and more adventurous mode of descent to the species of chair contrived for the visitors to the mine, and were shot down in an incredibly short space of time to the second “level” of what we saw there is really very little to tell. The lodes or veins of metal looked like irregular lines of shining moisture drawn on the rocky walls; there was a tramway occupying the whole of the narrow gallery that formed the level, and up and down this tramway, at a tremendous rate, and with a noise like thunder, came the trucks loaded with ore. We had to squeeze up against the wall as they passed. The path was more than half submerged; we splashed into pools and puddles at every third or fourth step, and the moisture dropped persistently from the glistening roof. We should have gone to the third and lowest “level” had it not been so thoroughly under water that the miners had to wear long waterproof boots mid‐way up their thighs when they worked there. On going up again we stopped at the first level, which looked exactly like the other. We did not gain much information by our excursion, but it was a rare frolic, and we were greatly excited. Our clothes came out of the “basket” in a soaked and streaky condition; but nobody cared, the achievement was enough to make up for anything. Some years later we tried the same sort of experiment, and did not find it nearly so exciting. It was at an iron‐mine in Monmouthshire, near the river Wye, famed in the legends of the Round Table; we were let down the shaft in a kind of iron cage (the miners’ regular conveyance), which swung unpleasantly to and fro, grinding against the sides of the narrow opening, and bumping us roughly down at the bottom, where, as their time was nearly out, the men were gathering, ready to go up. Here there was literally nothing to see. The work was done a long way off, and there was no time to go there; besides, the place was several inches under water. The interest of this expedition consisted simply in going down and coming up again, and in the feeling that we could “say we had done it.” What was really interesting on this same occasion was the sight of the iron‐works and furnaces at nightfall. The metal was put into the furnaces at one end, and came out at the other in a continuous stream of intensest light; blindingly white it poured out, running slowly and spreading itself into a network of grooves all parallel with each other, ready fitted for its reception, where it was left to cool. Few things so truly realize one’s idea of light as molten metal. There seemed no color in this beautiful stream, and one could fancy just such an intense glow as that to be the very radiance round the throne of God. It was impossible to stand near it for more than a second, the heat was so fierce, and we had to watch the calm, uninterrupted lustre from a respectful distance. This work was going on in a kind of open shed, sheltered above to protect the furnaces and machinery, but open at the sides, where in the darkness all kinds of strange groups and forms succeeded one another. The commonest circumstances took on solemnity and mystery in this half‐light, the red flashes from inside darting like tongues into the fading light, and making of it all a wonderful, living Rembrandt.

To return to our lakes. We had seen all the great ones, and driven across the country in all directions—through mountain passes where the bare crags and bowlders lay heaped together, as if the Titans had flung them there to bar the passage to their fastnesses; through smiling pastoral valleys where the summer stream bubbled peacefully enough, hiding its secrets of roads washed away and trees uprooted by its anger in early spring; by Esthwaite Lake with its solitary yew‐tree celebrated by Wordsworth; out into a bleak region of gray stone walls and hungry‐looking pastures to Westdale (valley) and Wastwater. Lonely and silent lies the black mere under its frowning cliffs; no house, no inn, near it; tourists seldom pass it, and tradition says that its depths have never been plumbed. We got a boat at a fisherman’s hut; it was not often he used it for anything but the necessities of his craft. And yet, in spite—or rather because—of this desolation, Wastwater has made a more lasting impression on us than the show‐lakes with their pretty activity and cheerful bustle of tourist‐life. Westdale would be just the place to live in if the mind needed bracing and restoring; few places within the pale of civilization can so truly boast of being absolute solitudes. We trust it is not changed even yet. Quite close, but you would not suspect it from the grim, rocky aspect of the scenery, is a little waterfall. It is in a narrow gully, a mere cleft in the rock, but alive with a thousand varying shades of green—ferns in abundance and in every stage of development, broad, dark, glossy leaves of water‐plants, and waxy spikes of rockwort. The incline of the waterfall is so gentle, and so many bowlders jut out from the stream, that you could almost climb up this natural staircase; the snow‐white spray dashes all over the banks, turning to diamonds in the hearts of the tiny flowers, and to rainbows on the broad surface of leaves; and the noise of the waters—their plash, their gurgle, or their trickle, as they strike moss, pebble, or little hollows round the big bowlders—seems like a living voice.

Our week was nearly up, and we were to meet the noonday train at a station several miles beyond Wastwater. The road lay through rocky passes, and was reckoned a bad one. Our car‐driver was doubtful as to whether we could make the distance in the time that remained; for we had been tempted, by the rugged beauty of the lovely vale, to overstay our appointed time for exploration and natural‐history collections. The drive was sufficiently exciting, a last bit of “fun” to end our holiday, and we jolted over the rough road, crossing the worn channels of mountain streams, and noticing on the steep sides of the hills what looked like moving bowlders, but what were in reality small, sure‐footed sheep, white, brown, and black. The country grew bleaker as we went on, till at last we reached the primitive railway station just in time. We were very sorry to part with our North‐ Country driver and his car, and return to the civilized mode of rapid locomotion; the more so as the scenery through which we flew for two or three hours was as barren and as desolate as the shores of the Dead Sea. Gray stone walls made a sort of magnified chess‐board of the level country, enclosing small fields of forlorn‐looking stubble or bits of dark‐red ploughed land. It was inexpressibly dreary, and a marvellous contrast to the beautiful region, bold and rocky, or wooded and smiling, which we had left behind us.

At last we reached Furness, our last halting‐place. Here there was a coquettish little station, gay with ornamental wood and wire‐work, and with autumn flowers and late climbing roses, while beyond the trim lawn stood an inviting hotel—modern, it is true, but decked out in villa style, full of bay‐windows and gables, with green Venetian blinds and long French windows opening into a garden. There was no trace of a village near, or of any human dwelling but these two buildings. The reason was that both of these were subservient to the ruins of S. Mary’s Abbey, which stood, as it were, within the hotel‐garden. S. Mary’s, Furness, is one of the three most stately and most perfect ruined abbeys in England; the others are Fountain’s Abbey in Yorkshire, and Tintern on the Wye, Monmouthshire. It is built of red sandstone, the warm hue contrasting beautifully with the luxurious growth of evergreens all round and inside its arches and cloisters. The tracery of the great pointed windows is almost intact, but here and there the tracery of delicate climbing plants is so interwoven with it that the marvel of carving is lost in the wealth of each summer’s renewed growth. The church is built in the shape of a cross. The walls and windows of the nave are untouched, and down the centre are the two rows of columns that divided it from the aisles—round Saxon pillars, alternating with clustered Gothic shafts, a sheaf of colonnettes forming one support. The bases of all of them remain, though every one is broken more or less near the base, none being more than two or three feet high. Of course the roof is gone, and everywhere around shaft and pillar grow tall flowering grasses, shrubs with bright berries and spear‐like leaves, while a carpet of grass as green as an emerald covers the stone floor. There were seven altars in the church, and the steps to the smaller ones are even now marked by the gradual ascent of the turf. Poking into the earth with a walking‐stick, we soon came to the stone steps, not more than three inches under ground. The chancel and sedilia are very perfect, and everywhere the piscinæ are visible in the walls. The chapter‐room preserved its stone groined roof up to twenty or thirty years ago, when it fell in. On the walls are the remains of lovely, intricate diaper‐work. The refectory is a long hall with a row of columns (only the bases exist now) down the centre, and the principal dormitory is said to have been exactly above this. The whole is now open to the sky. The quiet cloister, with some of the old graves of dead and gone Cistercian monks, is still traceable, and beyond is a little enclosed and railed‐in stone chamber, contrived out of the ruined walls, but carefully roofed in, and used to stow away such fragments of sculpture as have been found within the precincts of the abbey. They are thus preserved from the rapacity of tourists. There are bones and skulls among them, too. The North of England was once called the garden‐land of the Cistercians; their abbeys abounded in that region, and their power, temporal and spiritual, was paramount. The abbots at the head of those religious corporations of early days had episcopal jurisdiction and claimed episcopal privileges, and were far more powerful than the wandering bishops who had no abbey to back their authority. They had tracts of land and many serfs. In many respects the “villeins” of the church were a happy and a privileged set of people. They were not obliged to serve in the king’s armies, as were the serfs of secular lords, and they could not be sued for debt or trespass, or any other local offence. They were immediately and solely under the jurisdiction of the abbot, which superseded, in their case, that of the common law. In return for their service, agricultural and otherwise, the abbot gave them shelter, food, clothing, and protection—not an unequal bargain, even for our days; but when we transport ourselves into the conditions of life in the middle ages, it will be easily seen how desirable a fate it was to be “made over to the church.” In those days protection was a greater boon than even food, lodging, or clothing; it was then what “habeas corpus” and the right of inviolability of domicile are now; and so long as the substance existed, it is idle to quarrel with the garb in which it was clothed.

The ruins were thronged all day; that was the only drawback to our enjoyment, but we remedied that at night. Every train came laden with tourists to see Furness Abbey; they walked about with guide‐books and luncheon‐baskets, and popped champagne‐corks in the cloisters, and strewed chicken‐bones among the bases of the great Saxon pillars, chatting, laughing, and joking, and evidently enjoying themselves as they would at a country fair or a cattle‐show. This went on all day long; but towards night, after a late dinner at the hotel, they subsided, and scarcely a soul was to be seen in the garden. The men were in the billiard‐room, and the women probably packing their things for the morrow’s journey; so we slipped out, two of us, and went over to the deserted ruins. The moon was up, not quite at her full, but bright enough to make the scene very beautiful, and there were many stars as well. It is not easy to describe the impression this night‐view of the old Catholic abbey made on us; one might as well try to catch a moonbeam, and examine it and find out what it is made of. Every one can sketch the picture for himself; every one with a love of the beautiful, the spiritualized, will understand what was its solemn charm. We roamed about in silence from nave to cloisters, from refectory to chapel‐room, and then, hand‐in‐hand, went with something of awe in our hearts into the old chancel, where in the days of the monks none ever went but the cowled, white‐robed Cistercians themselves—an angel and virgin choir meet to sing the praises of the Lamb. By the sedilia, in the beautiful carved recesses of which scarcely a stone is out of place or an ornament broken off, we knelt down and said the rosary together for the conversion of England.

Presently a strange green light flashed before our eyes, right above the place where the high altar had stood of old; it was gone in a minute, and the calm radiance of the moon was still undisturbed. Seen, as it was, in this dim, silent place of song and worship, it was very impressive; and had it been nothing but what we first took it for—i.e., a railway signal—even then it would have remained in our imagination, idealized into something symbolic. Green is the color of hope, and where is there more room for hope than under the arches of a ruined abbey, once the pride of a Catholic country, the home of learning and charity, the representative of a nation’s civilization? We stayed a long while yet, lingering about the dusky arches, catching sight of the starry sky through the Gothic tracery of the windows, repeopling the place in fancy with its silent, prayerful denizens in their white robes and hoods, and wondering what that fitful flash might have been. Next morning we saw in the newspaper that just at that very hour a meteor of greenish hue had appeared and been observed in many places all over England. You may imagine how glad we were to find that it had been no railway signal that had cleft the white moonlight while we were praying in the chancel. It was a beautiful remembrance to carry away from the Abbey of S. Mary at Furness. God does not forget the places where his feet have rested, and there are heavenly, undying flowers yet in the gardens of Paradise which the angels fling down on those consecrated spots which princes once endowed, because they humbly acknowledged that “the roses and flowers of kings, emperors, and dukes, and the crowns and palms of all the great, wither and decay, and that all things, with an uninterrupted course, tend to dissolution and death.”(175)

So we took leave of the beautiful North Country, its lakes, its solemn mountains, its abbeys, and its hardy, independent people, whose character has in it yet all the elements out of which God, infusing into them his grace, moulded the great Northumbrian saint, Wilfrid of York, the Thomas à Becket of the VIth century.

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