On The Wing. A Southern Flight. VI…

On The Wing. A Southern Flight. VI

“An evil spirit swept the land, Of ruin and unrest.”

Not far from the villa we occupied there stood an uninviting house, as it appeared to me, the loggia of which was surrounded on three sides with green trellis‐work, and commanded a fine view of Naples and the bay. Outside the door I had noticed barrels of oysters, as indicative of what we might find inside. This was the Caffe Frisio, renowned in Naples, spite of its unattractive appearance. I was somewhat surprised when, a few days after our engagement, Don Emidio suggested to Mary that we should all dine there, including, of course, the Vernons. I remonstrated. I did not see the fun of leaving our own quiet, cool house, with a modest but sufficiently well‐cooked dinner prepared by Monica and served with the honest awkwardness of our unpretending Paolino, for the hurry of noisy waiters and the click‐clack of other people’s plates and glasses. I stood up for my point with my usual undiscerning obstinacy until I thought I saw a puzzled and half‐pained expression come over the usually serene brow of my future master. Of course I yielded instantly, and, before I had stammered out a dozen words, found I had gone the length of declaring that my appetite for that day would fail me unless I dined at the Caffe Frisio. That point gained, Don Emidio hurried off (no! I am wrong there; I never as yet have seen him hurry about anything) to press the Vernons to be of our party. From thence he went, no doubt in his usually leisurely style, to order dinner for us. He was no sooner gone out of the room than I turned to Mary a bewildered face of inquiry, and asked her if she could at all understand Emidio’s being so anxious we should dine at a caffe. Mary’s reply was an indirect one. She look my hand in hers, and said with a smile:

“I sometimes wonder, my dear girl, whether you will quite easily take to the foreign ways of your intended husband.”

“Do you doubt it, Mary? I think, on the contrary, there is something so charming in that strange mixture of childlike simplicity and manly generosity which is so remarkable in the really good and noble Italians. Emidio always reminds me of a high‐bred school‐boy.”

“That is even more the characteristic, perhaps, of a thoroughly consistent Catholic life from childhood upwards than of any particular nation; though I agree with you that it is generally evident amongst Italians. Joy is the attribute of childhood, as distinct from any other period of life; and a joyful spirit is one of the marks of hidden sanctity. But I was not thinking of anything so serious as this. I mean that I wonder whether you will take easily to the out‐of‐door, unprivate life which is engendered amongst Italians by their beautiful climate, and which makes it not only a simple, but almost a necessary, thing that Don Emidio should immediately think of celebrating your engagement by dining at the celebrated Caffe Frisio.”

“I certainly wondered why he wished it, but I suppose it is the custom, and I am quite content.”

“You will doubtless, as you go on, find many customs which you will have to comply with. At Capo di Monte you will sit in the open loggia of your husband’s house, instead of in your drawing‐room with closed doors, as you would do in England. When you want your man‐servant, you will call for him at the top of the stairs at least quite as often as you will ring a rare and occasional bell. You will order your dinner, from the balcony, of the cook below, just starting for his marketing. And I am afraid you may very possibly see your maid surreptitiously laying out your fine linen to dry on the trim‐cut box hedge which surrounds the geometrical divisions of your garden. Of course in your palazzo in Rome you may succeed in keeping up a little more state. But even there, and certainly in Villegiatura(176) at Naples, you may have to make up your mind to your chef calling your attention to an unusually fine piece of beef in its uncooked state which he designs for your dinner that day.”

“Do you remember, Mary,” I replied, laughing, “the man‐servant one day in Rome bringing you in a beautiful pigeon with an ever‐varying purple breast that reminded me of the shot silks or stuffs in Raphael’s pictures? You asked the man if he supposed you could by any possibility eat it an hour after you had fondled it.”

“I had to go without meat for luncheon that day, and the pigeon’s life was spared. I fed it with rice, and it used to sit on my chest and pick the grains from between my lips.”

“At last it got too bold, and, mistaking your teeth for grains of rice, pecked at your lips till they bled.”

What a mischievous bird it was! When we came home, after leaving it at liberty in the house, we found all the heads of a bouquet of violets that stood in water picked off and strewed on the table, and all the pens taken from the pen‐tray and laid on the floor. Finally one day the pins had been extracted out of the pin‐cushion and put on the table, and the long, black hair‐pins taken out of Mary’s silver toilet‐box and laid on the bed. At last we noticed a black pigeon that used to come often and sit on the water‐pipe of the house opposite. We never closed the windows on account of our purple pigeon, as it had shown no disposition to leave its human friends for others of its own kind. But blood is stronger than water; and no doubt the black pigeon had wonderful tales to tell of the many roofs of Rome as presenting eligible habitations, and of the daily markets in the Piazza Navona and beneath the shadow of the Pantheon as affording an easily‐obtained repast among the refuse. So one day, when we came home, the window was open, and the pigeon nowhere to be found. Nor did we ever again see the black seducer sitting on the neighboring water‐spouts.

After all we were very much amused at our dinner at Frisio. We ate frutti di mare,(177) and macaroni dressed with pomi d’oro.(178) Of the meat the less said the better. I rarely thought any of it good at Naples; though no further off than Sorrento the beef is excellent. All provisions are, in fact, better there than at Naples. Our supply of butter came from Sorrento, and was obtained for us by Pascarillo, our coachman’s master; so that frequently, as we passed his door returning home from our drive, his wife would hail us, and hand into the carriage the fresh butter wrapt up in green vine‐leaves.

When dinner was over, and we sat looking out on the sea, I remembered that Emidio had promised to tell us the story of Padre Cataldo’s escape at the time of the Italian revolution in 1860, and I asked him to give us the particulars.

“This will be a very good time to do so, Miss Jane,” was his reply, “because we are quite safe at Frisio from the father’s presence. He does not like talking of it. You very probably have heard of the earthquake in Italy that took place in 1857; though I dare say the devastation it caused was hardly noticed in the English papers. The Jesuit Fathers had a college at Potenza which was partly thrown down at the time, and consequently the boys had been sent home to their parents and most of the fathers dispersed. Padre Cataldo and one other alone remained. You are aware that Potenza is the principal town of the Basilicata, and is the see of a bishop. There were forty villages in the same province destroyed at the same time. The king (of course I mean Francis II.) had obtained that Padre Cataldo should be sent on a mission to the inhabitants of these unfortunate villages, not only to preach in the different places, but to carry relief to the inhabitants, and to organize the proper burial of the dead, who lay neglected among the ruins at the imminent risk of breeding a pestilence. He was also to encourage the poor people to rebuild their habitations, and to aid them once again to gain their livelihood and resume the cultivation of the land. He was engaged in this arduous labor for a period of about fifteen months, during which he lived amongst the people with the affection of a father and almost the authority of a ruler; for there was nothing they would not do at his bidding.”

“The work accomplished, he returned to the half‐ruined college at Potenza. There was but one other priest in residence with him there, and Padre Cataldo had hardly joined him when the revolution broke out. The Jesuits were far from apprehending any violence at first from the inhabitants of Potenza, a great many of whom were much attached to them. But at that time they had not had personal experience of the insidious ways by means of which the revolutionists instil their doctrines into the minds of the unsuspecting. They soon, however, began to notice that the caffes were thronged with noisier guests than usual, and who remained till late into the night discussing and disputing over their wine or coffee. The few shops where books or newspapers could be found in the not highly‐educated or literary town of Potenza began to display pamphlets with brilliant‐ colored covers and dubious titles. The men frequenting the churches were fewer, and those that came were less respectful in their demeanor. At night the young men wandered about in file, arm‐in‐arm, walking rapidly with what no doubt they thought a military step, a flower stuck behind the ear, the hat on one side, and singing revolutionary songs in a loud and often inebriated voice. The symptoms were all bad. And the fathers were not surprised when one morning, having noticed an unusual agitation in the streets and the piazza, they received a secret message to the effect that they would do well to leave the town as quickly and as quietly as possible, for the one simple reason that where there is a Jesuit the revolutionist is his enemy. The persons sending this message to the fathers added that if their advice were not forthwith taken, acts of violence might follow.

“Not very far from the Jesuit college there lived a priest who had known Padre Cataldo for many years, and who, though himself corrupted by revolutionary principles, and not in any way an honor to his sacred calling, maintained a great friendship and regard for the father. He had gone on from one thing to another in his own downward course until at this time he was actually one of the leaders of revolutionary principles in the Basilicata. He had nevertheless always told Padre Cataldo that in case of need he would befriend him. And he kept his word; for one night, when Potenza was getting too hot for a Jesuit to remain in safety, and the only question seemed to be what kind of violence against the college would be attempted, the apostate priest arrived in his own carriage, to fulfil his old promise, and safely conveyed Padre Cataldo to a house at some distance where he could lie hidden for the night. The flight had been so sudden that Padre Cataldo, who was not likely at any time to be cumbered with wealth, had come away without a franc in his possession. The next morning he despatched three messengers to various friends in the neighborhood to say where and in what condition he was; and they, in return, sent him the money he needed. With this he procured for himself the disguise of lay clothes, and set out to join the Jesuits residing at Bari. When he arrived, he found the Jesuits had already left; and the condition of the country was such that he was unable to proceed with any hope of safety to Noci, his native place, where his parents lived.

“For many days he had to fly from place to place disguised as a layman, and with a false beard. But even so there was something in his whole appearance which betrayed him. One day he was walking along the street, swinging a walking‐stick, when he heard one man say to another, as they passed him, ‘There goes a Jesuit in disguise.’

“A lady residing at Bitonto concealed him in her house for one night. He left the house before dawn; but already the rumor had spread that a Jesuit was in hiding there, and early in the morning the brother of the lady, who was a liberal and the syndic of the town, came to tell her the people were in such a state of excitement that if she did not give up the father, they would burn the house to the ground. And it was not till she had taken him into every hole and corner of the place that she could persuade him there was no one concealed there, and that his assertions to that effect calmed the mob. ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests,’ but, like their Master, the priests of the Son of man had not where to lay their heads. Thus driven from place to place, and hunted down like a wild beast, Padre Cataldo at length reached Venosa, where, as he had once preached a very successful mission, he was well known and much respected. He took up his abode at the house of some friends, and the next morning, which was the Feast of S. Ignatius, the founder of his order, he went to the church to say Mass. While he was vesting in the sacristy he received a message that the intendente or governor of the place wanted to speak with him. It so happened that the intendente was the brother‐in‐law of a man who had been condemned to death for murder a short time previous. Padre Cataldo had been acquainted with the case; and as he considered it had been attended with extenuating circumstances, and that the crime was not premeditated, he had used his influence with success to get the sentence commuted to a term of years’ imprisonment at the galleys. He also obtained permission for the man, who was a jeweller, to work at his trade during his incarceration. Padre Cataldo had not happened to see any members of the family since that event, in which he had saved them from so great a calamity. Very naturally, therefore, on hearing that the brother‐in‐law of the criminal wanted to see him, he thought he had come to thank him for saving his relative from the guillotine. But on going to the door to receive him he found the governor surrounded by soldiers, who, at a word from him, seized the father as their prisoner. He was at that time suffering from fever brought on by exposure to all weathers in his endeavor to elude his enemies; creeping into some sheltering house late at night, when the evening damp, so fatal in Italy, was falling; making his way over fields and mountains in the noon‐tide heat, and getting from place to place through by‐ways, as he dared not take the frequented road; and of course often without sufficient food. He was put upon a horse, and conducted by a guard of soldiers to a small place called Rionero. It was a long day’s journey, and his sufferings were intense. Having been seized before he had begun his Mass, he had not tasted food. When they reached Rionero in the evening, they found a terrible scene. The revolutionists had entire possession of the town. It is said that the piazza—the large open place in the centre of every Italian town—literally ran with blood. Strange to say, many persons connected by family ties with the intendente who had so cruelly betrayed Padre Cataldo perished in the massacres of that night. I know a man who saw the father brought into the town in the midst of the guard. The insane fury of the mob at the sight of a Jesuit knew no bounds. It was the Ecce Homo over again in the person of one of his servants. He was taken through the piazza on horseback, and the soldiers did nothing to restrain the people. They flung at him every missile they could lay their hands on; and as it was evening, a band of masons were returning from their work, and, transported with rage, actually threw their tools at him, and beat him with them as he passed. To all this ill‐usage he made no other reply than by blessing them. Some of the most violent cried out, ‘Here is the King of the Basilicata.’ Did they know they were parodying the cry of ‘the King of the Jews’? At length the prison‐doors shut him in from his persecutors; and as he lay there, bruised all over, and severely cut about the head and face, he could hear them crying out that they would yet get at him to burn him alive, while actually they began building up a pile in the centre of the piazza for that purpose.

“The liberal priest who had been his friend in the first instance, and had brought him away from Potenza, had by this time heard of his arrest, and immediately came to the rescue. This, however, was no easy matter. He was himself one of their leaders; and, lest they should accuse him of infidelity to their cause, he was obliged to begin by pretending that he shared their views with respect to Padre Cataldo. It was only in this way that he could succeed in getting himself heard. By degrees he induced them to consider whether, on the whole, the burning alive of a well‐known Jesuit priest in their piazza would be altogether a wise proceeding. It might get them into trouble at some future day. It might be considered an extreme measure. At length he gained sufficient influence for them to propose that the question should be decided by an appeal to the people. The general inhabitants of the town were not a bad set of people. They were probably not very courageous in a good cause, and they were overwhelmed by the noisy and daring wickedness of the revolutionists. But when thus appealed to, their real sentiments found expression; and Padre Cataldo, whose prison‐cell overlooked the piazza, could hear the shouts of Noi lo vogliamo salvo.(179) Soon after his prison‐door was unlocked, and in the dead of the night he was conducted by two guards to a distance from the town, where they left him. Faint with loss of blood, bruised, and weary, he managed to reach the house of some friends. He lay there for a fortnight, ill from fever and the cruel treatment he had received. And it was not till some time after, when the troubles had calmed down, that he was able to return to Naples in safety.”

We sat silent for a few seconds at the end of Don Emidio’s account. It seemed to bring the nature and qualities of revolution keenly before us when we thus heard of what it had done to one so well known and so beloved by us all. Ida was the first to speak; and she told us that not long after they had settled at Posilippo with Padre Cataldo, a gentleman had called to see him on some business, accompanied by a young man. Ida remarked that when the latter came into the room, as soon as his eyes fell on Padre Cataldo, he turned deadly pale. As he was only in attendance on the other gentleman, he sat a little back, and no one paid much attention to him, while she watched him. She saw he was greatly overcome and trembled very much. She tried to enter into conversation with him, but he seemed too absent to talk. When at length the gentleman had concluded what he came to tell Padre Cataldo, the latter turned towards the younger man, who got up and approached him, exclaiming, “O father! how is it I find you here? I thought you had died at Rionero. I witnessed the treatment you received there, and I and many others believed you were dead. By what miracle did you escape?” When the conversation became more general, the young man, who could hardly recover from his emotion, told Ida that he should never forget the father’s countenance, as he sat silent and calm on his horse, with stones, sticks, and missives of all sorts flung at him. The blood poured from his head; but there seemed to be a celestial light beaming from his face which reminded him of the pictures he had seen of the martyred saints.

We finished our evening on our own loggia. It was a lovely night, and we felt we could never weary of watching the moonbeams on the sea, and, when the moon had gone down, the fishermen’s little boats, noiselessly sailing one by one from the dense, dark shadow of the caves where they are moored, and then, each with a burning torch at the prow, casting anchor and waiting for the fish to rise to the light. From time to time the fishermen utter a soft, monotonous cry to each other in a minor key, which comes floating through the darkness on the still night‐air like an echo from another world. There must be a strange fascination in this life of the fisherman, whose occupation begins as other men are laying aside theirs, and is continued through the silence of the night on the vast solitude of the ocean.

Don Emidio drew his chair near to where I was sitting, leaning on the low wall of the loggia and looking down upon the plain of waters, which so mysteriously appear to flash an unreal light from their dark bosom, as if the sea itself gave out sparks. Presently I heard a voice asking me if I thought I could learn to love the world‐famous beauty of the Bay of Naples.

“I have learnt to love it from the first moment I saw it; for I love all that is beautiful. And when the beauty of this glorious land comes to be wound up with the duties of my life, I shall love it doubly.”

“Say with life’s affections too, dear Jane.”

“Why should I not say it? Of course I mean it.”

“Will you never tire of this unmitigated beauty? Will you never, cara mia, have a pining for a soft, gray day, with the perfumed damp that comes up from the velvet moss and dense greenery of an English copse? Will you heave no sigh for the pale but varied and most abundant wild flowers of your chilly springs, a lapful of primroses, a wealth of cowslips? Shall I have you longing after a narrow lane of yellow sand, the trees meeting overhead, the meadow‐sweet growing lavishly in the moist hedge, and the ripe nuts hanging just within reach, crisp and sweet in their slippery brown shells? Shall I hear you reproaching me that the mushrooms are dotting the Sussex downs all round the fairy rings, and that you long to tread the close, fine grass where the sheep are browsing, with the little hillocks of purple thyme scenting the breeze with its aromatic breath? When your nerves are overstrung by the continuous dry heat and the brisk air of our joyous land, will not your Saxon nature long for one of the short autumn days of old England, when you might walk through the fields to the edge of the western hill, and watch the sun sink amidst yellow and red clouds painted on a pale blue sky, and then, returning in the soft wind of evening redolent with nameless perfumes, feel the damp like a creamy balm uncurl your locks and bathe your cheek as if with moist kisses? It will be almost dark when you reach home; there is a low wood‐ fire flickering on the hearth, and the steam of the urn curling up with a scent of new‐made tea. Papers, pamphlets, magazines, and new volumes by the dozen from the London library are there to greet you. And day by day, hour by hour, in that land of rapid thought and universal intelligence, the latest news from pole to pole finds its way with every post into the remotest depths of the I country. Cara mia, it will not be so here.”

There had been a choking sensation in my throat as Emidio described the dear old land of my birth, and brought so vividly before me exactly those little touches of home and country life which I should most certainly not find in my future Roman palazzo or in the villa at Capo di Monte, beyond the garden of which I could not stray into any wild woods and barren but ever‐beautiful heaths, as in England. But there was something in the close of the vision he called up before me which turned the current of feeling and made me smile. Strange as it may seem, I felt it was the newspapers and the I rapid intelligence that I could spare the more easily.

“There are good old books I have never read, Emidio, and which you have in your library. From time to time we will get a few new ones from the teeming British press. I am none the happier in England for tracing day by day the progress of modern ideas. I will turn my thoughts upon the past. I may sometimes sigh for the shady lanes and breezy downs of England; but I think the imperious beauty of Italy will hold quite as much sway over my heart in time. Are you satisfied?”

“I am satisfied as much as my jealous Italian nature will allow me to be.”

“Are all Italians jealous?”

“Nearly all, especially husbands.”

“But I shall never give you cause.”

“I am quite sure of that. But it will not prevent my being jealous. Do not look frightened, carissima.(180) I am not going to prove a regular Bluebeard, like some of my countrymen. But it would sound strange to your English ears to know the intense sense of appropriation which an Italian has with regard to his wife. It is true he adores her; but it is an adoration which would exclude the remotest homage of the merest stranger. He waits upon her, watches her, serves her. But it is possible to have too much of that, particularly when it is done with an evident intention to prevent the approach of any other human being. I had an acquaintance—for I cannot exactly call him a friend; he was too great a fool for that—who would not allow his wife to set her foot outside the door unless he accompanied her. She was not permitted to look out of the window, if he could prevent it; and he actually one day consulted me on the possibility of running a railing in front of his windows inside the rooms to prevent her getting near enough to look out.”

“And they did not shut him up as a madman?”

“Not at all; though I think the generality allowed he was eccentric. The poor woman had a melancholy time of it; for of course, if he would not allow her to look out, neither would he allow any one else to look in.”

“Well! and how did it end?”

“The only way any man of sense could expect it to end. She got out of the window and over the wall one fine night, and left him. The poor thing went no further and to no other place than her father’s house. But nothing would ever persuade her to return to her husband, who grew yellower and greener every day until he finally died—of jealousy.”

“Serve him right,” was all I deigned to reply, being too indignant to be grammatical.

“I knew a young girl,” continued Don Emidio, “who had made up her mind she would marry a certain Neapolitan duke of immense wealth. Her parents did not object (which they ought to have done). But her confessor, that Padre Cristoforo whom you heard preaching through the month of May at Santa Catarina, did everything he could to dissuade her. The only answer she would ever make to his remonstrances was that she should have a carriage. All life seemed to résumé itself in her mind in the possession of that one luxury, with just the addition of gowns from Paris. She was married to the old duke, and very soon after came to Padre Cristoforo to complain of her hard lot. He could only repeat that he had warned her how it would be, and recommend her to take a drive in her carriage, and ever more and more to drive in her carriage, reminding her that it was for that she had married. Alas! she had to confess that even that consolation was denied her, as her husband was too jealous of the passers‐by to allow of her being seen driving out, and that for the most part she was kept to the house. It is true he was constantly making her magnificent presents of that other great object of her ambition—dresses from Paris; but, as she represented to him, they were quite useless to her, as she could not wear them shut up alone with him in the house. Now, are you not frightened by this peculiarity in us Italians, carina, or are you prepared for it?”

Emidio was laughing, and so was I, when he more gravely added:

“The other day we were talking of the reverse of the medal, as regards the good or bad qualities of different people and nations. And I think I can promise you, cara mia, that as my respect for you, and I hope my own good sense, will always preserve me from this ludicrous excess of a national characteristic, so the only form which it will take will be in making me more observant that you should receive from my hands alone those little attentions, and what the French call petits soins,(181) which are so necessary to a woman, and which make up so large a share in the lesser enjoyments of her life. I hope never to bore you. But I hope always to wait upon you.”

I looked over my shoulder as we came to this point in our discourse. Frank and Elizabeth were discussing their future also in another part of the loggia. And I thought to myself, if we could have compared notes, we should no doubt have traced many differences characteristic of English and Italian future husbands. But I am convinced that both English maidens were equally content with their prospects.

We paid more than one visit to the great museum of Naples, now called the Museo Nazionale, but which Mary and Frank remembered as the Museo Borbonico. Since they were last here, the dynasty being changed, the name of the collection and the arrangement of the objects have also changed. Mary, who is very decided in her artistic preferences, had her favorites here, as I have always found she had in every collection of pictures or statues she had once visited; and faithful to her old loves, she never could rest or look at other objects till she had revisited those that had already struck her imagination. I do not know whether it may arise from the fact that in Rome the attention is naturally more turned, in the collections at the Vatican, to those which have reference to the life and customs of the early Christians, in preference to the indications of pagan life; but certainly the objects in the museum at Naples brought before me, with a vividness I had never felt elsewhere, the very minutest details of old Roman existence. And I believe, in point of fact, no collection equals that at Naples, enriched as it is by the treasure‐trove of Pompeii and Herculaneum. It would be quite easy to furnish a house with every requirement of life from roof to kitchen out of the abundance of these interesting relics of the long ago past. And as I wandered about the large chambers filled with kitchen utensils, lamps, vases, and female ornaments, and then passed into the halls where are the frescos that decorated the walls of their dwellings, I felt I could realize to myself the many differences in the external forms of their life and our own.

The first conclusion I arrive at is that there was more sameness and less multiplicity. For instance, there was a certain received form for lamps. You had your choice, in the ornamental parts, of the heads of lions or of griffins, but the shape was the same. In the kitchen the like shape reigned as in the triclinium or the œci—the dining‐room and drawing‐ rooms of the ancients—minus the ornaments.(182) The same absence of diversity is observable among the jewels. There could be very little difference, except in size and weight, between one lady’s necklace and another’s. The houses, judging from the discoveries at Pompeii, and borne out by the classic writers, were all built on the same model, some large and magnificent, others small and mean, but alike in structure. I pause, and ask myself how life went on without modern china in the houses of the great. Though much of their glass was beautiful, yet what a difference between their earthenware pots and our Sèvres and Dresden, Worcester and Minton! Everywhere the tables and seats and chairs were alike. The difference lay in the draperies and the cushions, never in the shape. It sounds bald and trite to register these remarks; but if we carry out the thought, and try and place ourselves where the men and women of Rome and its subject provinces stood, and in imagination sleep in a cubiculum(183) six feet long and four wide, sit on a marble representation of a camp‐stool, and lay our work or our book—which latter will be in the inconvenient shape of a long roll of papyrus—on a round marble table with three lion’s paws for legs; if we fancy our rooms divided one from the other by portières, or hangings, instead of doors, artistically draped in longitudinal folds, and fastened with cords by the fashionable upholsterer of the day; if to this we add an almost entire absence of washing‐basins, and, instead, a lavishness in the article of marble baths, all more or less taken in public; if from vestibule and atrium,(184) from hospitium(185) and exedra,(186) we dismiss all notion of knicknacks, all glass‐fronted cabinets, all buhl and marqueterie, all enamelled snuff‐boxes, china pug‐dogs, and filigree; with no Berlin‐wool work and no miniatures; a few severely beautiful bronze figures, some busts, some heathen goddesses in tinted marble, standing cold and naked in a niche; an ever‐plashing fountain like the pattering of incessant rain—if we bring all this vividly before us, we shall soon feel that the minute yet all but infinite circumstances of external life having been so different from our own, the whole flow of thought and fancy must have been different.

We owe more than we are aware, both for good and evil, to the way we furnish our houses. And if we decorate them according to our own ideas, we must remember that those decorations are for ever throwing back our ideas upon ourselves in a perpetual reflection until a sort of moral identity is established.

My impression is that the greater simplicity of form, combined, as was the case with the ancients, with a very high though but slightly varied style of decorative art, may have left a greater solidity, unity, and intensity in the old‐world characters, as compared with what we find in modern minds, distributed amongst such an endless variety of objects.

It is a great thing to be elevated by noble desires and high Christian aims above the trivialities of modern life. But if those high aspirations are absent, it is perhaps a safeguard to take to old china, old lace, and Louis Quinze furniture. It breaks up the thoughts into a kaleidoscope of fancies; and that, on the whole, is decidedly preferable to the restlessness of youth, health, and idleness, leading to a craving for gladiatorial fights and scenes of bloodshed and cruelty. In those days the virtuous were nobly virtuous, and were very rare. The vicious were horribly vicious, and formed the generality. It always struck me that an old Roman house must have been a dull home. And ennui is the mother of naughtiness quite as surely as the devil is the father of lies. There are minds which cannot be great, as there are lives which never are much more than harmless. Surely for these the multiplicities of modern times, the toys of fashion, the novelties of the day, in dress, furniture, and ornament, are safety‐valves and almost godsends! At least they are better than the arena, with its brutalizing scenes of blood and horror, where a vestal had but to turn her thumb to take the life of the victim bleeding before her eyes!

These results of modern civilization are not Christianity; and I am taking a very low standard in all I am now saying. But they are the dross of a civilization leavened by Christianity, and they are very different from the poison that found its way into the daily life of Roman men and women from the seething wickedness of the great heathen empire.

Nothing can exceed the interest of the paintings taken from Pompeii. Of course I was intimately acquainted with them from engravings, and had been all my life. One of the early impressions of my childhood was the delight of finding that the grave old Romans (and therefore the Greeks before them), for whom I had a very pagan admiration, were capable of appreciating humor as expressed in the movements and attitudes of animals. I was overjoyed at this touch of sympathy with a dead past; and I recommend all visitors to Naples to look out for certain cocks and hens and other creatures among the lesser mural decorations taken from Pompeii. The well‐known dancing girls I had never properly admired until I saw them being copied by a Neapolitan artist in the Museum. He had not deviated one hair’s breadth from the original outline; but the mere restoration of vivid coloring had imparted to them an airy, floating grace which I had failed fully to detect in the scratched and faded originals, but which I at once felt must have belonged to them when they decorated some rich Pompeian’s house.

While I was wandering about, trying to live for an hour the inner homespun life of a Roman maiden by gazing long on the walls she must have looked on, Mary had gone in search of the Farnese Bull and the exquisite half‐ head and figure of the Psyche, that wonderful embodiment of virginal grace and feminine delicacy which makes one long to have seen the statue in its unmutilated condition. She had stood for a good quarter of an hour before the Aristides (for we insist on believing it is Aristides), and was, as she told me afterwards, growing more and more in the consoling belief that many of the old pagans will have found a place among the thrones of the blest through the mercy of Him who never asks for more than he has given, and who since the creation has never left the world without a witness of himself. Then she visited the Farnese Flora, that wonderful triumph of art over matter, where in a statue of above twelve feet such floating grace is expressed that she seems to be skimming along the ground, while the light wind plays in the drapery.

I found Mary lost in thought before a beautiful bronze statue of Mercury in repose. The lithe figure has just sat down to rest on the edge of a rock. The tension of the muscles is gradually relaxing. One foot as yet only touches the ground with the heel. Wait a moment, and the foot will yield and rest. Never was fatigue gradually giving way to repose more exquisitely depicted. Then Mary turned to the dead Amazon with the death‐ wound beneath her breast, and finally declared that having satisfied herself by revisiting these, that for one reason or another had haunted her for twenty years, she was ready to admire the others. It is curious how the long lines of statues and busts seem to give out cold. The same stone walls covered with pictures could never be so severely cold. The old gods and heroes seem to breathe upon you with an icy breath from out of the grave of the old classic world.

The best pictures in the Naples Museum are not very numerous, but are admirable specimens of the Italian schools. They are collected into one or two rooms, deserving time and study. A cursory view of the others will be sufficient to satisfy most people. There is much more to be seen besides the relics from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the statues and pictures. It is all worth visiting, and, to be fully appreciated, requires many hours to be spent on each different class of objects.

I had a very distinct and not altogether a pleasant recollection of the mysterious grotto of Pozzuoli, which had haunted my imagination ever since I was here as a child. Ida and I had made an engagement to visit Astroni, Victor Emanuel’s happy hunting‐grounds, one day when we were to have the carriage to ourselves; and accordingly we were to pass through the grotto. You approach it by a deep cutting in the rock, the sides of which are draped with ivy and hanging plants, with bright tufts of wild flowers wherever a few grains of earth give them a roothold. There is a small oratory to the right as you enter, of a most simple and rustic kind, and kept by a Capuchin, whom I cannot call a venerable hermit, as he happened to be of rather youthful appearance. On festas his little altar was covered with flowers, and a few votive candles burnt before the obscure picture of the Madonna within the dark recesses of the cave. When the poor Capuchin heard a carriage approaching, he would hurry forth with a little tin box, which he held up to us for an alms. We seldom failed to give him some, and from time to time it would be silver instead of the more frequent copper; and then his gratitude became eloquent, and many a blessing followed us down the murky gloom of the long, unsavory grotto. Certainly, this strange road, which it appears dates from the middle of the first Christian century, is not calculated to leave a pleasant impression, though in many ways it presents picturesque bits which reminded me of some of Salvator Rosa’s pictures. It would be quite dark but for the yellow, faint light of gas‐lamps, not sufficient in number to dispel the gloom, which is greatly increased by the clouds of dust the numerous carts, carriages, and herds of goats are constantly raising, the latter adding thereto their own peculiarly suffocating odor. It is paved in the same way as the Neapolitan streets, and the noise reverberates from the roof. It has a curious effect when you lean forward to see the bearded goats just visible through the dusty air, and further on, perhaps, a cabriolet laden with people—six inside, four out, and one boy at least, after the Neapolitan fashion, hanging in a net beneath the vehicle—drawn by one horse, always equal to his load, no matter how starved and miserable he may be. On it comes, the merry inmates singing, shouting, piercing the darkness, but compelled thereby to slacken their pace a little, lest there should be a collision in this Erebus. We were always silent and a little uncomfortable in the din, the dust, and the darkness. Yet it had to be passed through again and again, as being the only road out into the country, unless we went all round by the Strada Nuova and Nisida. At the entrance of the grotto from Naples is the supposed tomb of Virgil, hidden beneath ivy and acanthus leaves‐just as a poet would have wished! We came out from the grotto on the busy, picturesque village of Fiorigrotta, where the whole population seem to live out in the one long street. Astroni is an extinct volcanic crater, the sides of which are clothed with ilex and other trees. It is circular, and a wall runs along the upper rim to prevent the escape of the deer and wild boar that are kept there for the king’s pleasure. There are two carriage‐roads through the dense forest. At the bottom of the basin there are a few open spaces, marshy land, and water. The solitude and silence are intense; for, as usual in Italy, there are not many singing birds, and what there are do not give song during the heat of the day any more than in our northern climes. I never shall forget the silence that reigned, nor the feeling of solitude induced by peering through the trees, looking down on the small lakes of intensely blue water below, and knowing that in those dense thickets myriads of wild animals were hiding in their lair, while we were the only human beings. The gates are kept locked, and it requires a special order to penetrate this sylvan scene. It does not seem to me a very satisfactory way of sporting. You are too sure of your game, walled in as it is all round. After visiting the extinct crater, we saw the emptied lake of Agnano, once notorious for malaria, now drained off and leaving a wide plain more or less adapted for agriculture. At present it seems in a rather neglected state, of which nature has taken advantage to cast her unsolicited gifts of flaunting bright wild flowers broadcast over the whole space.

One of our most interesting excursions was to the Solfatara, not far from the Lago Agnano. This also is an extinct crater; and yet so barely extinct that we feel, as we tread the sulphur‐checkered soil, and hear the hollow reverberation if we stamp on the ground, as if at any moment it might again burst forth.

From time to time our nostrils were disagreeably met by a puff of steam redolent of sulphur; and occasionally these puffs grow stronger and more threatening. The stones you pick up are tinged with yellow. The vegetation is sparse and dwarfed. At the further end of the plain is a cave, from whence at regular intervals rush clouds of hot steam, while a roaring, boiling sound surges within. The aperture is large enough for a person to enter by stooping a little. Most of our party peeped in, but instantly retired from the suffocating and horrible stench and great heat.

The rocks are covered with sulphur and alum; and in my eagerness that we should all equally benefit by the sight, I wanted to persuade Ida just to take one peep. It would, however, have been a risk to do anything which even for a second might embarrass the action of her delicate lungs and weak heart. She tried to approach, but turned back with the feeling that one puff more would have suffocated her.

I think we all felt as if we were standing in one of the outer halls of a region never to be mentioned “to ears polite,” and almost too “Dantesque” to be pleasant. We gladly breathed a purer atmosphere as we passed out of the gate (inside which is a fabric of sulphur‐works), and bent our steps between white walls on which the green lizards basked, and between fields of unripe corn and mulberry‐trees, till we reached an open space commanding a fine view of the Gulf of Pozzuoli and the hills beyond. From thence we turned into the Capuchin church dedicated to S. Januarius, and said to be built over the spot where he suffered martyrdom in 305. There is a stone, on which he is believed to have been beheaded, let into the wall, and protected with an iron grating. It is seamed with red marks as of blood. It is very probably a stone on which he knelt and on which the blood fell. But a block, whether of stone or wood, for the purposes of beheading, is a modern invention. The Romans used a sword—as the Turks use a scymitar for that ghastly purpose to this day—and the patient knelt upright.

It was pleasant to rest in the cool church, which, humble as it is, is not without its quota of beautiful marbles, and is kept exquisitely clean, with fresh flowers on the altar, and all care taken of it as if the community were still there. We found only a lay brother left in charge. I think he said he had a companion. All the poor fathers were dispersed by Victor Emanuel’s government, and Mass is only said on feast‐days; though it seemed to be the only church in that immediate neighborhood, and the poor of the district must greatly miss the presence of the Capuchin fathers, those special friends of the poor.

As we came down the hill, we were met by peasant lads, who wanted us to buy lumps of sulphur and the skeletons of the pretty little fish called the sea‐horse, which abound in this part of the Mediterranean, and which are just like the knights among chessmen. They may be seen alive in quantities in the aquarium at Brighton. They twist the tapering end of their tails round a fragment of sea‐weed, or indeed, as the buoyancy of the water keeps them up, they need but to touch something stationary. And there they stand in groups, motionless, and looking for all the world like a grave assembly of horses’ heads of the most delicate race, and with noses slightly turned up. Nothing can be more graceful than the way they hold themselves. Their heads are not bigger than those of ordinary‐sized chessmen.

As the Vernons had been at Posilippo all through the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in April, 1872, they were naturally anxious we should see something of the devastation it had occasioned. We determined, therefore, to drive to San Sebastiano, a village which was almost entirely destroyed. As we approached the spot, it seemed as if we were driving into the kingdom of chaos, where “the earth was void and empty.” On either side lay wide plains of gray‐black lava, looking as if a dead, unfertile earth had been furrowed with the burning shares of some gigantic and infernal plough, and had remained calcined and sterile for ever after. We left the carriage and climbed up a large mound of lava. I found myself nearly on a level with the low roof of the small church, round which the lava had crept, but had spared it. I looked down into the basement of a house below me. The lava had poured in and filled what once were rooms, but had left the walls and the roof standing. There was part of a street left, the lava having, with seeming caprice, turned off to the left, as it poured down the mountain, just in that spot. Our friends told us that as they used to sit by the hour and watch the progress of the burning stream through glasses, they could see the small white houses, with the fiery flood approaching, when suddenly each house seemed to leap into the air like a lighted straw, and then was seen no more. A cat ran past me, in haste to save her paws. We could not stand still long, for, though more than a year had elapsed, the land was still too hot to be pleasant; and when we reached home, we found our feet were blistered. The poor creatures whose homes have thus perished approach you timidly with bits of lava to sell. They still have a scared look in their faces. But nothing will persuade them to shift their quarters and leave their grand but dangerous neighbor. They are trying to rebuild their village, and are deaf to all the remonstrances of the great scientific philosopher(187) who lives a hermit’s life in the observatory half‐way up the mountain. He has a Capuchin priest as a companion; and the latter was able to give the last rites of the church to about forty of the unfortunate people, who, actuated by curiosity, had attempted to climb the mountain during the eruption. It seems they had never calculated upon the effect of the burning heat from a distance. They thought if there were a certain space between them and the lava, they should be safe. They forgot that actual contact was not needed; and they were scorched to death long before the stream reached the spot where they stood. Not one of those thus licked up by the breath of the volcano ever recovered, or even lived long enough to quit the place.

Signor Palmier and the Capuchin saw a carriage full of people, coachman and two horses, advancing up the mountain. Suddenly the whole was submerged. They could only tell where it had been arrested by the carrion birds hovering over a certain spot for many days after!

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A Discussion With An Infidel

VIII. Laws Of Nature And Miracles.

Büchner. We differ very widely in many points, sir; but there is one point about which we shall have no difficulty in agreeing—the immutability of natural laws. In fact, you have already conceded that the laws of nature are unchangeable.

Reader. Yes, I admit the unchangeability of the laws of nature; but I most strongly protest against your rash inference that therefore miracles are impossible.

Büchner. Yet my reasoning is very plain. “The law of nature, observes Moleschott, is a stringent expression of necessity. There exists in it neither exception nor limitation; and no imaginable power can disregard this necessity. A stone not supported will in all eternity fall towards the centre of the earth; and there never was, and never will be, a command for the sun to stand still” (p. 33).

Reader. Is this what you call “reasoning”?

Büchner. Yes. “The experience of thousands of years has impressed upon the investigator the firmest conviction of the immutability of the laws of nature, so that there cannot remain the least doubt in respect to this great truth” (p. 34).

Reader. This I grant.

Büchner. “Science has gradually taken all the positions of the childish belief of the peoples; it has snatched thunder and lightning from the hands of the gods ...” (ibid.)

Reader. It was Christianity, not science, that conquered the gods.

Büchner. “The eclipse of the stars and the stupendous powers of the Titans of the olden times have been grasped by the fingers of man” (ibid.)

Reader. How can the fingers of man grasp the eclipses and the Titans?

Büchner. “That which appeared inexplicably miraculous, and the work of a supernatural power, has, by the torch of science, proved to be the effect of hitherto unknown natural forces” (ibid.)

Reader. You dream, doctor. Has “the torch of science” made known those hitherto unknown forces? No scientific work has yet explained how, by an act of the will, water can be changed into wine, how the deaf and dumb can be instantaneously cured, how the blind can be made to see, the paralytic to walk, and the dead to rise, at the sound of a voice, four days after burial, and when already in a state of advanced putrefaction. You may of course deny these facts, as you deny that the sun ever received a command to stand still; but to say that “the torch of science” has shown these facts to be the effect of unknown natural forces is to tell us the most stupid lie that can be uttered. Lies, you know, should at least be credible.

Büchner. “We have the fullest right, and are scientifically correct, in asserting that there is no such thing as a miracle. Everything that happens does so in a natural way—i.e., in a mode determined only by accidental or necessary coalition of existing materials and their immanent natural forces. No revolution on earth or in heaven, however stupendous, could occur in any other manner” (p. 34).

Reader. These are mere words. I deny that science gives you the least right to suppress miracles. How can you establish such a right?

Büchner. “Wherever fire and water meet, vapors must arise and exert their irresistible power. Where the seed falls in the ground, there it will grow; where the thunderbolt is attracted, there it will strike. Can there exist any doubt as to these truths?” (p. 35).

Reader. Please, doctor, come to the point.

Büchner. “How is it possible that the unalterable order in which things move should ever be disturbed without producing an irremediable gap in the world, without delivering us and everything up to arbitrary power, without reducing all science, every earthly endeavor, to a vain and childish effort?” (p. 36).

Reader. All this rhetoric is most absurd, doctor. “The order in which things move” is not unalterable; and He whom you call an “arbitrary power” can alter it when he pleases without asking your permission, or without reducing science to a childish effort.

Büchner. What? You contradict yourself, sir. For, if the order in which things move is changeable, the laws of nature cannot be unchangeable.

Reader. Not at all. You sophistically confound two things entirely different—the law of nature, and the course of nature. The first is unchangeable, because it is connected with the essence of things; but the second is changeable, as a constant and universal experience compels us to admit. However much you may hate “arbitrary power,” you cannot deny that, besides necessary causes, there are others which are free in their exertions. Can you deny, for instance, that a stone may be thrown upwards in spite of gravitation, or that we can catch hold of the stone from the window, and, in spite of gravitation, we can prevent it from falling back to the ground? Now, if we do this, we do not change the law of nature, and nevertheless we modify the course of nature by freely producing a phenomenon which nature would not produce.

Büchner. Would you call this a miracle?

Reader. The question is impertinent. I call it a change in the course of nature. Now, if the course of nature can be modified without the law of nature being altered, it is absurd to pretend that there is contradiction in holding the unchangeableness of the latter and the changeableness of the former. This being evident, let us go a step further, and draw an obvious conclusion. We can, when we please, catch the stone from the window, and prevent it from falling; and cannot God do the same? We are free to exert our power; but is not God free, or has he less power than we have? If you are honest, you will own that what can be done by us can be done by our Creator and Lord. Now, if he stops the stone in the air, a miracle will be wrought, and no law of nature violated. You cannot deny the possibility of miracles without denying God.

Büchner. “A spirit independent of nature cannot exist; for never has an unprejudiced mind cultivated by science perceived its manifestation” (p. 36).

Reader. Are you not ashamed, doctor, to repeat such a nonsensical assertion? You have already failed to prove it, and I have shown its absurdity in a preceding discussion. Must I answer it anew? The only answer you now deserve is that “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ ” Fools, in fact, deny God in their hearts, but cannot deny him in their minds, because atheism is not the result of intellectual knowledge, but of moral depravity. Our present question, however, is not theism or atheism, but the possibility of miracles without any breach of natural laws. Surely, if there were no God, no miracle would be possible; but your argument was that if the laws of nature are unchangeable, no miracle is possible; and this I have shown to be false. If there is a God, as we must now assume, miracles are possible. In the same manner, if a single true miracle has ever been wrought, there is a God.

Büchner. “Apparent exceptions from the natural order have been called miracles, of which there have been many at all times” (p. 36).

Reader. You should know better, doctor. The church is not satisfied with “apparent” exceptions from the natural order; the exception must be rigorously proved.

Büchner. “We should only waste words in our endeavor to prove the natural impossibility of a miracle. No educated, much less a scientific, person who is convinced of the immutable order of things can nowadays believe in miracles. We find it rather wonderful that so clear and acute a thinker as Ludwig Feuerbach should have expended so much logic in refuting the Christian miracles. What founder of religion did not deem it necessary, in order to introduce himself to the world, to perform miracles? And has not his success proved that he was right? What prophet, what saint, is there who has not performed miracles? The miracle‐seeker sees them daily and hourly. Do not the table‐spirits belong to the order of miracles? All such miracles are equal in the eye of science; they are the result of a diseased fancy” (pp. 36, 37).

Reader. This is miserable logic, doctor. Why do you speak of the natural impossibility of miracles? Have we ever taught that miracles are naturally possible? We know that nature works no miracles, and that all miracles are supernatural. It is therefore either a mean trick or a logical blunder on your part to pretend that the natural possibility of miracles is the point in question. That no educated or scientific man can nowadays believe in miracles is not only an empty boast, but also a disgraceful calumny. We Christians believe in miracles, and yet, I venture to say, we need not resort to you for lessons in science or education. As a reason for not believing in miracles, you allege “the immutable order of things”; that is, you assume what is to be proved. The order of things is so far from being immutable that we see it modified at every moment. It is the laws of nature, not the order of things, that are immutable. That Feuerbach “expended so much of logic in refuting Christian miracles” I will not deny; I only say that his logic, like your own, is mere sophism and cavil. Of course you call him “so clear and acute a thinker”; but we know what this means on the lips of Freemasons. If he was “so clear and acute a thinker,” why did he not furnish you with at least one good argument against Christian miracles?

Besides, you pretend that all founders of religion deemed it necessary to perform miracles. What then? Were it true, the fact would scarcely help your cause; for it would only prove that there have ever been impostors, as there have been quacks and coin‐forgers. Now, who would think of selling counterfeited articles, if there had existed none genuine? Would there be quacks, had there been no doctors? And yet your reasoning leads to the conclusion that, because there are so many quacks, there can be no doctors. Are you, then, a mere quack yourself?

You say with a malicious sneer that all prophets and saints performed miracles. Yes; they performed miracles, or rather, to speak more correctly, God wrought miracles through them. Yet, in the teeth of sacred and ecclesiastical history which testifies to an infinite number of unquestionable miracles, you are shameless enough to conclude that no miracle has ever been performed, on the plea that miracle‐seekers, table‐ spirits, and diseased fancy must have conspired to deceive the world. Is it necessary to refute such a silly assertion? Was Elymas the magician a miracle‐seeker when S. Paul, to punish him for his opposition to Christianity, struck him blind with a word in the presence of the Roman centurion? Was it a trick of table‐spirits that made the blind see, the lame walk, or the dumb speak? Was it diseased fancy that impressed on an immense crowd the belief that they had been miraculously fed by Christ in the desert, where no provisions were at hand? No, doctor, you are not silly enough to believe anything of the sort.

Büchner. But what do you answer to the following difficulties? First, if we admit miracles, “science will be reduced to a vain and childish effort” (p. 36). Secondly, how can we conceive “a supreme legislator who allows himself to be moved by prayers and sobs to reverse the immutable order which he himself has created, to violate his own laws, and with his own hand to destroy the action of natural forces?” (p. 38). Thirdly, “every miracle, if it existed, says Cotta, would lead to the conviction that the creation is not deserving the respect which all pay to it, and the mystics would necessarily be obliged to deduce from the imperfection of the created world the imperfection of the Creator” (p. 38). Fourthly, “is it a view worthy of God to represent him as a power which now and then gives a new impulse to the world in its course, and puts on a screw, etc., like the regulator of a watch? If the world has been created by God perfect, how can it require any repairs?” (p. 39). Fifthly, we see that nature works without superior control; “its action is frequently quite independent of the rules of a higher reason, now constructing, now destroying, now full of design, then again perfectly blind and in contradiction with all moral and rational laws. That in the formation of organic and inorganic bodies, which are constantly being renewed, there can be no direct governing reason at work is proved by the most striking facts. The nisus formativus inherent in nature is so blind and so dependent on external circumstances that the most senseless forms are frequently engendered, that it is often incapable of obviating or overcoming the slightest obstructions, and that frequently the contrary of what according to reason should happen is effected” (pp. 41, 42). These are serious difficulties, sir.

Reader. I hardly think them to be serious, doctor. The first entirely disappears when you reflect that the conclusions of physical science are all hypothetic, inasmuch as they regard phenomena which must take place under the action of given powers, to the exclusion of any other power extraneous to those taken into account. Such conclusions, therefore, imply the condition that no extraneous agent and no disturbing cause interferes with the production of the phenomena. If an extraneous power interferes, the conditions are changed, and with them the phenomena; but science is not upset. A stone not supported must fall. Not supported; such is the condition. Now, whether you, or I, or the roof, or God, or an angel support it, the consequence will be that the stone will not fall. Now, I ask you, is science “reduced to a vain and childish effort” because you or I or the roof prevent the stone from falling? I presume, doctor, that if such were the case, science would long since have disappeared from this world. Why, then, should science become a vain and childish effort as soon as God would do himself what we can freely do without destroying science? Take another example. Nature builds no stately palaces, no fine steamers, no locomotives, no railroads. All such things are our free creations. Yet surely you will not maintain that by building palaces or by boring mountains we destroy science, although we may interfere very materially with the works of nature.

Now, if our free action upon nature does not destroy science, why should God’s free action destroy it? Answer me in the name of reason: What theory of natural science would be falsified were God to send angels to build you a palace, or devils to dig you a grave?

And now I come to your second difficulty. You assume that the supreme legislator cannot work a miracle without destroying the action of natural forces and violating his own laws, thus reversing the immutable order which he himself has created. But you are mistaken. The order of things is not immutable; this I have already shown. On the other hand, we have just seen that no law of nature is ever violated by a miracle. Lastly, God’s action does not destroy the action of natural forces, but produces an effect superior to and independent of them. Nor is this strange; for we ourselves can do the like within the range of our limited powers. When we go up‐stairs, do we destroy the action of gravity that urges us downwards? By no means. The action of gravity continues its work, but our contrary exertion prevails; and thus our body obeys the resultant of the two opposite actions, both of which obtain their effect. You see, therefore, that there is no need of destroying the action of natural forces in order to produce an effect which natural forces cannot produce. After these remarks, nothing remains of your second difficulty but “the prayers and sobs” which you cruelly ridicule as useless and superstitious. But our Father who is in heaven listens to such prayers and is moved by those sobs. This is abundantly proved by innumerable authentic facts; and this suffices for us.

Your third difficulty is based on Cotta’s notion that the creation deserves respect on account of its perfection. Cotta may be one of your great men, but surely he does not know what he is speaking about. What “respect” do we owe to creation? Benighted barbarians thought, indeed, that the sun, the earth, and the stars deserved respect; but how can a man who pretends to be a philosopher, and who professes himself an enemy of superstition, adopt such a stale pagan view, unless he blinds himself and renounces reason by bestowing upon matter the worship which he refuses to the living God? To say that the world is “perfect” is a mere equivocation. The world is perfect after its own manner, inasmuch as it serves all the purposes for which it has been made; it is perfect in the same sense in which we say that a thermometer, a telescope, or an engine is perfect; it is a perfect instrument in God’s hand for the attainment of a determinate end; and therefore its perfection is relative only, and might be greater and greater without end. Now, Cotta’s argument overlooks this obvious restriction, and presents the world as absolutely perfect. If the world is imperfect, says he, God is imperfect; but miracles would show that the world is imperfect; and therefore miracles would show that God is imperfect. Now, is not this, doctor, asinine logic? We might as well argue thus: If an engine is imperfect, its maker is imperfect; but the opening of a turning‐cock for admitting more steam shows that the engine is imperfect; and therefore that opening shows that the engine‐maker is imperfect. And this leads me to your fourth difficulty, which is nothing but a repetition of the third.

You ask: “Is it a view worthy of God to represent him as a power which now and then gives a new impulse to the world in its course?” I answer, Yes; it is quite worthy of God to exercise his power in the world in the way he thinks fit. Shall we say, then, that God, “like the regulator of a watch, puts a screw on the world”? Why not? The watchmaker is not degraded by regulating his work. But, then, “the world requires repairs”? I say, Yes. And if you conclude that the world “has not been created perfect,” I reply that although it came out relatively perfect from the hands of the Creator, it has gradually and most sadly deteriorated by the malice of man. Moreover, the world, whether more or less perfect in itself, without a constant active intervention of its Creator can neither work nor last for a moment. The world is, therefore, constantly “repaired,” to use your expression, and has “screws put on it,” as history testifies; and other “screws” are undoubtedly ready for further “repairs” when they will be wanted.

Your last difficulty arises from your assumption that nature works without being controlled by a superior power. But how do you know that nature is not controlled? What are the “striking facts” which prove that “there is no direct governing reason at work” in the formation of organic and inorganic bodies? Your nisus formativus proves nothing. You say that the nisus is “blind.” You may well call it blind, inasmuch as it is a work of secondary causes; but you cannot deny that it is ruled by a superior reason. What does it matter if “most senseless forms are frequently engendered”? You yourself admit that the nisus formativus depends very much “on external circumstances,” which may mar or spoil the work of organization, and which nothing obliges the superior reason to alter or improve. On the other hand, such senseless forms are not so “frequently” engendered as you pretend; and if a few such senseless or monstrous forms can move you to doubt whether their formation is controlled by a superior reason, I do not see why the immensely greater number of other forms perfectly constituted should not constrain you to banish the doubt, and to recognize that matter not controlled and not directed by reason cannot co‐ ordinate its efforts towards the formation of an organism of which it knows neither the plan nor the object.

I trust, doctor, that these remarks suffice to solve your difficulties, and to show that the world is governed by a superior reason.

Büchner. It may be; yet “what this or that man may understand by a governing reason, an absolute power, a universal soul, a personal God, etc., is his own affair. The theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves; so the naturalists with their science. They both proceed by different routes” (p. 43).

Reader. This is no reply, doctor, and your remark is misplaced. The existence of a personal God, the possibility of miracles, and many other such truths, are proved by natural reason. Had I refuted your objections by quoting “theologians” and “articles of faith,” your reply might have some meaning. But since your allegations have been answered by reason, what does it avail to say that “theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves”? Moreover, you unwittingly condemn your own tactics. For if theologians are to be left to themselves, why do you, then, who are no theologian, and not even a philosopher, invade the province of theology, and fight against faith?

If you have any desire to know the truth about the reality of miracles, I will tell you what you have to do. M. Artus, a Frenchman, on the 23d of July, 1871, publicly challenged all the free‐thinkers of the world to show the falsity of any two out of the many miracles registered in M. Lasserre’s book entitled Notre Dame de Lourdes, and staked 10,000 francs upon the issue of the contest. This money was safely deposited by him in the hands of a notary‐public in Paris; and fifty judges were appointed, some of whom were members of the French Institute, and others fellows of other celebrated institutions and academies, or members of the bar, including even a Protestant; so that there could be no suspicion of fanaticism, ultramontanism, or mysticism about them. Now, incredible as it may appear to you, none of your great braggarts has dared from that day till now to accept the challenge. It is for you, who are so peremptory in denouncing miracles, to come forward, and to blot out by an act of philosophical valor the stain which the cowardice of your enlightened friends has left on the glory of free‐thinkerism. It is for you, I repeat; for if a man of your standing and reputation quails before the challenge, the world will most reasonably conclude that you have no faith whatever in your own doctrines.

IX. The Heavens.

Reader. The laws of nature are universal. Such is the subject of the seventh chapter of your Force and Matter. I need hardly say that, while admitting with you the universality of the natural laws, I cannot but condemn the materialistic spirit which disgraces your explanation of that obvious truth. But in the chapter which follows you speak of the heavens in a most objectionable style.

Büchner. “Every school‐boy knows that the sky is not a glass shade covering the earth, but that, in contemplating it, we behold an immense space interrupted by infinitely distant and scattered groups of worlds” (p. 51).

Reader. This I grant; but I am at a loss to understand how the contemplation of the heavens can furnish you an argument against the existence of God. Is it not strange that what has hitherto been considered to proclaim most loudly the existence, and magnify the power, of God, has become, in your hands, an evidence in support of atheism?

Büchner. The heavenly masses “are in constant motion—a motion singularly combined and complicated, yet in all its modifications merely the result of a single universal law of nature—the law of attraction.... All these motions may be determined and predicted with mathematical exactness. As far as the telescope of man reaches, the same law, the same mechanical arrangement, according to the same calculated mechanical formula, is found. Nowhere is there a trace of an arbitrary finger which has ordered the heavens or pointed out the path of comets. ‘I have searched the heavens,’ says Lalande, ‘but have nowhere found the traces of God.’ And when the Emperor Napoleon asked the celebrated astronomer Laplace why there was no mention of God in his Mécanique Céleste, he replied, ‘Sire, je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse.’ The more astronomy progressed in its knowledge of the laws and motions in the heavens, the more it repudiated the idea of a supernatural influence, and the easier it became to deduce the origin, grouping, and motions of the heavenly bodies from the properties inherent in matter itself. The attraction of atoms rendered the bodies compact, whilst the law of attraction, in combination with their primary motion, produced the mode of their reciprocal rotation which we now observe” (pp. 51, 52).

Reader. Waiving the more than problematic plausibility of your premises, and setting aside the blasphemies which you have diligently copied from the books of the French unbelievers, and which are too stolid to need an answer, I reply, doctor, that you are always too hasty in drawing your conclusions. Why did you not reflect that the matter of which the celestial bodies are formed must have had an origin, that the revolutions of those bodies cannot be ruled by an abstract law, and that their enormous distances, as well as the expanse of their orbits through the immensity of space, compel the admission of an infinite being ranging infinitely above matter and necessarily prior to it? You should not have overlooked the fact that the heavens proclaim God’s existence by their immensity far more eloquently than by the revolutions of the celestial bodies. You speak of movements ruled by a law. I admit the movements and the law which rules our calculation of the movements. But without space there is no movement, and without God there is no space; therefore without God there is no movement. Extricate yourself, if you can. Do you concede that without space there is no movement?

Büchner. It is evident.

Reader. Do you admit that without God there is no space?

Büchner. This I deny.

Reader. Then what do you mean by “space”?

Büchner. I fancy that space is nothing but the volume of bodies.

Reader. How is this possible? A body moves through space. Now, does a body move through its own volume, or does it move through the volume of other bodies? On the contrary, the body cannot move without pushing away before it all other bodies and volumes whatever from the space they occupy. It is therefore evident that space, as such, is not the volume of bodies.

Büchner. Then I shall say that space is the capability of bodies and motion.

Reader. This definition of space may be admitted if properly understood. But what is such a capability? Is it, in your opinion, a real and positive entity?

Büchner. I should not think so, unless, indeed, it be occupied by bodies.

Reader. I know that many are of this opinion, that the reality of space depends on the presence of bodies; but I say that, if such were the case, then empty space would be mere nothing. Now, if you admit this, you will be compelled to admit also the absurdity that a mere nothing can be greater or smaller. For between two neighboring atoms there may be a greater or smaller interval of space; and such an interval, by the hypothesis, would be nothing. Hence it is evident that space, no matter whether occupied or unoccupied, must be something real.

Büchner. Then I say that space is a mere relation of material objects.

Reader. There are relations of bodies in space; but all such relations presuppose the existence of absolute space, and therefore space itself is none of those relations. Moreover, since all real relations have their reason in something real, which is the foundation of the relativity, it follows that space, as that through which one body is really related to another, is in itself a reality, independently of the relations which may result from the existence of bodies in it. And again, before bodies can be considered as related through space, they must be each located in space. But, evidently, they cannot be located in space if there is no space. And therefore there must be space before any local relation of bodies can be imagined as possible. Hence you cannot maintain that space is a mere relation.

Büchner. Perhaps I shall be obliged to say with Kant that space is only a subjective form of the mind.

Reader. Then you will entangle yourself still more. The assumption would imply the denial of all real distances, of all real volumes, of all real movements, of all real phenomena, and of all natural laws. For if space is only a subjective form of our mind, then there is no space out of the mind; and consequently there are no real distances and no real movements in the outside world, and science becomes an array of lies.

Büchner. What is, then, your notion of space?

Reader. Space is the region of all possible ubications and movements. Do you accept this definition?

Büchner. Why not? It is substantially the same as that which I have given by saying that space is the capability of bodies and motion.

Reader. Very well. Then, since I have shown that this capability of bodies and motion is a positive reality, space is a positive reality. Moreover, space is neither matter nor any of the forces of matter, nor dependent on matter, but prior to it, and is prerequired as a necessary condition for the existence of matter. Lastly, space is independent of time and motion, and therefore is absolutely and strictly eternal and unchangeable. Do you object to these conclusions?

Büchner. No, sir.

Reader. Then you concede that space is an infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent reality, prior to matter and above matter, and therefore, according to your own theory, prior to the world and above it. Now, to concede so much, and then to deny God, would be an evident contradiction. For you must admit that absolute space is either a substance or not. If it is a substance, then it is an infinite, eternal, independent, unchangeable substance, embracing and transcending with its immensity all imaginable worlds; and a substance having such attributes is what we call GOD. If space is not a substance, it must still have the reason of its reality in a substance from which it borrows its infinity, its eternity, its immutability, and of which it is the extrinsic manifestation. Hence the contemplation of the heavens and of “the immense space interrupted by infinitely distant and scattered groups of worlds” affords an irresistible proof of God’s existence, and leaves no room for your pretended “scientific” objections. If there is no God, there is no space; and if there is no space, science is a dream and scientists mere visionaries.(188)

Büchner. I cannot fight on this ground, sir. Space is a mystery which our reason has no power to explain; and I decline to argue about anything that transcends reason. The strongest argument in favor of the existence of a personal God was ever drawn from the necessity of a first mover, in order to account for the movement of the celestial bodies. But such a necessity has never been proved; and therefore “even in this remote position a personal creative power cannot hold its ground” (p. 52).

Reader. You cannot cover your retreat by pretending that space is a mystery; for if space is a mystery, then science also is a mystery—a conclusion which you do not accept. But while you thus implicitly acknowledge your defeat, you try to secure a safer position by alleging that the movement of the heavenly bodies may have originated in the powers of matter itself without any exterior impulse from a first mover. I wish you to remark that the words “first mover” can be understood in two manners; for not he only who directly imparts the first movement, but he also who governs the exertions and establishes the conditions on which the first movements depend, can be called “first mover.” The old philosophers, who did not know the fact of universal gravitation, proved the existence of God by affirming the necessity of a first mover—that is, of a first cause—giving the first impetus to the heavens, and governing their revolutions. But since gravitation became known philosophers have acknowledged that all matter could receive motion through the action of other matter, and therefore that the first movements in the material world could arise from matter itself, with no need of a special impulse from without. This, however, does not mean that we can dispense with a “first mover.” However great your effort to convince yourself that “matter is eternal, and the motion of matter as eternal as matter itself” (p. 53), you will not succeed. Matter is created; and He who created it placed it in definite conditions, that it could exert its powers in a definite manner and give rise to definite effects. To him, therefore, as to a first cause, are to be traced all the movements arising from his production and arrangement of all the proximate causes. Now, the first cause of all movements is a “first mover.” What can science object against this evident truth?

Büchner. “Why matter assumed a definite motion at a definite time is as yet unknown to us; but the investigations of science are as yet incomplete, nor is it impossible that we may get some clue as to the period of the first origin of individual worlds. Even at this day astronomers give cogent reasons that some of the nebular spots are worlds in embryo, which, by gradual condensation and rotation, will become worlds and solar systems. We have, therefore, concluding from analogy, a right to say that those processes through which the existing solar systems have arisen can have formed no exception to the general laws inherent in matter, and that the cause of the first definite motion must have existed in matter itself” (p. 53).

Reader. This is possible; but is it true?

Büchner. “We are the more justified in asserting this, as the many irregularities, contingencies, etc., in the economy of the universe and individual bodies, exclude the thought of an external personal activity” (ibid.)

Reader. What? Are you serious?

Büchner. “If it were the object of a personal creative power to create worlds and dwelling‐places for men and animals, why, we may ask, these enormous, waste, useless spaces, in which but here and there suns and planets swim, floating about as imperceptible points? Why are not all planets of our system so formed as to be inhabited by man? Why is the moon without water and atmosphere, and consequently adverse to every organic development? Wherefore the irregularities and enormous differences in the size and distances of the planets of our solar system? Why the deficiency in order, symmetry, and beauty? Why have all comparisons, analogies, speculations, in regard to the number and forms of the planets, proved idle fancies? Why, asks Hudson Tuttle, did the Creator give rings to Saturn, which, surrounded by its eight moons, can have little need of them, while Mars is left in total darkness? And again, the moon’s rotation round its axis is, in relation to that of the earth, such that it always presents to it the same surface. What is the reason of this? If there be design in this arrangement, it must be admitted that it is very imperfect. Why did the Creator not impart to the celestial bodies that order from which the intention and the design could irresistibly be inferred?” (pp. 53, 54).

Reader. Unfortunate man that you are! You have already received the just punishment of your rebellion against truth; you have been struck with blindness. The thing is evident, say what you will. You make a fool of yourself, as your preposterous queries prove nothing but your arrogance, ignorance, and malice. You will never be cured of your blindness till you lower your tone and humble your pride before the God whose works you disregard, and whose wisdom you call in question. You are a smoky little candle challenging the sun thus: “Why these enormous, waste, useless spaces?” Is it necessary to inform you that those spaces are not waste and useless? We have just seen that the expanse of the heavens reveals the infinity of the Creator; accordingly, the enormous spaces which you arrogantly call waste and useless proclaim most eloquently the highest truth, the necessary truth, the source of all truths. “Why are not all planets of our system so formed as to be inhabited by man?” In return let me ask you, Why is not the atmosphere so formed as to be inhabited by fishes? Indeed, if God has no need of peopling the air with fishes, it would be hard to say on what principle he can be obliged to people the planets with beings exactly similar to us in their organization. It is plain that man, though the best creature on earth, is not the last effort of Omnipotence; there can be rational beings made according to other patterns, having a different organization and different needs. But whether there are or not, it is not for you to ask why the planets are not so made as to be inhabited by man. It is no less preposterous to ask, “Wherefore the irregularities and enormous differences in the size and distances of the planets of our solar system?” If the planets were all alike, and their distances equal, would you not pronounce the world monotonous, and the plan of creation a limited conception of an unintelligent mind? But now it is variety that offends your æsthetics; and you denounce it as being “irregularity.” Did you never hear that variety is a source of beauty? To me, the musician who always harps on the same chord is a nuisance; and I am sure that you too would prefer a full orchestra, with all the “irregularities and enormous differences in the size, etc.,” of the instruments employed. You find in the heavens “a deficiency in order, symmetry, and beauty.” This only shows your bad taste. Do you think that symmetry is indispensable for beauty? An oak is beautiful, though its branches are not symmetrical. The sea‐shore, the hill, the valley, the mountain, would lose much of their beauty, were they to be reduced to symmetrical forms. Then you speak of a want of “order.” What do you imagine order to be? Look on a chess‐board when the game is going on. Is there any order? If you are no chess‐player, you will not perceive order, but confusion; and yet there is order. Order is a suitable disposition of things in pursuance of an end, and must be different when it has to lead to a different end. He who has no knowledge of the end pursued cannot judge of the suitableness or deficiency of the arrangements made in view of such an end. When you think that the pieces are most disorderly mixed up on the chess‐board, then perhaps they are in the most perfect order, and the intelligent player already knows that he is about to checkmate his adversary. So do not speak again of the order of the heavens until you are called into the secret council of Divinity. I thought, doctor, that you had some ability; yet how dull that man must be who asks “why all comparisons, analogies, speculations, in regard to the number and forms of the planets, have proved idle fancies”! The why is evident. It is because men are ignorant, and yet presumptuous. But does our ignorance show that there is a deficiency of order in the heavens? No; our ignorance only shows that the best thing we can do is to hold our tongue. As to the rings of Saturn, what do you know besides their existence? And how could you show that, because Saturn has eight moons, the rings can have no duty to perform? But then, you say, “Mars is left in total darkness.” I reply that twelve hours of darkness are not a total darkness. Moreover, the dense atmosphere and the small diameter of Mars are calculated to afford it a long crepuscle, which may shorten very sensibly the length of its night. And, after all, what need is there that Mars should have a moon? Could we not do on earth without our moon? But you are scandalized that our moon “always presents to us the same surface,” and never deigns to show its other side. What a disorder! What an evidence of a want of design! This it is that causes you to exclaim that “if there be design in this arrangement, it must be admitted that it is very imperfect.” I remark that you here admit with Tuttle that there may be design in this arrangement. But if there is a design, there is a designer. Who is he? Is he not the Omnipotent? For how can he fulfil his design if he does not hold the heavens in his hand? The design, however, in your judgment, is imperfect. Why? Only because your ignorance can put a question to which it cannot make an answer. You say: “Why did the Creator not impart to the celestial bodies that order from which the intention and the design could irresistibly be inferred”" Your curiosity, doctor, lacks modesty. What right have you to be instructed in detail of the intentions of the Creator? Is he not the Master? Is he obliged to discover his secrets to you, rebel and arrogant being, who disregard the most clear evidence of his very existence? Would you be able to understand his plan if he were willing to reveal it? The heavens proclaim God’s existence and attributes; they glorify him by their beauty, variety, and harmony; they reveal the general scope of creation; but they withhold the secrets which God has reserved for himself. God’s providence and his government of the world are infinitely wise, but they are inscrutable.

Büchner. Although you treat me with little regard, and apply to me very hard epithets, I wish to make a short remark on what you call “providence”: “Some perceive in the position and relations of the earth to the sun, moon, and stars a designing providence; but they do not consider that they confound cause and effect, and that we should be differently organized if the inclination of the ecliptic were different or not existing” (p. 55).

Reader. I think that you would have done better if you had withheld your remark. That I treat you with little regard I do not deny; but, in truth, I believe that if you deserve respect as a doctor, you deserve only contempt as the author of Force and Matter. Freemasons praise your person and extol your book; be satisfied with this. To us you are nothing but a blind and obstinate sophist. If we apply to you some hard epithet, you gave us the fullest right to do so; for remember that you have called our great men “charlatans.” We, at least, when we call you ignorant, arrogant, presumptuous, take care to prove that such epithets are well applied; whilst you make denunciations, and give no proofs.

And now as to your remark about Providence. “Some,” you say, “perceive in the position and relations of the earth to the sun, moon, and stars, a designing providence.” Indeed, all great philosophers, nay, all mankind, perceive that designing providence; but, from your words, it would seem that this is only a peculiar bias of a few obscure and eccentric thinkers. Hence those words, “some perceive,” are calculated to conceal or disguise a great historical truth—the testimony of mankind in favor of divine providence. This may be called a trick. But what follows is a real blunder. Those who recognize a providential order “do not consider,” according to you, “that they confound cause and effect.” Where is there confusion? Do you mean that what we call “Providence” is an effect of natural laws?

Büchner. Exactly so.

Reader. Natural laws are abstractions, and abstractions can produce nothing. Did you ever imagine that a law of geometry could make a circle, or that a law of harmony could write a quartetto? Laws do not produce facts, but are gathered from facts of which they exhibit the general expression. Thus the natural laws are not natural causes, but abstract formulas, and do not rule the world, as scientists too often assert, but only our calculations and scientific inductions. Your blunder is evident. But is it true, at least, that “we should be differently organized if the inclination of the ecliptic were different or not existing”? No, doctor, you are not happy in your illustration. A change of inclination of the ecliptic would only alter the distribution of heat on the terrestrial surface without altering its amount; and as now men can live under different latitudes and in different climes without being differently organized, so also they would live and thrive under some different inclination of the ecliptic without acquiring a different organization. And if so, it would appear that your physical knowledge is as limited as your philosophical attainments.

Büchner. Of course I am a doctor in medicine, not in physics or in philosophy; but this I know: “that empirical philosophy, wherever it may search for it, is nowhere able to find a trace of a supernatural influence, either in time or space” (p. 55).

Reader. Quite true. Your “empirical philosophy” is unable to find anything supernatural, wherever it may search for it. But are you so simple as to believe that, if there is a God, you should be able to reach him with the telescope, or to detect him by the microscope, or to get by the balance an indication of his presence, or to find him in a retort, as a residue after some chemical manipulation? Shame! shame! Is this your method of convincing yourself that there is no God? Then, by shutting yourself in a dark cellar, you should be able also to convince yourself that the sun does not exist. Is it not a mockery to pretend that there is nothing supersensible, because it cannot be reached by experimentation upon sensible things? I cannot but repeat that you have received the punishment of your rebellion against truth. A man of your ability would never fall into such absurdities from want of light; it is your hatred of truth that distorts your reason and instigates you to heap sophism upon sophism, and blasphemy upon blasphemy. You need not search for God; you know him, and try in vain, like Cain, to fly from his face.

Büchner. You make a sermon rather than a discussion.

Reader. But whose fault is it if your assertions are so openly incongruous as not to bear discussion? Even your “empirical philosophy” is a myth. Are you not ashamed to appeal to a science which has no existence? Chemistry is empirical, and other parts of physics may be empirical; but empirical philosophy is nothing but a bombastic word without meaning, a fit conclusion to a chapter wherein you try to make the heavens bear witness against their Maker.

X. The Earth.

Reader. After the heavens you try to enlist the earth also among your witnesses against God. But what can the earth say in your favor?

Büchner. “The investigations of geology have thrown a highly interesting and important light on the history of the origin and gradual development of the earth. It was in the rocks and strata of the crust of the earth, and in the organic remains, that geologists read, as in an old chronicle, the history of the earth. In this history they found the plainest indications of several stupendous successive revolutions, now produced by fire, now by water, now by their combined action. These revolutions afforded, by the apparent suddenness and violence of their occurrence, a welcome pretext to orthodoxy to appeal to the existence of supernatural powers, which were to have caused these revolutions in order to render, by gradual transitions, the earth fit for certain purposes. This successive periodical creation is said to have been attended with a successive creation of new organic beings and species. The Bible, then, was right in relating that God had sent a deluge over the world to destroy a sinful generation. God with his own hands is said to have piled up mountains, planed the sea, created organisms, etc.” (p. 56).

Reader. And so he did. But mark that these Biblical expressions are metaphorical.

Büchner. “All these notions concerning a direct influence of supernatural or inexplicable forces have melted away before the age of modern science” (p. 57).

Reader. Melted away? Indeed? And how?

Büchner. “Like astronomy, which with mathematical certainty has measured the spaces of the heavens, so does modern geology, by taking a retrospective view of the millions of years which have passed, lift the veil which has so long concealed the history of the earth, and has given rise to all kinds of religious and mysterious dreams” (ibid.)

Reader. To call our views “religious and mysterious dreams” is no argument, doctor. We have a history of the earth far more certain than all your modern geology; and that portion of geology which is not fiction and charlatanism not only does not contradict, but rather completes and confirms, the Mosaic history.

Büchner. This is what I cannot admit. “It is now known that there can be no discussion about those periodic creations of the earth of which so much was said, and which to this day an erroneous conception of nature tries to identify with the so‐called days of creation of the Bible; but that the whole past of the earth is nothing but an unfolded present” (ibid.)

Reader. You say, “It is known.” No, sir, it is not known; it is only wished. You infidels pretend to know a great many things of which you are ignorant. If you know that geology refutes the Bible, how does it happen that you cannot impart to us such a knowledge in a rational manner—that is, by proving what you assert?

Büchner. “Geology, supported by the knowledge of surrounding nature and its governing forces, is enabled to trace the history of what has happened in infinite periods of time with approximating exactness, frequently with certainty. It has proved that everywhere and at all times only those material and natural forces were in activity by which we are at present surrounded” (p. 59).

Reader. This cannot be proved by geology.

Büchner. “Nowhere was a point reached when it was necessary to stop scientific investigation, and to substitute the influence of unknown forces” (ibid.)

Reader. Not even for the origin of life?

Büchner. “Everywhere it was possible to indicate or to conceive the possibility of visible effects from the combination of natural conditions; everywhere existed the same law and the same matter” (ibid.)

Reader. Of course. But this does not exclude the intervention of a superior cause.

Büchner. “An enlightened intellect no longer requires the aid of that powerful hand which, acting from without, excites the burning spirits of the interior of the earth to a sudden rebellion, which pours the waters as a deluge over the earth, and shapes for its designs the whole structure like soft clay” (p. 60.)

Reader. This is openly false. All enlightened intellects acknowledge that He who declared his intention of desolating Sodom by fire and the world by the Deluge must have had a hand in the fulfilment of his menace.

Büchner. This is your Bible history, which we reject.

Reader. But can you refute it?

Büchner. “How curious and whimsical is not the conception of a creative power, which conducts the earth and its inhabitants through various transitions and immense periods of time to a more developed form, in order to make it finally a fit dwelling‐place for the most organized animal—man! Can an arbitrary and almighty power require such efforts to attain its object? Can it not immediately and without delay do and create what seems good to it? Why these roundabouts? The natural difficulties alone which matter meets with in the gradual combinations and formations of its parts can explain to us the peculiarity of the origin of the organic and inorganic world” (p. 60).

Reader. It is ridiculous to speak of “efforts” of the Almighty; for no one but a fool could dream of such an absurdity. Moreover, you confound creation with formation. By creation matter received existence immediately, without “roundabouts”; for creation is not movement, and therefore needs no time. This creation of matter was the work of God alone; but the formation of the earth was successively brought about, according to God’s plan, through the exertion of the natural powers, which were not created to remain idle, but to carry on the objects intended by their Creator. Now, the exertion of natural powers could not give rise to a perfect order of things “immediately and without roundabouts.” Hence your argument is worthless; and it is worthless precisely on account of the “difficulties which matter meets with in the gradual combinations and formations” of complex things. But matter meets with a much greater difficulty, which you omit to mention. The difficulty is that matter does not know how to form a molecule of hydrogen; and yet there is hydrogen.

Büchner. It chanced to be formed by nature.

Reader. Indeed? Chance might form one molecule, or two, but could not form millions of millions of them all perfectly equal to one another, for chance excludes uniformity. Nor does it avail to say that their formation is the work of nature; for nature, according to you, is only matter, and consequently it cannot do more than matter itself is capable of doing.

Büchner. Science is still imperfect; we cannot as yet explain everything. But geologists refute the Bible as to the six days of creation. “The so‐called coal formation alone required, according to Bischof, 1,004,177; according to Chevandier’s calculation, 672,788 years. The tertiary strata, about 1,000 feet in thickness, required for their development about 350,000 years; and before the originally incandescent earth could cool down from a temperature of 2,000 degrees to 200, there must, according to Bischof’s calculation, have elapsed a period of 350 millions of years. Volger finally calculates that the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us must at least have amounted to 648 millions of years! From these numbers we may form some notion as to the extent of these periods of time. They give us, moreover, another hint. The enormous distances in the universe which stagger our imagination, in combination with these almost unlimited periods of time, lead us to acknowledge that both time and space are infinite and eternal” (p. 61).

Reader. You are always the same. Your conclusion that time is infinite is pinned on the statement that the periods of geology are almost unlimited—that is, not altogether without limit. I need not show that such a rash conclusion is contradicted by your very calculations. And again, as to the geological periods themselves, their length does not clash with the six days of creation as described by the Bible. The word “day” is often used in the Bible to express a great interval of time, and may be interpreted as an “epoch,” or, as you say, a “period.” This is, in fact, the interpretation of the word now accepted by our writers when explaining the days of creation. Only our writers, more prudent than you, do not pretend to determine the length of those epochs or periods; for they do not indulge in wild calculations or imaginary data. When we see a difference of 331,389 years between the results of two calculations regarding the period of the coal formation, we may well suspend our judgment, and not commit ourselves by the premature choice of either opinion. But we admit the periods, nor are we afraid of identifying them with the days of creation. The Bible has nothing to fear from geology or any other science. We might, on the contrary, prove from geology the truth and divine inspiration of the Mosaic narrative. Moses was no geologist, and could not know the order of the events which took place before the creation of man, except by supernatural revelation. Now, in his cosmogony we observe not only the description of an order of events like that deduced from modern geology, but “a system in the arrangement, and a far‐ reaching prophecy,” as Prof. Dana well remarks,(189) “to which philosophy could not have attained, however instructed.” You see, doctor, that your geological periods, instead of refuting the Bible, furnish us with a new argument in support of its divine origin. Have you anything to reply?

Büchner. Your explanation of the Bible is quite new.

Reader. Be it so. Our ancient doctors, however, knew very well that the word “day” in the Bible frequently means a great length of time. Had they known geology, they would have unanimously interpreted the six days as six great geological periods, just as we do.

Büchner. But I have still other arguments deduced from the primeval generations.

Reader. I am ready to meet them. But I really think it is scarcely worth the trouble to continue the discussion, as you have hitherto uniformly failed in every point you have tried to establish.

(To Be Continued).

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Hymn Of The Flowers

A Memorial of the First Mass of ——, One of Eleven Young Jesuits Who Said Their First Masses at Woodstock on the Feast of S. Aloysius, June 21, 1874.

I.

Chosen from many, Tenderly nurtured, We budded to sunlight, Our fragrance we scattered; Queens of the garden, Languishing beauties, Reserved for high favor— Fair flowers! fair flowers!

II.

Emblems of purity, Fitting for virgins, Our sisters are gathered To grace the blithe maidens Who go to their bridals— Oh! fair be their fortune. Glad flowers! glad flowers!

III.

Emblems of innocence, Fondly we’re sought for: Young mothers will scatter The blossoms just budding, Will scatter our sisters, Kept still fresh and dewy, With sad pearls of affection, O’er the vanishing image Of the lost darling— Ah! kindred with blossoms. Sad flowers! sad flowers!

IV.

Emblems of triumph, Emblems of glory, The nations will cull them, Will cull from our sisters To honor their true ones. Mingling with life, Mingling with death, The flowers will crown the hero’s brow, Or wreathe the stone that marks his grave. Frail flowers! frail flowers!

V.

But we—O glad fortune! O blest among flowers!— We have been chosen High o’er our sisters:

Culled for the altar, We gave all our beauty, We spent all our perfumes, When God’s priest in oblation Pronounced his first fiat. How we trembled with rapture When the Christ was descending! Oh! our bloom caught new glory From the priest’s face all radiant, As he held for adoring His God in his hands, And our odors were mingled With prayer from his lips.

And, oh! the pale mother Who guided his lisping, Who gave up her peerless, The one jewel left her, Robbed her breast for God’s warfare, The gift ne’er recalling— How her heart is now pealing, Ringing out unto heaven Glad chimes that are drowning The dull whispers of sorrow!

And the prayer of th’ Anointed, The heart‐voice of the mother, The breath of the flowers, Triple incense, are wafted Up, up to God’s footstool.

Ah! such incense is treasured; Our odors shall die not. They give fragrance in heaven To that glad first oblation Of God’s priest at the altar. Blest flowers! blest flowers!

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Kathleen Waring

The loveliest of autumn days shed its warmth and brightness over magnificent Rome, while the bells from many towers announced the hour of twelve, and a still more emphatic reminder of mid‐day boomed from Castle Sant’ Angelo, the firing of whose cannon frequently startles strangers, though even they soon become unconscious of its loud report. Citizens meeting complained of the horrible sirocco day; visitors congratulated one another upon such beautiful weather for the fulfilment of their plans; and a very perceptible thing was that not even in the Eternal City can every individual be satisfied. In no way could an unbeliever be better convinced of this solemn truth than by a peep into the principal parlor of the Hôtel d’Angleterre, where a travelling party had just arrived. An elderly gentleman stamped up and down the apartment, furiously gesticulating, and undoubtedly making use of rather forcible language, consigning hotels in general, and the Hôtel d’Angleterre in particular, to pretty uncomfortable quarters. At every approach to a small tête‐à‐tête placed near the window he fiercely glared upon a lady, evidently his wife, whose sweet, smiling face served to exasperate her husband beyond endurance. A large fan, plied industriously, stirred not only the black feathers of her own bonnet, but the scarlet ones jauntily stuck in a dark gray hat that persistently drooped, for no reason in the world but to conceal a very amused countenance which might have added fuel to the fire of the gentleman’s anger. Though for a time he is denied the gratification of a peep at so winning a face, we will take it ourselves, and see what is under that gray hat with the scarlet plumes: A pair of dark eyes sparkling with fun, which all those curling black lashes cannot hide, while a few saucy rings of hair, lying here and there on the forehead, cause a surmise as to whether they are the result of nature and warm weather or curl‐papers nightly twisted up. It would be difficult to form an estimate of a mouth whose under‐lip is being held in bondage by two rows of exceedingly white teeth, but we will imagine it a rose‐bud, and hasten to make the acquaintance of yonder thunder‐cloud, who pouts so abominably, and is still so like her of the mischievous aspect. Agathe Waring leaned on the back of her chair, and, when her father stamped his feet, she did likewise; when his frown deepened and voice waxed louder, her pout became more decided, and very beautiful hands doubled into fists that shook defiantly at invisible landlords. Mrs. Waring, observing this, remarked: “I think, Agathe, you have chosen a dangerous employment for hands so valued as yours. Do you not fear your vehemence will be the cause of a sprained wrist or finger? Then where will be our delightful evening music. A young lady who, at the faintest suspicion of danger ahead, generally clasps her hands behind her, is to be wondered at when seen bravely challenging our most dreaded enemies.”

“It may be very amusing to you and Kathleen, mamma; but I confess to not perceiving the joke,” replied Agathe, glancing complacently at her formidable weapons. “How you can see papa so worried, and be perfectly unconcerned, is more than I understand.”

“But, my dear, would it mend matters in the least were your sister to weep tears of vexation, and I to vociferate against the unfortunate people of this hotel, who were never less in fault than now? If your father had taken my advice, and telegraphed for rooms, this occasion for trouble would have been avoided; but, as he considered such a precaution unnecessary, we need not regard ourselves as dreadfully‐injured travellers.”

“Am I not sufficiently annoyed, madam, by this turn of affairs,” shouted the elderly gentleman, “that you should consider it essential to remind me what your advice was in Florence? I have never yet met the woman who did not delight in being able to say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

“Now, papa,” said Kathleen with a merry glance from her bright eyes, “I look upon that speech as a calumny and an injustice to Agathe. When all our luggage was left in Paris, simply because you would not heed her injunction to be very careful in looking after it, she did not gratify herself by any such malicious words as ‘I told you so.’ Indeed, her sympathy was far greater than ours, as we only felt indignant at having nothing to wear.”

This boldly‐uttered sentence proved quite soothing to Mr. Waring, who ceased his restless walk to twine an arm about his daughter’s waist, whose head leaned fondly against the dusty sleeve, and desired no sweeter resting‐place.

“Yes, whatever my faults, whatever my grievances, this little daughter is ready and willing to share them,” said he, gently patting Agathe’s cheek. “It has always been a wonder to me that a brute like myself should possess three treasures such as my wife and daughters. But the more valuable the treasure, the more difficult its keeping. If that atrocious landlord will only give us an apartment for this afternoon, I’ll go in quest of permanent quarters, and leave you to rest until my return.”

An immediate ringing of the bell brought the attendant, who was requested to inquire into the possibility of procuring at least a single room for the remainder of the day, during which time other accommodations might be sought. An answer, to the effect that there was a small chamber, engaged by a party who would arrive that night, which until then was at the service of the American gentleman, caused a gathering together of bags, boxes, and baskets, an ascent of several stairs, and a happy entrance into the nicely‐furnished and exceedingly pleasant apartment. The waiter, before his departing bow, made many apologies for the crowded condition of the house having rendered it impossible to receive monsieur, and hoped their inability to please would be forgiven. Mr. Waring’s wrath, until then on the wane, appeared gradually gaining ascendency, and a convenient lunch‐basket would certainly have made the acquaintance of the waiter’s head had not the latter prudently withdrawn. “The impudence of that dog in presuming to beg my pardon! What do I care how crowded the house may be or how impossible it is to accommodate us? I don’t suppose this hotel is the only habitable place in Rome; if so, I’ll just take up my abode in the Colosseum, and be done with it.”

Neither Mrs. Waring nor Agathe could resist smiling at this outburst, while Kathleen laughed outright.

“I shall consider it my first duty, on entering the Colosseum, to set you up as a statue of Perversity, surrounded by imps of contradiction. During the last half‐hour you have been in a towering passion because the Hôtel d’Angleterre could not contain you. Now the poor waiter humbly laments the numerous visitors and non‐elastic material of the house, and you are ready to annihilate him for supposing us anxious to remain in it.”

“Are you not ashamed of yourself, Kathleen Waring?” cried Agathe. “Were I papa, you should not speak to me in that rude manner. You surely do not approve of it, mamma?”

“My dear Agathe,” said her mother, “I cannot disapprove when I so fully appreciate the spirit in which your sister thus addresses her father. Do not imagine you are alone in your affection for him, and that the sole mode of expressing that affection is by unvarying respectfulness in language and constant caressing. We all know you to be more dignified than Kathleen, and to possess much greater stability of character; then how can you expect her to be otherwise than more thoughtless and much saucier than yourself?”

This last sentence, accompanied by a meaning smile, brought a crimson flush to Agathe’s cheek and an angry retort to her lips, the utterance of which was stayed by a kiss from her sister, who whispered:

“Never mind, Aggie; just be as firm and stable and dignified as you choose. I’ll be your admiration‐point for ever, and I am sure mamma is as proud of her model of strength and her impersonation of sauciness as she can be; then why need we quarrel?”

“Well, it would be a waste of ammunition, mavourneen,” replied Agathe; “so, instead of letting loose my tongue, I’ll exercise my arms. Be good enough to get me the clothes‐brush from your bag, that I may dust papa’s coat.”

By plentiful application of soap and vigorous use of towels Mr. Waring now appeared resplendent, and announced his intention of at once going in search of rooms. “In my absence,” said he, pausing at the door, “I desire the three treasures to repose, and hope to find them bright and sparkling this evening.”

The ladies did retire, and slept soundly several hours, while Mr. Waring made every effort to obtain a suite of rooms, first at the different hotels, which were all full, next at two or three casas recommended by his banker. At last in a small house, opening on the Piazza di Spagna, he succeeded in engaging five bright, cheerful apartments, though at quite a high price, since the number of visitors at Rome increased rents far beyond their usual rate. Leaving orders with his padrone to secure a man‐servant as soon as possible, he next made arrangements with the proprietor of the nearest restaurant to supply him with the necessary breakfast and dinner, which must be daily occurrences to sustain the vitality of even the most enthusiastic tourist. With a sigh of relief that his preparations were complete, Mr. Waring returned to the hotel, and found his wife and daughters radiant in their fresh toilets and expectant eagerness. There is nothing so destructive of beauty as fatigue added to the dust and soot of railway travelling; and an individual emerging from this double ordeal deserves the congratulation of friends. Mr. Waring bestowed a gaze of admiration upon each lady in turn, kissed his wife, pulled one of Agathe’s curls, and whirled Kathleen round and round to the tune of a cracked hand‐organ stationed beneath the window, which just then ground out a very fine waltz. Breathless and panting, Kathleen soon sank on the sofa, while her mother came to the rescue with a fan, and Agathe opened the window to throw the musician some coppers.

“There is little need to inform us of your success,” said Mrs. Waring, “as this emphatic greeting tells its own tale. I am really glad you were able to return before dark, as we feared you might be detained later.”

“Well, you cannot fail to like the rooms,” said Mr. Waring; “for they are five in number, quite handsomely furnished, and two overlook the Piazza di Spagna. I think, as it is a mere step from here, we had better walk, and have our luggage sent by these people. If you are half as tired riding as I am, you will infinitely prefer proceeding to our destination on foot.”

“We should like nothing better!” cried the three ladies, and immediately began to collect their scattered property. This being duly disposed of, the black bonnet and gray hats donned, our party set out. The Ave Maria was ringing, and the sweet sound of many bells penetrated the hearts of even these Protestants, who understood so imperfectly its beautiful significance. Dusk was fast changing into darkness, while black clouds chased each other over the sky, and the rising wind betokened the sure approach of a storm. Our travellers hastened their footsteps, and only reached their parlor when a terrific flash of lightning poured through the windows, and the rain fell in torrents. Mr. and Mrs. Waring at once went on a tour of investigation, in which neither of the girls could be induced to join. Agathe approached the window and gazed upon the outdoor fury, with only clasped hands and awe‐stricken countenance to betoken her feeling. Kathleen buried a miserably pale face in the cushions of her armchair, and sobbed most piteously; for the poor child dreaded nothing so much as thunder and lightning. After a short lapse of time, Agathe turned impatiently from her post of observation, and exclaimed:

“Without exception, Katy, you are the greatest goose I ever met, to be sitting there crying when you might have the benefit of yonder magnificent panorama. It is too absurd that the least sign of a storm must send you into hysterics. Do you not suppose there is quite as much danger for me as for you? Yet let me sob as you are doing, and how foolish you would think me! Do control yourself this once, or your eyes will be red and ugly to‐ morrow, and you not presentable.”

Agathe had intended simple expostulation; but anger got the better of her, and her last words were very commanding—so much so as to rouse Kathleen, who cried:

“I am sure I don’t care for eyes, or appearance, or anything else, and I wish you would let me alone. Because you have a reputation for courage and firmness, you imagine you are justified in persecuting me; but I tell you you are not. I cannot see any great courage and firmness in facing that lightning. If there should ever be a call upon me for such qualities, I will beg the good Lord to give them to me, but not for the purpose of staring at a storm.” With this the dark head again took refuge in the cushions, and Agathe returned to her former position. The scene was indeed magnificent, and fully compensated for any uneasy feeling she might have experienced in thus exposing herself. The entire sky within range of vision seemed one dense, black cloud, hanging but a few feet above the house‐tops, every moment sending forth flashes of light, at times sharp, forked, fearful, again soft, widespread, and of sufficient duration to illumine the entire piazza beneath. The pouring rain could not conceal surrounding objects, but rather served to enhance their beauty, since they appeared through a mist that served to screen the hard, substantial reality. High up, beyond the fine steps which are a prominent feature in this piazza, rose the church and convent of the Trinità di Monte, looking, in its elevation and noble strength, a fit emblem of a religion so true and sublime. Inclining from its height to the level beneath, the aforesaid steps were lonely and deserted, deprived of their lounging idlers, but nevertheless beautifully reflecting from their wet surface the brightness above. One might have imagined the piazza, with its brilliant shops, caffes, hotels, and booths, to be the noisy, bustling world, having in its midst those steps so numerous, so difficult of ascent, but in the end leading to rest, peace, heaven! How pitiful, then, to see no foot ascending! And if this little picture be one of sorrow, how much worse the great, real world, where so few mount the stairs within reach of all! Some walk round, others glance up and promise a beginning to‐morrow; but how many heed the warning? Now, now is the time; to‐morrow may never come!

It is not probable, however, that such thoughts found favor with Agathe, whose Protestant mind was in no way addicted to pious musing, since her church furnishes such meagre food for heart and brain. Her eyes, roving restlessly about, suddenly became fixed upon the tall, muffled figure of a man hurrying through the rain with bent head and quickening speed. Devoid of fear, of suspicion, she watched until he neared the piazza’s centre, when, after one long, blinding streak of lightning, a fearful crash followed, and she distinguished the object of her curiosity lying prostrate on the ground. A sharp cry from her lips brought Mrs. Waring, to whom, with trembling limbs and horror‐stricken face, she pointed out the prostrate form. Kathleen, who had crept up behind her mother, no sooner beheld it than she ran from the room, and, meeting her father in the hall, breathlessly exclaimed: “O papa! do go quickly.... There is a poor man lying in the street who has been struck, ... and nobody seems to know it. Please go to him.... Bring him here. Get some one to help you; for he may not be quite dead.”

Before she had ceased speaking her father was down‐stairs ordering a servant to follow him; and from their position Mrs. Waring and Agathe saw the two rush into the driving rain, gently raise the body, and carefully bear it towards the entrance. Kathleen had hastily arranged pillows and blankets on the sofa; so there was no delay in fixing something on which to lay the poor fellow, and very soon the entire family were making a desperate effort to restore animation, as Mr. Waring declared there was life in the body. His assertion was verified when, after a while, the young man drew a long breath, and opened such bewildered, astonished eyes as made every one smile.

“Ah! my fine fellow,” cried Mr. Waring, “I’ll wager you you are on the road to life again, and we are spared the trouble of attending your funeral—a thing, I candidly assure you, I had expected to do not very long ago.”

“O papa!” whispered Kathleen, glancing timidly at the pale face, blue eyes, and curling brown hair, “don’t talk to the poor fellow about funerals when he has been so near the grave; it cannot be pleasant.”

“Never mind, Miss Puss, I will set him straight,” replied her father. “Now, my friend, I have always heard, and there is an indistinct idea of my having read it, that people struck by lightning never feel it. As you are a living witness to the truth or falsehood of this statement, I would like to have your views on the subject.”

This, delivered with the air of a man thirsting for knowledge, brought a smile to the patient’s mouth, and caused a general laugh.

“I am truly grieved,” replied the lightning‐struck, “that my knowledge is of questionable authority, because I cannot tell whether I felt a blow on the head or not, though there is a half‐defined recollection of some one pounding me there, and producing about five hundred simultaneous sensations; whether really so or the fruit of my active imagination I am unable to avow.”

“Well, for our own satisfaction, we will believe you did have five hundred feelings jumbled together, and take it as a warning to avoid like strokes.”

“Such profanity shall not be allowed!” said Mrs. Waring; “and I really think, Mr. Waring, you should conduct our patient to a comfortable room where he may sleep away his weakness. Kathleen will share Agathe’s apartment, that he may occupy hers.”

All protestations to the effect that he could walk to his hotel being indignantly denied, the young man was immediately consigned to bed, and commanded to sleep as long as he could. For about half an hour the family sat up discussing the accident, and did not separate until its victim was unanimously pronounced handsome, elegant, charming!

The sun was many hours high next morning before our friends thought of stirring, and the two girls were yet sound asleep when their mother came tapping at the door. Her knock was so slight as to be scarcely perceptible, and, receiving no response, she entered. The change from bright sunshine to this darkened room at first made it impossible to distinguish clearly; but opening the blind a very little way, Mrs. Waring smiled to herself, as, glancing about the apartment, she murmured: “Those careless, careless girls! What is to be done with them?” Evidently, the careless girls had taken small trouble to arrange their things before retiring, and now a somewhat confused picture greeted the despairing mother’s eye. The bureau appeared the favorite receptacle for almost all articles. A colossal brush, instead of properly supporting the rightful partner of its joys and sorrows, made desperate love to an ink‐stand, a red bow, and a bottle of cologne, whose stopple had stepped over the way to consult an oracle of a watch about the probable comfort of the poor, deserted comb that patiently reposed on a prickly pin‐cushion. The oracle, unwound and unmoved, refused utterance, and sullenly stared at a crowd of rings, bracelets, belts, reticules, hair‐pins, false curls, and handkerchiefs indiscriminately gathered together. They were not interested in the watch, but bemoaned the sad fate of a coquettish gray hat with a scarlet plume, one string of which had caught in a tightly‐shut drawer, and cruelly hung its fair possessor. A grand civil war had transpired in other parts of the room; the washstand implements were horribly mutilated and dashed about; the four shoes and stockings had taken leave of each other, and angrily stationed themselves in different corners; and, last, a huge trunk had brutally emptied itself of its contents, that now lay limp and helpless, here, there, everywhere.

Had not Mrs. Waring been well accustomed to such a display, it is possible she might have been dismayed; but as nothing is equal to habit, she preserved her equanimity, and, approaching the nearest bed, her attention was at once arrested by a tiny pair of beads which she perceived dangling from Kathleen’s wrist. With a dark frown she retreated to the door, and cried:

“Girls! girls! it is time to get up. You have slept long enough even for weary travellers, and your patient has been waiting an hour to see the young ladies before taking leave. Do hurry and come at once to the parlor.”

“Yes, mamma, we will,” answered two very lazy voices.

“Yes, my dears, I do not doubt it,” said Mrs. Waring; “but let me see you well out of those two comfortable beds, as you cannot be trusted in my absence.”

In the midst of the commotion which followed Mrs. Waring escaped, and, slowly walking along the hall, murmured:

“Is it possible Kathleen still retains those absurd convent notions, and am I ever to regret having sent her to Mt. de C——? Surely, in three years she must have forgotten those ridiculous impressions; yet what does that rosary mean, and why should she sleep with it encircling her arm? Well, it will only make matters worse to discuss them, and, until I am certain what the poor child intends, I shall say nothing.”

By this time the drawing‐room was reached, and, entering, Mrs. Waring found her husband and their guest in hot dispute as to the best manner of sight‐seeing in Rome. Mr. Waring expressed abhorrence of guide‐books and his resolution never to use them. The stranger intimated such a resolve rash. Mr. Waring inquired why. The young man said guide‐books being absolutely essential in a place so filled with objects of interest as Rome, he was willing to wager Mr. Waring would have three or four in his possession by the end of the week. Mr. Waring indignantly repudiated this idea, and the argument might have continued indefinitely had not the girls made an opportune appearance. In their wake came a delicious breakfast, after partaking of which the young man rose to depart.

“I cannot,” said he, “pretend to thank you for such kindness to a stranger, for words are inadequate to express my gratitude. My obligations will be increased tenfold if you only permit me to continue an acquaintance so happily begun.”

“My dear fellow,” cried Mr. Waring, “don’t mention gratitude; and as for an acquaintance happily begun, if you choose to consider as such one brought on by lightning, we are at your disposal, and nothing will delight us more than receiving you as our friend. But friends should know what to call one another, and, though my name is Alexander Waring, yours is still a dead secret.”

“A thousand pardons!” exclaimed the stranger. “My negligence is truly shocking; but it is Mr. and Mrs. Waring, with their lovely daughters, who have charmed me into a forgetfulness of Howard Lee, and it is they who must forgive him.”

Of the two lovely daughters, Kathleen pouted bewitchingly at the foregoing speech, while Agathe gracefully inclined her head. The gentlemen shook hands most heartily, and Mrs. Waring cordially invited Mr. Lee to return often, assuring him of a sincere welcome. Thus, amidst compliments and acknowledgments on both sides, Howard Lee took leave of his friends, promising to see them very soon again.

It is scarcely necessary to add that the promise was observed, and during the next month or two he was almost constantly one of the gay little party which roved among the grand old ruins of Rome, wandered about its art‐ galleries and into its temples and churches, always consulting guide‐books with a faith in, and a dependence on them that undoubtedly made Mr. Lee winner of his wager. It is very remarkable what wonderful things can transpire in a little while, though we are not certain whether you consider it remarkable that Mr. Lee soon manifested extraordinary interest in the movements of Miss Kathleen. If that young person chose to stare an old statue out of countenance, she would not be long without the assistance of another pair of eyes that had suddenly remembered some never‐before‐known merit about the image, and were instantly intent on it. If Kathleen thought proper to sit among the ruins, he, completely overcome by fatigue, would rest by her side. We are much afraid this was not all that happened; for there were certainly some very ardent glances sent from his eyes to her sparkling black ones, that softened and glowed as they drank in the language of the blue ones. And at every new approach of the tall, manly figure didn’t the gray hat with the scarlet plume droop lower and lower; didn’t the round, dimpled cheeks beneath rival the feather in color; didn’t the little hands clasp each other tightly, that their trembling might not make too bold a confession of her happy agitation? You cannot be surprised that, standing together by the beautiful Trevi fountain one moonlight night, to her was told in eloquent tones the old, old story which every woman hears once in her life, be she ever so poor, so ugly, so disagreeable. But this woman was lovely, bewitching; and the tale seemed exquisite harmony when softly, beseechingly it fell upon such ears. Long after the low voice had ceased telling what was music to her soul Kathleen stood silent. The water dashed from and over rocks in playful sport, defying the peaceful glance of the moon, which bade it be quiet. The church‐bells rang out the hour of ten, and from the distance sounded Agathe’s laugh, with the accompanying expostulation from several ladies and gentlemen who were begging her to sing. At last clear and full to these lovers came the sweet old song, “Kathleen Mavourneen.” Howard waited till the music died away, then whispered,

“Why art thou silent, Thou voice of my heart? Oh! why art thou silent, Kathleen Mavourneen?”

“Oh! spare me, spare me,” cried Kathleen. “I cannot, cannot answer! If you but knew!”

“And do I not know you are what I love with all my heart, what I long to call my own? Have you not encouraged me? allowed me to believe you cared for me?”

“Oh! I never meant it. I would not have had you know that I cared for you. Have pity on me, Mr. Lee, and do not ask why! I can give no answer to your kind words. Believe me that it is best as it is.”

“Miss Waring, your friends are coming—will interrupt us in one minute; can you give me no hope? Is there nothing you will say to comfort my yearning heart?”

“All I can say is, Wait; in a little while you will cease to wish for my affection when you have learned what it is essential you should know before I can give an answer to your question.”

“Nothing can change my desire,” pleaded Howard, gazing upon the tear‐laden eyelashes and trembling lips. “Only tell me now what you think I must know, and then see if it makes the slightest difference.”

“No, Mr. Howard,” said Kathleen, regaining composure, “wait a few days; then I will either send for you or write what I have to communicate. With you will rest the decision. Remember always that I have cared for you, and that now it is a sad good‐night I wish you, knowing it may be my last.”

Here they were joined by their party, and Kathleen flying to the protection of her mother’s arm, Mr. Lee took his place by Agathe’s side, and thus they returned home. Poor Kathleen passed a miserable night, and awoke next morning with head aching so badly as to prevent her appearance at breakfast. Towards noon she improved, and by three o’clock presented herself in the drawing‐room, where were her mother and sister. Telling them she was going out for a little fresh air, and to feel no uneasiness if she did not immediately return, she left the house, ran across the piazza, up the steps, and stood in front of the Trinità di Monte. Pausing a minute, “This is the 8th of December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, so certainly there must be Benediction here this afternoon, as they tell me the church belongs to the Ladies of the Sacred Heart. I’ll try, anyhow.”

The little portress, in her very ugly cap, informed la signorina, “Yes, benediction would be given in one hour from that time. Would she walk into the chapel now and wait, or would she prefer going away to return?” La signorina would wait; so she was shown into the church, and there left to her own reflections, which were one long struggle with feelings so contrary that to make them agree was impossible. The poor child had, ever since leaving the convent of Mt. de C——, been praying for courage to avow a faith which she knew would anger her father, distress that darling mother, and call forth words of bitter ridicule from Agathe. Now to these considerations was added the fear of losing Howard Lee’s affection.

“Ah! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she cried, “help me in this my agony. Send down upon me your blessing, that I may be strengthened in the path which has become so difficult to my faltering feet! Endow my heart with that courage I once boasted I would ask for when its need should be discovered. O my Father in heaven! look upon thy child with pity, and heed her earnest supplication.”

For an entire hour she wavered between the earthly devotion that awaited but a word to be hers, and the higher Love, that requires many crosses and sacrifices before it recompenses the heart. It will never desert, never wound. The sun sank lower in the heavens, and the light in the chapel took a soft, mysterious tone that lent supernatural quiet and stillness to the place, greatly soothing Kathleen’s restless mind. Her head leaning on the railing in front of her, her lips moving in unconscious prayer, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that was only disturbed when over her senses stole the faint sound of music, gradually, gradually unclosing those delighted eyes shining with blissful wonder, as she supposed it all must have been a dream, from which she waked to find herself safe in the dear old convent. Surely, there was the beautiful altar, the Blessed Sacrament exposed, many candles burning amid vases of exquisite flowers, the venerable priest kneeling at the altar’s foot; above all, the convent girls, in blue uniforms and white veils, entering two by two, making their genuflections, and standing in their places till all were ready, when tap! from the Sisters’ bench, and down they sat. From the organ‐loft the sweet litany she knew so well came pouring into her ears just as of yore; as of yore the priest, the Sisters, and convent girls sang in familiar tones:

“Mater Christi, Mater divinæ gratiæ, Mater purissima.”

With happy heart and tearful eyes she sang out the Ora pro nobis, while many looked to see from whence came the joyful notes, so splendidly swelling their chorus. Through the litany, the O Salutaris! and the Tantum Ergo her strong, young voice was clear and sweet, and none guessed that in the girl’s heart a fearful struggle had taken place, and that there the good Lord had come and left a gift which would never decay, never be worthless, but ever bright and glorious. A last prayer for strength was uttered during Benediction, and Kathleen felt half her difficulties were overcome when she stood up at the Laudate Dominum.

That night she confessed to her parents her intention of becoming a Catholic, and besought their permission to take the step. Mr. Waring was furious at first, and vowed she shouldn’t—not if he knew himself; but three days’ fussing and fuming brought him to the conclusion she might do as she chose, “but, for heaven’s sake, never expect him to love her as much again,” and enforced his resolution by hugging and kissing her on the spot. Mrs. Waring was very sad at the aspect of affairs, but had so long anticipated it as to be little surprised. Deeming a refusal of her sanction worse than useless, she also said her daughter might do as she pleased. Only Agathe was inexorable; for, having begun by condemning her sister’s course, she considered it incompatible with firmness ever to change.

“How you can have allowed yourself to be so wound about the little fingers of those priests and nuns I can’t divine,” she cried. “It indicates such contemptible weakness to turn from the religion in which you were born to that of a Papist—above all things, a Papist! Were I to live a hundred years, I could not do it.”

“No, my poor sister,” thought Kathleen; “with all your character, I fear you have not the daring courage required to combat the distress of parents, the anger of friends, the loss of a beloved object. No; it is a precious gift of God, and must be prayed for.”

Next Kathleen wrote to Mr. Lee, informing him of all that had taken place, of her intention to become a member of the Catholic Church in a few weeks, and renewed her request that he would forgive the pain she had caused him in remembering the grief she herself endured; with many wishes for his future prosperity, she remained his true friend. No answer came to this at all, and the Warings saw nothing more of Howard Lee. Delicacy prevented their asking an explanation from Kathleen, and, as she proffered none, his name was never mentioned among them.

The days passed on, and Kathleen, being at last considered sufficiently instructed, had prevailed on the Sisters of Trinità di Monte to allow her retreat to be made with them, and her baptism and first communion to take place in their church. Christmas was the time appointed for the consummation of Kathleen’s desire. The chapel had been beautifully decorated by the nuns and girls; and a little Bethlehem, removed some slight distance from the altar, was the emblem of the glorious feast. A new Mass had been learned, and, while the organ pealed forth its first tones, the white‐robed girls filed in, followed by Mr. and Mrs. Waring and Agathe, who, by dint of persuasion, had been induced to appear on the occasion. Last entered Kathleen, and knelt in front of the altar. She was faint and trembling, but did not lose a syllable of the words that made her a Christian, a Catholic, and soldier of heaven. She was baptized, of course, before the celebration of Mass, and during it received for the first time the Holy Communion. Mr. Waring seemed much moved, his wife cried outright, and Agathe’s flushed face and shining eyes belied the unconcern she tried so hard to assume.

No one noticed the tall, dark figure standing in the furthest corner of the church, nor saw the gaze riveted upon the fair, sweet girl at the altar. As everything here must have an end, so did the music, the lights, all that had brightened the chapel. The dark figure had hurried away, the girls in white had disappeared, the Warings were gone; only the little Babe of Bethlehem still lay in the manger, and one lamp shed its faint lustre in honor of that Blessed Sacrament which is for you, for me, for all who but seek it.

On the evening of the same day Kathleen was playing soft chords on the piano, and indulging in waking dreams, when she was greatly disturbed by the entrance of a man bearing in his arms a huge package of something very delicate, to judge from the care with which said package was deposited on the table. Before Kathleen could frame a question concerning the matter the man was gone. Approaching the very remarkable bundle, she perceived a card suspended bearing these words:

“A Christmas gift for Miss K. Waring.”

Still wondering, she gently detached the paper cover, and there, delighting her eyes, was a tiny Christmas‐tree literally filled with bon‐ bons, colored candles, and children’s toys, while two or three small papers concealed some more valuable presents no doubt. In perfect amazement she ran to the door and called father, mother, and sister, who, hastening to the room, uttered exclamations of pleasure at the sight. The candles were instantly lighted, and the tree admired from every point, though a thorough mystification ensued as to the donor. Each surmise only seemed to make the matter worse; so they instituted a search among the separate parcels. The first opened displayed a gold locket with the initials A. W. in pinheads of pearls; the next contained a handsome silver tobacco‐box for Mr. Waring; the next, a musical work‐box with Mrs. Waring’s name; yet still there was nothing for Kathleen. More astonished than ever, they examined once again; and right on the very top of the tree, buried deep in its branches, was a round pasteboard box about the size of a lady’s watch. Being opened, it disclosed a knot of hard‐twisted note‐paper, which Kathleen unwrapped and unfolded until she came upon an old, worn medal of the Immaculate Conception, from which hung a blue ribbon. As the paper in her hand had something written on it, she made haste to read, and here is the secret:

“Will my dear one take for a Christmas gift the little medal herein enclosed, which was put around my neck by my mother when I made my first communion eighteen years ago? I have kept away from you, that you might have a pleasant surprise for this Christmas day, though I went to communion for you this morning, and also saw the triumph of your brave spirit in the Church of the Trinità di Monte. If, when I come to you this evening, my little medal is about your neck, I shall know you accept me as your devoted HOWARD LEE.”

Kathleen stood looking at the words through gathering tears, and was not conscious of the quiet withdrawal of her parents and sister until the door opened gently to admit Howard, who, glancing quickly at the blue ribbon on her bosom, advanced eagerly, and, bending low, exultantly murmured:

“Why art thou silent, Thou voice of my heart? Oh! why art thou silent, Kathleen Mavourneen?”

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New Publications

THOMAS GRANT, FIRST BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK. By Grace Ramsay. With two portraits. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The late Bishop Grant was remarkable for learning, ability, and sanctity. The events of his life, both before and after the period of his ordination, are interesting. As rector of the English College in Rome, and as bishop, his administration was successful and filled with great services to the Catholic Church in England, particularly in respect to the re‐establishment of the regular hierarchy. The story of his life is told in a lively and pleasing manner, and the publisher has issued the volume in a style which makes it attractive, though somewhat costly. The author, whose nom de plume is Grace Ramsay, is one of the best of our English Catholic writers. We have been indebted to her graceful pen for some of the most agreeable articles in our magazine, and we are pleased to learn that some remarks in THE CATHOLIC WORLD on the character of the late illustrious Bishop of Southwark first suggested to her the idea of writing his biography.

BLESSED MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE. A brief account of her life. To which are added a selection from her sayings and the Decree of her Beatification. By the Rev. Charles B. Garside, M.A. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This tiny and pretty little book costs only fifty cents. We make its small size and price thus prominent, in order to encourage those who have not money or time to bestow on large books to buy this one and to help its circulation. It contains the substance of the larger biographies of a saint who has done one of the most wonderful works of modern times, and has become justly the object of an extraordinary devotion among the faithful.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart of our Lord has become the great devotion of our day, to the incalculable benefit of the church and the promotion of the most solid piety among the faithful. Pius IX. has constituted himself the Superior‐General of the Congregation of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, and has expressed to several of its members his desire to consecrate the universal church to the Adorable Heart of our Lord, if he is asked to do it. We trust that the petition to the Holy See will not long be delayed, and that it will be made in such a way as to show most conclusively how ardent is the sympathy of the members of the church with their august head in his pious sentiments. It is most natural that all who love this devotion should desire to know something of the favored recluse of Paray‐le‐Monial who was chosen by our Lord as the medium of his revelation, making known his will that it should be universally promulgated and cherished. There can be no doubt of the real, supernatural, and divine character of the extraordinary graces conferred upon her for this intention. The Sovereign Pontiff, in his Decree of Beatification, declares that “whilst she devoted herself day and night to continuous prayer, being often rapt in ecstasy, the gifts of divine grace were most plenteously showered upon her” (p. 89). Again, that “it was now, as she was praying before the august Sacrament of the Eucharist, that Christ our Lord intimated to her that it would be most pleasing to him if the worship of his most Sacred Heart, burning with love for mankind, were established, and that he wished the charge of this to be consigned to her” (p. 90). When the Pope speaks in this manner, and the most learned and holy bishops, theologians, and other sound and judicious Catholic writers everywhere re‐echo, amplify, and confirm by solid reasoning and evidence the calm and cautious statements of the supreme authority, hesitation, criticism, and doubt are out of place. Infidels and heretics may scoff; we expect them to do it. But devout Catholics do not need to wait for a positive command under pain of sin in order to believe readily and joyously; and to let their hearts take fire with the devotion that burns everywhere among the faithful, kindled by a spark from heaven which fell into a virgin bosom, and has been communicated from her, under the fanning of the wings of the divine Dove, until it has enkindled the whole world. We trust the time may soon come when the canonization of the Blessed Margaret Mary will give to the whole church the privilege of celebrating Mass in her honor, and make her day a universal feast.

In the meantime, we welcome and most earnestly recommend the little book of F. Garside, and wish for it the widest possible circulation.

THE SPIRITUAL CONFLICT AND CONQUEST. By Dom J. Castaniza, O. S. B. Edited with Preface and Notes by Canon Vaughan, Monk of the English Benedictine Congregation. Reprinted from the Old‐English translation of 1652. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Vast numbers of Catholics have read the treatise which in English has been known by the title of The Spiritual Combat, and has been widely circulated in many other languages besides the Italian, from which the English translation was made. It has been always attributed to F. Scupoli, a Theatine, who in reality only translated and adapted it, with alterations and additions, from the Spanish of Dom Castaniza, a Benedictine who lived at the same time with S. Teresa. In this altered form it has been generally esteemed as second only to the Imitation of Christ, which, by the bye, has lately been conclusively proved not to be the work of Thomas à Kempis, Gerson, or any other writer to whom its authorship has been ascribed. The complete work of Dom Castaniza, which was translated into English in 1652, is now once more brought to light, and republished in the most perfect manner, with a preface and notes, increasing its value very considerably, by a member of the remarkable Vaughan family, a brother, we presume, of our illustrious and highly‐ honored friend, the Bishop of Salford. We are disposed to regard this treatise in its present complete form as decidedly the best spiritual guide in the English language for the great majority of devout Catholics. This is very high praise, but it is, in our opinion, not exaggerated. Let our readers examine for themselves, and we are inclined to think they will find our judgment correct.

We ought to say that even now, as it stands, a considerable portion of the first part of the book is made up of Scupoli’s additions. In the main, we have no fault to find with the translation. We like that old‐fashioned, terse, strong English which is found in Old English writers. But it is sometimes rude and even coarse, and in the present work there are a few passages which are revolting to the more correct modern taste, and which therefore become really irreverent.

The Month has a very severe, though, as is always the case in that periodical, a courteous and polite, critique on the preface and notes of Canon Vaughan. It accuses him of boasting too much of his order, and of “girding” at other people. We have looked through the book with this criticism in our hand, and we must say that we find it overstrained. We cannot see any evidence that Canon Vaughan is disposed to undervalue other orders different from his own, or that his remarks upon methods of direction used in other societies are intended to censure anything except indiscretion and exclusiveness in their application.

GRAPES AND THORNS. By M. A. T., Author of The House of Yorke. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.

Another story from the pen of the author of The House of Yorke. Turning as the interest of the tale does on the discovery of a criminal in whose stead an innocent man is imprisoned and actually condemned, it is yet so skilfully conducted that none of the disgusting realistic details of what is known as the sensational school are brought in to mar the work. It really is a case of touching pitch, and yet not being, in a literary sense, defiled. The circumstantial evidence on which the supposed murderer is condemned is very well managed, and, until the facts are thrust upon the reader, there is no chance of his discovering the real criminal. This is a very great attainment in novel‐writing, and, in this day of hackneyed “situations,” one very seldom reached. It is difficult nowadays to take up any book, especially one referring to such events as are treated in Grapes and Thorns, without at once seeing through the conventional skeleton of the story, and picking out the main points in it beforehand. As to style, we can only say of this book what all the literary world said of The House of Yorke—that it alone would recommend even the flimsiest web of story. The author has, in addition to this rare charm of style, a faculty, so far as we know peculiar to herself among current novelists, of investing with poetical grace the most commonplace things of every‐day life, even such hopelessly prosaic subjects as the engine and engine‐ driver of a night‐train, and, worse still, a grocer’s shop and a palette full of syrups! The descriptions of Rome are a feature of the book, but so are the delineations of New England scenery, in snow‐storm and autumn glories as well as in its summer dress of fresh greenery and moistness, which is so delicately sketched in the picture of the Pond farm, the water‐lilies, and the strong, beautiful young boat‐woman.

But to come to the chief point, the characters; for of the story itself we say nothing, hoping that every reader of this notice has either read the book or will immediately do so. Annette is unquestionably the only heroine of the tale, although in the beginning one may be induced to consider the beautiful, conscientious, high‐principled Honora Pembroke as entitled to that place of honor.

Mrs. Gerald is another well‐drawn female character in the story. The most touching thought in the whole story is contained in her gentle words after she has found her son’s footsteps on the fresh mould of the violet‐bed under her window: “I mean to sow little pink quill daisies in those two foot‐prints.... When they come back, the tracks will be green.” Anita, the little convent‐flower, is a very beautiful conception; she is like one of the ethereal angels of Fra Angelico, not a common mortal. Mrs. Ferrier is the very reverse, but her generous championship of Max Schöninger goes far to redeem the vulgarity that shocks one in the early part of the book, where she constitutes herself spy over Lawrence’s actions, and lectures him to the verge of insanity.

We have now mentioned the name of the hero of the story, Schöninger, the Jewish musician, on whom falls the false accusation of murder. His character is all but faultless, the only exceptions, perhaps, being his rather uncontrolled and fierce burst of joy when released from his seven months’ imprisonment, and his general attitude towards F. Chevreuse. The latter is more excusable than the former; but if the hero of a book were faultless, he would be unnatural as a man. Schöninger is a wonderful conception; so self‐reliant, self‐contained, and yet not harsh, not repulsive even, in his defiance. The opinion of the world is nothing to him; he has his own standard of right and wrong, and he lives up to it; he would think martyrdom a trifle, if endured for the truth; he sees straight to the core of things, and will be as uncompromising a Christian after his conversion as he was an earnest Jew before it. We think, however, that the author has made a mistake in making him a Reformed Jew. Doubtless it was meant to enable him to parade the superior spirituality which was the only form of religion possible for such a man; but the Reformed Jews are no nearer to a high spiritual standard, as contrasted with the orthodox Jews, than the Lutheran or Calvinist sects are as contrasted with the true Church. They are mere secessionists from the old faith, and, like all branches divided from the parent trunk, are more or less withering into atheism and infidelity. An orthodox Jew is much more likely to be converted to Catholicity than a Reformed Jew.

F. Chevreuse is a very beautiful character, especially after the scene in Lawrence’s room, where the priest and his penitent are alone with their solemn secret, and face to face with God. Some one once said of The House of Yorke that there was an undefinable “something” wanting in the character of the priest of that story, and that doubtless it was not given to any one to be able to delineate truly a perfect priest. Perhaps it is so, for it is most difficult to portray a life in which the supernatural mingles with and effaces the natural to such an extent as it does in the life of a true priest; but in F. Chevreuse the author has gone as near to the ideal as any one could well go. Lawrence Gerald is a very difficult character to analyze—a peculiar product of American civilization (this assertion would be very hard to prove categorically, but every one who has read the book will understand what we mean); a man for whom our feelings change, during the progress of the tale, to a degree that almost gives him at the last the moral pre‐eminence which at the beginning would have been difficult to award even to saintly F. Chevreuse. Truly, in his case, as he himself says, “Nothing but utter ruin could have brought him to his senses.” There are souls whose salvation God works in this way, and Lawrence’s penance certainly reads like some biography of a mediæval sinner gradually turning into the life of a grand saint. The human element is not absent, either, in this picture, of a most unusual expiation, and no scene in the book will be read with more emotion than that of the artist sketching the sleeping Lawrence, and adding, at the eager suggestion of the “woman under the arch,” the “cluster of yellow flowers which touched his head in the form of a crown.” We venture to say that nothing short of the influence of a sojourn at Rome and the personal contact with a life of exuberant, all‐pervading Catholicity, such as that of the Italians, could have suggested such a remarkable ending to Lawrence’s career. Of the subordinate characters of Grapes and Thorns—John, the shrewd, hard, honest footman; Jane, the faithful but exasperating housekeeper of F. Chevreuse; Dr. Porson, the Crichton cynic and man of the world; F. O’Donovan, the fast friend at need of his brother‐priest; Mother Chevreuse, the bright, tender, brave woman, of whom we get but a glimpse; Sister Cecilia, a counterpart of Honora—we can only say that they show the varied acquaintance of the author with many and widely different types of mankind. The pettiness and prejudice of “liberal” Crichton are well defined in the hue‐and‐cry which soon follows Schöninger’s arrest, and the equally intemperate revulsion in his favor when he is proved innocent. It is remarkable that no one but F. Chevreuse and Mrs. Ferrier believed firmly in his innocence while circumstances all pointed so suspiciously to him as the murderer, except, of course, those who already knew the miserable secret.

In spite of the great merits of this story, it has, nevertheless, like The House of Yorke, one great defect which mars its excellence, not perhaps as a work of art, but as a specimen of the Catholic ideal in art. Annette, the heroine, acts foolishly, unreasonably, and against the sense of personal dignity and worth which the perfect Christian maiden must cherish, as next to her faith and honor, in marrying the unhappy Lawrence Gerald. This shows that the author’s ideal woman is not the highest type of her sex, and that she fails to appreciate the lofty, Christian idea of conjugal love and of marriage. Honora Pembroke ought to have been the heroine, and although she has not been fortunate enough to win the sympathy of critics and readers generally, especially of the fair sex, we are glad to see that the author has given us at least one specimen of a woman who is governed by conscience and reason, and not by sentiment.

Another fault, against which we beg leave here to caution all our writers of light articles and stories for the magazine, is the introduction of the writer’s private and personal opinions on matters connected with religion and the church. We request, once for all, that such matters may be left to the editor of the magazine and those whom he judges competent to treat of them expressly.

AN ESSAY CONTRIBUTING TO A PHILOSOPHY OF LITERATURE. By B. A. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger. 1874.

The aim of this essay is to give such principles as are calculated to counteract the false and baneful ideas proposed in our text‐books on English literature. The author, one of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who modestly conceals his name, is a worthy confrère of Gerald Griffin. Evidently, his reading is extensive, his taste fine and accurate, and his mind truly philosophical. The unassuming book he has put forth is one which teachers in the department of English literature and intelligent students of the same will find to be of great service.

AMELIA; OR, THE TRIUMPH OF PIETY. Translated from the French. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham & Son. 1874.

This is a story quite romantic and sensational in its character, but withal very pious, and showing very dramatically high virtue in contrast with great wickedness, and triumphing over it. In one part of it Amelia makes a promise which a Catholic could not make without grievous sin. She promises, namely, her supposed parents, who were Protestants, that if they will listen to a discussion between a priest and a minister, she will embrace their religion, provided they declare their conviction that the minister has the best of it. The use of the word “Catholicism” to express the Catholic religion, though sometimes allowable, is awkward and unsuitable as it occurs in the story. Critically speaking, this story is not much, but it may amuse children, who are generally not very critical if there are plenty of remarkable incidents to excite their emotions. There are hosts of stories like this in the French language, many of which are much better. It is a pity that more care and taste are not sometimes shown in selecting among them for translation.

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRES, HISTORICAL PERIODS. By Henry William Wilberforce. Preceded by a Memoir of the Author by J. H. Newman, D.D. With a portrait. London: Henry S. King & Co. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The essays contained in this volume are reprints of articles from the Dublin Review. The memoir, by the dear friend of the author, Dr. Newman, though brief, is a complete little biography of a justly distinguished and most estimable man, who honored the illustrious name of Wilberforce by his sacrifices, his virtues, and his valuable literary labors.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. A DRAMATIC POEM. By Aubrey de Vere, Author of “Legends of S. Patrick.” London: Henry S. King & Co. 1874. (New York: For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.).

A dramatic poem by Aubrey de Vere could not be other than noble in theme and thoughtful and delicate in execution. Almost alone among the poets of the day, not many of whom equal, and not one of whom surpasses, him in the higher qualities of insight and subtle imagination, he seems never to have felt the debasing touch of that materialism which in one department of letters seeks to elevate science at the expense of faith, and in another to degrade poetry to be the beautiful but shameless minister to all that is lowest in man’s nature. Religion, which he has served so faithfully, has rewarded his devotion by lifting him into a clearer atmosphere than can be breathed by men devoid of faith, and has made him worthy to be ranked with those true poets who sing not alone for the busy, itching ears of their contemporaries, but for a wider, because a more enduring, audience.

Nevertheless, Mr. de Vere’s lyric poetry, subtle and delicate as it is, could hardly, we should say, have prepared his readers for the power shown in his conception and delineation of the hero of his drama, Alexander, the greatest of the great conquerors whom the world has seen. His poem is absolutely simple in aim and in detail, and gains interest, if not solely, yet almost solely, from the manner in which he has strongly though briefly expressed his idea of what a great conqueror, a man with aims truly imperial, swayed by no mean passion, and filled with the idea of welding into one all peoples, and informing them by the highest purely human intelligence, should be. What literal truth there is in the picture—how nearly the Alexander of the play resembles him who died at thirty‐three, the master of half the world—is not a question of any special interest. It is enough that Mr. de Vere’s hero is a noble and intrinsically true conception, and a fit measure by which to estimate the true proportions of those lesser men whom the world once in an age sees filled with the lust of empire, but void of the skill and quick insight which should make them avoid its perils. In his play, indeed, Mr. de Vere, who follows the tradition of Josephus, and makes Alexander visit once the temple at Jerusalem, and pay to its high‐priest such reverence as he had never shown to mortal man, makes him listen there to the warning that his power must have its “term and limit,” and that he who would indeed wear the world’s crown “should be the Prince of Peace.” And yet the errors and mistakes by which great men seem blindly to throw away at last the fruits of their long toil seem to the on‐looker as if they might have been so easily avoided that it is always necessary to remind one’s self how little is truly in the power of man, and how surely God controls even the crimes and follies of those who seem to rule the world.

Aside, however, from the fine scenes in which Mr. de Vere brings out his idea of his hero, the play has many subsidiary beauties of a different kind.

What poet but himself could have written the two lovely scenes between Hephestion and Arsinoë, and made his readers see so well the love which either felt, but of whose return neither was aware? The minor characters, indeed, are drawn throughout with the hand of a master who never wastes a stroke, and who has the art of showing his readers what he wills by lifting them and not by lowering himself. Who has painted in our day a lovelier picture than that in which Hephestion shows us Arsinoë’s mother?

“Who knew your mother Till death shall reverence woman’s race! In her, Though doubly‐dower’d, a mother and a queen, There lived a soft, perpetual maidenhood, An inexperienced trust, timid, yet frank, Shy, yet through guilelessness forgetting shyness. She seem’d a flower‐like creature come to fruit; She moved among her babes an elder sister; Then, wakened by an infant cry or laugh, Full motherhood returned.”

Some qualities of Mr. de Vere’s work, which are more generally known than the virile force displayed in his grasp of the characters of his play, are shown at their best in the two or three lyrics which occur in it. Let us end an inadequate notice, which may send our readers to the poem itself, by quoting his exquisite paraphrase of one of the most beautiful of the Psalms:

“We sate beside the Babylonian river: Within the conqueror’s bound, weeping we sate; We hung our harps upon the trees that quiver Above the rushing waters desolate.

“A song they claimed—the men our tasks who meted— ‘A song of Sion sing us, exile band!’ For song they sued, in pride around us seated; How can we sing it in the stranger’s land?

“If I forget thee, Salem, in thy sadness, May this right hand forget the harper’s art! If I forget thee, Salem, in my gladness, My tongue dry up, and wither, like my heart!

“Daughter of Babylon, with misery wasted, Blest shall he be, the man who hears thy moans; Who gives thee back the cup that we have tasted; Who lifts thy babes, and hurls them on the stones!”

ADELINE DE CHAZAL; OR, FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD AFTER LEAVING SCHOOL. Translated from the French by a Sister of S. Joseph. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1874.

A great number of young graduates are just now beginning this “first experience,” after receiving their medals, crowns, and premiums, and listening to the valedictories with which good‐by is said to academic halls and groves. Miss Adeline de Chazal’s experience, and her remarks upon the same, will probably come home to this class of young ladies with more interest than to any other set of readers. They will find it edifying and instructive, and, if they act upon the advice it contains, they will certainly take a safe course. The list of books for reading is good, so far as it goes, but might receive a considerable increase.

THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS. By the Rev. C. B. Garside. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The Helpers of the Holy Souls are a religious congregation of women in France, whose special devotion is to aid the souls of the faithful departed in purgatory by their prayers, good works, and other suffrages. F. Garside gives an account of their foundress and a history of their institution, with suitable reflections on the great utility of the special object which they have undertaken to promote.

ROSEMARY. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton.

SHORT STORIES. By the same.

THE NEPTUNE OUTWARD BOUND. By Winnie. New York: P. O’Shea. 1874.

The first two of these pretty books for children are reprints from the English editions already noticed in this magazine; the third is a lively, wholesome story imitating Oliver Optic.

[Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected.]

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

FOOTNOTES

1 “Essentialis ratio substantiæ ut sic non consistit in esse per se, quatenus per hæc verba describitur ipsum subsistere in actu, sed in hoc quod habeat talem essentiam, cui debeatur subsistentia, seu quæ ex se sit sufficiens principium illius.”—Suarez, Metaph. Disp. 34, sect. 8, n. 11.

2 Τὸ ἐν ἑατῷ ὃν, καὶ μὴ ἐν ἑτέρῳ ἔχον τὴν ὔωαρξιν.—Dialect., c. 4.

3 Ἐπὶ πάντων τῶν ὄντων, τὸ ἐν ἑαυτῷ, καὶ μὴ ἐν ἑτέρῳ ἔχον τὸ εἶναι, οὐσία ἐστί.—Dialect., c. 4.

4 Ὀυσία ἐστι πᾶν ὄτιπερ αὐθυπόστατόν ἐστὶ, καὶ μὴ ἐν ἑτέρῳ ἔχει τὸ εἶναι.—Dialect., c. 39.

5 “Quod in suo maneat, nec ope subsistat aliena (Deus), appellatur substantia.”—De Incarn., c. 10.

6 This absence is a real negation—a negation of imperfection, so long as we speak of God, who cannot admit of an inferior nature being inserted in the plenitude of his reality; but a negation of further perfection when we speak of created things, which are potential, and can be raised supernaturally above their natural condition.

7 Contra Gent., lib. 1, c. 25.

8 “Substantia non addit supra ens aliquam differentiam, quæ significet aliquam naturam superadditam enti: sed nomine substantiæ exprimitur specialis modus essendi” (De Verit., q. 1, a. 1). Hence this special mode does not constitute the nature or essence of the thing itself, and for this reason it is not mentioned in its definition, as S. Thomas says, Quodlib. 9, q. 3.

9 “Prima substantia est quædam natura sensibilis, quæ nec de subjecto dicitur, nec in subjecto aliquo est.”—In Logic. Arist., c. 5, De Substantia.

10 “Non est de essentia eius subsistentia, sed modus substantiæ.”—In 3 part, q. 77, a. 1.

11 Lib. xi. c. 14.

12 Vol. 2, q. 1, de accident.

13 “In substantiæ rationem redeuntes, tria quoad ipsam considerare possumus: primum, quod existat, et quidem in se; alterum, quod tali potius quam alia realitate constat, seu essentia, ex qua determinatæ vires operandi dimanant; tertium, quod se possideat, sitque sui juris in existendo. Primum proprie et præcise constituit notionem substantiæ; alterum conceptum offert naturæ; postremum denique, ... ideam suppositi præbet.”—Metaph. Gen., n. 64.

14 “Ex duobus, nempe ex re prædicamenti, et ratione essendi ejus, quæ est ratio prædicamenti, constituitur ipsum prædicamentum, et diversificatur unum prædicamentum ab alio.”

15 De Verit., q. 1, a. 1.

16 “Non propter defectum alicujus quod ad perfectionem humanæ naturæ pertineat, sed propter additionem alicujus quod est supra humanam naturam, quod est unio ad divinam Personam.”—Summa Theol., p. 3, q. 4, a. 2.

17 “Persona divina sua unione impedivit, ne humana natura propriam personalitatem haberet.”—Ibid.

18 “Existere ex se solum dicit habere entitatem extra causas, seu in rerum natura; unde de se indifferens est ad modum existendi innitendo alteri ut sustentanti, et ad modum existendi per se sine aliquo sustentante.”—Metaph. Disp. 33, sect. 4, n. 24.

19 It is known that this analogy has been erroneously interpreted by some old and modern heretics, who taught that Christ’s body is in the Holy Eucharist by impanation or by consubstantiation, and not by transubstantiation. The heresy of impanation asserts that the Eternal Word in the Holy Eucharist becomes bread by assuming hypostatically the substance of bread. The heresy of consubstantiation assumes that in the Holy Eucharist the substance of Christ’s body is united with the substance of the bread, and that therefore the Eucharist contains both substances. These heresies are, of course, mere corruptions of the traditional doctrine. The first corrupts it by confounding the substantive sustentation with the personal assumption, and by substituting the latter in the place of the former. The second corrupts it by supposing that a thing substantively supported by an underlying substance continues to exist as a substance; which is against the traditional definition of substance, and against the very analogy of which it pretends to be the interpretation; for, in virtue of such an analogy, it is as impossible for a thing thus supported to be a substance as it is impossible for the human nature assumed to be a human person. Hence what logically follows from the analogy of the two mysteries is neither impanation nor consubstantiation, but real and proper transubstantiation—that is, a real substitution of one substance for another under the remaining sensible species.

20 “Subsistere dicit determinatum modum existendi per se et sine dependentia a sustentante; unde illi opponitur inesse vel inexistere; dicitque determinatum modum existendi in alio.”—Disp. Metaph. 33, sect. 4, n. 24.

21 At the consecration of a church to the Sacred Heart.

22 What, sir! you bring us all those pretty ladies! You will revolutionize our poor curate.

23 According to Gov. Dix’s report for 1874, our “evangelical” state church will have to draw the sum of $8,600,000 (eight million, six hundred thousand dollars!) out of the public treasury to erect two “evangelical” asylums, one “evangelical” hospital, and one “evangelical” non‐sectarian state reformatory! From the same report we learn that our “evangelical” system of public education cost the state for the year ending September 30, 1873, the sum of $20,355,341 (twenty million, three hundred and fifty‐five thousand, three hundred and forty‐one dollars!); and that our “evangelical” state church owns twenty‐seven millions, seventy thousand, three hundred and ten dollars’ worth of school property! Remember that Catholics pay their proportion of the taxes, and that most of the public schools are not only “evangelical” in their religion, but some even formally Methodist by the “hymns” and prayers taught in them!

24 How little publicity the “Evangelical” press have given to this letter, because it favored the Catholics!

25 One of our judges—an ex‐Methodist minister—lately in open court violated the parental right over offspring by sending a Catholic child to a Protestant establishment in spite of the respectable father’s opposition.

26 The following are the words of our State constitution in regard to religion:

“The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall for ever be allowed in this State to all mankind.”—Art. 1, sec. 3.

Now, it is known that the “free exercise” of the Catholic religion is not “free” in most of our state institutions; and in most of them there is “preference and discrimination” in favor of “Evangelical” clergymen and against the Catholic Church. The writer could prove by affidavits that in the very city of New York there is religious persecution in some of the state institutions, if the general scope of his remarks permitted him to go into many details. Where is the Catholic priest living near a state institution but knows that there is “discrimination” made against him?

27 Will Gov. Dix, therefore, tell us by what right of “eminent domain” Victor Emanuel robbed the Pope and confiscated the church property? Does Gov. Dix forget that he was one of those who approved this confiscation at the great “Italian unity” meeting?

28 S. Leonides was also a bishop. See Euseb., Hist. 6, c. 12; also S. Jerome, Catal., c. 54.

29 Catal. et Ep. ad Magn.

30 Hæret. Fab., l. 1, c. 8.

31 Stromata, 1, 1.

32 S. Jerome, Catal., c. 54.

33 Ibidem.

34 Hist. Univ. Douzième Epoque.

35 Tertullian.

36 General History of the Catholic Church, Darras. American translation, vol. i. p. 218.

37 Monks of the West, vol. ii. p. 33.

38 Hæres., 64.

39 Orig. Defens., l. 4, note p. 35.

40 Preface, Bellamy’s Translation of Origen’s Apology.

41 Ps. cxviii.

42 Preface to Vulgate.

43 Pref. ad Ephes.

44 Pref. in Pentateuch.

45 Pref. in Job.

46 Introd. in Cantica, etc., translated by Jerome from Origen.

47 Lib. 2 adv. Rufinus et passim.

48 In c. 6 Ep. ad Rom.

49 Tract. in Matt.

50 Apud Euseb., l. 6, hist. c. 19.

51 Life of S. Cecilia, pp. 9 and 10.

52 Cel., l. 3.

53 Butler’s Saints, vol. ii. p. 141.

54 Leviticus, hom. 9.

55 See Acts of the Council of Nice for proof of this line of reasoning—“Apostolic Canons.”

56 Can. de Hierarchia Ecclesiæ Con. Nicenem.

57 Apud Hieron., adv. Theophilus.

58 Apud Hieron., 2 lib. “adv. Rufinus,” et opera S. Gregory Nyssen.

59 De Principiis, lib. i. 4.

60 See Life in Butler, note vol. iii.

61 Lib. 2. adv. Rufinus.

62 Apud Hier., lib. 2. adv. Ruf. p. 217.

63 The question of Origen’s orthodoxy turns principally on the Periarchon. The violently heretical character of that book, as it now stands, contradicting the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, is the best defence of Origen. It is altogether contrary to the teaching of his undoubted works, and, if it had been acknowledged and defended by him, there would never have been any controversy at all about his orthodoxy. He would have been at once and universally condemned as the grossest of heretics.—ED. C. W.

64 Christine. Par Louis Enault.

65 Following of Christ, b. i. c. xix. v. 7.

66 Wisdom xi. 21.

67 Little girl.

68 Attribute and property mean the same in reality; but we usually call them attributes with respect to the thing absolutely considered as a being, and properties with respect to the thing considered as a principle of operation.

69 A paper read before the Xavier Union, of this city.

70 S. Thomas says (Summa Contra Gentiles, l. 4, c. xi.): “Nam viventia sunt quæ seipsa movent ad agendum; illa vero quæ non nisi exteriora movere possunt omnino sunt vita carentia.” This, however, is rather a description of a vital phenomenon than a definition of life itself. Fichte says: “Life is the tendency to individuation;” which, like most of the phrases of the German pantheists, means nothing or anything you please.

According to Richerand, “Life is a collection of phenomena which succeed each other during a limited time in an organized body”; but this applies equally to the succession of phenomena which takes place in the body after death. Herbert Spencer defines life to be “the co‐ordination of actions”; but what is anything but a co‐ ordination of acting forces, consequently of actions? This definition is as applicable to sulphuric acid as to life.

71 Kant defined truth to be the harmony of thought with thought, not of thought with things.

72 It may be well to quote the testimony of two Englishmen on this subject.

Buckle, in his History of Civilization, vol. i. page 158, says: “Thus, for instance, the miserable and impudent falsehoods which a large class of English writers formerly directed against the morals and private character of the French and—to their shame be it said—even against the chastity of Frenchwomen, tended not a little to embitter the angry feelings then existing between the two first countries of Europe: irritating the English against French vices, irritating the French against English calumnies. In the same way, there was a time when every honest Englishman firmly believed that he could beat ten Frenchmen—a class of beings whom he held in sovereign contempt, as a lean and stunted race, who drank claret instead of brandy, who lived entirely off frogs; miserable infidels, who heard Mass every Sunday, who bowed down before idols, and who even worshipped the Pope.”

“I did not know,” says John Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, “the way in which, among the ordinary English, the absence of interest in things of an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a special thing here and there, and the habit of not speaking to others, nor much even to themselves, about the things in which they do feel interest, cause both their feelings and their intellectual faculties to remain undeveloped, or to develop themselves only in some single and very limited direction, reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a kind of negative existence.”

73 The Old Faith and the New, p. 120.

74 “My name is Monaco, A rock my seat: I neither reap nor sow, And yet I eat.”

75 “O thou, whom chance or will brings to the soil, Where fair Armida doth the sceptre guide, Thou canst not fly; of arms thyself despoil, And let thy hands with iron chains be tied.”

—Fairfax’s Translation.

76 A street‐lane.

77 The above passage is really in the Prayers for the Dead. The Dominican ritual differs in some respects from the ordinary ritual; whether it includes any difference in the Prayers for the Dying I have been unable to ascertain. The above account is taken from some passages in Lacordaire’s life of the saint. Lacordaire was himself a Dominican.

78 The Baldacchino at S. Peter’s is by Bernini.

79 “I have found that Rome is the place where one can enjoy the most happiness.”

80 Ah! poor fellow. Why, he is weeping!

81 Throughout this poem the lover’s songs are in the longer metre; the lady’s in the shorter. In the 1st and 3d parts, the songs are all his; in the 2d and 4th, all hers; in the 5th and 6th, the two classes are mixed.

82 A Course of Philosophy; embracing Logic, Metaphysics, and Ethics. Designed as a text‐book for the use of schools. By Rev. A. Louage, C.S.C., Professor in the University of Notre Dame. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1873.

83 The principal work of this author is in Latin. We believe that some of his treatises are in Italian. There are similar works noticed in the Civilta Cattolica.

84 Poems. By Dante Gabriel Rosetti. London. 1871.

85 These expressions are frequently employed in philosophy, but are not applied in a uniform manner by several writers. It is known that “first matter,” or materia prima, usually means matter without form, or potency without act; and nevertheless it is not rare to find the denomination of materia prima applied to the matter which is in the bodies, and which is certainly not without a form. We cannot enter here into a discussion about this subject; but it is obvious that, if we wish to be consistent and avoid equivocation, we must carefully guard against applying to anything actual the very epithet we employ to characterize its contrary.

86 See CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1873, page 471.

87 The general definition of relation is, Id. cuius totum esse est ad aliud se habere.

88 There are philosophers who do not admit any real distinction between a thing and its mode. Thus Tongiorgi (Ontol., n. 148) says that “the mode of any being is really nothing else than the being itself considered in a different manner.” This view deserves no discussion, as it is evidently false. If the mode of a thing were the thing itself, then the sphericity of the wax would be the wax, the joy of the soul would be the soul, and every affection would be the subject of the affection. The author seems to have confounded being, the participle, with being, the substantive.

89 It is well known that the people of Southern Italy think they can, by this gesture, avert the effects of the jettatura, or evil eye, which they attribute to some persons.

90 See Naples, and then die.

91 Vine‐dressers.

92 It was a fit of rage.

93 This chapter is taken from a work published soon after the date of the occurrences narrated, as was the previous one (CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec., 1873), on account of the interest which recent events impart to it.—ED. C. W.

94 Afterwards Comte de Chambord.

95 In fact, Stultorum infinitus est numerus.

96 Force and Matter: Empirico‐philosophical studies intelligibly rendered by Dr. Louis Büchner, President of the Medical Association of Hessen‐Darmstadt, etc., etc. Edited by J. Frederick Collingwood. Second English edition. London: Trübner & Co. 1870.

97 Of these two unseen spirits, the first voice is that of Cain; the second, that of Aglauros, changed to stone for envy of her sister Herse, as told by Ovid.

98 The meaning of this bit or bridle is explained in the preliminary note.

99 Holy Madonna, assist me.

100 The Question of Anglican Orders Discussed. By E. E. Estcourt, Canon of S. Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham. 1873.

On the Decision of the Holy Office on Abyssinian Orders. By the Rev. J. Jones. Letter to the Month, November‐December, 1873.

101 See the pamphlet, A Few Remarks on the Recent Work of Canon Estcourt, and the letter, signed “English Catholic,” to the Tablet of May 3, 1873.

102 This is true of F. Kellison’s Survey of the New Religion, 1603, to whom Canon Estcourt attributes the first publication of the Nag’s Head story.

103 De Illust. Angliæ Script., p. 770. Paris, 1619.

104 See Kenrick’s Anglican Ordinations, p. 81, and Tiernay’s Dodd, append. No. xlii.

105 De Antiq. Eccles. Rit., lib. 1, pt. iii. c. viii. art. 10, § 16.

106 Estcourt, p. 62.

107 Note to Haddan’s Preface to Bramhall.

108 Haddan, Pref. to Bramhall.

109 See Pref. to Bramhall; but in Apost. Succession, p. 209, Mr. Haddan says nine out of forty‐nine.

110 Estcourt, p. 76.

111 Actes de la Captivité et de la Morte des R.R. P. P. P. Olivaint, L. Ducoudray, J. Caubert, A. Clerc, A. de Bengy, de la Compagnie de Jésus. Par le P. Armand de Ponlevoy de la même Compagnie. Paris: G. Tegui. 1871.

112 “They went forth rejoicing.”

113 P. 46.

114 “But in all things let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in tribulation, ... in prisons, in seditions, ... through honor and dishonor, through infamy and good name.”—2 Cor. vi. 4‐8.

115 “It is a great, a very great virtue to know how to lack all consolation, human as well as divine, and to endure willingly for the glory of God the exile of the heart.”—Imit., i. 2, c. ix.

116 “In many more labors, in prisons more frequently.”—2 Cor. xi. 23.

117 “And you shall be hated by all men for my name’s sake.”—Matt. x. 22.

118 From hatred of the faith, hatred of the name of Jesus Christ.

119 French proverb: From thread to needle.

120 The pleasure of doing nothing.

121 Peasants.

122 Mistress.

123 The keepers of the vineyards.

124 Peasantry.

125 Literal translation of an Italian term meaning without narrow prejudice.

126 The past is absent, but not dead.

127 See Zschokke’s History of Switzerland, page 45, for all these characters in the uprising against Austria in 1307.

128 CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1874, p. 584.

129 A lecture On Molecules, delivered before the British Association at Bradford, by Prof. Clerk‐Maxwell, F.R.S. Nature, September 25, 1873.

130 It is competent, however, to furnish the philosopher with all the materials of such a reasoning, as this very passage clearly shows.

131 Book 10, ch. 15.

132 See CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, p. 827.

133 CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, page 759.

134 See A Speculation touching Electric Conduction and the Nature of Matter.

135 Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis p. 1, n. 18.

136 CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, page 766.

137 “Long live the spouses! Long live the duke! Long live the duchess!”

138 “Beatrice upward gazed, and I on her.”

139 The appetite comes with eating.

140 Ex Chron. Mauriniac. ap. Harduin Concil., tom. 6, p. 1214.

141 Wilberforce, Holy Euchar., p. 438.

142 See M. Le Grand, Dissert. de Ord. Abyss., p. 361, translated by S. Johnson.

143 Godigno, 1 c. p. 327.

144 Assemani, Controv. Copt., p. 185.

145 Estcourt, Append. xxxiv.

146 See Le Brun, Explic. Miss. (Venice, 1770 tom. ii. p. 273).

147 Act. Sanct. Junii., tom. v. p. 128.

148 Montesquiou.

149 As unhappy as the stones.

150 My daughter.

151 Dear daughter.

152 Such forms are usually said to be produced “out of the potency of matter”; but this makes no difference. For what is only in potency to exist is still nothing: hence what is to be drawn out of the potency of matter is still nothing. Its production, however, is not a creation, because it implies a real subject.

153 This has been shown in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1874, pp. 764, 765.

154 We are not unfrequently imposed upon by the infidel phraseology and the bold assertions of modern scientists. We should remember that bold assertions in science may be as false as they are bold. The theory of the indestructibility of force is one of such assertions; and yet it is trumpeted about as a demonstrated truth. It is time for us to awake. The seed of atheism is sown everywhere under cover of positive science; but the fraud may be easily detected. Infidel theories are usually mere trash; and if we were to look into them a little more sharply, we would find that they bear no examination. It is the duty of our Catholic professors of physics and mechanics to raise their voices in earnest, and expose the fraud instead of gobbling it down. We have only pointed out some of the reasons why the new mechanical theory must be rejected; but its pretensions may be more effectually crushed by thorough scientific and mathematical analysis, as pure philosophical arguments are unfortunately above the comprehension of most modern students.

155 A paper read before the CATHOLIC UNION of Boston, Mass., June 4, 1874.

156 A Few Words on Church Choirs and Church Music.

157 Apud Bellasis, Memorial of Cherubini.

158 Cf. Bellasis, loco cit.

159 The only efficient actions of our soul are those by which the will carries its desires into execution. This is done by the will, not as the faculty of willing, but as a moving power, and consequently by means of a truly efficient action. The immanent operations of the soul are, on the contrary, formal acts, not efficient actions. The intellect and the will are moved by their objects in a manner analogous to that in which a material element is moved by physical agents. If an element could treasure up all the momenta it receives from different agents, and were not under the necessity of following their resultant, but had the faculty of yielding at pleasure now to this and now to that determination, then such an element would give us a true image of what our soul is competent to do by immanent operation. The soul treasures up the species impressed by intelligible objects, that is, its intellectual momenta, and fields or not to the attraction of any of them as it chooses. And the like occurs with regard to the object of the will. To think and to will is therefore nothing more than to let one’s self be carried by an object or in the direction of an object. Accordingly, the soul, when understanding or willing, is indeed actuated by the object, and therefore is in act; but this act is resultant, not efficient. In other terms, immanent acts are not efficient actions, but formal attitudes formally resulting from either spontaneous or free movements of the appetitive potency.

160 On this subject see THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1874, p. 768.

161 Boscovich’s Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis, part i. n. 108.

162 Cavendish in 1798 made his celebrated experiments concerning terrestrial attraction, in order to determine the density of the earth; but his calculations were grounded on the assumption that all the material particles of the earth were equally attractive; and therefore the result of such calculation cannot be implicitly relied on. M. Reich in 1837, and M. Bayly in 1842, repeated the same experiments, and calculated the density of the earth according to the same assumption. It did not occur to either of them that the assumption itself might have been subjected to a crucial test by successively substituting spheres of zinc, iron, copper, silver, etc., instead of the leaden ones which they uniformly employed. Had they tried these substances in a proper manner—that is, with a suitable modification of the apparatus—we have little doubt that they would have discovered a difference of action for equal masses of different substances. The experiment may yet be made, and we hope it will, as it is of great scientific importance; but it should be encouraged by the help of some powerful scientific body, as the cost of the new apparatus would probably exceed the ordinary means at the command of unaided individuals.

163 A Lecture on Mental Education, London, 1855.

164 In the O Salutaris Hostia!

165 Marie Antonette.

166 Words of Monsignor Nardi to Mrs. Peter.

167 A paper read before the Catholic Union of Boston, Mass. June 4, 1874.

168 Third Prov. Council N. Y.

169 Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, No. 361.

170 Third Provincial Council of New York, decree the third. Since this latter decree has been issued many organists have acted in the most senseless manner. Instead of composing or arranging music to which the words of the Sanctus might easily be sung within the prescribed time, they have retained what they had, and thus are frequently obliged to interrupt the Sanctus in the middle of a movement, and before half the words have been pronounced. Sometimes they continue the movement, and resume the same words after the Elevation, and then they find it impossible to sing the Benedictus, which should, as is evident, immediately follow the consecration. It is true that at the High Mass the celebrant is expected to make a longer memento than usual, both for the living before the consecration and for the dead after it, to give the singers time to sing all the words, but not that they may indulge in useless and tiresome repetitions.

171 Histoire Générale de la Musique Religieuse.

172 Musica Sacra. Boston: Carl Prüfer.

173 Ave Verum, and other Pieces. Boston: Oliver Ditson.

174 History of Music. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co.

175 From the introduction to the foundation‐charter of the Abbey of S. Mary at Furness.

176 A country‐house.

177 “Sea‐fruit.” The name given at Naples to star‐fish, etc., which they eat fried.

178 Tomatoes, called apples of gold.

179 We will have him safe.

180 Dearest.

181 Little cares.

182 There are some exceptions, such as the beautiful candelabra of the Villa Diomed.

183 Bed‐chamber.

184 Court.

185 Reception‐room.

186 Room for guests.

187 Signor Palmier.

188 The above doctrine concerning the reality of absolute space is taken from Lessius’ magnificent work, De Perfectionibus Moribusque Divinis (lib. ii. c. 2), where he shows that absolute space is the virtuality of God’s immensity. We cannot here develop this doctrine, nor discuss the objections of those who hold a different opinion. This would lead us too far from our present object, and give to our dialogue with Dr. Büchner a higher metaphysical character than his arguments deserve.

189 J. D. Dana’s Manual of Geology. See also Pianciani’s Cosmogonia Naturale Comparata col Genesi, Rev. Gerald Molloy’s Geology and Revelation, and Card. Wiseman’s Twelve Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion.

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