Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XI. A Harvest of Thorns…

Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XI. A Harvest of Thorns

By The Author Of “The House of Yorke.”

One of the greatest severities in the imprisonment of a criminal is, probably, that he can no longer see the wide earth nor the free skies, so that not only is his body cramped, but his mind is thrown back on itself, and forbidden to send out those long tendrils which can sometimes shoot through the eyes, and fasten on distant objects, when those near by are repelling. Moreover, the universe itself becomes to him like another prisoner, and he can scarcely believe that the large, smooth creation sails uninterruptedly on its way when he sees of it but one little spot for ever shut in by the bars of his cell.

Mr. Schöninger’s window in the jail had been low, giving him a sight of the street not far away; but his cell in the prison was higher up, and separated from the window by a passage. Sitting or lying down, therefore, he saw only a small square of sky; and standing, the topmost line of a blue hill became visible. Only one other earthly object was in sight; and as time passed by that became still less and less of earth, and assumed a variable but always supernatural character: it was the stone Christ that stood on the church not far away. He could see all of it but the lowest hem of the robe; and as it stood there, surrounded by air alone, above the narrow line of the distant hill, it seemed an awful colossal being walking in over the edge of a submerged world. At morning, when the sky was bright behind it, it darkened, the lineaments of the face were lost in a shadow that was like a frown, and its garments and its hands were full of gloom. At one season there were a few days when the risen sun at a certain hour surrounded the head with an intolerable splendor, and then it was an image of wrath and judgment. It wore quite another character on bright evenings, when, the setting sun shining in its face, it came, white and glowing, down the hillside, with arms outstretched, full of irresistible love and invitation. To see this image, he had to stand at the grated door of his cell. When sitting or lying down, there was no view for the prisoner but a square of sky barred off by iron rods; and as the earth rolled, his view travelled with it, day after day going over the same track in the terrestrial sphere. At evening a few pale stars went by, afar off, and so unaware of him that they were like distant sails to the shipwrecked mariner, hovering on the horizon and disappearing, each failure a new shipwreck to him.

One morning, when he opened his eyes just as day was beginning to flicker in the east, he saw a large, full star, so brilliant that it trembled in the silvery sky, as if about to spill its brimming gold. It was so alive, so intelligent, so joyous, that he raised himself and looked at it as he would have looked at a fair and joyful face appearing at the door of his cell. Surely it was like good tidings, that glad star in the east! He got up, and, as he rose, there rose up whitely against the sky the Christ of the Immaculate Conception, seeming almost transparent in that pure light.

The prisoner knelt on the stone floor of his cell, and lifted his hands. “God of my fathers,” he said, “deliver me! for I am turned in my anguish whilst the thorn is fastened!”

It was the first prayer he had uttered since the night of his arrest, except those outcries which were more the expression of anger and a devouring impatience than of petition. Having uttered it, he lay down again, and tried to sleep. He dreaded the thronging thoughts and tormenting pains of the day, and there was a tender sweetness in this new mood which he would fain have kept and carried off into sleep. To keep it by him, he called up that story suggested by what he had just seen, the star in the east and the Christ. He did not believe it, but he found it soothing. It came to him like David’s song to Saul, and, though but a mythical story, as that was but a song, it kept down the tigers of anger and despair which threatened to rise and tear him.

It was his own Judæa, which he had never seen, indeed, but which was to him what the fountain is to the stream—the source of his being. How fair and peaceful was that silent night that overhung, unbarred by iron bolts, free from horizon to horizon! The holy city was sleeping, and by its side slept Bethlehem. Within a stable a fair young matron had just laid her newly‐born child on its bed of straw, while Joseph, his Jewish brother, ministered to both, feeling sad and troubled, it must be, that those so dear to him were so illy cared for at such a time. The ox and the ass looked on with large, mild eyes, and warmed the air with their breath. It was poor, but how peaceful, how tender, how free! The open door and windows of that poor stable were to him more beautiful than the barred and guarded portal of a Herod or a Cæsar.

Yet with what a blaze of glory the Christian church had surrounded this simple human picture! The poor man who had been able to give his family no better shelter than a stable was held by them more honored than Herod or Cæsar; and cherubim, bright and warm from heaven, like coals just from a fire, drew near to gaze with him, and burned with a still white light above his head. They called this matron a miraculous mother, they showered titles over her like flowers and gems, they placed the moon beneath her feet, and wreathed the stars of heaven into a garland for her head.

How terrible and how beautiful was this Christian legend! The Jew had abhorred it as a blasphemy, and his blood chilled as he suffered his thought to touch one instant the awful centre of this strange group—the Babe to whose small hand these idolaters gave the power to crush the universe, on whose tiny head they placed the crown of omnipotence. It was useless to try to sleep. The soothing human picture had blazed out with such an awakening supernatural glory that he could not even lie still. He rose again, and stood at the door of his cell. The star had melted from sight, the peaceful, cloudless morning was spreading over the sky, and where the feet of the Christ stood on the hill‐top the beams of the sun were sparkling. Beautiful upon the mountains were the feet of Him who brought good tidings.

“A Christian would call it miraculous,” he muttered, looking at that light; and he shuddered as he spoke. But that shudder did not come from the depths of his soul, where a new light and peace were brooding. It was like the clamor and confusion outside the doors of the temple when the Lord had driven forth the money‐changers, and was less an expression of abhorrence than a casting out of abhorrence.

The Jew did not know that, however, nor guess nor inquire what had happened in his soul. He scarcely thought at all, but stood there and let the light steep him through. Some dim sense of harmony stole over him, as if he heard a smooth and noble strain of music, and for the first time since his imprisonment he remembered his loved profession, and longed to feel the keys of a piano or an organ beneath his hand. His fingers unconsciously played on the iron bars, and he hummed a tune lowly to himself, without knowing what it was.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!”

Then, catching himself idle and dreaming, he turned away from the grating, took a book from the table, and began to read.

This book had been to Mr. Schöninger an intellectual substitute for that spiritual consolation which he had not. Finding early in his imprisonment that his mind was working itself into a frenzy over the horrors of his position, and injuring him physically more even than confinement did, he had begun the study of a language with which he was entirely unacquainted, and, whenever he found his thoughts accomplishing nothing profitable, he turned them resolutely to this study, and bent them, with the whole force of his will, to learning dry rules and regulations. The discipline had saved him much, but it had not prevented his growing thin and haggard, and loathing food, and almost forgetting how to sleep.

But on this morning study did not seem so much a refuge as a task. The prisoner lifted his eyes now and then from the book, and looked outward to the sky, and then dropped them again, still in a dream, and wondering at himself. So might the sea have wondered when its waves sank to rest beneath the divine feet of the Lord passing over.

How many times during those terrible months he had striven to produce a perfect calm in his own soul by calling up stoical thoughts, and all in vain; or, if not in vain, the only effect had been a temporary and enforced calm.

Nor was it unworthy a manly and reasonable character that such an effect as he now experienced should be produced by something which, apparently, appealed only to the artistic or the marvellous. Every soul has its beautiful gate; and if truth, walking about outside, should choose to enter by that vine‐wreathed portal, and reach the citadel by way of gardens and labyrinths, instead of approaching by the broad avenue of reason, who shall say that it is not as well? Besides, in the artist, that gate stands always open.

It was those same sunbeams, shining on the hill‐top, and speaking to the lonely prisoner of a dawn of hope and joy, which to Annette Gerald’s eyes had flashed like the two‐edged sword by whose lightnings the first sinners in the world had fled out into the desert. But this sorrowful daughter of Eve missed one of the consolations of our first mother; for Eve could lament aloud, and call on all creation to weep with her; but this later exile must take up her misery as if it were a delight.

She went about smilingly, making preparations for this little journey she had announced her intention of taking.

“But you needn’t put everything in order, just as if you were never coming back again,” her mother said. “I’ll see to things.”

She was sitting in Annette’s chamber, and watching her at work.

“Well, mamma, just as you please,” the daughter answered gently, and touched her mother caressingly on the shoulder in passing.

A lock of Mrs. Ferrier’s dark hair had fallen from the comb, and was hanging down her back. Annette paused to fasten it up, and, as she did so, caught quickly a pair of scissors near, and severed a little tress.

“What in the world are you cutting my hair for?” exclaimed Mrs. Ferrier, who had witnessed the operation in a looking‐glass opposite.

Annette laughed and blushed. She had not meant to be detected. “I’ll tell you when I come back, mamma. You shall see what I am going to have made. It will be something very wonderful.”

She turned quickly away, and bit her lip hard to keep down some rising emotion. She had seen a single thread of silver in that dark‐brown tress, and the sight, touching at all times—the mother’s first gray hair—brought with it the poignant thought that white hairs would come fast and thick when her mother should know what this journey meant.

“What are you taking all those common dresses for?” Mrs. Ferrier asked. “They are hardly fit to go to the mountains with.”

“Oh! we do not mean to be gay and fashionable,” was the light reply. “We want to have a quiet time by ourselves.”

“But you have got your jewel‐case,” the mother persisted. “I don’t see what you want of diamonds with a shabby black silk gown.”

In spite of the almost intolerable thought that after these few hours she would probably never see her mother again, Annette found this oversight irritating. Yet not for anything would she have spoken one word that was not dictated by respect and affection. The only way was to escape now, and make her preparations afterward, and for that she had an excuse.

“By the way, mamma,” she said, “I want to see F. Chevreuse, and this is just the hour to catch him at home. Won’t you take your drive now, and leave me at his house? Wouldn’t you just as lief go out before lunch as after? You and I haven’t had a drive together for a long time.”

And then, when she was alone, she made haste to put into her trunks all those common, useful articles which fitted her present needs, and the few souvenirs too dear to leave behind, and the valuables, which might some day be sold, if money should fail them. She had scarcely turned the key on them, when her mother came in again, pulling on her gloves. “I want to speak to F. Chevreuse myself,” she remarked, “and I will go in with you.”

Annette said nothing, but dressed herself hastily. It really seemed as though every obstacle were being placed in her way; yet how could she be impatient with her poor mother, whose heart was so soon to be smitten, through her, by a terrible grief, and who would soon recall in bitterness of soul every word and act of this their last day together? And, after all, she had no desire to talk with the priest. What could she say to him? All that was necessary was written, and she could not ask his blessing nor any service from him, nor even his forgiveness. The one thing he could do for them was to denounce them, set the officers of justice on their track, and make their lot worse than that of Cain, since the earth was no longer wide and wild, but close and full of watching eyes and prating tongues. The world seemed to her, indeed, oppressively small, having no least nook where the restless, curious traveller did not penetrate with his merciless pen, for ever ready to sketch all he heard and saw to gratify the equally restless and curious people at home.

“Is it a confession you have to make?” Mrs Ferrier asked, as they approached the priest’s house.

They had been driving along in silence, and at this question Annette started and blushed violently. “Dear me, mamma!” she said, in answer to her mother’s look of astonishment, “I was off a thousand miles, and you gave me such a start when you spoke. Yes, it is a confession. You can see F. Chevreuse first, and I will go in after. You need not wait for me. I am going to walk out to the convent to Sister Cecilia a few minutes. The walk will do me good; and afterward I would like to have you send the carriage there for me.”

The excitement under which she was laboring led her unconsciously to assume a decided and almost commanding tone, and her mother submitted without any opposition. Annette certainly did not look well, she thought; and, besides, she was going away. This last consideration was one of great weight with Mrs. Ferrier, for she looked on railroads and steam‐boats as infernal contrivances expressly intended to destroy human life, and never saw persons in whom she was interested commit themselves to the mercies of these inventions without entertaining mournful apprehensions as to the probable result. Moreover, Annette had been very sweet and fond with her all day, and was looking very beautiful, with that wide‐awake glance of her bright eyes, and the crimson color flickering like a flame in her cheeks.

“I think, dear, on the whole, I won’t go in to‐day,” she said. “It might take too long; for this is his busy time of day. To‐morrow will do as well.”

Annette only nodded, unable to speak; but in stepping from the carriage, she laid her small hand on Mrs. Ferrier’s, and gave it a gentle pressure.

“That girl grows prettier and sweeter every day,” said the mother to herself, as her daughter disappeared within the doorway. “And how black velvet does become her!”

Father Chevreuse knew well that no ordinary errand could have brought Annette Gerald to his house, and it was impossible for him to meet her with the ordinary forms of civility. Scarcely any greeting passed between them, as he rose hastily at her entrance, and waited for her first word. She was, perhaps, more collected than he.

“Are you quite alone here?” she asked.

He led her to the inner sitting‐room, and closed the door after them, and even then did not think to offer her a chair any more than she thought of taking one.

“We have told mamma that we are going away this evening for a little journey, and she expects us to return in four weeks. John knows all about our affairs. At the end of four weeks, he will say something to you, or you to him, whichever you please, and at that time you will open and use this packet.” She gave him an envelope carefully sealed, with the date at which it was to be opened written on the outside. “If anything should happen to you in the meantime, some one else must open it; but care must be used not to have it read before the time.” She paused for an answer.

“You need not fear,” the priest said, taking the packet and looking it over. He thought a moment. “I will write also on this that, in the event of my death, it is to be opened by F. O’Donovan or by the bishop of the diocese.”

He went to a table, wrote the directions, and then gave them to Annette to read.

“It is a private paper of mine,” she said, after reading and giving it back; “and I have the right to say when it shall be read. I give it into your hands only on the condition that my directions shall be complied with.”

He bowed, understanding perfectly that the words were intended as a future shield for him.

“At the same time, you will open this also, which is yours,” she added, and gave him a paper roll sealed and tied, but without any direction.

F. Chevreuse shrank a little, took the roll, then let it drop from his trembling hand. The cold and business‐like manner of his visitor and his sympathy for her had kept his thoughts fixed on her; but here was something which brought his mother’s image up before him with a terrible distinctness. It was impossible for him not to know that this little package was what she had died in trying to save. Tears blinded his eyes. The last evening he had spent with her came back like a vision; he saw her face, heard her voice, saw her kneeling before him for his blessing.

Making an effort to control and hide his emotion, he stooped to take up the package he had dropped; and when he looked up again, his visitor had left the room, and was walking quickly to the street door. For one moment he stood irresolute; then he hurried after her. But she had already gone out, and either did not or would not hear him call her back.

The sight of her going away so, wrung all thought of selfish grief out of his mind. He went back into the room, and watched her as she walked swiftly up the street. So innocent, so generous, so brave as she was, yet of all the sufferers by this miserable tragedy, with one exception, the most unhappy! The grief that must fall upon the mother of the guilty one no one could fathom; but the mother of a criminal can never hold herself surely innocent of his crimes, since a greater holiness in her own life, a wiser care in his training, and a more constant prayerfulness in his behalf might have saved him; but the young wife was, of all people in the world, the most innocent and the most wronged.

How light and graceful her step was. Who would not think that it betokened a light heart? She met an acquaintance, and stopped for a word of greeting, and the friend came along afterward smiling, as though at some merry jest. Passing the house of another friend, she nodded and kissed her hand to a child in the window, with how bright a face the priest, who had seen her self‐control, could well guess.

“Is there nothing I can do, nothing I can say, to help her?” he asked himself, turning away from the window. “It is cruel that one so young should bear alone such a burden! What can I do? What can I do?”

He searched in vain for some means of help. There was none. For what she should do her own wit or the advice of others must suffice; and for words of comfort, they were not for him to speak to her. Her manner had shown clearly the distance which she felt must lie between them, and there was no way but for him to accept that position. He could pray, and that was all.

By the time he had come to this conclusion, Annette Gerald had reached the convent, and was greeting Sister Cecilia.

“I have only two words to say to you, dear Sister,” she said, “and those may seem very childish, but are not so in reality. Lawrence and I are going to make a little journey, which may last about four weeks, and poor mamma will be lonely. Besides that, she will worry. She hates to have me go away from her. Will not you be very kind to her, if she should come to you? Oh! I know you always are that; but recollect, when you see her, that I am really all she has. A son does not count for much, you know, especially when he is a young man. Very few young men are much comfort to their mothers, I think. Tell F. Chevreuse the very first time you see him that I said this to you, but don’t tell any one else. And now, dear Sister, I have but a little time, for we start this evening. If there is no one in the chapel, I would like to go in a while. People have got so in the habit of wandering into the Immaculate, and looking about carelessly, that it is no longer pleasant to go there.”

The same air, as of a person gentle, indeed, but not to be detained nor trifled with, which had impressed F. Chevreuse in his visitor, was felt by the Sister also. She rose at once, saying that there was no one in the chapel, and would not be for some time, all the Sisters being engaged, unless Anita should go in.

“Anita has not been well?” Mrs. Gerald remarked with absent courtesy.

“No; she has not been the same since that terrible trial,” the nun sighed.

Annette Gerald’s face lost its absent expression, and took a somewhat haughty and unsympathizing look. “Is that all?” she inquired in a tone of surprise.

“But, you know,” expostulated the Sister, “Anita’s testimony was of the greatest importance. Besides, the scene was a most painful one for her to be dragged into. She is such a tender, sensitive creature.”

Annette had paused just inside the parlor‐door, and she had evidently no mind to let the subject drop indifferently.

“My dear Sister,” she said with decision, “I am truly sorry for your sweet little Anita; but I think it wrong to foster the idea that there are certain sensitive souls in the world who must be pitied if a breath blows on them, while others are supposed to be able to bear the hurricane without being hurt. A great deal of this shrinking delicacy comes from a selfish watching of one’s own sensations, and forgetting those of others, and a great deal from being pampered by others. You remember, perhaps, an old myth, which I have half forgotten, of a Camilla who was fastened to a lance and shot across a stream. She was a woman soft and weak, perhaps, but she had to go. Now, in this world there is many a woman who has all the miserable sensitiveness and delicacy of her kind, but with that there is also a will, or an unselfishness, or a necessity which transfixes her like a spear, and carries her through all sorts of difficulties.” For one instant a flash of some passion, either of anger, impatience, or pain, or of all mingled, shot into the speaker’s face, and seemed to thrill through all her nerves. “Oh! it is true in this world also,” she exclaimed, “that unto him that hath shall be given. The happy must be shielded from pain, and those who cry out at the prick of a pin must be tenderly handled; but the miserable may have yet more misery heaped on them, and the patient find no mercy.”

“My dear lady!” expostulated Sister Cecilia, when the other paused, quivering with excitement.

“Oh! I do not mean to speak harshly of your sweet little Anita,” interrupted Mrs. Gerald, recovering herself; “I was only reminded of others, that is all. But even to her I would recommend thinking more of the sufferings of others and less of her own.”

“It is precisely that which hurts her,” replied the Sister, a little displeased. “She thinks of the sufferings of others, and, fancying that she has caused them, breaks her heart about it.”

Annette made a motion to go, and had an air of thinking very slightingly of the young novice’s troubles. “She merely did her duty, and has no responsibility whatever,” she said. “The child needs to be scolded, and set about some hard, wholesome work. It would do her good to work in the garden, and spend a good deal of time in the open air. A person who has been taken possession of by some morbid idea should never be shut up in a house.”

Sister Cecilia suffered her visitor to pass on without saying another word. She was surprised and deeply hurt at the little sympathy shown their household flower and pet, yet she could not but perceive that, in a general way, much that had been said was quite true.

Passing by the chapel‐door shortly after, she saw Annette Gerald on her knees before the altar, with her head bowed forward and hidden in her hands. Half an hour afterwards, when Mrs. Ferrier’s carriage came, she was still in the same position, and had to be spoken to twice before she was roused. Then she started and looked up in alarm.

“Your carriage has come,” whispered the Sister, and looked quickly away from the face turned toward her, it was so white and worn. In that half‐ hour she seemed to have grown ten years older.

“Must I go now?” she exclaimed, with an air of terror, and for a moment seemed not to know where she was. Then murmuring an excuse, she recalled herself, and, by some magic, threw off again the look of age and pain. “You need not call Sister Cecilia, only say good‐by to her for me,” she said. “I have really not a moment to spare.”

This Sister was almost a stranger to Mrs. Annette Gerald, and was quite taken by surprise when the lady turned at the door, and, without a word of farewell, kissed her, and then hurried away.

“Drive to the office, John, for Mr. Gerald,” she said; and no one would have suspected from her manner that she trembled before the man to whom she gave that careless order.

Lawrence came running lightly down the stairs, having been on the watch for his wife, and John, holding the carriage‐door open, winked with astonishment at sight of the bright greeting exchanged between the two. He could maintain a cold and stolid reserve, if he had anything to conceal; but this airy gayety on the brink of ruin was not only beyond his power, but beyond his comprehension.

Stealing a glance of scrutiny into the young man’s face, he met a glance of defiant hauteur. “You need not go any further with us, John,” Lawrence said. “We shall not need you. Jack, drive round to Mrs. Gerald’s.”

And John, with his coat down to his heels—a costume in which nothing would have induced him voluntarily to take a promenade—was forced to walk home, comforting himself with the assurance that it was the last order he should have to obey from that source. Perhaps, indeed, he would not have obeyed it now, had they not driven away and left him no choice.

The sun was declining toward the west, and touching everything with the tender glory of early spring, when they drew up at the cottage gate, the sound of their wheels bringing Mrs. Gerald and Honora to the window, and then to the door.

“We can’t stop to come in, Mamma Gerald,” Annette called out. “We are going off on a little visit, and only come to say good‐by. Isn’t it beautiful this afternoon? The trees will soon begin to bud, if this weather continues.”

The two ladies came out to the carriage, and Mrs. Gerald caught sight of her son’s face, which had been turned away. It had grown suddenly white. She exclaimed: “Why, Lawrence! what is the matter?”

“Oh! another of those faint turns,” interposed his wife quickly, laying her hand on his arm. “He has no appetite, and is really fainting from lack of nourishment. The journey will do him good, mamma. We are going entirely on his account.”

“Oh! yes, it’s nothing but a turn that will soon pass away,” he added, and seemed, indeed, already better.

“Do come in and take something warm,” his mother said anxiously, her beautiful blue eyes fixed on his face. “There is some chocolate just made.”

“We have no time,” Annette began; but her husband immediately opened the carriage‐door.

“Yes, mother,” he said. “I won’t keep you waiting but a minute, Ninon.”

The mother put her hand in his arm, and still turned her anxious face toward him. “You mustn’t go to‐night, if you feel sick, my son,” she said. “You know what happened to you before.”

“But the journey is just what I need, mother,” he answered, trying to speak cheerfully. “Of course I won’t go if I feel unwell; but this is really nothing. I have not quite got my strength up, and, as Annette says, I have eaten nothing to‐day.”

Those little services of a mother, how tender and touching they are at any time! how terrible in their pathos when we know that they will soon be at an end for us for ever! How the hand trembles to take the cup, and the lip trembles to touch its brim, when we know that she would have filled it with her life‐blood, if that could have been saving to us!

“Sit here by the fire, dear, while I get your chocolate,” Mrs. Gerald said, and pushed the chair close to the hearth. “There is really quite a chill in the air.”

She stirred the fire, and made the red coals glow warmly, then went out of the room.

He looked round after her the moment her back was turned, and watched her hastening through the entry. The temptation was strong to follow her, throw himself at her feet, and tell her all. He started up from the chair, and took a step, but came back again. It would kill her, and he could not see her die. He would let her live yet the four weeks left her. Perhaps she might die a natural death before that. He hoped she would. At that thought, a sudden flame of hope and of trust in God rose in his heart. He dropped on his knees. “O my God! take my mother home before she hears of this, and I will do any penance, bear anything!” he prayed, with vehement rapidity. “Be merciful to her, and take her!”

He heard her step returning, and hastily resumed his seat, and bent forward to the fire.

“You look better already,” she said, smiling. “You have a little color now. Here is your chocolate, and Annette is calling to you to make haste.”

She held the little tray for him, and he managed, strengthened by that desperate hope of his, to empty the cup, and even smile faintly in giving it back. And then he got up, put his arm around his mother’s waist, in a boyish fashion he had sometimes with her, and went out to the door with her so. And there he kissed her, and jumped into the carriage, and was driven away. It never occurred to her, so sweetly obedient had he been to her requests, and so expressive had his looks and actions been, that he had not uttered a word while he was in the house nor when he drove away. He had accepted her little services with affection and gratitude, and he had been tender and caressing, and that was enough. Moreover, he had really looked better on leaving, which proved that her prescription had done him good.

How Annette Gerald got away from home she could not have told afterward. Her trunks were sent in advance, and she and her husband chose to walk to the station in the evening. Some way she succeeded in answering all her mother’s charges and anxious forebodings. She promised to sit in a middle car, so as to be at the furthest point from a collision in front or rear, and to have the life‐preservers all ready at hand in the steamer. She took the basket of luncheon her mother put up, and allowed her bonnet to be tied for her and her shawl pinned. And at last they were in the portico, and it was necessary to say good‐by.

“My poor mamma! don’t be too anxious about me, whatever happens,” Annette said. “Remember God takes care of us all. I hope he will take care of you. Whenever you feel disposed to worry about us, say a little prayer, and all will come right again.”

The darkness hid the tears that rolled down her cheeks as she ended, and in a few minutes all was over, and the two were walking arm‐in‐arm down the quiet street.

“This way!” Lawrence said when they came to the street where his mother lived.

It was out of their way, but they went down by the house, and paused in front of it. The windows of the sitting‐room were brightly lighted, and they could see by the glow of the lamp that it stood on a table drawn before the fire. As they looked, a shadow leaned forward on the white curtain. Mrs. Gerald was leaning with her elbow on the table, and talking to some one. They saw the slender hand that supported her chin, and the coil of her heavy hair. They saw the slight movement with which she pushed back a lock of hair that had a way of falling on to her forehead.

Annette felt the arm she held tremble. She only pressed it the closer, that he might not forget that love still was near him, but did not speak. There was nothing for her to say.

“Let’s go inside the gate to the window,” he whispered. “Perhaps I can hear her speak.”

She softly opened the gate, and entered with him. The moonless night was slightly overclouded, and the shadows of the trees hid them perfectly, as they stole close to the window like two thieves. Lawrence pressed his face to the sash, and listened breathlessly. There was a low murmur of voices inside, then a few words distinctly spoken. “And by the way, dear, I forgot to close the blinds. Oh! no, I will close them. Don’t rise!”

Mrs. Gerald came to the window, opened it, and leaned out so close to her son that he heard the rustle of her dress and fancied that he felt her breath on his cheek. She was silent a moment, looking up at the sky. “The night is very soft and mild,” she said. “Those children will have a pleasant journey.” One instant longer she rested there, her hand half extended to the blind, then she sent upward a word of prayer, which brushed her son’s cheek in passing. “O God! protect my son!” she said.

Then the blinds were drawn together, and the son was shut out from her sight and sound for ever.

“It is our signal to go,” Annette whispered to her husband. “Come! We have no time to lose.”

He held her by the arm a moment.

“Isn’t it better, after all, to stay and have it out here?” he asked desperately. “I’d rather face danger than fly from it. Running away makes me seem worse than I am.”

“You have no longer the right to consider yourself,” she answered, with a certain sternness. “I will not submit to have a convict for a husband. I would rather see you dead. And your mother shall not visit you in a felon’s cell. Besides, no one is to be profited by such a piece of folly, and you would yourself repent it when too late. Come!”

He said no more, but suffered himself to be drawn away. He could not complain that his wife treated his heroic impulses with a disrespect amounting almost to contempt, for he could not himself trust them.

After having closed the window, Mrs. Gerald returned to her place by the fire. A round table was drawn up there between two armchairs, in one of which Miss Pembroke sat, knitting a scarf of crimson wool. The shade over the lamp kept its strong light from her eyes, and threw a faint shadow on the upper part of her face; but her sweet and serious mouth, and the round chin, with its faint dent of a dimple, were illuminated, her brown dress had rich yellow lights on the folds, and the end of a straying curl on her shoulder almost sparkled with gold. Her eyes were downcast and fixed on her work, and crimson loop after loop dropped swiftly from the ivory needles scarcely whiter than her hands.

“As I was saying,” Mrs. Gerald resumed, “six months of the year they were to pass with Mrs. Ferrier have gone, and next fall they will have an establishment of their own. It will be better for both of them. I am sure Annette will make a good housekeeper. Besides, every married man should be the master of a house. It gives him a place in the world, and makes him feel his responsibilities and dignities more.”

“Yes, every one should have a home,” answered the young woman gravely. “It is a great safeguard.”

Mrs. Gerald leaned back in her chair, and gazed into the fire. There was a smile of contentment on her lips and an air of gentle pride in the carriage of her head. As she thought, or dreamed, she turned about the birth‐day ring her son had given her, and, presently becoming aware of what she was doing, looked at it and smiled as if she were smiling in his face.

“I never before felt so well contented and satisfied with his situation,” she said, her happiness breaking into words. “His marriage has turned out well. They seem to be perfectly united, and Lawrence is really proud of his wife; and with reason. She is no more like what she was when I first knew her than a butterfly is like a grub. She has developed wonderfully.” She was silent a moment, then added: “I am very thankful.”

She drew a rosary from her pocket, and, leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed, began to whisper the prayers as the beads slipped through her fingers.

Miss Pembroke glanced at her, and smiled faintly. It was very pleasant to see this mother happy in her son, yet how trembling and precarious was her happiness! This woman’s heart, which bruised itself in beating, was always ready to catch some fleeting glory on its springing tide; like the fountain, which holds the rainbow a moment among its chilly drops.

While one woman prayed, the other thought. She had often dwelt upon this subject of women’s lives being wrecked from love of friend, husband, or child, and the sight of Mrs. Gerald had been to her a constant illustration of such a wreck. These thoughts had troubled her, for she was not one to judge hastily, and she did not know whether to pity or to blame so ruinous a devotion. Now again the question floated up, and with it the wish to decide once for all before life should thrust the problem on her, when she would be too confused to think rightly. She was like one who stands safe yet wistful on shore, looking off over troubled waters, and Mrs. Gerald and Annette seemed to her tossing far out on the waves. She even seemed to herself to have approached the brink so near that the salt tide had touched her feet, and to have drawn back only just in time.

Gradually, as her fair fingers wove the glowing web, a faint cloud came over her face, and, if it had been possible for her to frown, that deeper shadow between the brows might have been called a frown. Her thoughts were growing stern.

“Were we made upright, we women, only to bend like reeds to every wind?” she asked herself. “Can we not be gentle without being slavish, and kind and tender without pouring our hearts out like water? Cannot we reserve something to ourselves, even while giving all and even more than our friends deserve? Cannot we hold our peace and happiness so firmly in our own hands that no one shall have the power to destroy them?”

Each question as it came met with a prompt answer, and resolution followed swiftly: “Never will I suffer myself to be so enslaved by any affection as to lose my individuality and be merged and lost in another, or be made wretched by another, or to have my sense of justice and right confused by the desire to make excuses for one I love. Never will I suffer the name which I have kept stainless to be associated with the disgrace of another, and never will I leave the orderly and honorable ways of life, where I have walked so far, to follow any one into the by‐ways, for any pretext. Each one is to save his own soul, and to help others only to a certain extent. I will keep my place!”

That resolute and almost haughty face seemed scarcely to be Honora Pembroke’s; and she felt so surely that her expression would check and startle her companion that when she saw Mrs. Gerald drop the rosary from her fingers, and turn to speak to her, she quickly changed her position so as to hide her face a moment.

Mrs. Gerald’s voice had changed while she prayed, and seemed weighted with a calm seriousness from her heavenly communion; and her first words jarred strangely with her young friend’s thought.

“How uncalculating the saints were!” she said. “Our Lady was the only one, I think, who escaped personal contumely, and that was not because she risked nothing, but because God would not suffer contempt nor slander to touch her. He spared her no pang, save that of disgrace; yet she would have accepted that without a complaint. How tender he was of her! He gave her a nominal spouse to shield her motherhood; it was through her Son that her heart was pierced, and the grief of a mother is always sacred; and he gave her always loving and devoted women, who clustered about and made her little court. She was never alone. But she is an exception. The others were despised and maltreated, and they seemed to be perpetually throwing themselves away. I do not doubt that those saints who never suffered martyrdom nor persecution were still, in their day, laughed and mocked at by some more than they were honored by others. They never stopped to count the cost.”

Miss Pembroke felt at the first instant as though Mrs. Gerald must have read her thoughts, and her reply came like a retort. “It is true they did not count the costs,” she said; “but it was God whom they loved.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Gerald replied gently, “that was what I meant.”

She was too closely wrapped in contentment to perceive the coldness with which her companion spoke. It seemed to her that all her cares had floated away, and left only rest and sweetness behind. She no longer feared anything. There comes to every one some happy season in life, she thought; and hers had come.

When, the next day, she received a note from her son, which he had written from their first stopping‐place, she was scarcely surprised, though it was an unusual attention.

It was but a hurried line, written with a pencil and posted in the station‐house.

“My darling mother,” he wrote, “if you should find your violet‐bed under the parlor window trampled, blame Larry for it. He saw his mother’s shadow on the curtain when he was on his way to the station last night, and took a fancy to go nearer and peep through the window. But he didn’t mean to do any harm then, nor at some other times, when he did enough indeed. Forgive him for everything.”

Mrs. Gerald immediately went out, letter in hand, to see what marks had been left of this nocturnal visit; and, sure enough, there, on the newly‐ turned mould, was the print of a boot—well she knew her son’s neat foot—and, on the other side, a tiny and delicate track where Annette had stood! But not a leaf of the sprouting violets was crushed.

Miss Pembroke smiled to see the mother touch these tracks softly with her finger‐tips, and glance about as if to assure herself that there was no danger of their being effaced.

“Such a freak of those children!” she said gaily. “Do you know what I am going to do, Honora? I mean to sow little pink quill daisies in those two foot‐prints, and show them to Lawrence and Annette when they come back. It was a beautiful thought of them to come to the window, and it shall be commemorated in beauty. The ground is nearly warm enough here now for seeds. When they come back, the tracks will be green. I wish flowers would blossom in three weeks.”

Mrs. Ferrier also heard that day from the travellers.

“I have a particular reason for asking you to be very careful about my letters,” Annette wrote. “Don’t let any one see or know of them. I will tell you why presently. We are very well. Write me a line as soon as you receive this, and direct to New York. We shall not stop there, but go right on out West, probably. And, by the way, if you should wish ever to hear from Mrs. Gerald’s relations, seek in New York for a letter directed to Mrs. Julia Ward. Say nothing of this now. I will explain.”

“And why should I wish to hear from Mrs. Gerald’s relations?” wondered Mrs. Ferrier. But she said nothing. The secret was safe with her.

Meanwhile, the travellers had lost no time on their way; and three days from their leaving Crichton, they were on the ocean. Every stateroom and cabin had been taken when “Mr. and Mrs. Ward” went to the office of the steamer; but the captain, seeing the lady in great distress on account of the sick friend she was crossing the ocean to see, kindly gave up his own stateroom to the travellers.

It was quite as well for him to do so, indeed; for the very day they started a storm started with them, and he was too faithful an officer to desert his post on deck. So all night long he watched, courageous and faithful, over the lives committed to his care, while underneath his two special guests lay helpless and miserable, counting his footsteps, as sleepless as he. The engine throbbed beside them, like a heavily‐beating heart, the long waves lashed the deck, the wind sang and whistled through the ropes, the steamer creaked and groaned.

“I have brought bad luck to the ship, Annette,” said her husband. “If I were overboard, the storm would cease.”

“In the first place, my name is Julia,” was the answer from the lower berth. “In the next place, there is nothing mysterious in this storm; it is simply the equinoctial gale, which has been threatening for days. I knew we should have it. In the third place, your being overboard would make no difference whatever in the weather. Are you sick?”

Annette knew well that a little chilly breeze would best blow away her husband’s vapors.

“I am sick of lying here,” he said impatiently. “The rain must be over, unless it is another flood. I wonder how it looks out?”

He drew aside the curtain, and opened the window. The rain had ceased, but the wind still blew, and a pale light was everywhere, shining up through the waves and down through the clouds. As the steamer rolled, Annette, lying in her lower berth, could see alternately the gray and tumbled clouds of air, and the gray and heaving sea, which was less like moving water than a ruined, quaking earth, so heavily it rose and fell.

Lawrence Gerald, closely wrapped in furs, knelt on the sofa, and looked out, humming a tune that seemed to be for ever on his lips since his wife had first sung it to him, so that she was sometimes half sorry for having suggested it to him. A few words broke out while she listened:

“For man never slept In a different bed, And to sleep, you must slumber In just such a bed.”

His thoughts seemed to be so haunted by the image of that cold and peaceful slumber that his wife trembled for him. He had not the enduring strength to bear a long trial, but he had that fitful strength which prompts to desperate deeds.

“I can see cities built and destroyed yonder,” he said. “There are white towns between dark mountains, and little hamlets up in the crevices; they grow, and then they are swallowed up. It is like a great earthquake. When the world is destroyed, it will perhaps look like that, pale and ashy.”

“Suppose we should go up on deck, and see what it looks like,” said Annette suddenly, anticipating the wish she knew he would have expressed. “It will be a change after our three days’ imprisonment, and we may think the stateroom a pleasant refuge when we come back.”

They escaped the crest of a wave that leaped over the rail after them, and reached the wet and slippery deck.

“We mustn’t speak to the officers,” Annette whispered, seeing the captain near them.

He passed them by without notice, and they hurried on to the shelter of the smoke‐pipe, where the heat had dried the planks; and here, holding by ropes, they could look over the rail and see the long streaks of pale blue, where the foam slid under the surface of the water; see the gigantic struggle of the sea, and how the brave ship pushed through it all straight toward her unseen port.

Nothing is so perfect a figure of life as a ship on the sea, and one can hardly behold it without moralizing.

“Suppose that this ship had a soul of its own, instead of being guided by the will of other beings,” said Annette; “and suppose that, finding itself in such a woful case, it should say, ‘I see no port, no pole‐star, no sun, nor moon, and I doubt if I shall ever see them again. I may as well stop trying, and go down here.’ Wouldn’t that be a pity for itself and for others?”

“But suppose, on the other hand,” returned her husband, “that the ship had got a deadly thrust from some unseen rock, and the water was running in, and it could never gain the port. What would be the use of its striving and straining for a few leagues further?”

“We know not where the haven of a soul is set,” said Annette, dropping the figure. “God knows, for he has set it, near or far; and it may be nearer than we think. It is scarcely worth while for a man to lose his soul by jumping overboard at ten o’clock, when he may save it, and be drowned too, at eleven.”

Lawrence drew back as a great wave rose before them. He had only been playing at death; the reality was quite another thing. Chilled and drenched with spray, they hurried down to their stateroom.

It was a weary journey. After the storm came head‐winds, and after the head‐winds a fog, through which they crept, ringing the fog‐bell, and stopping now and then.

Mr. and Mrs. Ward did not appear once among the passengers, even when everybody crowded up to catch the first glimpse of Ireland, and they were the last to appear when the passengers prepared to land at Liverpool. They had been a fortnight from home, the storm having delayed them two days, and they knew not what might have happened in that time. A telegram might have sped under the waves in an hour while they toiled over them, and just at the moment of escape their flight might be intercepted.

To Be Continued.

Dante Gabriel Rosetti.(84)

It is not difficult to understand the title which has been bestowed upon Mr. Rosetti of the “Poets’ Poet.” His volume is full of delicate rhythmical experiments—winding bouts of melody with subtle catches of silence interspersed—which alternately pique and satisfy. No brother of the craft could fail to obtain valuable hints from these studies. But Mr. Rosetti is no mere word‐poiser; he is an artist in the highest sense of the word, whose canvas teems with a thousand nameless lights, which as they cross and disappear make all the difference between the real and the unreal.

During the two years or more that Mr. Rosetti’s volume has been before the English‐reading public on both sides of the Atlantic, it has been frequently reviewed. Perhaps the best justification of the present review is that, over and above purely literary merits, Mr. Rosetti has peculiar claims upon the interest of Catholic readers, to which we would draw attention.

We gather from the brief notice at the beginning of the volume that many of these poems were composed twenty years ago, yet, if we except the occasional appearance of a single poem in the pages of a magazine, Mr. Rosetti has published nothing before. We can hardly believe that even the barbarians of twenty years ago can have combined against his publishing, like Mr. Bazzard’s friends in Edwin Drood, and so we must suppose that he was fain to wait for the severest of all criticisms—that passed by a middle‐aged man upon the productions of his youth. And now, having altered something and burnt more—had he waited, he would have found old age more indulgent—he publishes the remnant, all of which, he tells us justly enough, is mature, for which his mature age is sponsor.

It would be far easier to estimate Mr. Rosetti’s position as a poet had he written more. Nor is this precisely a truism; for one feels at once that what he has given us is most precisely and emphatically a selection. Every one of his poems, whatever else it may be, is at least a cunning piece of artist’s work in this or that particular style, with a distinct flavor of its own and true to itself throughout. If you know, and care for, the old Scots ballad, you will at once appreciate the specimen he gives you. If you object to the coarseness which shades the tenderness of “Stratton Water,” your criticism is unlearned. As well complain of the peat flavor of a “Finnan haddie.”

Poets who sing because they must sing, who pour into trembling ears great heterogeneous floods of song, the reflection of their many moods, things beautiful and rather beautiful, and plain and very plain; all the thousand‐and‐one scraps which have something clever in them, or illustrate something, or with the composition of which something interesting, whether pleasant or painful, is associated—take, for instance, any chance volume of Wordsworth or Browning—may be in the long run our benefactors, but they have no claim upon the ready‐money of thanks; they charm, perhaps, but they often also bore. If a man whose imagination has not been left out is bored by Mr. Rosetti’s volume, it is time for him, according to the Turkish proverb, to put his trust in God—his wine is running to the lees, his roses wither. And this is true although the generations of poetic taste are so short‐lived that almost before a man has reached the mezzo camino, and certainly before he has lost his sense of life’s enjoyments, he is apt to find himself somewhat out of harmony with the poetry of the day. Mr. Rosetti is no prophet of a new theory of art or master of a new phrase‐mint, but rather a merchant whose cargo tells a tale of every port at which he has touched.

It is natural to compare, even if only to contrast, any new poet with Mr. Tennyson, as the poet who has had more immediate, sensible influence than any other upon the taste of his day; and although there is a prejudice against comparisons, it is difficult to see how they can be avoided if one is to do something more than point and ejaculate. In the present case, there is at least sufficient resemblance to suggest comparison. Amongst living poets these two are pre‐eminently artist‐poets, who finish their work and hide well away all their literary shavings. They are almost the only living poets who never go on talking till they can find the right word, and who never stammer.

There is not a scrap of either of these poets that, for the refined work there is in it, it would not be a shame to burn. Again, they are like in this, that they have an intense sensuous appreciation of the medium which they use, which seems to belong rather to the art of the painter or the musician than to that of the poet. It would not be difficult to make a color‐box of Mr. Tennyson’s favorite words, literary formulas for cool grays and bits of scarlet. On the other hand, Mr. Rosetti’s art is rather that of the musician than the painter; he produces his effects rather by subtle changes of manner than by the color of single words, although his choice in these too is exquisite. His modulations remind one of Crashaw’s lines in “Music’s Duel”:

“The lute’s light genius now doth proudly rise, Heaved on the surges of swoll’n rhapsodies. Whose flourish, meteor‐like, doth curl the air With flash of high‐born fancies; here and there Dancing in lofty measures, and anon Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone, Whose trembling murmurs, melting in wild airs, Run to and fro, complaining his sweet cares.”

And so, having drifted into points of difference, we will continue. They are unlike because, although both affect the quaintnesses of mediæval art, the laureate has done little more than utilize, for poetic purposes, the antiquarian and art knowledge of a gentleman of the period with a turn that way. But Mr. Rosetti is a mediæval artist heart and soul; and, though it may not be literally true that he has no end beyond his art, he would certainly feel that he was doing evil that good might come of it if he sacrificed a point of art to any object whatsoever.

Mr. Tennyson’s pictures of the middle‐age, beautiful and lifelike as they are, are the less true for their somewhat formal flourish of antiquity, whereby they give themselves, as it were, a modern frame. Of course, Tennyson’s knights are not modern gentlemen in the sense that Racine’s Greeks are French courtiers, but anyhow they are the realized aspirations of modern gentlemen of culture and refinement, and measures of fashionable reaction against the spirit of the day.

I think the consciousness that he wants a loosely‐fitting mediævalism, or, so to speak, the armor without any particular quality of man inside, makes Mr. Tennyson affect the hybrid mediævalism of the Round Table in preference to the genuine strain of the old chroniclers. His mail‐clad knights always remind us somewhat of a common scene in a marine aquarium—a whelk‐shell inspired with an energy not its own by the intrusion of a hermit‐crab, who, having disposed of the original occupant, manipulates the shell at his pleasure.

It may be urged, with some justice, that a poet is no mere collector of old china and old lace. He gathers to himself of all precious things, to frame for his thought such vehicle as he wants; but he has no duties to his materials that they should be in keeping with one another or with themselves, provided they minister to his design. Yes, but it must be remembered that both these poets belong to a school which owes its success to the religious observance of such duties, even though self‐imposed; and it must always remain true that the more a poet can afford to borrow wholes instead of parts or aspects, and these plead the poet’s cause each in its own tongue, not his, the greater is his triumph. I am not indicating any failure on the part of Mr. Tennyson when I speak of his Arthurian poems as a splendid masque. He knows where his strength lies. He has chosen his legend as a man might choose an antique wine‐cooler for his wine; but the liquor inside, though superlatively good, is not hippocras or metheglin, but port and sherry. On the other hand, if we turn to Mr. Rosetti’s treatment of mediæval subjects, “Dante at Verona,” “Sister Helen,” “The Staff and Scrip,” we find that his mediæval figures live, indeed, with the intensest kind of life, but that that life, from its woof to its outermost fringe, is stained with the color of its own day and country. It is this union of purism and vitality which is Mr. Rosetti’s distinguishing characteristic.

It is now time for us to examine some of Mr. Rosetti’s poems in detail. “The Blessed Damozel,” the first poem in the volume, were it not for its title, would be perfect; but we confess that the ultra quaintness of the title is the one point in the mediæval dress which does not, to our mind, harmonize with the Catholicity of the subject.

The subject would be trite enough in many hands. A young man has lost his love, and dreams of her night and day, until at length the soul of his imagination pierces that heaven into which she has been received ten years ago:

“Her seemed she scarce had been a day One of God’s choristers; The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers, Albeit, to them she left, her day Had counted as ten years.”

With the calm, unhesitating realism of Fra Angelico, he paints his lady leaning out towards him “from the gold bar of heaven,” with stars in her hair and lilies in her hand; and the outline is so clear and firm, so free from the mist of modern sentimentalism, that the paroxysm of doubt which breaks in at the end of the fourth stanza, and which for a moment makes the radiant vision tremulous, is really wanted to remind us of the abyss which the imagination is spanning:

“It was the rampart of God’s house That she was standing on, By God built over the sheer depth The which is space begun; So high that, looking downward thence, You scarce might see the sun.”

“The tides of day and night” alternate far down in the abyss beneath her feet, where the earth is spinning about the sun “like a fretful midge.” If any one is tempted to doubt if the heavens of modern science, with their vast distances and harmonious order, are more poetical than the star‐ spangled cope upon which the Chaldean shepherds gazed, let him read this poem. The simple imagery with which Mr. Rosetti clothes the abysses of heaven seems, without destroying their immensity, to render them visible:

“From the fixed place of heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the world....”

Again:

“The sun was gone now; the curled moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf.”

He sees that she is looking for him, and then she speaks, not to him, for she sees him not, but of him, of what their life in heaven will be when he has come—for he must come, she says. And again, as she talks of the life in heaven, it is Fra Angelico in words; lush meadow‐grass, so soft to road‐worn feet, and golden‐fruited trees, and tender intercourse from which all the acerbities and conventionalities of life are banished; an atmosphere in which the freshness of morning and the peace of evening are woven into one eternal day, which, as he says elsewhere, “hours no more offend.” How thoroughly Dantesque in its homely sublimity is the conception of Our Lady and her handmaids at their weaving:

“Into the fine cloth, white like flame, Weaving the golden thread To fashion the birth‐robes for them Who are just born, being dead.”

We hardly think that this poem of Mr. Rosetti’s strikes a single false chord even to Catholic ears. The utmost that can be said is that the blessed soul is too absorbed by her longing for her earthly love. But then the heaven of theology is an assemblage of paradoxes which faith alone can knit together; and, in its entirety, wholly without the realm of art. In this poem we have one aspect of the life of the blessed, “securus quidem sibi sed nostri solicitus,” as S. Bernard says, presented to us most vividly in the only colors an artist’s pencil can command—those of earthly love. But this love is serene and pure, and, despite its intensity, free from all pain and impatience. The passion is supplied by the refrain in the earthly lover’s heart, as in his touching commentary upon the confidence of her “we two” will do thus and thus when he comes:

“Alas! we two, we two, thou sayst! Yea, one wast thou with me That once of old. But shall God lift To endless unity The soul whose likeness with thy soul Was but its love for thee?”

Having ended her description of heaven’s mysterious joys:

“She gazed and listened, and then said, Less sad of speech than mild, ‘All this is when he comes.’ She ceased. The light thrilled towards her filled With angels in strong level flight. Her eyes prayed and she smiled.”

But soon the smile fades away as the angelic convoy glides past, for he is not there—

“And then she cast her arms along The golden barriers, And laid her face between her hands, And wept (I heard her tears).”

If it be objected that this is too gross a violation of the state in which all tears are wiped away, I answer, first, that there are tears and tears; secondly, that if anthropomorphism is allowable in our realizations of God, à fortiori is it allowable in our realizations of those who, although they are raised above the estate of humanity, are still human. Again, even the angels of Christian art have a prescriptive right to tears, and is it not written, Isai. xxxiii. 7, “Angeli pacis amarè flebunt?”

And now we will say what we have to say of perhaps the most wonderful of all Mr. Rosetti’s poems, which somehow, for more reasons than one, suggests itself as a pendant to “The Blessed Damozel.” He has called it “Jenny,” and Jenny is the name—neither French nor Greek will mend the matter—of a young prostitute. We freely confess that there are two or three lines in this poem which we heartily wish Mr. Rosetti had never written; but, take it as it stands, few will be disposed to deny that it is a very real sermon against lust, all the more impressive because it is indirect. The story, such as it is, is this: A man, young but not in his first youth, who has been for some years settling down to a student’s life, throws his work aside one evening, and goes off to one of his old haunts. Having spent half the night in dancing, and being smitten with Jenny’s youthful beauty, he goes home with her. She, poor thing, utterly tired, falls dead asleep at supper, and he, watching her, falls to moralizing, half cynically, half tenderly, upon innocence and lust and destiny, until at last the pity of it all wholly possesses him and kills every other thought. And so musing till early dawn, till

“Now without, as if some word Had called upon them that they heard, The London sparrows far and nigh Clamor together suddenly,”

he slips some gold pieces into her hair, and goes with the half‐expressed hope that, as God has been merciful to him, so he will be merciful to her also.

What first touches him is her evident longing for rest:

“Glad from the crush to rest within, From the heart‐sickness and the din, Where envy’s voice at virtue’s pitch Mocks you because your gown is rich, And from the pale girl’s dumb rebuke, Whose ill‐clad grace and toil‐worn look Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak And other nights than yours bespeak, And from the wise, unchildish elf, To schoolmate lesser than himself Pointing you out what thing you are.”

The girl herself, beyond her youth and beauty, is nowise better than her fellows, and so she individualizes a larger pathos, and is in some sense a more touching representative of the victims of man’s lust—

“Poor handful of bright spring water Flung in the whirlpool’s shrieking face.”

He is penetrated by the contrast between the fate of this poor girl and that of his cousin, just such another girl in natural disposition—

“And fond of dress, and change, and praise, So mere a woman in her ways”;

but in the guarded atmosphere of her home, with every point in her character blooming into good.

“So pure—so fallen! how dare to think Of the first common kindred link? Yet Jenny, till the world shall burn, It seems that all things take their turn, And who shall say but this fair tree May need, in changes that shall be, Your children’s children’s charity? Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorned, Shall no man hold his pride forewarned Till in the end, the day of days, At judgment, one of his own race, As frail and lost as you, shall rise, His daughter with his mother’s eyes?”

Many a man would be fain to listen to such a sermon who would reject any other. For the preacher is no missionary in disguise, but a fellow‐sinner converted in the presence of his sin, if we may call it conversion; at least, beaten down and overwhelmed by the colossal horror and pity of it, as a wild beast is tamed by a prairie‐fire.

Many beautiful things have been said by non‐Catholic poets of Our Blessed Lady. Indeed, a very pretty book might be made of these Gentile testimonies, from Milton, Cowley, Crashaw (before his conversion), Wordsworth, Keble, and many others. It would seem that Parnassus is as one of the high places of Baal, where the Spirit of the Lord rushes upon the poet, whose eyes are opened and he must needs bless her whom he that blesseth “shall also himself be blessed, and he that curseth shall be reckoned accursed,” and he cries, “How beautiful are thy tabernacles,” O Mary, Mother of God, “as woody valleys, as watered gardens near the rivers, as tabernacles which the Lord has pitched as cedars by the water‐ side.” But with Mr. Rosetti it is something more than this. One is tempted to fancy that with his Italian name he must have really inherited an Italian’s devotion to the Madonna. His poem “Ave” is neither more nor less than a meditation upon the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of Our Lady’s life, and it breathes a devotion as tender and sensitive—in a word, as Catholic—as though it had been written by F. Faber. We shall venture to transfer the whole of it to our pages, for we cannot otherwise justify what we have said, and part of its specific beauty is that it is in one breath:

Ave.

Mother of fair delight, Thou handmaid perfect in God’s sight, Now sitting fourth beside the Three, Thyself a woman Trinity, Being a daughter born to God, Mother of Christ from stall to Rood, And wife unto the Holy Ghost:— Oh! when our need is uttermost, Think that to such as death may strike Thou wert a sister, sisterlike! Thou head‐stone of humanity, Ground‐stone of the great mystery, Fashioned like us, yet more than we! Mind’st thou not (when June’s heavy breath Warmed the long days in Nazareth) That eve thou didst go forth to give Thy flowers some drink that they might live One faint night more amid the sands, Far off the trees were as pale wands Against the fervid sky; the sea Sighed further off eternally As human sorrow sighs in sleep. Then suddenly the awe grew deep, As of a day to which all days Were footsteps in God’s secret ways: Until a folding sense like prayer Which is, as God is, everywhere, Gathered about thee; and a voice Spake to thee without any noise. Being of the silence: “Hail,” it said, “Thou that art highly favorèd; The Lord is with thee here and now; Blessed among all women thou.”

Ah! Knew’st thou of the end, when first That Babe was on thy bosom nursed? Or when he tottered round thy knee Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee— And through his boyhood year by year Eating with him the Passover, Didst thou discern confusedly That holier Sacrament, when He, The bitter cup about to quaff, Should break the bread and eat thereof? Or came not yet the knowledge, even Till on some day forecast in Heaven His feet passed through thy door to press Upon his Father’s business?— Or still was God’s high secret kept?

Nay, but I think the whisper crept Like growth through childhood. Work and play, Things common to the course of day, Awed thee with meanings unfulfill’d, And all through girlhood, something still’d Thy senses like the birth of light, When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night Or washed thy garments in the stream: To whose white bed had come the dream That He was thine and thou wert His Who feeds among the field‐lilies. O solemn shadow of the end, In that wise spirit long contain’d! O awful end! and those unsaid Long years when it was Finished!

Mind’st thou not (when the twilight gone Left darkness in the house of John) Between the naked window‐bars That spacious vigil of the stars? For thou, a watcher even as they, Wouldst rise from where throughout the day Thou wroughtest raiment for his poor; And, finding the fixed terms endure Of day and night which never brought Sounds of his coming chariot, Wouldst lift through cloud‐waste unexplor’d Those eyes which said “How long, O Lord”? Then that disciple whom he loved, Well heeding, haply would be moved To ask thy blessing in his name; And that one thought in both, the same Though silent, then would clasp ye round To weep together—tears long bound, Sick tears of patience, dumb and slow. Yet, “Surely I come quickly,” so He said, from life and death gone home. Amen: even so, Lord Jesus come!

But oh! what human tongue can speak That day when death was sent to break From the tired spirit like a veil, Its covenant with Gabriel Endured at length unto the end? What human thought can apprehend That mystery of motherhood When thy Beloved at length renew’d The sweet communion severèd— His left hand underneath thine head And his right hand embracing thee? Lo! He was thine, and this is He!

Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope, That lets me see her standing up Where the light of the Throne is bright? Unto the left, unto the right, The cherubim, arrayed, conjoint, Float inward to a golden point, And from between the seraphim The glory issues for a hymn.

O Mary Mother! be not loth To listen—thou whom the stars clothe, Who seest and mayst not be seen Hear us at last, O Mary Queen! Into our shadow bend thy face, Bowing thee from the secret place, O Mary Virgin, full of grace!

Mr. Rosetti certainly does not affect classical subjects. There is nothing in his curious Treasury at all corresponding to those most exquisite of all Mr. Tennyson’s poems, “Ulysses” and “Tithonus.” In the few instances in which he does handle classical legend, it is always its quaint reflection in the mediæval mind that attracts him, as in “Troy Town,” but he is at home everywhere. “Eden Bower” and “Sister Helen” are like and unlike enough for comparison. They are both monologues of deadly sin; the first is spite, the second hate, set to music. The conception of Lilith in “Eden Bower” is a monstrous waif of rabbinical tradition. She is a sort of woman‐snake, supposed to have been Adam’s first wife before the creation of Eve, and in her jealousy of the wife who supplanted her is found the origin of her conspiracy with the king‐snake of Eden which brings about the Fall. The poem is one prolonged musical but most diabolical chuckle of Lilith over the immortal mischief she is about to perpetrate. She is indeed all the while coaxing the serpent to help her, but her tone throughout is one of assured triumph. The woman and the fiend are interwoven with marvellous subtlety—a fiend’s colossal blasphemy and a woman’s petty spite. The fiend does not shrink from declaring open war against heaven.

“Strong is God, the fell foe of Lilith (And O the bower and the hour!)— Naught in heaven or earth may affright him, But join thou with me and we will smite him.”

The woman thus in anticipation stabs her rival with her husband’s cowardice.

“Hear, thou Eve, the man’s heart in Adam (And O the bower and the hour!)— Of his brave words hark to the bravest, This the woman gave that thou gavest.”

How she wriggles and gasps and hugs herself at the thought of the woe she is to bring upon her victims, gloating over every detail of their desolate exile, and forecasting the death of one son and the damnation of another. Lilith after all is a fiend, and, as a creation of art, a fiend is a creature that lives and revels in wickedness as a salamander was supposed to inhabit fire, with a keen sense of pleasure and without moral responsibility; but in “Sister Helen” we have something much more dreadful because more human—“Hate born of Love”—hate that has devoured all love, even love of self—the hatred that is despair. A ruined girl, dwelling in a lonely tower with her little brother, seeks vengeance upon her seducer after the mediæval manner, by consuming his waxen image before the fire. And now upon the third night she is nigh upon its achievement, for the wax is wasting fast. The child takes a child’s interest in the little figure that was once so plump, but through which the flame is now shining red. He prattles about it, but understands nothing, nor yet that there is anything to understand. His sister coaxes him out into the balcony to look out and say what he sees, for she knows what must come. And one after the other the brothers and father of the dying man ride up in the wild night and implore her mercy, at first that she will save his life, and then that at least she will forgive and save him from his despair, that body and soul may not perish. There is something simply appalling in the way in which each entreaty, as it comes to her repeated by her little brother’s voice, is slain by the calm, ruthless, sometimes ironical comment in which she conveys her refusal.

“ ‘He calls your name in his agony, Sister Helen, That even dead love must weep to see.’ ‘Hate born of Love is blind as he, Little brother!’ (O mother, Mary mother, Love turned to hate, between hell and heaven!) ‘Oh! he prays you, as his heart would rive, Sister Helen, To save his dear son’s soul alive.’ ‘Nay, flame cannot slay it, it shall thrive, Little brother!’

(O mother, Mary mother, Alas, alas, between hell and heaven!)”

All entreaties are useless, the death‐knell sounds, and the riders turn their horses—

“ ‘Ah! what white thing at the door has cross’d, Sister Helen? Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?’ ‘A soul that’s lost, as mine is lost, Little brother!’ (O mother, Mary mother, Lost, lost, all lost, between hell and heaven!)”

One is tempted to say of Mr. Rosetti as was said of his patron Dante, “Lo, he that strolls to hell and back at will.” We speak advisedly of his “patron Dante,” for his devotion to his great namesake is of the intensest kind. Almost the longest poem in the volume is “Dante at Verona,” in which every conceivable detail in the poet’s painful exile at that court is dwelt upon with a solicitude that reminds one of an early Christian sponging up a martyr’s blood. To appreciate the poem thoroughly, one ought to share with Mr. Rosetti in the intimacy of the great Florentine. There are, however, many exquisite bits of description in it that must come home to every one. Surely the Gran Cane’s jester will live for ever:

“There was a jester, a foul lout Whom the court loved for graceless arts; Sworn scholiast of the bestial parts Of speech; a ribald mouth to shout In folly’s horny tympanum Such things as make the wise man dumb.

“Much loved, him Dante loathed; and so One day when Dante felt perplex’d If any day that could come next Were worth the waiting for or no, And mute he sat amid the din— Can Grande called the jester in.

“Rank words with such are wit’s best wealth. Lords mouthed approval; ladies kept Twittering with clustered heads, except Some few that took their trains by stealth And went. Can Grande shook his hair And smote his thighs and laughed i’ the air.

“Then facing on his guest, he cried: ‘Say, Messer Dante, how it is I get out of a clown like this More than your wisdom can provide? And Dante: ’Tis man’s ancient whim That still his like seems good to him.’ ”

We cannot of course pretend to catalogue all Mr. Rosetti’s beauties. But for the sake of quoting one stanza, we must say a word of the “Staff and Scrip.” A knight vowed to defend wronged innocence, finds himself, whilst returning from Palestine, in the land of a fair lady, which her triumphant foemen are ravaging, and where all hope of resistance is dead. He goes out on her behalf, and conquers and dies. This is the description of his return on the night of his victory:

“The first of all the rout was sound, The next were dust and flame, And then the horses shook the ground: And in the thick of them A still band came.”

Nearly a third of Mr. Rosetti’s volume consists of sonnets. Now, a sonnet should be grave but not heavy. It must have a severity tempered by sweetness like the breviary character of the Venerable Bede. It must linger meditatively; it must not loiter, or fumble with its meaning. It must be sinuous, never headlong; feeling its rhymes delicately, not falling upon them; for these are less rhymes than the most prominent of many assonances, upon all of which the rhythm hangs. Indeed, the texture of the sonnet resembles more that of blank‐verse than that of any other metre we possess. Without denying the perfection of some two or three of Milton’s sonnets, and perhaps in a lesser degree of about as many of Wordsworth’s, we may be permitted to say that among our sonnet‐writers Milton, as a general rule, is too fierce and headlong, as Wordsworth says of him, in words of praise which to our ears suggest blame. In his hands, “the thing became a trumpet”; whilst Wordsworth has too poor a vocabulary for a composition in which every word ought to tell. Shakespeare’s sonnets are only sonnets in name. They do not fall into two, or rather one and a half, like an acorn and its cup, but are simply short poems of three independent stanzas of alternate rhymes, the whole concluding with a rhyming couplet. The Elizabethan writers who used the genuine sonnet—Sidney, Spenser, Drummond, especially the last—attained, we cannot help thinking, to a more exquisite use of the sonnet than either Milton or Wordsworth, although the beauty of their sonnets is somewhat marred by the twanging effect of the concluding rhyming couplet to which they persistently cling. Many of Mr. Rosetti’s sonnets strike us not only as beautiful poems, but as very finished specimens of the sonnet. He seems to have attained to the Italian delicacy of the best of the Elizabethan sonneteers, without loss of originality and force. He is, however, perhaps rather too fond of fretting the melody of his lines by a harsh emphasis, which, effective enough in a liquid medium like Italian, is rather trying to the naturally broken music of the English tongue. An example of this may be noted in the sixth line of the following very beautiful sonnet. He has called it “Inclusiveness”—a title with which we venture to quarrel, for the phenomenon described is not a quality of anything, but a fact or law; we would substitute, in spite of its technical flavor, “Introsusception.”

“The changing guests, each in a different mood Sit at the roadside table and arise: And every life among them in like wise Is a soul’s board set daily with new food. What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies? Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

May not this ancient room thou sit’st in, dwell In separate living souls for joy or pain? Nay, all its corners may be painted plain Where Heaven shows pictures of a life spent well; And may be stamped a memory all in vain, Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.”

Here is an exquisite vindication of one of the least popular of the condemnations in the Syllabus—that of non‐intervention.

It is called “On the Refusal of Aid between Nations”:

“Not that the earth is changing, O my God! Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,— Not that the virulent ill of act and talk Seethes ever as a wine‐press ever trod,— Not therefore are we certain that the rod Weighs in thine hand to smite the world; though now Beneath thine hand so many nations bow, So many kings:—not therefore, O my God:— But because man is parcelled out in men Even thus; because, for any wrongful blow, No one not stricken asks, ‘I would be told Why thou dost strike’; but his heart whispers then, ‘He is he, I am I.’ By this we know That the earth falls asunder, being old.”

Mr. Rosetti has adopted, as we have already indicated, more fully than a Catholic could approve, a principle which is obtaining a very dangerous prominence amongst the rising generation of English poets, that art is justified of her children—that to the artist all things are chaste. Thus inevitably there are some lines one could wish unwritten, and more that one would not have every one read. Yet for all this the ethos of the book is chaste and noble, nor do we know any poet by whom purity is more honestly appreciated and worshipped. The volume is a remarkable example of the extent to which a love of the Madonna and the ascetic inspiration of Dante can counteract and restrain the growing sensuousness of English poetry.

If Mr. Rosetti is sometimes obscure, it is not that his touch is ever otherwise than delicate and precise, but because his art is rather the art of the musician than of the painter. His changes of key, so to speak, are so swift and subtle, and the harmonies with which the theme is clothed are so manifold and so quaint, that his compositions have sometimes the difficulty of a sonata of Beethoven, and require considerable familiarity before their proportions can be grasped. Indeed, we must confess that there are passages the meaning of which we despair of ever grasping with any precision; we must be content to accept them as a sort of hieroglyphic, for splendor or purity, like the scroll and lily‐work of a mediæval goldsmith. This is the more provoking, as obscurity is not here, as often in Mr. Browning’s poems, covered by an oracular use of certain crabbed expressions, which at least indicate the nut that is to be cracked, but coexists with a diction consistently pure and flowing.

Although we have compared Mr. Rosetti’s art to that of the musician rather than to that of the painter, we have been told that he is a painter of a high order. Anyhow, his fondness for painting is proved by the number of sonnets which he has made upon pictures, ancient and modern. We cannot more fitly conclude our review than with his sonnet, “For our Lady of the Rocks, by Leonardo da Vinci”:

“Mother, is this the darkness of the end, The shadow of death? and is that outer sea Infinite, imminent eternity? And does the death‐pang by man’s seed sustain’d In Time’s each instant cause thy face to bend Its silent prayer upon the Son, while he Blesses the dead with his hand silently To his long day which hours no more offend?

“Mother of grace, the pass is difficult, Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through. Thy name, O Lord, each spirit’s voice extols, Whose peace abides in the dark avenue Amid the bitterness of things occult.”

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For Ever

Those we love truly never die, Though year by year the sad memorial‐wreath— A ring and flowers, types of life and death— Are laid upon their graves.

For death the pure life saves, And life all pure is love, and love can reach From heaven to earth, and nobler lessons teach, Than those by mortals read.

Well blest is he who has a dear one dead: A friend he has whose face will never change, A dear communion that will not grow strange: The anchor of a love is death.

The blessed sweetness of a loving breath Will reach our cheek all fresh through fourscore years: For her who died long since, ah! waste not tears— She’s thine unto the end.

Thank God for one dead friend, Whose mother‐face no miles of road or sea Or earthly bonds can hold apart from me— First friend in life and death.

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Visit To An Artist’s Studio

I do not know if, outside his own small circle of patrons and acquaintances, any one has heard of the artist Van Muyden. Yet hidden talent is none the less a divine gift because few know it; it gives a more pathetic interest to a life to know that it is a life harassed with care, vexed by non‐appreciation, hampered with poverty. Perhaps Van Muyden is only obscure because he would not lower his art to suit the dealers’ terms or the public taste. When I visited his studio, he was settled in a small house in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. His own appearance was striking: the supple form, not very tall, but very spare; the large eyes that seemed to dart through you and search your soul, the high forehead, wrinkled and bald, told of a man with an intellect higher than that of his fellow‐men, an ideal enthroned beyond the region of which they know the bearings, and of the cares with which they can sympathize. He was a man past the prime of life, eager and enthusiastic—eccentric, perhaps, as the world’s estimate goes; but who is not?—I mean amongst those whose characteristics are worth studying at all. He wore over his vest and trowsers an old brown dressing‐gown, suggestive of the appearance one is used to connect with mediæval scholars and seers. His forte is not landscape‐painting, and, indeed, he seemed lost at Geneva, despite the southern beauty of its environs, for Van Muyden’s predilections were evidently for the representation of the human kind. But then, if it was man that he loved to copy, it was not broad‐cloth man, sleek, respectable, decorous, well‐off, but man as you find him in Italy or Spain—picturesque as his scanty surroundings; an unconscious artist, a born model; man imbued with the spirit of the sun‐god; man carolling and trilling without effort, believing himself born to sing like the birds; man in himself a study, a picture, a statue, a marvel.

Van Muyden explained his theories very freely, and they were well worth listening to.

“In the north, you see,” he said, “an artist is forced, if he wishes to be truthful, to copy a thousand pitiful details of upholstery. Such pictures are called genre; and this realistic, mathematical accuracy, utterly destructive of the picturesque, is lauded to the skies; but, good God! could not a Chinese do as well with his wonderful imitative faculty, altogether apart from the feeling of art? The North makes up for the picturesque by the comfortable; what a compensation for the artist! But modern art has more to contend with than vitiated taste or the loss of that free and natural life which in simpler times was more conducive to artistic inspiration; we have to struggle on without a school or a standard of taste. We no longer have those centres where the traditions of art were religiously kept; those high‐priests who gathered round them numerous and docile disciples, as of old the Athenian philosophers in the groves of Academe. Even in Italy, in Rome itself, no such centre can be found. A young artist has to make his own solitary way, pursue his ideal alone, keep up his enthusiasm by his own unaided exertions, and probably find neither patron nor master to care for his works or guide his attempts.”

The artist was surely right; for the great schools of painting were to art what the religious orders are to the church—centres towards which a vague vocation may be directed and find its true mission, with brethren to share its enthusiasm and superiors to guide its aspirations. Most of his pictures were Italian scenes, some domestic, but mostly treating of the monastic life. The cool cloister, with its ilex or orange‐trees seen cornerwise through the railings; the old portico, with a monk seated in meditation on the fragment of a sculptured pillar: the noon‐day siesta; the begging friar coming home with his sack of food; the preacher starting meekly, staff in hand, for the distant station where he is to preach a Lent; the novice arranging the altar; the monk digging his own grave in the sunny cloister, or washing the altar‐plate in the sparkling fountain, etc. etc.—such were chiefly the subjects chosen. Why? He was not a Catholic, this artist; but it seems to have come to him intuitively that there is more room for artistic expression and artistic liberty in things pertaining to the old church. His own studio was as perfect a picture as any he could have painted; a treasure‐house of antiquities carelessly displayed. It was lighted by two immense windows, one of which was shaded by a sort of slanting tester, throwing the light on the easel in the middle of the room. Between these windows stood a nondescript piece of furniture in carved oak, very black and old—a species of secrétaire, with an “extension” holding a small washing‐bowl, surmounted by a dolphin’s head, which was crowned for the nonce with a scarlet berrétta. Large jars of old porcelain were placed here and there, either on the ground or on substantial étagères, and two corners of the room were filled with high chests equally carved, on whose capacious tops rested a medley of distaffs, horns, helmets, old swords, a spinning‐wheel, and a confused mass of tattered garments or drapery, dingy and time‐stained, crimson cloaks, blue tunics, purple veils, etc. An array of pipes, hooked into the wall for security, stood on the high mantel‐piece, together with one of those common brass kitchen lamps in use at Rome, with four projections enclosing wicks, and whose shape has never been altered since the days when Nero rode in the arena and the Christians went calmly to the stake. On the unoccupied spaces on the wall hung the artist’s pictures, some few representing touching family scenes (all Italian) strewed among the monastic subjects. Right in the centre of the ceiling hung a movable apparatus, in which was placed a lamp—modern, alas! This came down quite close to the easel, and gave all the light required for night‐work. A carved table with curiously‐twisted legs, and two high‐backed mediæval arm‐chairs covered with tapestry, completed the furniture, besides a green baize stage for the models. This reminded me of the palco used for preaching in Italian churches, even when there is a proper pulpit; some of my readers may remember these miniature stages, raised about five feet from the floor, and on which the excited orator can promenade like a lion in his cage while hurling his burning periods at his awe‐stricken listeners. Van Muyden has a wife and nine children, which fact we ascertained through the reply to a question prompted by the enormous quantity of under‐linen hung out to dry on the balusters outside the studio. We did not see Mme. Van Muyden, and were thankful we did not; for such a reckless display of household secrets must argue a woman whose appearance would frighten romance out of the veriest sentimentalist that ever lived. So we speculated in silence on this domestic guardian of the artist’s peace—an excellent and worthy woman, no doubt, a capital house‐ keeper, a careful mother, a faithful wife, but scarcely a help‐mate, a companion, a Beatrice, to her husband. How few men of sensitive nature, high‐strung character, aspiring organization, have fit wives! Why is it that they generally take a fancy to peculiarly unsuitable women? Is it that they are so soft‐hearted that they cannot resist the attraction of the first pretty face they see, or so rapt above the reach of common interests that they form, as it were inevitably, an incongruous union, and only wake up to find themselves irretrievably tied to a showy slattern, or a plodding, unappreciative housewife? What perverse fairy casts her spell on the poor artist’s marriage‐day, and makes of the chime of his wedding‐ bells the knell of his possible fame?

Poverty is the safest ladye‐love for an artist, as one of Dante’s friends was always telling him. Artists and scholars are the Francis‐of‐Assisiums of the intellectual world, and the same bride as that spiritually wooed by the heroic voluntary beggar, is the most fitting companion for them. With her, at least, they can enjoy the perfect freedom from care which alone makes want supportable; they can throw around their destitution that halo of romance which the prosaic details of a household invariably strangle out of existence. But in the early choice of a wife more hopes go down, more aspirations are smothered, than those whose aim is worldly success and the favor of the great. The ideal is the victim par excellence; for the struggling artist, tied by his own hasty imprudence to a woman of inferior mould, soon feels the spark of genius die within him; the incentive to “do and dare” has dwindled down to the necessity of “earning and eating.” A woman with uncomprehensive soul peevishly reminds him at every moment of the world of matter, without even offering him the compensation of a blind and admiring worship of his talents in his own peculiar sphere; in short, he is a living example of the adage, “A man that’s married is a man that’s marred.”

Far be it from me to bring this reproach on any particular individual; but such was the train of thought naturally induced by the unsightly array of house‐linen hung like delusive flags of truce on the balusters of the artist’s home. Early marriage is undoubtedly best for the generality of men in the world, but it is intellectual ruin to artists. Let us wish them the rare fortune of a wife that will be a real helpmate to their higher and better selves, a staff to lean on up the thorny road to Parnassus, and then recommend early marriage; but unless such exceptions be found, let them beware of the fate typified by the prosaic decoration of Van Muyden’s abode at Geneva.

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Visions

The white stars gleamed in the jessamine bush, And the bright stars up in the sky, And Gilfillan stood at the garden‐gate, And so at the gate stood I.

The apple‐boughs bent as we lingered there, And showered their rosy rain— Is it all that shall fall in that pleasant path, If we meet at the gate again?

O Gilfillan gay! why seek away From lady‐love, kith, and kin The world’s Well‐done, or ’neath foreign sun The golden spurs to win?

O womanly heart! be still, be still! It is threescore years to‐day— And thou canst throb with this wild, wild tide, And I all withered and gray!

And Gilfillan’s bones ’neath the kirk‐yard stones Of a foreign and far‐off land— No preacher so loud of the coffin and shroud, And the house that is built on sand!

Oh! a rare, rare castle of human hope We builded aloft in our pride! And, oh! woe betide so weary a dream; For my lover is by my side.

We have known no partings, no weary years, We have known no days of sorrow; For I am but seventeen to‐day, And we shall be married to‐morrow!

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A Word For Women

By One Of Themselves.

It has been urged that women should refrain from writing for the public, and busy themselves with interests more strictly within their own domain than those of literature. The demand might claim respectful notice, if all women would give heed to it. Since they will not, is there any reason why those who employ their pens in the production of sensational stories and other demoralizing works should have the field all to themselves? Or is it right that others of equal ability should shrink from entering it in defence of religion and morality?

The space is ample for all combatants. Our learned and venerable doctors, stern champions of truth, who keep their logical and polemical lances ever poised to strike the foe, to demolish error, and force conviction upon minds firmly closed against less cogent weapons, need not fear being jostled by humble handmaidens of the same mistress, who have ventured within the lists. These may do good service, also, with a large class whom their telling blows shall fail to reach.

Our women and youth, who will read and be influenced for good or evil by “feminine literature,” cannot be amused with metaphysical discussions that gain an attentive hearing from men of philosophical tastes, or even by moral essays and reflections, however excellent and edifying.

Unfortunately, it is not a question of forming the tastes of readers. Alas! these are already formed by a vitiated literature, flowing from a godless system of education, and carrying the poison through the whole length of its course.

The only question is, Where shall the antidote be found, and how administered? Certainly not in moral lectures that will not be read, or in fiction of the goody‐goody sort.

Our only hope—and it is a bright one—for the future of our young Catholics lies in the blessed awakening—effected by the clear tones of that infallible voice which never, in any age, gave forth an uncertain sound—that is causing schools for Christian culture to spring up through the whole length and breadth of our country. But what for our children of a larger growth, whose tastes are already perverted?

We think it is unquestionable that, as the daughters of the first Eve, according to the flesh, have aided powerfully in commending the forbidden fruit to the lips of a deluded public, so the daughters of the second Eve, according to the spirit, may do much to remedy the consequences of the fatal banquet.

There are certain influences exercised almost exclusively by women. There are certain subjects to the consideration of which the flexibility of her nature enables her to bend her efforts with graceful success, and to far better purpose than the “stern masculinity” of man’s heart, head, and pen can compass.

Well, then, if women may write, it behooves them to treat of such matters, and in such manner, as shall secure readers. For our people must and will read. Right or wrong, it is a necessity of the age. From the abodes of wealth and leisure, in the metropolis of fashion, to village homes and rural firesides, our people must and will read. Happy for them if the nourishment their fevered imaginations so morbidly crave be at least harmless! A highly‐seasoned sensational literature has stimulated the craving to a degree of frenzy, if not to actual organic disease; happy, indeed, for them could such mental pabulum, such agreeable viands and cooling fruits, be furnished and accepted as would gradually assuage the wild thirst for excitement, until wholesome correctives should become palatable!

To secure success in tilling the field from which so desirable a harvest is to be gathered, the most conscientious writers must be content, however they may deplore the necessity, to sharpen their plough‐shares in the camps of these Philistines of literature. With no blunt implement can the soil be compelled to yield such harvest.

We may furnish entertaining and edifying biographies, and gain a few readers. For this department women are by nature peculiarly fitted, if they will guard against the tendency to exaggeration which is their besetting sin. But for one reader of such a book there will be fifty, even among Catholics, who will prefer the demoralizing trash in cheap newspapers and dime novels to the best biography that can be produced.

Truth should be presented in a sharp and, to use a phrase of the times, taking way which shall compel a hearing. The popular absurdities and glaring depravities of this “enlightened XIXth century” should be set forth with vehement energy and convincing force.

It is no shadow, but a real, all‐pervading, soul‐destroying power with which the Christian athlete of this day is brought into close conflict. The foe must be met by an attitude as firmly hostile to its evil enticements as it assumes against all good influences. “Beating the air” will win no victory. Seeking to compromise or modify the stern principles of eternal truth held and proclaimed by the Catholic Church from first to last will only ensure defeat.

If our women join in the struggle to resist the forces of infidelity which threaten to overwhelm our sons and daughters in temporal and eternal ruin, and, in their zealous enthusiasm, step beyond the sphere of domestic privacy and humble retirement that is happily their own; if some literary Judith even throws off for the moment the delicate tenderness of her sex, and seems to pass the limits of female decorum to strike off the head a leading Holofernes, let us not cry, Out upon her for such unwomanly act! Let us reflect that it would have been more in accordance with her nature and inclination to have remained quietly in her sequestered home and at her ease, if she could have forgotten the fearful interests that were at stake.

What woman could look on with apathy when husband, brother, or child was exposed to certain death, from which her strongest effort might possibly snatch the dear one, or listen to the remonstrance that it was unbecoming and improper for a woman to put forth such effort, and that it must prove a very feeble and faulty one at the best? And shall we ask her to fold her hands in ease, and remain silent in fitting retirement, when the souls of her beloved are exposed to eternal death? No; it is her inalienable right to speak and act when by word or deed she may possibly rescue souls.

Should sentiments of mere human feeling, and affections from which it is most difficult to detach the heart of woman, enter into, imbue, and even control the means she uses to promote interests dearer than mortal life, she has nothing to fear but the critics. Her heavenly Judge will never condemn her for using such weapons as he has endowed her withal in his holy cause.

Honey is sometimes better than vinegar, feminine sentiment often more effective than masculine wisdom, and fervor always to be preferred to apathy.

We need not fear that the Catholic woman will be carried too far by her fervent zeal in resisting the “spirit of the age.” She can never be led into the mistakes of the so‐called “strong‐minded.” Our vigilant and loving mother, the Holy Catholic Church, arms her daughters with invulnerable shields against all fanaticism. She holds also in her hands the power to sanctify all influences by which souls are attracted to her embrace; to transmute all metals into gold.

If an appeal to the sentimental and emotional element in the heart of a stranger to her fold has drawn the wanderer to her maternal bosom, her gentle, all‐prevailing inspiration soon condenses feeling into principle, and the romantic visionary stands clothed in the panoply of a martyr.

If fitting words bravely spoken have called hither a soul from the slough of transcendentalism, spiritism, free love, or from the ranks of the “strong‐minded,” there is no fear that it may prove less docile to the genial influence than that of the dreamer, or fail to be speedily invested with all the delicate attributes and simple dignity of the true woman.

All honor to the Catholic women in our own country and in Great Britain who are striving, each in her own way, to promote the interests of a sound and truly Catholic literature. When there were but few of these in America, our sisters beyond the Atlantic reached their hands across the great waters to rescue souls. It will be known only at the great accounting day how many they first attracted to the consideration of eternal verities. From that time they have increased in number, and have continued to enrich British Catholic literature by their contributions, while encouraging their American co‐workers.

A feminine Catholic literature may not be faultless, and yet gain numerous readers, and prove a power for good, not only within the church, but beyond her pale. Women are human, and therefore liable to imperfection.

When we notice the faults of female writers, we must not forget the difficulties which encompass them. Few American women who write are exempt from a multitude of vexatious household cares, or even from kitchen drudgery. Many are oppressed with poverty, have no power to earn a subsistence but by the pen, with helpless families dependent upon their literary exertions. Among the most favored, scarcely one can be found who has not some invalid—a husband, parent, or child—who requires her attentions by night and day. It may be safely asserted that such literary leisure as men devoted to these pursuits ordinarily enjoy is unknown to American women. With all their disadvantages, the marvel is, not that their performances should be imperfect, but that they have really accomplished so much under the shadow of the crowding cares and duties which surround them in their various domestic relations.

Let them take courage, then, and persevere in their laudable efforts, striving diligently to make the productions of their pens more and more perfect. And to this end let them bestow their cordial smiles and most graceful bows of acknowledgment upon their best friends—the critics who will take the pains to examine and pass honest and intelligent verdicts upon their productions. Acute criticism is the purging fire of literature, without which it would soon become overburdened with nonsense. As the friend who kindly admonishes us of our faults is entitled to the warmest corner in our hearts, so the critic who frankly sets forth the defects of any production may justly claim the most sincere gratitude of its author.

New Publications.

STATE CHARITIES AID ASSOCIATION. Report of a Committee on a new Bellevue Hospital. New York: American Church Press Co., 4 St. Mark’s Place. 1874.

This pamphlet is worth reading by all who are interested in hospitals. The need of reformation in this branch of philanthropic work is only too well proved. The gentlemen and ladies who interest themselves in the care of the sick poor merit both honor and gratitude. All that is written or done, however, by the most zealous and disinterested persons who seek to accomplish their end outside of the Catholic Church only adds to the evidence that the church alone is competent to deal with great social evils and miseries. The state is cold, selfish, and merciless, except so far as it is Christianized. Mercenaries are always lacking in the qualities necessary to secure a truly faithful and charitable care of the sick and miserable. Division among those who are seeking to carry out the precepts of Christian charity, and the want of organization and of religious institutions among those who are out of the one true church, paralyze their efforts. It is only Christian unity which can give the proper remedy for this lamentable state of things, and without Catholic faith and obedience this unity is impossible. Religious orders are alone capable of carrying out great works of charity, and they cannot exist and flourish except in the Catholic Church. If modern society does not return to the bosom of the church, its evils are incurable, however much individuals may do in a partial way. Nevertheless, these partial and imperfect efforts ought to be encouraged; and during this past winter we have had occasion to admire and rejoice in the outflow of a stream of beneficence upon our suffering population in New York which has relieved an immense amount of misery. In so far as the special subject of this pamphlet is concerned, it is obvious that the erection of a new Bellevue Hospital is imperatively demanded, and we trust that it will be accomplished.

UNIVERSITE LAVAL. SIXIEME CENTENAIRE DE SAINT THOMAS D’AQUIN A S. HYACINTHE ET A QUEBEC. Quebec: Coté et Cie. 1874.

We are rejoiced to see that the six‐hundredth anniversary of S. Thomas was celebrated with due splendor and solemnity in at least these two places on the American continent. The same was done in private at the college of the Jesuits, at Woodstock. The Quebec pamphlet, besides the two excellent discourses of M. l’Abbé Bégin and the Rev. F. Prior Bourgeois, O.S.D., contains a very remarkable poem by a religious of the Congregation of the Precious Blood at S. Hyacinthe. We tender our thanks for the courtesy of the friend who sent us this interesting memorial of a religious fête which does honor to the taste and piety of the devout and cultivated Catholics of Lower Canada.

The two discourses contained in the pamphlet are of a high order of excellence in regard both to thought and diction. We have accidentally omitted to notice among the other discourses that of Professor Pâquèt, which is fully worthy of the brilliant occasion on which it was delivered, viz., the soirée which took place in the evening in the grand hall of the university.

TRUE TO TRUST. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This story, the epoch of which is placed during the reign of Henry VIII., is almost worthy of Lady Georgiana Fullerton, and its style frequently reminds us of that accomplished writer of fiction. The character of Catharine Tresize is truly beautiful and original. We recommend this story as one of the best which has lately appeared.

IN SIX MONTHS; OR, THE TWO FRIENDS. By Mary M. Meline. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1874.

The story of the two friends, who are two young Americans converted to Catholicity in Europe, has the advantage of appearing upon tinted paper, in a neat form, suitable to the polished, ornate diction and poetic fancy of the lady author, a near relative of the late Mr. Meline, who was one of our favorite contributors. Miss Meline has a cultivated literary taste and a decided talent for writing stories. She has, moreover, the genuine Catholic spirit of fervent devotion to the Holy Father, and in the present story describes some scenes connected with the invasions of Rome under Garibaldi and La Marmora. We trust Miss Meline will not suffer her pen to lie idle, but keep it busily at work.

DR. COXE’S CLAIMS TO APOSTOLICITY REVIEWED. Right Rev. Bishop Ryan’s Reply to the Attack of the Episcopal Prelate. Buffalo: Catholic Publication Co. Price 15 cents.

Dr. Coxe is a prelate who has always been conspicuous for arrogance and reckless assertion in maintaining the pretensions of the High Church party in the Protestant Episcopal denomination, and for his vituperative and defamatory assaults on the Catholic Church. In this temperate but severe criticism, Bishop Ryan has made an end of his claims to possess episcopal character and mission, and has refuted him out of his own mouth. We trust that this able and valuable pamphlet will not be permitted to go into oblivion, as pamphlets are wont to do, but be carefully preserved and made use of by clergymen and others who have to deal with Episcopalians searching after the true church, of whom there are so many in these days.

COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT’S LETTERS TO A SCHOOLFELLOW. 1827‐1830. Translated from the French by C. F. Audly. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.

Goethe somewhere remarks that many of an author’s best thoughts are to be found in his letters to his intimate friends; written, not for the public, not for fame but from the strong desire to communicate that which is most living within him to a kindred spirit.

In the confidential correspondence of great minds there is a yet greater charm. We feel a kind of personal interest in men who have exercised great intellectual power over us; they become our heroes, and we endow them with imaginary qualities, from lack of more certain information concerning them. The minutest details in their lives become to us affairs of moment. How they looked, how they dressed, what they thought about the most trifling subjects, seem to us to be matters worthy of becoming a part of history. There is a still higher interest in the story of the unfolding of a powerful intellect. It contains a lesson in psychology more instructive than any which can be learned from abstract treatises on this subject. This it is that gives the chief value to autobiographies of philosophers, poets, and theologians. Yet an autobiography can never be a mirror in which we may behold the workings of the human mind. It is an after‐ thought, a reflex judgment, the expression of what men now think they once felt or thought. It does not give us the process of intellectual growth, but a theory concerning what that process must have been; and a theory formed by the individual concerning the flux and reflux of the currents of his own life can never be wholly trustworthy. Autobiography is necessarily subject to all the vices inherent in special pleading.

The truest history of the intellectual and moral development of a man is to be found in his letters to his intimate friends. There we have, not what in after‐years he thinks he thought and felt, but what he really did think and feel; and in this view of the matter, the egotism which is always so prominent in letters to friends gives them an additional value. Instead of being offended with the writer for talking so much about himself, we are grateful for the weakness which gives us a truer insight into his character.

These considerations will prepare our readers for a favorable criticism upon the volume before us. Few men have lived to whom we more gladly give the homage of admiration and respect than to Charles de Montalembert; and though we strongly condemn certain words which he uttered when his mind was troubled by suffering and disease, and which, had he lived longer, he himself would have been the first to wish unsaid, he was yet so great a man that we willingly forget that he made this blunder.

These Letters, of which Mr. Audly has given us an excellent English translation, were first published in the Contemporain (June, 1872, to March, 1873).

They run from 1827 to 1830, and, as the work of a youth from his seventeenth to his twentieth year, are of course fresh, frank, and ardent; but they also reveal in the future orator and historian a depth of feeling and a command of language rarely to be met with in one of so tender an age.

They are addressed to M. Léon Cornudet, whom Montalembert calls the friend of his soul, his dearest friend; to whom he is bound by a common sympathy in every noble feeling and high aim; whom nor time nor absence can make him even for one moment forget. What chiefly strengthens him in his faith in the permanency of this friendship is the fact that it is based on religion, which becomes the immortal mediatrix between his soul and that of his friend.

When he travels and contemplates the beauties of nature, his only regret is that his friend is not near him; when he reads a poem, and his soul is borne aloft on the wings of inspiration, he exclaims, “Oh! if he were but here to share my delight.” He never dreams of the future, of battling for religion and freedom, of victories won and defeats nobly borne, that he does not behold his friend by his side; and when, picturing to himself the vicissitudes of life, he imagines that possibly, in spite of his high resolves and strong purposes, he may fail, may be doomed to obscurity and the contempt of the world, he seeks for consolation in the thought that in the heart of his friend he will find a better world.

His friend is, as it were, his other self, which gives to him a twofold life; making him feel always that “joy was born a twin,” and that all who joy would win must share it, and that sorrow, too, longs to pour itself into the heart of love.

This strong friendship—“the only impulse of the soul admitting of excess”—which, like a thread of gold, runs through all these letters, wins at once our sympathy and our confidence.

There is something noble and great in the youth who is capable of such pure and deep love. After all, it is the heart that reaches highest and deepest, and through it man attains to the best.

Of course there is in these letters much that is immature; were it not so, they would not be the letters of a mere boy; but the infinite faith in the possibility of divine realities even on earth, the lofty contempt for what is mean and ignoble, the self‐confidence that never doubts of itself, the restless activity that no work satisfies, the boundless craving for knowledge, the freshness of the heart that falls like dew upon every lovely thing, giving it health and beauty—all this so charms and delights us that we have no eye for defects.

“A contempt for life,” he writes to his friend, “is, in my opinion, the finest privilege of youth. As we grow older, the more we cling to a frail existence which becomes a burden to ourselves and to others.”

What has experience that can compensate for the loss of

“The love of higher things and better days; The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance Of what is called the world, and the world’s ways; The moments when we gather from a glance More joy than from all future pride or praise Which kindle manhood, but can ne’er entrance The heart in an existence of its own”?

Young Montalembert, with wealth and noble birth, which gave him the entrée of the highest circles, found no charm in what is called society. His mind was too serious, his ambition too lofty, to permit him to throw away the precious time of youth in frivolous amusements.

“People usually say,” he writes to his friend during the summer vacations of 1827, “that in youth we ought to give ourselves up to the pleasures of society. In my opinion, this amounts to downright absurdity. I should think that in youth we ought to plunge into study or into the profession we wish to embrace. When a man has done his duty towards his country; when he can come before the world with laurels won in the senate or on the field of battle, or at least when he enjoys universal esteem; when, again, he is sure of commanding universal esteem and respect, then I can understand that he has a right to enjoy himself in society, and to mix in it with assurance.”

Montalembert had a passion for labor, which is the only sure road to excellence and power, and which is also the greatest evidence of ability.

We find him, when not yet ten years old, shut up in his grandfather’s library, acting as his secretary, helping him in the designs of his geographical maps, and absorbed in the study of the great English orators; and later, at college, giving up his recreations, and devoting fifteen hours a day to the severest mental discipline. By saving five minutes every morning in his cell at Sainte‐Barbe out of the time allowed to the pupils for rising and dressing, he managed in one year to translate a whole volume of Epictetus. He spent a portion of the summer vacation of 1827 at La Roche‐Guyon, the country‐seat of the Duc de Rohan; and though the castle was filled with guests, for whom the duke provided every kind of amusement, this intrepid young worker is able to write the following lines to his friend:

“While you are idling your time away, pray just hear what I shall have read during my month’s residence at La Roche: in the first place, all Byron, which is no trifling job; Delolme, on the British Constitution—a capital and highly important work; the whole of the Odyssey, twenty‐four cantos, at the rate of one a day; Thomson, Cowper, Pliny’s Letters; the Lettres Provinciales; the Life of S. Francis Xavier, by Bouhours, which the duke obliged me to read; three volumes of the Mercure newspaper; and, lastly, the poetical part of the Greek Excerpta.”

Even in Stockholm, whither he went in 1828 with his father, who had been appointed French ambassador to the court of Sweden, he is able, in the midst of the endless and tiresome routine of court etiquette, to devote six or seven hours a day to study. “In the morning,” he writes, “I read Kant, whom I study deeply, not finding him over‐difficult in the beginning. At night I plod in detail over Northern history. In the afternoon I devote all the time I can catch to my correspondence, to reading a few German poems and novels, and to certain statistical or political studies.”

Not content with working himself, he seeks to rouse the flagging energies of his friend by pointing out to him’ what great things he may be able to do for God and his country. The ruling passion in Montalembert’s heart, in these early years as during his whole life, was the love of the church and of freedom.

“Religion, liberty,” he writes—“such are the eternal groundworks of all virtue. To serve God, to be free—such are our duties. In order to fulfil them, we must use every resource, every means, which Providence has placed in our hands.” And again: “I have succeeded in preserving my faith in the midst of one hundred and twenty infidels; I hope that God will not allow me to lose my independence of mind in the midst of half a dozen absolutists.”

And then he pictures to himself the great good which might be accomplished by a writer who, bidding defiance to the prejudices of youth and the public, would raise a bold and eloquent voice in defence of freedom and the church. “What a noble part he would have to play!” he exclaims. “What blessings he would confer upon mankind! What services he would render to religion! Ah! wherefore has not God deigned to give me talent? With what passionate ardor I would have embraced such a glorious future!” Who does not perceive here how the thoughts of the boy were father to the deeds of the man?

No author of our time has written more feelingly or eloquently of Ireland than Montalembert. He was drawn to her by a double attraction—he loved her for her faith, and he sympathized with her because she was wronged. The finest portion of his history of The Monks of the West is that devoted to the Irish saints. Nothing could be more beautiful or more consoling than the noble pages which he has devoted to this subject. As his Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth opened a new path across the vast field of Catholic history, his studies on S. Columba and S. Columbanus called attention to the wealth of religious poetry and Christian example which was suffered to remain buried in the archives of the early Irish Church. In these letters we perceive the first awakening of his love for Ireland, and are able to trace the causes which led him to study the history of that most interesting but unhappy land.

“By reading the admirable speeches of Grattan,” he writes in 1828, “I have discovered, as it were, a new world—the world of Ireland, of her long‐ sufferings, her times of freedom and glory, her sublime geniuses, and her indefatigable struggles. The universal interest now felt for Ireland, and the remarkable circumstances in which she is placed at present, have tempted me to unfold before the eyes of those Frenchmen who care for Ireland the highly interesting annals and the sundry revolutions of her history. My Irish parentage on my mother’s side, my deep knowledge of English, and my acquaintance with several families in that country have confirmed my first ideas on this matter, and I have determined upon writing a history of Ireland from the year 1688, and to do it as soon as possible, in order that it may be published, if that can be done, before the vital question of the emancipation is solved. There is perhaps no country presenting such a plentiful harvest of events equally interesting and unknown.”

Montalembert was in Sweden when he wrote this letter, and he at once sent to England for books, that he might without delay set to work on his proposed history of Ireland. In addition to this, he proposed at the end of the year to visit Ireland itself, that he might consult libraries and make a thorough study of the people and country. This somewhat ambitious project of the youthful Montalembert led to no other immediate results than an article on Ireland in the Revue Française, and a journey to the Emerald Isle in 1830; but to it we are no doubt in part indebted for the eloquent chapters on the Irish Saints in The Monks of the West. His first letter from Ireland to his friend is full of the enthusiasm with which the history of that country had inspired him:

“As for the Irishwomen,” he writes, “they are bewitching. They form the most beautiful female population I ever beheld. But I reserve all my remarks on the country and the people for our conversations in Paris. For the present I must simply beg of you to pray that my passion for Ireland may not become criminal, for it threatens really to lead me astray from the lawful object of my affections; and I am but too often tempted to turn away my thoughts from our France to a country so completely responding to my beliefs, my tastes, and even my most trifling prepossessions.”

He visited the county Wicklow in September, 1830, and wrote to his friend from the “meeting of the waters in the vale of Avoca.” “No, never,” he exclaims, “in France, England, the Netherlands, or even in Germany, have I met with anything comparable to the wild and picturesque defiles of this Wicklow County.... Only figure to yourself the grandest and yet the most lovely landscape; torrents abounding in numberless cascades, struggling to make their way through perpendicular rocks; forests of almost fabulous depths; meadows and swards full worthy of the Emerald Isle; and then old abbeys, modern residences, and lodges built in the purest Gothic style. Place, moreover, in such a landscape, the most pious, most cheerful, most poetical population in the world. Then, again, say to yourself that Grattan passed his childhood here; that he meditated his speeches along these torrents; that one of these residences was bestowed on him by his fatherland, and that therein he lived in his old age; that all these beautiful lands were sanctified and immortalized by the Rebellion of 1798. Well, figure to yourself all this, and you will still have but a faint idea of what I have felt for the last few days.”

As in his eyes Irishwomen were the most beautiful, and Irish scenery the most lovely, he was prepared to admire enthusiastically the men of the country. At Carlow College he dined with the celebrated Bishop Doyle and several of his professors, who, he says, received him with a truly Homeric hospitality.

“I really don’t know,” he writes, “which I ought to admire most, the people or the clergy. I feel confounded at the sight of this people, equally faithful—as I said in my article, whilst myself hardly believing it—equally faithful to its old misery and to its old faith, who, of all the possessions of their forefathers, have preserved nothing but their religion, the only relic snatched from the conqueror, without ever allowing themselves to be carried away by the invincible attraction of imitation.... As for the priests, they are all model priests—manly, open, cheerful, energetic. No hypocrisy, no assumed reserve, to be read on their candid and serene countenances; they talk of freedom with all the buoyancy of a Paris school‐boy, and of their country, of their dear and unfortunate Ireland, with an accent that would melt a heart of stone. One can see that over their hearts religion and patriotism hold equal sway. Indeed, in order to comprehend fully what patriotism is, one must hear an Irish priest talk of his country.”

It is a mistake to affirm, as has been done, that Montalembert made this journey to Ireland merely, or chiefly even from a desire to see O’Connell.

The great Liberator had indeed fired his young heart with enthusiasm, and he rode sixty miles through a dreary country to have the pleasure of talking with him; but from these letters it is evident that a feeling, higher and more general than any which could be inspired by an individual, however great, had drawn him to the Isle of Saints. At Derrynane he found O’Connell, surrounded by his twenty‐three children and nephews, looking like a plain country farmer. “I was struck,” he writes, “but not dazzled, by him. He is by no means the most interesting object in Ireland.”

He heard O’Connell speak, and, in spite of his enthusiastic and impressionable nature, was disappointed.

“He is but a demagogue,” he tells his friend, “and by no means a great orator. He is declamatory, inflated, full of bombast; his arguments are loosely strung together; his fancy is devoid of charm or freshness; his style harsh, rough, and choppy. The more I see of him, the more I hear him, the more I am confirmed in my first opinion—to wit, he is not stamped with the mark of genius or with true greatness. But he defends the finest of all causes. He has before him no mighty antagonist or rival, and circumstances—as is the case with many others—will stand him in lieu of genius.”

We have given our readers but a faint idea of the warmth, and glow, and freshness that pervade these letters; of the frank and unaffected candor with which their youthful author lays open his whole heart to his friend; of the deep spirit of religion and reverence which runs through them; of the noble sentiments and generous resolves which, as from an inexhaustible fountain, well up from young Montalembert’s heart. In reading them, we have felt our own heart grow younger and kindle with new fire; we have seemed to catch the accent of the olden time, when men lived for honor, and were glad to die for faith and truth, rather than the metallic tone of this age, “when only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie.”

We know of no book which we would more gladly see in the hands of our Catholic youth who lack enthusiasm and are without the courage which a noble and high purpose in life can alone give.

They need the education which will lift them above low and petty aims, and cause them to take an interest in things of an unselfish kind. They must learn that worth is more than success, and honor better than wealth; they must be taught to outgrow the narrow, calculating spirit of the huckster and the shopkeeper, the disposition to sneer at enthusiasm and to depreciate high principles of action; and to this end we know of nothing that is likely to contribute more effectually than the example and writings of such men as Montalembert, who devoted the labor of a lifetime to high aims and noble purposes; who loved the truth for its own sake, and freedom, not for himself alone, but for all men; who never worshipped the rising sun or paid court to success, but fought for the just cause without stopping to reflect whether he would win or lose.

“Let us never forget,” said Montalembert, towards the end of his life, speaking to his friend—“let us never forget that Rio, when we were young, cultivated enthusiasm within our souls, and for such a blessing we must be bound to him by the deepest gratitude.” This is a debt which many a Catholic to‐day, not in France alone, but throughout the world, owes to Charles de Montalembert.

THE CONSOLING THOUGHTS OF S. FRANCIS OF SALES. Gathered from his writings and arranged in order by the Rev. Père Huguet. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1874.

This work is really beyond the scope of the reviewer or the critic, as it is made up wholly from the writings of a great saint. To every one who knows the works of S. Francis of Sales, it will be a fresh pleasure to see such well‐arranged parts of them in an English dress. Père Huguet has had the happy thought of choosing from the saint’s spiritual treatises everything that could console the sorrowful, strengthen the weak, and encourage the doubtful. The translator made it a labor of love to put these thoughts within the reach of many millions of English‐speaking people. S. Francis has been read and admired by every one, within or without the church; and there is between him and the modern mind a peculiar sympathy which makes him essentially welcome to men of our day. Non‐Catholics would call him a thoroughly reasonable saint. Everywhere his counsel will be found on the side of moderation. The “smoking flax” and the “bruised reed” need not fear him; his gentle touch is the very thing they require. The care with which Père Huguet has made this compilation is apparent; for though the sentences that compose one page may, as he says, have been taken from twenty various treatises, they all follow each other in admirable order. The author has also supplemented them with footnotes, consisting of appropriate passages from other spiritual writers, ancient and modern, bearing on the same subjects as those treated of by S. Francis. A few of these notes are signed with no name, and are probably the adapter’s own. S. Francis has a wonderful power of expressing spiritual truths in little terse sayings that might well be called proverbs. A few quotations will give an idea of this peculiarity of his style:

“Persecutions are pieces of the cross of Jesus Christ; we should scruple very much to allow the smallest particle of them to perish.”

“It is not with spiritual rose‐bushes as with material ones; on the latter, the thorns remain and the roses pass away; on the former, the thorns pass away and the roses remain.”

“It is necessary that all these sentiments should sink deep into our hearts, and that, leaving our reflections and our prayers, we should pass to our affairs sweetly, lest the liquor of our good resolutions should evaporate and be lost, for we must allow it to saturate and penetrate our whole soul; everything, nevertheless, without strain of mind or body.”

Some very beautiful thoughts will be found on death, and the sorrow of the living for the loss of their dear ones; also some merciful and encouraging conjectures on the number of the saved, which S. Francis thinks will be the greater number of Christians.

SERMONS, LECTURES, ETC., ETC., OF THE REV. MICHAEL B. BUCKLEY, (LATE) SS. PETER AND PAUL’S, CORK. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1874.

This volume, containing the literary remains of the lamented F. Buckley, will, we have no doubt, be well received by his numerous friends both here and in Ireland. Though a young man, he had earned a high reputation as a speaker and a writer; and the contents of this volume prove that his reputation was not undeserved.

The subjects of the sermons and lectures are varied and interesting, and are, for the most part, well handled. The memoir of the devoted young priest attached to the volume will be found edifying and instructive, and the whole book we deem well worthy the careful perusal of both clergy and laity.

NOVENA TO OUR LADY OF LOURDES; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE APPARITION. From the French Edition. Approved by the Bishop of Tarbes. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1874.

The devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes has spread so rapidly, and miraculous favors coming from it have become so common, even in this country, that this little book is extremely welcome, and will, no doubt, be very popular. It cannot fail, also, to do much good by making the apparition more generally known, and increasing the love of the faithful for Our Lady, and their confidence in her intercession.

MEDITATIONS ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST. By Brother Philippe, Superior‐ General of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Translated from the French. West Chester: New York Catholic Protectory. 1873.

All who are acquainted with other meditations by the lately‐deceased and much‐regretted Brother Philippe will not need to be assured of the excellence of the present work. We have eighty‐two meditations on the Eucharist, admirably chosen and thought out. Among them we are delighted to see one entitled “The Holy Eucharist and the Most Blessed Virgin,” and another upholding “Frequent Communion.”

Subjoined to these meditations are some on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, by the same author. These are twenty‐four in number, and will prove of service for instructions and conferences to sodalities of the Sacred Heart.

May our glorious Lady, to whom this volume is dedicated, secure it the reception it deserves. We have never seen anything to surpass these Meditations, which Brother Philippe has left us as a precious legacy.

SNATCHES OF SONG. By Mary A. McMullen (Una). St. Louis: Published by Patrick Fox, No. 14 South Fifth Street. 1874.

There are several reasons which incline us to speak favorably of this book of poems. The first, perhaps, is the appearance of its printed pages, which are neatly executed upon tinted paper. We notice, also, that the red on the edges does not rub off on our fingers, which is a great source of satisfaction to one who is obliged to handle new books. On turning the book over, it occurs to us that green muslin does not form a pleasant contrast with red edges; but as we notice a gilded harp and shamrock on the cover, the arrangement of color is perhaps intended to be typical of the sentiments of the authoress.

The book‐noticer—for we shall not claim the august title of critic—pauses with instinctive reverence at sight of the works of a poet, and, above all, of a poetess. The rhymes must be either good or bad. If good, how shall he condense the ecstasies, the harmonies, of one volume into the prosaic compass of a notice? If bad, how shall he run the risk of breaking by rude treatment the strings of a lyre which is perhaps just working into tune, or inflict a wound on those gushing hearts which sing with the birds or bubble with the brooks? In the present instance, we are glad to be able to say that the verses are not bad. The writer has talent. While there is no marked or striking originality in the subjects chosen, and not much of deep and moving pathos, there are many well‐turned and pretty stanzas, and at times quite a wealth of imagery and illustration. The lines on “The Nightingale,” “To Cashel,” “The Wayside Shrine,” will furnish instances of this; and the volume will be found agreeable to lovers of poetry. The writer deserves to be encouraged. We wish her success in the fortune of her volume.

There is, however, a tone in some of the strains which grates somewhat upon our ears. Although no one suffers from the abuse of arbitrary power as greatly as the holy church, it is not her spirit to seek relief by violence, nor is this permitted to her children, even under oppressive tyranny, excepting when it promises to be a true remedy. There is much more to be feared in these days from the spirit of lawlessness and rebellion than from intelligent submission to governments, even when imperfect in form and unjust in practice. Our Holy Father, while branding with his apostolic eloquence the iniquities of which he is the victim, has forbidden violent resistance, for the time being, to the oppressors of Italy. The Catholics of Germany, under the most diabolical tyranny, have not sought relief by agitating insurrection. And while we do not propose to submit to injustice, or to call bad things by good names, we will never wilfully stain our hands by unnecessary bloodshed. Under these circumstances, the “Hymn to Liberty,” page 39, strikes us as a piece of heated declamation.

Some lines which we have noted at intervals, and which seem to look forward to the emancipation of Ireland as the work of the sword, though highly gratifying to martial spirits, will not wholly commend themselves to those friends of Ireland who are now seeking it by peaceful means, and tread in the paces of the great O’Connell. There is no beauty without truth; and those who lose sight of it, even in minor details, run the risk of a false inspiration. We are glad to notice, on the other hand, several poems in the volume full of Catholic thought and piety. As for the melodies, harmonies, etc., before alluded to, those who wish for them must lay aside our notice and read the book.

THE PARADISE OF GOD; or, The Virtues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By a Father of the Society of Jesus. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. London: R. Washbourne. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society).

The idea of this book is to show that the lovers of the Sacred Heart find in that “masterpiece of creation” an Eden more beautiful than that from which sin expelled us. The various chapters treating of the “Virtues,” will be read with delight by all who are capable of appreciating them. The book is one of the “Messenger Series,” and uniform with the Happiness of Heaven and God Our Father—two works which have been widely read.

Books and Pamphlets Received.

From D. & J. SADLIER & Co., New York: Sadliers’ Catholic Directory, Almanac, and Ordo for 1874. 12mo.

From the AUTHOR: The Anæsthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy. By Benj. P. Blood. 8vo. pp. 37.

From J. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: Circular of the Catholic Commissioner for Indian Missions, to the Catholics of the United States. Paper, 8vo, pp. 14.

From COMPTON & CO., Halifax, N. S. The Evil of our Day: A Lecture by Rev. A. Chisholm. 8vo, pp. 15.

From the AUTHOR: Speech of Hon. N. P. Chipman in the House of Representatives, Feb. 28, 1874. Paper, 12mo, pp. 31.

From METCALF & CO., Northampton: Sixth Annual Report of the Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes. Paper, 8vo, pp. 40.

From C. LANGE & CO., New York: Fourth Annual Report of the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital. Paper, 12mo, pp. 34.

From J. LOVELL, Montreal: The Labor and Money Questions. By Wm. Brown. Paper, 24mo, pp. 58.

From J. A. MCGEE: Ireland Among the Nations. By Rev. J. O’Leary, D.D. 12mo, pp. 208.

From P. FOX, St. Louis: Snatches of Song. By Mary A. McMullen (Una). 18mo, pp. 203.

From SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., New York: The History of Greece. By Prof. Dr. Ernst Curtius. Translated by A. W. Ward, M.A. Vol. IV. 12mo, pp. 530.

From J. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: The Paradise of God; or, The Virtues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By a Father of the Society of Jesus. 18mo, pp. 365.

From The NEW YORK CATHOLIC PROTECTORY, West Chester: Meditations on the Holy Eucharist, and Meditations on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By Brother Philippe. 12mo, pp. xvi., 508, 153.

From P. DONAHOE, Boston: Holy Week in the Vatican. By Thomas Canon Pope. 12mo, pp. xxiv., 416.

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THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XIX., NO. 111.—JUNE, 1874

The Principles Of Real Being. VI. Principles of Nominal Realities.

There are beings which are called real, not because they have any special reality of their own, but only on account of their objective connection with real beings. Thus possibilities are called “real,” although the things possible have no formal existence and no actual essence; relations are called “real” when they have real terms and a real foundation, although they are not found to possess (unless they be transcendental) any new and special reality; distinction, too, is called “real” from the reality of those things that are distinct, although distinction in itself is neither a new thing nor aught of any real thing. Hence possibility, relation, and distinction are to be looked upon as entities having only a conventional reality, from which their denomination of “real” has been desumed. Let us therefore inquire what are the principles on which these nominal realities depend.

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Principles of possible being

It has been proved, in one of our preceding articles, that every created being is constituted of an act, of a potential term, and of their formal complement. It is now to be observed that an act, when conceived as ready to be produced and to actuate its term, is called a “first act”—actus primus; whilst the same act, when already produced and existing in its term, is called a “second act”—actus secundus. In the same manner, the potential term, or the potency, when conceived as ready to be first actuated by an act and to complete it, is called a “first potency”—potentia prima; whilst the same term, when already actuated and completing its act, receives the name of “second potency”—potentia secunda.(85)

When treating of being as possible, it is evident that we cannot consider its act as really actuating a term; for such a real actuation would immediately be followed by the real actuality of the being. Yet the quiddity of a possible being is always conceived through the same principles and the same ratios through which the quiddity of the actual being is conceivable. For a being is adequately possible when an act is terminable or can give existence, when a term is actuable or can receive existence, and when, from the concurrence of the two, one complete actuality can result. The act, the term, and the complement are therefore implied in the possible no less than in the actual being; with this difference, however: that in the actual being the act and the term are actually existing in one another, whereas in the possible being the act and the term are not really existing in one another, but only mentally conceived as ready to conspire into one common existence. In other words, in the actual being the act is a second act, the term is a second potency, and the complement is a real and formal result; whilst in the possible being the act is a first act, the term is a first potency, and the complement is a mere resultability.

Hence the intrinsic possibility of a being may be regarded under two correlative aspects—that is either as the terminability of a first act, or as the actuability of a first potency. Under the first aspect, possibility involves a positive reality, because it implies a real entity which is eminently (that is, in a more perfect manner) pre‐contained in the entity and power of its cause. Under the second aspect, possibility does not involve anything positive—unless we speak of the possibility of accidents, which require a positive subject—but only connotes something positive, to wit, the first act by which the term is to be formally actuated. Possibility, under this second aspect, and with reference to primitive beings, is nothing else than the potentiality with which we clothe nothingness when we conceive it as a term out of which beings are educed by creation; for nothingness thus conceived connotes the act by which the non‐existing term can be brought into being.

Every possible being has, therefore, a twofold incomplete possibility—the formal and the material. The formal consists in the terminability of a first act; the material in the actuability of its term; while the complete and adequate intrinsic possibility of the being is a simple result of the concurrence of the two.

It must be manifest, as a consequence from the preceding remarks, that a possible being is not truly, but only nominally, real. For its material possibility, or its possible term, is only an entity of reason, since it means nothing more than a non‐entity conceived as liable to actuation; and its formal possibility, or its possible act, although involving, as we have said, the notion of a positive reality eminently contained in the entity of the Creator, is still nothing formally in that line of reality to which we refer when we speak of its possibility. Thus the possibility of man, so far as it is eminently contained in the entity of the Creator, is no human entity at all, but simply God’s entity and power; just as the possibility of velocity, so far as it is eminently contained in the entity of its cause, is no formal velocity at all, but simply the entity and power of the agent by which the velocity can be brought into being. Certainly, the velocity with which a drop of rain falls to the ground has no formal existence in the earth which produces it, but only in the drop itself; it being evident that the attractive power of the earth is not velocity, but the principle of its production. And the same is to be said of any other effect inasmuch as it is eminently contained in its efficient cause. Nothing, therefore, that is merely possible has any formal being in its cause; whence it follows that whatever is merely possible is nothing more than an entity of reason—that is, an unreality—whether we consider its material or its formal possibility. All entities, in fact, of which the act and the term are beings of reason, can have no actuality but an actuality of reason. Hence possible beings are themselves only beings of reason, and have no reality, either physical or metaphysical. Why, then, are they called real? Certainly not for what they are, but simply because their possibility is the possibility of real beings. Many philosophers are wont to style them metaphysical realities; but this is a mistake, for all metaphysical reality implies existence.

Possibles, as mere beings of reason, have neither actuality nor formal unity, except in intellectual conception; whence it follows that they do not constitute number, except in intellectual conception. This inference is evident. For every multitude is made up of distinct units; and therefore no real multitude can be conceived without real units really distinct. On the other hand, possible beings are not real, but conceptual, units, nor are they really, but only mentally, distinct from one another. As, however, they are distinctly conceived, and have a distinct ideal actuality in the intellect that conceives them, they constitute what may be called an ideal multitude. Such a multitude, as seen and exhaustively comprehended by God’s intellect, is absolutely and positively infinite; for possibilities are nothing but the virtual degrees of being which God’s infinite reality eminently contains, and which God’s infinite power can produce outwardly. The range of possibilities is therefore co‐extensive with God’s infinity, and thus actually comprises an infinite (not an indefinite) multitude of distinct terms.

This infinite multitude is distinctly and positively known to God in the perfect comprehension of his own infinite being, which is the inexhaustible source of all possible beings; to our intellects, however, which cannot comprehend infinity, the same infinite multitude is known only negatively, inasmuch as we understand that the multitude of possible beings admits of no limit whatever. We have, in fact, no positive intuition of the infinite, but acquire a notion of it by means of abstraction only, as we remove the limits by which any finite reality directly perceived by us is circumscribed. In other terms, our notion of the infinite is not an intuitive idea, as the ontologists assume, but only an abstract concept.(86)

Thus far we have spoken of what is called intrinsic possibility. Besides this possibility, which is theoretical and absolute, there is also a relative possibility which is extrinsic and practical. Extrinsically possible we call that which is in the power of some being to do. With regard to God, all that is intrinsically possible is also extrinsically possible; for his omnipotence has no bounds. With regard to creatures, whose power is confined to the production of accidental acts, the range of extrinsic possibility is very limited, since it is reduced to acts of a determinate species, and depends on extrinsic conditions. Still, as the efficient power of created substances is never exhausted by exertion, creatures virtually contain in their own power a multitude of possible acts which has no limit but that of the multitude of terms or subjects which can be placed within the sphere of their activity. This amounts to saying that the active power of creatures can be exerted, not only successively, but even simultaneously, in the production of any number of accidental acts of a certain kind. Thus the attractive power of the sun sufficiently accounts for the possibility of innumerable movements which can take place at any time and at all times in any number of planets, comets, or particles of matter around it; so that the multiplication of the effects does not require the multiplication of the power, but only that of the number of subjects, or potential terms, in which the acts proceeding from that power must be received.

From what we have just said of real possibility, it will be easy to determine in what real impossibility consists. Really impossible we call that which cannot exist in nature. Now, nothing can exist in nature which is not an act completed by a suitable term, or a term actuated by a suitable act, or an actuality resulting from the conspiration of an act and a suitable term, as we have shown in a preceding article. That, therefore, is absolutely and intrinsically impossible in which this essential law of being is not fulfilled. Thus passion without action is absolutely and intrinsically impossible, because a term cannot be actuated without an act; whiteness with nothing white is absolutely impossible, because no mode of being is conceivable where there is no being; a material form actuating an intellectual term is absolutely impossible, because the one cannot give that kind of reality which the other should receive, and thus they cannot conspire into one essence; rotundity and triangularity in the same subject are absolutely impossible, because they exclude and destroy one another. Generally, whenever the assumed principles of a thing do not conspire into one essential ratio, the thing will have no essence, and consequently no possibility of existence. Hence everything is intrinsically impossible which lacks some constituent, or of which the constituents cannot meet together.

Things intrinsically impossible are no beings, not even ideal beings; for since they have no essence, they have no objective intelligibility. Nevertheless, they are said to be really, truly, entitatively impossible, inasmuch as they are the opposite of possible entity, reality, and truth.

Besides this intrinsic and absolute impossibility, there is a relative impossibility, which is styled extrinsic, arising from a deficiency or limitation of extrinsic power. It is evident that a thing intrinsically possible may be extrinsically impossible to causes possessing limited power. To God nothing is impossible. When we say that God cannot sin or make a square circle, we do not limit his power, but only point out the intrinsic impossibility of the thing. And let this suffice with regard to possibles and impossibles.

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Principles of real relation

Relative we call “that which connotes something else”—id quod se habet ad aliud. Thus the greater connotes the less, as nothing can be styled “greater” except as compared with something less; and, similarly, the less connotes the greater, as nothing can be styled “less” except as compared with something greater. Hence greater and less are both relative.

That one thing may connote another, there must be some link between them—that is, a communication in something that reaches them both, and thus connects the one with the other. Hence, to constitute a relative being, three things are required: 1st, that which is to be related, or the subject of the relation; 2d, that to which it is to be related, or the term of the relation; 3d, that through which it is related, or the foundation or formal reason of the relation.

It is worth noticing that the word “relation” is used by philosophers in two different senses. Sometimes it is used as meaning simply “the respect of a subject to a term”; as when we say that the father by his paternity is related to his son, or that the son by his filiation is related to his father. Here paternity and filiation are simple relativities, which may be called “transitive relations,” as the one leads to the other. But sometimes the word “relation” is used as meaning “the tie resulting between two terms from the conspiration of their distinct relativities”; as when we say that between the father and his son there is a tie of consanguinity. Relation in this sense is nothing else than the actuality of two correlatives, inasmuch as connected by their distinct relativities, and may be styled “resultant relation,” or “intransitive relation,” as it does not lead from the subject to the term, but is predicated of both together.

The precise distinction between relativity and resultant relation is marked out by the two prepositions to and between. Relativity relates the subject to its term; resultant relation, or correlation, intervenes between two terms. Relativity needs completion in a term having an opposite relativity, as it is evident that paternity has no completion without a son; and thus one relativity essentially needs to be completed by the other; but correlation is perfectly complete, as it is the result of the completion of one relativity by the other. And, lastly, the formal reason or foundation of the simple relativity is that which induces the connotation, or the respect of one term to another; whilst the formal reason of the correlation is the conspiration of two relativities. Thus the foundation of paternity and of filiation is generation, active on the part of the father, and passive on the part of the son; but the formal reason of consanguinity is not the generation, but the conspiration of paternity and filiation into a relative unity. This shows that these two kinds of relation are entirely distinct, though they are essentially connected with one another in the constitution of the relative being.

Let us now inquire in what the reality of relations consists. Here again we have to make a distinction; for among the relations which are called real, some are real in fact, as the transcendental relations, and others are real by denomination only, as all the predicamental relations.

Transcendental relation is that which intervenes between the act and the term, or the formal and the material principles of one and the same being. Such a relation is called “transcendental,” because it transcends the limits of any particular predicament, and, like being, extends to all predicaments. This relation is truly real, whether we take “relation” as a simple relativity or as a resultant correlation. For the relativity of an act to its term is nothing less than the actuality of the act in the same term; in like manner, the relativity of a term to its act is nothing less than the actuality of the term in the same act. We know, in fact, that the common foundation of the two relativities is actuation, active on the part of the act, and passive on the part of the term; and from actuation nothing but actuality can result. And since by such an actuation the act and the term are really constituted in one another, hence their relativities need nothing extrinsic for their completion, but the one intrinsically completes the other in the same individual being, and both conspire into one absolute actuality, which is the formal complement of the same being, as we have shown in another place.

But with predicamental relations the case is different. The subject and the term of the predicamental relation do not communicate with one another through themselves immediately, but through something else, and are always physically distinct, as we shall see hereafter; whence it follows that the predicamental relativity always refers the subject to a term extrinsic to it, and thus needs something extrinsic for its entitative completion. But nothing which is extrinsic to the subject can complete anything intrinsic to it so as to form a real entity. Therefore the relativity of the subject to its term is not a real entity of the subject, but only a real denomination. The minor of this syllogism can be easily proved; for two things which are, and remain, extrinsic to one another cannot conspire into one real unity; but the subject and the term of predicamental relations are, and remain, extrinsic to one another; they cannot, therefore, conspire into one real unity. Hence they cannot give rise to any new real entity; for unity and entity are convertible terms.

Moreover, predicamental relations arise between two absolute terms without anything new being introduced into them. For if we have two real terms, A and B, possessing something which is common to both, their communication in this common thing will make them relative. Yet such a communication leaves A and B in possession of that reality which is said to be common, and adds no real entity to them. If A and B are both white, the whiteness which is in A is by no means modified by the existence of whiteness in B. The fact that A and B are both white, simply means that whiteness is not confined to A; but it does not imply any new real entity in A, and therefore A remains identically the same, whether there is another white body, B, or not; and if there were one thousand white bodies, A would become related to them all, and acquire a thousand relativities, without the least real modification of its entity.

Not even the relation between agent and patient, which is the nearest possible imitation of the transcendental relation between the essential constituents of absolute being, is a new entity. A being which acts is an agent; and a being which is acted on is a patient. Agent and patient are connected by predicamental relation, the act produced by the first, and received in the second, being the foundation of their relativities. Now, is the relativity of the agent to the patient a new real entity above and besides the substance of the agent and its action? By no means. For such a relativity arises from this only: that the act produced by the agent is received in the patient; and as the patient is a being distinct from the agent, the reception of the act in the patient cannot concur to the constitution of any new reality in the agent. Hence the whole reality of the agent, as such, consists in its substance and its action; while the reception of its action elsewhere can add no real entity to it, but simply gives it a real denomination desumed from the reality of the effect produced. For the same reason, the relativity of the patient to the agent is no new real entity above and besides the substance of the patient and its passion. This relativity, in fact, arises from this only: that the act received in the patient comes from the agent; and as the agent is a being distinct from the patient, the coming of the act from the agent cannot concur to the constitution of any new reality in the patient. Hence the whole reality of the patient, as such, consists in its substance and its passion, or reception of the act; while the coming of this act from a distinct being can add no real entity to it, but simply gives it a real denomination desumed from the reality of the causation.

From what precedes we may conclude that the reality of predicamental relations requires no new real entity superadded to the real terms and the real foundation of their relativity, and accordingly predicamental relations are only nominal realities.

Relations are either virtual, formal, or habitual. Virtual relativity is predicated of a subject which contains in itself virtually (in actu primo) something through which it can communicate with a distinct term. Thus everything visible has a virtual relativity to the eye before it is seen; because all that is visible has the power to make an impression upon the eye. Hence visibility is a virtual relativity, or, if we may so call it, a mere referability. In Latin, it is called ordo—“ordination”; and in the language of the schools, the visible would be said to have “a special ordination to the eye”—visibile ordinem habet ad oculum. In the same manner, the eye has a special ordination to the visible, the intellect to the intelligible, etc.

The formal relativity is predicated of a subject which is formally (in actu secundo) connected with its correlative by the formal participation of a common entity. Thus, when the visible object strikes the eye, the action of the one upon the other entails a formal link of relativity between the two, and it is thus that the previous virtual relativity of the one to the other becomes formal. This formal relativity in Latin is often called respectus—“a respect”; and the things thus related are said “to regard”—respicere—one another.

The habitual relativity is predicated of that which has been brought into relation with its correlative by something in which both originally communicated, but which, owing to the destruction of one of the two, has ceased to be common. This relativity in Latin is properly called habitudo—that is, “habitual connotation”; and the subject thus related is spoken of as habens se ad aliquid—a phrase which we do not attempt to translate, and which is used by philosophers in a more general sense to express all kinds of relations.(87) Thus a murderer is still habitually related to the man whom he has killed, although the man killed is no more a man; and, in the same manner, a son is habitually related to his father, even after his father’s death; for he is still the same son of the same father, and it would be absurd to pretend that he has lost his own relativity and ceased to be a real son only because his father is no more. It must be remarked, however, that this habitual relativity cannot be real, except when the relation has an intrinsic foundation. For when the foundation is extrinsic, there is nothing formally remaining in the subject which, after the suppression of the term, can keep up its relativity. Thus, if the moon were annihilated, the distance from the earth to the moon would totally vanish, as every one will easily admit.

Much might be said about predicamental relations, both intrinsic and extrinsic; but, in a general treatise like this, we cannot well enter into matters of detail. We will only state that relations are divided according to their foundations. Intrinsic relations are respectively founded on substance, on action and passion, on quality, and on quantity; and therefore may be reduced to four kinds. Extrinsic relations also may be divided into four kinds, as they are respectively founded on a common cause, on a common region of ubication, on a common duration, or on a common extrinsic term of comparison.

Substance, and everything else considered absolutely, founds the relations of unity and plurality. Action and passion found the relations of causality and dependence. Quality founds the relations of likeness or unlikeness. Quantity founds the relations of equality or inequality. All these relations are called intrinsic, because their foundation is something intrinsic to the terms related.

A common cause founds the relation which we may call of collateralness between two terms proceeding from it. Thus two brothers are connected in mutual fraternity, inasmuch as they are the offspring of the same parents. A common region of ubication and movement founds the relation of distance. A common duration founds the relation of succession. A common extrinsic term of comparison founds the relation of site or situation. All these relations are called extrinsic, because their foundation is extrinsic to the terms related.

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Principles of real distinction

Distinction is nothing but a negation of identity; and therefore there must be as many kinds of distinction as there are kinds of identity which can be denied. Hence we cannot properly determine the principles of real distinction without first ascertaining what are the principles of real identity.

Identity is a relative unity, or a relation founded on the unity of a thing. For the thing which is to be styled the same must be compared with itself according to that entity on account of which it is to be pronounced to be identical with itself; and it is evident that such an entity must be one in order to be the same. Thus if I say: “The pen with which I am now writing is the very same which I used yesterday,” the pen with which I am now writing will be the subject of the relation, the pen which I used yesterday will be the term of the relation, and the oneness of its entity will be the foundation of the relation and the formal reason of the identity.

As relations, like everything else, are specified by their formal reasons, it is clear that there must be as many kinds of identity as there are kinds of unities on which the relation of identity can be founded. Now, three kinds of unities can be conceived: first, the formal unity of a complete being, or a complete unity, which may be called physical unity; secondly, the unity of an incomplete or metaphysical reality, which may be called metaphysical unity; thirdly, the unity of a being of reason, which may be called logical unity. Accordingly, there can be three kinds of identity, viz., the physical, the metaphysical, and the logical. Let us say a word about each.

Physical identity is a relation founded on the unity of a physical entity, and is the most real of all identities. Some philosophers taught that this identity is merely a logical relation, or a relation of reason, because a relation cannot be real unless its subject be really distinct from its term—a condition which cannot be verified when the subject and the term are identical. But they did not reflect that a thing must be called really identical with itself then only when it cannot be really distinguished from itself, and inasmuch as it excludes real distinction from itself. It is therefore manifest that real identity excludes real distinction in that in which there is identity. Nevertheless, the thing which is substantially identical with itself may still really differ from itself in the manner of its being, and may, as the subject of the relativity, involve a real entity, which it does not involve as the term of the same relativity; and accordingly the substantial identity of a thing with itself does not exclude all real distinction. The pen with which I am now writing, although identical with the pen that lay on the table one hour before, is now in different accidental conditions, and has some real mode, which was wanting one hour ago. And this shows that there can be a sufficient real distinction between the subject and the term of the relation, even though they are substantially identical.

Physical identity may be divided into complete and incomplete. It is complete, or total, when a being is compared with itself through the unity of its physical entity, as in the preceding example of the pen. It is incomplete, or partial, when a physical part is compared with a physical whole, or, vice versa, as when we compare the whole man with his soul or with his body.

Metaphysical identity is a relation founded on the unity of a metaphysical entity, and possesses a metaphysical reality. It may be divided into adequate and inadequate. It is adequate when a being is compared with itself through the unity of some metaphysical reality which belongs to it. Such is the personal identity of John when old with John when young; for although he has undergone many physical changes in his body, and therefore has not preserved a perfect physical identity with himself, still his formal personality, which is wholly due to his soul, has not changed at all. The identity will be inadequate when any metaphysical constituent of a complete being is compared with the being itself, or vice versa. Such is the identity of the substantial act with the substance of which it is the act, of the matter with the material being, and of any property or attribute with the thing of which it is the property or the attribute. Such is also the identity of the divine Personalities with the divine essence; for, although the divine Paternity identifies itself perfectly with the divine essence, this latter requires further identification with the divine Filiation and with the passive Spiration; for it must be as whole and perfect in the Second and the Third Person as it is in the First.

Logical identity, or identity of reason, is a relation founded on the unity of a being of reason. It may be divided into objective and subjective. The objective has its foundation in the real order of things; the subjective has no foundation except in our conception. Thus the identity we conceive between a horse and its owner as to their animality is an identity of reason only, although it is grounded on a real foundation; for animality is indeed to be found really in both, but its unity is only a unit of reason; for animality, as common to both, is only a logical entity, which we call “genus.” The same is to be said of the identity between Peter and Paul as to their humanity; for humanity, though real in both, is not numerically, but only specifically, one, and its unity is therefore a unity of reason; for “species” is a logical being. On the contrary, when we say that “a stone is heavy,” the identity between a stone and the subject of such a proposition has no foundation except in our reason, and therefore is purely subjective; and the same is to be said of the identity of the verb is with the copula of the proposition, of heavy with the predicate, etc. It is evident, in fact, that the ground on which these last relations are founded is not a real unity, and not even a unity having anything corresponding to it in the real order; since subject, predicate, etc., are mere conceptions and creations of our mind.

We have thus three kinds of identity: the physical, which is either complete or incomplete; the metaphysical, which is either adequate or inadequate; the logical, which is either objective or merely subjective. Since distinction is the negation of identity, it is obvious that the distinction between two terms always results from the non‐unity of the same, and is conceived by the comparison of the one with the other according to something which can be affirmed of the one, and must be denied of the other. Those things, in fact, are said to be distinct of which the one is not the other, or in one of which there is something not to be found in the other.

First, then, to deny real physical identity is to assert real physical distinction. Physical distinction may be either complete or incomplete as well as physical identity. It will be complete, or major, when, comparing two complete wholes with one another, we deny that the one is the other; as when we deny that the sun is the moon. It will be incomplete, or minor, when, comparing together the whole and any of its parts, we deny that the whole is any of its parts, and vice versa; as when we deny that Germany is Europe, or that the roof is the house. It is evident that incomplete physical distinction always coexists with incomplete physical identity.

The true and certain sign of real physical distinction between two things is their separability or their state of actual separation. For when two things are completely distinct as to their physical entity, they are each in possession of their own distinct existence; and consequently the existence of the one does not depend on the existence of the other. On the other hand, although a physical whole cannot exist as a whole, if its parts be separated, yet each of its physical parts can exist separated, as each of them has its own existence independent of the existence of the whole.

Secondly, to deny real metaphysical identity is to assert real metaphysical distinction. Metaphysical distinction may be either adequate or inadequate no less than metaphysical identity. It will be adequate, or major, when, comparing together two metaphysical constituents, we deny that the one is the other; as when we deny that the act is the potency. It will be inadequate, or minor, when, comparing a metaphysical compound with any of its constituents, we deny that the constituent is the compound, and vice versa; as when we deny that existence is the thing existing, or that person is personality. The inadequate metaphysical distinction always coexists with an inadequate metaphysical identity.

Thirdly, to deny an identity of reason is to assert a distinction of reason. A distinction of reason may be either objective or merely subjective, no less than the identity of reason. It will be objective, or major, when, comparing together two entities which are really identical, we find in their identical reality a ground for denying their conceptual identity; as when we deny that God’s eternity is God’s immensity, or when we deny that in any given being one essential attribute, as animality, is another, as rationality. This distinction is objective, because its ground is found in the object itself; and yet it is not real, because each term represents the same thing under two distinct aspects. Thus, in man, animality really includes a rational soul, and therefore implies rationality. But the distinction will be purely subjective, or minor, when, comparing together two entities, we find no ground whatever for denying their identity, except in our subjective manner of viewing them. Thus, although man is identical with rational animal, we can distinguish man from rational animal as a subject from a predicate; and it is evident that this distinction has no ground but in our conception.

Accordingly, we have three kinds of distinction: the real physical, which is either complete or incomplete; the real metaphysical, which is either adequate or inadequate; the logical, or of reason, which is either objective or merely subjective. This division is exhaustive. Some will say that we have forgotten the modal distinction. But the fact is that we have abstained on purpose from mentioning it in connection with any special kind of distinction, because it may fall under the physical as well as the metaphysical distinction, according as it happens to be understood; for it is differently understood by different writers.

Some authors consider that there is a modal distinction between the spherical wax and its sphericity, between the soul affected by fear and its affection, between the finger inflected and its inflection, and generally between the modified subject and its mode. Others, as Suarez, seem to admit a modal distinction between the wax simply and its sphericity, between the soul simply and its affection, between the finger simply and its inflection, and generally between the subject simply and its mode. And others, again, admit a modal distinction between the wax having a spherical form and the same wax having a different form; between the soul affected by a movement of fear and the same soul affected by a different movement; between the finger inflected and the same finger not inflected; and generally between a subject having one mode, and the same subject having another mode.(88)

These different opinions have been occasioned by an imperfect analysis of distinction. Those who originally treated of this matter called real all distinction which was not a mere distinction of reason, and overlooked the necessity of subdividing real distinctions into physical and metaphysical. Hence the modal distinction was simply called real, without further examining whether it had a physical or a metaphysical character; the more so as it was assumed that real modes were physical entities—which would convey the idea that real modal distinction is of a physical nature. But the assumption is not to be admitted, because, as we have remarked in another article, modes cannot be styled “physical” entities, as they have no possibility of separate existence. This being premised, let us briefly examine the three aforesaid opinions.

The first admits a modal distinction between spherical wax and its sphericity. Sphericity cannot exist without a subject; and therefore it must be ranked among metaphysical entities. On the other hand, spherical wax is a metaphysical compound of wax and sphericity. Hence, from what we have said above, the distinction of the one from the other is an inadequate metaphysical distinction.

The second opinion admits a modal distinction between the wax simply and its sphericity. Sphericity, as we have stated, is a metaphysical entity, and so is “wax simply” also; for wax, as such, is not yet spherical, although, as a subject of sphericity, it excludes every other form. Such a wax therefore has no form, and, as such, it cannot exist; and accordingly it is an incomplete being. Hence the distinction between the wax simply and its sphericity is that which intervenes between two principles of a complete being, and therefore is an adequate metaphysical distinction.

The third opinion alone gives the true notion of the modal distinction. For if a piece of wax which is spherical happens to acquire another form, say the cubical, the comparison of the cubical with the spherical wax will involve two terms physically real; and as the substance of the wax is still the same, no distinction will be found between the two terms, except that which arises from denying the identity of the cubical with the spherical form. We have thus a real and physical modal distinction: real and physical, because the spherical wax really and physically differs from the cubic wax; modal, because the negation of identity falls on the two modes, and not on the substance.

From this we learn that neither the first nor the second opinion above mentioned gives the true notion of modal distinction. The first denies only the identity of the spherical wax with its sphericity; the second denies only the identity of wax simply with sphericity. Now, it is evident that neither spherical wax nor wax simply is a mode. It is evident, therefore, that neither opinion denies modal identity. But modal distinction cannot be anything else than a denial of modal identity. Therefore neither opinion gives the true notion of modal distinction.

As modes are accidental formalities, the modal distinction may also be called formal. The Scotist philosophers imagined a formal distinction of another kind, which, according to them, was to be admitted between the attributes of real being, and which was neither real nor a mere distinction of reason, but something intermediate. They called it “formal distinction arising from the nature of the thing”—distinctio formalis ex natura rei. We need not refute this invention. We have already given in full the general theory of distinction, and we have found no room for any formal distinction intermediary between real distinctions and distinctions of reason; and, as to the attributes of real beings, we have shown, in the article before this, that they are not really distinct from one another, but admit of a simple distinction of reason, which, however, has a real foundation in the thing.

Sometimes distinction is styled formal as contrasted with virtual. Thus we may say that there is a formal distinction between two terms formally existing—e.g., two existing men, and a virtual distinction between two virtual terms—e.g., two possible men. And generally, whenever one and the same thing virtually contains two or more, these latter, as thus contained, are said to be virtually distinct. Thus intellect and reason are only virtually distinct, as they are one concrete power of acquiring knowledge which can perform its task by two different processes. This virtual distinction is, of course, nothing but a distinction of reason.

Sometimes, again, distinction is called positive as contrasted with negative. It is positive when the two terms of which we deny the identity are both positive, and it is negative when one of the two terms is negative; as when we distinguish the existent from the non‐existent. Negative distinction is a real distinction; for the negation of real identity can be predicated not only of two real beings, but also, and with greater reason, of the existent as compared with the non‐existent.

It may be remarked that distinction, difference, and diversity are not synonymous. Diversity is most properly predicated of two things that are not of the same genus; difference of two things that are not of the same species, and distinction of two things that are not numerically identical. Nevertheless, the terms distinct, different, and diverse are very frequently employed for one another, even by good authors.

We observe, lastly, that distinction, as such, is not a relation; for all relation presupposes some distinction between the terms related, as a condition of its possibility. Yet two positive terms really distinct have always a certain relative opposition, inasmuch as there is always something common to both (at least their being) which may be taken as a foundation of mutual relativity.

And here we close our investigation about nominal realities. We have shown that possibles, relations, and distinctions are no special realities, but are called real from the reality of other things. Real possibility is only the possibility of a real being; real relation is only the actuality of two terms really communicating in something identical; and real distinction is only the existence of things of which the one is not really the other.

As this is our last article on the principles of real being, we beg to remind the reader that our object in this treatise has been only to point out distinctly, and to express with as great a philosophical precision as our language could permit, all that concerns the constitution of being in general. We may have failed to employ always the best phraseology, but we hope our analysis of real being is philosophically correct, and the principles we have laid down under the guidance of the ancients will be found to shed a pure and abundant light on all the questions of special metaphysics. But the student of philosophy should not forget that the greatest difficulty in the settlement of all such questions arises, not so much from the nature of the subjects investigated, as from the imperfect knowledge and mis‐application of philosophical language. And this is the reason why we did our best to determine the exact purport of the terms most frequently employed in metaphysical treatises.

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Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” II

An Eastern Romance Narrated In Songs.

By Aubrey De Vere.

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II. She Sang

I.

I heard his voice, and I was dumb Because to his my spirit cleaved: He called to me from far. I come. Because I loved him, I believed.

He said, “Though love be secret yet, Eternity its truth shall prove.” It seemed not gift, but ancient debt Discharged, to answer love with love.

II.

Thy herald near me drew and knelt: I knew from whom the missive came Ere yet I saw, ere yet I felt Thy sigil‐mark, or kissed thy name.

I read—’twas like a thousand birds, Music confused of Paradise: At last the words became thy words; Thy voice was in them, and thine eyes

Above them shone in love and power, And flashed the meaning on the whole: We were not severed, friend, that hour: One day shall blend us, soul with soul.

III.

That face is valorous and grave: To it, despite thine unripe spring, Thy spirit’s might the painter gave: It is the countenance of a king.

Look down, strong countenance, strong yet fair, Through all this weak, unstable soul! Like stars sea‐mirrored, kindle there His virtues—truth and self‐control!

Not beauty, nor that youthful grace Uncareful girlhood’s natural dower, Suffice. A child of royal race, A hero’s wife should walk in power.

IV.

Like some great altar rises vast That rock whereon our City stands, With gray woods girt; with shade far cast At morn dividing distant lands.

Nor war she fears, nor summer drouth, By runnels pierced whose sparkling tide Is drawn from mountains of the South O’er myriad arches far descried.

Around her cliff‐like, stony zone, From tower to tower, from gate to gate, At eve, when sunset changes stone To gold, her princes walk in state;

And priests entoning anthems sweet, The people’s strength; and maiden choirs That, passing, make them reverence meet; And orphaned babes, and gray‐haired sires.

High up, with many a cloistered lawn, And chapelled gallery widely spread, Extends, flower‐dressed at eve and dawn, The happy “City of the Dead.”

There musing sit I, day by day; I sing my psalm; I pray for thee: “If men could love, not hate,” I say, “How like to heaven this earth would be!”

V.

Love bound a veil above my brow; He wrapt it round me, o’er and o’er; He said, “My little nun art thou, My solitary evermore.

“Where hid’st thou when the falcons fly; The flung jereed in music shrills? When sweep the Arab horsemen by In valleys of the terraced hills?

“Where are thy childhood’s blithesome ways? The tales, the dances, and the sports? The bards that sang thy beauty’s praise Amid the hundred‐columned courts?”

Love took from me all gifts save one: The veil that shrouds me is his gift: Love! say to him I love, “Alone That veil of severance thou canst lift.”

VI.

On crimson silk, ’mid leaf and flower I traced thy name in golden thread; A harper harped beneath my bower: I rose, and brought him wine and bread.

He sang: methought he sang of thee! “My prince!” I cried—“how knew’st him thou? His victories in the days to be? His heaven‐like eyes, and king‐like brow?”

“O maid! I have not seen thy prince: Old wars I sang; old victories won In my far‐distant land long since; I sang the birth of moon and sun.”

VII.

He culled me grapes—the vintager; In turn, for song the old man prayed: I glanced around; but none was near: With veil drawn tighter, I obeyed.

“Were I a vine, and he were heaven,” I sang, “I’d spread a vernal leaf To meet the beams of morn and even, And think the April day too brief.

“Were he I love a cloud, not heaven, I’d spread my leaf and drink the rain; Warm summer shower, and dews of even Alike I’d take, and think them gain.”

“I would not shrink from wintry rime Or echoes of the thunder‐shock, But watch the advancing vintage‐time, And meet it, reddening on my rock.”

VIII.

I often say, now thou art gone, “How hard I seemed when he was here!” I feared to seem too quickly won: Love also came at first with fear.

I sang me dear old songs which proved That many a maid had loved ere I: No secret knew I till I loved: I loved, yet loved reluctantly.

My heart with zeal more generous glowed When he I loved was Danger’s mate. Great Love in this his greatness showed— He lifted thee to things more great.

IX.

My childhood was a cloistered thing: No wish for human love was mine: I heard the hooded vestals sing The praises of their Love Divine.

The village maids with rival glee, Flower‐filleting their unclipt hair, Sang thus, “The meadow flowers are we”: I thought the convent flowers more fair.

Yet false I am not. Still I climb Through love to realms this earth above: And those whom most I loved that time Only for love’s sake fled from love.

X.

Dear tasks are mine that make the weeks Too swift in passing, not too slow: I nurse the rose on faded cheeks, Bring solace to the homes of woe.

I hear the Vesper anthems swell; I track the steps of Fast and Feast I read old legends treasured well Of Machabean chief or priest.

I hear, on heights of song and psalm, The storm of God careering by: Beside His Deep, for ever calm, I kneel in caves of Prophecy.

O Eastern Book! It cannot change! Of books beside, the type, the mould— It stands like yon Carmelian range By our Elias trod of old!

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