Christmas In The Thirteenth Century
Few are the hearts that do not feel the benign and joyful influence of Christmas. It is the one feast that neither the all‐destroying zeal of the Reformation nor the cold indifferentism of the present age has dared to abolish or desecrate. To how many is it the sole remaining word that reminds them of the sacred name of Christ! There was a time when Christmas was but one of the many holydays that with each succeeding month recalled to Christian hearts some great event in the life of their divine Master; but heresy has swept away one by one those sacked days of repose and prayer. Even in Catholic countries the church has found it necessary to reduce the number of Days of Obligation, so cold have grown both faith and devotion.
Wealth and material prosperity—these are the sole ends for which a heartless world would have us exert all our energies, and it would fain clog with the sordid love of gain all the higher aspirations of the soul.
But we are forgetting that this is Christmas time—a time for innocent pleasure, and not for moralizing; so, leaving the present age, with all its faults, we will ask our readers to transport themselves with us, in imagination, some six centuries back, and witness how was celebrated in those Ages of Faith the holy night of the Nativity of our Lord.
The period selected is about the middle of the XIIIth century. Religion was then in the fullest splendor of its power. It was the light of civilization, the custodian of all learning. Every art had combined to render its outward expression worthy of the great and holy mysteries it taught. Gothic architecture had at this date attained its highest perfection; painting and sculpture were almost exclusively devoted to the decoration of God’s temples; poetry and music were united to render attractive the sublime and rarely‐interrupted Offices of the church. The liturgical works of the period are mines of poetic and musical riches that for the most part lie hidden and uncared for in their musty tomes.
Some will doubtless smile when we speak of the Latin poetry of the middle ages, and certainly those who seek in it the polished and classical verses of a Horace or a Virgil will be disappointed. They will, however, find that, despite their somewhat strange Latinity, these productions of a so‐ called barbarous age contain a depth of feeling, a strength and freshness of expression, quite unknown to the pagan poets, and were as appropriate to those grand old cathedrals under whose roofs they were to resound as were the classic odes and songs to the luxurious banquet‐halls of Rome or the effeminate villas of Naples. In fact, to adequately judge of the poetry contained in the Offices of the mediæval period, we must place ourselves amid the surroundings in which they were performed; we must not view it from the stand‐point of the present age, with its entirely different ideas of both religious life and religious art.
It will be, then, in an old French cathedral that we shall ask our readers to spend this Christmas night; for the office, or rather religious drama, at which we intend to make them assist, is taken from a Roman‐French missal of the XIIIth century.
The night has closed in. Within the city walls the tortuous and narrow streets are nearly deserted; but lights gleam from many a diamond pane, for inside joyous circles are gathered around the glowing logs that brightly sparkle in the ample chimneys. Old stories are repeated by venerable grandfathers to merry grandchildren, who in return sing with silvery voices quaint old carols. Suddenly a well‐known sound fills the air; from the high cathedral towers burst forth the joyous chimes that herald the approach of Christ’s natal hour. The notes that ring out so clearly in the cold December air are those of the familiar Christmas hymn, Christe Redemptor omnium.(112) Soon a hurrying throng begin to fill the streets, all wending their way towards the same point, through narrow and winding streets. By gabled house and arched doorway, by mullioned window and jutting tower, they press forward until they reach the central square, where rises, in all its splendor, the old cathedral church.
Beautiful and imposing at all times is a Gothic cathedral, but never more so than when the trembling light of a winter moon throws around it a soft halo, just enough to make its grand proportions visible amid the surrounding gloom, while leaving all the finer details wrapt in sombre mystery. Doubly lofty appear tower and spire, and strangely weird each fantastic gargoyle, as a stray moonbeam falls athwart its uncouth countenance.
Let us follow the crowd, and enter beneath the richly‐sculptured doorway. Dim is the light within, only just sufficient to find your way among the throng that now begins to fill every part of the vast edifice. The numerous assemblage of priests and choristers are singing the Office of Matins, the grand old melodies of S. Gregory resounding beneath the vaulted roof with that wonderful effect that makes them, when sung by choir and congregation, the most truly religious music that exists. As the last solemn notes of the Te Deum die out, a white‐robed chorister‐boy representing an angel advances into the centre of the choir, and in sweet, clear accents chants the words of the angelic message, “Nolite timere: ecce enim evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum, quod erit omni populo, quia natus est vobis hodie Salvator mundi, in civitate David. Et hoc vobis signum: Invenietis infantem pannis involutum, et positum in præsepio”—“Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people: for this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling‐clothes, and laid in a manger.”
Then from the high triforium‐gallery seven pure young voices ring out, as if from heaven, the words sung by the angel‐host on the first Christmas night: “Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis.” These familiar words that herald the pious representation of the holy scenes whose reality centuries ago hallowed this night in the mountains of Judæa, are listened to by the vast congregation with rapt and devout attention. In their simple and earnest faith the assistants feel themselves transported back to the days of Herod and to the village of Bethlehem, as they behold emerging from the western porch, and slowly advancing up the nave, a train of shepherds with staves in their hands, singing, as they proceed in search of their newborn King, the following hymn. Both words and music are full of beauty, and the cadence is well suited to a Christmas carol:
Pax in terris nunciatur, In excelsis gloria.
Terra cœlo fœderatur, Mediante gratia. Mediatur homo Deus Descendit in propria, Ut ascendat homo reus Ad amissa gaudia. Eia! Eia!
Transeamus, videamus Verbum hoc quod factum est Transeamus, ut sciamus Quod annunciatum est.
In Judea puer vagit, Puer salus populi,
Quo bellandum se præsagit Vetus hostis sæculi.
Accedamus, accedamus Ad præsepe Domini,
Et dicamus: Laus fecundæ Virgini.
(Peace on earth is announced, and in heaven glory,
Earth is reconciled through divine grace. The Mediator God‐Man descends amongst his own, that guilty man may ascend to lost joys.
Let us go over, let us see this word that is come to pass.
Let us go over, that we may learn what has been announced.
In Judæa an infant cries
An Infant, the salvation of his people,
By whom the ancient enemy of the world foresees he must be warred upon.
Let us approach, let us approach the cradle of our Lord,
And let us sing: Praise to the fruitful Virgin.)
A crib has been arranged at the extreme end of the choir, containing the figure of the divine Infant and our Blessed Lady. It is surrounded by women, to whom naturally is given the charge of watching over the Virgin Mother and her new‐born Babe. Towards this crib the shepherds wend their way, passing beneath the carved rood‐screen through the open portals of the choir. Two priests advance to meet them, and greet them with the following versicle: “Quem quæritis in præsepio, pastores, dicite?”—“Whom seek ye in this manger, shepherds, tell us?”
They reply: “Salvatorem Christum Dominum infantem pannis involutum secundum sermonem angelicum”—“Christ our Lord and Saviour, an infant wrapped in swaddling‐clothes, according to the word of the angel.”
The women around the crib now draw back the curtains that have, until this moment, kept it concealed from view, and, showing to the shepherds the divine Infant reclining in the manger, sing these words: “Adest hic parvulus cum matre sua de quo dudum vaticinando Isaïas dixerat propheta: Ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium: euntes dicite quod natus est”—“Here is the little Child and his Mother of whom of old Isaias prophesied: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son; go forth and announce that he is born.” The shepherds salute the Virgin and Child, and sing the following charming little carol in honor of the Virgin Mother:
Salve Virgo singularis; Virgo manens, Deum paris, Ante sæcla generatum Corde patris;
Adoremus nunc creatum Carne matris.
Nos, Maria, tua prece A peccati purga fece; Nostri cursum incolatus Sic dispone, Ut det sua frui natus Visione.
(Hail, O Virgin incomparable! remaining a Virgin, thou hast brought forth the Son of God, begotten of his Father before all ages.
Now we adore him, formed of the flesh of his Mother.
O Mary! purify us from all stain of sin; our destined course on earth so dispose, that thy Son may grant us to enjoy his blessed vision.)
After this hymn they fall on their knees and adore the divine Babe; then, turning towards the choir, they with joyful accents exclaim, “Alleluia, Alleluia. Jam vere scimus Christum natum in terris, de quo canite omnes cum prophetis dicentes”—“Now we truly know that Christ is born on earth, let all sing of him with the prophet.” Answering to this invitation, the choir intone the prophetic words of the introit of the midnight Mass: “The Lord has said to me, Thou art my Son; this day I have begotten Thee.”
The priests and assistants advance slowly in procession to the foot of the altar, and the solemn celebration of High Mass commences.
The lessons conveyed by this beautiful and symbolic representation are happily continued when the reality of the divine mysteries has taken its place. The priests who represented the shepherds, quitting the crib where they were the first to do homage to the Child‐God, proceed to occupy the most exalted places in the choir, and to take the leading parts in the chants that accompany that Holy Sacrifice in which the same Child‐God once more descends on earth.
Among the many impressive ceremonies of the Catholic Church, there is none more touching than the celebration of the midnight Mass. Whether it be in a vast cathedral or in a modest village church, it never fails to bring home to the heart, in a wonderful manner, the realization of the two great mysteries of the Incarnation and the Eucharist, awakening in the soul a lively devotion towards them. If such be the effect of the sacred rite on men who have only just quit the bustle and turmoil of life, as they enter the church, what must it have been on minds prepared by so graphic a representation of those very mysteries that the Mass not only commemorates, but actually reproduces in a manner far more perfect, if less perceptible to the outward senses.
How conspicuous, then, was the wisdom of the church in encouraging the performance of these pious dramas—not only as affording an innocent pleasure to the spectators, but as a preparation for the better understanding of the sacred mysteries that were commemorated in each succeeding feast; for on the popular mind how far more powerful than the most eloquent sermon is the effect of any ceremony that appeals directly to the senses!
At the termination of the Mass the officiating priest, turning towards the shepherds, intones the following anthem: “Quam vidistis, pastores? dicite, annunciate nobis in terris quid apparuit”—“Tell us, O shepherds, whom you have seen? Announce to us who has appeared on earth.” To which they reply: “Natum vidimus et choros angelorum collandantes Dominum. Alleluia, alleluia”—“We have seen the Lord, who is born on earth, and the choirs of angels praising him.”
The office of Lauds, which terminates the night‐office, then commences. The shepherds, still occupying the places of honor, but divided in two choirs, sing the poetic paraphrase which on all solemn feasts in those days took the place of the Benedicamus and Deo Gratias. After which they all unite in chanting the following antiphon, which forms a fitting termination to the ceremonies of the night: “Ecce completa sunt omnia quæ dicta sunt per angelum de Virgine Maria”—“Behold, all things are accomplished that were announced by the angel concerning the Virgin Mary.”
Such were the pious festivities that six hundred years ago filled with joy and devotion many a vast congregation in cathedral and church throughout France on Christmas night. We have described them as far as they can be gathered from the Office‐books of the period; but how many beautiful details, handed down by tradition and introduced from time to time, must necessarily have escaped us at this distant period! We venture to hope, however, that we have succeeded in giving our readers at least a slight idea of the deep religious feeling, and at the same time poetic beauty, that characterized these sacred dramas of the middle ages.
The Civilization Of Ancient Ireland.(113)
The greatest difficulty experienced by students of Irish history, whether foreigners or to the manner born, arises out of the crudeness of the mass of fables and myths, contradictions and harsh criticisms, which confuse and disfigure many histories of the country. Unfortunately, native Irish historians and annalists have been wont to indulge much too freely in exaggeration and romance, substituting the airy creations of the poets for authenticated facts, and dogmatically putting forward the most minute details of remote, and therefore necessarily indistinct, actions in a manner to overtax our credulity and weaken our faith even in well‐ established authorities. English writers, on the contrary, from Giraldus Cambrensis downward, have erred on the other side. Always ignorant of the Gaelic tongue, and generally of the customs, laws, and religion of the people whose history they assumed to chronicle, they invariably attempted to conceal their defective knowledge by ignoring the claims of the Irish to a distinctive and high order of civilization, not only before the advent of the Anglo‐Normans, but anterior to the introduction of Christianity. The want of adaptability of the English mind to historical composition, even in relation to domestic matters, may account for much of this unfair method of treating those of a subjugated nation. National and, of late centuries, sectarian animosity has been, however, the leading motive of the British historiographers, with one exception, for falsifying the records of the past, no matter to what country they belong. To have acknowledged that S. Patrick preached the Gospel to a race possessing considerable social refinement and mental culture; that, under Providence, an entire people were converted to Christianity without any material change in their civil polity or disruption of their general domestic relations; and that, even in his lifetime, he had the happiness to see his work completed, and to feel that he would leave behind him a native priesthood, whose piety and learning were for ages afterwards to edify and astonish Europe, was to concede the glory and the wisdom of the church in introducing and perpetuating the faith of her divine Founder at that early period of her existence.
With the Irish historians, who fully admitted this great central fact in the annals of their country, it was different. They knew the language, laws, and habits of their countrymen, but the circumstances by which they were surrounded rendered it impossible for them to consult freely the original records then existing, or to compare and collate them with that scrutiny and care with which documents of such antiquity ought to be regarded. Thus, Dr. Keating wrote his work in the recesses of the Galtee Mountains, while hiding from the “Priest‐hunters” of James I.; and the Abbé McGeoghegan composed his while in Paris, a fugitive from William of Orange’s penal laws, where at best he could only consult second‐hand authorities. As for Moore, though illustrious as a poet, his knowledge of his native country was of the most meagre and inaccurate description, and his ignorance of its language and antiquities, as he subsequently confessed, is apparent in every page of his book.
At the time of the Norman invasion, and for two or three centuries afterwards, the number of Irish MSS. in Ireland, including histories, annals, genealogies, poems, topographical and otherwise, historical tales, and legends, was immense. Many of them, fortunately, are still extant, bearing date from the Xth, XIth, and XIIth centuries; but the greater portion are either destroyed or hidden in inaccessible places. As the civil wars progressed, and the ancient nobility were slaughtered or driven into exile, the cultivation of native literature gradually ceased, and consequently many of the most valuable national records were ruined or lost, so that their titles only remain to us; while others, escaping the general spoliation, became scattered among the libraries of the Continent, or found their way into careless or hostile hands. At the present day several are in the British Museum; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; in Paris and Brussels; St. Gall, in Switzerland; and St. Isidore’s, in Rome. One hundred and forty are yet preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin; while many of the most valuable are the property of the Royal Irish Academy and of private collectors.
The decline of learning in Ireland, like so many of her other calamities, can be dated from the period of the “Reformation,” as its revival may be said to have been contemporary with the uprising of the people, which led to the partial emancipation of the Catholics, less than half a century ago. Then it was that the Irish, breathing something like the air of freedom, began in earnest to gather up the broken threads of their ancient history, and to demonstrate to the world that, though long enslaved and silenced, the spirit of true nationality was as indestructible in their hearts as was the faith for which they had so long and heroically suffered. In 1826 appeared O’Conor’s translation of the first part of the Annals of the Four Masters; some years after Dr. Petrie published his masterly work on the Round Towers, and in 1851 Dr. O’Donovan issued the entire Annals, the great vertebræ of Irish chronology, in seven large volumes, containing more than four thousand pages; the text in Irish characters, the translation and copious, critical notes in English. Late in the next year a commission of Irish scholars was appointed by the government to collect, transcribe, translate, and publish the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland, which, after a great deal of labor and expense, has now been accomplished. The first volume of this most valuable work appeared under the title of Senchus Mor, in 1865, the second four years later, and the third, we learn, has recently been issued from the press in Dublin. Meanwhile, the Celtic and the Archæological Societies, separately and combined, for many years past have been publishing several valuable detached works on Ireland, which have attracted much attention in literary circles in Europe, and quickened at home the popular desire for productions of a similar character. In 1867 Dr. Todd’s Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, a translation of all the original documents extant bearing on the wars of the Danes and other Norsemen in Ireland during the two centuries preceding the battle of Clontarf, A.D. 1014, was added to the collection of historical records.
But the merit of elevating the study of Irish history to the dignity of a profession belongs to the Catholic University of Ireland; thus constituting a claim on the affections of the Irish people in every clime which will long remain among the foremost of its many distinctions. At its foundation a chair of Irish History and Archæology was established, and the late Eugene O’Curry, of all men then living the most fitted for the position, was selected to fill it. In 1855‐56 Prof. O’Curry delivered before the students a course of twenty‐one lectures, afterwards published at the expense of the University under the title of Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History. This work, including a valuable appendix, embraces six hundred and sixty pages, and contains a full and most interesting account of all known documents relating to Irish history. These lectures were followed by a series On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, delivered during the years 1857‐62, and recently published in two handsome volumes, with an introduction and explanatory notes by the editor, W. K. Sullivan, in an additional volume of six hundred and forty‐four pages. The value of O’Curry’s last work, as well as of the very profound introduction by Prof. Sullivan, can hardly be over‐ estimated. In them are contained a complete, vivid, and harmonious series of pictures of the laws, religion, territorial and class divisions, literature, art, social habits, weapons, dress, and ornaments of the people of ancient Ireland from the remotest times to the Xth or XIth century. The style of O’Curry in presenting these instructive historical tableaux is clear, concise, and sufficiently varied to attract the attention of the least diligent student; while any of his statements which may appear to savor of an over‐fondness for the things of antiquity, or undue reverence for the past, find an efficient corrective in the critical and exhaustive commentaries of the editor, who, in addition to being a distinguished chemist, is evidently an excellent philologist and ethnologist; as familiar with the genius of the continental languages and antiquities as he is with those of his own country.
With the results of the labor of two such men before him, the student of Irish history, though unacquainted with Gaelic, and beyond the reach of the original documents, has now no excuse for not becoming as familiar with Gaelic historical and archæological lore as with those of the other races of the Old World. He will be rewarded, also, in his studies, by the contemplation of a system of civilization without a parallel in the records of any other nation of which we have a knowledge; equally removed from the elaborate, artificial life of the Greeks and the oligarchical paganism of Rome, as it was from the rude barbarism of the Northmen and the refined sensuality of the East.
Before the commencement of our era the history of the various tribes who are said by tradition to have visited Ireland as colonists or invaders is, of course, obscure, and can be traced only through the legend‐tales of the poets and story‐tellers of more recent but still very remote times. There is no doubt, however, that about the middle of the first Christian century the island was peopled by two distinct and to some extent hostile tribes; one described as a tall, red or golden haired, blue‐eyed, and fair‐ complexioned people; the other dark and small of stature—evidently the subject race. About this time a revolution, or rather a series of revolts, by those known by the name of the Aithech Tuatha, or rent‐paying tribes (the Atticotti of continental writers), broke out, and resulted in the temporary success of the servile race and the annihilation of the greater part of the nobility. The aristocracy, however, regained their power after some years of violent and varying struggle, and to prevent the recurrence of such bloody scenes, as well as to disunite their enemies, they redistributed them throughout the island, while at the same time they built a number of duns, or forts within easy supporting distance of each other, the better to consolidate their authority and ensure the protection of their families.
The leader of the restored nobles was Tuathal, “the Legitimate,” who, having been declared King of Ireland, reorganized the government, founded the Irish Pentarchy, established great national and provincial fairs, and enacted the greater part, at least, of the body of laws known as the Senchas Mor. He was in fact the first able soldier, as well as law‐ giver, of whom we have any definite and well‐authenticated account in Gaelic history. As the country at that time, and for centuries after, was essentially agricultural, we naturally find that the laws of Tuathal and his successors are mainly devoted to agrarian matters; the divisions, rights, and duties of the various classes of occupants of the soil being set forth with a minuteness and exactness rarely to be found in modern codes. Politically, the island was divided into five subordinate kingdoms, nearly corresponding with the present four provinces, except that the fifth, which was called Meath, embraced not only that county, but Westmeath and a portion of the surrounding territory. Here were situated Tara, the principal palace of the Ard‐Rig, or supreme monarch, and the mensal land set apart for his use. Sometimes the Ard‐Rig was also King of Meath, but generally, as in the cases of Con “of the Hundred Battles,” Nial, “of the Nine Hostages,” and Brian, “Boru,” he was the head of some of the great northern or southern septs. In theory the sovereignty was elective, and by the law of Tanistry the king’s successor was designated during his lifetime; but in practice, when the crown did not descend hereditarily, it was most frequently the prize of successful warfare. The same may also be said of the provincial kings. There appears to have been no such thing known in that age as a Salic law for the exclusion of women from a participation in the affairs of government; for we find numerous instances of kingdoms being swayed and armies led into action by the gentler sex, notably the celebrated Meave, the Queen of Connaught, and the darling heroine of Irish fiction.
The provincial kingdoms were divided into Mor Tuaths, each of which comprised several Tuaths, and these again were sub‐divided into Bailé Biatachs Caethramhadhs, or quarters; Seisreachs, or ploughlands; and Bailé‐boes, or cow‐lands, each of the latter containing about sixty acres. According to a poem of the VIth or VIIth century, there were in Ireland at that epoch 184 Tuaths; 5,520 Bailé Biatachs; 22,080 Quarters; 66,240 Plough‐lands; and 132,480 Ballyboes—equal to about 7,948,000 acres. The lowest rank in the nobility was that of Flath, or lord of a Tuath; the highest in the commons were the Bo‐aires, or farmers who, though they held lands from the Flath, were freemen, entitled to all the rights and privileges of witnesses, jurors, bails, and local courts. Next beneath them were the saer and daer Ceiles, or free and base tenants. As there were no towns or villages of any importance, the rules of the agrarian laws were applied to all classes, and hence skilled workmen, such as goldsmiths, blacksmiths, dyers, and other mechanics, were, equally with the smaller tenant farmers, called free Ceiles, holding by contract from the Flaths, and paying in labor or kind a determined equivalent. The base Ceiles were of two kinds—one who held lands by uncertain tenure, or as tenants at will; and the other, who performed personal service as mercenary soldiers or laborers upon the mensal lands of the lord. “Though the free Ceiles were all freemen,” says Sullivan, “and consequently possessed some political rights, it is evident that the extent of those rights differed. In some cases they must have been confined to bearing arms and obtaining a share of the common land. All Ceiles, whether free or base, had certain definite rights in the territory, such as the right to have a habitation and the usufruct of the land; but besides these were several other classes, who possessed either very few rights, or occupied so low a position in the social scale as to have been practically in a state of complete servitude; these were the Bothachs, Sencleithes, and Fuidirs.” The saer or free Bothachs were simply occupiers of cabins, and the daer Bothachs were menials; while the Sencleithes included all sorts of poor dependents, generally the descendants of strangers, mercenaries, or prisoners of war. The Fuidirs, to whom S. Patrick in his captivity belonged, were absolutely serfs attached to the land, and in some respects the property of the chief. It was only a Flath, however, who was entitled to retain those belonging to the three servile classes; and where the condition grew out of mutual compact, it could be ended by either at any time. Prisoners of war, malefactors, and non‐paying debtors, similar to peons, were of course excluded from this privilege. Those various classes and sub‐divisions did not constitute perpetual castes; on the contrary, a member of the lowest order, through lapse of time, undisturbed possession, and the accumulation of property, could ascend, not only to the highest place in the commons, but enter the charmed circle of aristocracy itself.
It must not be supposed, however, that the entire ownership of the soil was vested in the Mor‐Flaths, or great chiefs; in fact, they only owned their proper estate and the mensal lands attached to their office, upon which were employed their Ceiles and Fuidirs, who tilled the farms and paid rent by supplying their masters’ tables, and by other tributes. In like manner the subordinate Flaths and Airés held their own proper lands in fee, paying their superior a tax, or Bes‐Tigi, in acknowledgment of his authority, and exacting labor and service in turn from their Bothachs, Sencleithes, and base Fuidirs. The remainder of the land belonged to the freemen of the Tuath in common, subject only to the dominion of the chief, though on certain conditions the usufruct could be devised or alienated. “In process of time,” says Sullivan, “estates were carved out of this public land, as appanages of offices, as rewards for public services, or by lapsing into prescription. The holders of such estates were the Aires, and as such were in an especial manner the Céiles of the Rig. The king, with the consent of his council, might, however, grant a portion of it as allodium at once. It is probable that Magh Aié, now the plains of Boyle, in Roscommon, was public land.” Around the duns or fortified residences of the chiefs their retainers and menials built their wattled huts for the sake of convenience and protection, and thus were formed the nuclei of so many towns and villages still marked on the map of Ireland, of the names of which Dun forms a part; just as in later times the early Irish Christians crowded round the churches and monasteries, and, thus forming new communities, took the names of their patrons with the prefix Kil, derived from Cill, church. Another class of subjects, artisans, farmers, and teachers, were to be found in the neighborhood of the courts of law and permanent places for elections, who, forming corporations or guilds, gradually laid the foundation of boroughs and privileged towns, under the management of Brugfers, or magistrates.
There were several degrees of rank among these officials. Some, whose duty was confined to the regulation of copartnerships in farms and the fixing of metes and bounds; others who held courts in their own houses, entertained guests, and presided over the election of the chiefs and their Tanistes. This class belong to the Airé rank, and every freeman had the right to vote at the assembly of the Tuath, and appear as a witness, juror, or bail in court. The Brughfer of a province held six different courts, and superintended the choice of the provincial king and his successor. On these occasions the voters were all of the Flath rank, and were supposed to represent their clans or Finés. This term, though literally meaning a house or family, was in law used in three different senses: first, as applied to all relations by consanguinity to the seventeenth degree, who were entitled to inherit property, as well as being liable for fines and mulcts; secondly, to the lord and his dependents; and, thirdly, to all the inhabitants of a Tuath, no matter of what condition. So, also, the word Cland, or clan, which, in its restricted meaning, was applied only to the nobles and their immediate families, was in its territorial application interpreted to signify all the people of the same district, who usually assumed the surname of the chief, though no relationship existed between him and them. There is therefore no more reason to suppose that an O’Brien or a Murphy of to‐day is descended from the victor of Clontarf or the traitor of Ferns, than that his ancestors were Fuidirs under either of those kings. In fact, family names were only generally introduced into Ireland in the XIth century.
With few exceptions, the punishment of crime under the ancient laws of the country was by fine, so that jails and penitentiaries were unknown. This fine, or eric, was paid by the criminal, or by his Finé or clan, to the party aggrieved or his representative, and upon failure thereof the culprit was reduced to the condition of a Fuidir. The servile classes, who had no goods, could not, of course, be fined or further degraded; but their lords were compelled to respond in damages, and in case of injury done to his defenceless tenants the landlord was entitled to compensation. In the Senchus Mor, “every nice offence bears its comment,” according to the enormity of the crime and the rank of plaintiff and defendant; so, in one sense at least, every man in Erinn may be said to have had his price. The courts in which those erics were levied seemed to have been organized on a very just plan, and their procedure exhibits marked germs of our present jury system—or trial by a certain number of neighbors and equals.
Minor causes were tried in the courts of the Tuaths or Aires, but greater ones were determined at the provincial assemblies, which appear to have exercised both legislative and judicial functions. The absence of cities or stationary places of barter was supplied by the institution of vast provincial fairs, held at stated times and in central localities. The most famous of these were that of Tailté in Meath, Ailech in Derry, and Carman at Wexford. The latter, which took place in August of every third year, was the most extensive, as well as the most ancient; its origin lying far back in the mythical ages, and its discontinuance dating so late as the XIth century. For some strange reason these great national fairs were invariably held in pagan cemeteries, and in ante‐Christian times were always commenced with games and funeral ceremonies, closing with horse‐racing, martial and athletic sports. According to the ancient chronicle, there were three markets at each fair, viz.:
“A market for food and clothes; a market for live‐stock, cows and horses, etc.; a market of foreigners and exiles, selling gold and silver, etc. The professors of every art, both the noble arts and the base arts, and non‐ professionals, were there, selling and exhibiting their compositions and their professional works to kings, and rewards were given for every work of art that was just or lawful to be sold or exhibited or listened to.”
The most important business of the assembly, however, consisted of the making of new laws and the revision of old ones for the province for the three succeeding years; and, as the Rig and his officers were always in attendance, the hearing and decision of serious causes on appeal from the inferior courts. In the presence of the sovereign and his court the greatest order and decorum were enjoined, and whoever was found to disturb the public peace by violence or fraud was summarily condemned to death; the offence being in some sort adjudged treason, and not condonable by eric fine. The time not devoted to law‐making, trials, and traffic was occupied in amusement and various sorts of pastimes; and if the ancient people of Erinn had as much relish for fun and frolic as their descendants, we can well imagine what mirth, sociability and interchange of opinions must have prevailed among such a light‐hearted multitude, whose only opportunity for enjoyment and mutual recognition occurred every third year. An old poem, “which,” says O’Curry, “I believe to have been contemporary with the last celebration of the feast, if not of even a more ancient date,” thus enumerates the different classes of persons who attended on such occasions, and the intellectual wares they brought with them for the delectation of the gathering:
“Trumpets, Cruits,(114) wide‐mouthed horns, Cusigs Timpanists, without weariness, Poets and petty rhymesters;
“Fenian tales of Find(115)—an untiring entertainment— Destructions, cattle‐preys, courtships, Inscribed tablets and books of trees,(116) Satires and sharp‐edged runes;
“Proverbs, maxims, royal precepts, And the youthful instruction of Fithal; Occult poetry, topographical etymologies, The precepts of Cairpri and of Cormac;
“The Feasts, and the great Feast of Teamar; Fairs, with the fair of Emania, Annals there are verified, Every division into which Erin was divided.”
The Feast of Teamair, or Tara, here alluded to as having constituted one of the subjects of the recitations at Carman, was also triennial, but of a different nature, and involving much higher occupations than those of the provincial fairs or feasts. It was an assembly of the subordinate kings and the nobles for elective, legislative, and judicial purposes; but, though nominally held every three years, was in reality celebrated as often as a new king was to be crowned, a general public law to be promulgated, or when some extraordinary occasion demanded the presence of the chiefs and Rigs before the supreme monarch. Again, many years are known to have elapsed without an assembly or Feis, owing to the existence of internal dissensions or foreign invasions. This assembly is said to have owed its origin to Tuathal the Legitimate, and it is certain that it only ceased to be held when Tara was abandoned as a royal residence in the VIIth century. The court of the Ard‐Rig on such occasions was not only attended by the provincial magnates and, in pagan times, by the chief Druids, but by their followers, poets, doctors, and historians, with their respective household guards. It was a knowledge of this custom, doubtless, that led S. Patrick to select the hill of Tara as the place, and the assembly of the Feis as the fitting occasion, upon which to disclose to the darkened minds of the whole people the splendid truths of Christianity.
The palace and adjoining houses of ancient Tara, judging by the extensive traces of their foundations yet remaining, must have been built on a very large scale; but as they were constructed entirely of wood, the buildings proper have long since disappeared. Still, we have accounts, more or less authentic, that collectively they were able to afford shelter and accommodation to many thousands of visitors, and that the barracks alone allowed quarters for twenty‐four thousand soldiers. Of the style of architecture of the king’s house we have no description, save that it was rectangular, and that its principal room or hall, which was used for deliberations as well as for feasts, was profusely ornamented with carvings in gold, silver, and bronze. Before the introduction of Christianity all buildings were of wood, some square or rectangular, others oval or round. Those of the higher classes were made of solid logs, but the smaller farmers and laborers dwelt in huts made of interlaced wattles or twigs, the interstices closed by mortar made with wet earth and straw. Stone structures were unknown before S. Patrick’s time; for, though lime was used as a wash for the interior and exterior of houses, its employment as a cement dates from the Christian ages. Hence there are no pagan ruins to be found in the country. The Round Towers, now proven beyond doubt to have been church belfries, are the most ancient stone memorials existing. It may be also remembered that the Druids had no such places of worship as temples or covered sanctuaries, and whatever rites they performed must have been celebrated in the open air. Indeed, our knowledge of those mysterious people and of their equally occult religious system is merely of a negative character; for, as O’Curry says:
“We only know that they worshipped idols from such examples as that of the idol gods taken into the Druid’s bed, so as to influence his visions, as described in Cormac’s Glossary, and that of the invocation of the idols in the case of the Teinm Laeghdha; and we know that in certain ceremonies they made use of the yew‐tree, the quicken or roan‐tree, and of the black‐thorn, as in the instance of the ordeal or test of a woman’s character by means of fire made of these sacred woods. That the people of ancient Erinn were idolaters is certain, for they certainly adored the great idol called Crom Cruagh, in the plain called Magh Slecht, as I showed on a former occasion. But it is remarkable that we find no mention of any connection between this idol and the Druids, or any other class of priests or special idol‐servers. We have only the record of the people, generally, assembling at times to do honor to the idol creation. As little, unfortunately, do we know of the organization of the order of the Druids, if they were indeed an order. They certainly were not connected as such with the orders of learned men or profession of teachers, such as before explained. The Druids were often, however, engaged in teaching, as has been seen; and it would appear that kings and chiefs, as well as learned men, were also frequently Druids, though how or why I am not in a position to explain with certainty at present.... I have refrained from suggesting any theory of my own on the subject. This negative conclusion, nevertheless, I will venture to draw from the whole: that, notwithstanding the singularly positive assertions of many of our own as well as of English writers upon the subject, there is no ground whatever for believing the Druids to have been the priests of any special positive worship; none whatever for imputing to them human sacrifices; none whatever for believing that the early people of Erinn adored the sun, moon, or stars, nor that they worshipped fire; and still less foundation for the ridiculous inventions of modern times (inventions of pure ignorance), concerning honors paid to brown bulls, red cows, or any other cows, or any of the lower animals.”
Next in rank and social importance, if not the equals or superiors of the Druids, were the Ollamhs, or doctors, the Files, or poets, and the Brehons or judges. In the earliest ages these three classes were all included under the term Fileadh, poets, who not only professed philosophy, such as it then was, but recorded history and chronology in verse, and expounded the laws so preserved, in the various local courts and tribunals. A tendency, however, to mystify and confuse the statutes of Tuathal and his successors, led to the expulsion of the children of song from the forum, while the offices about the sovereign, when grave matters were to be considered, fell to the lot of the philosophers. This latter class had also an especial charge of educational matters, and usually superintended personally the training of the children of the Rigs and chiefs. The Ard‐Rig, the provincial kings, and the Flaths had their own philosophers, poets, and judges, with their special duties assigned them. Of the first, besides making and preserving regular records, “they were bound by the same laws,” says O’Curry, “to make themselves perfect masters of that history in all its details, and to teach it to the people by public recitals, as well as to be legal referees upon all subjects in dispute concerning history and the genealogies.” No person could be a Brehon without first becoming an Ollamh, and twelve years’ study was required for that honor. But the poets, like their tribe in every land and age, were the nobly honored and the most privileged of any order in the government. They flattered kings and satirized them with impunity, charmed the masses with the melody of their songs and the fertility of their imagination; but, while they were generally on the side of popular liberty in their verses, they were always to be found at the tables of the nobles, where good cheer and rich largesses awaited them. However, as their poems were the only vehicles through which the history, traditions, and even laws of the nation could possibly have been transmitted to us, we owe them too much to blame their amiable weaknesses. Like the teacher, when the File travelled about the country he was accompanied by his pupils, and every hospitality was shown to him and them, partly from love of his calling, and not seldom through dread of his satires. Many instances are recorded in popular tales of the dire effects of the poet’s wrath, of which sickness, loss of property and reputation, were among the least.
In connection with the courts we find two classes of paid advocates, one the Ebe, attorney, and the other the Aighne, or counsellor. When it is remembered that slander and libel were offences severely punished in the Brehon courts by eric fine, we can admire the grim humor which discriminated against the attorneys, who, as the wise law‐givers of old argued, being professional libellers of other men, had no right to exact a fine when their own characters were assailed.
The custom of fosterage, about which so much unfavorable comment has been made by modern ill‐informed writers, is fully and clearly explained by O’Curry, who classes it as a part of the educational system of the country, and not, as some erroneously suppose, the partial desertion of children by their parents. In Lecture XVII. he asserts:
“We have ample proof that this fosterage was not a mere indiscriminate custom among all classes of the people, nor in any case one merely confined to the bare physical nurture and rearing of the child, which in early infancy was committed to the care of a nurse and her husband; but that the fosterhood was generally that of a whole family or tribe, and that in very many cases it became a bond of friendship and alliance between two or more tribes, and even provinces. In those cases the fosterers were not of the common class, poor people glad to perform their nursing for mere pay, and whose care extended to physical rearing only. On the contrary, it is even a question, and one not easily settled, whether the term nursing, in the modern acceptation of the word, should be applied at all to the old Gaelic fosterage, and whether the term pupilage would not be more appropriate.... The old Gaelic fosterage extended to the training and education, not only of children up to the age of fourteen, but sometimes of youths up to that of seventeen years.”
One of the chief duties of the foster‐father was the military training of the young chieftains. This consisted principally of the management of the horse, either in pairs for the chariot or singly for riding, the use of the casting spear and sling, and the sword exercise. Of strategy the ancient Irish soldiers had no idea, and very little of tactics; so that their battles were hand‐to‐hand combats, and therefore bloody and generally decisive. Their weapons of bronze or iron, many fine specimens of which we examined years ago in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy, still exhibit evidences of high finish and excellent temper. We do not find any mention of cavalry in the accounts handed down to us of the various battles fought in the earlier centuries, and very slight allusions to defensive armor. Ornaments of gold and other precious metals, such as crowns, collars, torque rings, and shield‐bosses, were worn in great profusion and variety, not only by nobles and generals, but by ordinary officers; in fact, so gorgeous are the poets’ descriptions of the decorations of their favorite heroes that we might be inclined to accuse them of gross exaggeration had we not also been shown some magnificent antiques of this description, in a perfect state of preservation, by the gentlemen of the academy during several visits made to that depository of Irish antiquities. Some of these valuable decorations are made of native ore, but by far the greater number were manufactured out of the spoils of war—the plunder wrested from the adjacent islands and the coast of France by the numerous expeditions that were fitted out in Ireland in the three or four centuries preceding S. Patrick’s mission.
The dress of the higher classes was, it seems, equally magnificent, and each rank was distinguished, not only by the peculiar shape of its garments, but by the number of colors allowed to be worn. Thus, servants had one color; farmers, two; officers, three; women, four; chiefs, five; ollamhs and files, six; kings and queens, seven; and, according to the ancient records, bishops of the Christian Church were afterwards allowed to use all these combined. Red, brown, and crimson, with their shades and compounds, were the colors generally used; green, yellow, blue, and black sometimes, but not frequently. Prof. Sullivan, in that part of his introduction treating of the various dye‐stuffs used in ancient Ireland, takes occasion to dissipate some popular errors with regard to national colors. He says:
“Garments dyed yellow with saffron are constantly spoken of by modern writers as characteristic of the Irish. There is no evidence, however, that saffron was at all known by the ancient Irish, and Lenas or Inars of a yellow color are only mentioned two or three times in the principal tales. From what has been shown in the Lectures and in this Introduction about the color of the ancient Irish dress, it will be evident that there was no national as distinguished from clan color for the Lena; a saffron‐dyed one, if at all used in ancient times, would be peculiar to a single clan.”
The Lena here spoken of was an inner garment which hung down to the knees like a modern kilt, usually made of linen, and sometimes interwoven with threads of gold. In addition to this were worn a shirt, or Leine; a cloak (Brat); an Inar, or jacket; Triubhas, or trowsers; a Bor, or conical hat; and Cuarans, or shoes made of raw‐hide. The costume of the women differed little from that of the men, except that they discarded the triubhas, and wore their lenas and leines longer. “They were, however,” says Sullivan, “distinguished from the men by wearing a veil, which covered the head. This veil was the Caille, which formed an essential part of the legal contents of a lady’s work‐bag. In a passage from the laws, quoted in the Lectures, it is called ‘a veil of one color’; as if variegated ones were sometimes used.... The white linen cloth still worn by nuns represents exactly both the Irish Caille and the German Hulla.” In many other respects, besides the matter of dress, women were placed on a footing nearly equal to that of men in those remote times; and if their liberal and respectful treatment may be considered one of the tests of civilization, the old Gaels were in refinement far in advance of any other race in pagan Europe, and indeed of many of our own times. We find women not only taking part in public affairs as rulers and generals, but as Druidesses, judges, poets, and teachers. At Tara and the great provincial fairs a separate portion of the grounds was assigned them, so that they could observe the games and enjoy the amusements without interruption; while in the homes of the Rigs and chiefs the best rooms, and sometimes an entire building, called Grianan, or sunny house, was exclusively reserved for their use. Most of the principal places in the country, such as the locations of the great fairs and the sites of royal palaces, were named in their honor, as well as the mountains and rivers and other objects in nature suggestive of symmetry, beauty, and elegance. We also read in the Senchus Mor several very minute and stringent laws protecting their rights of person and property, assigning their dowry before marriage and their separate ownership of property afterwards. They were, in fact, to a great extent pecuniarily independent of their husbands; and though polygamy was tolerated and divorce allowed in pagan times, they were so hedged in by restrictions and conditions that it is more than probable little advantage was taken of the latitude thus afforded both parties.
Being almost exclusively an agricultural people, with very little commerce with the outward world, the food of the ancient Irish was confined to the natural productions of the soil, flesh‐meat, milk, and fish. Wheat, spelt‐ wheat, barley, and oats were produced in abundance, while cattle were so plentiful and so general an article of traffic that in the absence of coin they formed the currency of the country, and in them fines were paid and taxes levied. Butter, milk, and cheese were luxuries, but vegetables, such as leeks, onions, and water‐cresses, were to be found growing in the garden of the lowest Fuidir. Beer, likewise, appears to have been the popular drink. Imported wine and native mead, distilled from honey, were considered the aristocratic beverages of the period. That large quantities of the latter were consumed at the triennial feasts there can be no doubt, judging from the tales of the poets; and it was on occasions when it was circling round the board that the Cruits (harps), Timpans, or violins, and Cruiscach, or pipes, the three principal musical instruments of the Gaels, came into play. The poets, too, were there to sing their songs of love and war, and the historians to recite the traditions of the tribes of Erinn. It is not positively known whether the pagan Irish had a written language or alphabet. O’Curry is disposed to believe they had, while Sullivan is of opinion that letters and writing were introduced with Christianity, and that previous to S. Patrick’s time all teaching in the ancient schools was oral, and the genealogies and histories were committed to memory and transmitted from father to son. They both, however, agree that there was a system of writing known only to the initiated, now called Ogham, which was inscribed on prepared wood, and engraved on monuments and tombstones, many of which latter, though still well preserved, are illegible to the best antiquarian scholars. The ancient Gaels, like their descendants, had a special reverence for their dead, and indulged in protracted wakes, as well as extensive funerals. In pagan days their funeral ceremonies were most elaborate, but in Christian times these gave way to the solemn offices of the church. Each person was buried according to his rank while living; the corpse was deposited deep in the ground, and a cairn or mound of earth and stone was erected over the grave to mark the spot. We have no reason to suppose that they had even the faintest notion of a future life or of the immortality of the soul, their mythology limiting the supernatural to celebrated Tuatha da Danians, real personages, who had left the surface to inhabit the bowels of the earth, and to fairies, the “good people” of the modern peasantry.
Those, then, were the people, computed to have been about three millions in number in his time, to whom S. Patrick preached the New Law, and whose complete conversion and subsequent undying attachment to Catholicity have puzzled as well as confounded the enemies of the church. Though pagans, they were neither barbarous nor over‐superstitious, and their ready appreciation and acceptance of God’s mysterious and elaborate Word is the best proof that their hearts were pure and their minds active and comprehensive.
Robespierre
The father of the great revolutionary demagogue was an advocate at Arras, a peaceful citizen, who had nothing about him in character or manners to suggest that he was to be the parent of the monster known to history as the tiger‐man. Nay, so little of ferocity was there about the worthy advocate that, when his wife died, he nearly went melancholy‐mad for grief, and in his despair left his native town, and took to wandering about France, then beyond it to Germany and England, where he finally died. There are, it is true, some ill‐natured local chronicles extant which pretend that it was not so much grief as debt that drove the disconsolate widower into exile; and this harsh and unpoetic version is supported by the fact of his having, by his flight, abandoned to loneliness and utter destitution the three little children, two boys and a girl, whom the wife he so bitterly lamented had left to his paternal care. Maximilien Marie Isidore, the eldest of the three, was born on the 6th of April, 1760. The solitary position and the poverty of the deserted children attracted the compassion of some kind persons of the town, and notably that of the curé of the parish, who sent Maximilien to school, where soon, by dint of hard work and intelligence, the boy shot ahead of all his class fellows, and justified the predictions of friends that he would make a name for himself in whatever trade or calling he embraced. The Bishop of Arras, Mgr. de Conzié, was also interested in the little fellow; his industry and desolate poverty making a claim on the prelate’s paternal notice. He used his influence with the abbot of the famous Abbey of Waast to grant Maximilien one of the abbatial bourses at the College of Louis le Grand, in Paris. The very first steps in life of the future persecutor of priests and religion were thus guided by the hand of the church, his poverty enriched, his orphanhood fathered, by her charity. The Abbé Proyart, then president of Louis le Grand, continued to the poor provincial student the fostering kindness of those worthy ecclesiastics who had placed him under his charge. Maximilien was also at this time largely assisted and most kindly befriended by the Abbé de la Roche, a canon of Notre Dame, who, all through the period of the young man’s studies in Paris, kept watch over him, and showed him the most sincere and delicate affection. When at the age of nineteen, Maximilien left the college, the Abbé de la Roche used his influence to secure the vacant bourse for the younger brother, Augustin Robespierre, and succeeded. Maximilien was called to the bar very soon after leaving Paris, and began at once to excite attention by his talent as a speaker. The first mention we find of his forensic success is in 1783, when he was engaged in a case against the corporation of St. Omer, a small town near Arras, in behalf of a gentleman who had erected a lightning‐conductor on his house, and been prosecuted on account of it, and condemned by the corporation. He appealed to the higher court of Arras. Robespierre pleaded his cause, and won a triumphant reversal of the first verdict. We find a note of this incident in the Memoires de Bachaumont: “The cause about the paratonnerre has been before our court three days, and has been pleaded by M. de Robespierre, a young lawyer of extraordinary merit; he has displayed in this affair—which was, in fact, the cause of art and science against prejudice—a degree of eloquence and sagacity that gives the highest idea of his talents. He had a complete triumph; on the 31st day of May the court reversed the sentence, and permitted M. de Boisvale to re‐erect his paratonnerre.” Robespierre was just three‐and‐twenty at this date. He is styled de Robespierre by the writer, and had assumed the particule noble at a much earlier date; he is entered at college with it, and at the bar, and was elected to the States‐General as de Robespierre. The pretentious prefix cost him dear, as we shall see; it afforded a poisoned shaft to Camille Desmoulins long after the Regenerator of the people had erased the feudal particle from his signature. But these were sunny days, when he might use it with impunity, and even to some advantage. The young advocate was courted and admired, and made welcome in clubs and drawing‐ rooms; he wrote essays and won prizes from learned societies, thus establishing a literary as well as legal reputation. He even aspired to be a poet, and addressed sonnets to ladies of fashion at Arras, which gained him the smiles of the Ariadnes and Arachnes that he sang to, and caused him to be rallied as a squire of dames. This time of merry dalliance, however, soon came to an end, and graver ambitions began to open out before Robespierre. He was elected member of the States‐General. M. Dumont, the distinguished journalist, gives a lively description of the figure made by the “avocat, de Robespierre,” in one of the earliest sittings of that Assembly: “The clergy, for the purpose of surprising the Tiers Etat into a union of the orders, sent a deputation to invite the Tiers to a conference on the distresses of the poor. The Tiers saw through the design, and, not willing to acknowledge the clergy as a separate body, yet afraid to reject so charitable and popular a proposition, knew not what answer to make, when one of the deputies, after concurring in the description of the miseries of the people, rose and addressed the ecclesiastical deputation: ‘Go tell your colleagues that, if they are so anxious to relieve the people, they should hasten to unite themselves in this hall with the friends of the people. Tell them no longer to retard our proceedings and the public good by contumacious delays, or to try to carry their point by such stratagems as this. Rather let them, as ministers of religion, as worthy servants of their Master, renounce the splendor which surrounds them, the luxury which insults the poor. Dismiss those insolent lackeys who attend you; sell your gaudy equipages, and convert those odious superfluities into food for the poor.’ At this speech, which interpreted so well the passions of the moment, there arose, not applause—that would have appeared like a bravado—but a confused murmur of approbation much more flattering. Every one asked who was the speaker. He was not known, but in a few minutes his name passed from mouth to mouth; it was one which afterwards made all France tremble—it was Robespierre!”
One is at a loss which to admire most in this brilliant sortie, the skill and power of the speaker in playing on the passions of his hearers, or the dastardly ingratitude which led him to use the eloquence he owed in so large a measure to the clergy for the purpose of stigmatizing his best benefactors. The first time Robespierre’s voice was raised in the tribune it was to vituperate the men to whom he owed his education, almost, it may be said, his existence. The reward of this treachery was not delayed; he electrified his audience, and henceforth became known to fame, though not yet to infamy. It is only just to Robespierre to admit that when he entered on his public life, his character was unstained by any of the vices which it developed later; he was in private life held to be virtuous, and suspected of no vice beyond the honorable one of ambition. Probably he would have lived and died amongst his fellow‐citizens without earning a worse reputation than the rest of them, if this latent ambition had not led him to seek to rise above them, and if his ability had not seconded the aspiration. Even in his demagogic career he kept his reputation for integrity, and gained the surname of the Incorruptible. Incorruptible by money he certainly was, while the instinct of either cowardice or sagacity induced him to disavow all personal ambition. Power was what he thirsted for; wealth and pageant he despised. These principles, aided by his fiery talent as any orator and his shrewd knowledge of the times, soon lifted him above all competitors, and made him a kind of uncrowned monarch long before he became so in reality as dictator of the republic. It is interesting to note the various decrees he passed while reigning in the National Assembly. One of the first was the turning of the Church of S. Geneviève into a Pantheon for the ashes of great men, and the inauguration of the paganized Christian temple by the entombing of Mirabeau’s remains there. Then we see him ardent in endeavoring to carry the abolition of capital punishment—an instance of that strange paradox so common to Frenchmen, who shrink with morbid sentimentality from inflicting death on the vilest malefactor by the hand of justice, while so ready to shed the blood of innocent men without remorse, nay, with exultation, the moment their passions are roused.
The flight of the royal family to Varennes wrought a sudden and decisive change in the state of public affairs. Robespierre was just then at the summit of his reputation as an orator, admired as the most prominent figure in Mme. Roland’s coterie, which numbered all the cleverest men of the new school, though the gifted and ill‐starred centre of the group seems, even in the days of their closest friendship, to have resented Robespierre’s stubborn independence, which contrasted disagreeably with the unqualified adulation of his fellow‐devotees.
The abortive attempt of the unfortunate Louis to fly from a position which had become unbearable had set the match to the train which Robespierre and his Jacobin faction had so long been preparing. The question, hitherto whispered in ambiguous words, was now spoken boldly aloud: What was to be done with the king? Lafayette was for keeping him a prisoner in the Tuileries, he, meanwhile, acting as a sort of military viceroy; the Orleanist faction had another solution to offer; the Jacobins and the Girondists another. There was a stormy sitting at the Assembly. Brissot proposed that the people should like one man rally round the republican flag, and sign a petition for the abolition of the king. There arose in answer to this daring proposition a tempest of applause, terror, anger, and loyal indignation. The Assembly rejected it, and voted for maintaining the king. Robespierre rushed out of the hall, tearing his hair and crying out, “My friends, we are lost! The king is saved!” This was on the 15th of July. A meeting had been already called of the Jacobin Club for the 17th on the Champs de Mars for the purpose of expressing the national will. The club, on hearing the vote of the Assembly, kept up a farce of respect by issuing a counter‐order. But the sovereign people were hampered by no such mock scruples; they, in the person of Brissot, drew up a fresh petition, and invited all classes of their fellow‐citizens to attend at the appointed day on the Champs de Mars, where the altar of fatherland would be erected, and where all patriots could sign the petition towards the freedom of the country. A tragi‐comic incident marked the proceedings at an early hour. Two men were found hid under the “altar,” and detected in the act of boring a hole in it with a gimlet; they were forthwith dragged out and massacred on the spot, though the only evidence of guilt brought against them at the time, or afterwards, was that one of them had a wooden leg, and the other a basket of provisions. The mob were like dry powder that only wanted a spark to make it ignite, destroying and self‐ destructive. The wildest inferences were drawn from the discovery of the two unlucky eaves‐droppers: they were laying a mine to blow up the patriots assembled round the altar of fatherland; the absence of all appliances for this terrible purpose proved nothing; some cried out that they were spies in the king’s pay; others that they were secreted there as dupes to be murdered by Lafayette’s creatures as a pretext for beginning the massacres that followed. We even find Mme. Roland repeating some absurd notions of this kind; but nothing is too monstrous or too preposterous for prejudice to swallow. However, let the motives of the two men have been what they may, their murder was undoubtedly the signal for that onslaught of the troops which completely destroyed Lafayette’s tottering popularity, and compelled him to leave Paris for a command on the frontier. The real odium of the unpremeditated blood‐shedding fell, like every mistake of the time, on the king. On the 5th of February, 1792, Robespierre was named Public Accuser, and from this event dates the explosion of personal rivalry between him and Brissot. He never could forgive the latter having been chosen to draw up that famous petition of the Champs de Mars, and for keeping the ascendency which this fact gave him in the Assembly and in the Jacobin Club. But Robespierre did not long retain the subordinate position of Public Accuser; he hated the bondage of having to attend at fixed hours, and some months after his nomination he resigned and started a newspaper called the Défenseur. Blood and terror were henceforth the watchwords of the journalist‐patriot. He effected a sham reconciliation with Brissot and all other enemies, and the Judas kiss of hate and treachery went round.
Roland was named minister at this crisis; a clever and honest man, moderate, and, above all, the husband of Mme. Roland, his nomination was hailed with joy by all. Robespierre alone was furious at seeing the mediocre provincial farmer placed over his head. His jealous vengeance against Mme. Roland dated from this elevation of her husband. The success of his journal consoled him, meanwhile, for the delay of larger triumphs, while it procured him competence and independence, which were all he required. He lodged with a man named Duplay, a carpenter, who had a wife and two daughters. One of the latter became branded in connection with the name of her father’s tenant. Robespierre vindicated his surname of Incorruptible all through the period of his popular power, inasmuch as he was inaccessible to the temptation of money or any of the softer bribes which sometimes beguile hard, ambitious men into acts of mercy or passing tenderness.
In August, 1792, he suspended his labors as a journalist, and henceforth devoted his undivided energies and his whole time to the political events which were thickening around him. The last number of the Défenseur contains an inflammatory appeal which is too significant of the man and the times to be omitted. It was decided that a convention should be elected to choose a new form of national government. The issue depended almost entirely on the character and principles of the members who should compose it. Robespierre determined at any and every cost to be one of the elected. It was his supreme opportunity; if he missed it, his career as a popular leader was broken, and he must sink back into the ranks of obscure mediocrities who had shot up from the mass of agitators like rockets, burning bright and fierce for a moment, and then subsiding in darkness. He had that instinct of genius which enables a man to read the temper of his time, and to this sanguinary temper he passionately addressed himself in the closing number of his paper:
“You must prepare the success of this convention by the regeneration of the spirit of the people. Let us awake—all, all arise, all arm, and the enemies of liberty will hide themselves in darkness. Let the tocsin of Paris be re‐echoed in all the departments. Let the people learn at once to reason and to fight. You are now at war with all your oppressors, and you will have no peace till you have punished them. Far be from you that pusillanimous weakness or that cowardly indulgence which the tyrants so long satiated with the blood of the people now invoke when their own hour is come! Impunity has produced all their crimes and all your sufferings. Let them fall under the sword of the law. Clemency towards them would be real barbarity—an outrage on injured humanity.” This manifesto revealed the true aim and policy of Robespierre, and just gave the touch that was necessary to set the wheel revolving. Danton cried amen to it, and all the faction shouted amen in chorus. “We must dare, and dare again, and dare to the bitter end!” said Danton, and the word acted like a trumpet‐call to the bloodhounds of the revolution. The prisons of Paris were at this moment gorged with aristocrats awaiting their trial. The people shouted, Try them! The tocsin sounded, the prison‐doors were surrounded. Mock courts of justice were set up in the courtyards. Quickly, one by one, the prisoners are called out, questions are rapidly put and answered; the jury decides: “Let the prisoner be enlarged!” The gendarmes seize him; they open the gate and “enlarge” him. He falls forward on a mass of glittering pikes and bayonets, and dies, cut to pieces. Soon the number of the butchered is so great that the amateur executioners have to pause and clear the space by piling up the corpses to one side before they resume their work. Every prison presents the same scene. At La Force a remnant of the Swiss Guard is called out. “They clasp each other spasmodically, gray veterans crying, ‘Mercy, gentlemen, mercy!’ But there is no mercy! They prepare to die like brave men. One of them steps forward. He had on a blue frock‐coat. He was about thirty. His stature was above the common, his look noble and martial. ‘I go first,’ he said, ‘since it must be so. Adieu!’ Then, dashing his hat behind him, ‘Which way?’ cried he to the brigands. ‘Show it me.’ They open the folding gate. He is announced to the multitude. He stands a moment motionless, then plunges forth among the pikes, and dies of a thousand wounds.”(117) The fair and saintly Princesse de Lamballe fell, butchered by the same pikes; her head paraded through the streets, her remains profaned by the most unheard‐of indignities. As it always happens in these storms of human souls, there were tones of a divine harmony to be heard striking through the hideous din. Old M. de Sombreuil is dragged out to die. His daughter, a tender girl in the first blush of maidenhood, rushes out, fearless and bold, clinging to him, and appeals to the tigers about to shed his blood: “O good friends! he is my father! He is no aristocrat! We hate aristocrats; tell me how I can prove it to you?” They fill a bowl full of the hot blood of an aristocrat just slain, and present it to her, saying: “Drink this, and we will believe thee and spare thy father.”
She drinks the loathsome draught, and clasps her father amidst the Vivats of the mob. Alas! it was only a respite that the brave deed had gained for the beloved old man. He died by those same blood‐stained hands before the year was out. At the abbey a picture of rest and calm is to be seen: “Towards seven on Sunday night, we saw two men enter, their hands bloody, and armed with sabres. A turnkey with a torch lighted them; he points to the bed of the unfortunate Swiss, Reding. Reding was dying. One of the men paused; but the other said: Allons donc! (come along!) and lifted the dying man, and carried him on his back out to the street. He was massacred there. We looked at one another in silence; we clasped each other’s hands; we gazed on the pavement of our prison, on which lay the moonlight, checkered with shadows.... At three in the morning we heard them breaking in one of the prison‐doors. We thought they were coming to kill us.... The Abbé Lenfant and the Abbé de Chapt‐Rastignac appeared in the pulpit of the chapel, which was our prison. They had got in by a door from the stairs. They said to us that our end was at hand; that we must compose ourselves and receive their last blessing. An electric movement, not to be described, threw us all on our knees, and we received it. These two white‐haired old men blessing us from their place above, death hovering over our heads—the moment is never to be forgotten.”(118) Half an hour later the two priests were dragged out and massacred, those whom they had strengthened with their last words to meet a like fate listening to their cries.
The massacres began on the 2d and lasted till the 6th, when Robespierre and Danton were elected to that legislative body called the Deputation of Paris, composed of twenty‐four members, the first name on the list being Robespierre, the last Philippe Egalité. It was on this occasion that the future regicide adopted the surname of Egalité, he being compelled to choose some appellation not obnoxious to the people.
The great struggle now began between the Jacobins and the Girondists, or virtually between the leaders of the two factions, the old rivals, Robespierre and Brissot. All the ultra‐republicans, who were represented by the Deputation of Paris, grouped themselves on the top benches of the convention to the left of the president, and were called the Mountain—a name henceforth identified with its prophet, Robespierre. The question still was, What was to be done with the king? The Jacobins were for killing him, the Girondists for putting him aside. The wretched weakness, vacillation, and cowardliness of the Girondists make them objects of contempt, without exciting in us the kind of horrified awe inspired by the monstrous feats of those Titanic fiends, the Jacobins. By what fatality is it in France that the honest‐meaning party is always the cowardly one that dares not assert itself, but bows down, cowed by the cynical audacity of the anarchists? The Girondists might have turned the scales, even at this crisis, if they had had the courage of their consciences; but they were cowards. Their policy was to run with the hare and cry with the hounds, and it met with the fate it deserved. But we must not anticipate. The Mountain, on the other hand, did not lack the courage of its creed; it out‐heroded Herod in its fury against the king and all appertaining to the old order which he represented. Roman history was its Bible, and the examples there recorded were for ever on its lips. All citizens were heroes, Cincinnatuses, Catos, Ciceros, etc.; all sovereigns were Neros and Caligulas. The Girondists turned these fine texts against their rivals by accusing them of plotting to set up a triumvirate, to be composed of Robespierre, Marat, and Danton. This was only three weeks after the orgy of blood which ushered in the reign of Robespierre and of Terror. Danton mounted the tribune, and made an eloquent defence of Robespierre, who never spoke impromptu when he could avoid it. Marat then rose—for the first time in the convention—and was hooted down; but he persisted, and made them listen while he exposed his revolting doctrines of wholesale murder and anarchical rule.
So the days passed, in boisterous invective, idle perorations, and savage threats of one party against another. The Girondists, however, were worsted in the fight, and the strength of the position remained with Robespierre and his more bloody and unscrupulous faction, who had from the starting traced out his plan, and adhered to it without flinching. The king was foredoomed to the scaffold, but some semblance of legality should accompany the decree. So strong was the Jacobin influence at this crisis that those who did not share the murderous design were terrified into seeming to do so, and, while looking with horror at the regicide in preparation, were cowed into silent acquiescence. M. Thiers, in his History of the Revolution, says: “Many of the deputies who had come down with the intention of voting for the king were frightened at the fury of the people, and, though much touched by the fate of Louis XVI., they were terrified at the consequences of an acquittal. This fear was greatly increased at the sight of the Assembly and of the scene it presented. That scene, dark and terrible, had shaken the hearts of all, and changed the resolution of Lecointre of Versailles, whose personal bravery cannot be doubted, and who had not ceased to return to the galleries the menacing gestures with which they were intimidating the Assembly. Even he, when it came to the point, hesitated, and dropped from his mouth the terrible and unexpected word, ‘death.’ Vergniaud, who had appeared most deeply touched by the fate of the king, and who had declared that ‘nothing could ever induce him to condemn the unhappy prince’—Vergniaud, at the sight of that tumultuous scene, pronounced the sentence of death.” It must truly have been an appalling spectacle, the like of which the civilized world had never before beheld. Mercier, in his Sketches of the Revolution, gives us an animated and glowing picture of the court during the trial: “The famous sitting which decided the fate of Louis lasted seventy‐two hours. One would naturally suppose that the Assembly was a scene of meditation, silence, and a sort of religious terror. Not at all. The end of the hall was transformed into a kind of opera‐box, where ladies in négligée were eating ices and oranges, drinking liqueurs, and receiving the compliments and salutations of comers and goers. The huissiers (bailiffs) on the side of the Mountain acted the part of the openers of the opera‐boxes. They were employed every instant in turning the key in the doors of the side galleries, and gallantly escorting the mistresses of the Duke of Orleans, caparisoned with tri‐colored ribbons. Although every mark of applause or disapprobation was forbidden, nevertheless, on the side of the Mountain, the Duchess Dowager,(119) the amazon of the Jacobin bands, made long ‘ha‐a‐has!’ when she heard the word ‘death’ strongly twang in her ears.
“The lofty galleries, destined for the people during the days which preceded this famous trial, were never empty of strangers and people of every class, who there drank wine and brandy as if it had been a tavern. Bets were open at all the neighboring coffee‐houses. Listlessness, impatience, fatigue, were marked on almost every countenance. Each deputy mounted the tribune in his turn, and every one was asking when his turn came. Some deputy came, I know not who, sick, and in his morning‐gown and night‐cap. This phantom caused a great deal of diversion in the Assembly. The countenances of those who went to the tribune, rendered more funereal from the pale gleams of the lights, when in a slow and sepulchral voice they pronounced the word ‘death!’—all these physiognomies which succeeded one another, their tones, their different keys; d’Orleans hissing and groaning when he voted the death of his relative; some calculating if they should have time to dine before they gave their vote; women with pins pricking cards to count the votes; deputies who had fallen asleep and were waked up in order to vote; Manuel, the secretary, sliding away a few votes, in order to save the unhappy king, and on the point of being put to death in the corridors for his infidelity—these sights can never be described as they passed. It is impossible to picture what they were, nor will history be able to reach them.”
Amongst the timid Girondists who dared not vote for acquittal, and shrank from decreeing the king to death, many hit upon a half‐measure, which was that of coupling their vote—for death with conditions that practically negatived it. This cowardly transaction is said to have given rise to some trickery in the counting of the votes, which enabled the scrutineers to make the majority of one voice by which the sentence of death was carried. It was this sham proceeding which prompted Sièyes to say when recording his vote, “Death—without palaver!”
Robespierre’s figure stands out with vivid and terrible brilliancy against the background of this picture. He dismissed the question of the king’s innocence or guilt—that had, he knew right well, nothing whatever to do with the issue—and proceeded to demand his death on the grounds of urgent political expediency. “The death of the king was not a question of law, but of state policy, which, without quibbling about his guilt or innocence, required his death; the life of one man, if ever so innocent, must be sacrificed to preserve the lives of millions.” There was honesty at any rate in this plain speaking, and so it was better than the odious hypocrisy displayed by the other actors in the tragic farce. On Robespierre’s descending from the tribune, his brother Augustin, rose and demanded in the name of the people “that Louis Capet shall be brought to the bar, to declare his original accomplices, to hear sentence of death pronounced on him, and to be forthwith conducted to execution.” Wild confusion covered this extravagant motion, but no notice was taken of it. The 21st of January was near at hand; even the Mountain could afford to wait so long.
On the 10th of March, the Revolutionary Tribunal was decreed. A month later there broke out a violent altercation between Robespierre and some of the Girondists in the Convention; numbers clamored for the “expulsion of the twenty‐two” obstreperous Girondists; they were arraigned before the bar where the king whom they so basely betrayed had lately stood; the trial lasted four days; even that tribunal, used to dispense with all proof of guilt in its victims, could not decide on condemning twenty‐two men at one fell swoop without some shadow of reason, and there was none to be found. But Robespierre was not going to lose his opportunity for a quibble; impatient of the delay, he drew up a decree that “whenever any trial should have lasted three days, the tribunal might declare itself satisfied with the guilt of the prisoners, might stop the defence, close the discussions, and send the accused to death!” This abominable document was read and inscribed on the register of the tribunal the same evening, the Girondists were at once condemned, and sent to the scaffold next morning.
To Be Concluded Next Month.
The Better Christmas
“’Tis not the feast that changes with the ever‐changing times, But these that lightly vote away the glories of the past— The joys that dream‐like haunt me with the merry matin chimes I loved so in my boyhood, and shall doat on to the last.
“There still is much of laughter, and a measure of old cheer: The ivy wreaths, if scanty, are as verdant as of yore: And still the same kind greeting for the universal ear: But, to me, for all their wishing, ’tis a ‘merry’ feast no more!”
I said: and came an answer from the stars to which I sighed— Those stars that lit the vigil of the favor’d shepherd band. And ’twas as if again the heavens open’d deep and wide, And the carol of the angel‐choir new‐flooded all the land
“Good tidings still we bring to all who still have ears to hear; To all who love His coming—the elect that cannot cease; And louder rings our anthem, to these watchers, year by year, Its earnest of the perfect joy—the everlasting peace.
“Art thou, then, of these watchers, if thou canst not read the sign? The world was at its darkest when the blessed Day‐star(120) shone. Again ’tis blacker to her beam: and thou must needs repine, And sicken, so near sunrise, for the moonlight that is gone!”
English And Scotch Scenes
The home life of England has ever been a favorite topic with American writers. The first thing that strikes an American travelling through England is the age of everything he sees, the roots by which every existing institution, custom, or pleasure is intimately connected with its real, tangible prototype in the past. He sees, too, how the people live a thoroughly characteristic life—that which consists in identification with everything that is national. No one is so unadaptive as the pure‐bred Briton, and it has truly been said that an Englishman carries his country with him wherever he goes. You never see an Englishman to advantage except at home; but, once enthroned amid his local surroundings, there is a sturdy native dignity in him which none can help admiring. He is no politician in the mercenary, personal, business‐like sense of the word, but he takes a pride in following the course of his country’s progress, in bearing a hand in all reforms, in exercising his right of censure—or, as some foreigners plainly call it, “grumbling”—and especially in watching closely over the well‐being of his own county and neighborhood. By this minute division of labor every county becomes, as it were, a self‐governed little nation, jealous and tenacious of its rights, keenly alive to its interests, intensely vigorous, and occasionally aggressive. Political and social life are closely intermingled, and personal disinterestedness is almost everywhere the rule. The varied traditions of different neighborhoods and the strong individuality shown by the different sections of the country, contribute a picturesque element to modern life, and often make the most inherently prosaic actions take on a mask of romance.
Elections to Parliament afford a multiplicity of such scenes, and form one of the greatest periodical excitements that stir up country towns. The candidate is generally one of the sons of some family well known in the county, or sometimes the chief proprietor of the neighborhood, if he be still under fifty. The county constituencies almost always return a member of this class; the commercial representatives come from the great manufacturing towns, where they have slowly toiled to make their fortunes, and risen, by earnest application to business, from the rank of a vestryman to that of lord mayor. The country town in which the hustings and polling‐booths are erected is as animated as it would have been at a great fair of the middle ages or an extraordinary sale of wool, which in Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire was a great article of trade in the XIVth century. Everything in the shape of bunting, evergreens, allegorical pictures, flaming posters, and unlimited ale has been done by both sides to enhance their popularity with the electors and non‐electors. Indeed, the latter are quite as important as the former, for from their ranks are recruited the bands of music and the array of stalwart supporters, ready to fight, if required, and to shout at the top of their lungs, so as to bewilder the voters and claim or surprise their votes. The canvassing that goes before an English election is neither a pleasant nor a creditable thing to dwell on; when subjected to the analysis of uncompromising morality, it resolves itself into deliberate and organized “humbug”; for it includes every species of flattery under the sun, not to speak of direct bribery. Very funny incidents sometimes occur to break the monotony of the usual routine. For instance, in canvassing a large seaport town, the Liberal candidate bethinks himself of his yacht—a gem in every way—and organizes a large party, to which are invited the voting citizens and their wives and daughters. A splendid luncheon is provided, and each dame and damsel goes home with the conviction that her smiles have won the heart of the candidate, and that he has sworn them by a tacit but flattering contract to further his claims with their all‐powerful husbands and fathers. “Honi soit qui mal y pense.” The latter are as proud of the expectant M.P.’s notice of the female members of their households as the ladies themselves, and the issue is trembling in the balance, when an announcement goes forth that the Conservative candidate has had his drag and four horses sent down from London, and proposes parading the young ladies and the more fearless married women on the roof of this ultra‐fashionable vehicle. The invitations are of course more limited than those for the yacht, but promises of repeating them, until all the free electors’ families have been included, cheer up the spirits of those not asked the first day. The Liberal pits his yacht against his rival’s drag, and invites the maids and matrons to another sail. Apparently, Neptune does not intend to vote for him, for a slight breeze arises, and the waves roll more than landsmen find pleasant. The cabin fills rapidly, and faces once rosy and saucy, turn pale and shrunken; the return against wind and tide is a wretched journey. The poor candidate, in despair, tries to become nurse and doctor, as well as consoler; but he, too, feels his cheeks blanch, not at the lurching of the vessel, but at the fear of the effect of this accident upon the votes which he was already reckoning up so confidently. As the forlorn party lands, the drag sweeps by, drawn by its four fiery horses, the whip cracking, the smart grooms grinning at the windows (in these carriages, made like a mail‐coach, the servants sit inside and the master drives, while his guests are packed on the outside seats at the top), the women huddling under cloaks and umbrellas, but all giggling with delight at the adventure, neither damped nor dismayed by water that cannot drown them, and wind that cannot make them sea‐sick. The next day those who have recovered from their marine excursion are invited to try the drag, and the Liberal candidate’s chances fall as visibly as the barometer did yesterday. When the great day comes, the drag has done its work, and the Conservative is returned by a triumphant majority.
To return to our country town in its holiday attire. No great arts are resorted to here; the common kind of canvassing will do for these quiet, agricultural people, and the only day that is worth mentioning is that of the election itself. The festive look of the place does not portend any very desperate contest, although there is a free display of the two opposite colors—blue (Conservative) and yellow (Liberal). The rivals come down from their neighboring seats in gay carriages full of the ladies of their families, wearing their respective colors. The horses and postilions wear bunches of blue or yellow ribbon; even the whip has its conspicuous knot of color. Brass bands clash forth a whole host of discords; the hired partisans good‐humoredly shout for one or the other party; an air of great good‐will prevails. The whole thing looks more like the welcoming home of a bride than a serious political gathering. The candidates ascend the hustings, or platform for speeches, and cordially shake hands with one another. They think it fun to be opposed to each other in public, whereas in private they are friends, companions, and neighbors; they have had the same training, the same education, the same associations, the same local interests, and the question that will decide their election will more likely be their reputation as farmers and their popularity as landlords than their political opinions as to the affairs of the nation at large. Talking of bribery and undue influence in elections, there is a law yet in force (though, of course, its effect is merely nominal) which forbids any peer to be present at an election. His presence is, by a legal fiction, supposed to hamper the freedom of the voters, and the law thus provides against the appearance of coercion or intimidation. The candidates for the counties are almost invariably the sons, brothers, or nephews of peers; but, however near the relationship, no member of the House of Lords is allowed to infringe on this rule. A contested election, one in which party spirit runs high and the passions of the people are artfully fanned and excited on both sides, is a scene worth witnessing once; but the excitement is of too rough a sort to make one wish for a second edition of it. A foreigner once said that the two best sights which England had to offer to a stranger were an Oxford “commemoration” and a contested election. The latter seldom takes place in the peaceful neighborhoods of the midland counties, and the only other species of elections, as distinguished from the festive one which we have just sketched, is, as a remnant of old‐time indifferentism, a curiosity in its way. There are no longer what were called “rotten boroughs” and “pocket boroughs,” the former representing what had once been a populous town or large village, now reduced to half a dozen ruinous tenements and an old, disused parish church, but still retaining the right to return one or more members to Parliament; the second being a village still worthy of the name, but from time immemorial voting strictly in accordance with the wishes of the “lord of the manor,” whether peer or commoner. These were also called “close boroughs.” The Reform Bill of 1830 did away with all such transparent abuses, but family influence, exerted in a milder form, still remains an important element in all agricultural counties; and it sometimes happens that for a whole generation, no one will think it worth his while to oppose a candidate whose good working qualities are recognized by friend and foe, and whose personal popularity, joined with his powerful connections, makes his success almost absolutely certain. Such was the case in the election at O——, for which the same member has run unopposed for at least a quarter of a century. The nomination was made by the high sheriff and the magistrates of the county, assembled in the town‐hall. This is a portion of a ruined castle or abbey, the Norman windows of which still assert their identity, though they have been shamefully mutilated and forced to conform to the ugly, shallow openings called windows in our days. The inside showed no signs of beauty. It was a huge barn, with grim‐ looking benches or pews at one end, towering amphitheatre‐wise one above the other. Public business of all kinds was transacted there. The decoration of the hall is somewhat peculiar, consisting of nothing but horse‐shoes. From time immemorial the custom of the county has been that every peer setting foot within the little town should put up a horse‐shoe in this hall, or give an equivalent in money, which is spent by authority of the town council in buying a horse‐shoe in his name. There is some dispute as to when and how the custom originated. The common belief is that Queen Elizabeth, passing through O——, stopped to get one of her horses shod, and, in perpetual memory of her royal visit, gave the town the privilege of exacting the tribute of a horse‐shoe from every peer setting foot within the county. By an anachronism, which at any rate does honor to O——’s public spirit, there are horse‐shoes bearing dates far more remote than the XVIth century, and some one has actually put the Conqueror himself under contribution, and unblushingly labelled a very antique shoe with his mighty name and the eventful date, 1066. During the last three hundred years genuine historical horse‐shoes have abounded; some plain as the real thing, some gold or silvered, some painted with heraldic devices, some immense as children’s hoops, some minute as the shoe of a Shetland pony. Whether the thousand‐year‐old superstition of the connection between luck and a horse‐shoe, and the belief in the power of the latter against witches, has anything to do with the custom, we do not know for certain, but it is not unlikely.
In this remarkable town‐hall were assembled the electors and magistrates one November morning. All the prominent country “gentlemen” and many farmers and tradesmen were present, besides a few ladies, come to see the proceedings. The member who had been re‐elected every time that an election took place for the previous twenty years was the brother of one of the great land‐owners of the neighborhood, and a Conservative. No one thought of opposing him. His friends and constituents mostly appeared in riding‐boots, some in “pink.”(121) One young magistrate got up and proposed him formally to the electors in a girlish, awkward speech; another seconded him in a still briefer address, and the question was asked: “Has any one any objections to make or any candidate to oppose?” A squeaky voice at the end of the hall propounded a query in this form:
“Would the honorable member vote for universal suffrage and cry down church rates?”
A laugh ran through the crowd, and an impatient movement stirred the knot of magistrates. Year after year some wag of this kind mounted the Radical hobby, and rode it in this unoffending fashion at the steady‐going “churchman” and loyal upholder of the constitution who represented the county in Parliament. The uneasy movement continues, and horses are heard neighing and pawing outside. Men in red coats take out their watches and put on long faces. It is nearly twelve o’clock, and the business of the nation is delaying the “meet.” The hounds are waiting not far off, and candidate, sheriff, magistrates, and electors are all alike anxious to be off. The hall is soon cleared and the election quietly over—a very secondary matter in the consideration of those who have been kept from kennel and field for two long hours. They rush out with all the zest of school‐boys let loose to play, and the hunt that day has twice its ordinary success, or at least its members think so, because the beloved sport has been intermitted, and requires extra enthusiasm as a peace‐ offering at their hands. So with redoubled vigor the search after foxes goes on, and not till long after sundown will the candidate, magistrates, and constituents return to their homes.
Very different are those elections whose surroundings remind us rather of a clan gathering to the standard of their chief than a modern constituency crowding to the polling‐booths. The mere description of these election scenes through Great Britain and Ireland would form an interesting chapter in contemporaneous history. The political differences need not even be alluded to; the contrast of outer circumstances is suggestive enough. In an agricultural neighborhood, such as that round the town of O——, a certain kind of torpidity exists among the prosperous and contented farmers. Not a hundred miles from the palace of the people at Westminster the interest in politics is subordinate to that excited by a cattle‐show or the prospect of a drought; in a word, there is so little local change called for which could be beneficial to the county that the passive but deep‐rooted clinging to old traditions, which is so characteristic of the genuine Englishman, is in this case rather a matter of course than a virtue or a meritorious turning away from temptation.
Life is hard to the masses in a city. Sharp ills require sharp remedies, say the demagogues; and straightway the voters adopt the extremest doctrine they can find, and fancy it a panacea for all ills. An English paper recently defined this kind of voter as the man “who has just learned sufficient to be sure that there can only be one side to a question.” The Irish elections, proverbial for their storminess, are of another nature; appealing to our sympathy by the wild earnestness of the voters, and governed by feelings which, though often misdirected, are yet noble in their origin. Religion and patriotism are the prime movers of the passions of Irish constituents; they often look upon their exercise of the franchise as a protest against tyranny and a confession of faith. And indeed the “tyranny” is no mere political scarecrow to them. It is very tangible; it strikes home to them, for its immediate result may be eviction and starvation. The wild, humorous individuality of the people of the western baronies of Ireland redeems much that is reprehensible from vulgarity in the faction fight—a not infrequent concomitant of the election. There is a rough romance left in these fights, making them the direct counterparts of the sudden encounters between the clans of the various kings of Celtic history; and what is best and most palliative is this: that sordid considerations are almost wholly absent from the voters’ minds. If men must fight, let them do it for anything rather than money; and, to do these electors justice, we will say that there is less bribery in all the Irish country districts put together than in one English manufacturing town. You will say there is intimidation instead; but, even that is better than bribery, for it is less degrading to a human being to barter away his vote, in view of the threats of his landlord to turn his wife and children out of doors, than to sell it for money. But there are other elections to speak of—those in the Highlands of Scotland.
Education is more universal among the humbler classes in Scotland than in either of the sister countries, and by nature the Scotchman is more reflective than the Englishman or Irishman. There is less of collective life in his country; the land is poor and barren, the northern parts are broken up by lochs and treacherous estuaries, and many counties include rocky islands among the billows of the Atlantic. In Inverness‐shire the elector is far removed from all common external influence. He thinks slowly and seriously, working out his own problems, answering his own questions by the aid of his strong native sense. He and many of his fellow‐voters are shepherds or “keepers.” They inhabit an isolated cottage in some remote glen—a cottage that is only approached by some faint sheep‐ track. Australia or the Territories of the United States are hardly less solitary; but, on the other hand, the Scottish Highlands, if solitary, are not barbarous. In newly‐settled countries, where the population is only gradually fusing into a national people, there is lawlessness to contend with; the school and the church are yet open to the attack of ruffianly bands, and dependent on a few respectable though equally rough settlers to stop the brigandage of their unruly neighbors. An old country, however sparsely peopled, has the past to guide it; its hermit settlers are the heirs, not the founders, of a state and a history. So it is with ancient Scottish shires, and thus you will find their electors sober, silent, reflective men, conscious of their dignity as clansmen of the old families whose names are in the records of Scotland from the VIIIth and IXth centuries; and perfectly aware of their personal, political value as present electors to the joint Parliament of a great empire. In England there were serfs, but in Scotland (and in Ireland also) there were clansmen—not slaves, but sons by adoption; freemen with the right to bear arms; protected, not owned, by the great chiefs of the North. They were used to a certain degree of power and responsibility, and their descendants were not intoxicated by a sudden rise to independence, as were the corresponding classes in England when the franchise was extended to them.
To continue our description of the local surroundings of the Inverness‐ shire voters—men removed from the ordinary circumstances which make most elections pretty much the same dull, time‐worn, vulgarized sight—we quote from a recent article in an English publication: “The nearest neighbors on one side are beyond a great mountain‐range, while for miles upon miles on the other there stretch the unpeopled solitudes of a deer‐forest. The nearest carriage‐road is eight miles off, and that is travelled only three days in the week by a mail‐cart that carries passengers. The church and school are at twice the distance; so the children must trust to the parents for their education, and the father can only occasionally join in the Sunday gossip, in the parish churchyard, that expands the ideas of some of his fellow‐parishioners. His cottage is ten miles from the nearest hovel where they sell whiskey. His work is arduous; he is afoot among his sheep from the early morning until dusk. In the best of times and in the height of summer it is but seldom that a stray copy of the county paper finds its way to the head of the glen. He is thoughtful by nature, as you may see in his face, which has much the same puzzled expression of intelligence that you remark in the venerable rams of his flock. No doubt he thinks much, after a fashion of his own, as he goes ‘daundering’ about after his straggling sheep, or stretches himself to bask in the hot sunshine, while he leaves his collies (sheep‐dogs) to look after his charge.”
This is a very true picture. Of course, in such a situation, it is impossible for the Highland shepherd to follow the questions that affect the fate of ministries. He can know nothing of foreign affairs, probably never heard of the Alabama, and would be at sea on the subject of the Franco‐Prussian war. Mr. Gladstone’s financial schemes are not only puzzles but terra incognita to his mind. He knows nothing of the extension of the suffrage in counties, and even local rates are indifferent to him, as the only one that concerns him is the dog tax—concerns him, but does not affect him; for his master pays the tax, and he himself is more or less exempted from extra trouble, according to the number of sheep‐dogs for which that master chooses to pay. His interest in the man who represents him in Parliament is therefore either purely theoretical or, what happens oftener, purely personal. There are country gentlemen everywhere who, though no newspaper may blow the trumpet of their fame, are nevertheless known throughout a wide expanse as good men and true, kind yet just landlords, upright magistrates, and sound economists. Their names are household words; their memory is always associated with some generous deed; they are looked up to and honored in the county. They are generally scions of the old historical families of the land—of those families to which the Scotchman clings with a proud affection, and which have been perpetuated by the very institutions that some coiners of new political creeds find so deleterious to the human race. The shepherd probably turns his mind to some such man of whom nothing but good has ever been recorded, and willingly entrusts to his safe‐keeping the interests of himself, his clan, and his country. Judging from the particular to the general, he concludes that, since this candidate has always been a kind master and a good landlord to his own folks, he is likely to be a conscientious law‐maker and an earnest protector of the nation’s liberties. Questions of detail may fairly be trusted to him; the main thing is that no widow or orphan has ever had any complaint to make of him.
This is the aspect on the voter’s side. Let us see what it is on that of the candidate. There is no question here of bill‐sticking, of distributing cockades, or of having bands of music and hired groups of partisans in your wake. Canvassing means “posting long distances in dog‐carts, seeking relays at widely‐separated inns, where the stable establishments are kept on a peace footing, except during the tourist season. In winter the roads are carried across formidable ferries, where, if you bribe the boatman to imprudence, your business being urgent, you are not unlikely to meet the fate of Lord Ullin’s daughter.” But this is not all; for when you have braved the floods, and arrive famished and half‐frozen at some out‐of‐the‐ way hamlet whence the scattered cottages may be gained, there is yet the ordeal of the interviews before you. The Scottish hermit can hardly be expected to forego or shorten such a rare opportunity of contact with the outside world. He will tax your ingenuity with the shrewdest, perhaps politically inconvenient, questions; and never doing anything in a hurry himself, he will resent his visitor’s seeming to be pressed for time. No hasty and transparent condescensions will do for him. He will not be satisfied, like the comfortable trader of the towns, with the candidate’s kissing his youngest born and promising his eldest son a rocking‐horse. Smiles and hand‐shakings are cheap gifts; but he wants no gifts, only pledges. He wishes to be met as an intelligent being, a man who, if worth winning, must be worth convincing. He expects a straightforward, if short, explanation of your general opinions; and though the sense of his own dignity as a voter is great, he does not forget that political does not entail social equality. Grave and earnest, he will resent flippancy as an insult to his understanding; and a joke that would win over a dozen votes in a small commercial town will very probably lose you his vote, and his good opinion too.
But there are also other constituents to be called upon. The numerous islands on the east coast of Scotland afford a still larger field for the danger and romance of canvassing. The islanders are very sensitive, and feel terribly hurt at the insinuation that their home lies out of the world. If their votes are necessary, is the courtesy to ask for them superfluous? They lead hazardous, daring lives themselves, and do not understand how any man can shrink from the danger that may be incurred in nearing their rocky island. If he does, what is he worth? they will argue; for the natural man readily judges of his fellow‐man’s mental qualities by his physical endurance. Then (we quote again the graphic sketch above referred to), “that island canvass means chartering some crank little screw, beating out into the fogs among the swells and the breakers, taking flying shots at low reefs of inhabited rock, enveloped in mists and unprovided with lighthouses. Landing‐places are almost as scarce as light‐ towers, and you may have to bob about under the ‘lee of the land’ in impatient expectation of establishing communications with it. When you do get to shore, you must be hospitably fêted by the minister and the schoolmaster, the doctor and the principal tacksmen, until what with sea‐ squeamishness and the strong spirits, it becomes simply heroic to preserve the charm of your manners. Moreover, you had better not make your visit at all than cut it uncivilly short. Our friend the shepherd may have made up his mind to support you; but you may rely upon it that he will promise nothing until you have set yourself down for a solemn ‘crack’ with him.” The day of the election itself is a suitable ending to this romantic episode in the life of an ordinary, drudging M.P. When a Highlander sets about a thing, he never gives in before it is accomplished. Honor binds him to redeem a promise, whether made to another or to himself; pride compels him to prove himself superior to circumstances, almost to nature herself; and he doggedly goes on his way, undeterred by any wayside temptation to turn into smoother and pleasanter paths. So the voters “climb over mountains and plod over snow‐fields, wade mountain streams, navigate lochs in crank cobles, and cross raging estuaries in rickety, flat‐bottomed ferry‐boats; so that, should the winds and the weather interfere too seriously with the exercise of the electors’ political rights, the polling of a great Highland constituency may possibly have a gloomily dramatic finale.”(122)
While we are on the subject of Scotland, we may mention the various occasions on which national gatherings draw together thousands of picturesquely‐clad men and women. The games are the most characteristic of these meetings. They take place in various places, mostly during the months of August and September. They are generally held under the patronage and supervision of some great family of the neighborhood. Something of old clan feeling is revived. The men often march in in bodies, preceded by their pipers, and wearing their individual tartan, with distinctive badges. The villages for fifty miles around send their group of representatives and their athletes and champions in the games. Vehicles of primitive build with rough, wiry little ponies bring in their load of farmers and petty freeholders. The country‐houses and shooting‐ boxes fill with guests from England; and in the neighborhood of Balmoral, to which we more particularly allude, there is of course the additional attraction of royal countenance and patronage. The queen and the royal family sometimes become the guests of their subjects on these occasions, and an almost German simplicity reigns for a few days among those to whom etiquette must be so sore a chain. The princes wear the Highland dress, and the queen (that is, before her widowhood) something of tartan in her plain toilet. The national sports, such as throwing the hammer, lifting heavy weights and supporting them on the outstretched hand, etc., require both strength and dexterity, and the champions who contend in these games are generally “professionals.” Sometimes, however, some village athlete ambitiously enters the lists against the trained champions, and occasionally bears off a prize. A competition of pipers is often a feature of the day, and these worthies make a brave appearance in their velvet jackets covered with a breast‐plate of medals, severally won in various contests. The shrill, clarion‐like tones of the bagpipes are not agreeable to the untrained ear, but to the Highlanders, whose national associations are proudly entwined with this wild, primitive music of the hills, they are naturally sweeter than the most sublime strains of the old masters. No one, even though not Highland‐bred, can listen to the pipes, playing a pibroch among the echoes of the mountains, without feeling that the soul of the people is in it; that the spirits of “the Flood and the Fell” which Walter Scott so graphically introduces in his Lay of the Last Minstrel might have used just such tones for their fateful, wailing speech; and no one having more than common ties binding him to Scottish traditions and Scottish homes can think of the wild dirges or stirring war‐calls of the pipes without sympathy and loving regret. Not quite so inspiring, however, is this music when the piper marches round a small dining‐room, and plays the distinctive tune of the host’s clan to the guests assembled over their wine and dessert. The narrow space makes the music harsh and grating, just as a confined room takes from the Tyrolese jodel all its romance, and turns the sounds into the caricature of a loud roulade. The games often last for three days, and a sort of encampment springs up by magic to supply the deficiencies of the crowded inns of the neighborhood. At the end of that time there is a ball given at one of the principal country‐ seats, and a torch‐light dance for the people. The queen and the royal family accompany their host and hostess, and are content with a hasty dinner, served with a delightful relaxation from etiquette; for this is their holiday from political anxieties and social duties, and the more informal this assembly, the better it pleases them. The ball‐room is not very large, and its simple decorations are in keeping with the character of the feast and the style of the lodge or cottage in which it is given. There are flowers in abundance, flags and evergreen garlands, Highland badges and emblems, and stags’ heads with branching antlers—the trophies of the host’s skill in stalking the red deer. Outside the house is a wide space, destined for the torch‐light dance. Great iron holders and pans lifted on rude tripods contain the torches and the resinous fluid which, when set on fire, burns steadily for many hours. To and fro flit the kilted Highlanders, with their jewelled dirks or daggers, and their hairy sporrans decorated with silver plates the size of large coins. The champions of the games are there, the rival pipers, the mountain shepherds, the gillies or game‐keepers, all the household servants and those of the guests; the women wearing tartan ribbons of different clans, and Scotch flowers, blue‐bell, heather or bog‐myrtle, in their caps or bodices. The pipes strike up the music of the sword‐dance; a noted dancer comes forward, and lays two naked swords of ordinary length on the ground, crossing them at right angles. Within the four narrow spaces between the points of this cross he then begins a series of marvellous steps, leaping high in the air, shuffling, crossing his feet, and invariably alighting in the right spot, within a few inches of the swords, always in these four interstices, but never touching nor even grazing the blades. If he were to touch one ever so lightly, and but for an instant, his reputation would be gone. Another succeeds him, and so on, till all the famous dancers have exhibited their skill. No novice appears; they take care never to dance in public till they are perfect in this feat. Scotch reels for the most part take up the rest of the night, and are danced by four people, two men and two women, the former standing back to back, and their partners opposite. Various figures follow each other, the figure eight being the most frequent. This is managed by the four dancers locking arms and giving a swing round, then passing on to the next person; arms are locked again, and another turn given, and so on till the four have changed places, and in doing so have described the figure eight. Of course, in this dance, it is the men who show to most advantage, as they perform a series of regular steps, snapping their fingers meanwhile, and, as soon as they get excited and enter into the spirit of the national dance, uttering a peculiar sort of cry. The women mostly walk and jump through their evolutions. The less characteristic dancing in the ball‐room, but in which reels are also mingled with quadrille and waltz, ceases about two o’clock in the morning, and the musicians are at liberty to join the fun outside. The Highlanders sometimes take possession of the deserted ball‐room, and continue their own revels there till daybreak, when the torches flicker out and the spell is broken. Another national dance is the strathspey, which we never had the good fortune to see performed.
In winter curling is the favorite game; it is played on the ice with heavy round stones, about eight or nine inches in diameter, and three to three and a half inches thick. These stones are neither rolled nor thrown at the line and mark, but propelled, by the strength of wrist of the player, along the surface of the ice, and aimed to displace the stones already set up by the opposite side. Whichever side, at the end of the game, has most stones near the line which serves as a mark, is declared by the umpire to be the winner. Miniature curling‐boards are very common in Scotch country‐ houses, with stones two or three inches in diameter; it is an amusing game on a rainy day, and, though so small, no little skill is required to guide these stones aright.
The same house to which we have taken the reader to be present at the torch‐light dance is a very pretty specimen of Scotch hunting‐lodges. Built at various times, it consists of several cottages, once detached, but now irregularly connected by picturesque galleries, verandas, and staircases. One part has much the appearance of a Swiss châlet; another that of a river‐side villa on the Thames, with its glass doors opening on to a lawn, and its rustic porch smothered in climbing roses. Though so straggling, it is a very comfortable house. Nothing is wanting—billiard‐ room, smoking‐room, boudoir, and innumerable pigeonholes for guests—a charming house for persons of sporting tastes; the halls carpeted with deer‐skins, and the walls hung with antlers, bearing each the date of the death of the stag to which they belonged; equally charming to the delicate London beauty wearied with her social triumphs, for here she finds the thousand elegances of a rococo drawing‐room, the luxurious arm‐chairs, the rare china, the velvet screen hung with miniatures, and little gilt brackets, each supporting a tiny cup or a porcelain shepherdess—in a word, every pretty refinement of the latest fashion. The neighborhood is famous for stalking—that is, following the red deer through moor and forest alone, with your rifle and your slight bag containing some biscuits and a pocket‐flask. You may have to trudge over miles and miles of heather, watching every turn of the breeze, lest it betray your whereabouts to your beautiful victim; making immense détours to reach him from some convenient cover; creeping along on all fours, or even flat on the ground; often taking a long, cold bath in the mountain burn (stream), wading through it, or waiting in it, so as not to let him scent your trail. If for no other reason, this sport is superior to any because it demands solitude; though it is hard to discover why one should not be privileged to take a twelve hours’ walk or saunter without the pretext of the rifle slung at one’s back, and also without incurring the charge of eccentricity. A forest in Scotland is treeless; the term is applied to a wide expanse of mountain, covered knee‐deep with heather, and perhaps here and there with a few stunted bushes or clumps of graceful birches. Here the red deer feeds in herds, and you sometimes come across six or seven of these “monarchs of the glen.” The sportsman, however, seldom pursues or kills more than one in a day. A moor is much the same in appearance as a forest, but that term is reserved for those tracts of heather‐land where the grouse and the black‐cock abide. These are often rented to Englishmen, the forests seldom; so that the Southron, if he have a taste for deer‐ stalking, generally depends for his chance of indulging it on the hospitality of some Scottish friend.
This neighborhood is full of romantic glens and hollows where mountain streams gurgle through narrow channels of rock, where tiny waterfalls splash under bridges mossy with old age, and where real forests of pine and birch and rowan, or mountain ash, make a variegated network across the blue horizon. In one little gorge tradition says that a hunted partisan of Charles Edward took refuge after the fatal battle of Culloden, in 1745, and lived there concealed for several weeks. The particular place where he hid was under a projecting ledge or table of rock, overhanging the brown, foaming waters of the mimic torrent, which, though not large in volume, might yet have strength enough to dash you in pieces, if you fell into the narrow bed bristling with sharp, rocky points and irregular boulders, round which the water boils and hisses, as if chafing at its imprisonment. The rocks incline their jagged sides so far forward over the stream as almost to meet in an arch above it, and the chasm can be easily, almost safely, leaped. Indeed, the rift is invisible from the road, which passes within a few yards of it. Its sides are fringed with heather, and are undistinguishable, except when one is standing close upon them.
The North of England, with its mountains and its lakes, its solitary tarns (pools or smaller lakes) and its becks, has a family likeness to Scotch scenery. Its people, too, are akin to the Lowland Scotch in their taciturnity, their hardy, physical nature, and their language; yet to those who know both well the difference is very perceptible. In olden times Lancashire and Yorkshire, lying to the west of the Lake country, were emphatically the land of the church, one vast net‐work of beautiful abbeys with their immense possessions. Even after the Reformation these two counties remained the stronghold of Catholicity, and to this day they contain more Catholics (exclusive of the large modern towns and their population) than any other part of England. The favorite sport of Lancashire is otter‐hunting.
A certain breed of hounds, having very long bodies and short legs, is kept for the purpose; the streams abound in otters, and the hunt is very exciting. The gentlemen wear preternaturally thick boots, covering even the thighs, as they often have to wade in after the otter, whose teeth are so sharp that they can take off a hound’s leg at one bite. These animals dive dexterously under the banks, and generally lead the hunt a pretty chase; but, never having seen this sport ourselves, it is difficult to describe it graphically. The dialect of this part of the country is almost as much a language as Provençal; the people have their own literature, and one of their poets (a humorous one) has been styled, par excellence, the “Lancashire Poet.” Lancashire people are desperately clannish, quite despise the southern English, and obstinately adhere to their own customs, as something immeasurably more dignified than the finical fashions of the Southron. The gentlemen all talk the dialect when speaking with their farmers, game‐keepers, or servants, and speak it with genuine gusto too. A Lancashire kitchen is a heart‐warming sight; it is emphatically the room of a farm, an inn, or any middle‐class dwelling. The fire blazes in the depths of a cavernous chimney, with settles on each side, on which two men can sit abreast, while from the low roof hang endless strings of fine onions and dozens of hams and flitches of bacon. At another part of the ceiling is fixed an immense rack, over which hangs the oatmeal cake in large sheets, of which any one is at liberty to break off a piece for his supper unrebuked and without question of repayment. Hospitality is a cardinal virtue here, but it is not that voluble, fussy hospitality which worries its recipient and makes him feel the obligation; you are welcome to go in and sit down, eat and drink, warm and dry yourself at the hearth, and go out again, without being assailed by impertinent questions or bored by long domestic revelations. A Lancashire host respects your mind while he refreshes your body, and silently makes you at home. Those kitchens of the north are the very type of comfort, with their vast corner‐cupboards, their cleanliness—you might literally eat off the brick floors; they are always paved with brick—their long oat‐cake racks and tempting meat, all home‐cured, hung from the ceiling. The temptation may be too great for you some night, if you happen to return to your lodgings, very hungry, at the late hour of twelve—that is dissipation in Lancashire—for you may wander in, and see no harm in hunting in the cupboard for eggs and flour, and in slicing off whatever will conveniently detach itself from a hanging flitch, in order to flavor some appetizing sauce of which you possess the secret. Perhaps the midnight raid ends fatally, and you stumble over the pots and pans, or find the embers hardly hot enough to cook the sauce, or give it up at last in despair, with a ridiculous foreboding of what the landlady will say to‐morrow morning when she contemplates the ragged appearance of the best flitch! Let us hope that you will honestly own your delinquencies, and not affirm that “it must have been the mice, ma’am!” It will be the easier as you happen to know the house well, and its inmates long ago agreed to overlook your little eccentricities with regard to sauces!
Among the principal country festivities which draw large parties to the neighboring houses in many parts of England, are the local cattle‐shows. The breeding of cattle is a topic of almost as universal interest in England as fox‐hunting, especially among country gentlemen. The secret of this apparent interest lies rather in the intense pride with which they naturally regard everything connected with their homes, than in downright personal liking for fat oxen and prize pigs. Not even the farmers who exhibit the cattle can outmatch the ladies of the neighborhood in their solicitude for the honor of the county, and, besides this, the gentlemen themselves sometimes enter the lists, and exhibit some choice specimen, thus giving their households special reasons for pride and anxiety. Most of the houses fill with guests for the occasion, and, despite the lateness of the season (the shows are generally late in the autumn, the one to which we refer taking place in November), the weather is usually propitious. Let us take a peep in at the window of yonder large Tudor house, with its cedars, sentinel‐like, guarding the approaches to the hall‐door, and an old gabled, ivied ruin overlooking the gay mosaic of the parterre. There is plenty of water here—ponds where huge old beeches droop over the banks and moor‐fowl swish through the rushes on the margin, and ponds fringed with late roses, and lifting up in their midst islands with rustic arbors and a wilderness of creeping plants. Within the house is the usual amount of family portraits and antique carved furniture, with a more than ordinary display of hot‐house flowers. A little earlier in the season you would find in the drawing‐room two immense marble vases, in each of which blossoms a queenly azalea, snowy or ruddy, as the case may be. On the tables lie islands of moss, relieving and framing three or four star‐shaped, blood‐red cactus‐blooms. Round the high chimney‐piece, where a wood‐fire burns merrily (a luxury in England), is assembled a family party, neither stiff nor yet free, and picturesque, if nothing else; for the girls are dressed in the square‐cut bodices and pale‐hued, brocaded overskirts of a more picturesque age. Perhaps they are discussing art matters or weaving personal romances.... No, for here, as elsewhere, you cannot take the bit in your mouth; it is the only penalty of decorous country life in old England. They are talking of to‐morrow’s agricultural fair, the annual cattle show, which takes place in the country town. There is a large party in the house for it; it is the event of the week. Most country ladies pretend to be, and some are, poultry fanciers; so there is an additional department allotted to the prize poultry. The carriages draw up in a wide field near the tents and sheds, where a view of the race‐course can be had. The men circulate among the cattle; the “judges” sit in a tribune provided for them. It is difficult to get up any enthusiasm about this kind of thing, but the adjuncts are quite as enjoyable as are most outdoor pleasures that you cannot enjoy alone. The last day of the fair closes with a dinner, when the prize beasts and their owners are commented upon and the general political situation discussed. One of the farmers is a born orator; at least he delights in the sound of his own flowery periods. He quotes Shakespeare and Tennyson, and feels sure he has made a hit. As all professions are represented, there is room for all kinds of toasts, and under the veil of sociability the opportunities for speaking home‐truths are not neglected. Around the hall are galleries that serve for spectators, both male and female, and from this point many a ludicrous incident is revealed to you that escapes the “grave and reverend seigniors” below. This is what a spectator once saw: The dinner takes place once a year, and it is impossible to have nothing but trained waiters. Many of the gentlemen on this occasion brought their own servants with them; but even this was not sufficient, and the supplementary waiters were “legion.” The dinner was not as orderly as it might be. There was a great deal of hurrying and skurrying, orders angrily given and awkwardly executed, wine liberally spilt before reaching its destination, etc. Suddenly some one gave an order from the far end of the hall, and an unlucky bumpkin, eager to show his agility, made a dart forward, but came to an abrupt stand‐still in the middle of a lake of soup that spread warm and moist about his feet. In his haste he had stepped into the soup‐tureen, which another waiter, in clumsy hurry, had momentarily deposited in this conspicuous place. The braying of the band, whose conductor was naturally not a little exhilarated by the copious “refreshment” distributed during the day, drowned these “asides”; but we cannot help thinking that the position of a spectator, alive to these incidents behind the scenes, was preferable to that of the unhappy actors and speakers, nailed for four or five hours to the table, and condemned to drink the execrable wine usually furnished on such occasions.
With this we will close this somewhat lengthy sketch of some of the incidents of rural life in the old mother‐country—a subject so dear to Washington Irving, so attractive to Longfellow, and so heart‐stirring to many who, on this side of the Atlantic, have not yet lost in the turmoil of business or the hurry of politics the fond, poetic remembrance of the land of their forefathers. It is a restful picture; the soul grows young again in the contemplation of that healthy, even placid home‐life, diversified by so many local interests, and disturbed by so few dangerous excitements. In such an atmosphere it is no wonder if scholars, poets, and gentlemen develop quietly, as the fruit ripens on the sunny garden wall; nor is it strange to find these men, so accomplished and so learned, filling the unobtrusive and secluded walks of life, as well as the councils of the nation, the cabinet, the bar, and the Parliament. Happy is the nation that attains to a green old age; happy the country that keeps all that is poetic in the past, without relinquishing the practical and the useful in the present. It is a good thing to be able to look back proudly on a long line of doughty forefathers, but better still to be able to look forward as proudly to a goodly line of worthy descendants.
The Future Of The Russian Church.
By The Rev. Cæsarius Tondini, Barnabite.
I.
“How much happier is Russia than are many Catholic countries!”
It is thus that a German author, of the Baltic provinces, a Protestant, and a subject of the czar, broke in upon the concert of complaints on the condition of the Russians to which we had for a long period been habituated. It is true that Augustus Wilhelm Hupel wrote towards the close of the last century; but the state of things which drew from him this cry of admiration continues even at this present time. Let us add that a considerable number of writers, especially Protestants, share the sentiments of Hupel; in fact, a certain government not long ago ranged itself on the side of this author’s opinions, and undertook to procure for its subjects, whether they would or not, the same happiness as that which the Russian people enjoy. This fact is a more than sufficient inducement for us conscientiously to study the cause of this happiness—a study to which the following pages will be devoted.
Happily, the writer of the Baltic provinces expresses himself with remarkable precision. “The monarch,” says Hupel, in speaking of the synod which governs the Russian Church—“the monarch himself selects the members of this ecclesiastical tribunal, and can also summarily dismiss those who do not please him. It follows, therefore, that the members of the synod entirely depend upon the will of the czar. Not only can they do nothing of which he does not approve, but, by virtue of this arrangement, it is the czar himself who is the real head of the church of his empire. Of what lofty wisdom, then, is not this institution a proof! How much happier is Russia than are many Catholic countries!”(123) It is evident, therefore, that the object of admiration and envy is the concentration of civil and religious power in the sovereign’s hands; the synod of St. Petersburg being the institution which secures and perpetuates the concentration of this double power.
The czar to whom Russia is indebted for the synod is Peter I., surnamed the Great (1689‐1725), than whom few sovereigns have been the object of more enthusiastic admiration. The things which he undertook and in which he succeeded, for promoting the civilization of Russia, are truly surprising, his laws being, in our opinion, the most splendid monument he has created in his own memory. Frequently, in glancing through the Complete Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire,(124) while taking into account the number, the variety, and extent of the subjects embraced by the genius of Peter, the circumstances under which he had to work, and the thankless elements which he contrived to manage, we have experienced sincere admiration; but, side by side with his great qualities, in what ignoble and monstrous vices did he not indulge! If we were to quote certain judgments passed by his contemporaries, it would be easy to understand the disgust with which the History of Peter the Great, by Voltaire, fills every sincere and virtuous man. Great qualities do not excuse great vices, especially in the case of Peter, who on many occasions proved by his conduct that he was capable of self‐restraint, had he only chosen to exercise it. This czar, whose leading characteristics were a spirit of determination and an energetic will, can neither be excused for his debauches nor his cruelties. The reforms originated by him naturally bear the impress of the despotic character of their author. In the present day it is openly said, even in Russia, that Peter acted, “as if there were no possible limits to his power, setting himself determinedly to gain his end, without in the least troubling himself about the nature of the means.”(125) We may add that the religious convictions of the czar were, to say the least, an enigma. And this is the man who gave to the Russian Church the organization which she retains to this day.
Unhappily for the people, when a man rises from among them and accomplishes unheard‐of undertakings, the prestige of his name eclipses the light in which justice would regard his actions. If flattery erects to him its altars, and if religious or political passions find it to their interest to exalt him, this man, though in his grave, continues no less to exercise a powerful influence; and all his qualities, even his bad ones, receive a species of consecration. A century and a half have elapsed since the death of Peter the Great, and yet it may be said with truth that he still rules Russia. It is no common thing to find a series of sovereigns, all of whom draw their inspiration from the same idea; and yet all the czars, with the single exception of Peter II., who only reigned three years (1727‐1730), perpetuated, with regard to the Russian Church, the idea of the originator of the synod.
That the czars, however, should have made it their rule to walk in the footsteps of Peter, and that in their ukases they should recall his memory with enthusiastic eulogies, it is easy to conceive; and also that Protestants, especially those of Germany, should never weary in their praises of his religious reforms; these praises being, in the first place, the payment of a debt of gratitude to the czar, and, in the second, an homage rendered to the Protestant side of the reforms themselves. But the most painful part of the matter is that Peter and his successors should have found, in that very church which they were oppressing, not only docile instruments of their will, but also the warmest encouragements to prosecute their work. Theophanes Prokopovitch, Bishop of Pskoff, of whom we will speak further, wrote treatises to prove that “the czars have received from on high the power to govern the church; only it is not permitted that they should officiate in it.”(126) Plato Levchin, Metropolitan of Moscow, while he was still tutor to the Czarowitz Paul, afterwards Paul I., prepared for his use a catechism which has been held in great esteem by Protestants. In the epistle dedicatory he thus addresses his pupil: “I bear in mind a saying of your highness—saying worthy of eternal remembrance. We were one day reading this passage in the Gospel: Take heed that you say not among yourselves: We have Abraham for our father (S. Matt. iii. 9); when, upon my remarking that the Jews vainly gloried in having Abraham for their father, whose faith and works they failed to imitate, your highness deigned to reply: ‘And I also should glory in vain that I descend from the great Peter, did I not intend to imitate his works.’ That these and other similarly excellent dispositions of your highness may increase with your years, behold this is what the church of God, prostrate before the altar, supplicates, and will never cease to supplicate, of the divine mercy, from the profoundest depths of her heart.”(127)
There is nothing surprising in the fact that lessons such as these, explained and developed in the body of the catechism, should have borne their fruit. The pupil of Plato, having become czar, was the first who introduced into official edicts the title of Head of the Church(128) for himself and his successors, and more emphatically than perhaps any one of the others he established as a principle the supremacy of the czar over the church.(129)
We forbear to quote other examples. If it be true that nations never stop short at a theory, the same thing is true also of sovereigns; and, when Nicholas I. acted as every one knows he did act, he was but carrying out the doctrine accepted and taught in the Russian Church. As for the people, it would have been indeed surprising had they not shared in the doctrine of the church, and still more so had they attempted any opposition to it. In fact, as might be supposed, there was no lack of writers who set themselves to make the people appreciate the advantages of every description which they enjoyed under the religious autocracy of the czars.
This state of things could not, however, last indefinitely; and it was the Emperor Nicholas himself who, by some of his measures, contributed to hasten its end. At the commencement of his reign it was desired to exclude the foreign element from teaching, and to substitute for it the national only. Professors were lacking; and, to form these, the government thought it well to send out young men at its own expense to learn in the German universities that which they would subsequently have to teach the Russians. Besides, for many years past Russia has entered into active and frequent relations with the rest of Europe; the regulations which bound Russians, if not to the glebe, at least to the soil of their country, have been relaxed; travelling has been facilitated; travellers have been able with less difficulty to penetrate into the country, and its own inhabitants to go abroad and observe what is passing in the rest of the world.
And what has resulted from all this? Many things; and, first of all, the following: “The future propagators of learning and civilization,” says the Père Gagarin, in a remarkable pamphlet,(130) “were sent to Berlin, where they lost no time in becoming fervent disciples of the Hegelian ideas. It was in vain that serious warnings reached St. Petersburg of the fatal direction these young men were pursuing. For reasons which perhaps some future day may explain the warnings were wholly unheeded; and in a short time the chairs of the principal universities were filled by these dangerous enthusiasts, whose newly‐imported ideas made rapid progress. School‐masters, professors, journalists, the writers who had been formed in the universities, successively became the apostles of the doctrines which they had adopted. Neither censures, nor the watchfulness of the custom‐house, nor the active surveillance of an ubiquitous and anxious police, availed to put a stop to the propagation of revolutionary notions, protected as they were by eccentric formulas, unintelligible to all who were not in the secret of the sect. It was not until 1848 that the eyes of the government began to be opened; but it had no efficacious remedy at hand. It multiplied regulations, of which the object was to hinder the diffusion of modern science and ideas; but was destitute of salutary principles to offer as a substitute for the unhealthy teaching of which it now recognized the dangers. The system of national education, which had so miserably failed, had been based upon ‘orthodoxy,’ autocracy, and nationality, and was now resulting in the triumph of German ideas, in the atheism of Feuerbach, and in radicalism and communism of the most unbridled description.”
That we may not unjustly charge the Emperor Nicholas with being solely responsible for these results, it must also be said that other Russians, who had at any rate travelled at their own expense, and foreigners who had come to settle in Russia, assisted in propagating the same doctrines. If books are not printed without some reasonable hope that they will be read, and if the number of publications in which certain ideas are particularly developed proves the favor with which they are received, it would be only too easy to make a statistical statement of alarming significance, showing the favor with which the most revolutionary doctrines are received by the Russians. Books printed in the Russian language are evidently addressed to Russians only, this language not having hitherto acquired a place in that part of education which is called the study of modern languages; and we can prove the existence of numerous publications in the Russian language, appearing some in London, some in Berlin, some at Leipsic, some at Geneva, and elsewhere also, in which the most communistic doctrines find their apology. Amongst others we may notice the publication at Zurich of a periodical review entitled V’pered! (Forward!), which wars against all belief in the supernatural and against every kind of authority. It matters little that the writings of which we speak themselves penetrate with difficulty into Russia; it is not to be supposed that the fact of having, when abroad, read this review or anything similar closes to Russians the return to their country. The book remains outside; but its teaching enters with them.
Let us now return to the consideration of the Russian Church. The radical ideas of which we have been speaking are plainly incompatible with the religious autocracy of the czars; and nevertheless Russia offers us the spectacle of men imbued with these ideas, and even manifesting them openly without, who suddenly recover their orthodoxy as soon as they recross the frontier of their country.
Under pain of deserving the reproach of cowardly hypocrisy, these Russians cannot support the existing state of things, liberty of conscience being too intimately allied with their principles. The reader will judge whether it is not wholly immoral that men who have ceased to believe in anything should, in order to escape legal consequences, present themselves in the “orthodox” churches for confession and communion!... Now, as far as we are aware, none of the pains and penalties against those who, being born of “orthodox” parents, fail to practise the state religion, or to fulfil their duty of annual confession and communion, have hitherto been abolished; still less are the penalties abolished to which all are liable who propagate doctrines contrary to those of the official church.
But the Russian atheists and rationalists of every shade of opinion are not the only persons who have a supreme interest in requiring, together with liberty of conscience, the abolition of the penalties to which they would be liable if the same rigor were observed towards them as towards those Russians who have become Catholics. For the czars, not satisfied with calling themselves and with being the head of the “orthodox” church, have also arrogated to themselves the right of direction with regard to all the religious sects of the empire.
When Paul I. declared that “the supreme authority, confided to the autocrat by God, extends also over the ecclesiastical state, and that the clergy are bound to obey the czar as the head chosen by God himself in all things, religious as well as civil,”(131) he was not addressing himself to the “orthodox” but to the Catholic subjects of the empire. It is in employing similar language, and by virtue of the same general principle, that the czars have defined the position of Protestants, Armenians, Jews, and Mahometans. However accommodating one may suppose the Russian subjects belonging to these different religions to be, we cannot understand why, at least in heart, they do not protest against the strange pretension that in religious matters they are bound to obey the “orthodox” czars. Neither can we suppose that, if they hold their errors in good faith, and believe themselves in possession of “religious truth,” they do not experience some desire to communicate their treasure to others, and do not suffer in obeying the articles of the penal code which forbid their so doing.(132) What can be, upon this subject, the sentiments of the ten millions of Russians belonging to the various sects formed in the bosom of the Russian Church itself, their name itself indicates; they are called collectively Raskolniks—that is to say, schismatics. Thus we need not say what must be the thoughts and desires of the Catholic subjects of the czar. There remain only the “orthodox”; but it is they who form the majority of the Russian subjects. It would be too much to expect to find in them the partisans of a more extended liberty of conscience than that which is permitted by the Code. “The dominant religion of the empire,” says the Code, “is the orthodox. Liberty of worship is awarded not only to the members of other Christian confessions, but also to Jews, Mahometans, and pagans.... The dominant church alone has the right to make proselytes.”(133) We will not stop to consider the motives which induce the “orthodox” Russians to oppose themselves to a more extended liberty of conscience,(134) but will rather proceed to examine whether, apart from what we have here said, it be not urgent, even in the interests of orthodoxy itself, that some changes should be introduced into the present organization of the Russian Church. We may be able to show that, by a singular disposition of Providence, the interests of the orthodox faith are intimately allied to those of the Catholic Church in Russia.
II.
If we are to believe Russian theologians, the Russian Church, with its czar, realizes in a certain measure the ideal of a church sustained by a powerful sovereign, which to many persons is the most desirable state of things possible. We may call to mind the saying of the Count de Maistre on the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire; in fact, the testimony of history leaves us in doubt as to whether this institution has served more to protect or to afflict the Catholic Church. Prosperity or reverses, it is true, alike turn to the advantage of those dear to God; but scarcely will any one take upon himself to maintain that, because reverses are useful to the church, they must be purposely procured for her. And therefore, whatever may be, for a longer or shorter time, the probable advantages of this institution, it is best, if we mistake not, to leave its revival to the providence of God. But if such is the teaching of history with regard to an emperor, guardian of the faith and protector of the Catholic Church, history condemns with a far more powerful eloquence the strange protection with which the czars have overshadowed their communion. In the Spiritual Regulation may be seen the passage in which Peter the Great is designated the “guardian of orthodoxy and of all things relating to good order in the holy church.”(135) The successors of Peter continued to declare themselves invested with the same mission, and this passage of the Spiritual Regulation was also inserted in the Russian Code.(136)
To be the guardian of orthodoxy, and of all which concerns good order in the holy church, is in fact the first duty of a Christian monarch. We will examine briefly the manner in which the czars have acquitted themselves of this duty.
Any reader who, without being repelled by the subject and form of the Spiritual Regulation, would impose upon himself the trouble of perusing them, text and notes, to the end, would have no difficulty in understanding with what good reason Protestants can and must look upon Peter as one of themselves. The Protestant tendencies of the Spiritual Regulation are evident. The reader will also observe the precautions, all in favor of the Protestants, there taken for the preaching of the divine Word. The priests, the monks, and the bishops of the Orthodox Church, treated as they were by Peter, were made to appear simply contemptible. In the same way, the favor publicly shown by him to the Protestants of Germany, the importance he accorded to them, and the boundless confidence he placed in their co‐operation with him for the civilization of Russia, and finally the ridicule he cast upon holy things in his infamous orgies—all this can hardly be reconciled with the idea of the fulfilment of his first duty as a Christian prince.
In the notes to the Spiritual Regulation we may also perceive, in more places than one, the manner in which Catherine II. understood and exercised her mission as Head of the Greek Church; for thus she entitled herself in writing to Voltaire. No sincerely orthodox Russian could read the correspondence of Catherine with Voltaire without blushing. If Protestants may fairly claim Peter I. as their own, unbelievers have a full right to do the same with regard to Catherine, and glory in it, as in fact they do. In various passages of these letters (which we have perused) she ridicules not only the ceremonies but also the sacraments of her church. If to this we add the favor shown by her to the infidel philosophers of the Encyclopédie, the free access which their productions found at St. Petersburg, the atmosphere of impiety with which she surrounded herself, and the state of her own morals, so plainly indicative of an unbelieving soul, our estimate will not appear exaggerated. It would in truth have been miraculous if, under such tutelage, orthodoxy could have retained its hold upon the minds of those who knew how to read, write, and think; and thus the unbelief that prevails among the higher classes in Russia is the heritage of Catherine II. If, on the other hand, she showed herself zealous for the maintenance of faith among the lower orders, it was because she predicted the same results from their unbelief as she did from any desire they might evince for knowledge. “It is not for Russians,” she wrote to the Governor of Moscow, “that I am founding schools; it is for Europe, where we must not lose ground in public opinion. From the day that our peasants shall have a desire for instruction, neither you nor I will remain in our places.”
Under the successors of Catherine II. Russian orthodoxy underwent various phases, according to the degree of orthodoxy professed by the czars and the vicissitudes of their interior and exterior policy. Paul I. was so convinced that he was the real head of the church that he one day proposed to say Mass.(137) On the other hand, it is certain that he contemplated the reunion of the Russian with the Catholic Church.(138) This monarch, however, was incapable of commanding respect, or of helping a return to the faith, either by his intelligence or his moral qualities; and thus incredulity continued its ravages in Russia.
In the life of Alexander I. a period is distinguishable in which the czar had an evident leaning towards Protestantism; and his historians do not fail to remark the influence obtained over him by the Protestant, Mme. de Krudener. If we are not mistaken, those who so actively busied themselves in founding a Bible society in Russia had no intention of favoring orthodoxy.
It was also under the reign of the same czar that appeared the first edition (1823) of the catechism of Mgr. Philaret, destined to take the place of that by Mgr. Plato, then used for religious instruction in the schools. Now, in 1823 Mgr. Philaret was far from being so orthodox in his writings as he subsequently became; and the first edition of his catechism differs materially from the later ones. “The Emperor Alexander,” writes an author well deserving of confidence, “was an orthodox Christian, not in the sense of his church, but in that of the rigorous conformity of his belief to the fundamental doctrine of all Christian churches; which is the redemption of mankind by the death of Jesus Christ, by means of faith.”(139) What a stone to cast at a czar, the guardian of orthodoxy! Notwithstanding all this, Alexander, towards the close of his life, must have had continuous relations with Pope Pius VII.; some affirm even that he died a Catholic.(140)
As we have seen, it was at the commencement of the reign of the Emperor Nicholas that, at the expense of the government, the Russian youth were sent for education to the University of Berlin. Then came the formidable revulsion of orthodoxy, which, announced by the revision of the catechism of Mgr. Philaret, manifested itself by the sanguinary “conversions” in Lithuania, in 1839. The tidings were received in Europe by a general cry of indignation; and the remembrance has not yet faded away.(141) By a strange coincidence Nicholas, to whom is due the glory of having completed the gigantic undertaking vainly attempted by all his predecessors, of the codification of all the Russian laws, had desired that in the Code the following article should be inserted: “The dominant church alone possesses the right of leading those who do not belong to her to embrace her faith. This faith, however, is produced by divine grace in the soul, by instruction, by gentleness, and especially by good examples. Therefore is it that the dominant church does not allow herself to make use of any coercive means, how small soever, to convert to orthodoxy those who follow other confessions and other beliefs, and, after the example and the preaching of the apostles, she in no wise threatens those who will not be converted from their belief to hers.” All this is to be found in the Russian Code of 1832, of 1842, and of 1857, and continues to have the force of law at this present time!(142) We will say nothing here of the reign of the present emperor, but will merely observe that the powerful reaction which took place almost immediately after the death of Nicholas, and which compelled the government to enter upon the way of reforms, was the inevitable consequence of that emperor’s conduct. It is only just that the historians of Alexander II., in passing judgment upon his hesitations and self‐contradictions in religious affairs, should bear in mind the difficulty of the part bequeathed to him by Nicholas.
But neither the ten millions of Raskolniks which Russia can count at this day, nor yet the numerous unbelievers and rationalists of every shade which she contains, protest as eloquently against the protection afforded by the czars to orthodoxy and the church as the impotence to which the czars have reduced that church itself for exercising any influence over the enlightened classes. All who have written upon Russia agree in acknowledging and deploring the degradation of the orthodox clergy.(143)
Lest we should trust ourselves, with regard to a point so delicate for us, to any exaggerated or inexact accounts, we have been careful to be guided in our statements by writers offering every security, not only for competence and impartiality, but also for their sympathy with the orthodox clergy. The author of La Tolérance et le schisme Religieux en Russie, known under the name of Schédo‐Ferroti, appears to us to unite all these qualities in a high degree. “Having,” he writes, “in the capacity of an old engineering officer, traversed Russia in all directions, taking, on foot and with the circumferentor in my hand, journeys of four and five hundred kilometres; and travelling in this way for the space of six months at a time, stopping at every village which I happened to find on my way, I habitually addressed myself to the priest for any information I desired to obtain, and, early taking into consideration the moral and political importance of these men, I set myself to study them with particular attention.... I do not exaggerate in saying that I have made the acquaintance of many more than two hundred Russian priests. I may say that I met with specimens of all the varieties, from the young priest but yesterday arrived in the parish to the old man bowed down beneath a load of moral and physical sufferings; from the priest of the regiment to the ascetic fanatic; from the ex‐professor of the seminary, nominated to the cure of some rich church in the capital, where he parades his rhetoric and complacently displays his erudition, to the humble village priest scarcely able to decipher his Breviary.”(144)
This is enough, as to the competence of M. Schédo‐Ferroti; and with regard to his impartiality on the point we are considering, it appears in every page, as will be proved by our quotations. For the rest, the author is a Protestant, and argues warmly in favor of religious liberty for every worship and for every sect.
With regard to his sympathy for the orthodox clergy, it would be difficult to find a more devoted advocate. “It is,” he writes, “with satisfaction that I can say that I always found better than I had expected, better than I had any right to expect, considering the situation and the social position in which he found himself, the man whom I had set myself to study.”(145)
Let us add, moreover, that M. Schédo‐Ferroti is by no means tender towards the Catholic clergy, over whom, according to him, the orthodox Russian clergy have the advantage in not being “tainted with hypocrisy.”(146) This is an additional reason for our choice of this author.
We will now see what he says respecting the social influence of the Russian “popes,” quoting only a few lines: “Oppressed and disregarded by his superiors, the pope loses three‐fourths of his means of action, for he sees himself cast off by the upper class, tolerated by the middle class, and turned into ridicule by the common people.... Judging from appearances, and noticing that everywhere, even in the receptions given by dignitaries of the church, the pope occupies the lowest place, the masses have contracted the habit of never assigning him any other.”(147)
Such are the Russian clergy who are in contact with the people—the clergy whose office it is to instruct the Russians in orthodoxy, and to maintain them in it. Now, this was not by any means the social position of the clergy when Peter I. instituted the synod. On the contrary, the Spiritual Regulation shows us this czar, alarmed at the excessive influence which the clergy at that time possessed, painting in sombre colors the dangers resulting therefrom to the country, and finding therein his best pretext for establishing the synod. It is the institutions of the czars which have created for the clergy the melancholy situation in which they find themselves at the present day, which have deprived them of all moral influence, and have reduced them to be “cast off by the higher orders, scarcely tolerated by the middle classes, and turned into ridicule by the common people.” That which retains these classes, notwithstanding the contempt in which they hold their popes, in an outward profession of orthodoxy, is the Penal Code. Can it be believed that, without the injunctions enforced by this Code, the people would confess to priests whom they so utterly despise?
To resume: There are historical facts still living in the memory of the Russian people which show them their czars making small account, personally, of orthodoxy, at the very time when, by laws of great severity, they compel its observance by the people. They see the higher ranks sceptical or unbelieving, revolutionary ideas in favor with a great number of their fellow‐countrymen; the Raskolniks, who in the time of Peter the Great were scarcely sufficient to form themselves into sects, now so powerful by their numbers and their political importance that they have already forced the government and the synod into making some considerable concessions; they see the clergy reduced, thanks to the institutions of Peter, which have been continued and completed by his successors, to mere agents of the police, tools in the hands of power, and forming a caste so despised that rarely is a pope admitted further than the antechamber of any house belonging to a member of the upper classes, and powerless to exercise any influence whatever, even upon the lower orders; this is a true portrait of the Russian Church of to‐day—the Russian Church such as the czars have made it.(148)
And to‐morrow?
This to‐morrow, now drawing near, will still more clearly reveal what the czars have made of orthodoxy and of the church of which they call themselves the guardians. The day must soon come when, by the intrinsic force of things, the regulations of which we have been speaking will disappear from the Russian Code, and when nothing will force the Russians any longer to keep up any relations with a clergy whom they scorn, nor to practise the religion of which they are the teachers and representatives. That will be the day to which Catherine II. looked forward with so much dread—the day when the Russian people will “know how to read and write, and will feel a desire for instruction.” What will happen then in Russia has been shown to us, on a small scale, in what has taken place before our eyes in more than one Catholic country, where the clergy, strong in the support of the laws, lived without anxiety about the future, until political revolutions, coming suddenly to change the relations between church and state, placed them without any preparation face to face with unbelief. We say, however, on a small scale, for if the Catholic clergy could not foresee the first outbreak of unbelief, they required but a little space of time in which to moderate or check its progress. Neither in Spain nor Italy can unbelief boast of having greatly diminished the number of Catholics; one might say rather that the new legislation has but served to open an easy way out to those who were such only in name, and has thus delivered the church from them. Information obtained from undoubtedly authentic sources proves that the churches are no less filled by the faithful, and the sacraments no less frequented, than before. This is a state of things, which it will be difficult to find in Russia; and we will mention the reason why.
And in the first place, if it is just to acknowledge that, in some provinces of the countries we have just named, abuses may have crept in among the clergy, still they were neither so serious nor so general as people have been pleased to represent them. Their principal source was to be found in the too great number of ecclesiastics, of whom some had entered holy orders without a true vocation. But, precisely by reason of the large number of priests, there are very many good ones to be found, and enough of these to suffice amply for the needs of the faithful. Their virtues, which contrast with the manner of life habitual to the apostles of irreligion, thus formed a first entrenchment against unbelief.
Will it be the same in Russia?
We are far from wishing to disparage the Russian clergy. Their defects neither destroy nor excuse any which may be met with among Catholic priests; we will even admit that the great majority of the Russian popes lead exemplary lives. But is it known what is the gain to unbelief, in Russia, from even a very small minority of bad popes? In Russia each parish has only just so many priests as are absolutely necessary to carry on the worship; and with scarcely any exceptions, especially in the country, no parish has more than one priest. If, then, this priest lose the faith, unbelief will have free course in his parish. The reader would here perhaps remind us of the monks, who are still numerous in Russia, and ask whether these could not come to the assistance of the secular clergy. Any Russian would smile, were such a question put to him; but we will confine ourselves to remarking, in the first place, that the monks who have received holy orders (hiero‐moines) are very rare, and, secondly, that never would any Russian parish desire the intervention of a monk. Stations, retreats, spiritual exercises, general communions, all these expressions do not, so far as we know, possess even any equivalents in the Russian language to this day, unless, indeed, in the Catholic books in that tongue which the government of St. Petersburg has recently caused to be printed, in order, it might seem, that more prayers might ascend to heaven in the Russian language, and fewer in Polish. In any case, the interference of monks in the management of parishes would be a far bolder innovation even than the “correction” of the liturgical books, which gained for Russia the ten millions of sectaries she can reckon at the present day. And this comparison reminds us that on the self‐same day whereon orthodoxy shall lose the support of the Penal Code, the Russian popes will not only have to defend it against unbelief, but also against the various Russian sects, some of which surpass in their diabolical superstitions and abominable mysteries all that has been related of the Gnostics and Manicheans. And, moreover, it must not be forgotten that the Russian popes, however exemplary they may be, and however full of zeal for orthodoxy, are married priests. Thus one quality is wanting to them, of which the prestige is far from being superfluous.
We will not ask how it happens that the Russian clergy, if truly virtuous, are “cast off by the higher classes, barely tolerated by the middle class, and turned into ridicule by the lower orders of the people,” when goodness and virtue rarely, if ever, fail to give their possessor an ascendency, especially over the masses, which is independent of either rank or learning. At the same time, we do not intend to place any reliance on the statements we find in Russian writings on this subject; the falsehoods and exaggerations which are so frequent, even in Catholic countries, with regard to priests, make it a duty to receive with mistrust the accusations of the Russians against their clergy. But, we repeat, the Russian clergy who are in contact with the people are married, and this fact deprives them of a quality which is far from being unnecessary.
Here we may perhaps be reminded of the Protestant ministers, especially the Anglican, “so respectable,” we are assured, “so surrounded with confidence and esteem, and at the same time a married clergy.”
We have made it our rule to avoid all recrimination, and therefore accept on trust all that we are told of the excellence of the Protestant ministers; but we ask, in our turn, how is it possible to establish a parallel between their mission and that of the “orthodox” clergy? Protestantism, of whatever form, recognizes no other judge than individual reason, on many questions touching upon morals, while, on the other hand, the “orthodox” church possesses an authority which decides upon them in the sense least favorable to natural inclinations. It is only some few forms of Protestantism that impose any particular mode of worship; whereas the orthodox communion does not on this point allow freedom of choice to its members. Protestantism has banished expiatory works; the orthodox church requires prolonged fasts and abstinences. Protestantism sends us to God for the humble confession of our sins, but the orthodox church commands that they should be confessed to a priest, in order to obtain, by this painful act of humiliation, the pardon of God. If Protestantism points to Jesus Christ as our model, it nevertheless circumscribes the sphere in which we are allowed to imitate him; while the orthodox church fixes no limit to the imitation of our divine Example. Virginity, poverty, and obedience are for Protestantism that which the cross was to the Gentiles—“foolishness”; but the orthodox church recognizes in them the counsels of perfection bequeathed by Christ himself to those who desire most closely to resemble him.
We will not pursue the parallel further.
To Be Continued.
The Leap For Life
AN EPISODE IN THE CAREER OF PRES. MACMAHON.
I.
In Algeria, with Bugeaud, Harassed by a crafty foe, Were the French, in eighteen hundred thirty‐one; Swarthy Arabs prowled about Camp and outpost and redoubt Crouching here and crawling there, Lurking, gliding everywhere, Tiger‐hearted, under stars and under sun, Seeking by some stealthy chance Vengeance on the troops of France— Vengeance fierce and fell, to sate Savage rage and savage hate For the deeds of desolation harshly done.
II.
On a rugged plateau, Forty miles from headquarters of Marshal Bugeaud, Lay an outpost, besieged by the merciless foe. Day by day close and closer the Arab lines drew Round the hard‐beset French.
To dash out and flash through, Like a wind‐driven flame, they would dare, though a host Hot from Hades stood there. But abandon the post? Nay, they dare not do that; they were soldiers of France, And dishonor should stain neither sabre nor lance; They could bravely meet death, though like Hydra it came Horror‐headed and dire, but no shadow of shame For a trust left to perish when danger drew nigh Should e’er dim the flag waving free to the sky. But soon came a terror more dread to the soul Than war’s wild thunder‐crash when its battle‐clouds roll, And the heavens are shrouded from light, while a glare, As of hell, breaks in hot, lurid streams on the air! It was Famine, grim‐visaged and gaunt, To the camp most appalling of foes— Slow to strike, slow to kill, but full sure As the swift headsman’s deadliest blows. O’er the ramparts it sullenly strode, Glided darkly by tent and by wall, Spreading awe wheresoever it went, And the gloom of dismay over all; Blighting valor that ne’er in war’s red front had quailed, Blanching cheeks that no tempest of strife e’er had paled.
III.
Then a council was held, and the commandant said Direst peril was near; they must summon swift aid From the Marshal, or all would be lost ere the sun Of to‐morrow went down in the west. Was there one Who, to save the command and the honor of France, Would ride forth with despatches? He ceased, and a glance At the bronzed faces near showed that spirits to dare Any desperate deed under heaven were there. But the first to arise and respond was a youth Whose brow bore nature’s signet of courage and truth, In whose eye valor shone calm and clear as a star When the winds are at rest and the clouds fade afar. Who was he that stood forth with such resolute air? Young Lieutenant MacMahon, bold, free, débonnaire, Never knight looked more gallant with shield and with spear, Never war‐nurtured chieftain less conscious of fear. In his mien was the heroic flash of the Gaul, With the fire of the Celt giving grandeur to all; And he said, head erect, face with ardor aglow, “I will ride with despatches to Marshal Bugeaud!”
IV.
It is night, and a stillness profound Folds the camp; Arabs stealthily creep Here and there in the moonlight beyond, With ears eagerly bent for a sound From the garrison, watchful and weak; O’er the tents welcome night‐breezes sweep, Bringing balm unto brow and to cheek Of men scorched by a pitiless sun To a hue almost swarthy and deep As the hue of the foe they would shun.
V.
Stretching dimly afar, Between slopes that are rugged and bare, Half obscure under moonbeam and star, Half revealed in the soft, misty air, Runs a rude, broken way that will lead Gallant rider and sure‐footed steed Westward forth to the camp of Bugeaud, Forty miles over high land and low; But the steed must be trusty and fleet, And the bridle hand steady and keen That shall guide him by rock and ravine, Where each stride of the galloping feet Must span dangers that slumber unseen; And beyond, scarce a league to the west, Yawns a treacherous chasm, dark and deep, Where death lurks like a serpent asleep, And the rider must ride at his best, And his steed take the terrible leap Like a winged creature cleaving the air, Else a grim, ghastly corpse shall be there, With perchance a steed stark on its breast, And the moon shall look down with a stare Where they lie in perpetual rest.
VI.
Now the silence is broken by neigh and by champ And the clatter of hoofs, and away from the camp Rides MacMahon, as gallant, as light, and as free As the bridegroom who goes to his marriage may be. With prance and with gallop and gay caracole His swift steed bounds along, as if spurning control; But the bridle‐hand guides him unerring and true, And each stroke of the hoofs is thew answering thew. Through the moonlight they go, fading slowly from sight, Till both rider and steed sink away in the night. But they go not unheard, and they speed not unseen; Dark eyes furtively watch, flashing fiercely and keen From dim ambush around; then like spectres arise White‐robed figures that follow; the rider descries Them on slope and in hollow, and knows they pursue. But he fears not their craft or the deeds they may do, For his brave steed is eager and strong, and the pace Growing faster and faster each stride of the chase. Now the slopes right and left seem alive with the foe Gliding ghost‐like along, but still stealthy and low, As wild creatures that crouch in a jungle; they think To entrap him when back from the terrible brink Of the chasm he returns, for his steed cannot leap The dread gulf, and the rider will halt when its steep Ragged walls ope before him, with death lying deep In the darkness below; they will seize him, and take From his heart, by fell torture of fagot and stake, Every secret it holds; then his life‐blood may flow, But he never shall ride to the camp of Bugeaud.
VII.
Still unflinching and free through the moonlight he goes, And each pulse with the hot flush of eagerness glows. Now a glance at the path where his gallant steed flies, Now a gleam at the weird, spectral forms that arise On the dim, rugged slopes, then still onward and on, Till he nears the abyss, and its gaping jaws yawn On his sight; but the rider well knows it is there, And his speed is soon cautiously checked to prepare For the desperate leap; he must now put to proof The true mettle beneath, for the slip of a hoof Or a swerve on the brink will dash both into doom, Where the sad stars shall watch o’er a cavernous tomb. Girth and bridle and stirrup are felt, to be sure That no flaw shall bring peril—and all is secure; Then with eyes fixed before, and brow bent to the wind, And one thought of the foe and his comrades behind, And a low, earnest prayer that all heaven must heed, He slacks bridle, plies spur, and gives head to his steed. With a bound it responds, ears set back, nostrils wide, And the rush of a thunder‐bred storm in its stride! Now the brink! now the leap! they are over! Hurrah! Horse and rider are safe, and dash wildly away; Not a slip, not a flinch, swift and sure as the flight Of an eagle in mid‐air they sweep through the night, While the baffled foe glare in bewildered amaze At the fast‐flying prey speeding far from their gaze; And the soft stars grow dim in the dawn’s early glow When MacMahon rides into the camp of Bugeaud.