The Catholic World, Vol. 25, April 1877 to September 1877 (part 3 of 5)

The Catholic World, Vol. 25, April 1877 to September 1877 (part 3 of 5)

But, apart from the declaration of the Council of Trent, the whole history of the church exhibits beyond peradventure her higher estimate of marriage as a sacrament rather than as a contract. She holds it to be, in a mystical sense, the symbol of our Lord’s union with the church, and surely no higher character could attach to it. But this symbolic meaning of marriage rests altogether on its sacramental phase, so that the church views it as a sacrament supernaturally, as a contract naturally, her higher regard for it being in the former sense. The English indissolubilists, therefore, could in no manner object to the proposed Divorce Bill; for, denying marriage to be a sacrament, they surrendered the strongest reason for proclaiming it to be indissoluble. If, as even Gibbon admits, the church has lifted woman from the lowest degradation into which she could be plunged, in which she was the mere slave of man and the toy of his passions, to her present position of respect and independence by investing matrimony with the holiness of a sacrament; and if the church has by the same means purified home-life and cemented its affections, is there not danger that, by dragging down marriage from its high estate, woman may again come to be regarded “not as a person,” as Gibbon says, “but as a thing, so that, if the original title were deficient, she might be claimed, like other valuables, by the use and possession of an entire year”? Such was the law in pagan times, and such it may be again if we list too readily to those modern renovators of society who call marriage tyranny and a “system of legalized prostitution.” Not in vain did St. Simon, Fourier, Le Roux, Fanny Wright, and their co-workers inveigh against Christian marriage. We are now reaping the fruits of their unholy crusade against it. Their labors are to-day blossoming in Oneida County as well as in Utah, in the general rush all round to snap uncongenial ties, and in the woful spread of an evil too base to be mentioned. These form the goal to which such pestilent agitations tend; and if some well-meaning advocates of innovation have not kept step with the leaders, it is not because their principles restrained them, but rather because they have not quite broken away from the influence of early teachings. Marriage, once stripped of its supernatural character, and reduced to the level of a contract, becomes as much the subject-matter of speculation as political systems. Reformers object to this feature of it or to that, and suggest endless modifications. Plato contended that there should be no such thing as marriage proper, and that all children should be surrendered to the state. To-day, in the light which the Gospel has shed on the question, civilized states tolerate a condition akin to that which the Athenian philosopher advocated. And just as Plato, by the sheer force of his commanding intellect, imposed his views on many both in his own time and subsequently, so, it is to be regretted, the skill and eloquence of some modern opponents of marriage are such that they have succeeded in winning hundreds to their standard.

It is a law of our nature that great intellectual force is never unproductive; that it triumphs over many obstacles; and, no matter what may be the cause on the side of which its influence is cast, it is always attended with at least partial success in the achievement of its aims. Now, we have witnessed the most strenuous efforts of powerful minds enlisted in the attempt to abolish marriage. We have had eloquent pleas for socialism, phalansterianism, etc., and it could not but be that these labors were destined to bear issue of some sort. That issue we are contemplating at the present moment; for these assaults on marriage have lowered the general conception of its obligations, its sanctity, and its importance to society. They have lured to a mere mockery hundreds who, when scarce the marriage-kiss has impressed their lips, besiege our courts with petitions for divorce. The influence of pernicious doctrines is deeper and wider than their authors imagine. It does not consist alone in the fact that they draw disciples and beget neophytes; but they weaken faith in what they assail, and thus engender the most pitiful lot of man—scepticism. This is precisely what we now complain of. Our neighbors round about us emphatically eschew the doctrines of the illuminati, of Heine and of Prudhomme, yet they more or less admit that there is some reason in what has been so well said, so forcibly and so eloquently urged. The consequence is that their faith in the true order of things is shaken; they are dissatisfied; they declare the doctrine of indissolubility to be rigoristic; and, provocation given, qualms are brushed aside and they hesitate not to fly to the ready remedy of the law. We may thus set down to the erratic speculations of a few self-appointed social reconstructionists many of the matrimonial miseries and scandals we now deplore. And the leaven is working not alone in the United States, but in every country where the same low estimate of marriage prevails, and where the law is the ready tool of those who desire escape from shackles of their own forging.

In England, where law machinery is more cumbersome than among us and its processes more tedious, not quite so many divorces are obtained, but still the number is on the increase. The English law is much the same as that which rules in New York State, and it is interesting to inquire what reason there can be for the greater percentage of divorces in New York than in England. We hinted that the administration of English law is slower, but that fact is not sufficient to account for a difference so marked. All the influences already enumerated as tending to favor the multiplicity of divorces are as actively at work over there as among ourselves, and hence we must strive to find the explanation of the difference in the different character of the social systems of the two countries. In England society is stratified with such extreme nicety that seldom, if ever, a waif is borne from one stratum to another. Lines are sharply drawn between classes, and the fact is well recognized; for the lowly do not seek to soar, nor do the higher ever entirely lose their social grade. Hence marriages are contracted only between those whose tastes by birth and education agree, whose general views are more apt to harmonize, and whose sympathies mainly run in the same channels. They come to the altar (we employ the word in its current sense) with a better understanding of what each expects from the other, with fewer doubts to frighten them and stronger hopes to sustain them, and hence subsequent collisions and estrangements are less frequent. In our country society has not quite passed out of its formative stage, the elements have not settled into their allotted planes. It still is like an estuary in which the conflict of opposing tides brings to the surface what had just lain at the bottom, and drives to the bottom the bead that had glistened for a moment on the brimming top; in a word, social stratification is not yet complete among us. The result is a tendency to the intermingling of incongruous forces. In the social ferment which is going on some rise suddenly from a lower depth and crystallize in their new plane by marriage, some fall and remain below on the same condition. Here wealth is a potent escort to lead its possessors higher up than they could hope to reach without the aid of this glittering talisman. A little veneer and a resolute lack of shamefacedness often enable those whom suddenly-acquired riches have lifted above their former level to hold their new station till marriage has assured it to them and given them a title to their position. But rapidly as wealth lifts in the social scale, more rapidly still does poverty drag down, and we have not yet fully developed, though happily we are fast coming to it, that public sentiment which refuses to behold loss of caste in loss of wealth. Till then a lower social level is the certain bourn of those who have fallen from opulence, just as a niche higher up in the social temple awaits the nouveau riche.

We are not sticklers for the social classification of aristocratic countries, but simply for that which is founded on cultivated taste, refinement, and general intelligence; and we contend that where the social condition is such as to permit the barriers between vulgarity and refinement to be broken down, no matter though the former may vie with Crœsus or the latter appear in the tattered garb of Lazarus, matrimonial misalliances will be the result. December and May are no more fitly mated than platinum and lead—i.e., sixteen and fifty make no more suitable alliance than refinement and its opposite.

“For in companions That do converse and waste the time together, Whose lives do bear an equal yoke of love, There must be needs a like proportion Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit.”

—Merchant of Venice.

Till, therefore, this social ferment has settled and all the elements have reached their allotted planes, there to remain, misalliances will continue to occur, and misalliances, we know, are a fruitful source of separation. There may be more satisfactory and truthful explanations of the fact we are endeavoring to account for, but of this we are convinced: that, for whatever cause, antagonistic social conditions operate more frequently against happiness in married life in this country than in Europe.

Space will not allow us to pursue the discussion of this question much farther, so we will devote the few remaining lines to the consideration of the leading objection which is constantly urged against absolute indissolubility, and which may consequently be taken as a strong argument in favor of divorce. Divorce, it is contended, favors morality; for, whether law intervenes or not, passion will assert its supremacy, and it is better to let those depart in peace and with the sanction of the law who cannot live together than have them burst their bonds illegally and contract new relations in despite of the law. By so permitting, the advocates of divorce hope to stem the torrent of evil which they say deluges some European continental nations where the proportion of illegitimate births is wofully excessive. The same thing, they maintain, is especially true of Spain, Italy, and, in a word, of all Catholic countries. Wherever divorce is not sanctioned by law dissoluteness, they affirm, is far greater than where divorces are granted. So the statistics seem to prove; and, in a spasm of virtue, believers in mere statistical figures denounce indissolubility as a stepping-stone to lust. We will grant the reliability of statistical reports for the nonce, and prove by them that, so far from immorality abounding in those countries where divorces are prohibited, a greater amount of immorality really exists in divorce countries, with the added immorality of a law which cloaks it. We know that passion, blind and impetuous, is the reigning force which orders the actions of those who contemplate emancipation from marriage bonds. Certainly they do not act under the inspiration of grace. When, therefore, they break loose from their unsuiting partners, it matters little to them whether the law approves or disapproves of their action, provided they can act with impunity. This impunity is guaranteed in most cases in countries where divorce is permitted, and new marriages, having all the seemingness of virtue, are contracted with the sanction of the law. In Catholic countries this is not permitted; new post-marital relations are branded as adulterous and their issue illegitimate. Is it any wonder, then, that illegitimacy is more prevalent in those countries where divorce is unknown than where caprice or crime can sever old bonds and weld new ones, all with the countenance of the law?

The only difference is that adultery and its consequences are called by their proper names in the former case, whereas in the latter an anti-Scriptural law retrieves them from stigma. And as there is in the human heart a disposition to do more frequently and more extensively what the law allows than what it prohibits, we may be sure that there are many more pseudo-marriages contracted in countries where divorce is permitted than there are adulteries where it is prohibited. Were, then, the mask of the law removed, we should find in the former more infamy and crime than even in those Catholic countries where the record of morality is lowest. There is one Catholic country in which divorce is a thing known only in name, and yet where even the illegitimacy which affects not to seek shelter behind the law is very much less than in the adjoining country, where divorces are frequently obtained. In Ireland the courts are most rarely troubled with such applications, and yet illicit relations on the part of married persons are fewer than in any country of Europe. Does not this fact evidently disprove the claim that absolute indissolubility is unfavorable to morality? While the Catholic Church holds to view on the one hand the indissolubility of marriage, and on the other the precept of conjugal chastity, and while even in one country she has established a higher rate of morality under those rigid conditions, it is evident her wisdom in this trying matter has been attested by the facts.

But the attempt to bolster up divorce morality by an appeal to statistics is radically wrong. It is based on the supposition that the end justifies the means; that it is better, for the sake of avoiding the scandals incident to adulterous cohabitation, to legalize it, and thus exhibit to the eyes of society a whitened sepulchre rather than hold to view the rottenness of “an enseamed bed.” It is the duty of moralists and teachers of religion rather to stem the torrent of vice and pluck the brand from the burning than attempt to cloak over and extenuate by legal devices what is essentially and for ever wrong. There are times, indeed, when separation is the only hope for two unfortunates whom an unlucky fate had thrown in each other’s way; but separation does not imply remarriage, and theirs it is, while reaping the fruits of an enforced singleness, to reflect that they are answerable for the consequences of their own deliberate action, while their case may serve as an example to others. Let the beautiful conception of Christian marriage more abound; let men and women learn to view marriage as something holy, in which the husband is the protector, the wife the comforter, and we may meet with more marriages in which, while the husband faithfully performs his allotted rôle, the wife embodies the beautiful picture of her drawn by Washington Irving: “As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and has been lifted by it in sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so it is beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependant and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.”

FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES. A free translation. BY AUBREY DE VERE.

[The Chorus laments the Judgment of Paris.]

STROPHE.

My doom was sealed, my lot decided, Not now, not now, but long ago, When first the all-beauteous Dardan boy, By that pernicious goddess guided, Laid Ida’s stateliest pinewood low, And built his ships, and sailed from Troy, To seek her gift—the richest, rarest— That wife most fatal; yet the fairest.

ANTISTROPHE.

A netted deer our country lies: One sinned; and all partook his ruin! O fatal, fatal was the hour, Fatal the contest and the prize How ill adjudged for my undoing, When in green Ida’s mountain bower That awful Three—my bane—contended: Even then our golden reign was ended.

EPODE.

And haply some Achaian bride Even now, by far Eurotas’ wave, Widowed like me, like me is mourning! Perhaps some mother by her side Laments for those she could not save, The early lost, and unreturning; Raising her withered hand to tear Her last thin locks of whitening hair.

SIX SUNNY MONTHS. BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC. CHAPTER XIII. “OUR LADY OF SNOW.”

“To-morrow comes the flower of the festivals,” the Signora said on the morning of the 4th of August. “It is our beautiful basilica’s birthday, and the loveliest of birthdays, too—just a sweet little poem.”

“Let us give ourselves up to it entirely,” Isabel proposed, “and see if we cannot imagine ourselves back in the middle of the fourth century. I really do not like to look at all these things as an outsider.”

“We must, then, shut the world out for two days,” the Signora replied. “I would like it, if you are agreed. I have found, indeed, that it is impossible to enter into the spirit of these beautiful beliefs of the old time while one is having much social intercourse with people about, even goodish people. It reminds me of seed scattered on good but shallow ground, which the fowls come and pick up. You think, you meditate, you pray, you begin to find yourself impressed; glimmers of light steal in, and your soul is on the point of being enriched; when in comes some friend, who means no harm, who has, perhaps, a faith like a dry branch with one green leaf at the end, and immediately all is discord. If you utter what is in your mind, it is like pearls before swine; if you listen in silence, and with sufficient attention to enable you to answer intelligently, it is more than likely that the religious impression you have received will be much weakened, if not entirely effaced. One understands, in such a case, the profound wisdom of the philosophy of silence, which even the pagans knew, and recollects the admonition of our Lord: “Let your speech be yea, yea; no, no.”

“Still, I should think,” Bianca observed dreamily, “that one might be so settled in that way of feeling and thinking as to influence others, instead of being influenced by them.”

“Very true, you dear little visionary!” replied the Signora, pinching the pretty ear so near her, from which hung a pink coral fuchsia. “If one were a great saint, and never touched earthly things except with conspicuous recollection; or a great egotist, constantly impressing on everybody that one is a very exceptional being and cannot possibly be approached in the ordinary manner; or some one, like a clergyman or a nun, who by their very profession impress those who approach them with the consciousness of different and loftier interests. But we common mortals are overrun by the many. You have seen the breakwater of a bridge, have you not, built of stone, and thrusting a sharp point up the stream to part the waters, that they may not rush against the broad side of the piers and sweep them away? Well, for one person to keep a firm stand against the influence of many, it is necessary to put forward, and keep forward, a very hard angle of the character. However, I will not preach any more about it, my dear friends. I will simply say that till the day after to-morrow we are in retreat. We will go up now to the church, and refresh our minds in relation to the legend, and look at some of the treasures there, if you like. Then we can read the whole over here at our leisure. I have a kind friend there—my patron with St. Nicholas—who has a superb illustrated description of the church, which he has offered me any time I may wish for it. I will ask for it to-day. By this means we shall be ready to assist intelligently to-morrow at the festa of Our Lady of Snow. And, by the way, what a charmingly fresh thought for the season is that of snow! I call for the yeas and nays.”

An unanimous yea was the reply, and they prepared themselves immediately to go to the church.

They had, of course, seen already all its more evident beauties; but such a temple can be studied for years without exhausting its attractions, and there were several of its more celebrated gems which they had quite passed over. After having heard Mass, then, they went first into the Sistine Chapel to see the Tamar. This beautiful figure is painted in one of the pendentives of the cupola—a space shaped like an inverted pear. She sits with her twin boys standing on the seat at either side of her, their lovely heads filling the rounded-out space. The most exquisite charm of the figure is the transparent veil which floats about the head and shoulders, and through which her face, with its large, drooping eyelids, is perfectly visible.

From there they visited the grand loggia to look once more at the mosaic story of the miraculous snow. This grand mosaic, made in the fourteenth century by the order of two Colonna cardinals, was once on the open façade of the church; but Benedict XIV., in the eighteenth century, building the new façade, enclosed them in the grand loggia from which the popes gave benediction, and of which they form the lower side. In the centre of the upper half of the picture the Saviour sits enthroned, the right hand giving benediction, the left holding a book open at the words, “I am the light of the world.” At either hand above an angel swings a censer, at either side below an angel adores. Four figures—the Blessed Virgin and saints—stand at right and left, the symbols of the four evangelists over their heads. The lower half, separated by the large, round window that lights the eastern end of the church, has, on the left, two pictures—one the sleeping Pope Liberius, the other the sleeping Giovanni—over both of whom hovers the same vision of the Madonna directing them to build her a church where the snow shall fall the next day. On the right side is Giovanni telling his dream to the pope in one picture, and beside it the pope, in grand procession, coming to the hill-top where, from above, the Saviour and Virgin send down the snow. So quaint, so full of faith, so exquisite in meaning, this visible story is one of the most eloquent sermons ever preached.

Opposite the mosaic picture, and seen through the graceful arches of the portico, was that living picture of St. John Lateran looking down the long street, the blue mountains melting far away, the nearer palm-tree, and the piazza with its beautiful column and statue.

“I have a little special treat for you this morning,” the Signora said as they went down into the church again. “It has no special connection with the Madonna delle Neve, but it will not disturb your visions of her. Here, however,” pointing to an altar near the sacristy door, “is the story again, and here is buried that Giovanni Patrizio who was found buried under, or in front of, the grand altar.”

It was the chapel of Santa Maria delle Neve, with a painting over the altar where the Virgin appears to Giovanni and his wife, and points them to a snow-capped hill.

Then they went into the sacristy, where one of the canons joined them, and had some precious vestments brought out for them to see; among them a cope of stuff such as one does not find any more, thick, rich, and dim, and threaded with gold, with the short fringe of mingled crimson and gold so thick as to round up almost like a cord—the cope given and worn by St. Pius V. Almost more precious, if one could choose, was the chasuble given and worn by St. Charles Borromeo—long, and with a slight, graceful point in the back. It had been proposed, the sacristan told them, to have this made a model for chasubles now on account of its graceful form, but no change had yet been made.

“This is worn on the festa of San Carlo, though it is crimson,” he added, “because it was his. Sometimes strangers exclaim, when they see it, that San Carlo was not a martyr.”

They touched reverently the sacred relics, and kissed the fastenings that those saintly hands had touched; then, with a more human admiration, examined a marvellous flounce of lace given the church three hundred years ago by the Prince Colonna of that time—a web of such fineness that the spiders might have woven the thread, and of such beauty of design that only an artist could have imagined it.

Before leaving the church they paused in front of the closed cancella of the Borghese Chapel to look at the bas-relief over the altar, wherein Our Lady of Snow again repeats her story. All was still in the church. Choir and High Mass were over, and only here and there lingered some custode, or assistant, putting the finishing touches to the preparations for the festa which would begin with first Vespers that afternoon. The pavements shone newly polished, the candlesticks were like gold, the gilt bronze angels that hold the great painted candles stood on the marble rail of the confession, the draperies were all up. In the chapel itself the benches of the choir were prepared, the altar glittering with its most precious ornaments, the two great hanging lamps at either side swinging faintly, as if impatient for the music to begin. All was peaceful; and a tender shade and coolness in the air veiled the glittering richness of the place.

“I cannot tell you how mysterious that picture seems to me,” Bianca whispered, pointing to the square veiled case bordered with jewels, and supported by gilt angels in the middle space over the altar. “The two veils that are to be removed in order to see it, and then the depth at which it is set, and the mere dark outline that is all one can see inside the golden border—it all impresses me with a sense of mystery and awfulness. I wonder what the face really looks like, and if any one has seen it.”

“Why, you have seen my engraving of it, my dear,” the Signora said; “and I presume that is a faithful copy, taken when the features were more distinguishable. That has a noble, serious look which impresses me. And no wonder you look with awe at this. If it were not painted by St. Luke even, it is embalmed by memories not less sacred. Twelve hundred years ago St. Gregory the Great carried this very picture in procession through the city, in a time of terrible pestilence, and set it on the altar of St. Peter’s. It was on the open façade of this church till Paul V. built this chapel to contain it. Ampère says that angels have been heard chanting litanies about it. It is held by all here in the most tender veneration. I have never heard any one describe it, and do not know who has seen it near. I have heard somewhere that only the chapter of the basilica and the Borghese family have the privilege of going up to it. Madonna mia, what a privilege it would be!” she sighed, looking up at the closed jasper gates.

They stayed a little longer, then started to go home; but as they were going out a boy came to tell the Signora that Monsignore M—— begged to speak with her. The others went on, but she turned back, well content; for a call from Monsignore M—— always meant something pleasant. This prelate was no less distinguished for position than for his virtues; and, finding the Signora a stranger and somewhat lonely when she first came to Rome, he had done her many kindnesses—was, in fact, her Santa Claus.

“Do you guess what little devotion I want you to make on the eve of our festa?” he asked, meeting her with the confident smile of one who knows he is going to confer a great pleasure.

“I know it is something delightful, Monsignore mio,” she replied, “but I cannot say just what.”

“Well, I want you to visit the antique Madonna,” he said.

She looked at him, uncomprehending.

He pointed to the veiled shrine in the Borghese Chapel, near which they stood. “Don Francesco will be here in a moment with a candle,” he said. “I prepared all, because I knew you would want to go. I could not invite a party, you know; but you belong to the church and have a special devotion to our Madonna.”

The Signora could not reply. Such a swift fulfilment of her wish moved her too deeply for words. She kissed the hand of her kind friend, and looked across the church to the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament with the almost spoken thought: “I am going to see your Mother.” To visit that sacred shrine was to her as near to seeing the Mother of God face to face as one could come on earth, without a miracle.

Presently appeared the custodian, bearing a lighted candle and a bunch of keys; he opened a small door beside the chapel. They ascended a narrow, winding stair, without any light except the one they carried, and passed a long, arched corridor where the walls almost touched their elbows at either side, and the vault just cleared their heads above. This corridor was between the side wall of the chapel and the wall of the adjoining sacristy. Another door opened, and they entered a cross corridor leading to one of the balconies of the chapel—one of those beautiful gilded balconies the Signora had so many times wished to get into. She stepped into this now, and looked down through the chapel, out into the church, and across to the Sistine Chapel, the columns, pictures, and gilded arches of the basilica set like a picture in the great arched entrance of the Borghese.

Going on then, Don Francesco opened a strong, locked door, that showed another door immediately within, closing the same wall. These led into another of those narrow white corridors running between the walls of the chapel behind the altar. Turning then into a third short corridor leading toward the chapel, they faced still another door, over which were painted the arms and tiara of Pope Paul V., who built the chapel.

This door unlocked, they found themselves in a little chamber directly behind the grand altar, with the miraculous picture, set in a box cased in metal, right before them. It stands a little back from the screens that cover it in the chapel, and there is space enough at either side for a person to slip in in front and see the picture face to face. Two iron hooks that barred the passage were taken down, and the Signora went in and found herself in front of this most venerable image.

The picture is painted on panel, and, though dim, is still distinct on so near a view, the rich, soft colors coming out as one gazes—a long, oval face full of serious majesty, with large eyes, and a mantle dropping over the forehead. But this mantle is now almost hid; for the head of the Mother, and of the Babe that looks up into her face, and the outline of their shoulders, are closely filled in with gold and gems. But for this nothing but a dark square would be distinguishable from the chapel. The outline is so clearly made, however, as to give a perfect idea, when looked at from below, of a crowned woman with a crowned child in her arms.

If, in the presence of the picture, one can think of jewels, these are worth looking at. They are the gems of a cardinal and of a pope—stones of immense value set in pure gold. Besides rubies and amethysts, in the centre of the Virgin’s crown is a large emerald surrounded by diamonds, and from the jewelled chain at her neck hangs a cross made entirely of large sapphires.

The Signora took the candle in her hand and held it before those faces, and the clergymen with her knelt, one at either side of her.

After a little while they rose, the Signora kissed the floor before the picture, and the case that held it, and they turned away. On leaving she observed that this little chamber behind the altar was quite covered with frescoes. Then came the low corridors again, and the narrow stairs; one more peep from the gilded balcony, and at length she stepped out into the church again, bewildered and enchanted.

“I will tell them nothing about it,” was her conclusion as she went home. “They might feel hurt at being left out. It shall be a little secret of my own.”

They went to first Vespers and to the High Mass next morning, but the finest part was the Vespers of the day, to which they went early, and were so fortunate as to have chairs in the chapel near the altar. The chapter came in in procession from the basilica, singing as they came, and the place was soon crowded.

Nothing was wanting to make the scene perfect; the magnificent chapel, the beautiful dress of the canons, who all wore purple silk soutanes, with rich lace on those picturesque little cotte of theirs, and the music—each was in harmony with all the rest. Then, as the music went up, down through the cupola, glowing with the colors of Cavaliere d’Arpino, and faintly veiling the frescoes of Guido Reni, came the soft and loitering snow of blossoms, flowery flake by flake. They were lost one instant against the white band of Carrara marble—cornice, capitals, figures, and flowers—under the arches, then green of verd-antique, and red of jasper, or the colored mantle of one of Guido’s saints threw them into relief again. Little by little the mosaic of the pavement grew dim under that exquisite snow-fall, which seemed, as it came down, to toss on the music in mid-air.

The light up in the cupola grew red with sunset, and the chapel below began to show softest shades and pale gold lights from the candles, and the pageant slowly dissolved like a bouquet that parts into flowers, each flower showing more beautiful separated than when massed together.

Going out into the basilica, where it seemed almost evening, so strongly contrasted were the lights and shades, the Signora silently pointed out to her friends the long, red-gold bar of sunshine that came in at a window of the tribune and lay the whole length of the nave, looking so solid one felt like stepping over or stooping to go under it, as if it were an obstacle. It was her very idea of the bars of the tabernacle which the Jews bore with them.

“If only the church should be lifted and borne to Paradise now, when it is all bathed in flowers and full of incense and music!”

They lingered yet, unwilling to go. Monsignore M—— came out of the sacristy and brought them all some of the blessed blossom-snow. People were gathering it up from the floor of the chapel, and, it having fallen also in the tribune, little boys were slyly vaulting over the railings, snatching it up unseen by the custodi, and scampering out again. The lights went out, the cancelle were closed, and finally our friends were forced to go home.

They stood a moment outside the church door before descending the steps, the two girls expressing their delight with feminine enthusiasm. Mr. Vane had but one word: “There is a certain Protestant hymn that used to make me feel, when I was a boy, very loath to go to heaven,” he said. “But, remembering it now by the light of this festa, I think heaven couldn’t be better described than as a place——

“'Where congregations ne’er break up, And Sabbaths have no end.’”

A few days later they made their little visit to Genzano, stopping one day in Albano on the way. It was the feast of the Holy Saviour, in which again an antique and venerated picture had a prominent part. They reached the town just in time to see the procession go from the Duomo bearing the picture up to the little church of Santissimo Salvatore on the hill.

“What are those military bands playing for?” Mr. Vane asked, as they sat in the loggia of their apartment, after having rested a half-hour.

“They are playing for the Lord,” said the Signora.

He stared a little, but, finding her perfectly serious, said after a moment: “Well, I don’t know why they shouldn’t; only I am not used, you know, to hearing fifes and drums on any but military and civil occasions.”

“This is a military occasion,” the Signora replied gravely. “It celebrates Him who is the God of battles and the Lord of hosts. It is a civil occasion, too, in honor of the King of kings, the Lawgiver of the universe, the Prince of peace.”

“You are right!” he said emphatically; “and I need not ask now why they are firing cannon.”

They went out just at sunset and took their places on the steps of the little church to which the procession was to come, catching glimpses of it in the distance as it appeared in some turn of the ascending way.

The slope of the street just in front of them had been swept, and two men were sprinkling it in a very primitive fashion. One trundled along a cart with a little barrel of water on it, and the other dipped in a small wooden bucket and scattered the water from side to side. He did it very dexterously, however, showing practice. Nearer the steps the street was paved with a mosaic of flowers, and all the houses by which the procession was to pass were decorated in some way, with flowers, pictures, and lamps to light later, some already lighted and showing faintly through the gloaming. All the windows and little balconies and elevated door-steps near the church were filled with women and children, every face turned toward the winding street up which a cross was glittering and a sound of music coming. A banner came in sight after the cross, and then a crucifix with its canopy, and then banner after banner, and crucifix after crucifix, showing in air over the wall that wound with the street. At one turn were visible the tops of the tallest heads; then, a little farther on, the whole heads of men, and the flowing locks of the boys of the choirs; and, lastly, they came into full sight near by, the inferior persons marching in lines at each side of the street, leaving hollow spaces where there was no banner or crucifix to be carried, the clergy walking in the centre. As the picture of the Holy Redeemer came along, borne on the shoulders of four men, all the crowd about sank on their knees. The picture was carried up the steps and placed on a table set there to receive it, and there were prayers and hymns before dropping the curtain over it and taking it into the church.

The sun went down and one large star burned in the west. It was easy to imagine an angel hand and wings above, and golden chains dropping down to a lamp of which that star was the flame. All the lamps, many-colored as the rainbow, were lighted in the windows, throwing their light, as the twilight deepened, in a strong splash, here and there, on a leaning face intent and praying, on a mantle of vines, on a bit of carving, a rough stone balcony, or a stair climbing up into the dark. One little arched window, with a vine over it, held a single beautiful face of a young woman, and a single lamp that shone on her black hair and eyes and perfect features, motionless there in prayer, till she looked like a cameo cut in pink carnelian.

The prayers ended, and some one drew the curtain before the lovely face of the picture. As he did so a chorus of exclamations burst from the kneeling crowd, and several women burst into tears.

“What do they say?” Mr. Vane asked in surprise. “What is the matter?”

“They say, 'Grazie, Santissimo Salvatore!'—Thanks, most holy Saviour,” she replied.

He smiled faintly and repeated after them, “Grazie, Santissimo Salvatore!” and it seemed that his eyes glistened in the candle-light.

“I am glad it touches you,” the Signora said as they went to their lodgings. “Some, even Catholics, think it superstitious; but it is no more so than it is a superstition for us to kiss and weep over the pictures of our friends.”

The next morning they went up to early Mass in the pretty Capuchin church, at the head of its long avenue of overarching trees, loitering slowly home again when the Mass was over.

“Now,” said the Signora suddenly, spying a man with a large basket—“now I will show you what figs are. You have not known before.”

She beckoned the man and asked how many he would sell for a soldo. He replied, “Twelve.”

“You may give me eight dozen,” she said. “Each of you dear people are to have two dozen and to carry them yourselves. Out with your handkerchiefs! That is the fashion. Don’t be scrupulous.”

“They don’t look as if I should wish to eat two dozen,” Bianca remarked doubtfully. “They look to me like little bits of green apples.”

“Please to defer your judgment,” remarked her friend; “and what you do not wish to eat I will take.”

When they had reached home and were seated at the breakfast-table, the Signora took one of the little figs, with some ceremony and much anticipated triumph, and, lacking a fruit-knife, peeled its green skin off with the handle of a tea-spoon. All their eyes were watching the process; and when it was ended, and she pushed out the little teaspoonful of delicious fruit for Mr. Vane to have the first, the others were convinced by only seeing. It was a rich, deep red, of the consistency of solid old preserved strawberries, but with the fig flavor.

After breakfast was over they went out to visit the gardens of the Cesarini palace, for which they had a permit. These are laid out and kept by a Swiss gardener, and are a wilderness of flowers and trees and fountains on the level and down the hill-side. After wandering about the upper part for a while they descended a slowly-winding path, bordered by hydrangeas in full flower, that stood shoulder-high and dropped their great balls of amethyst bloom toward the earth, and came out into a little terrace where the trees and shrubs left an open front. A long bench at the back, and a richly-carved antique capital of a column near the wild-vine parapet, gave them seats, and before them was the whole verdant amphitheatre, with Lake Nemi at the bottom, and the town of Nemi half up the opposite bank, like a little white flower painted half way up the inside of a green cup. And down from the flower, like its white stem, dropped a white stream, cascade after cascade, to the lake, its motion petrified in the distance.

Tall white cloud-shapes marched round the hill-tops and looked over—shining shapes that seemed to hold Olympian deities within their folds, “impenetrable to every ray but that of fancy.” The amphitheatre sloped steeply in a green cone rich with orchards and vineyards, and pressed in a waving line around the water. Opposite the little terrace in which they sat, as in a box at the opera, the shore made a green heart in the water, and from behind one curve of it a boat, tiny in the distance as a black swan, slipped out and moved across the view. The lake lay like an emerald half-fused, its shaded greens touched in places with a soft purple bloom or a silvery lustre, and catching now and then a melting image of some cloud-cap higher than the rest. There was a sound of mellow thunder from some direction—Jupiter Tonans driving through those driving clouds.

They sat there silently drinking in the beauty of the scene, speaking only a word or two now and then, waiting till it should be noon and they should hear the Angelus from Nemi. When it came, a dream of a sound, touching with the outermost wave of its song the party of strangers across the lake, they stood up and said the prayers together. Then, bidding adieu to Nemi and its lake and the beautiful garden, they went slowly away.

That afternoon they went back to Albano, and the next evening returned to Rome. They had only one other excursion to make—that to Monte Cassino. Certain affairs were calling Mr. Vane to America, either for a longer or shorter stay, to go with only his daughters, or to have a nearer companion yet, and the end of their visit was approaching. It would soon be September, and in October they must start. Besides, it was found that, subject to her father’s approval, Bianca had promised to marry early in the spring, and some preparations must be made for the wedding.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

TO POPE PIUS IX. A JUBILEE OFFERING, JUNE 3, 1877.

I.

To-day the scattered peoples of the earth— Haply the monarchs may not all forget— Pay unto thee, great Pope, their willing debt Of love sincere—blest debt of heavenly birth! We kneel afar, a people of to-day, Whose life but doubles in its hundred years Thy long episcopate of many tears; But none the less we love, nor ceaseless pray That He who leadeth Joseph like a sheep May bless thee with fair length of glorious days, May give thee yet triumphant voice to raise When men, with happy tears, shall vigil keep Of that great feast when Christian Rome no more In chains shall stand a world’s awed gaze before.

II.

Eudoxia’s church—where Michael Angelo Hath Moses wrought in terrible array— With faith’s most loving rites keeps holiday In holy thought of those long years ago When, 'neath its roof, the throng devout drew near To see thee made a shepherd of the sheep, Thy crook receive, that thou shouldst bravely keep, Thy flock e’er leading by the waters clear. “St. Peter of the Chains”—prophetic name! Beneath this title was thy charge begun; As Peter’s self thy hands his chains have won, With these, his years. When shall God’s angel claim Thy liberty, the prison gates fling wide? Christ in his vicar no more crucified!

III.

O happy senses of the Virgin Blessed Standing the cross of Calvary beneath— So winning martyrdom without its death— Queen of all martyrs evermore confessed! O happy Pontiff! wear’st thou not to-day Beneath the triple crown one wrought of thorn? So crowned for love thou hast unfailing borne To thy pure spouse the faithless would betray? Art thou not martyr, too, by that deep woe Thou sharest with our Queen Immaculate? About thee rise the cries of blinded hate, Thou seest afresh the wounds of Jesus flow; His cross thy palm, his words sublime thine too— “Father, forgive; they know not what they do.”

IV.

As said Lacordaire, of the rosary, That love must ever its own speech repeat That, ever murmured, groweth e’er more sweet, So, seeking long some gift to bring to thee On this high day that keeps thy years of gold— Some thought that shall heart’s dearest service prove— Find I but one e’er-echoing word of love That doth all else I seek most fair enfold. Too great thy deeds for my poor verse to tell That need the Tuscan’s speech of Paradise; Even to think them, tears are in my eyes And sorrow stifles the Te Deum’s swell— Tears for so dear a feast seem gift unkind, But love in every falling bead is shrined.

V.

As, when our Lord doth rest in solemn state On altar for his worship set apart, And from the fulness of each faithful heart The fairest flowers to him are consecrate— Pure lilies, that with fragrant breath pour forth The speechless worship human love must give; Red roses, in whose flush love seems to live— As, 'mid this wealth, some gift of little worth, Some penance-hued, frail-blooming violet, Is brought by humble soul with love as great As lies within the lilies’ lordlier state— Each cancelling so little of love’s debt— So I, my father, 'mid thy lilies place My rue, thy blessing shall make herb-of-grace.

THE PRESENT STATE OF JUDAISM IN AMERICA.

Judaism, in its purity, is not a false religion. It was revealed and established by God, and nothing which comes from him can be untrue. Judaism, as it now exists here and in Europe and Asia, is, on the one hand, overladen and almost smothered by the inventions and additions of men, until the original deposit of the truth is with difficulty discerned; on the other hand, it is refined and explained away until it has become little better than a system of worldly morals. To-day, in Europe, Jews, and the descendants of Jews who have lost their ancestral faith without becoming Christians, are powerful in the cabinets of kings, in parliaments, in the money exchanges, and in the world of journalism. In America, while they have as yet, perhaps with a single exception, taken no leading part in the political affairs of the country, they have become a power in finance, and are beginning in a quiet way to influence, and to some extent to control, journalism. The ability of the race is unquestionable, and their virtues, as a race, are many. They are prudent and thrifty; they are charitable to each other, and their charities are not always confined to their own people; they are seldom guilty of crime, although when a Jew does become a criminal his offences are apt to leave little to be desired in the matter of completeness, audacity, and cruelty; they are excellent parents, and the domestic virtues among them are cultivated to a high degree; their women are for the most part chaste; their men are seldom cruel creditors, even when their defaulting debtors are Gentiles. They have their faults and objectionable peculiarities; among certain classes of them these imperfections are especially noticeable; but, as we shall show, the rising generation of Jews in America will probably become tolerably well Americanized, and will, to some extent at least, cease to be an unpleasantly peculiar people.

To Catholics the study of the changes which have taken place and are now occurring among the Jews should be invested with peculiar interest. We cannot forget that the Holy Scriptures of the Jews are a portion of our Holy Scriptures; that Our Blessed Lady was a Jewess, and that our Divine Lord willed to be born a Jew according to the flesh; that he made himself subject to the ceremonies and rites of the Jewish law, which was then the divine law, and consequently his own law; that the first drops of his precious blood were shed in the Jewish rite of circumcision; that his chosen apostles, and among them the first pope, were all Jews; that the Catholic Church at its first organization was wholly composed of Jews; and that the first Christian martyr was a Jew.

When Jesus Christ had finished his work on earth and had ascended into heaven, the Jewish law was fulfilled but not destroyed; it remained in full force and effect, subject only to such modifications as God himself, speaking through the infallible mouth of the church which he had established, should ordain in matters of ritual, sacrifice, and outward observances. The code of laws given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and engraved by the divine hand upon tables of stone, is as binding to-day upon all of us as it was binding upon the Jews on the day when Moses came down from the mount bearing the sacred tablets in his hands. The devout Jew who to-day, with reverently covered head and contrite heart, stands in his synagogue and listens to the reading of the law, hears the same words that Jesus of Nazareth read when, as was his custom, “he went into the synagogue and stood up for to read.” True, hearing, he does not hear the full meaning of the divine words; seeing, he does not see how they have been fulfilled; his understanding has not been opened to know that the Messias for whom he still yearns was the Jesus whom his ancestors crucified on Calvary, and that, on the altar of the church which, perhaps, stands next door to his synagogue, this same Jesus, risen, glorified, and descended again from heaven, stands ready to receive and bless him.

But the Jew, ignorant of this and still clinging fast to the faith of his fathers, has an infinite advantage over all the other non-Catholics in the world. His religion, as we have said, was revealed by God, and therefore is not false in its essence, however much it may be overlaid and hidden by the innumerable superstitions and additions with which successive generations of rabbis and doctors have encumbered it. It is not a revolt against the Catholic faith nor a contradiction of it; for not only did it exist before the Catholic Church was established, but it was revealed by God, and he cannot contradict himself. The Jew errs only because he cannot or will not see that the Catholic Church is the lineal heir and rightful possessor of the church of which Adam was the first, and Caiphas the last, high-priest; and as for his sin in this hardness of heart and blindness of eye, God will judge him. Outside of this, and outside of the human additions which have been made to his creed, he believes what God spake unto Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, and his religion is entitled to respect because it is of divine origin. But the origin of all the other non-Catholic religions in the world is human or diabolical. They are revolts against the authority and teaching of the church which Jesus Christ established in the world; to the earthly and visible head of which he gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven; to the words of which he enjoined all men to render obedience; on which he has bestowed the inestimable grace of perfect unity; and which the Holy Spirit keeps ever in the truth. The Jew can say with truth, “God founded my church”; but the Protestant can only say, “Martin Luther, or King Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, or John Knox, or John Wesley, or Alexander Campbell, or Jo Smith, or the devil founded my church.”

Judaism, however, although divine in its origin, ceased to possess the divine sanction from the moment when our Lord had completed his work on earth and ascended into heaven, and the Holy Ghost descended to preside over the organization of the church from which he has never since departed. The Jewish religion, thus deprived for ever of the divine sanction, was at once deprived of its divine authority and became a merely human organization, subject, like all other human things, to corruption, change, decay, and disintegration. These processes have been going on within it for eighteen hundred years, and they have now reached a most advanced stage.

Prior to the crucifixion and ascension of our Lord the essential unity in faith of the Jewish people had been preserved. The lawyers, the doctors, and the Pharisees had added much to the law of Moses in the way of laying heavy burdens on the people; they took tithes of annise and cummin; they made broad the edges of their phylacteries, and they were famous for making long extempore prayers, in which latter respect they resembled too closely some of our esteemed Protestant brethren. But the essential and divinely-given articles of the Jewish faith remained unimpaired, and in these essentials the unity of the people was complete. The process of change and disintegration commenced immediately after the establishment of the Christian Church and what may be called the formal transfer to her of the guiding and enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit. But for many centuries this process was slow and its progress excited little or no attention. The Jews, until a very recent period in their history, were a persecuted people; and persecution tends to make men cling closer to that which is the cause of the persecution. There were times in the history of the Jews when their only city of refuge was Rome; when the popes, alone of all the sovereigns of the earth, stretched forth over them a protecting arm and permitted them to dwell in peace and security. Within the last century, or less, all this has been changed: nowhere in all Europe now, save in Bulgaria and one or two other provinces, are the Jews persecuted; they have obtained equal political and social rights; they are cabinet ministers, premiers, members of parliament, eminent journalists, and autocratic bankers. With this prosperity have come the marked evidences of that disintegration in matters of faith to which allusion has been made. And here in America, where the Jews have been always free, these changes have now become more signal and wide-spread than in any other country.

To show how this has come about, it will be necessary, in the first place, to explain briefly the nature of the additions which have been made by the Jewish doctors to the divine law; the effect of these human edicts and precepts upon the minds of those Jews who retain their faith; and their contrary effect, upon other minds, in promoting and disseminating the spirit of infidelity which is now so widely prevalent among the Hebrews. The strictly “orthodox” Jew to-day is more burdened than were ever any of his ancestors by practically endless rules, observances, rites, and ceremonies, while his “reformed” or “ultra-reformed” brother has not only shaken himself free from all, or nearly all, of these human inventions, but has emancipated himself also from the letter and spirit of the law of Moses and from the bonds of the faith.

The books of the Jewish law as they now exist are the Old Testament, as we call it; the “Mishna,” or Second Law; and the “Gemara,” or supplement to the “Mishna.” These two latter books, taken together, form the “Talmud.” But the “Mishna” is the explanation of the Old Testament; the “Gemara” is the explanation of the “Mishna”; and there remains behind or above all these the mystical and mysterious “Cabala,” which contains within itself the sum and essence of all human wisdom, and of such portions of divine wisdom as men are permitted to know. The “Cabala,” properly speaking, is not a book, and has never been wholly committed to writing. The “Cabala”—and the meaning of the word is the “tradition”—is a divine, sublime, secret, and infinite science, treating of the creation of the universe, of the esoteric meaning and significance of the Mosaic laws, and of the secrets of God. No trace of its origin is to be found. Moses, David, Solomon, and the prophets are said to have been masters of it. It was taught to successive generations, but with the utmost secrecy and only to a select few, who were deemed worthy to receive this priceless knowledge. Those portions of it which are written are brief, obscure, and full of abbreviations and initials, to be understood only by the initiated. They resemble the manuals of Freemasonry—pregnant with meaning to the members of the craft, but unintelligible to all who have not the key of the cipher. He who is a perfect master of the “Cabala” is so wise and potent that he not only can work wonders, but may exercise almost creative powers. Nay, even an imperfect and surreptitiously-obtained knowledge of its mysteries enables one to perform miracles. He who can place certain letters in a certain way, and pronounce them in a certain manner, may suspend the operation of the laws of nature and command the angels of God to do his will. The Cabalists, however, claim that seldom, if ever, has their divine science been used by unworthy men or prostituted to selfish purposes. The penalty for such a sin is eternal death; it is written in one of their books that “he who abuses the crown perisheth,” and this is understood to refer to those who possess themselves of this knowledge and then use it for selfish purposes. The true Cabalists study their science not for gain, but for the sake of obtaining profound knowledge. They apply their rules to the letters and words of the Mosaic law, and ascertain thereby its hidden significance, drawing from every word or sentence an esoteric meaning, often full of sublime intelligence, and as often pregnant only with absurdity.

Emanuel Swedenborg seems to have been an unfledged Cabalist; it is probable that he became in some manner acquainted with a few of the outward formulas of the Cabala, and that he based on these his wearisome treatises upon the secret meaning of the Scriptures. Certain it is that nothing which Swedenborg imagined is not to be found in the Cabala. Fortunately, a knowledge of the Cabala is not necessary for salvation; on the contrary, knowledge of it is a special perfection which every one is not able to attain, and for the want of which no one is to be blamed.

The “Mishna” contains the oral or traditional laws transmitted from Moses, through a line of which the personality of every member is known, to the Rabbi Jochanan, who lived at Jerusalem at the time of the destruction of the second Temple. It was compiled by Rabbi Jehuda Hanasi in the latter half of the second century. The “Gemara,” or supplement to the “Mishna,” is a wonderful book, containing thirty-six treatises upon history, biography, astronomy, medicine, and ethics, interspersed with legends, aphorisms, parables, sermons, and rules of practical wisdom. The oral or traditional laws in the “Mishna” are claimed to be of divine authority; and the passages in both these books which seem to be absurd in the letter have a secret meaning understood best, if not exclusively, by the Cabalists. The morality taught in these writings is not to be despised. For example, it is laid down that men should not use flattery or deceit in business affairs; they should not be boisterous in their mirth nor permit themselves to sink into abject melancholy, but should be reasonably and gratefully cheerful; they should be neither greedy of gain, nor slothful in business, nor over-righteous in fasting and penance; all that they do they should do for the glory of God; they should love every Israelite as themselves, and they should be kind and charitable to the stranger; they must abstain from inward and silent hate, and if aggrieved by a neighbor they should make it known to him, affectionately asking him to redress the wrong; they should be especially solicitous to comfort, aid, and protect the widow and the orphan, not merely if these be poor, but because they have suffered and their hearts are laden with grief. There are three mortal sins—idolatry, fornication, and bloodshed; but calumny is equal to all three. Every one who professes the true faith must believe that there is a Being whose existence is inherent, absolute, and unconditional within himself; who has no cause or origin, and like whom there is no other; who is the first producer of all things; in whom all creatures find the support of their existence, while he derives no support from them; and that “this Being is by men called God—blessed be he!” There are six fundamental principles of the faith—the creation of all things by God out of nothing; the pre-eminence of Moses as a prophet and lawgiver—a pre-eminence so great that there never has been and never can be another equal to him; the unalterableness of the law which he gave; the dogma that the proper observance of any one of the commandments of the law will lead to perfection; the resurrection of the dead; and the coming of the Messias. But upon this excellent foundation has been built up that structure of ceremony, ritual, observance, and false and narrow philosophy which has become unbearable to so many of the Jews in this country and in Europe, and from the yoke of which too many have escaped by throwing aside all faith, while others have contented themselves with taking refuge in the half-way houses of “reform.”

It is difficult to estimate with accuracy the number of Jews in the United States. But the census of 1870 affords us some valuable data upon which a calculation may be based. In 1850 there were 36 Jewish synagogues in the United States, with sittings for 18,371 persons, and having a value of $418,600. In 1860 there were 77 synagogues, with sittings for 34,412 persons and a value of $1,135,300. In 1870 no less than 189 Jewish “organizations” were reported; there were 152 synagogues, seating 73,265 persons and valued at $5,155,234. Now in the city of New York there are 26 synagogues, and the Jewish population of the metropolis is not less than 75,000. This would give an average of some three thousand souls to each synagogue; and if we took this average as a basis of calculation, we should have a Jewish population in the whole of the United States amounting to 456,000 souls. But we have reason to believe that this is much less than the actual number. We have received from two high authorities estimates of the Jewish population in the republic; both are avowedly only estimates, but they have been made with care. One of them places the number of Jews in the United States at “one in thirty of the whole population,” which would give a total of 1,600,000 souls; the other reports the number to be “almost exactly 1,000,000 souls.”

According to the census of 1870, there were no Jewish synagogues or other Hebrew organizations in Arizona, Dakota, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington Territory, or Wyoming. But, in point of fact, there are many Jews in all, or nearly all, these States and Territories. The following table will show the number of Jewish organizations in the United States, the number of their synagogues, with their sittings and their value, according to the census of 1870:

Organizations. Synagogues. Sittings. Value. Alabama 2 2 1,650 $30,000 Arkansas 1 1 300 6,500 California 7 7 3,600 314,600 Colorado 1 — — — Connecticut 5 3 1,850 105,000 Dist. of Columbia 2 1 800 18,000 Georgia 6 5 1,400 52,700 Illinois 10 9 3,950 271,500 Indiana 5 4 1,900 113,000 Iowa 5 1 150 1,900 Kansas 2 1 300 1,500 Kentucky 3 3 1,500 134,000 Louisiana 5 5 2,200 75,000 Maine 23 23 7,315 36,400 Maryland 5 4 2,750 650,000 Massachusetts 5 2 1,500 33,000 Michigan 5 3 1,300 51,000 Missouri 4 4 2,100 217,100 New Jersey 1 1 300 8,000 New York 47 33 21,400 1,831,950 North Carolina 1 1 200 500 Ohio 7 7 4,000 360,584 Pennsylvania 15 14 7,750 681,000 Rhode Island 1 — — — South Carolina 3 3 900 91,200 Tennessee 4 4 1,100 21,000 Texas 1 1 400 6,000 Vermont 8 7 1,890 35,300 West Virginia 1 — — — Wisconsin 4 3 750 8,500

Totals 189 152 73,265 $5,155,234

A careful examination of this table discloses some remarkable contrasts which are not without their significance. While the synagogues in North Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, and some other States are small and cheap structures, costing only from $500 to $2,800 or $3,000 each, those in Georgia have cost, or are valued at, an average of $10,500; in Alabama and Maine, $15,000; in Illinois, $30,000; in Connecticut, $35,000; in California, $45,000; in Pennsylvania, $49,000; in Ohio, $51,500; in Missouri, $54,000; in New York, $60,000; and in Maryland, $162,000. These instances exemplify to some extent the comparative wealth and religious zeal of the children of Israel in the different States named, and many of our readers, we suppose, will learn with surprise that there are far more Jews in Maine than in all the other New England States put together; and that the Jews of Maryland are apparently very much more wealthy and zealous than their co-religionists in any other part of the republic. But we must now trace the history of the settlement and progress of the Jews in this country, and set forth the outer as well as inner causes which have tended to work changes in them: to Americanize them to a great extent; to remove or soften the prejudices formerly cherished against them; and to weaken, modify, or destroy, in a degree which cannot yet be accurately determined, their own religious faith.

Jewish emigration to this country began at a very early period in its history, but only within the last thirty years has this emigration assumed perceptible dimensions. The Jews who came to the United States prior to 1848 were for the most part members of a low class; they were chiefly of Polish, Russian, Portuguese, or Spanish birth; they were either poor or pretended to be poor; they were peddlers, dealers in old clothes, pawnbrokers, money-changers in a small way, and petty merchants. From all social intercourse with the rest of the community they were cut off; they did not seek that which probably would have been denied them had they asked for it; the traditional prejudice against the Jews which exists so generally among the Gentiles was not diminished by the appearance, the actions, and the general reputation of these children of Israel. They were supposed to be exclusively devoted to trade and to money-making, and to be quite devoid of any scruples as to the means by which they might get the better of the person to whom they sold or of whom they bought. A Hebrew writer of some note many years ago remarked that the Jews, as a race of people, were more widely and generally known and less generally appreciated than any other class upon the earth; that the peculiarities which have marked them as objects of dislike were by no means original in their character, but were the fruits of centuries of oppression and degradation; and that they needed only a few years of existence in a free country, where equal rights would be accorded to them, and where they might in peace and security manifest the virtues which were in them, in order to win for themselves not only the toleration but the active esteem and respect of their fellow-citizens. The truth of this remark has been amply substantiated by what has occurred in England, France, Germany, and other portions of Europe; while in this country the Jews have succeeded in Americanizing themselves to a very great extent, and in obliterating in a marked degree the peculiarities which formerly served to point them out as a wholly separate and foreign people. That this process has been accompanied by the partial loss of their religious faith is unquestionably true, but it is not clear whether they have become Americanized because they have to this extent lost their faith, or whether they have lost their faith because they have become Americanized.

The Jews in America at the present moment are divided into five classes—the “Radical Orthodox,” the “Orthodox,” the “Conservative Reformed,” the “Reformed,” and the “Radical Reformed.” There is a wide gulf between the first and the last of these classes; but the shades of difference between a Radical Orthodox Jew and an Orthodox Jew, or between a Conservative Reformed Jew and a Reformed Jew, are somewhat difficult to define. The Radical Orthodox Jews are few in number, and are said by their co-religionists to be daily growing less. They are chiefly of Polish, Austrian, or Hungarian birth; they for the most part are in humble and obscure walks of life; they form no associations with Gentiles; they accept as the rule of their life the Mosaic law interpreted by the “Talmud” and the “Cabala”; they do not welcome Gentiles, or even Jews of later views, to their synagogues. We believe there is but one synagogue in New York belonging to this school of Jews, and in which one may witness Jewish worship as it was performed a thousand years ago. The children of the Radical Orthodox Jews—especially the male children—do not adhere closely to the faith and ritual of their fathers; and some of the fathers themselves, as they become rich in this world’s goods, manifest a disposition to affiliate themselves with one or other of the less rigorous sects. Some of them are content to join the ranks of the Orthodox Jews, who hold most firmly to all matters of dogma, and to all the essential rules of life laid down by the law of Moses, but who at the same time dispense themselves from the strict observance of a certain number of the more onerous observances and regulations enjoined by the rabbinical writers.

The line of demarcation between the Orthodox Jews and the Conservative Reformed Jews is vague and undetermined; but the Reformed Jews are very much advanced. They hold themselves bound no longer to obey the ceremonial and dietary laws laid down by Moses and his successors, and their faith in the predictions of the prophets has almost wholly faded away. The higher class of the Hebrew community for the most part belong to the Reformed sect; but these congregations are also largely composed of the well-to-do middle-class Jews. Nearly all of the Jews of American birth are found in the ranks of this sect or in the one of which we have yet to speak; and very many of the German and English Jews resident here are also members of the Reformed synagogues. They openly avow their desire and ambition to become thoroughly Americanized, and to cease in all respects to be regarded as an alien and foreign people. They still retain their belief in God, but this belief is in too many cases vague and ill-defined. The expectation of the coming of the Messias in any literal sense has, with rare exceptions, ceased to be entertained among them. They will not confess that the prophecies of his coming were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and their philosophy has led them to the conclusion that these prophecies do not now remain to be fulfilled, save in a metaphorical sense. The Messias is indeed to come—but not as an individual. Humanity as a race, elevated, happy, prosperous, blessed with long life, health, and earthly comfort, is the Messias; the prophets saw him and were glad, but it was reserved for the children of this generation to discover what was the hidden and real meaning of their predictions concerning him.

A learned Jewish scholar has thus expressed this phase of Jewish thought: “The majority of intelligent Israelites have long since abandoned the wish of building up an independent national existence of their own. The achievement of higher conditions of human life they are disposed to regard as the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy, and the furthering of this end, in intimate union with their fellow-men, as the highest dictate of their religion.” These are weighty words; and there is abundant reason to believe that they truthfully represent the dominant tone of thought among the American Jews. The latest sect among them—the Radical Reformed Jews—go to the root of the matter and have the full courage of their opinions. They have the goodness to admit that there is, or may be, a God, but they deny that he has ever revealed himself to man save by the law of nature, and that God is himself nature. In other words, these Jews have become Pantheists. Benedict de Spinoza was excommunicated and denounced by the forefathers of those who now revere and extol him. The most eloquent and gifted, if not the most learned, of the Jewish rabbis in America has become the leader of this sect, and has left the magnificent synagogue which was built for him, only to draw after him into new paths a large proportion of his former congregation. They are extremely wise in their own conceit; they prate of the necessity of doubting all things; they deride the rites and practices of external religion; they say they worship God, but inasmuch as God, as they insist, is only nature, and nature is part of themselves, in worshipping God they worship themselves. We are told that many of those Jews who still maintain their connection with the Conservative Reformed or Reformed congregations are by conviction in full sympathy with the Radical Reformers. The laity are far in advance of the rabbis of each sect. The rabbis are for the most part men of foreign birth and foreign education; there are, we believe, not a dozen rabbis of American birth in the whole Union. The almost universal tendency of thought and practice among the younger Jews is in the direction of that phase of infidelity of which we have spoken; and the elder members of the race take little care to counteract in any effectual manner this apostasy. The education of Jewish children in this country is left pretty much to take care of itself. There are few, if any, Jewish schools, and none at all of a high character. The Jewish children for the most part attend the public schools, where they either are taught no religion at all or listen to such vague and disjointed utterances concerning the truths of Christianity as the caprice or the prejudices of the teacher may lead him to pronounce. In some instances the children of well-to-do Hebrews among us are sent to receive their education in Unitarian academies; in others the sons of wealthy American Jews are educated in the German universities, from whence they return full-blown infidels. Intermarriages between Jews and nominal Christians are not rare; and the children of these unions are, as a rule, educated in the religion of the mother—if she happens to possess any.

We have said that the Jewish laity is in advance of the rabbis in the matter of what is called “reform,” but which is too generally nothing but destruction. The position of the rabbis is a peculiar one. They are not priests, for they no longer offer sacrifice. They are not even the sons of priests; the hereditary character of their office has long since been lost; they are rabbis, or, in other phrase, teachers, not by hereditary descent nor by divine selection or consecration, but merely by their own choice and the good-will of their neighbors or friends. The last high-priest of the Jewish Church who had any divine sanction for the title which he bore was Caiphas, and his office was taken away from him, in the sight of God and in truth, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost descended to dwell until the end of time with the Christian Church. Since that day there have been no priests of God upon the earth, save the priests of the Catholic Church; and consequently since that day there have been no true Jewish priests. The altars of the Jews have crumbled away; their sacrifices have ceased; the sons of the tribes of Aaron and Levi have abandoned even the pretence of belonging to a priestly order. In the place of the priests have come the rabbis, who are mere ministers or teachers. They are to the Jews what the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Protestant ministers are to the respective Protestant sects. They are a little less than some of the Protestant ministers claim to be; for some of these do set up in an uncertain way a vague and altogether fallacious pretence to the possession of “orders” and to having been empowered to perform priestly functions. The rabbis make no such pretence, and their position, such as it is, is confessedly invested with only purely human sanction. They are teachers, but do not claim that they have a divine authority to teach. They are subject to the will and caprice of the congregation to which they are attached; they are like school-teachers, whose tenure of office depends upon the pleasure of the school commissioners. Some of them have sought to put themselves at the head of the reform movement, and have succeeded, but only on the condition that they should keep pace with the advance of the laity. The younger German rabbis have been most prominent in this respect. They have effected an organization among themselves, as well here as in Germany, and have managed to act together with something approaching to unanimity. Destitute, however, of any rule of faith and practice higher than their own will and whim, and having no central or supreme authority to which they can appeal, they lack the essential bond of unity, and some of them are constantly wandering off in one direction or the other. They began their work of reform by modernizing the ritual of the synagogue, and eliminating from it, little by little, those portions of it which, directly or indirectly, assert the dogmas that are inconveniently opposed to the new ideas whereof they are enamored. Among the regular prayers of the synagogue, for instance, were supplications for the bringing back of the chosen people to the land of their fathers, the restoration of the throne of David, and the coming of the Messias. The new philosophy, as we have shown, teaches that the Messias is not to come in any literal sense; that inasmuch as modern progress is best subserved by democratic or republican institutions, the establishment of a monarchy of any kind is not to be desired or prayed for; and that the return of the Jews as a nation to Palestine is not to be wished, even if it were feasible.

It became advisable, therefore, to reconcile theory with practice, and to cease pretending to pray for that which was either impossible or undesirable. If it were absurd to believe any longer that the Messias was to come as a personal king and redeemer, to lead back his people to the Promised Land, and to elevate them as the rulers and princes of the earth, then it was something worse than absurd to continue the repetition of the prayers imploring the hastening of his coming. If the Books of the Law and of the Prophets are not the veritable word of God; if they contain merely ingenious and beautiful myths, symbolical poetry, and a code of moral and dietary rules which, in some respects at least, are no longer either necessary or advisable to be obeyed, it is dishonest to pretend to regard these writings with devout reverence, and to insist upon any one governing himself by them. By this course of reasoning the German rabbis, often pushed further than they cared to go by the laity who were behind them, sapped the foundations of faith among the common people of the Jews, and prepared them for the downward path which so many of them are now treading.

Having thus reviewed the present state of Judaism in America, we may ask ourselves what is likely to be the future of what was once the church of God, but has now fallen to the level of a mere sect. It is clear that the Jews, here as in the Old World, and more rapidly here than in the Old World, are losing the faith of their fathers. Judaism, divine in its origin, but no longer invested with the divine sanction nor inspired or guided by the Holy Ghost, is undergoing the same process of disintegration and decay which the Protestant sects are suffering. Judaism, now wholly human, like Protestantism, is leading its adherents to infidelity. Every day, as Protestants see this, the devout and pious among them turn to the one church which Jesus Christ established in the world, and in her bosom find refuge, peace, and salvation. The number of conversions from Protestantism to the holy Roman Catholic Church, here and in Great Britain, is continually on the increase. But nothing is more rare than the conversion of a Jew. They are rapidly parting with their own faith, but very seldom do they embrace any form of Christianity in its stead. In a few years the great majority of Jews in the United States will probably have ceased to be Jews, save only in name. But how many of them will become Catholics? All roads lead to Rome; but very few Jews have made that journey. A Jew who becomes a Catholic is a most excellent Catholic; he seems to desire, by the fervor of his faith and the burning zeal of his charity, to make some reparation for the sins of his people. Jews should be the best Catholics in the world; and God has told us, through the mouths of Jewish prophets, that the time will come when they will be all that they should be. The word of God is sure and cannot fail. He has told us that the day is coming when the Jews shall ask him, “What are those wounds in the midst of thy hands?” and when he shall reply, “With these was I wounded in the house of them that I love.” In that day he “will pour out upon the house of David the spirit of grace and the spirit of prayers; and they shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son, and shall grieve over him as the manner is to grieve for the death of the first-born.” In that glorious day God has promised that he will destroy the names of idols out of the earth, so that they shall be remembered no more; and that he will take away the false prophets and the unclean spirit out of the earth. He will bring back the captivity of Juda and the captivity of Jerusalem, and “will build them as from the beginning”; he will cleanse them from all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned against him and despised him; and he will so crown them with blessings that all the world shall be amazed thereby. “It shall be to me a name, and a joy, and a praise, and a gladness before all the nations of the earth that shall hear of all the good things which I will do to them.” “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform the good word that I have spoken to the house of Israel and to the house of Juda.” When the Jews become Catholic Christians, Jerusalem shall “be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name,” and the Jews shall become “a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of God.” Then they shall no more be called forsaken, and their land shall be no more called desolate; “but thou shalt be called 'my pleasure in her,’ and thy land inhabited.” Then shall the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass be celebrated by Jewish hands in the Holy City where Jesus Christ first offered up the ever-living Sacrifice, and then shall the Jews eat the heavenly Bread and drink the sacred Blood which have so long been given to us Gentiles and rejected by them. “The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by the arm of his strength: Surely I will no longer give thy corn to be meat for thy enemies, and the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine for which thou hast labored; for they that gather it shall eat it, and they that have brought it together shall drink it in my holy courts.” Wonderful are these words; full are they of a meaning at once mystical and clear. The Jews, in God’s own time, will become Catholic Christians, and, united with the whole body of the faithful on earth, they shall eat the divine Bread which is the life of the world. The abandonment of their traditional faith will continue to lead them more and more to the abandonment of all their distinctive national peculiarities and practices, and they will become merged in the great body of the children of men. Then such of them as God may choose will have given to them the grace of faith, and as individuals, and not as a nation, will they become Catholic Christians. We know that in the vision of St. John the Apostle he saw one hundred and forty-four thousand of the children of Israel, of every tribe twelve thousand, who had come out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. We are certain, then, that before the end of the world at least this number of Jews will have been converted. It may be that the number represents only those who belonged to the church while it was yet mainly composed of Jews. If so, let us hope that those of the once chosen people who yet remain may be found, or at least many of them, in that great multitude which no man can number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, which St. John also saw, standing before the throne and in the sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice “Salvation to our God who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb.”

LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER. FROM THE FRENCH. CONCLUSION.

JULY 30.

This morning I was in a sort of mortal sadness. I opened the “Book of those who suffer” at these words: “You have willed, O my God! to separate me from her to whom I have so often said that I should wish to die the same day as she. This desire has not been granted, and thou hast condemned me to survive.

“She is at rest; and never have I more fully realized than in this my exceeding grief the meaning of that beautiful Christian word, quies—rest.”

I said this with all my heart, and I have comprehended.... O Kate! I loved you too much for this world. Bless me from on high, and visit me with Picciola. It seems to me that the divine Goodness must permit that.

AUGUST 2.

“The present war is the natural and necessary consequence of the great apostasy of the sixteenth century and the principles of the Revolution!” O my God! if this might be a holy war! But I fear; for France is so guilty! Prayers are being offered in all the dioceses; the emperor has put himself at the head of the army. May God save us! We needed a St. Louis, if we were to deserve victory. Do you remember, Kate, how much we admired these words of Bossuet? “War is often a salutary bath, in which nations bathe and are regenerated.” Oh! how you must pray, all our kind friends in heaven.

AUGUST 4.

Amélie has bidden us adieu; she is a charming creature. Her mother will not accompany her. She fears her own weakness; and she is a veritable Spartan.

On the 2d of August took place a first engagement at Saarbrück; our troops were victorious. May this success augur well! They say that there is a terrible effervescence in minds. Our Bretonnes are praying that their sons may soon return.

Arrival of our Parisians! Alix and Margaret have all the grace of the twins; my godson is magnificent. I like to feel that we are together in these troubled times. How I pity mothers!

AUGUST 7.

Terror, anguish, defeat—these are the synonyms of this date. Two days ago we were beaten at Wissembourg; yesterday at Forbach. We are waiting for news. Our reverses are a chastisement; the French government is withdrawing its troops from Rome. Is it, then, to secure success that France abandons the Pope? Oh! it is not France which acts thus; she is too profoundly Catholic for that; but she will be none the less certain to undergo the penalty for this cowardice. Kate, pray for France! The Prussians are upon our soil, and civil war is also feared.

AUGUST 13.

Horrible details are received of the battle of Reichshoffen. Marshal MacMahon behaved with admirable heroism. He would not quit the field of battle after witnessing this odious butchery—40,000 against 150,000! Lord, O Lord! have pity. There must have been some treason there. The cuirassiers and chasseurs of MacMahon sacrificed themselves to facilitate the retreat. The newspapers make one weep. Kate, what is said in heaven?

My Guy is charmingly beautiful; and when he is twenty years old an enemy’s cannon-ball will have the right to carry him off!

AUGUST 21.

Dear Kate, I bless God for having placed you in the peace of eternity before these murderous struggles, in which your heart would so often have been wounded! Ah! it seems to me that it is a great favor to be taken from this earth before the calamities which are impending.

A subscription has been set on foot, in order that all France shall offer a sword of honor to MacMahon. Marshal Lebœuf, General-in-Chief, is replaced by Marshal Bazaine; the army is falling back on Chalons. There were brilliant affairs on the 14th, 15th, and 16th. But what agitation in the country! The republicans consider the moment favorably for their triumph, and René declares that the Prussians of France are still more to be dreaded than the Prussians of Germany. Montaigne said: “There are triumphant defeats which equal the finest victories.” Our troops are sublime. Fresh levies are being made, companies of francs-tireurs are organized; will France be saved? Catholic La Vendée is rising en masse.

AUGUST 24.

The Prussians are at Saint-Dizier. It is said that in the partial engagements the losses are considerable on both sides. The enemy is bombarding Strasbourg. Read heart-rending details. Povera Francia! They say that two sons of Count Bismarck are dead; it is the justice of God passing by! Oh! when we think of so many families who are suffering from the disasters of invasion, who see their homes invaded and their days in peril, how ardent are our prayers!

That which I dreaded is come upon us. René and his brothers are going! O my God! guard them from danger. I love France too well to hinder René from defending her. The fear of afflicting me held him back. God aid us and have at the English! as our Breton ancestors used to say. The English of to-day are the Prussians.

They leave us, five brothers, all valiant and strong, courageous as lions. Ah! if they should not return. I believe in presentiments, and something tells me that all hope of happiness is at an end for me. “Give all to God,” a saintly priest wrote to me. Fiat! Take all, my God, but leave me thy love!

Do you remember, Kate, my mother’s stories of the heroism of our grandfather? Do you remember that Georgina whose name I received, who said to her brother, “Go and fight without thinking of me. God and his angels will guard me; think of your country!”

Could I be less courageous than she? Pray for me, holy soul in heaven! What shall I do without him?

AUGUST 26.

Levies are being raised en masse. Men will not be wanting, but soldiers cannot be made at a moment’s notice, especially in our days. It is said that Bazaine is blockaded in Metz with 70,000 men, and that he has before him 200,000 Prussians. MacMahon is going to his relief with an equal number of heroes. The French have burnt the camp at Chalons. What will be the issue of this frightful struggle? The ministry which has caused all our misfortunes has resigned; a clear understanding is most important, and time passes away in useless discussions. General Trochu, a Breton, is Governor of Paris.

To-day we shall be left alone....

AUGUST 29.

It is over. René has taken with him all my heart, and I feel a strange sense of suffering. My mother has been sublime. O these adieux, these last embraces! Who would have said that we should come to this?

Protect them, ye holy angels! Bring them back to us soon with the return of peace! There are wounded everywhere; my mother has asked for ten, to whom we shall attend ourselves. It is terrible to see these mutilations. O war! how I hate it.

The army of Prince Frederick Charles is marching upon Paris; there are no official tidings of our soldiers. Phalsbourg, Toul, Metz, Strasbourg are all undergoing the horrors of bombardment. Where shall we go? Prayer alone will save us. There is much patriotic eagerness in the populations; the loan of 750,000,000 has been covered with astonishing rapidity. What will become of the capital? What chastisement will visit it for having erected a statue to Voltaire?

A visit—the Comtesse de G—— and her two daughters, friends of Lucy. What a difference between the two sisters! The younger calm, gentle, and placid, like a beautiful lake, seraphic and tender; the elder ardent and enthusiastic to exaggeration, impassioned for the cause of good, peace, and right, but like a volcano.

Kate, tell me that you pray for us, and that God will have pity upon his people!

AUGUST 31.

A letter from René! Alas! his presence was so sweet to me. Gertrude and I do not quit the chapel, except for the wounded. Mary and Ellen, Marguerite and Alix, multiply their prayers. Arthur has made his mother give him a Zouave’s uniform; thus equipped, he drills the children at the school. You should hear him say how he wants to join his father and fight with him. Our savage enemies commit revolting atrocities. How truly are they the sons of the Teutons!

Berthe’s family is in Switzerland.

SEPTEMBER 4.

Lord, save us; we perish!

The public journals speak in an ambiguous manner of triumphs with respect to which a terrible silence had been observed in official quarters; a great battle was imminent.... The day is come, and its events are brought to light. Povera Francia! The emperor and 40,000 French prisoners, MacMahon grievously wounded, and a capitulation—it is horrible! My God! hast thou abandoned France? The public consternation cannot be described. It was said yesterday that, owing to a crypt whose existence was generally unknown, the women and children had been able to quit Strasbourg, so valiantly defended by General Uhrich. The enemy aims his murderous projectiles especially at the cathedral—that unequalled marvel in stone. Horrible! horrible! It seems as if hell had vomited innumerable legions of monsters upon France. There were 550,000 in this last three days’ battle. How will all this end? “Arise, O Lord! and deliver thy people, for the time to show mercy is come!”[52]

Footnote 52:

Ps. ci.

SEPTEMBER 6.

The republic is proclaimed. Paris is in a state of delirium. Did not Joseph de Maistre say: “The French Revolution has been satanic; if the counter-revolution is not divine, it will be a nullity”? Read the Univers yesterday—so Christian, so right-thinking. Louis Veuillot calls Prussia the Sin of Europe. Will the republic save us? The enemy is at Soissons. We see now the result of twenty years of despotism.... “MacMahon is dead!” said a workman on the boulevards with a journal in his hand. At these words arose a general cry: “Honor to MacMahon!” This report is contradicted, and Mme. la Maréchale set out yesterday to join her husband. O this wound! What Frenchman would not give his life to heal it? No army left! Bazaine is still blockaded in Metz, bombarded by the Prussians. MacMahon had done wonders, but was unable to effect his junction with Bazaine. He was thrown back by the enemy upon Sedan, and a bridge not having been destroyed, notwithstanding his orders, he was surrounded by a network of the enemy; grievously wounded, he placed the command in the hands of General Wimpffen, who capitulated. MacMahon would never have done this—never! Without a miracle, France is lost. It seems as if one were suffering a bad dream in reading that, owing to our woods, the enemy slaughter us without mercy, whilst our blows fall on emptiness, and that on the fatal day which annihilated our army our artillery was for a quarter of an hour playing upon a regiment of French cuirassiers.... The Angelus is ringing. O Angelic Salutation! with what anguish Christian hearts yesterday repeated you, on this beginning of a new era of which no one can tell the form or the duration.

SEPTEMBER 7.

A line from Adrien to reassure us all. Alas! who does not tremble at this hour? Kate, protect us! Some members of the Left have, themselves alone, made the republic and seized the reins of government. Can the enemies of God regenerate a people? “The Keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” Napoleon I. (Louis Veuillot, the valiant heart, tells us) used to say that the general who dared speak of capitulation ought to be shot; what, then, would be the deserts of him who surrenders? Poor France, humiliated, vanquished, deprived of her noblest children!

SEPTEMBER 8.

On this festival of your nativity, O Our Lady of Victories! succor us. No courier from Paris, which must be invested. The Garde Nationale is being organized; the scheme is to oppose the whole of France to these Vandals of the nineteenth century—barbarous hordes who seem to be impelled by some irresistible force into the heart of our unhappy country. How French I feel myself in these days of sorrow! Dear Kate, is it true, as we believe, that all our saints of France, headed by St. Remi, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Joan of Arc, are prostrate at the feet of the Eternal to obtain the pardon which would save us?

SEPTEMBER 11.

In the frightful catastrophe of Sedan our soldiers were in want of munitions and had not eaten for four days.

I send daily a long bulletin of news to my devoted Margaret. Has not Marcella also something to fear? Poor Italy! Poor France! We can but have either a shameful peace or a pitiless war.... Laon is threatened with the fate of Strasbourg. Alas! these poor cities, besieged and heroic. “Country of my brethren and of my friends, may the words of God for thee be words of peace: 'May peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy towers!’ O my God! save thy servants who put their trust in thee!”[53]

Footnote 53:

Ps. cxxi.

Every man under arms, every woman at prayer! This decree makes me bless the republic. And René—where is he?

SEPTEMBER 13.

Laon must have ceased to exist; the commander has had the citadel blown up. They say that Garibaldi, the insulter of Pius IX. and the king of vagabonds and bandits, is coming to succor France; is not this the depth of humiliation? “How long, O Lord! wilt thou delay to succor us? O God! be thou our judge, and defend our cause against this pitiless nation; deliver us from these men, who are full of injustice and deceit!”

The enemy is six leagues from Paris. M. Thiers has set out for Vienna, St. Petersburg, and London. The United States have offered their mediation. We are assured that the foreign powers desire peace, but what proofs do they give? Russia is preparing formidable armaments, doubtless finding the present moment opportune for taking possession of Constantinople. The excommunicated king is adding to his crimes in annexing to his own the last remaining States of the church.

We are told that the republican world boasts greatly of the circular of Jules Favre and the letter of Victor Hugo.

I do not know from whence there comes to us a copy of a revelation announcing that from the 20th to the 29th all will be over, and that France will be delivered by a stranger. O feast of St. Michael the Archangel! be to us a day of salvation. But, Lord, does France deserve it? Ah! she is no longer the eldest daughter of the church, since she consents to the odious spoliation of Italy, and since every sort of hatred is let loose against religion. Do they not say that at Lyons the Visitandines have been driven from their convent? We deserve every misfortune and disgrace. Louis Veuillot, calm in the midst of so many storms, gave yesterday a beautiful article, in which he predicted the near approach of the triumph of the church; and today, the splendid history of Judas Machabeus. Save us, O Lord! we who are thy people. “God gives to his church the flotsam of every wreck, as he gives her, sooner or later, the laurel of every triumph.”

It is said that Paris will be destroyed. “Unless the Lord keep the city, he that keepeth it watcheth in vain!”[54] Hope! hope! Prayer will save us!

Footnote 54:

Ps. cxxvi.

I knew yesterday that Réne was alive. O Kate! pray for us.

SEPTEMBER 17.

O surprise! O joy!—if I dared to say so.... Margaret here! Kind, dear, and perfect friend! she could not remain away from us during these troubles. Lord William and Emmanuel have come with her. What an exquisite proof of affection! How we have wept together! O dear Kate, dear flower transplanted to heaven! your native soil, how much we have spoken of you. How René will be touched at hearing of this arrival! My mother and sisters give a festive welcome to my belle Anglaise, who is English only in name, being as Catholic, as Irish, and as French as we are.

Communications are interrupted, or are on the point of being so. The line of Orleans is cut. The Paris Journal is here, however, with frightful accounts of the barbarity of the Prussians. Save us, my God; have pity on those who are fighting pro aris et focis!

Margaret has brought me a bit of the soil of Ireland, and some flowers gathered from our mother’s grave.

SEPTEMBER 19.

What is happening to-day, twenty-four years after the Apparition of La Salette? We are melting away in prayers. My mother has obtained from the bishop the most liberal permissions for benedictions. Our good curé is dying ... of old age and grief. The love of their country is a robust plant among the Bretons.

Dear Kate, we speak of you with Margaret. I told her that I continue to write to you; she was touched at hearing it. How kind it is of her to have quitted her home to share our anguish and our dangers! The province will be invaded—that is certain. No news of René; but who does not feel courageous at this time? Ah! assuredly, in face of the extent of our disasters, selfish anxieties disappear, and the soul grows, in her prodigious faculty of suffering, to compassionate all the present miseries, all the crushing misfortunes, all the deaths. How long, O Lord! will thy hand be heavy upon us? O mysterious depths of the designs of God! O militant church! O venerated Pontiff, the purest glory of our age! O Rome, invaded like France! I have just read an admirable pastoral letter of Mgr. Freppel, the illustrious successor of Mgr. Angebault in the see of Angers. He sees a reason for hope in this community of sorrows between the mother and the eldest daughter. O Pontiff!—is not this title become a bitter derision? The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church, and we are surely not far distant from her signal triumph; but how many tears, it may be, and how many martyrdoms, before that hour! Italy, France, Ireland—the three countries of my heart, lands that are mingled in one in my enthusiasm and love, daughters of God, and the privileged ones of his heart—you cannot perish; God will fight for you, and we shall bless him for ever!

Kate, beloved sister, tell me that you hear me, that your soul touches mine. Be René’s guardian angel!

SEPTEMBER 21.

Our life is strange. Beneath all it has a wonderful serenity, a confidence in God which defies everything; on the surface it is a sort of fever, passing from the wildest hope to the most complete discouragement. Gertrude has appointed us her aides-de-camp—Margaret and myself. There is much to do around us. Our Bretonnes have need to be consoled, and there are sick and dying. The good abbé multiplies himself with admirable self-forgetfulness; our pastor is dying, happy to be called away at the present crisis.

I have a letter from René—a kind, long, sweet letter, from which I cannot take away my eyes. He only speaks to me vaguely of the war, so as not to increase my alarm. Every ring of the bell makes us start; the gallop of a horse makes us run to the windows. My mother never quits her psalter and rosary; Mistress Annah faithfully keeps her company when we are not there; Mary and Ellen, with the other dear young ones in the house, are our sunshine. The courageous Margaret talks politics with Lucy, the abbé, and the doctor, organizes plans of defence, creates fortresses, and finally expels the enemy. Lord William was just now reading to us in the Paris Journal of the 18th details of deep interest relating to the affair of Sedan—“the Waterloo of the Second Empire, and the greatest disaster of modern times.”

SEPTEMBER 25.

Jules Favre has made an appeal to William and Bismarck. France is very low. The result has been the affirmation of the exorbitant demands of the conquerors. The struggle is to be pushed to extremities. Regiments are to be formed of National Guards. Here none are left but old men. No official news. It is said that the enemy has been repulsed at Versailles, that Nantes is burnt, that headquarters are at Meaux; they said yesterday at Rheims: “O Clovis! why are you not there with your Franks?” The Prussians are burning Rouen. When, then, will the terrible work of these executioners of Heaven be ended? William wants Alsace and Lorraine, Metz, Strasbourg, Toul, Verdun, and Mont Valérien. Ah! we also, we shall say with the Bishop of Orleans that which was said by Louisa of Prussia—a magnanimous soul, to whom the life of her four sons was less dear than the honor of her country; a believing and valiant woman, who beheld so violent and devastating a storm pass over her kingdom that Prussia was on the point of being erased from the map of nations: “I believe in God; I do not believe in force. Justice alone is stable. God prunes the spoiled tree. We shall see better times, if only each day find us better and more prepared.” The son has not inherited the sentiments of the mother. It is said that it was Prince Albert who commanded the burning of Bazeilles; this fearful barbarity would suffice for his reprobation in the memory of men. “The Hebrew people saw Deborah and Judith arise in the day of its affliction; Gaul, St. Geneviève; and France of the middle ages, Joan of Arc.”[55] Who shall save modern France? Whose arm shall God raise up to avenge her? “But now thou hast cast us off, and put us to shame: and thou, O God! wilt not go out with our armies.... Arise, O Lord! Why sleepest thou?”[56]

Footnote 55:

Gabourd.

Footnote 56:

Ps. xliii.

Rome is invaded by the republican troops; they leave the Pope the castle of Sant’ Angelo and the Leonine city, with magnificent assurances of security. O the time of deliverance, the hour of salvation!—soon, doubtless, soon. The church cannot perish. Gentle Pontiff, Pius IX., Vicar of Christ and his representative, like him crucified in heart, given gall to drink, overwhelmed with insults, your powerless children join their supplications to your own, and God will arise, mighty and terrible, to confound your enemies—you who have loved justice and hated iniquity!

Letter from René, hastily written in a cottage. Our Blessed Lady protect his devotion! “Our help is in the name of the Lord!” O church of Jesus Christ! how happy are thy children in the midst of their distress. What ineffable consolations in thy sacred prayers! I live in the Psalms, I nourish my soul with them; every feeling of the heart is there so marvellously expressed, and in incomparable language.

SEPTEMBER 27.

Louis Veuillot, the intrepid defender of the Catholic faith, a few weeks ago wrote as follows: “God will have pity on us. Justice will not exceed mercy. We shall not be scourged beyond the needs of our future well-being; we shall find in the cup of chastisement a healthful beverage. The love of their country raises hearts above vulgar vexations. They are willing to be ruined; they are willing to die. But these abject and senseless things mingled with our tragedies, these intoxicating songs when the earth is being watered with generous blood, these statesmen who ask for prayers and authorize blasphemy, these blasphemies beneath the falling thunderbolt, these assassins of the pavement and these orators in the tribune—all this revelation of the stupid crowd which will not be saved—it is these things which keep souls under the millstone, which suffocate and grind them down.” How well this great mind describes the deepest sufferings of all that is still Christian in this nation of crusaders and martyrs! The admirable demonstrations of the Bretons and Vendéans console one for the irreligion of the greater number. Why has not all Europe risen to defend in the Pope the cause of outraged sovereignty? The sacrilege of Victor Emanuel has met with no resistance.

“Be to us, Lord, a place of defence against the enemy!” We are on a volcano—the volcano of popular passions; if the hand of God does not arrest them, what will become of us? Confidence! confidence! “Infidel France is abased and humiliated, and is not yet willing to repent; eucharistic France will pray, will arise, and increase in greatness!”[57]

Footnote 57:

Louis Veuillot.

O beloved soul gone hence before me, and who art myself! offer to God our prayers.

OCTOBER 2.

Toul has surrendered, after a splendid resistance worthy of a better fate. The 29th—the looked-for 29th, the feast of the glorious Protector of France—has brought us another sorrow more: the capitulation of Strasbourg! O dear and beautiful cathedral, which I loved so well! “There is nothing left but ruins,” writes one of Berthe’s cousins. Why does the Lord delay to help us? Will not our other fortresses be also forced to give themselves up into the enemy’s hands? What will become of France? William is at Versailles; he lay down, booted and spurred, in the bed of the great king who so imperiously dictated laws to all Europe. Who will redeem us from all our humiliations?

Margaret and Lord William have apprehensions which will only too soon, alas! be verified. La Vendée is rising at the call of Cathelineau and of Stofflet—two illustrious names. Ah! who will merit for us that we shall be saved, when the public papers lavish outrage and abuse against everything that is holiest in the world—against the church of God, his priests, his pontiff, the glorious Pius IX.? Who shall restrain thine arm, O Lord! when scarcely a voice is raised to recall to conquered France that thou art the Salvation of the nations?

OCTOBER 7.

The gentle Bishop of Geneva used to say: “Alas! we shall soon be in eternity, and then shall we see of how small account were the affairs of this world, and how little it mattered whether they were accomplished or not.” Adrien sends us long details. My soul is in anguish. O Kate! pray for us. I went yesterday with Margaret to the cemetery; we stayed there long. A splendid moonlight illumined the golden crosses surmounting the marble columns beneath which our doves repose. A feeling of profound peace took possession of my soul in the midst of this striking contrast—the calm and tranquillity of this field of death with the tumult and agitation of actual life in our poor France.

OCTOBER 8.

The journals give accounts, only too faithful in their details, of the battle of Sedan, the catastrophe of Laon and of Strasbourg. It is horrible—this destruction, these savage attacks! Of how many valiant defenders are we not deprived, while the enemy’s forces are going to strengthen the army now besieging Paris! William is at St. Germain; he desires to be present at the bombardment of the brilliant capital which gave him so splendid a reception three years ago. To the shame of humanity, Europe remains unmoved in presence of our misfortunes. America sends an insignificant number of volunteers. O divine Justice! wilt thou not avenge us? Who shall tell the story of this sanguinary epic? Who shall recount this unheard-of intermingling of shameful cowardice and prodigies of courage, of base treason and sublime devotion, of reverses and successes equally impossible? Who shall tell posterity that the most loyal and generous of nations, the people which has been eager in its succors to every misfortune, has found no defender in the day of its calamities? And who shall make known to France that her success is a consequence of her repentance, that there is something greater than victory, more decisive and more powerful than the most formidable engines of war—the protection of Him who holds in his hands the destinies of nations? Deus, Deus, quid reliquisti nos?

OCTOBER 10.

Two melancholy, dark, and rainy days, such as always depress my soul. Garibaldi has arrived at Marseilles with a thousand volunteers—doubtless the scum of Italy. Mgr. de Saint-Brieuc summons all Bretons to the defence of their country. “No, France will not die! This cry from the heart of forty millions will pierce heaven and awaken all the echoes of the earth!” Paris has provisions for two months; but after? Surely all France will rise, and, as soon as she feels herself strong enough, she will meet these barbarians, to whom all has been successful hitherto! What bloodshed! What ruins! What opprobrium! Will not God raise up some hero from this soil which has given so much to the world? Anna Maria Taigi predicted that the Council would last eighteen months, that Pius IX. would die towards its close, and the gentle and venerated Pontiff would see the dawn of a new time. Does not this mean that soon the trials of the Papacy will cease? “The church cannot perish; but God has not made to nations the same promises of immortality.”

O Kate and Mad, my two idols! I think of you. To-morrow we go to Auray, all together; the abbé will say Mass for us there, if we can arrive before noon.

OCTOBER 14.

I have prayed much, thought much, suffered much, hoped much, loved much, during these four days!

A prediction, said to be from Blois, assures us of definitive success. Alas! we were in need of saints; this republic of lawyers makes me afraid. My mother quoted to us yesterday an old prophecy from the works of Hugues de Saint-Cher, Cardinal-Dominican of the thirteenth century: “There will be four sorts of persecutions in the church of God: the first, tyrants against the martyrs; the second, heretics against the doctors; the third, lawyers against simple people; and, lastly, Antichrist against all.” We are in the third. There is no unity; there is impotence, and therefore nothing succeeds.

A terrible rumor which will only too soon be confirmed—Orleans is invaded. M. de Bismarck’s plan is to ruin France in detail, in order that it may for a long time be impossible to her to avenge herself. But vengeance belongs to God, and he will take it! The journals gave us so much hope! What a spectacle—two nations slaughtering each other, and a land which God created so fair covered with blood and ruins! Send us, O Lord! legions of angels; fight for the cause of civilization and right; save France, and may there no longer be amongst us a single soul which does not by its worship glorify thee!

The news from Metz is reassuring in that direction—Metz, which has been our ruin! The inhabitants are admirable in their patriotism, and engage to defend the city if Bazaine and the one hundred thousand men can make themselves an opening. Without a miracle, however, can the aspect of events undergo a change? Bitche continues to resist. O my France! must thou, like Ireland, also be crucified?

Evening.—An enigmatic despatch, in negro language, announces that the army of the Loire has been compelled to retire before superior forces, and that St. Quentin has repulsed fifteen thousand of the enemy. Garibaldi declares that fifteen thousand Italians will march at the first signal. The six thousand Pontifical Zouaves will form a splendid regiment, under the leadership of a hero, M. de Charette. Oh! how these words rend my soul: Garibaldi, Pontifical Zouaves. What an assemblage! May God pardon France! How will all this end? Phalsbourg holds out, and other towns; but to see the enemy always in imposing numbers, to know that everywhere they make crushing requisitions, that each day brings fresh mourning, is a deadly sorrow! What part of our soil will remain unpolluted by the passage of these emissaries of death?

Orleans is in the enemy’s power—Orleans, the key and the heart of France—Orleans, the Queen of the Loire, the faithful city, the town saved from Attila by St. Aignan, from the English by Joan of Arc! A great battle is imminent.

Our venerated pastor suffers no more. This morning, at three o’clock, one of our farmers, who, with Mistress Annah, was sitting up with him, came to let us know that he was sinking, and we reached him in time to receive his last blessing. O Kate! draw us also. The words of the divine Office for to-day are admirably suitable to our distress: “I am the Salvation of my people, saith the Lord; in whatsoever affliction they shall be, I will hear them when they shall call upon me, and I will be their God for ever.” “If I am in trouble, thou, O Lord! shalt preserve my life; thou shalt stretch forth thy hand against the fury of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me!”

OCTOBER 20.

O my God! if it were declared that these avenging hordes are to carry fire and sword through the whole of France, if our sanctuaries and our relics protected us not, still would we hope in thee, whose love is greater than our misdeeds, and we would bless thee for ever.

No news from Rheims.

OCTOBER 22.

Twenty thousand Prussians have invaded Chartres, the city of Mary, famous for its pilgrimage and for its splendid memories. Will they not defile its cathedral? Horror! The churches of Nancy are changed into stables. O my God! so many profanations, and still always triumph.

OCTOBER 26.

Read the circular of M. Jules Favre to the French diplomatic agents. O statesman! your eyes, then, are not opened, and you perceive not that, chastised for our crimes, we cannot be saved but by the help of God.

They write to us from Orleans: it is lamentable! Poor, dear city! who shall restore it to us? O misguided France! what firm and Christian hand shall take thy helm and steer thee into port? At the beginning of this century, and up to the close of its first half, what noble characters, what ardent Catholics defended the cause of liberty! And now, alas! how this oracle of the Holy Scriptures makes me fear: “A kingdom is given over from one people to another, because of its injustice, violence, and crimes.”

Kate, what is said in heaven? O dearest sister, my other mother! protect René and pray for France.

OCTOBER 30.

Bazaine has surrendered; 120,000 troops, 20,000 wounded, cannon, flags, and Metz, the strongest of our citadels, the heroic city—all is Prussian! It is, then, finished. It seemed as if all French hearts had there their hope—not the last, which can be only God. The circular of Gambetta begins by a sursum corda: “Lift up your hearts! lift up your souls!” It is well, but whither? You say not, “Up to God,” nor do you pronounce that saving name.

Ah! France has deserved this shame of being again vanquished, of seeing all her citadels fall one after another, until the day when, repentant and humbled, she will implore the divine aid. Schélestadt has also capitulated.... Gertrude is ill and keeps her room. The blade has worn out the scabbard, the body has been broken down by the soul. O my God! wilt thou take from me also this elder sister—this admirable saint, my model and consolation? “Weep for France, dear sister,” she said, “not for me. I have given all to God; I do not fear. I offer for my country my last sorrow—that of not seeing Adrien once more....”

This unexpected blow crushes me. Pray for us, Kate!

NOVEMBER 1.

“Heaven is opening. O Jesus! have pity upon France.” And thus she died.... It is, then, true! Henceforth I must seek her in heaven with you, dear Kate, and all our dear ones who have taken wing from hence.

What an example she leaves us! Not a complaint: she owned to me that she had long been suffering. What austerity of life! What renunciation of her own tastes! What love of poverty! “She was too near heaven to remain below,” my mother says. Margaret is very unwell, because of so many emotions. O this life and this death; these adieux, this generosity of heart, these last lines traced for Adrien, for her brothers! A few minutes before her departure she said to me: “You will come soon.”

I scarcely know where I am; my soul is in a chaos of sorrows, but the love of God prevails over all. I am writing this by her funeral couch. Three days ago she went out with us. She fatigued herself too unsparingly; she never shrank from trouble. Kate, welcome her and bless your sister! Gain strength for me, and, if I must die without once more seeing René, obtain that I may know how to say, Fiat!

Mourning in the family, mourning for the country—for everything, mourning!

NOVEMBER 7.

I feel ill.... Anxiety is killing me. O Kate! O Gertrude! remember us on high. The day before her death Gertrude said: “Prayers, prayers! Oh! the Lætatus of the angels must be so beautiful.... I hear it!...” Mary and Ellen at her request sang her an Irish melody on the love of one’s country. “Georgina, to pray, to suffer—this is everything!”

What words! And how well I understood her at that moment, when all was passing away from this valiant and strong soul who had fought the good fight! Poor Adrien!

Troops have been levied en masse, from twenty to forty years of age. The Lamentations of Jeremias apply to us in our calamities! Who shall number the widows and the orphans? May God protect us! The sadnesses of the present life complete my detachment from this world by discovering to me its nothingness. The details respecting Metz throw me into stupefaction. My mother has heroically borne the great trial; she herself closed the eyes, so bright, so beautiful, of her eldest daughter. She insists that Lord William shall take Margaret away, because the enemy is certain to come upon us also. “Well, then,” says my friend, “we will defend you!”

NOVEMBER 10.

The Univers is here, edited at Nantes. Yesterday it contained a magnificent page, vibrating with Catholic faith, addressed by Louis Veuillot to General Trochu. The illustrious convert of Rome has, then, quitted the country of his heart and is present at the agony of that Paris whose corruptions he has so energetically denounced. I have been glad (if one may use the word) to find, in this believing journal, an expression of the indignation of my soul against those who have dared to give to that gouty fetich, Garibaldi, the rank of a French general at the moment when Piedmont was consummating its sacrilegious attacks against Pius IX. There is fighting at Orleans. O Joan of Arc!

Kate dearest, we all suffer. What has become of all our hopes? No, they are not destroyed; they had heaven for their object.

NOVEMBER 13.

I dare not make a complete narrative of our disasters, and I know not how to speak of anything else. “Revolutionary France is no longer the France of Christ. She has kept the name, but repudiated the heart. O France, France! nation of so many centuries, of such men, and of so much glory, crouched beneath the boot of Flourens, before the sword of the Prussian.” These are the words of Louis Veuillot. Paris is wrought upon by rioters, the dregs of the Revolution. Bismarck is said to have uttered the pride-inflated words that “there is nothing but Prussia in the world: there is no more Europe!”

“Let us,” cries Louis Veuillot—“let us examine the inexorable logic which rolls us in the mire, and see by what hands it has been possible to lay prostrate a nation which is proud of having no more thought of God! O mockery! O derision! And this is France!”

We know nothing of the absent.... Uncertainty—the cross of crosses!

NOVEMBER 16.

Orleans is delivered. Cathelineau, the morning of his solemn entry, went with his Vendéans to hear a Mass of thanksgiving. In hoc Signo vinces. Marseilles and Lyons, the Queen of the Mediterranean and the city of Notre Dame de Fourvières, are agitated by violent intestine struggles. Pazienza! Speranza! Oh! what need has my soul of these two sources of strength to bear up beneath this hour of unutterable anguish! René and Adrien are wounded! “Remember, my daughter, the sacrifice is short and the crown eternal,” my poor mother says to me, wounded to the heart like myself. Where are they? The date is torn off the letter, which has been brought us by an unfortunate soldier with an amputated limb, who has faced a thousand dangers to come and die in his own part of the country. I wish to go—but whither? Kate, inspire me!

NOVEMBER 22.

My anxiety has brought on fever.... Yesterday was a great day in the religious history of France. Mgr. de la Tour d’Auvergne convoked the whole church of France to a solemn act of faith. At one and the same hour, in all the sanctuaries of this nation, bent beneath the strokes of the divine Justice, Mass was said to obtain pardon. O Lord! if only so many prayers and tears might obtain peace. “All for God and our country!” cried Cathelineau, before that altar[58] where joys so pure were granted me. “Let official France make her act of penitence!” says the Univers. Alas! it does not appear that this thought occurs to her. O these dates, these memories, my whole life in my remembrance! I examined myself this morning and had to acknowledge my own weakness. My God! wilt thou require of me this sacrifice? I would desire to submit, but my heart!... Dear and sweet friend, chosen for me by the best-beloved and most devoted of sisters, return, return! O fatal war! I comprehend the words of Rousseau: “The man who has lived longest is not he who can reckon up the greatest number of years, but he who has felt most what is life.”

Footnote 58:

In the cathedral of Orleans.

There are presentiments.... My soul is crushed. Ah! these hours, these days which are passing by—what are they for France?

The Duke of Aosta, son of Victor Emanuel, is named King of Spain by the Cortes. Into what hands is Europe yet to fall? The diadem of Charles V. and of St. Ferdinand in the family of the excommunicated King of Italy; these two countries of noble memories thus fallen, and France defended by Garibaldi; the insulter of sanctity, the blasphemer of Jesus Christ, made a French general! O blindness, O impiety of a government which pretends to be a regenerator! And this, too, in the age in which we live, in the century of Pius IX. and of the Immaculate Conception!... Deluges of rain for weeks past. Our unfortunate youth of France decimated by misery and cold!

Wrote to Marcella and Lizzy—two lovely, beloved, and poetic souls.[59]

Footnote 59:

A few hours after tracing these lines Georgina learnt of the death of René. Of the five brothers, two had given their lives for France. Adrien and Gertrude rejoined each other in heaven.

NOVEMBER 26.

The Lord gave him to me; the Lord hath taken him away! Thou hast willed it, my God; thou hast taken back this life which was so dear to me. I adore thy will!

NOVEMBER 29.

Is this dying life deserving of a single regret? And yet I weep! My God! thou pardonest these tears—thou who didst weep over us. Oh! if I had at least had his last look.

It is a week ago this evening since I knew of my misfortune. O my God! that unusual stir, those sinister noises, and the entrance of Raoul, Edouard, and Paul. Dead—both dead! I would see that dear face once again, to try and restore its warmth by my kisses!

DECEMBER 1.

Kate, I can write no more.... A widow! Can you comprehend this word and the desolation which freezes my heart? All my soul was devoted to him, placed in him. Miserere mei, Deus! Friend so dear, so loving, so heroic, so kind, obtain for me that I may follow you to the home where separation is no more. O you who stood on Calvary, Our Blessed Lady! pray for us. Have pity upon my distress!

He is dead! The heart which loved me has ceased to beat! And if only France were saved, and my mourning might win her salvation!

And still I must live, move about, spend myself in attendance on the sick, when I feel as if the heavy stone which hides him from me were weighing down my soul. O the destruction wrought by death! Thus one single year has taken all from me!

Prayed for two hours yesterday by this newly-closed tomb. O Lord! I spoke to him, I understood him, I comprehended that thou requirest holy victims to disarm thy justice.

O France! which I loved so much.

DECEMBER 25.

Margaret leaves us suddenly. Her father-in-law is dying. God be praised for having left her with us during these days of trouble!

I am still weak in the inferior part of my soul, feeling every hour an increase of bitterness and depression. “You will come soon!” This farewell of Gertrude’s resounds continually in my ears. Nevertheless, if the pain of a long life should be in store for me, if her words were symbolic only, if I must grow old, I pray the Author of all good to permit that the unending mourning of my heart may overflow in tenderness towards all who suffer, that I may wipe away or comfort tears—I, who henceforth can only live in tears.

Christmas, feast of gladness, of the birth of Jesus, and of love; the anniversary of Edith’s death!

JANUARY 1, 1871.

Spent this day in the church and cemetery. O René! how I hear you still. I seek you now in heaven. Pray for France, and also for me, who cannot accustom myself to widowhood.

O ye almost infinite delights enjoyed in the intimacy of that noble heart! can I think upon you and not die?

Dear René, dear Kate, it is before God that I weep; it is on these pages concealed from all that I write my regrets. Does God permit this, or is it cowardice?

JANUARY 4.

Edouard has this morning put René’s pocket-book into my hands. My name is on every page. Observed these words, which I have read a hundred times over: “If I die, comfort her, ye good angels who guided me to her!”... Oh! it is more than I can bear—emotion and regrets so deep.

JANUARY 6.

He is at rest. Eternal felicity of rest in God, thou art become his inheritance. I loved him so much, and, alas! I could not secure his happiness! Just now I opened my book of Hours at this Psalm: “Cantate Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit.” I seemed to obtain a glance into heaven, and this friend, so ardently and faithfully loved, was smiling upon me.... Rapid flashes of light, after which the darkness thickens and the loneliness grows more oppressive!

JANUARY 13.

May God console the mothers, the widows, and the orphans!

If I had time to think of self in this chaos of nameless events, I should feel myself unfortunate beyond all expression. O Lord! the happiness of loving thee, of possessing thee in heaven, is well worth some years of Calvary; and although mine appears to me at times so difficult to climb, thou knowest that it is no more for myself that I weep, but that the sufferings of René’s country alone fill my heart. My poor France, so glorious whilst she still served thee, wilt thou efface her for ever from the book of nations, or wilt thou restore her power? Fiat voluntas tua! Turn us to thee, O Christ! who didst die to save the world, and, for the sake of so many hearts that turn to thee, shorten our woes!

JANUARY 18.

Heard for the first time the complete account of his death.... My brothers are on the point of setting out again; they are of a race in which self-devotion is hereditary.

O René! how proud I am of you—dead on the field of honor, after receiving your God that morning; and dying in defence of France! Ah! I would fain be a Sister of Charity, to have a right to receive the last sigh of our courageous defenders.

Often had you said to me: “It seems to me that I should have strength to love God even to suffering martyrdom!” And the hour came when it would have been permitted you to remain quietly at home; but your country was in mourning, and you went forth, a soldier for right, a soldier of God! Ah! then I felt indeed something which broke within me....

Do you, on high, remember her who loved you better than herself? Do you call to mind those delightful days when heavenly love shed a ray from on high upon our love? Do you remember our conversations, in which the thought of eternity was always present? Ah! we both knew well that our happiness was not of this world.

Yesterday I dressed the wounds of an unhappy victim of this war, which posterity will call inexplicable. What a horrible wound! The man was a Vendéan and a Catholic. He saw tears in my eyes, and thanked me with a hearty and naïve simplicity. He regrets his wife, whom he wants to see. Poor woman!—or rather, happy woman; for she will see him!

JANUARY 25.

A letter from Karl, addressed to René. O my God!

The enemy is approaching; France is agonizing. René, Kate, Mad, pray for us!

FEBRUARY 2.

Miserere nostri, Domine!

I return to these pages on a day of cruel disappointment. Paris has capitulated! The Prussians occupy the forts; the army has been made prisoners of war. There is an armistice of twenty-two days. There were elections on the 8th for a constituency. How many sorrowful events have taken place!—the bombardment of Paris, the defeat of Chanzy at Mans, the civil discords.... One must despair, were it not that God overrules all, and that if he punishes he is ready to pardon. The question is whether France is to be or not to be!

Edouard writes. He hopes that the Prussians will not advance so far as to the sea. Margaret and Marcella—what do they think at this time, at this Gethsemani of France?

“O my God! I am as thou wert, falling prostrate from weakness, when another had to carry thy cross!”[60]

Footnote 60:

The Abbé Perreyve.

Si vous pouviez comprendre et le peu qu’est la vie, Et de quelle douceur cette morte est suivie![61]

Footnote 61:

“Could you but know how small a thing is life, and also by what sweetness death is followed!”

FEBRUARY 12.

Prayer and charity fill up our time. Alas! there is still room for regrets. Everything revives them; to-day it is a passage from Montaigne: “We were seeking one another, and our names were intermingled before we had made acquaintance. It was a festival when I saw him for the first time; we found each other all at once so bound together, so united, so well-known, so obliged, that nothing was so dear to each of us as the other. And when I ask myself whence comes this joy, this ease, this repose that I feel when I see him, it is because it is he and because it is I; this is all I can say.”

O René! it was thus that we loved, and thus our love will be eternal.

FEBRUARY 18.

The fatherland of our soul is God! Trial is not sent only as an expiation to purify us, but also to detach us from earth and raise us near to God. “Jubilate Domino, omnis terra; servite Domino in lætitia!” O my soul! do thou serve the Lord with gladness. Lift the veil; behind your troubles and sorrows God is there, who counts them all, and whose love will change them into an unknown weight of glory! Beati qui lugent! Heaven! heaven!

I was thinking this evening of the motto of Valentine of Milan: Plus ne m’est rien, Rien ne m’est plus[62]. Is this sufficiently Christian? From this world’s point of view, from the frivolities of life and of all that charms the senses, oh! nothing is anything to me. But one’s country, the church, the poor, one’s family!

Footnote 62:

More is naught to me; naught is aught to me more.

O Jesus, who seest my tears! remember that thou hast said: “All that you shall ask the Father in my name, he will give you.” May thy adorable will be done! He who believes, hopes, and loves—has he the right to complain? Can the soul whom thou dost protect call herself abandoned? Will the heart that is rich in thy love feel despoiled and desolate? Draw me to loftier heights, O Christ, my King!

FEBRUARY 21.

Belfort has capitulated! Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem. Must we say with Dante: Lasciate ogni speranza? How empty and desolate earth appears to me! My God, show thyself; let thy power shine forth in our behalf! I will hope in thee against all hope. “Every soul is the vicar of Jesus Christ, to labor, by the sacrifice of himself, at the redemption of humanity. In the plan of this great work each one has a place marked out from eternity, which he is free to accept or to refuse.” René, Kate, Gertrude, you all understood this! O my God! have pity upon France. I offer myself as a holocaust to thee. I accept every sacrifice; I give myself up; take with me all who have in like manner devoted themselves: let not France undergo the fate of Ireland; let her not be crushed by Protestantism, but leave her her faith and love.

MARCH 1.

Peace is declared, but at what a price!—five milliards, Alsace, and Metz; the occupation of Champagne until the payment of the indemnity, the entry into Paris of thirty thousand men on this very day. O the Alsatians! To think that henceforth they belong to the Vandals who have ruined their territory, made a desert everywhere, brought mourning into every home—what infinite grief! No! the Prussian will not be their master; the heart of Alsace is too French; the yoke of the enemy may weigh down bodies but not souls. We have here a friend of Berthe’s, a young wife and mother, who ever since this morning has been in the chapel, weeping in despair. Poor Alsace! Terrible alternative—the mother-country sacrificing her more unfortunate sons to purchase the others!... Where is Joan of Arc? Where are even the women of Carthage! Lord, save us!

MADAME DE T—— TO LADY MARGARET.

MARCH 20, 1871.

God be with us!

Dear Lady Margaret, our so dear, beautiful, and perfect Georgina has departed from us for ever!

I cannot leave to any one else the sorrow of acquainting you with this fresh bereavement.... Shall I have strength for it? I feel as if my heart were enclosed in the tomb where my children rest.

A pernicious fever has carried from us this most lovable creature, who has been amongst us like an apparition from heaven. She is now reunited to him whom she so loved and mourned, and she who had “unlearnt happiness” is happy now! This thought is necessary to sustain those who remain. You know what she was to me—the most loving, devoted, and piously amiable of daughters; you know what she was to all—an adviser, a comforter, and a light. And all this in a few hours has vanished from us. Who shall console us for the loss of this angelic child, the very sight of whom was a consolation?

Dear friend, she thought of you; she murmured your name in her last prayer. God, the church, France, Ireland, and all those who loved her, by turns were on her lips; the voluntary victim of charity, she accepted death with gladness. You who were her sister, kind Lady Margaret, would that you had been with us at that time which was at once both sweet and cruel! Ah! tears are not permitted to me; the place of angels is in heaven.

Do not think of returning to us until peace is definitely established. Alas! only a few days since we were forming a project to go and take you by surprise. Henceforth I quit Brittany no more—my Campo Santo, as my beloved daughter called it.

Oh! how she must pray for our sorrows on high.

On the morning of the last day she twice repeated to me these beautiful words of the Père Lacordaire: “However hard may be the separations of this world, there always remains to us Him who is its author, who has given and who removes us, who never fails, in whom we shall all be one day reunited by the faith and charity which he has given us.”

And a few minutes before breathing the last sigh she said: “Mother, I asked that I might die for France; it was a sacrifice, because of leaving you. Now all regret has disappeared from my heart; I am going to see Mad, Gertrude, Kate, René—and God!”

May she call me soon also!

Dear and kind friend, I would comfort you, but I am powerless. Let us love and pray.

My remembrances to Lord William; kisses to Emmanuel, the treasure whom she so much loved, and to yourself, the expression of the maternal affection of my desolate heart.

COMTESSE DE T——.

* * * * *

Madame de T—— survived this last affliction only a few months, and the Campo Santo received yet another tomb. May these delineations of love so pure and Christian, and of resignation so sublime, benefit at least some souls! This is the editor’s sole aim.

The premature end of Lady Margaret has unfortunately only too soon facilitated the sorrowful task of the friend who has been desirous of revealing to loving hearts the private life of her dear Georgina, this poetic flower of Ireland, transplanted to the soil of this our France, which became the second country of her heart, and which she loved even to death.

PROSE AND POETRY OF ANCIENT MUSIC.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils: The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

—Merchant of Venice.

Music, in its most general sense, is the art of producing melodious sounds, and, from its power over the passions, it is called the sentimental art. In the mythology of Greece it was cultivated chiefly by the Muses, from whom the term music is derived; but, although dear to all of them, it was presided over by Euterpe, who is always represented with a flute in her hand. The great divinity of song and instrumental music, however, was Apollo, who is mentioned in the Iliad as delighting the immortal gods with the sweetness of his notes; for he was the inventor of the lyre and leader of the Pierian nine, whence he is called sometimes Citharœdus and sometimes Musagetes, in both which characters very fine statues of him have come down to us from antiquity. The worship of the Muses began early in Greece, and the favorite resort of these divinities of intellectual pleasure was the flowery border of the rills that murmured down the sides of Mount Parnassus, while their chaste grove and sacred fountain of Castalia was on that part of the Parnassan range called Helicon. Here their statues were seen and described by Pausanias, and afterwards removed by Constantine to his new capital on the Bosporus.

Pagan authors ascribed the origin of music to fanciful occurrences, or, at best, to chance and natural operations. Thus, according to some, it was a gift to man of this one or that of their national divinities; but, according to others, the babble of running waters, the warbling notes of birds, mountains that echoed, winds that sighed through the forest trees and

Fill the shade with a religious awe,—

in a word, the general song of nature inspired Apollo and the Muses, who were no more than shepherds of Arcadia, to please the world with music; for

The birds instructed man, And taught him songs before his art began; And while soft evening gales blew o’er the plains, And shook the sounding reeds, they taught the swains; And thus the pipe was framed and tuneful reed.

—Lucretius.

But Christian writers believe that Adam, the first man, being endowed by the Creator with every sort of knowledge, excelled in music as well as in the other arts and sciences. With his fall this knowledge was weakened, while in his descendants many things were lost and all things became obscured. That music has in some way a heavenly origin all are agreed—even the Hindoos, who say that its effects are produced in us by recalling to memory the airs of Paradise, which we heard in our state of pre-existence; even the Greeks, whose fables are founded on the corruption of primeval traditions, and whose invocation to music is:

O art divine! exalted blessing! Each celestial charm expressing! Kindest gift the gods bestow! Sweetest good that mortals know!

But the writer in the English or, perhaps, in any other language who has most poetically stated the case of music, and given us a Christian view of it, is Newman, in the last of his Oxford University sermons. “Can it be,” he asks, “that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends, in itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere; they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes from our Home; they are the voice of angels, or the Magnificat of saints, or the living laws of divine Governance, or the divine Attributes; something are they besides themselves which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter, though mortal man—and he, perhaps, not otherwise distinguished above his fellows—has the gift of eliciting them.”

The ancients urged in favor of music three principal benefits to mankind: its effects in softening the manners of men, thereby promoting civilization and raising a people out of the barbarous and savage state; its effects in exciting or repressing the passions; and its effects as a medicinal power to cure diseases. Thus Polybius ascribes to the cultivation of this art the refinement of the inhabitants of Arcadia, and to the absence of such a discipline the roughness which characterized the citizens of Cynæthæ; thus Homer places a musician near the person of Clytemnestra as a guard upon her chastity, and, until he was away, Ægistus, who then wronged her, had no power over her affections. The subduing influence of music was again tried with success many ages after by the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay, who used to play upon guitars and flutes to attract the melody-loving Indians from their forest haunts towards the village communities which they had established on the banks of the Parana.[63] Lycurgus regulated the music of Sparta, and his laws were set to measure by the celebrated musician Terpander; while Plato not only attributed an instructive virtue to music, but maintained that a people’s music could not be interfered with without altering their form of government. This civilizing influence of music is beautifully illustrated by the old legend of the Greeks, that when the workmen toiled on the walls of Thebes, Amphion played so sweetly on a lyre borrowed from Mercury that the stones did move of themselves. This, of course, is an allegory, to signify that by his musical talents, poetical numbers, and the wisdom of his counsel Amphion prevailed with a rude people to submit to law, live in society, and raise a defence against their neighbors.

Footnote 63:

After religion there is certainly no greater means of civilization than commerce; and commerce in the middle ages began with fairs, at which merchants employed the seductions of minstrelsy and music to draw numbers together, and thus be able to display and sell their goods.

Since two things greatly contribute to the effects of music, its powers of imitation and of association, the ancients gave it a large measure of influence over the passions. Thus Plutarch relates that Terpander appeased a violent sedition among the Lacedæmonians by the aid of his lyre, and that Empedocles prevented a murder by the soothing sound of his flute; and the painter Theon, having brought one of his works, which represented a soldier attacking an enemy, to be exhibited on the public square, would allow the veil to be withdrawn only after his attendant musicians had wrought up with military airs the crowds that gathered before it. Hence Plato wrote that a warlike air inspires courage, because it imitates the sounds and accents of a brave man, and that a calm air produces tranquillity in the soul on the same principle; or, as Burke says, “The passions may be considerably operated upon, without presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose, of which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful effects of instrumental music”; for it counterfeits by sound some quality or state of the mind. Thus, rage is loud, anger harsh, but love and pity are gentle; consequently, loud and clangorous music stirs up the stronger passions, while a smooth measure imitates the gentler emotions of the mind. The wonderful influence of martial music on the ardor of soldiers in battle has been remarked by many writers on military affairs, and opera-goers must confess the bad tendency of sensuous music. Shakspere knew it well when he wrote of the fellow

Who capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

The effects of music on the heads and hearts of men were so strongly perceived by Plato that he banished from his model republic the Lydian and Ionian modes, because they excited the lower instincts, but retained the severe Doric and Phrygian measures on account of their manliness and decency; and some of our best English poets have recorded their testimony to these same effects. We subjoin a few examples, taken almost at random:

And ever against eating cares. Lap me in soft Lydian airs.

—Milton.

Music alone with sudden charms can bind The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.

—Congreve.

Chiron with pleasing harp Achilles tamed, And his rough manners with soft music framed.

—King.

Timotheus to his breathing flute and sounding lyre Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

—Dryden.

Now wild with fierce desire, My breast is all on fire! In soften’d raptures now I die! Can empty sound such joys impart? Can music thus transport the heart With melting ecstasy?

—Cunningham.

Music! the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heav’n we have below. Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love, With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art.

—Addison.

When Music, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions oft, to hear her spell, Thronged around her magic cell,

Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, Possessed beyond the Muse’s painting: By turns they felt the glowing mind Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.

—Collins.

Music the fiercest grief can charm, And Fate’s severest rage disarm; Music can soften pain to ease, And make despair and madness please; Our joys below it can improve, And antedate the bliss above.

—Pope.

Association of ideas, which has so large a share in the operations of the human mind, often contributes much to the effects of music; for, as Shakspere says:

How many things by season seasoned are To their right praise, and true perfection!

Thus, music that has been heard in an agreeable place or that was played by some one near and dear to us, or music that is connected with the trials and triumphs of our native land, will awaken sentiments of love or melancholy, or sympathy or ardor, on the principle of associated ideas. This is feelingly expressed in the 136th Psalm in the persons of the captive Hebrews, in whom the sound of music which they had listened to in happy days would have awakened too keen an anguish.[64] In more modern times we have had public illustrations of the same principle in those simple melodies called ranz des vaches, which are such favorites with the mountaineers of Switzerland, and are played upon a long trumpet or Alpine horn. The sound of these tunes, and the rude words set to them, which are expressive of scenes of pastoral life—the shingled cottage, the dashing waterfall, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of herds, and the tinkling cow-bells—sometimes recalled so vividly to the native in a foreign clime the memories of his own land as to produce a disease called nostalgia, that often showed itself among the Swiss soldiers in the Neapolitan service;[65] for

Footnote 64:

This plaintive Psalm was turned into most musical English verse by Donne, who makes it touchingly suggestive; and later, and better still, by Aubrey de Vere in his beautiful drama, Alexander the Great.

Footnote 65:

A person who was present has feelingly described the deep effect produced on some of our poor wounded soldiers who had been brought to a church in Fredericksburg on their way North, after one of the battles in the Wilderness, when some person sat down at the organ and played “Home, sweet Home.”

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds; And as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave; Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touched within us, and the heart replies.

—Cowper.

The belief of the ancients that music was auxiliary to medicine is attested by a great number of writers. Chiron the Centaur, who educated Achilles, was careful to unite instructions in the healing art to those which he gave on music. Plutarch tells us that Thales of Crete delivered the Spartans from a plague by the aid of his lyre; Athenæus quotes Theophrastus as authority that the Thebans cured epilepsy by the notes of a flute; Aulus Gellius says that music will rid a man of the gout; Xenocrates employed music in the cure of maniacs; while the judicious Galen gravely speaks of playing the flute over the suffering parts of the body; and the idea that music is the sovereign and only remedy for the bite of the tarantula still lingers in Southern Italy. The Tyrrhenes always hired a flute-player to perform while they flogged their slaves, to give them some relief under the lash; and there was usually an arch-musician on board of the triremes—in which the rowers’ strength and endurance were more severely taxed than in smaller vessels—not only to mark the time or cadence for each stroke of the oar, but principally to cheer the men by the sweetness of the melody; whence Quintilian takes occasion to remark that music is a gift of nature, to make us the more patiently to support labor and fatigue.[66]

Footnote 66:

Blessed Peter Claver, Apostle of the Negroes, used to contrive that the sufferers in the hospitals at Cartagena, in South America, should be solaced with music; and for centuries it has been a custom at Santo Spirito, in Rome, to have the magnificent organ which is set up in the main ward play three times a week for the patients.

Among the nations of antiquity Egypt was long thought to be the mother of ancient civilization; and the Egyptians were well acquainted with music, for representations of musical instruments have been discovered on some of their oldest monuments, such as obelisks and tombs. But they never popularized music, because they thought that it had the effect of making youth effeminate; yet Strabo says that their children were instructed in one, and only one, special kind of music, of which the government approved. Like every other profession, that of musician was hereditary. Egyptian music was originally grave and in solemn accord with the stiffness of the kindred arts, which were hampered by strict hieratic rules, and almost exclusively devoted to the service of religion. When the country fell under the sway of the Greeks, music became of a gayer and less moral sort, being as much or more employed at banquets and on other profane occasions as in the temples and beside the bier. The Ptolemies encouraged Greek music, and the musical contests introduced into Egypt by this race of splendid princes were all of Hellenic origin. Athenæus relates that at a grand Bacchic entertainment given by Ptolemy Philadelphus over six hundred musicians formed the orchestra. Musical talent was hereditary in the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the father of Cleopatra was surnamed Auletes, or the flute-player, from his excessive attachment to this instrument.

We have little knowledge of music as a science among the Hebrews, but there is abundant proof of its practice. They had music on their festival days, whether domestic, civil, or religious, and professional musicians were attached to the royal court; but the art was systematically studied in the schools of the prophets, and received its highest application in the Temple, where it entered largely into divine worship.

The music of the Greeks has engaged the attention of many learned men, but is so difficult a subject that no one understands it; and it is as easy to imagine how the Pyramids were raised as to conceive what Greek music was like.

Music enters largely into the mythology of Greece, and strange legends—some of which are pure myths, others the exaggeration of facts—have been made up about it. The Muses were extremely jealous of their musical talents, and whoever ventured to compete with them was punished. Thus the impudent Sirens or sea-nymphs lost their wings, and the lovely daughters of King Pierus were changed into birds.[67] Two of Apollo’s contests are famous for their mournful ending. One was with Marsyas, a ranger of the woods, who, having found the flute which Minerva threw away because it distorted her handsome features, rashly challenged the divine Apollo to a contest between this instrument and the lyre, the condition of which was that the victor might do what he wished with the vanquished. The Muses decided in favor of their leader, and the miserable mortal was tied to a tree and flayed alive. A statue of Marsyas, bound and suffering, was generally placed by the Greeks, and afterwards by the Romans also, in the vestibule of their halls of justice, as a warning not to go into litigation hastily, and, above all, not to dispute with the gods—i.e., bring religion into court.[68]

Footnote 67:

The adventure of Ulysses and the melodious Sirens was a subject early seized upon by Christian art within the Discipline of the Secret to convey an idea of the cross (Ulysses attached to the mast of his vessel), the church (under the figure of a ship), and the seductions of the world (of the flesh particularly) in this voyage of life. See De Rossi's Bulletin of Christian Archæology for 1863, page 35, in which a curious monument bearing on this strange rapprochement is described.

Footnote 68:

One of these old statues having come to light in good condition while the palace of Monte Citorio, designed by Pope Innocent XII. for the seat of the higher tribunals of law at Rome, was being built, it was appropriately placed on the landing at the head of the great stairway. The Italian Deputies have doubtless removed it, as too significant of divine vengeance.

Another triumph of Apollo was over Pan, a dilettante of music and inventor of the reed-pipes, which he called syrinx after the beautiful Arcadian nymph whose adventure with her tuneful lover is well known from Ovid. Midas, King of Phrygia, was chosen umpire, and, deciding in favor of Pan, was disgraced by having his ears changed into those of a donkey. Poor Midas contrived for a time to conceal his mishap by wearing day and night a cap of a peculiar form;[69] but as no man is long a hero to his valet, his body-servant, while trimming his hair one day, pushed up the bonnet a little and discovered the deformity. The secret so embarrassed him that, fearing he might unwittingly divulge it, he dug a hole in the ground beside a meandering brook and whispered therein: “Midas has ass’s ears!” He then filled it up and thought himself secure against himself; but, alas! on the very spot a tell-tale reed grew up, which, as the breezes rocked it to and fro, murmured the fatal secret, “Midas has ass’s ears.” While this fable may signify one of the ways by which the ancients believed nature to have drawn man’s attention to instrumental music—for travellers tell us that in some parts of the world there are plants called vocal or singing reeds, which emit a sweet strain when moved by the wind—it may also be a myth to insinuate that music is a sort of language; and as such, says Metastasio, it has the advantage over poetry which a universal language would have over a particular one, for music can touch all hearts in every age and country, but poetry speaks only to the people of its own age and country. One of the Greek stories of sublimest significance, and which mysteriously enters into early Christian art under the discipline of the secret, is the Orphic legend. Orpheus, presented by Apollo with a lyre and instructed in its use by the Muses, was able to tame with his sweet notes the wild beasts that gathered around him, and to enchant even the trees and rocks of Olympus, which started from their places and followed the sounds that charmed them:

Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage But music for the time doth change his nature,

Footnote 69:

We find in this story the origin of the Phrygian cap which came to be a symbol of slavery and degradation among the Romans, by whom the Phrygians were considered a stupid people—whose rulers even had asinine qualities; and it never quite lost this character, but was used in France up to the time of the Revolution by galley-prisoners, and it is well known that an irruption of escaped convicts into Paris during the Reign of Terror, carrying one of their caps at the end of a pole and singing the Marseillaise, gave rise to the absurd custom of the liberty-pole and cap now so common.

as Shakspere remarks. That some animals are amenable to the influence of harmony is certain—hence the success of the Hindoos with their deadly cobras; and some recent botanists are of opinion that the growth of flowers, and especially roses, is stimulated by music. But whatever slight foundation of fact there may be in the wonders of the historical Orpheus, it fades into obscurity beside the noble conception of the mythical Orpheus, whose history seems based on a traditional knowledge of the happy state of man in Paradise when all things of earth were subject to him:

Till disproportioned Sin Jarred against Nature’s clime, and with harsh din Broke the fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed In perfect diapason, whilst they stood In first obedience, and their state of good.

—Milton.

Music is mentioned with a degree of rapture in more than fifty places of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Lacedæmonians had a flute blazoned on their standards, and the military airs composed by Tyrtæus continued to be played in the Spartan army until the end of the republic.

The Pythagoreans and Platonists not only supposed the soul of man to be a substance very like a disembodied musical instrument of some sort, but believed the universe itself and all its parts to be formed on the principles of harmony; hence their not altogether imaginary music of the spheres which enters into their systems of philosophy:

Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: _There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins_: Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

—Merchant of Venice.

And this idea of a close connection between music and the heavenly bodies was still lingering in the minds of some philosophers as late as the eleventh century of our era, when Psellus the younger, treating of music and astronomy, describes the former as symmetry and proportion itself, which reminds one of Hegel’s profound and intelligible definition that “music is architecture in time”! Pythagoras especially is said to have regarded music as something celestial and profound, and to have had such an opinion of its powers over the human affections that he ordered his disciples to be waked every morning, and lulled to sleep at night, by the dulcet notes of the lyre or the flute.[70]

Footnote 70:

Dr. Burney, History of Music, vol. i. p. 436, has a note which bears too quaintly on this part of the subject not to be reproduced. He says: “Master Thomas Mace, author of a most delectable book called Musick’s Monument, would have been an excellent Pythagorean, for he maintains that the mystery of the Trinity is perspicuously made plain by the connection of the three harmonical concords 1, 3, 5; that music and divinity are nearly allied; and that the contemplation of concord and discord, of the nature of the octave and unison, will so strengthen a man’s faith 'that he shall never after degenerate into that gross subbeastiacal sin of Atheism.’”

The love and cultivation of music formed so much a part of the discipline of the illustrious men who sprang from the school of Pythagoras that almost every one of them left behind him a treatise on the subject. Plato, in the seventh book of his work on laws, says that children in a well-ordered commonwealth should be instructed for three years in music, which reminds us of the commendable efforts made of late years in Great Britain and the United States to make music a necessary part of popular education, in which connection the late Cardinal Wiseman wrote an interesting letter to the Catholic Poor-School Committee of London in 1849 about “the importance of introducing music more effectually into our system of education.”

In the third book of Plato’s Republic music is treated of at considerable length with reference to education; “for whatever is concerned with the art of music ought somehow to terminate with the love of the beautiful.” But to seize the full meaning of this passage we must remember that, in the doctrine of the Academy, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are reciprocal terms, and consequently that music should elevate to the contemplation of the great Godhead—Goodness itself, Truth itself, Beauty itself.

Eloquence was thought by the ancients to be so intimately connected with music that the orators of Greece and Rome had a flute-player standing at a proper distance behind them while they spoke, who kept up an undertone of musical sound, now swelling as the speaker rose with his theme, now gently falling when, as in panegyrics on the dead or in pleadings for mercy, he sought the chords of sorrow or sympathy in the human heart. Musical contests of flutes, trumpets, and other instruments were among the attractions at the public games of Greece; and the profession of music was so highly honored, and often so remunerative, that many musicians lived in splendor. There was Dorion the flute-player, who lived like a Sybarite and was a frequent guest at the table of King Philip of Macedon; there was Ismenias of Thebes, who was sent on an embassy to Persia, and (like the late Duke of Brunswick) had a passion for collecting jewels which his enormous wealth enabled him to gratify to the utmost. He once reproved a smart agent for not having paid as much for a pearl as it was worth, saying that it belittled him in the jeweller’s eyes not to have given, and the gem in his own eyes not to have cost, its full value, and sent him back with the surplus money. The flute which he bought at Corinth for three talents (about $4,000) must have been encrusted with precious stones. Amœbeus, the harper, received an Attic talent (about $1,000) for every appearance on the stage. But although proficients in music were highly honored and rewarded, the mere makers of musical instruments enjoyed no greater esteem than did other artisans, and we know that the comic poets of the time often ridiculed the celebrated orator Isocrates because his father had been able to give him a liberal education with money made by manufacturing flutes. Not only men but women also publicly exhibited their musical accomplishments; they belonged, however, mostly, if not exclusively, to the class of Hetairai. Such was the famous Lamia, whose skill as a flute-player, hardly less than her personal charms, won the heart of King Demetrius.

Passing over to Italy, we can only mention the Sabines and Etruscans, who early cultivated music, and from whom the Romans derived their knowledge of the art; the former giving them their profane, and the latter their sacred, music. At a later period the genius of Greece banished her ruder rivals and monopolized the art in Rome. It was a general custom among people of rank, towards the end of the republic and under the empire, to keep a private band of musicians; but in the earlier days of Rome music, being almost exclusively devoted to religion, either in the temples or at burial rites, was under government control; hence it was forbidden in the Twelve Tables to have more than ten flute-players at funerals, and the Salii, who were priests of Mars, were obliged, in their annual procession through the city, to accompany their stately tread by a sort of music made by striking their rods of gold on the metal shields which they carried in the hand. The most important body of musicians at Rome, and the recognized officials of the art, were the tibicines, or pipers, who formed a college, and on one occasion brought the religious affairs of the city to a stand-still by seceding in a body, after some real or fancied grievance, to the neighboring town of Tibur (Tivoli).

The “ambubajarum collegia” of Horace, and the Syrian musicians satirized by Juvenal, were held in contempt by the Romans as not delighting the soul with exalted harmony, so much as exciting the instincts to sensual gratification.

THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU.

“We shall be happy to see you at Rathdangan Castle, sir,” said Sir Geoffry Didcote. “If—aw—you come down on Saturday and—aw—stop till Monday, we shall—aw—be pleased”; stroking his finely-shaven chin at each “aw.”

I accepted with a gratified alacrity. We had won the rubber trick by trick, and, although the honors were against us, I had somehow or other managed to establish a long suit commencing with the king, and had ended by lugging in all the poor relations, including a miserable deuce of diamonds, for which I contrived to secure as good a berth as that held by any member of its illustrious family. Flushed with victory, Sir Geoffry’s hospitality spread forth its arms and enfolded me within its embrace. This was a chance for a briefless barrister during the long vacation. Briefless! Why, I could not even command a nod from an attorney, much less that magic roll of paper whose cabalistic inscriptions are so readily deciphered by—the pocket. The Hall of the Four Courts was a most delightful club-room, where all the news of the day was freely discussed, from Mr. Justice Keogh’s latest witticism to the new street-ballad by Doctor Huttle; from Baron Dowse’s joke to Sergeant Armstrong’s wig. And as for Circuit, it was nothing more or less than a charming country excursion, where the wit and wine of the bar mess amply compensated for any little ennui the hours occupied in doing nothing during the day might have reasonably engendered. In vain I strutted across “The Hall” with a bagful of old French novels, endeavoring to appear as though absorbed in some pending case in which my dormant talent would be strained to the utmost limits of its capacity; in vain I caused myself to be called forth from the library as often as it pleased the porter to summon me for the sum of five shillings, with which I had retained his eminent services; in vain I buttonholed country friends. But why continue? The word “briefless” speaks for itself; and were it not for sundry remittances from a maiden aunt, my sole surviving relative, I should, bon gré mal gré, have been compelled to take the queen’s shilling or to seek employment from the Corporation of Dublin in the capacity of a street scavenger.

As yet I had made but little way in society. I could not talk Wagner or fall foul of Tennyson. I had not brass enough for a ballad or talent for a scena. Too nervous for anecdote, my modesty muffled me even in conversation. I was not a man’s man, nor yet a cavaliere servante. I did not hunt, fish, or shoot. In a word, I was somewhat of a dreary drug in Vanity Fair.

Why Sergeant Frizwig asked me to dinner I cannot determine; and why Sir Geoffry Didcote, after that excellent repast, took it into his head to invite me to Rathdangan Castle is a mystery unto this present hour.

The vulgar question of ways and means stared me in the face and almost out of countenance as I walked homewards. Rathdangan was distant from Dublin at least thirty-five miles, thirty of which could be traversed by rail. The cost of a conveyance from the station might or might not be a “crusher”; and then the tips to the retainers! Luckily, my aunt had forwarded a remittance of five pounds upon that very morning, sixty shillings of which still remained firm and true; and as she invariably impressed upon me, in addition to the necessity of obtaining briefs, the advisability of mixing in the best society only, I naturally calculated on a “tenner” upon receipt of the intelligence of my arrival at the Castle, inscribed upon the Didcote paper. My wardrobe was the next consideration, and this was of the scantiest description. The evening suit might pass muster in candlelight, but once turn a jet of gas upon it, and the whole fabric tumbled to pieces. The grease of countless dinners, the patches beneath the arms, the seams artfully blackened with ink, the frayed linings, would jointly and severally step into the witness-box and turn evidence against me. My shirts were singularly blue, and worn away from constant friction with the horny palms of the washerwoman, whilst the collars resembled those “sierras,” or saw-edged mountains, which the observant traveller recognizes upon entering the dominions of his most Catholic Majesty Alfonso the Twelfth of Spain. My walking-suit was presentable enough, consisting as it did of Thomastown frieze, and my boots, although machine-made, possessed the redeeming influence of novelty.

“I’ll risk it,” thought I. “The investment is a safe one, and the return will amply repay the outlay.” A new and unforeseen difficulty presented itself. The battered portmanteau which usually bore my “fixins,” whilst quite good enough for “the boots” of provincial hotels, was utterly unfit to be handled by the genteel retainers at Rathdangan Castle; and as nothing bespeaks a certain ton more than smart-looking luggage, I found myself under the necessity of investing in a new valise.

“There’s wan fit for Roosia, or Pinsylvania—no less,” exclaimed the proprietor of a description of open-air bazaar situated behind the Bank of Ireland, with whom I was in treaty for the desired article. “Its locks is as sthrong as Newgate, an’ ye might dhrop it from Nelson’s pillar an’ ye wudn’t shake a nail in it.”

This was a large black box strongly resembling a coffin, both in size and shape.

“Mebbe it’s a hair thrunk yer looking for? Here’s wan. There’s brass nails for ye! There’s hair! Begorra, there’s many a man in Merrion Square that hasn’t half as much.”

Informing him that I had no intention of emigrating just at that particular moment, and that I required a small, solid leather portmanteau, Mr. Flynn proved himself equal to the emergency.

“That’s solid enough, anyhow. Shure, ye’d think it was Roman cimint—sorra a less,” he cried, as he administered several resounding whacks to the article in question.

“What are you asking for this?” I demanded.

“What am I axin’ for it?” Here he fixed me with his eye, as the Ancient Mariner fixed the wedding-guest. “It’s worth thirty shillin’s.”

“Say twenty,” said I.

“I couldn’t if ye wor to make me a lord-mayor.”

“I cannot give more.”

“Well, here now: we’ll shplit the differ—say twinty-five.” And he spat upon what he elegantly termed “the heel of his fist.”

“Twenty,” said I.

“Begorra, yer a hard man! I suppose ye must have it.”

My preparations being now completed, five o’clock on the Saturday evening found me on the platform of the Amiens Street terminus.

“Hillo, Dawkins!” exclaimed Mr. Dudley Fribscombe, a brother barrister, whose father (in the bacon trade) allowed him five hundred a year. “Going as special, eh? A hundred guineas—you’re coining, by Jove!”

“No,” I replied with assumed nonchalance, “just running down to Rathdangan Castle to spend a few days with the Didcotes.” I never felt better pleased in my life. This fellow was always sneering at the poverty of his briefless brothers, and as his people happened to reside near Rathdangan, but were of course _un_visited, my red-hot shot told with withering effect.

“Oh! indeed,” he muttered. “What an awful swell! Going second?”

“First,” was my sententious reply.

“Let us travel together.”

“All right.”

Now, my intention was to have taken a second-class ticket, but the tone of Fribscombe altered my mind. What a crisis in my destiny as I walked to the booking office! What a pivot in my fate!

Had I travelled second—but I will not anticipate.

“The smoking-carriage is full. Let’s get in here; I'll tip the guard to let nobody else pass,” said Fribscombe, carrying his idea into execution.

We ensconced ourselves snugly in the pet corners, and made a great display of luggage all over the compartment. My companion offered me a cigar, but I preferred my ebon meerschaum, bought of Hans Larsen himself at Lillehammer, and which I had colored with possibly as much delicate assiduity as Mr. Millais, R.A., bestows upon his delightful masterpieces.

We were about to “scratch,” as the last bell had rung, when the door was suddenly unlocked, thrown open, and a bundle of rugs bristling with umbrella-handles, a portmanteau, and a lady attired in the newest and presumably most correct thing in widow’s weeds were flung violently into the compartment. The whistle sounded, the door was banged to, and the train glided out of the station ere we could make any move in the direction of a change of seats.

“What an infernal sell!” muttered Fribscombe.

“Too bad!” I growled.

“That guard is a 'do.’ Half a crown thrown into the Liffy!”

“Would she stand it, Fribscombe?”

“Not she. If the dear departed smoked, it would remind her too forcibly of him; and if he didn’t smoke, she’d scream and call the guard.”

In the meantime the object of our solicitude had shaken out her draperies and snugly wrapped herself in a wolf-skin rug, the head and glass eyes of which reposed in her lap like the sporran of a Highlander. Her figure appeared to very little advantage in the heavy folds of her ribbed-silk, crape-laden cloak; nevertheless, it betrayed a youthful grace and symmetry. She kept her veil down, and from the posture she assumed—her head pressed back against the cushion—it became pretty evident that, if she were not en route to dreamland, she wished to indulge in a profound meditation.

“This train won’t stop till we get to Skerries,” said Fribscombe. “I think,” he added sotto voce, “that she is asleep, and a whiff or two of real Havana will not awaken her.”

“It’s much better to ask her consent, and I’ll do it,” I whispered.

She sat directly opposite to me, facing the engine. I leaned a little forward.

“I beg your pardon, madam; but may I ask if you have any objection to our smoking? If you have the slightest feeling on the subject, I beg to assure you that it will be no deprivation to us to wait until we reach Skerries.”

She raised her veil.

“I have no objection whatever,” she said in a low, sympathetic murmur. “I like the perfume of tobacco.” And, as if smitten by some sorrowful remembrance, she sighed and sank back, but did not lower her veil.

I mumbled some incoherent expression of thanks, scarcely knowing what I said; for my whole soul was focussed in my eyes as I gazed into one of the loveliest faces that I had ever beheld.

“You are not availing yourself of my permission, sir,” she observed, almost laughingly.

“'Pon my conscience! I forgot all about it,” was my reply.

Woman-like she felt the compliment, and woman-like she was grateful for it; she knew it to be genuine.

Somehow or other we drifted into conversation. There are some women who can trot a man’s ideas out for him, walk them gently up and down, canter, and, lastly, gallop them. Any little defects are concealed by the excellent hand which is over him; and were he to come to auction at that particular moment, he would be knocked down to the very highest bidder, be he ever so modest—namely, himself. This young girl—for she could scarcely have passed her teens—possessed this marvellous gift, and, as she deftly passed from subject to subject, I found myself, usually so dull, so reticent, so uninformed, discussing topic after topic—travel, music, the drama, literature, anything, everything—with a feverish facility, and offering decided opinions upon subjects even to approach which would have ordinarily been a matter of no little enterprise, doubt, and difficulty.

So deeply had I become absorbed that when Fribscombe, whose existence I had totally forgotten, suddenly awakening from a cosey slumber, shouted in a very excited tone: “I say, Dawkins, jump out, man! This is your station. We’re moving off,” I could scarcely realize the fact of its proximity, and that two hours had rolled by, compressed into so many minutes.

My first thought was to journey onwards with my fair vis-à-vis—I cared not whither; my second, that Fribscombe would laugh me to death at the “Hall.” With a sense of sorrow—I might almost say of agony—in my heart at the idea of parting from her, I seized upon my portmanteau, and just succeeded in alighting without accident as the train moved rapidly away.

I stood upon the platform like a person just aroused from a deep slumber. I was purposeless. The tide had receded, and the bleak barrenness of my shore life confronted me. The fair enchantress whose wand had conjured up a new order of being within me had departed.

“Ye’ll have for to come inside the station, sir. I’m goin’ for to lock the doore,” observed a porter, as he significantly pointed in the direction of the exit.

“Can I get a car over to Rathdangan Castle?”

“Sorra a wan, sir. Billy Heffernan dhrew two gintlemin over there that come be this thrain.”

“Will he return here?”

“Sorra a fear av him. Ketch him lavin’ a house where there’s such lashins as at the Castle! Ow! ow! sez the fox.”

“How am I to get across?” I asked in some trepidation.

“Shure, it’s only a nice little taste av a walk—nothin’ less.”

“How far is it?”

“Well, now, you might coax it into four mile, but, be the powers! it’ll fight hard for five.”

I could not refrain from laughing at this peculiar form of expression, although there was anything but mirth in my present position. To be late for dinner would be a high crime and misdemeanor, and nothing short of lèse majesté, even were I to accept the porter’s ultimatum and walk. I could scarcely reach the Castle in anything like time.

“Did they expect you, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Troth, thin, they might have sint a yoke for ye. They always does for the quollity.”

This was not complimentary, but, like many a speech of a similar nature, it contained a great deal of truth in it. Could Sir Geoffry have forgotten all about his invitation? It had been given hurriedly as the whist-table was breaking up. He had had his share of wine, if revoking twice might be taken as an index. Yes, the following morning had erased me from the tablets of his memory. What an ass to come all this way to be instructed by a common fellow in a corduroy suit. Served me right! I ought to have known better.

“What time does the next train go up to Dublin, my man?” I asked.

“What time?” he ejaculated.

“Yes, yes, what time?”

“In forty minits, if she’s not late; but she’s shure to be in time if I’m not here, bad cess to her!”

I sat down in the cheerless waiting-room, disgusted with Sir Geoffry Didcote, disgusted with myself, boiling with anger, and writhing with mortification, till the recollection of my fair travelling companion descended like oil upon the troubled waters of my mind, and the desire to discover who she might be became overwhelming. Fool that I was not to have gained even a solitary clue! She might be travelling to Belfast en route for Scotland, or she might have alighted at the next station. The last thought induced me to question the porter.

“Did you see a handsome lady in weeds in the train that I travelled by?” I asked.

“Is it a widdy woman ye mane?”

“Yes.”

“Young?”

“Yes—very.”

“Purty?”

“Beautiful!” I exclaimed.

Here he winked facetiously. “I seen her. Me an’ her is acquainted.”

“Who is she?” I eagerly asked.

“She’s the widdy av a dacent, sober man be the name av O’Hoolahan, that died av the horrors av dhrink.”

“Poor thing!” I muttered half-aloud.

“Poor? Begorra, it’s him that left her warm an’ snug, wud three av the elegantest childer.”

“Three children!” I interposed, somewhat disconcerted. The name O’Hoolahan was bad enough, but three little O’Hoolahans!

“She left this parcel wud me.”

“When?”

“A few minits ago, whin she got out.”

“Got out? Where!”

“Out av the third class, foreninst the doore there.”

Pshaw! We had been talking of the wrong woman, and somehow I felt intensely pleased to think that my fair incognita was not the relict of the defunct O’Hoolahan and the mother of three little O’Hoolahans.

“Whisht!” suddenly exclaimed my communicative friend. “I hear a horse’s feet. He’s tearin’ along like murther—a rale stepper”; then turning to me: “Yer not forgotten. It’s from Rathdangan. Yer sint for. It’s Highflier, an’ Jim Falvey’s dhrivin’ him.”

These surmises proved to be correct.

“I’ve to beg your pardon, sir, for being late,” said Falvey, touching his hat; “but we cast a shoe at Ballinacor, and I done my best to pull up the lost time. Any luggage, sir?”

“This portmanteau.”

“All right, sir. Will you be pleased to jump in? You’ll only get over at the first dinner bell, if you do that same.”

Having tipped the loquacious porter, I sprang into the tax-cart, and the next minute Highflier was dashing at a hand gallop on the road to Rathdangan.

Mr. Falvey informed me that there was the “hoigth” of company at the Castle; that every room was full; Lord Dundrum and Captain Buckdash had arrived by the morning train, and the Bishop of Ballinahoo and his lady had just entered the avenue as he was leaving it; the partridge were plenty, and a covey might be found within “a few perch” of the west wing; Master James (the Didcote heir) was expected with two of his brother officers of the King’s Dragoon Guards; Miss Patricia’s collar-bone was now as good as new, etc. We then talked horses, and he was still hammering away at the pedigree of Highflier when we reached the entrance gate. This was castellated and partly covered with ivy. A stout old lady unlocked the ponderous portals, and, as she admitted us, dropped a courtesy whilst she uttered the cheery words, “Yer welkim, sir.”

Why do people keep gloomy-looking servants, dismal phantoms who reply to your ring with a sigh, answer your query with a sob, and wait upon you with a groan? Their depression is infectious, and although you may, with a naturally lively constitution, baffle the disease for a time, sooner or later you are laid low by it.

According to a time-honored maxim of the road, we kept a trot for the avenue, and just as we whirled up to the grand entrance the sound of a gong reached us.

“Jump out, sir. You’ve only ten minutes; that’s the second bell. There’s some of them in the drawing-room already,” cried Falvey, as he flung my portmanteau to a solemn-looking domestic, who gazed at me as though he were engaged in a deep mental calculation as to the length of my coffin and the exact quantity of linen necessary for the formation of a shroud. Following this grim apparition across a low-ceiled, wainscoted hall, in which a billiard-table of the present contrasted strangely with oaken furniture of the sixteenth century, and up an old oak staircase decorated with battered corselets, deeply-dented morions, halberds, matchlocks, steel gloves, and broadswords, along a wainscoted passage as dark as Erebus, and up a spiral stone staircase the ascent of which took all the breath out of my body, I was finally deposited in a little stone chamber in one of the towers of the Castle.

“Your keys, please, sir,” demanded my janitor.

“Oh! never mind; thanks; I’ll get out my things myself.” I feared the penetrating gaze of this man. I shuddered as I thought of the frayed linings and the inked seams.

“Very good, sir,” uttered like a parting benediction; and with a bow which plainly said, “We shall never meet at this side of the grave again,” the dread apparition vanished. The old saying, “More haste, less speed,” never exemplified itself more unhappily than in my case. With the thoughts of the last gong ringing through my brain, I vainly endeavored to open my portmanteau. My keys had got mixed up, and, as they were nearly all of a size, I had to travel round the entire ring before I could manage to induce one to enter the keyhole. Then, when I came to turn it, it got blocked and wouldn’t move either backwards or forwards. I withdrew it, whistled it, probed it with my breast-pin, tugged and strained until my backbone ached again, but without effect. What was I to do? Break it open. But how? I possessed no implements. Perceiving a bronze figure poised upon one leg on the chimney-piece, I resolved upon utilizing the outstretched limb of the harlequin, and, having inserted it in the ring of the key, I finally, to my unspeakable delight, succeeded in detaching the bolt.

Throwing open the portmanteau, I plunged my hand into the corner where I had deposited my brushes, but found that they must have shifted during the journey. I tried the other corner, with similar success. I then probed and groped in the lower compartment. Here was a pretty go. I must have forgotten to pack them, although I could have sworn not only to their having been packed, but as to the precise spot in which I had deposited them. Mechanically I drew forth my linen and laid it on the bed, in order to mount my studs.

I was somewhat astonished to find that the breast was most elaborately adorned with floriated needlework.

Some mistake of the laundress. I detest worked shirt-fronts, which are only worn by cads and shoddy lords, so I picked out another. If number one was embroidered, number two was done in fresco, and, in addition to the vast tumuli of birds, beasts, fishes, and flowers, an edging of lace played a prominent part. What could this mean? Surely I put up my own time-honored linen myself, and here were bosom decorations fit for a fop of the year 1815. Hastily turning out the contents of the portmanteau upon the floor, in order to realize my own property, what were my sensations in discovering that this pile of snowy drapery did not contain one single article of male apparel!

The truth flashed across me now in all its appalling reality: Heavens and earth! I had taken the young widow’s portmanteau for my own.

I do not know what the exact sensation of fainting comes to, but this I do know: that if I did not faint, I went within a pip of it. A cold perspiration burst out all over me, and I felt as if I was on board the Dover and Calais boat and about to call the steward. How could I appear to the assembled company? With what ridicule would I be overwhelmed when the true state of the case came to light! And then what would she think? She would write me down an ass—a donkey unfit to be allowed to wander from a thistle-grove. Her key would open my leathern “conveniency,” and the ghastly condition of my wardrobe would be laid bare, whilst I had profaned the sanctity of—but it was too dreadful to contemplate. How could I meet her? How could I look into that beautiful face again? How was I to recover my wandering wardrobe? My whole stock of clothes, save those I wore, were now in the possession of another, whilst in exchange I had received a commodity of no value to me whatever. On the contrary, my prize was worse than valueless—it was contraband.

Bang-ang-ang-ang-oong-ang! went the gong.

Let it go! What were its sounds to me? If I were starving, I could not descend in my present costume.

“Sir Geoffry Didcote begs me to say, sir, that he waits on you in order to enter the dining-room,” mournfully announced the dismal servitor.

“Please say to Sir Geoffry that I don’t feel quite well—that I will go down by and by.”

“Thank you, sir.” This was uttered as if he wished to say: “I am glad that you are dying. I knew how it would be—you couldn’t deceive me.”

The man had scarcely time to deliver my message ere Sir Geoffry himself panted and puffed into my apartment.

“My dear sir—aw—I hope—aw—that you are not—aw—ill. It would—aw—grieve me very much”—here he availed himself of my mirror to adjust his spotless white choker—“if—aw—upon your—aw—first visit you—aw—became indisposed.”

Honesty, thought I, is the best policy, and it saves a lot of trouble; so I made a clean breast of it to the pompous baronet.

“How very unfortunate—aw—for the lady! We will dispense—aw—with ceremony under—aw—the peculiar, not to say delicate—aw—circumstances of the case, and Lady Didcote will—aw—receive you in your—aw—present attire. You can telegraph—aw—for reinforcements, which—aw—will arrive on—aw—Monday morning.”

I could not see the force of this. I might easily telegraph for reinforcements, but would they come? Secondly, as my visit was to terminate upon Monday, reinforcements were not necessary, unless they could be brought up at once. I begged to be excused from attending table; but this he would not listen to, and, as he informed me that I was keeping dinner waiting, there was nothing for it but to descend with him.

I have, when a boy, been lugged into the school-room to suffer condign punishment; at a later period I have been forced into the presence of a young lady of whom I was deeply enamored; I have had to march up to the pulpit in Trinity College dining-hall to repeat the long Latin grace amid the muffled gibes of my peers; I have been placed in positions where my bashfulness has been ruthlessly tortured and my retiring modesty tried by fire and water; but never did I experience the pangs of the rack until the full blaze of that drawing-room burst upon my vision. The apartment appeared to swim round, carrying with it the form of a hooked-nosed dowager in a turban, who screwed an eye-glass into the corner of a wicked old eye, to have a good stare at the strange figure her husband had introduced into her salon.

A confused murmur of many voices, in which “Who is he?” “What is he?” “Stole a portmanteau,” “Highway robber,” “Police” smote upon my ear, whilst a general craning of necks in my direction announced the curiosity which my appearance had naturally excited.

I am aware that I bowed to something in blue drapery surmounted by a head, that it placed the tips of its fingers on my arm, that I mechanically followed a crowd of people towards an aperture in the wall which proved to be a door, that I plunged downwards upon a chair, and that then I came slowly to my senses. Having gulped down three glasses of sherry in rapid succession, I found myself seated beside a gaunt young lady of about five-and-thirty, so covered with pearl powder that she was only partially visible to the naked eye. On my right hand sat a portly dowager, who viewed with some alarm my inroads upon the sherry, and she appeared so interested in my movements that I fully expected to receive a temperance tract before the evening was half over. There were about twenty at table, all stiff, solemn, and ceremonious.

“So you have been robbed?” snappishly remarked the young lady in blue.

“Oh! dear, no; merely an exchange of portmanteaus.”

“How stupid!”

Now, whether this applied to me or to the fact, I was not in the position to say, so I merely rejoined:

“Very stupid of me and for me.”

“How so?”

“Why, I was the offending party.” And I endeavored to make myself agreeable by narrating the circumstances exactly as they had occurred.

“And do you mean to say that you opened the lady’s trunk, sir?” demanded my companion with great asperity.

“In mistake, madam, I assure you.”

The waspish lady waited until a portion of the ice which she was engaged in despatching had cleared two very shaky-looking teeth bound in gold.

“There are some mistakes, sir, which no gentleman should make.”

This was quite enough for me. To endeavor to make terms with this foe were worse than folly, explanation weakness, and concession cowardice. She gained nothing, however, by her viciousness; whilst I remained upon the field and prepared to bivouac, surrounded by sturdy sentinels in the shape of port, claret, and Madeira.

“The—aw—guard insisted upon his taking the old lady’s—aw—portmanteau.” And Sir Geoffry was proceeding to retail his version of the story when Lord Dundrum gaily exclaimed:

“Oh! by Jove, we’d better put the witness into the box. Let us cross-examine the lawyer.”

“With all my heart,” said I; “the absurdity of the sensation will redeem itself by its novelty.”

My story flowed joyously along, and peal upon peal of laughter greeted me as I described my sensations upon discovering the strange garments.

“So—aw—the widow was—aw—young?”

“About eighteen, Sir Geoffry.”

“And pretty?” added his lordship.

I devoutly kissed my second finger and thumb, and flung them in the direction of the ceiling.

“I’ll lay five to two he never hears of his portmanteau,” lisped Captain Buckdash.

“Shall I be at liberty to hunt it up?” said Lord Dundrum.

“Certainly. Are you on?”

“In tens?” asked his lordship.

“Ponies, if you but limit the period to one week.”

“Done, Buckdash! I’ll book it.” And the peer, producing a pocket-book, entered the bet, the terms of which he read aloud, and which the gallant captain pronounced eminently satisfactory.

“I’m afraid, my lord, that you’ll lose your money,” I observed to Lord Dundrum as we ascended to the drawing-room.

“I’ll give you the same bet, and that I’ll get your portmanteau, without any interference of yours, in less than a week—say five days.”

“You know the lady?”

“No.”

“You suspect who she is?”

“I have no more idea of who she is, where she came from, or where she is going to, than the man in the moon. Will you evince your sincerity by betting now?”

“The fact is, my lord, I cannot afford to bet.”

“Quite right,” slapping me on the shoulder. “Never do. It’s a doosid bad, pleasant habit.”

“And might I venture to ask how you purpose proceeding towards winning your money?”

“I’ll tell you. I have just ordered round a trap. I’ll drive to Ballynamuckle Station and telegraph along the whole line. If she’s local or a county swell, we’ll have her name and address to-night. If, on the contrary, she is not known along the line, she will have gone on to Belfast. I’ll set the police to work there, and put advertisements in all the papers on Monday morning. If Tuesday tells me nothing, I’ll put the wires in motion north of Belfast, and on Wednesday we’ll have a touch at Scotland. I feel certain, however, that we’ll find her this side of Newry.” And his lordship retired for the purpose of equipping himself for the road.

This bet was a lucky chance for me. Not that I cared much whether my wardrobe ever turned up again or not, but I longed to discover the identity of my fair acquaintance. I would at least enjoy the satisfaction of learning her name, and gain some knowledge of her surroundings, and then—pshaw! bow over my restored baggage and utter Vale, Vale, Vale to my three-hour dream.

In the billiard-room the menkind were assembled for pool. By a series of ghastly flukes I managed to clear the table and divided every pool. Captain Buckdash muttered something in reference to Dawson Lane, and one young fellow, whose lives were sacrificed to my ruthless cue with startling rapidity, offered to back me against some formidable player in the Guards, laying the odds. For the second time in this eventful day did I feel myself fit for the front rank. Lord Dundrum lounged into the room about eleven o’clock. He indicated by a look that he wished to speak to me, and, under cover of “splitting a bottle,” exclaimed in a low tone:

“It’s all right.”

My heart gave a bound.

“The portmanteau is found.”

“Where?”

“At Nobberstown, the next station but one. She evidently discovered your mistake; for she tumbled it out. It’s coming on.”

“And where is she?”

“Oh! hang me if I know or care. My ponies are safe. You can look her up.”

“Did she leave no message, no directions?” I asked eagerly.

“Don’t know,” said his lordship, as he chalked the top of his cue preparatory to joining in the pool.

Lord Dundrum was correct in saying that I should take up the running now. It was my business to make restitution and to deliver the white elephant left on my hands to its rightful owner. This task should be undertaken at once. I scarcely closed my eyes all night, thinking of the modus operandi; and when I came down to breakfast next morning I had resolved upon nothing more definite than a searching cross-examination of the employés at Nobberstown Station.

“I’ll thank you for a check, Buckdash,” said Lord Dundrum, as the gallant warrior entered the breakfast-room.

“For what?” asked the captain.

“For Mr. Dawkins’ portmanteau.”

“Wait till you get it.”

“I have it here.” And as he spoke he lugged my valise from beneath the table, accompanied by a roar of laughter from all assembled.

“A capital joke,” grinned the captain.

“A capital joke, indeed! Hand over the coin.”

Captain Buckdash turned to me.

“Mr. Dawkins, is this your portmanteau?”

“It is indeed,” I replied.

“The one which you left in the railway carriage?”

“Yes.”

“I am quite satisfied, Lord Dundrum. You shall have a check after breakfast; in the meantime will you kindly inform us how you managed to lay hold of it?” And he cracked an egg with a violence that almost crushed in the china cup.

I searched for some note or mark by which to obtain a clue to her identity, but in vain; my leathern “conveniency” was as bald as when I purchased it behind the Bank of Ireland. No message had been forwarded, not a line of instruction. This course appeared singular, inasmuch as it was unlikely that she would make no effort to regain her property; and why lose this most legitimate opportunity? Had she no desire to place herself in communication with me? Ah! there was that in her glance which gave this thought the lie. Heigh-ho! I was in love up to my eyebrows and badly hit. I was obliged to come face to face with myself, to place my hand upon my heart, and to plead guilty. I thought of the elder Mr. Weller, and of his opinion respecting widows, and voted him vulgar. My preconceived ideas upon the subject of relicts underwent a total change, and now a bashful maiden seemed but an insipid nonentity. I longed to quit Rathdangan, and, excusing myself under the plea of an important professional engagement, started for Nobberstown at cockcrow.

This station consisted of simply a “porter and a platform,” one equally intelligent as the other, and of the two the platform was “the better man.”

“Sorra a know I know,” was the invariable reply to almost every query.

“Did the lady alight here?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

“Did she give you no message?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

“No card?”

“Sorra a wan.”

“Who handed you the portmanteau?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

A thought now flashed across my brain: Fribscombe! He was not the man to lose a chance of talking to a pretty woman. He would have told her who I was, and it was through him that she had communicated. How asinine not to have thought of this before!

Chartering a jarvey, I started across the country to the family mansion of the Fribscombes, accompanied by the two portmanteaus.

“I never opened my lips to her. She dried up after you left, and pulled down the shutters.” This gave me a pang of the keenest delight. “I got out at Killoughter, the next station, and she went on.”

On my return to Dublin I caused advertisements to be inserted in several of the leading Irish papers; I also tried the second column of the Times and the Glasgow Herald, but, alas! with no effect.

Six months had glided away, during which she made no sign. The portmanteau maintained possession of a corner of my solitary apartment, and the image of its whilome proprietor defiantly held more than one corner of my heart; indeed, I may as well candidly confess that it was strongly entrenched in all four.

The summer assizes were over, and the briefless ones flitted hither and thither for the long vacation: some to Switzerland, with Mont Blanc in the distance—very much in the distance—others the passes of the Tyrol, sunny Spain, byways in Brittany, or the Highlands of Scotland. Connemara found its true believers, and Killarney its pious pilgrims. As for myself, I was perforce compelled to substitute the Dodder for the Rhine, the Dublin mountains for the Alps, and Sackville Street for the Boulevard des Italiens. My aunt had contributed the ten-pound note upon which I had hung in fond anticipation towards the building of Father Donnelly’s new church at Shinanshone, and the letter which conveyed this intelligence concluded with the following: “I don’t see your name figuring in any of the trials, good, bad, or indifferent. It’s all Macdonogh and Armstrong. What are you about, at all at all? At this rate of going you’ll never see a silk gown, let alone the bench. You might as well be on the Hill of Howth as in the Four Courts, if you don’t stir yourself. Let me see you cheek by jowl with Macdonogh and Armstrong during the coming winter, or I’ll know the reason why, and make my financial arrangements accordingly.”

I was seated one lovely morning in autumn gazing gloomily into the street, which was as empty as my own exchequer. Dreamy visions of the golden glory of ripening corn, of blood-red poppies, of fern-shaded dells, of limpid pools and purple-clad mountains mocked my aching heart. I sighed the sigh of impecuniosity, and railed at the inconsistency of a fortune which gave little Bangs, who hadn’t one idea to rub against another, a thousand per annum, a vulgar cad like Hopkins a bagful of briefs, and which left me high and dry in a front garret in Eccles Street, without a red cent to come into collision with a battered sixpence in my somewhat cavernous pockets. Heigh-ho!

An outside car, driven at a frosty pace, smote upon the drowsy stillness of the street, and my gloom was somewhat speedily dispelled by the sight of my friend Tom Whiffler’s honest and beaming face, and his expressive and expansive signals while yet a considerable distance from the house. Tom is always full of money, full of health, and full of the most boisterous and explosive spirits.

“Aha! you old cat on the tiles,” he shouted, “come down from your coign of vantage. I was afraid you were out of town. Somebody said you were on Circuit.” And standing upon the foot-board of the car, he burst forth with—

“Hail to our barrister back from the Circuit! Honor and wealth to the curls of his wig! Long may he live o’er his forehead to jerk it, Long at a witness look burly and big!”

“Come up, for gracious sake!” I cried, as I perceived heads peeping from behind the partly-closed shutters of an opposite house, inhabited by a genteel family, who wished their little world to imagine them in Italy, France, Spain—anywhere but in Dublin—during the dog-days.

In a few seconds Tom bounded into the apartment. “This is a slice of luck to get you, old man. Come, now, pack up your traps, and we’ll have four days in the County Wicklow. I shall have the car in any case, and our hotel bills will be mere bagatelles which we’ll square up at Tib’s Eve. Lend me a couple of shirts and things; you can bring the baggage—a change for two—and I’ll do the rest. We’ve twenty-five minutes to catch the train.”

Five minutes found Tom upon one side of the car, myself upon the other, and, calmly reposing in the well between us, the neat little portmanteau of the fair unknown. I was compelled to make use of it, as Whiffler had no “leathern conveniency,” and my travelling-valise had been lent to one of “ours,” and was possibly at that particular moment strapped upon the murderous mound of luggage which encumbers the groaning roof of the Alpine diligence, or snugly ensconced on the grape-strewn deck of a Rhine or a Moselle steamer. It gave me more than a pang to remove it from its well-known corner. A chord had been touched which set all my memories vibrating, and I handled it with as much care and anxiety as though it were a new-born infant or a rickety case containing rack-rent or nitro-glycerine.

A glorious moonlight found us driving through the Vale of Clara en route to Glendalough—the sad, stricken valley of the Seven Churches. The hills, quietly entranced, lay gazing upwards at the gentle moon, who enfolded them in her pellucid beams as with a soft, sheeny mantle of light. The Avonmore far, far down in the valley musically murmured while she glided onwards to join the Avonbeg, who joyously awaited her coming in the sweet Vale of Avoca. The honest watch-dog’s bark bayed up the valley, and the perfume-laden air in its holy calm was as sweet as an angel’s whisper.

After “a square meal” of rasher and eggs which would have put the most elaborate chef-d’œuvre of the cuisine out of count, we strutted forth from the hostelry in the direction of St. Kevin’s Bed, and heard the oft-repeated legend of poor Kathleen’s fate from the lips of a very ragged but very amusing guide, whose services we were desirous of engaging for the morrow.

“Troth, thin, but it’s me father’s son that’s sorry not to be wud yez; but shure”—and here he lowered his voice—“it’s in regard to me bein’ in a hobble that I’m out in the moonlight.”

“What scrape have you got yourself into?” asked Tom Whiffler. “Whiskey?”

“Musha, thin, it wasn’t a dhrop o’ sperrits that done it this offer.”

“A colleen?

“Sorra a fear av all the colleens from this to Wicklow Head.”

“Mistaking another man’s sheep for your own?” laughed Tom.

“If ye wor spaikin’ airnest I’d make ye sorry for them words,” said the man in an angry tone; but brightening up, he added: “Av yez wor guessin’ from this to Candlemas ye’d be out every offer. I got into thrubble be raison av a saint, an’ I’ll tell yez how: A lot av ignoraamusses av English comes here in the summer saison, an’ nothin’s too holy but they’ll make a joke on it; but the divvle will have his own wan av these days. Well, sir, last Monday I was engaged for to divart a cupple of English, as bowld as brass, an’ that vulgar that the very cows turned their tails to thim as we thravelled through the fields—sorra a lie in it. I done me best for to earn an honest shillin’, but, on my word, wan av thim, a stout lump av a man, gev me all soarts av impidince, an’ whin I come for to narrate about St. Kavin he up’s an’ insults the holy saint to me very face.

“'There never was no sich man,’ sez he.

“'There was, sir,’ sez I.

“'It’s all humbug,’ sez he; 'an’ as for Kathleen,’ sez he, 'she was no betther nor—'

'“Ye’d betther stop, sir,’ sez I, intherruptin’ him; 'for St. Kavin was a holy man, an’ never done nothin’ but what was good an’ saintly.’ Well, sir, he up’s an’ calls the blessed saint a bad name, so I hot him betune th’ eyes an’ rowled him on the grass, an’ I planted his comrade beside him. An’ now I’m the worst in the world below at the hotel for bating two blackguards that done nothin’ but insult me an’ me holy religion; an’ that’s why I can’t go wud yez to-morrow.”

It was far into the “wee sma’ hours” when we parted with Myles O’Byrne and gained sanctuary in the double-bedded room which had been told off to us. The pale and gentle Luna was surrendering her charge to the pink and rosy Aurora, and we sought our couches in beautiful budding daylight.

“Where’s your portmanteau, Dawkins?” asked Tom Whiffler. “I want to get at my things.”

To my utter dismay, the portmanteau was not in the apartment. To ring the bell at this unseemly hour was but to alarm the entire hotel; so, slipping off my shoes, I descended to the hall in the hope of discovering it in a heap of luggage which lay piled in graceful profusion near the entrance. My search was vain, and, with secret forebodings of another mischance in connection with this unhappy valise, I returned to the room and retired to bed.

“I seen it in yer hand, sir,” observed the waiter the next morning whom I interrogated about the missing article—“a thick lump of a solid leather portmantle. I can take the buke on it, if necessary, sir. Here’s the boots; mebbe he can tell us something. Jim, did ye see a thick lump av a solid leather portmantle lyin’ about?”

“I did,” replied the boots, who was a man of much physique and very few words.

“Ye did?”

“Yis.”

“Where is it, thin?”

“Where it ought to be.”

“Where’s that?”

“Wud th’ owner.”

“It was not left in my room,” I exclaimed.

“It was left in number five.”

“Shure, number five’s gone,” cried the waiter.

“It’s news yer tellin’ us,” observed the boots with a surly grin.

“An’ is the portmantle tuk be number five?”

“Yis.”

“Phew!” whistled the waiter. “Be the mortial the fat’s in the fire now, anyhow.”

Here was a situation! My misgivings realized. My portmanteau gone, perhaps never to return. How could I face the owner? I never gave up the hope of meeting her and of restoring the property.

“Who slept in number five?” I asked.

“Number five is two faymales.”

“When did they leave?”

“They left for Father Rooney’s first Mass beyant at Annamoe.”

“Where were they going to?”

“To Lake Dan and Luggelaw.”

I proceeded to hold a council of war—consisting of the landlord, the waiter, the boots, two or three stable-boys, and the surplus population of the village—when it was determined to send a boy on a fast-trotting pony in pursuit of the fugitive luggage.

I was two inches on a mild Havana after such a breakfast as the tourist alone can dispose of, when the waiter burst into the summer-house situated over the lake, whither we had repaired to enjoy the “witching weed.”

“The portmantle is safe, sir, an’ number five is here with it an’ wants for to see ye, sir.”

“Well, I do not want to see number five, waiter, so just say—”

“I dar’n’t say nothin’, sir; she slipped a half a crown into the heel of me fist an’ towld me to hurry you up,” burst in the waiter, now in a white perspiration.

“I’ll not stir till I finish this cigar, at all events, and there is a good hour’s pull in it yet.”

“Och! murther, an’ she’s in such a hurry—such a dainty little craythur; an’ it was so dacent of her for to journey back the road with it.”

This last thrust failed to pierce my armor. The waiter was conscientiously working out his half-crown.

“She’s quite convaynient in the coffee-room, sir. I’ll show ye a short cut across the bog.”

I listened and puffed, puffed and listened.

“I must get back, sir. May I tell her ye’ll be over in five minutes, sir?”

“Tell her anything you like, my friend, but out of this till I finish my cigar I’ll not stir.”

Why I acted in this manner I was at a loss to determine. My anxiety for the valise almost amounted to pain; and yet here was the cause for worry removed, and I would not even trouble myself to walk a few hundred yards to the hotel to thank the lady for returning with it, which, as a gentleman, I was bound to do at any cost as to personal discomfort.

“Some frouzy old maid,” suggested Whiffler.

“Probably; or a strong-minded female doing Wicklow on a geological survey,” I added.

When I got back to the hotel, which might have been an hour or so subsequently, I found my portmanteau safely deposited in my room.

“Where is this lady, until I—”

“She’s gone, sir,” interrupted the waiter in a reproachful tone, “but she towld me for to give you this bit av’ a note,” handing me a piece of paper folded cocked-hat fashion.

I opened it.

“I have two regrets,” it said—the geologist’s handwriting was exquisitely feminine—“one, that I was inadvertently the cause of inconvenience; and the other, that I was denied the opportunity of claiming the portmanteau, as I imagine that I recognize in it one which I lost about eight months ago during a railway journey to the north.”

I was literally stunned. I gazed from the letter to the now astonished waiter, and back from his vacant countenance to the three-cornered billet, which, alas! told so much and yet so little. It bore no name, no initial, no monogram, no clue.

“Describe this lady’s appearance!” I shouted, clutching the waiter by his greasy collar, and imparting to him no very delicate shake.

“I never seen her; her veil was foreninst her nose the whole time she was spakin’ to me. The boy that attindid her is gone to the fair at Knockatemple.”

“Who saw her?”

“Barrin’ the masther, dickins a wan; for Mary, the chambermaid, started this mornin’ for Fogarty’s, of Glinmaloure. She an’ the misthress had a few words in regard to—but here’s the masther.”

The burly host presented himself; he had not encountered my enslaver, for the bill had been paid by the other lady.

“The red wan,” interposed the waiter.

“Just so, Mick,” said his master approvingly, and turning to me: “They have gone on to Luggelaw, sir, and intend to sleep at Enniskerry to-night.”

I unbosomed myself to Tom Whiffler, who immediately entered into the affair con amore. “We’ll hunt them,” he said; “we must catch them at Latouche’s Cottage. There is no exit from Luggelaw except the one.”

The road from the Seven Churches to Luggelaw is exquisitely picturesque. Behind lies that lake whose gloomy shore skylark never warbles o’er, with Lugnacullagh frowning sternly over its gloomy waters, and the round tower standing like a grim sentinel ready to challenge the approach alike of friend and foe. In front is the little village of Lara, with Castle Kevin perched upon a ledge of rock like an aerie’s nest, and stretching away in the distance the silvern beech-woods of Annamoe, while to the left the purple-crowned crags of Slonaveena seem almost to topple into the placid bosom of Lough Dan. It was a lovely summer day—one of those days that recall past joys, and in which the present is but a voluptuous dream.

At Roundwood we gained intelligence of the objects of our pursuit. The car had passed through about half an hour previously; the ladies had stopped at the hotel while the horse was being baited, and had indulged in that inevitable cup of tea which is at once the dissipation and the solace of the sex. The road to the first gate at Luggelaw is an ascent of three miles, which must of necessity be traversed upon “shanks’ mare,” and it is a blisterer. Not a vestige of tree, and with scarcely as much pasture as will satisfy the cravings of a few stunted sheep, the sun smiles grimly upon the entire roadway and scorches the luckless traveller whom destiny leads to the little lodge perched on the summit of the mountain. We were not spared, and coats, waistcoats, and neckties were cast upon the car, while we retained our pocket-handkerchiefs to mop our glowing faces, which resembled two very full and exceedingly dissipated-looking rosy moons.

Puffing, panting, blowing, mopping, by one supreme effort we gained the table-land which crowns the ascent, and, plunging towards an adjacent thicket of pines, took tremendous headers into the middle of it, where we lay gasping like a pair of stranded fish.

“Blow me,” exclaimed Tom Whiffler, “if I’ll ever climb Luggelaw Hill widow-hunting in July again. I wish you and your portmanteau and widow at Timbuctoo!”

A low, musical laugh quite near us; a rustle of female garments—my heart gave one mighty throb; for right in front of us, not two yards distant, with her large, lustrous gray eyes bent searchingly upon me, stood the owner of the peripatetic portmanteau.

To spring to my feet, to apologize for our déshabille—the car was as yet half a mile down the hill—to mumble some horrible incoherencies, was the impulse and action of half a minute.

She seemed puzzled to know how to act, but her friend, the “red wan,” cut the Gordian knot of the present embarrassment by a fit of loud, hearty, ringing laughter, which, maelstrom-like, sucked us one after another into it, and whirled us into an ocean of mirth before we knew where we were exactly, or what it was all about. There are some contagious laughs in the world, and she of the ruby locks was the fortunate possessor of one.

Two things establish instantaneous and easy communication with strangers—with women a baby, with men a cigar. Throw in a laugh, and, if the situation be a comical one, the laugh beats infant and tobacco. In this case it proved a talisman, and a very few words found us at our ease while I unfolded my tale.

I was i’ the vein and told my story well.

“Why did you not send it after me?” she asked.

“I had no clue,” I replied.

“I flung my card to the porter at the station.”

“It must have gone down the line; for the only reply I could awake in that self-same porter was, 'Sorra a know I know.’” And I devoutly dwelt upon all the bitter anxiety the hopeless efforts at restoration had cost me, to all of which I found a deeply-interested listener.

Before the sun had set on Luggelaw’s deep-wooded vale I learned much that satisfied me as to the past, and a something—inferentially only—that caused the white wings of Hope to flutter against my heart. Lucy Donaldson had been married to Captain George Middlecomb, of the Sixth Dragoon Guards, if not against her will, at least under the pressure of being talked into it. Captain Middlecomb had died within a year of their marriage of delirium tremens.

Need I say that we travelled up to Dublin as a party; that I became a constant visitor at Mrs. Middlecomb’s beautiful residence—Arcachon Villa at Killiney; that—

I suppose I should not divulge it, but, as I have written so far, I may as well finish the chapter. After all, I won’t. Those who have been interested, however, in the portmanteau may be pleased to know that it is now the common property of Lucy and the writer.

THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.

I. ST. DOROTHEA.

The little martyr-maid of Cæsarea— I do not a more lovely legend know. Said young Theophilus, mocking: “Dost thou go To join thy Spouse? If more than fond idea, Send me, I pray thee, pretty Dorothea, Of flowers and fruits that in his garden grow!” The maiden meekly bowed her head; and so She passed to death along the Roman Via.

A blooming boy, with hair like odorous flame, Out-dazed the sword that slew her; the next morn A blooming boy to young Theophilus came, With three fresh roses and three apples: scorn Melted in bliss. By crown and palm! we claim To guess that fragrance, and are less forlorn!

II. ST. CECILIA.

Two visions of divine Cecilia, Born of Italian art, possess my mind. One in the marble, at her tomb enshrined, Reveals her as in catacomb she lay. The budding maiden in her chaste array— Ah! closely let that awful necklace bind Clipt flower to stem!—to that cold sleep declined, Was in warm marriage-bed a bud alway.

Her heart’s dear love starved for a Mystic Spouse; She was not chary of sweet music’s gift I see the listening rapture of her brows: I hear her organ yearn, exult, and lift Humanity to God! The heavens arouse, And storms and seraphs o’er the white keys drift.

III. ST. AGNES.

I was God’s maid, less woman than a child; And yet they threw me in the common stews Naked as I was born, for men to use. The dear Lord saved his vessel, though reviled, From outrage of a look: the Mother smiled— Over my hot shame all my hair shook loose; And, lo! it swept my feet in lengths profuse, A bower of blinding awe to ruffians wild!

My life’s green branch they lopped with cruel sword; But He hath kissed my hurts, and they are well; And, walking in the meads of asphodel, I kiss the scarred feet of my gracious Lord: I lead his lambkins by my lily bell, Where the pomegranates shade the softest sward.

SHAKSPERE, FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.[71]

Footnote 71:

Shakspere, from an American Point of View: including an Inquiry as to his Religious Faith and his Knowledge of Law; with the Baconian Theory considered. By George Wilkes. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. 1877. 8vo, pp. ix. 471.

This elegantly-printed volume, published in England, though by an American author, has for its subject four distinct lines of inquiry; two of these—the validity of a theory which originated in this country a few years ago, that Bacon, Lord Verulam, really wrote the plays known as Shakspere’s; and, secondly, the extent of Shakspere’s legal knowledge—though carried through the work, are subordinate to the other two—the anti-democratic tone of the dramatist and the fact that he was a Catholic. These are the real issues of the book. Mr. Wilkes holds that Shakspere should not exert the influence in this country that he does in England, and he arraigns him at the bar of American public opinion to answer the indictment that he is always a strenuous upholder of royal authority, an advocate of the privileges of the nobility, regarding them as far removed above the ignobile vulgus, for whom on all occasions the poet manifests the utmost contempt. That a work teeming with constant lessons of this character is no fit guide for Americans he makes the real argument of his book. The second count is apparently intended to be no less damaging. Shakspere was a Catholic, and as such should exercise no influence on a Protestant community. His influence in England for three hundred years has not apparently won that country back to Catholicity, and the United States are probably as safe. Still, it may serve for a new agitation to get up a cry: “No Shakspere in the public schools!”

That Mr. Wilkes considers it a danger is seen by the fact that he uses toward Catholics every vile nickname drawn from the slums by religious hate to degrade us in the eyes of our fellow-men. Yet surely a Shaksperean scholar should not need reminding that to rob one of his good name is worse than stealing his purse, oft-times as bad as taking his life. Not only this, but he more than once represents the Catholic Church as actuated by a hatred of intense fury against the Jews, as an earnest upholder of the unlawful claims of aristocracy, as an enemy of popular rights, and as an excuser of perjury. While thus under a strong anti-Catholic bias or prejudice—stronger even than he at all conceives—he has attempted to understand Catholic terms and usages, and to enter into that world which to Protestants seems so strange and inconceivable—the world of Catholic thought.

The question as to the religious convictions of Shakspere is not a new one. No Catholic has ever read the great dramatist without feeling that he was strangely lacking in the usual anti-Catholic element, even if he did not impress him as often Catholic in thought.

Catholic writers in English periodicals, such as the Rambler and others, had already claimed Shakspere as a Catholic. All evidence, extrinsic and intrinsic, seems to sustain the position. His family belonged to the gentry on the father’s and mother’s side, and on both sides had adhered to Catholicity after the change of religion in England. The will of his maternal grandfather, Robert Arden, who died in 1556, is distinctly Catholic: “I bequeath my soul to Almighty God, and to our Blessed Lady St. Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven.” Of his father there is still extant a Testament of the Soul—not, as Mr. Wilkes supposes, a form drawn up by some chaplain of the family, but that Testamentum Animæ Christianæ which, in Latin and the vernacular, has for centuries been found in Catholic devotional manuals, and the copying of which, as a kind of formal act, has been maintained in many families—certainly was in the family of the present writer down to the nineteenth century. Shakspere’s father, too, was fined for non-attendance at the established church. So far as the families of his parents were concerned, he was evidently Catholic, and must in childhood have been familiar with the thoughts and language of English Catholics. How far in mature age he retained the impressions of youth, or how faithful he may have been to the teachings of his religion, we have no means of judging. The lightness with which moral obligations lay on him, his career as a wild but gifted man, give little ground for supposing him to have practised the religion he may still have professed.

In his dramas Shakspere constantly uses Catholic terms, speaks of Catholic clergy, religious of both sexes, rites and ceremonies with respect, and in many cases turns his ridicule upon the new order of clergy in England. The Shaksperes and Ardens had both held office under the Tudor kings, and the dramatist shows the utmost zeal for royal power as against the Pope. To a Catholic, now, this gives his position at once. His life was not a regular one; and he could scarcely, in those days of persecution, have been a firm, consistent, practical Catholic, although he clung to the faith, never abjured it, and had no liking for any of the new forms. His Bible reading was in the Protestant versions of the day, not in the Rheims and Douay, of which no influence has ever been detected in his plays. That he died a good Catholic needs proof; but Mr. Wilkes’ ideas of the meaning of the term are vague, since he tells us that Henry VIII. died a good Catholic.

The fact that Shakspere makes his characters—most of whom are Catholics in time or country—speak as Catholics is really no proof of his own Catholicity, any more than Longfellow’s almost constant correctness in his use of Catholic terms and familiarity with Catholic thought is proof that he is a Catholic. The fact is, we admit, suspicious; for during centuries Protestant writers seem to have made it a point to display the most intense ignorance of Catholic terms, usages, rites, and ceremonies, and equally a point to insist on talking about what they vaunt their ignorance of. But, going back to Shakspere’s time, we must bear in mind that the new religion had not yet taken any hold on the people at large; that the only religious terms and expressions that conveyed any definite ideas to their minds were those of the old faith sanctioned by the usage of centuries, and that the terms introduced by the various classes of reformers were diverse, new, strange, and, to the people, a mere ridiculous jargon. The coinage of a new religious vocabulary took time and skill. It was no easy task to shape Bible translation so as to avoid old ideas and thoughts. This new jargon rose to be a language when the King James Bible was imposed on the people after the Restoration. Though long vaunted as a well of English undefiled, philologists now admit that it is the language of no period of English history, of no district of English soil; it was a hash made to meet the pressing want, with obsolete words, terms drawn from every county of England, and new-coined expressions, all forced into the service so as to supply the English people with a new vocabulary of religious thought.

To convey religious ideas in Shakspere’s time, the readiest words were those familiar to the people. The dramatist employs them with no regard to the country or time. The pagan Hamlet refers to the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, the Mass, and Office for the Dead; they talk of confession and beads in the Comedy of Errors; of indulgences in the Tempest, and even in Troilus and Cressida; of fasting days in Pericles and Coriolanus; and christening is spoken of in Titus Andronicus. The anachronisms were apparently not noticed in his time, nor taken into account.

The system had not been adopted of entirely ignoring Catholic terms; there were no others, and Shakspere used what he had. One word seems to be avoided. The Mass is introduced only like Moore’s “neat little Testament, just kept to swear by.” It occurs only in the form of an oath, except in one instance, to which Mr. Wilkes devotes a chapter. Juliet, going to her confessor, asks:

“Are you at leisure, holy father, now, Or shall I come to you at evening Mass?”

Mr. Wilkes goes into a lengthened argument to show that it was the custom at that time in England to celebrate Mass at night. He says: “I have found many illustrations from Catholic reviews and other reliable authorities of the practices of the hedge-priests, as they were called, in times of Catholic persecution, whose business it was to go in the darkness of the evening to the houses of the faithful to celebrate a nocturnal Mass.” We should be much pleased to see any such authorities. He cites only an article in the Manhattan Monthly last year, where a writer speaks of priests in Ireland “who often at dead of night fled to the mountain cave, the wooded glen, and wild rath to celebrate Mass for the faithful”; but travelling by night is one thing, and saying Mass at night is another. Again, there were no priests in England answering to the Irish hedge-priests. The priests in England found shelter in the houses of Catholic gentry; they had not a mass of poor and oppressed faithful among whom they lived. But neither in Ireland nor in England is there a single example that the writer has ever found of a Mass said in what may be called the evening—that is, between sunset and midnight—much less of its being so frequent an occurrence as to make Shakspere refer to evening Mass as an ordinary matter. Dodd’s History of the Church, Challoner’s Missionary Priests, the works of Father Parsons, Campion, and other Catholic writers of the time, never allude to any single case where such a Mass was said. Nor is there in any liturgical work reference to any such custom ever having obtained in England.

Mr. Wilkes seems to feel that the theory is not very solid. He next refers to the custom in some parts of saying a Low Mass immediately after the Sunday High Mass. “Shakspere may have considered the last or one o’clock Mass an evening Mass.” The play itself makes this untenable. It was late in the afternoon when Juliet went to the friar. When she comes back the nurse says:

“See where she comes from shrift with merry look”—

not half as charmingly as Longfellow describes Evangeline as most beautiful

“When, after confession, Homeward serenely she walks with God’s benediction upon her.”

Then, a few lines lower down, Lady Capulet, in the same scene, says:

“’Tis now near night.”

This fixes the time too clearly to allow that any reference is made to a Mass about mid-day. “Evening Mass” is simply nonsense; but the phrase has charmed later writers, and several poets introduce the expression, just as poets and prose writers have all copied the Protestant Bible misprint, “Strain at a gnat,” instead of “Strain out a gnat.”

But the word Mass here is against all Catholic custom and reason. Juliet wishes to go to confession. She politely asks her confessor whether he is at leisure or whether she shall come again at a later hour. Would any one, under the same circumstances, propose to come to confession to the priest when he was saying Mass? It would be just the time when he could not possibly hear confessions. If he expected to say Mass soon, he would hear her then, and neither he nor she would think of putting it off till he had begun his Mass. Shakspere critics have boggled and blundered over this without seeing this incongruity, which to a Catholic is as patent as the day. What, then, does it mean? Juliet can ask only whether he will hear her then or whether she shall come later. Now, if we consider Shakspere to have written:

“Are you at leisure, holy father, now, Or shall I come to you as evening wanes?”

the whole thing is as natural, consistent, and usual to Catholic ideas as can be. Then there is no such absurdity as evening Mass, or going to confession to a priest who is saying Mass. The dense ignorance of later times on every Catholic matter will easily account for the neglect to correct the palpable error in the actual text.

The fact that, while Shakspere speaks of religion as the monastic state, religious, monks, nuns, convents, monasteries, beads, penance, month’s mind, dirge, requiem, purgatory, indulgences, relics, shrines, the housel (Eucharist), christening or baptism, aneling (anointing), the cross, altar, holy-water, he nowhere in any of his plays speaks of the Mass (except in the oath “By the Mass”), is a strong argument against its use here. Convents and monasteries were abolished; relics and shrines were gone; no dirges or requiems resounded in the old church walls; allusions to them were simply allusions to something deemed past and gone; but there were nearly a thousand Mass-priests in England—men who carried their lives in their hands, over whom the severest edicts of the law were hanging like the sword of Damocles. To talk of the Mass as a service with respect was verging on high treason. Having avoided it everywhere else, he would scarcely introduce it here absurdly—no less absurdly to him than to us.

At that time, though the government was anti-Catholic, the state church was a mere matter of office. There was little zeal in its members—little more than conformity to law. The Puritans were active and zealous in spreading their doctrines; but the people were to a great extent still Catholic, and, with many nobles and gentlemen as leaders, and a greater number of priests than during the next two centuries, formed a power which was finally crushed by the Civil War. With this body Shakspere sympathized. He was not of the stuff to make a martyr. Ben Jonson and Massinger were, we know, Catholics, but not a single act of Shakspere’s is recorded that stamps him as a Catholic. He was not fined as a recusant, had no intercourse with known Catholics, in all arrests under the penal laws there is no allusion to him, even as using his undoubted influence with the great to shield some poor victim. With the mass of the people, at court and not at court, he ridiculed the new Gospellers, as we do Millerites or any other oddities. Against royal supremacy or the religion established by law, the Common Prayer, or the bishops who had been intruded into the old Catholic sees, Shakspere says nothing. His ridicule is never launched at them. His wit is turned, as was that of the court circle, at the Puritan element. The state church was respectable, but lacked earnestness, piety, and zeal: it was simply a state affair. Those whose minds and imaginations tended to effusive piety found themselves repulsed. Gradually they camped apart and formed new organizations. In Shakspere’s time the government and the government church laughed at them, when they should have used them to build up the Church of England. Just so in the following century they repulsed Wesley. Shakspere takes not a Catholic but the court-prelatic side; and there were no prophets on that side to see that James’ son was to die on the block and the Church of England be abolished by these very Puritans. That he had any direct idea of attacking Protestantism as a system, or making his dramas—with their coarse and often impure speech, such as then found favor with Elizabeth and her court—an arm against the Reformation, is absurd, and Mr. Wilkes, in going through play after play to note every praise of convents or religious practices as done with a direct view to elevate the Catholic Church, is extravagant. We have but to remember that Protestantism had then no institutions, no religious rites or practices, nothing absolutely for a poet or dramatist to employ as illustrations. Protestant poets and artists feel the poverty to this day, and in despair turn from cold, set formalism to Catholic themes, where poetry finds so many a subject.

Our American critic has endeavored to follow out Catholic thoughts, but not always successfully. Thus, in Richard III. Elizabeth addressing her murdered children:

“If yet your gentle souls fly in the air,”

and Buckingham:

“If that your moody discontented souls Do through the clouds behold this present hour,”

are gravely put down as evidences of Shakspere’s recognition of the doctrine of purgatory, as though every believer in ghosts must be a believer in purgatory. There are some comical remarks about Shakspere’s familiarity with “the intricacies of the Roman Catholic faith,” because in Henry VI. we find:

“Although by sight his sin be multiplied,”

when surely the Scriptural injunction to pluck out an eye that leads one to sin might explain it without his getting tangled in intricacies. His knowledge of the marriage service also seems peculiar; the rituals we know are hardly the origin of Shakspere’s marriage form.

Mr. Wilkes is evidently led away by his theory in his forced Catholic interpretation of many passages of the dramatist; and his desire to show that the whole series of dramas was a device of the Catholic Church to attack Protestantism in England induces him to strain much to support his view, and often to jump at unwarranted conclusions, as in making Hartley, in the strange Girachy case, to have been a priest. A man might be hanged as a Catholic priest—as Ury was a century ago within sight of the spot where Mr. Wilkes’ office now stands—and yet not have been even a Catholic. There is no Catholic record of priest or layman suffering in connection with this affair.

Hence, while we admit Mr. Wilkes’ diligence and ability in studying Shakspere, we must regret that his judgment, like that of too many, has been warped by the old anti-Catholic feeling, to the extent of giving the plays a character which neither friend nor foe of Catholicity at the time dreamed of ascribing to them.

In treating the question of Shakspere’s legal knowledge, he is free from bias, and hence easily perceives and often exposes the exaggeration which induces learned men of the law to interpret much that any attendant at courts, whether as witness or juror, might easily acquire as proof of serious legal study. The length to which the legal argument has been pushed has led to similar claims by other professions; but a young man of such Catholic stock as Shakspere undoubtedly was could scarcely have attempted to obtain admission to the bar in those days.

Certainly, as Mr. Wilkes well maintains, the amount of legal knowledge and the use of legal terms manifested in the plays are not of the character that we should expect from one who had held such eminent legal and judicial positions as Lord Bacon. Nor is this, as he shows, the only difficulty. The style of the dramas and that of Bacon’s acknowledged writings are utterly different; the conception of thoughts and their clothing in language are both distinct. The ear attuned to Shakspere finds in Bacon a measure, an adaptation of words, a symmetry of his own, utterly at variance with the dramatist. Wilkes’ euphonic test has great weight; and he well and aptly cites Bacon to show that the chancellor made style a test of disputed authorship. If the Baconian theory is but “a bubble which has never floated among the public with any amount of success,” it has doubtless found some advocates, and Mr. Wilkes has strengthened the arguments against it.

His argument against Shakspere as one who worships a lord and despises the middle and lower classes has but the one fault: that it takes our modern American theories as the test—our theories, and not our practice; for after all personal liberty has, in a certain sense, steadily declined in America during the last century, and many of the rights possessed by individuals in Shakspere’s time, and enjoyed by our ancestors down to the Revolution, have been swept away in the name of liberty, while general and local taxation has reached a point that often amounts practically to confiscation of all revenue, and sometimes of the whole estate. In point of fact, the lower classes among us are more oppressed in person and property by official power, and less able to obtain legal redress, than they were in England in Shakspere’s time. The distinction of rank was then as absolute almost as that of the Hindoo castes, and the contemptuous style of the day in which the aristocratic portion treated their inferiors was caught up too readily by Shakspere. Mr. Wilkes develops this element steadily through the work, and makes it, as we have seen, the basis of one of his heaviest charges against the dramatist. He treats the point skilfully, and the subject affords a fine scope for discussion. For our own part, we think that he carries his theory too far, and that Shakspere may find an advocate who will relieve him from much of the obloquy and secure his claim to respect in America.

Shakspere literature is now a field so vast, and has won contributions from so many able minds and eloquent pens, that it requires some courage to produce a new work on the topic at large; yet Mr. Wilkes has certainly produced a volume that will take a prominent place among the Shaksperiana. It gives utterance to many new views; the whole treatment, being thoroughly American, is fresh and free from much of the conventional bias that is almost inevitable in England; while solid German learning, by its very seriousness and profundity, seems often to miss the point and finesse of the dramatist.

The Catholic part is so prominent that we could not but treat it plainly and frankly, addressing as we do more exclusively a circle of Catholic readers. We do so with no wish to be merely censorious, and with our recognition of the author’s evidently careful study and desire to treat the question fairly.

“He presents the volume,” he avows, “rather as a series of inquiries than as dogmatic doctrine, and strives,” he says, “to support them only by such an amount of controversy as is legitimately due from one who invites the public to a new discussion.”

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ESSAYS AND REVIEWS By Rt. Rev. J. L. Spalding, D.D. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 355. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

The author of these essays has been recently raised to the dignity of the episcopate and appointed to the newly-created see of Peoria, Ill. His name and fame as an author, preacher, and orator are already widely known in this country. His Life of Archbishop Spalding, his illustrious uncle, will remain one of the landmarks of Catholic history and biography in the United States. By this important and valuable work the name of the learned and distinguished author is at present best known outside of the immediate circle with whom friendship and the round of daily life connect him. He has done, however, much more than this. He has used his great gifts incessantly and in whatever way they could prove of service to the cause which every word he utters and every line he writes proclaim he has alone at heart—the growth and strengthening of Christ’s church, the defence of Catholic faith and doctrine, and the spread of Christ’s kingdom on earth. With this view he has even gone down to that lowly, much neglected, yet most important field of editing a series of Catholic school-books—that issued by the Catholic Publication Society.

He has been a constant and most valued contributor to the pages of this magazine, and a selection of his articles—which, had he chosen, might have been much larger—goes to form the present volume of Essays and Reviews. As they come before us now in book-form we are glad to have this opportunity of saying publicly what we have always felt, not only in regard to these but also all other contributions from the same pen: that they are of the very best kind of that peculiarly modern, peculiarly favorite, and peculiarly difficult form of literature—the magazine article. Dr. Brownson used to say that there were not half a dozen men in this country who could write a really good review article. Whether that be so or not, we are sure that the veteran reviewer would not have excluded these essays from his category. And what we here state regarding them is only an echo of the general opinion, so far as it reaches us through the medium of the public press and the private verdict of excellent judges. The style is fascinating, glowing, brilliant. There are here and there passages of extreme beauty and eloquence. There is nothing like mere verbiage or redundance. There is a man behind it all—a man of knowledge, of wide yet careful culture, writing in dead earnest, observing the march of events while the history of the past is ever present to him, with power and courage to say what he means in a manner that all will understand. Not one of these articles fell dead. The leading one, “The Catholic Church in the United States, 1776-1876,” excited universal interest and attention not alone in this country but abroad, and a distinguished writer in the Correspondant made it the chief text of an important article on the United States. No history or historical sketch that we have seen gives so complete and profound a view of the history, the trials, and struggles of the Catholic Church in this country within the century as that article. The other essays are of a piece with it. Their very titles speak their timeliness: “The Persecution of the Church in the German Empire,” “Prussia and the Church” (three essays), “German Journalism,” etc. Perhaps the most valuable of all, however, are the three essays on the “Comparative Influence of Catholicism and Protestantism on National Prosperity,” for which M. de Laveleye’s well-known pamphlet furnished a text. They are eminently characteristic of the writer. He faces everything, shirks nothing. He takes up the subjects of “Wealth,” “Education,” and “Morality”—just the very points on which Protestant writers are in the habit of claiming superiority for Protestant over Catholic nations—and how he treats them we leave to the reader’s enjoyment.

We are often asked the kind of article needed for THE CATHOLIC WORLD. We can recommend no better text-book to such applicants than this volume of Essays and Reviews; nor can we recommend anything fresher, better, or more interesting to Catholics generally who are anxious to defend their faith on points where it is often believed to be most assailable.

MAGISTER CHORALIS: a Theoretical and Practical Manual of Gregorian Chant for the use of the clergy, seminarists, organists, choir-masters, choristers, etc. By Rev. Francis Xavier Haberl, cathedral choir-master, Ratisbon. Translated and enlarged (from the fourth German edition) by Rev. N. Donnelly, Cathedral Church of the Immaculate Conception, Dublin. Ratisbon, New York, and Cincinnati: Frederick Pustet.

This excellent and most timely work is one we have long desired to see. Many pastors of churches and their organists have been willing to do something towards the introduction of the holy chant in the divine offices, but the means of instruction have been almost wholly wanting. Very few organists and choir-directors in the United States have made any study whatever of the chant, and the greater number are not able to read even its notation. We have felt and lamented the difficulties in the way of those who, convinced of the claims of Gregorian chant, and wearied and disgusted with the wretched cheap concert performances they have been forced to endure at Holy Mass and Vespers, have longed to rid themselves of the “church music” nuisance and again hear the true song of the church resounding in the sanctuary. Even with ample pecuniary resources it would not have been enough to issue an order to the choir-director to organize a Gregorian choir, or even to sing some portions of the chant from the organ gallery. The work before us solves almost all these difficulties. Of course the organist will need to study the character of the chant in other works, that he may be able to appreciate its tonality and style, and to give it its true accompaniment, without which he would be more likely to produce poor music than good chant, or a detestable mixture of both, such as one commonly finds published in various Catholic “choir-books” and books of so-called “Services of the Catholic Church.”

We recommend to Gregorian organists the careful study of the harmonies of John Lambert in his harmonized Gradual and Vesperal, the Organum Comitans by Dr. Witt, and the Accompagnment d’Orgue pour le Graduel et Antiphonarium de Rheims et Cambrai, by Messrs. Dietsch and Tessier.

The only faults we have to find with Father Haberl’s work are, first, the rules as given for the Italian pronunciation of Latin, especially for the pronunciation of the word excelsis, which is directed to be pronounced egg-shell-sis! and, second, the rule on page 66 directing the elision of the last vowel of a word when followed by another vowel in the next word, in the verses of hymns; and we regret to see this rule carried out in the new Vesperal as published by Mr. Pustet. This rule may do for reading classic poetry, but, if we mistake not, such elision is absolutely forbidden in the recitation of the divine Office, whether read or sung. In all former editions of the Vesperal we have found an extra note provided for the superfluous syllable.

We cannot bring ourselves to sing or say

Sit laus Patr-ac Paraclito,

or

Quænam lingua tib-o Lancea, debitas Grates pro merit-est apta rependere? Christi vivificum namqu-aperis latus Und-Ecclesia nascitur.

How is one to sing namqu-aperis? and what are we to think of clavor-aditus for clavorum aditus, and ill-hic for ille, hic? We would like to be referred to some authority on this subject. That this work has already reached the fourth edition in Ratisbon is a very encouraging sign of the restoration of Gregorian chant among our German brethren. May it find a wide-spread sale in our own country!

GOLDEN SAND: A Collection of little Counsels for the Sanctification and Happiness of Daily Life. Translated from the French. New York: Sadlier & Co. 1877.

We have not seen for a long time a more charming little hand-book of daily piety than the modest volume of which a young lady, who is too modest to put her name on the title-page, has here given us an excellent translation. Miss Ella J. McMahon, to whom we are indebted for the publication of this version of Paillettes d’Or, has turned the simple and unaffected original into equally simple and attractive English. First published periodically in the form of tracts, these short chapters of practical counsels were afterwards collected in pocket volumes, and the book now before us, though it could be read through in a morning, contains the series for several years. It is addressed to people in the world, and it embraces rules for the sanctification of all the actions of life, for making home happy and the domestic hearth an altar of blessing and sacrifice. No one can read a few of its pages without feeling. “Here is something that just suits my case; the circumstances described here are just my own; the temptations are mine; the little trials are mine; nothing can be easier than to make the virtues mine, too.” Several chapters of the book, for instance, are devoted to what the author styles “The Angels of the Hearth,” and here is a description of “The Angel of Little Sacrifices”:

“Have you never seen her at work?

“Have you never at least felt her influence?

“In every Christian family and in all pious communities, as the image of his providence in the household, God has placed the angel of little sacrifices, trying to remove all the thorns, to lighten all the burdens, to share all the fatigues.

“She has for her motto these gracious words of an amiable saint: Good makes no noise, and noise effects no good.

“Thus she is like a ray of sunlight, lighting, warming, giving life to all, but inconveniencing no one.

“We feel that she is with us, because we no longer experience those misunderstandings of heretofore, those rancorous thoughts, those deliberate coolnesses which spoil family life; because we no longer hear those sharp, rude words which wound so deeply; because affectionate sentiments mount readily from the heart to the lips, and life is sweeter.

“Who, then, has absorbed that self-love which would not yield; that egotism which mingled with the most sincere friendship; that self-indulgence, in fine, which always sought ease?

“The angel of little sacrifices has received from heaven the mission of those angels of whom the prophet speaks, who removed the stones from the road, lest they should bruise the feet of travellers.

“And that of the angels who, according to the simple legend of the first Christians, scattered rose-leaves 'neath the feet of Jesus and Mary in their flight into Egypt....

“But, like them, she is oftener invisible; she does her work in secret.

“There is a place less commodious than another; she chooses it, saying with a sweet smile, How comfortable I am here!

“There is some work to be done, and she presents herself for it simply with the joyous manner of one who finds her happiness in so doing.

“It is an object of trifling value, of which she deprives herself to give to her who the evening before has manifested a desire to possess one like it.

“How many oversights repaired by this unknown hand!

“How many neglected things put in their places, without our ever seeing how they came there!

“How many little joys procured for another without his ever having mentioned to any one the happiness which they would give him!

“Who has known thus how to do good in secret? Who has known how to divine the secrets of the heart?

“Does a dispute arise? She knows how to settle it by a pleasant word which wounds no one, and falls upon the slight disturbance like a ray of sunlight upon a cloud.

“Should she hear of two hearts estranged, she has always new means of reuniting them without their being able to show her any gratitude, so sweet, simple, and natural is what she does.

“But who will tell the thorns which have torn her hands, the pain her heart has endured, the humiliations her charity has borne?

“And yet she is always smiling.

“Does sacrifice give her joy?

“Have you never seen her at work, the angel of little sacrifices?

“On earth she is called a mother, a friend, a sister, a wife.

“In heaven she is called a saint.”

Here is another example of the familiar and easy spirit, the clearness, the practicality of this admirable little counsellor:

“WHAT IS MY CROSS OF TO-DAY?—It is that person whom Providence has placed near me, and whom I dislike; who humiliates me constantly by her disdainful manner; who wearies me by her slowness in the work which I share with her; who excites my jealousy because she is loved more than I and because she succeeds better than I; who irritates me by her chatter, her frivolity, or even by her attentions to me.

“It is that person who, for some vague reason, I believe to be inimical to me; who, according to my excited imagination, watches me, criticises me, ridicules me.

“She is there, always there.... My efforts to avoid her are of no avail.

“A mysterious power seems to multiply these appearances before me....

“This is my most painful cross; the others are very small compared to this.

“Circumstances change, temptations diminish, positions improve, misfortune becomes endurable by habit, but persons who are disagreeable to us always irritate us more and more.

“HOW I MUST BEAR MY CROSS OF TO-DAY.—By not showing in any way either the weariness, the dislike, or the involuntary repulsion which her presence causes me. By obliging myself to render her some service, it matters little whether she knows it—it is a secret between God and me.

“To say nearly every day something good of her talents, of her virtues, her tact.... Something, certainly, I will find to praise.

“To pray seriously for her soul, and even to go so far as to ask God to love her and leave her with me.

“Dear companion, blessed messenger of God’s mercy, you have unconsciously the mission of sanctifying me, and I will not be ungrateful.

“Angel of a rude and appalling exterior, were it not for thee I would fall into humiliating faults. My nature disdains and repulses thee, but, oh! how my heart loves thee.”

There is an abundance of good advice which will touch directly upon a multitude of the commonest faults of good people—those apparently trivial sins and imperfections which cause so much unhappiness at home, which make family life so hard and bitter, and place so many obstacles in the path of perfection.

The book cannot fail to do good. It will be a favorite companion of the pious soul, an affectionate and never unwelcome monitor to the cold and careless.

LIFE OF THE VENERABLE CLEMENT MARY HOFBAUER, PRIEST OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE MOST HOLY REDEEMER. By a Member of the Order of Mercy, authoress of the Life of Catharine McAuley, Life of St. Alphonsus, Glimpses of Pleasant Homes, etc. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

We have received advance sheets of this beautiful and most interesting life by the gifted author of the Life of Catharine McAuley. Father Hofbauer was one of God’s heroes, and the story of his life will be found full of interest and profit. He is fortunate in his biographer, whose clever pen seems particularly adapted to a style of literary work than which there is none more pleasing and useful. An extended notice will appear later.

THE LADY OF NEVILLE COURT. A Tale of the Times. By the author of Marion Howard, etc., etc. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

It is really refreshing to come across a simple, unaffected, yet most interesting story such as this. Its only fault is that happiest of faults—brevity. The characters are few, natural, well contrasted, and well developed; the situations well wrought up, yet by the most natural of means. The pathetic portions are indescribably touching, but constantly and happily relieved by bright dialogue or playfully humorous narrative. Richard O’Meara is a genuine Catholic hero, albeit a modern one; and Maud Neville as sweet and noble a woman as we have ever met with in fiction. The real art of the book lies in its genuine artlessness, and we trust the author may give us many such.

* * * * *

In the July number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will appear the first instalment of a new story, entitled Alba’s Dream, by the author of Are You My Wife?, A Salon in Paris before the War, Number Thirteen, M. Gombard’s Mistake, etc., etc. The story will be completed in three parts.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXV., No. 148.—JULY, 1877.

THE EUROPEAN EXODUS.

We propose in the following pages to speak of the past history, the present condition, and the future prospects of European emigration to this country. We shall have to present many dry figures and prosaic statistics; but the investigation will lead us to regard the wonderful manner in which the wisdom and the love of God have been manifested in the control which he, as the ruler of all things, has exercised over this European exodus. Even out of those details of its course and progress which have seemed most deplorable, and have caused to many of God’s enlightened servants the greatest anxiety and grief, beneficent and grand results now begin to be discerned which are likely to secure the permanent establishment of the church in this land, and to prepare her for the magnificent task which, as we believe, she is destined to accomplish here—the salvation of the republic and of society from the utter ruin into which the arch-enemy of mankind would otherwise soon engulf them. The foolishness of men is sometimes the wisdom of God; and God, who governs all things sweetly, has chosen to turn the apparent folly of a large portion of the emigrants from Europe to the United States during the last twenty-five years into channels through which inestimable blessings have already flowed, and others, still more glorious, are yet to pass.

The great wave of emigration began to rise in 1840, reached its highest point in 1869-72, and, notwithstanding some fluctuations, continued to bring to our shores a colony every day until 1875. In that year it experienced a sudden and serious check, and has ever since steadily subsided, until now it has not only sunk to low-water mark, but has even seemed to be about to flow the other way. The official reports of the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York classify the passengers who arrive at this port from foreign countries as “aliens” and as “citizens or persons who had before landed in the United States”; and the “aliens” are subdivided into steerage and cabin passengers. It is safe to take the “alien steerage passengers” as persons who have come to this country for the first time with the purpose of residing here—in fine, as bonâ fide emigrants. The alien cabin passengers in most cases are tourists or visitors, although among them also are some emigrants. Now, the whole number of alien steerage passengers who arrived at the port of New York during the year 1876 was only 60,308, of whom 17,974 were from Germany, 12,728 from Ireland, 5,429 from England, 1,479 from Scotland, and 428 from Wales. The whole number of steerage emigrants from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland who landed at New York during this year was only 20,064—a much smaller number than arrived in any previous year since 1840. Indeed, in no previous year until 1875, when it was 34,636, had the number failed to be twice as great; in many years it was more than ten times as large. The following table will show the emigration of all classes from the United Kingdom into the United States at all our ports during the last thirty-six years:

1840 40,642 1841 45,017 1842 63,852 1843 28,335 1844 43,660 1845 58,538 1846 82,239 1847 142,154 1848 188,233 1849 219,450 1850 223,078 1851 267,357 1852 244,261 1853 230,885 1854 193,065 1855 103,414 1856 111,837 1857 126,905 1858 50,716 1859 70,303 1860 87,500 1861 42,764 1862 58,706 1863 146,813 1864 147,042 1865 147,258 1866 161,000 1867 159,275 1868 155,532 1869 203,001 1870 196,075 1871 198,843 1872 233,747 1873 233,073 1874 148,161 1875 92,489 1876 [72]54,554

Footnote 72:

Of whom 24,452 landed at New York.

The 54,554 persons who, not being citizens of the United States, arrived in this country from the United Kingdom in 1876, embrace all those who came either for pleasure, or for business, or to remain. But during the same year 54,697 persons of Irish and British origin arrived in the United Kingdom from the United States; so that the emigration from this country to the United Kingdom exceeded the immigration into the United States from the United Kingdom by 143 souls. The English Board of Trade, in publishing these returns, says that “as regards North America, in fact, the records of 1876 are the records of a movement of passengers to and fro, and the so-called emigration is not really emigration.” We digress here, for a moment, to speak of one or two facts disclosed by the emigration returns of the British Board of Trade for 1876, which cast a side light upon a portion of our subject.

The total emigration from the United Kingdom to places out of Europe in 1876 was 138,222 persons; the total immigration into the Kingdom was 91,647 persons, showing an apparent loss of population of 46,575. But after deducting from both sides the persons of other than British birth, the net loss of population to the United Kingdom by emigration is reduced to 38,000 persons—a percentage scarcely worth mention when compared with the annual increase by births. As regards the emigration from that Kingdom to the United States, it is noted not only that it has become very small, but that its character has materially changed. Only 73 agricultural laborers sailed from England for the United States, but no less than 3,191 of this class sailed for Australia; while, on the other hand, “4,535 gentlemen, professional men, merchants, etc., and 10,874 persons of no occupation, have gone to the States, and only 1,106 of the first-named class and 2,753 of the second migrated to Australia.” The returns go on to point out that emigration from Ireland, and of Irishmen living in England and Scotland, has almost entirely ceased. “The total number of persons of Irish origin who emigrated from the United Kingdom in 1876 to places out of Europe was 25,976.” Of these 16,432 came to the United States; some of these were only visitors; but counting them all as emigrants, they would not number as many as arrived here in a single month in former years.

The gradual but steady decrease of Irish emigration to the United States is pointed out in these returns in a forcible and apparently exultant manner. From 1853 to 1860 the annual average of Irish emigration to this country was 71,856; during the ten years following it was 69,084; in 1871 it fell to 65,591; in 1874 it was 48,136; in 1875 it was 31,433; and last year it sank to 16,432.[73] “The Irish people,” says the Board of Trade with evident satisfaction, “do not at present migrate from the United Kingdom in any appreciable numbers, although they may emigrate from one part of the United Kingdom to another.” We cannot call the correctness of this statement into question; it is no doubt quite correct; and it is safe to conclude that, for the present at least, and probably for many years to come, Irish emigration to this country will be limited to very small proportions. Nay, there is some reason to fear that, unless a marked improvement soon occurs in the industrial affairs of our country, we shall be in danger of seeing too many of our Irish and Irish-American citizens leaving us to seek homes in Australia. The year 1877 is scarcely six months old, but it has seen three vessels sail from this port with American, Irish, and German emigrants for Australia. This movement is probably a wholly sporadic one, and too much importance should not be attached to it. But we are not yet in a condition to encourage emigration from this country nor to desire to see it under any circumstances. We wish still to receive many millions of people from the Old World, and, as we shall show, there is a strong probability that we shall obtain them.

Footnote 73:

Of whom 13,314 landed at New York.

Emigration from the Continent of Europe, while showing a decrease, has not diminished in such a marked degree as that from the United Kingdom. The whole number of alien emigrants who arrived at the port of New York during the thirty years ending December 31, 1876, was 5,604,073. Of these 2,920,397 were natives of Great Britain and Ireland; 2,665,774 were natives of the Continent; and the remaining 17,902 came from all the other countries of the earth. The following table will show the exact number of emigrants from each country arriving at the port of New York during the last thirty years:

FROM GREAT BRITAIN.

Ireland 2,001,727 England 732,922 Scotland 157,578 Wales 28,170 2,920,397

FROM AMERICA.

South America 3,066 West Indies 7,897 Nova Scotia 1,611 Canada 1,397 Mexico 1,030 Central America 289 15,290

FROM CONTINENTAL EUROPE.

Germany 2,121,020 France 107,710 Switzerland 81,798 Holland 39,069 Norway 44,772 Sweden 116,655 Italy 42,769 Belgium 10,096 Spain 7,796 Denmark 32,974 Poland 11,291 Sardinia 2,306 Portugal 1,791 Russia 22,124 Sicily 339 Greece 269 Turkey 242 Austria 21,677 Luxembourg 1,076 2,663,774

FROM THE ORIENT.

China 1,057 East Indies 304 Arabia 14 Africa 191 Australia 225 Japan 175 Unknown 646 2,612

5,604,073

We may remark that fourteen of the countries in this list are Roman Catholic countries, and that the emigrants from these number 2,212,963 souls. The proportion of Catholics among the emigrants from the other twenty-one countries would probably be, taking them altogether, not less than one-fourth of the whole number—597,772. This would give a Catholic emigration at the port of New York alone, during these thirty years, of about 2,800,000 souls. But we shall return to this part of our subject later on.

The emigration from Germany at the port of New York during the year 1876 was 21,035 persons, of whom 17,974 were steerage passengers; in 1875 the number was 25,559; during the twenty-eight years from 1847 to 1875 the average number of emigrants arriving from Germany at this port had been 75,000 annually. The severe and sudden check which emigration received in 1875 must be traced, in the case of Germany, almost wholly to the effects of the financial disasters which had occurred in the United States, and which had then begun to be heavily felt. The Germans are a prudent people; they are exceedingly well informed concerning the condition of affairs here, and they were well advised not to come to a new country at a moment when industry and trade were prostrated, when labor was superabundant and poorly paid, and when confidence and enterprise were so paralyzed that capital could find no productive or safe employment. The restrictive measures against emigration instigated and enforced by Prince Bismarck, and the financial distress which prevailed, and which still prevails, in Germany, had also their influence in discouraging and retarding emigration; but the principal cause of its decline in the case of Germany was the one we have mentioned. When that cause shall have ceased to act, as there is reason to believe it soon will do, we can expect with confidence a revival of emigration from Germany and the other Continental countries of Europe. Should the present war in the East become general and involve all Europe, the anxiety of the people to escape its horrors and burdens will increase the desire for emigration, but their facilities for seeking a new home will probably be lessened by the same causes. We must, in all likelihood, wait for the return of prosperity here and of peace in Europe before the great wave of emigration again rises to its former level. There is no reason to doubt that in due time it will again attain its former proportions; but the principal countries from whence we must hereafter look for our emigrants are Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Holland, and perhaps England. The emigration of the future, most probably, will to a large extent be composed of people possessed of some capital, and prepared to begin their new life under far more favorable conditions than those which surrounded the Irish and German emigrants of past years upon their arrival here. The latter, landing here too often with no capital but their muscles, their honest hearts, and strong but often uncultivated intellects, have accomplished the work to which they were ordained. Their successors will find much prepared for them, but they also will have their mission to fulfil.

Let us now endeavor to ascertain with as much accuracy as possible in what manner our foreign-born citizens have disposed of themselves, and what it is that they have done and are doing for us, for themselves, and for God. It appears that, according to the census of 1870, the whole number of foreign-born persons then in the United States was 5,567,229, of whom 62,736 were Chinese, 9,654 were negroes, and 1,136 were Indians. There were also 9,734,845 persons who had been born in this country, but whose parents were all of foreign birth, and 1,157,170 others the father or mother of each of whom had been of foreign birth. These 16,459,244 persons constituted, in 1870, the whole of that portion of our population which could in any way be classed as foreign or as being under the immediate domestic influence of foreigners. There remained 22,099,132 persons, who were not only native-born, but whose parents on both sides were natives. Let us deal, first, with the persons of foreign birth. In 1850 there were but 2,244,602 persons of this class; in 1860 they had increased to 4,138,697, and in 1870 to 5,567,229 souls. The following table will show their nationalities:

Ireland 1,855,827 England 550,688 Scotland 140,809 Wales 74,530 Great Britain[74] 4,117 Germany 1,690,410 France 116,240 Denmark 30,098 Holland 46,801 Hungary 3,649 Italy 17,147 Belgium 12,552 Luxembourg 5,802 Austria 30,506 Bohemia 40,287 Norway 114,243 Poland 14,435 Portugal 4,495 Russia 4,638 Spain 3,701 Sweden 97,327 Switzerland 75,145 Turkey 301 Malta 51 China 63,042 Greece 390 Greenland 3 India 551 Japan 73 Africa 673 Asia 834 Australia 3,111 Pacific Isles 305 Sandwich Isles 539 South America 3,378 West Indies 4,897 Mexico 41,308 Cuba 4,811 Atlantic Isles 4,219 British America 489,344 At sea 2,612 Unknown 2,135

Footnote 74:

What part not stated.

We have omitted from the above table 9,654 negroes and 1,136 Indians, born outside of the United States.

Where now do we find these five and a half millions of foreign-born citizens? The greater part of them—4,193,971—were congregated in ten States, as shown by the following table:

TABLE OF TEN STATES HAVING 200,000 OR MORE OF FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION.

STATES. 1870. 1860. 1850. California 209,831 146,518 21,802 Illinois 515,198 324,643 111,892 Iowa 204,692 106,077 20 969 Massachusetts 353,319 260,106 164,024 Michigan 268,010 149,093 54,703 Missouri 221,267 160,541 76,592 New York 1,138,353 1,001,280 655,929 Ohio 372 493 328,249 218,193 Pennsylvania 545,309 430,505 303,417 Wisconsin 364,499 276,927 110,477

4,193,971 3,183,939 1,737,998

There were fourteen States each of which had an Irish-born population of less than 10,000 souls—to wit, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Virginia; nineteen States each of which had an Irish-born population of less than 100,000—to wit, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin; while Illinois had 120,000, Massachusetts 216,000, Pennsylvania 235,000, and New York 528,000 Irish-born citizens. Eighteen States had each a German-born population of less than 10,000—namely, Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. Thirteen States had each a German-born population of less than 100,000—namely, California, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Texas; while Missouri had 113,618, Pennsylvania 160,146, Wisconsin 162,314, Ohio 182,889, Illinois 203,750, and New York 316,882. The following table will show the exact number of persons of Austrian, German, French, and Irish birth residing in each State in 1870:

States. Austrian. French. German. Irish. Alabama 99 587 2,479 3,893 Arkansas 41 236 1,562 1,428 California 1,078 8,063 29,699 54,421 Connecticut 154 820 1,243 70,630 Delaware 8 127 1,141 5,007 Florida 17 126 595 737 Georgia 34 308 2,760 5,093 Illinois 2,099 10,908 203,750 120,162 Indiana 443 6,362 78,056 28,698 Iowa 2,691 3,130 66,160 40,124 Kansas 448 1,274 12,774 10,040 Kentucky 146 2,052 30,318 21,642 Louisiana 433 12,288 18,912 17,068 Maine 10 136 508 15,745 Maryland 266 640 47,045 23 630 Massachusetts 255 1,627 13,070 216,120 Michigan 795 3,120 64,143 42,013 Minnesota 2,647 1,743 41,364 21,746 Mississippi 85 621 2,954 3,359 Missouri 1,493 6,291 113,618 54,983 Nebraska 299 340 10,954 4,999 Nevada 157 414 2,181 5,135 New Hampshire 9 59 436 12,190 New Jersey 686 3,128 53,999 86,784 New York 3,928 22,273 316,882 528,806 North Carolina 13 53 904 677 Ohio 3,699 12,778 182,889 82,674 Oregon 53 308 1,875 1,967 Pennsylvania 1,556 8,682 160,146 235,798 Rhode Island 19 167 1,200 31,534 South Carolina 10 143 2,742 3,262 Tennessee 112 562 4,525 8,048 Texas 1,748 2,226 23,976 4,031 Vermont 2 93 370 14,080 Virginia 56 368 4,050 5,191 West Virginia 59 223 6,231 6,832 Wisconsin 4,486 2,704 162,314 48,479

30,104 116,240 1,690,410 1,855,827

These four nationalities, then, account for 3,692,581 of the foreign-born population in 1870; and the remaining 1,874,648 had their birth in the other thirty-five different countries named in one of our preceding tables. A glance over the table just given will show still more plainly within what limits the great bulk of the Irish and German born population is found; and the reader will remember that we have shown that all but 1,373,258 of the entire foreign-born population were residing in the ten States of California, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In twenty of the States the persons of Irish birth exceeded those of German birth; in the remaining seventeen States the latter outnumbered the former. The excess of persons of Irish birth over those of German birth, however, was only 165,417. This was seven years ago. During these seven years the emigration from Germany has almost equalled that from Ireland, and for the thirty years last past, taken as a whole, the arrivals from Germany have exceeded those from Ireland by 119,293 souls. We shall probably not be far out of the way if we assume that the entire foreign-born population of the United States is at present about seven millions, of whom two and a half millions are of German, and nearly an equal number of Irish, birth. Let us, however, continue to confine ourselves for the present to the official facts in our possession, and proceed to follow up the 5,567,229 persons of foreign birth whom we know were among us in 1870.

One of the remarks most frequently made concerning the foreign-born population of this country is that it has a general disposition to congregate in our large cities, from which have come consequences highly prejudicial both to itself and to the community at large. These two assertions have been made so persistently and in such good faith; they have seemed to be so susceptible of proof and so apparently true; and they have chimed in so well with the sometimes latent and sometimes active prejudice against “foreigners” which is so often found in the breasts of the natives of every country, that they have passed current almost without challenge and have come to be regarded as axioms. Nay, not a few of our foreign-born citizens themselves, and even of the Catholic bishops and clergy, have often accepted these two assertions as true, and have not ceased to deplore the crowding of the foreign population into the large cities, regarding it as an almost unmixed evil, and pointing to it as the source of direful woe. No doubt they have had some reason on their side. A large proportion of the crime and misery of our cities is perpetrated and suffered by foreign-born citizens or by their children in the first generation. Had these citizens not been gathered together in the cities, but scattered at remote distances throughout the country, they might have been criminal and miserable, but their crime and misery would not have been so obtrusive and apparent to every observer. But, leaving this point for a moment to return to it in the light of the facts we are about to adduce, let us see what amount of truth there is in these two assertions. We may remark, in passing, that the truth of the first does not necessarily imply the truth of the second: it may be true that the foreign-born population has congregated to an apparently undue and unwise extent in our cities, but it may not be true that this has been by any means an unmixed evil either to the foreigners themselves or to the native-born.

POPULATION, NATIVE AND FOREIGN, OF THE LARGE CITIES, 1870.

CITIES. Scotch. French. Austrian. Belgian. New York 7,559 8,240 2,737 325 Philadelphia 4,175 2,471 519 116 Brooklyn 4,098 1,892 321 142 St. Louis 1,202 2,788 751 254 Chicago 4,195 1,417 704 392 Baltimore 525 428 215 29 Boston 1,794 615 124 31 Cincinnati 787 2,090 554 46 New Orleans 568 8,806 253 134 San Francisco 1,687 3,543 470 139 Buffalo 996 2,332 135 37 Washington 298 191 26 8 Newark 870 710 261 45 Louisville 298 856 69 31 Cleveland 668 339 2,155 16 Pittsburgh 584 348 117 9 Jersey City 1,175 276 69 43 Detroit 1,637 760 161 233 Milwaukee 423 189 574 79 Albany 427 149 36 17 Providence 575 72 5 1 Rochester 428 475 39 4 Allegheny 570 619 109 6 Richmond 146 144 29 5 New Haven 347 133 54 6 Charleston 115 97 39 4 Indianapolis 258 237 14 5 Troy 462 88 14 7 Syracuse 138 276 47 1 Worcester 187 29 12 1 Lowell 469 28 3 3 Memphis 119 207 14 10 Cambridge 298 100 9 1 Hartford 359 92 20 6 Scranton 366 64 4 — Reading 35 77 36 2 Paterson 879 237 48 21 Kansas City 180 110 44 1 Mobile 166 311 33 11 Toledo 119 206 93 — Portland 172 23 2 1 Columbus 133 238 20 — Wilmington 117 64 — 2 Dayton 90 242 28 2 Lawrence 691 4 9 2 Utica 198 287 25 2 Charlestown 89 29 1 2 Savannah 72 99 5 — Lynn 72 5 1 — Fall River 382 3 4 2

Totals 43,055 42,430 11,218 2,232

CITIES. Native. Irish. German. English. Brit. Amer. New York 523,198 201,999 151,203 24,408 4,372 Philadelphia 490,398 96,698 50,746 22,034 1,453 Brooklyn 251,381 73,985 36,769 18,832 2,779 St. Louis 198,615 32,239 59,040 5,366 1,986 Chicago 154,420 39,988 52,316 10,026 9,528 Baltimore 210,870 15,223 35,276 2,138 292 Boston 162,540 56,900 5,606 5,968 13,548 Cincinnati 136,627 18,624 49,446 3,524 1,175 New Orleans 142,943 14,693 15,224 2,005 384 San Francisco 75,754 25,864 13,602 5,166 2,237 Buffalo 71,477 11,264 22,249 3,558 4,113 Washington 95,442 6,948 4,131 1,231 211 Newark 69,175 12,481 15,873 4,040 296 Louisville 75,085 7,626 14,380 930 311 Cleveland 54,014 9,964 15,855 4,530 2,599 Pittsburgh 58,254 13,119 8,703 2,838 282 Jersey City 50,711 17,665 7,151 4,005 556 Detroit 44,196 6,970 12,647 3,282 7,398 Milwaukee 37,667 3,784 22,599 1,395 792 Albany 47,215 13,276 5,168 1,572 843 Providence 51,727 12,085 592 2,426 1,038 Rochester 41,202 6,078 7,730 2,530 2,619 Allegheny City 37,872 4,034 7,665 1,112 152 Richmond 47,260 1,239 1,621 289 42 New Haven 36,482 9,601 2,423 1,087 336 Charleston 44,064 2,180 1,826 234 32 Indianapolis 37,587 3,321 5,286 697 297 Troy 30,246 10,877 1,174 1,575 1,697 Syracuse 29,061 5,172 5,062 1,345 1,167 Worcester 29,159 8,389 325 893 1,960 Lowell 26,493 9,103 34 1,697 3,034 Memphis 33,446 2,987 1,768 589 225 Cambridge 27,579 7,180 482 1,043 2,518 Hartford 26,363 7,438 1,438 787 396 Scranton 19,205 6,491 3,056 1,444 125 Reading 30,059 547 2,648 305 26 Paterson 20,711 5,124 1,429 3,347 128 Kansas City 24,581 2,869 1,884 709 821 Mobile 27,795 2,000 843 386 55 Toledo 20,485 3,032 5,341 694 984 Portland 24,401 3,900 82 557 2,017 Columbus 23,663 1,845 3,982 504 190 Wilmington 25,689 3,503 684 613 47 Dayton 23,050 1,326 4,962 394 131 Lawrence 16,204 7,457 467 2,456 1,563 Utica 18,955 3,496 2,822 1,352 261 Charlestown 21,399 4,803 216 488 1,119 Savannah 24,564 2,197 787 251 63 Lynn 23,298 3,232 17 330 1,133 Fall River 15,288 5,572 37 4,042 1,324

Totals 3,808,770 826,398 564,967 165,024 80,728

In fifty of the largest cities of the United States there was in 1870 a total native population of 3,808,770 souls; 826,398 persons of Irish birth; 564,967 of German birth; 165,024 of English birth; 80,728 natives of British America; 43,055 natives of Scotland; 42,430 natives of France; 11,218 natives of Austria; and 2,232 natives of Belgium—in all, 1,736,052 persons born in foreign countries.

The foregoing tables give the native population of each of these fifty cities, with the foreign population belonging to each of these eight nationalities.

The persons of foreign birth of other nationalities in the above cities would raise the whole number to about 1,800,000 souls.

It is to be noticed from this table, in the first place, that in these fifty cities, in 1870, the proportion of foreign-born to native inhabitants was almost exactly as 18 is to 38—1,800,000 to 3,808,770—while the proportion of foreign-born to native inhabitants in the entire Union was almost exactly as 5 is to 38—5,567,229 to 38,558,371. It must be confessed that on this showing there was an apparently or a really undue proportion of our foreign-born citizens congregated in the large cities. But it should be remembered that among the native-born population were the 10,892,015 persons who had been born here of parents, on one or both sides, of foreign birth, and who, to this extent, were quasi-foreign. If these be taken into account, the proportion of foreign-born and the immediate descendants of foreign-born persons to the rest of the population throughout the country in 1870 would have been as 16 to 38—16,459,239 to 38,558,371. This is really the more correct basis upon which to make the comparison; for without doubt a large proportion of the ten millions of persons born here of foreign parents were the children of the five millions of foreign-born persons; and it is perfectly natural that the parents and the children should be found living in the same localities. After giving to this consideration, however, all the weight to which it is entitled, the fact still remains that an apparently excessive proportion of our foreign-born citizens are to be found in the large cities.

Let us look still closer into the subject. The whole number of persons of Irish birth in the United States in 1870 was 1,855,827, and of these 826,398, or 44.4 per cent., were living in these fifty cities. There were 1,690,410 Germans, and 564,967 of them, or 33.4 per cent., were in the cities; 550,688 English, of whom 165,024, or nearly 30 per cent., were in the cities; 489,344 British Americans, of whom 80,728, or only 16.5 per cent., were in the cities; while 30 per cent. of the Scotch, 36.5 per cent. of the French, 36.7 per cent. of the Austrians, and 17.7 per cent. of the Belgians were in the same category. Our Irish fellow-citizens are the greatest sinners—if any are sinners in this respect—and after them, in a declining ratio, come the Austrians, French, Germans, Scotch, English, Belgians, and British Americans. The Irish, Austrians, French, and Germans are the Roman Catholic emigrants, and in the wisdom of God it has been ordained that they should be the ones most crowded into the cities. How have they performed there the work which he sent them to do?

Our cities are the centres of the intelligence, the culture, and the wealth of our country. They contain to a very large extent the brains of the republic. From them issue influences which sway, if they do not absolutely control, the thoughts and actions of the people. These influences are not, by any means, always altogether wholesome, but they are unquestionably potent. The newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals published in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Milwaukee have a circulation exceeding that of the similar publications of all the rest of the country combined. The serial publications of one firm in New York alone reach into the millions; the aggregate annual circulation of the New York daily and weekly journals is so large that mere figures expressing it convey but a faint idea of its extent. The publisher of a magazine in New York told the writer the other day that if the copies of his publication issued each year were stacked together, the column would be three times as high as Trinity Church steeple.

The social influences of the cities upon the rural districts are also powerful. The cities not only set the fashions in dress, but in political, moral, and religious thought and custom. The sturdy independence of the bucolic mind may yet boast of its existence, but it very often yields to the sway of urban ideas. A lady who had lived all her life in a small village, in which the only Catholic population consisted of a handful of poor Irish people, destitute of a church, and visited only at long intervals by a humble priest who celebrated the divine Mysteries in an attic over a liquor-store, not long ago came to New York, and was taken by her friends into one of our magnificent Catholic churches. The grandeur and beauty of the Mass were for the first time revealed to her; for the first time she obtained an idea of what the Catholic Church was and what it taught. By the grace of God her conversion followed, and, mainly through her exertions and her influence after her return home, her village is now blessed with a church, a resident priest, and a Catholic population composed largely of converts. In very many of our rural localities all over the Union the Catholics are few and poor; in too many of them the idea of a Roman Catholic in the minds of the natives is still associated only with the idea of an ignorant fanatic, who worships images, pays half a dollar to a priest to pardon him for a crime, and believes that the Pope is God. But when the country merchant of such a locality comes to New York to make his purchases, and sees the splendid Catholic churches here, and finds, perhaps, that the great importer with whom he deals, or the wealthy banker, or the renowned lawyer to whom he is introduced, is a Roman Catholic, and not unseldom an Irishman or a German, his eyes are opened and his mind is prepared for the reception of the truth. In a word, the congregation of foreign-born emigrants, the most of whom are Catholics, in our large cities, has had the effect of making the Catholic church in these cities a noticeable and a respectable fact, and of thereby accomplishing one of the preliminaries in the work which it has yet to perform in the republic. The influence of this fact is to be perceived, also, in the changed tone of the secular press with regard to the church. Respectable journalists, with few and decreasing exceptions, have become ashamed to repeat the vulgar and senseless slanders and the worn-out calumnies concerning the church, her ministers, her dogmas, and her sacraments which were so current twenty years ago. In communities consisting in an appreciable and often in a large proportion of intelligent, wealthy, and influential Catholics, the able editors do not venture any longer to amuse their readers with arguments based on the assumption that the church is the foe of knowledge and of education, and that her mission is to degrade, enslave, and pauperize mankind. In cities where the spires of dozens and scores of Catholic churches, tipped with the emblem of our salvation, point towards heaven; where Catholic hospitals, asylums, schools, and academies abound; where many of the most enterprising and wealthy merchants, manufacturers, and bankers are Catholics; where in the front rank of all the professions Catholics are found—in these communities it is no longer a social disgrace or a mark of singularity to be a Catholic, and a convert to the faith is no longer looked upon as a person of weak intellect or a slave to a benumbing and degrading superstition. We shall show, in the subsequent pages of our article, that for all this, to a very great extent, and under what seems to have been the direct guidance of God, we are indebted to the foreign-born population of the country, and that its accomplishment was made possible, humanly speaking, by their congregating themselves in the cities instead of dispersing in small bodies throughout the agricultural regions of the country. But we shall show, also, that, the work of God having thus far been accomplished, the time has now arrived when the future emigration to the United States should be directed towards the rural districts, under conditions which, until now, were practically impossible; and we shall seek to point out in what manner this new colonization may be best directed in order to promote the welfare of the emigrants themselves, the prosperity of our country, and the greater glory of God.

ALBA’S DREAM. BY THE AUTHOR OF “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” ETC. PART I.

Once upon a time, some sixty years ago, on one of the bleakest points of the coast of Picardy, high perched like a light-house overhanging the sea, there was a building called the Fortress. You may see the ruins of it yet. It had been an abbey in olden times, and credible tales were told of a bearded abbot who “walked” at high water on the western parapet when the moon was full. One wing of the Fortress was a ruin at the time this story opens; the other had braved the stress of time and tempest, and looked out over the sea defiant as the rock on which it stood. The Caboffs lived in it. Jean Caboff was a wiry, lithe old man of seventy—a seafaring man every inch of him. His wealth was boundless, people said, and they also said that he had gained it as a pirate on the high seas. There was no proof that this was true; but every one believed it, and the belief invested Jean Caboff with a sort of wicked prestige which was not without its fascination in the eyes of the peaceful, unadventurous population of Gondriac. Caboff had a wife and three sons; the two eldest were away fighting with Bonaparte on the Rhine; Marcel, the youngest, was at home. A shy, awkward lad, he kept aloof from the village boys, never went bird’s-nesting or fishing with them, but moped like an owl up in his weather-beaten home. They were unsocial people, the Caboffs; they never asked any one inside their door; but the few who accidentally penetrated within the Fortress told wonderful stories of what they saw there; they talked of silken hangings and Persian carpets, and mirrors and pictures in golden frames, and marble men and maidens writhing and dancing in fantastic attitudes; of costly cabinets and jewelled vases, until the old corsair’s abode was believed to be a sort of enchanted castle. The stray visitors were too dazzled to notice certain things that jarred on this profuse magnificence. They did not notice that the damp had eaten away the gilded cornices, and the rats nibbled freely at the rich carpets, or that Jean Caboff smoked his pipe in a high-backed wooden chair, while Mme. Caboff cut out her home-spun linen on a stout deal table, the two forming a quaint and not unpicturesque contrast to the silken splendor of their surroundings.

Some five miles inland, beyond a wide stretch of gorse-grown moor, rose a wood, chiefly of pine-trees, and within the wood, a castle—a fine old Gothic castle where the De Gondriacs had dwelt for centuries. The castle and its owners, their grandeur and state and power, were the pride of the country, every peasant along the coast for fifty miles knew the history of the lords of Gondriac as well as, mayhap sometimes better than, he knew his catechism. The family at present consisted of Rudolf, Marquis de Gondriac, and his son Hermann. The Marquis was a hale man of sixty; Hermann a handsome lad of eighteen, who was at college now in Paris, so that M. le Marquis had no company but his books and his gun in the long autumn days. He was a silent, haughty man, who lived much alone and seldom had friends to stay with him. When Hermann was at home the aspect of the place changed; the château opened its doors with ancient hospitality, and laughter and music woke up the echoes of the old halls, and the village was astir as if a royal progress had halted on the plain; but when Hermann departed things fell back into the stagnant life he had stirred for a moment. It was natural that the young man’s holidays were eagerly looked forward to at Gondriac. But one August came, and, instead of returning home, Hermann joined a regiment that was on its way to the frontier. He went off in high-hearted courage as to the fulfilment of his boyish dreams. M. le Marquis, who had himself served in the guards of the Comte d’Artois, was proud of his son, of his soldier-like bearing and manly spirit, and kept the anguish of his own heart well out of sight as he bade the boy farewell. “I will come back a marshal of France, father,” was Hermann’s good-by.

Not long after his departure tidings were received of the death of Hugues Caboff, the old pirate’s eldest son. He had fallen gloriously on the field of battle; but glory is a sorry salve for broken hearts, and there was weeping in the Fortress that day—a mother weeping and refusing to be comforted. Old Jean Caboff bore his grief with an attempt at stoicism that went far to soften men’s hearts towards him—farther than his gold, which they said was ill-got, and his charity, which they called ostentation.

“Who may tell what will come next?” said Peltran, the host of the village inn.

“They say that M. le Marquis has been over to see the Caboffs,” said a customer, who dropped in to discuss the event. People felt for the Caboffs, but, there was no denying it, this sad news was a break in the dull monotony of Gondriac life.

“I saw his carriage at the foot of the cliff,” said Peltran; “he stayed full fifteen minutes up at the Fortress. Père Caboff conducted him down to his carriage, and Marcel stood watching them till it was out of sight.”

“It must have consoled them mightily to have M. le Marquis come in and sit talking to them in that neighborly fashion,” remarked lame Pierre, a hero who had lost a leg and an eye at Aboukir; “that, and poor Hugues being killed by a cannon-ball under the emperor’s own eye, ought to cheer up the Caboffs wonderfully.”

“Ay, ay,” said Peltran; “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”

“M. le Marquis looked as down-hearted as if he had lost a child of his own,” observed Pierre; “may be he was thinking whose turn it might be next.”

“There goes Mère Virginie with the little one!” said Peltran; and all present turned their heads towards the window and looked out with an expression of interest, as if the objects in view were a rare and pleasant sight. And yet it was one that met them in their daily walks by the roadside and on the cliff—the little old lady in her nun-like dress, with her keen gray eyes and sweet smile, and the dark-eyed, elfin-looking child whose name was Alba. Alba was always singing.

“Is not your little throat tired, my child?” said Virginie, as the blithe voice kept on soaring and trilling by her side.

“I am never tired singing, petite mère! Do the angels tire of it sometimes, I wonder?”

“Nay, the angels cannot tire; they are perfectly happy.”

“And I, petite mère—am I not perfectly happy?”

“Is there nothing you long for, nothing you would be the happier for having?”

“Oh! many things,” cried Alba: “I wish I were grown up; I wish I were as beautiful as the flowers; I wish I had a voice like the nightingale—like a whole woodful of nightingales; I wish I lived in a castle; I wish I were so rich that I might make all the poor people happy in Gondriac; I wish everybody loved me as you do. Oh! I should like them all to adore me, petite mère,” cried the child, clasping her little hands with energy.

“Nay, my child, we must adore none but God; woe to us if we do!” said Virginie, and her face contracted as with a sudden pain. “But it seems to me, with so many wishes unfulfilled, you are a long way off from perfect happiness yet?”

“But I am always dreaming that they are fulfilled, and that does as well, you know.”

Yes, perhaps it did, Virginie thought, as she bent a wistful smile on the young dreamer’s face. Alba’s face was full of dreams—beautiful and passionate, changeful as the sunbeams, tender and strong, pleading and imperious by turns. How would the dreams evolve themselves from out that yearning, untamed spirit that shone with a dangerous light through the dark eyes? Would they prove a mirage, luring her on to some delusive goal, and leaving her to perish amidst the golden waste of sands, or would they be a loadstar beckoning faithfully to a safe and happy destiny?

The child gave promise of rich fruit; her instincts were pure and true, her heart was tender; but there was a wild element in her nature that might easily overrule the rest, and work destruction to herself and others, unless it were reduced in time to serviceable bondage. Who could tell how this would be—whether the flower would keep its promise and prove loyal to the bud, or whether the fair blossom would perish in its bloom, and the tree bring forth a harvest of bitter fruit?

“It will be as you will it,” a wise man had said to Virginie; “the destiny of the child is in the hands of the mother, as the course of the ship is in the hands of the pilot.”

“Then Alba’s will be a happy one!” Virginie replied; “if love be omnipotent here below, my treasure is safe.”

* * * * *

Hermann de Gondriac had won his epaulets. Every post brought letters to the castle full of battles and victories; and though the young soldier was modest in his warlike narrative, it was clear to M. le Marquis that Hermann shone like a bright, particular star even in the galaxy of the grande armée, and that now, as in olden times, France had reason to be proud of the De Gondriacs. If the boy would but calm his rhapsodies about Bonaparte! M. le Marquis’ patrician soul heaved at the sight of this enthusiasm for the upstart who had muzzled his country and usurped the crown of her lawful princes. But he was a great captain, and it was natural, perhaps, that his soldiers should only think of this when he led them in triumph from field to field.

So far Hermann bore a charmed life. Not so the Caboffs. One day, some eight months after the death of the eldest son, the second brother followed him—“killed gloriously on the immortal field of Wagram,” the official letter announced in its most soothing style. M. le Marquis’ carriage was again seen standing at the foot of the cliff, and Peltran informed the population that he had remained over twenty minutes this time at the Fortress.

“M. le Marquis is a true grand seigneur, and never begrudges any condescension for the good of his inferiors,” observed the old tory host. “This time it was only Marcel who accompanied him down the cliff. Old Caboff, they say, was more cut up by this last blow; still, grief ought not to make a man selfish and unthankful.”

“Just so,” said lame Pierre, who sat puffing in the bar; “and it’s only what those two poor lads had to expect; moreover, since a man must die, better be killed in battle than die of the small-pox.”

“All the same, it’s hard on the folks up yonder,” remarked a bystander, “and it isn’t their money-bags—no, nor even M. le Marquis’ good words—that can comfort them to-day.”

Soon after this M. le Marquis left Gondriac rather suddenly one morning. After reading his letters he ordered his valise to be got ready, and in an hour he was posting to X——. There he dismissed the postchaise, and no one knew whither or how he had continued his route. Gondriac busied itself in endless conjectures as to the purport and destination of this mysterious journey. Had M. le Marquis been summoned to Paris to assist the government in some political crisis? Had he gone over to England to pour oil on the angry waters there? For the king of England was full of wrath and jealousy against the great emperor, and it was well known at Gondriac that he was plotting foul play of some sort against France. Or, again, could M. le Marquis’ hasty departure have had any reference to M. le Comte? Perhaps M. le Comte was wounded or a prisoner; who could tell? So the wiseacres gossiped, adopting first one theory, then another.

A month went by without throwing any light on the mystery. Then the cold set in suddenly, and the gossips had something else to talk about. The cruel winter was down upon them, catching them unprepared, so how were they to face it? They were only in October, and the wind blew from the northeast as if it were March, keeping up its shrill, hard whistle day and night, and the sea, as if it were exasperated by the sound, roared and foamed and thundered, till it seemed like a battle between them which should make most noise. And it was hard to say who carried the day.

One night, when the battle was at its fiercest, the wind shrieking its loudest, and the sea rolling up its biggest waves, Alba sat at her window watching the tempest with thrills of sympathetic terror. Virginie thought the child was in bed and asleep hours ago, and she was glad of it; for the storm drove right against the cottage, and burst upon it every now and then with a violence that shook her in her chair and made the walls rock. She was knitting away, but between the stitches many a prayer went up for those who were out breasting the fury of the hurricane. Suddenly a sound came up from the sea that made her start to her feet with a cry. Boom! boom! boom! it came in quick succession, leaping over the rocks with a sharp, dull crash. The door of the little sitting-room was thrown open, and Alba stood on the threshold, white as a ghost, her dark eyes gleaming. “It is the signal-gun, mother!” she cried. “There is a ship in distress!”

“How came you up and dressed, child?” exclaimed Virginie.

“Mother, I could not sleep; I have been watching the storm. Hark! there it is again. Why don’t they answer it? Let us hurry down to the beach.”

“Of what use would we be there, my child?” said Virginie. “Let us rather kneel down and pray that help may come.”

“I cannot pray; I cannot stay here safe and quiet while that gun is firing! Hark! there it is again. Oh! why don’t they make haste? Mother, I must go! If you won’t come I will go by myself.” Alba, as she spoke, threw back her head with the wild, free movement that Virginie knew, and knew that she could no more control than she could check the flight of a bird on the wing.

“I will go with you,” she cried, and, wrapping a cloak round Alba, she flung another round herself, and then lighted her lantern, and the two sallied forth into the storm, clinging fast to one another for support until they got under the shelter of the overhanging cliff. Lights were glancing here and there, hurrying down from the cottages, and a few fishermen were already on the beach watching the distressed ship, helpless and hopeless. Presently old Caboff appeared, holding his lantern high above his head—an aged, shrivelled man, likely to be of little use in this desperate strait; but such was the prestige which his supposed antecedents lent him in the eyes of the panic-stricken group that of one accord they turned to him as to the only one who might give help or counsel. The night was pitch dark, and the blinding rain and deafening roar of the breakers seemed to make the darkness thicker. It was impossible to see the ship, except when the flash of the gun lighted up the scene for a second. In the lull of the billows—that is, between the heavy sweep of their rise and fall—the cries of the crew and the whistle of the captain issuing his commands were faintly audible. How was it with the ship? Had she struck upon a rock, or was she simply going down before the storm? It was impossible to say. On finding that her signals were heard and her position seen from land, she slackened fire, and the gun only spoke every three minutes or so. In the interval of unbroken darkness all conjecture as to the immediate cause of the peril was at a stand-still. Caboff said she had struck upon a rock; the others thought she was simply disabled and rolling in the trough of the sea.

“Can we put out a boat? Who is for risking it?” said Caboff, pitching his voice to a whistle that was heard distinctly above the roar of the black breakers clamoring for the moon. There was no answer, but heads were shaken and hands gesticulated in strong dissent.

Alba pushed her way into the midst of the group. “What does it matter what the danger is? Go and help them!” she cried. “If you don’t help them they will all perish!”

“We cannot help them, little one,” said an old fisherman. “No boat could live in such a sea. See how the waves run up in mountains to our very feet, and think what it must be out yonder! See, now the signal-gun lights it up! Look! again it flashes.”

It was an appalling sight while the flashes lasted. The waves, rushing back, left the side of the ship visible, and then, returning with a tremendous sweep, broke over her and buried her out of sight in foam. The stoutest heart might well recoil from venturing to put out in such a sea.

“Naught but a miracle could do it,” said one of the oldest and hardiest of the fishermen; “and we none of us can work miracles.”

“God can!” cried Alba, and she looked like the spirit of the storm, her dark hair streaming, the light of courage and scorn and beseeching hope illuminating her face with an unearthly beauty—“God can, and he does for brave men; but ye are cowards!”

“Gently, little one; men will risk their lives to do some good, but it is suicide to rush on death where there is not a chance of saving any one.”

It was Caboff who spoke, and his words were followed by strong approval from the rest.

“Ye are cowards!” repeated Alba passionately. “God would work the miracle, if ye had courage and trusted him. See, there is the light now!” She pointed to the sky, where, as if to justify her promise, the moon came forth, and, scattering the darkness, shed her full blue radiance over sea and shore. The storm was now at its height. The guns had ceased to give tongue, and the crowd stood watching the scene in mute horror, while the reverberating shore shook under their feet at every shock of the furious billows.

Caboff was right. The ship had struck upon the Scissors, and, caught between the two blade-like rocks, was rapidly falling to pieces. The deck was deserted. The crew had either gone down into the cabin to meet their fate or they had been swept away by the devouring waters. One man alone was descried by Caboff’s keen eyes clinging to the broken mast. “I will risk it!” cried the old pirate, after watching the wreck for some minutes intently. “I will risk it; my old life may as well go out in saving his. Come, boys, help me to push down a boat. I must have three pairs of hands. Who is to the fore?”

A dozen men rushed forward; the boat was at the water’s edge in a moment, and after a short scuffle—for now all were fighting for precedence—three men got into it, and the others, putting their hands to the stern, launched it with their might. A cheer rang out from the shore; but close upon it came a cry, piercing and full of terror. It was Marcel Caboff, who was flying down the cliff, and reached the scene just as the boat put off.

“Father! father!” cried the lad, and he fell on his knees sobbing.

“Don’t be afraid, Marcel,” said Alba, falling on her knees beside him; “he is a brave man, and God will protect him!”

Something in the tone of the child’s voice made him turn and look at her, and as he caught sight of the beam of confidence, almost of exultation, on her face, he felt his courage rise and despair was silenced. But what meant that shout?

The boat was no sooner borne out on the receding wave than it went down into the sea as if never to rise again; there was a moment of breathless suspense, and then the wave rose and tossed it violently to and fro, and flung it back upon the shore. The men who had launched it were still upon the spot, and rushed forward to seize the boat and help the brave fellows out again. One was so stunned by the force of the shock that he became insensible and had to be lifted out. Old Caboff refused to stir.

“It is madness to try it again,” said his companions. “A cork could not live in such a sea!”

“I will risk no man’s life,” said Caboff. “I will go alone. Here, my men, lend a hand once more!”

There was a clamor of expostulation from all present; but the old man was not to be moved.

“I will go with you, father,” said Marcel, stepping in and seizing an oar.

“You here, lad! And your mother?”

“She sent me to look after you. Allons! mes amis; push us out and say God speed us!”

But there was now a third figure in the boat. “Now we are three, and God will make a fourth!” cried Alba; then, turning to the men, “Push us out,” she said, “and then go home, lest ye take cold here in the rain!”

“Good God! the child is mad,” cried Virginie, rushing forward to snatch her away. But it was too late; a heavy wave rolled in and made the boat heave suddenly, which the men seeing, with one impulse put their hands to it, till the breaker washed under it and swept it out to sea once more. Virginie stood there like one turned to stone, watching in dumb horror the boat drifting away on to the seething waters. Alba was on her knees, her arms outstretched, her face uplifted in the moonlight, transfigured into an apparition of celestial beauty—a heaven-sent messenger from Him who can unchain the storm and bid the winds and waves be still. The rough men, subdued by the sublimity of the scene, knelt down like little children and began to pray.

Gallantly the little boat rode on, now drowned out of sight, now rising lightly on the crest of the wave, while the sea, as if enraged at so much daring, redoubled in fury and pitched it to and fro like a ball. Old Caboff, grown young again, worked away like a sea-horse. Many a time had he and Death looked into each other’s faces, but never closer than now; and it was not the old seaman who quailed. Marcel, feeble Marcel, seemed endowed with the energy and strength of an athlete. They were now close upon the sinking ship; but the peril grew as they approached it. There was a lull for one moment, as if in very weariness the hurricane drew a breath; then a huge wave rose up like a mighty water-tower, oscillated for a moment like a house about to fall, and, dashing against the boat, swallowed it up in an avalanche of foam. Five seconds of mortal suspense followed; not a gasp broke the horrible silence on the beach. But the boat reappeared and rode bravely on to within a stone’s throw of the ship. The solitary man on deck was signalling to them with one hand, while with the other he clung to the mast. At last the little skiff was close under the bows. Old Caboff threw up a rope-ladder; it missed its aim, once, twice, three times. “How the old fellow is swearing! I can see it by his fury,” cried one of the fishermen, stamping in sympathetic rage. “Ha! the poor devil has caught it. Bravo! Hurrah! He is in the boat!”

Then there was a cheer, as if the very rocks had found a voice to applaud the brave ones who had conquered the storm. Wind and tide were with them as they returned, the waves pitching the boat before them like an angry boy kicking a stone, until one final plunge sent it flying on the beach.

“Vive Caboff! Vive Marcel! Vive la petite Alba!” And every hand was stretched out in welcome. Then there was a pause, a sudden hush, as when some strong emotion is checked by another.

“Monsieur le Marquis!”

“Yes, my friends, thanks to these brave hearts I am amongst you and alive.”

He was the first to step from the boat; then he took Alba in his arms and lifted her ashore into Virginie’s. Marcel alighted next, and was turning to assist his father when M. le Marquis pushed him gently aside and held out both hands to his deliverer. But the old man still grasped his oar and made no sign.

“Mon père!” cried Marcel, laying a hand on his arm, “mon père!”

But old Caboff did not answer him. He was dead.

* * * * *

The grande armée was still winning famous victories, ploughing up sunny harvest-fields with cannon-balls, and making homes and hearts desolate.

“There is one comfort,” said old Peltran, sitting moodily in his deserted bar: “when things come to the worst they must get better.”

“They’ve not come to the worst yet,” observed a neighbor. “There’s lots of things that might happen, that haven’t happened yet; the plague might come, or the blight, or the grande armée might get beaten. We’ve not come to the worst yet, believe you me.”

“There’s one thing anyhow that can’t happen,” said Peltran: “there can’t be another recruitment in Gondriac, for there isn’t a man left amongst us fit to shoulder a musket; we are all either too old, or lame, or blind of an eye.”

“There’s young Caboff is neither one nor the other. To be sure, he’s not the stuff to make a soldier out of; but when they’ve used up all the men they must make the best of the milk-sops.”

“Marcel is a widow’s only son; he’s safe,” said Peltran.

“From one day to another the last reserves may be called out,” observed the neighbor; “it will be hard on the mother, after two of her sons going for cannon’s meat. It was a plucky thing of the old father putting out that night. I wonder if he knew for certain who was on the deck of the ship.”

“If he didn’t he wouldn’t have been such an ass as to put out,” said Peltran. “Why should he fling away his bit of life for a stranger that he owed nothing to?”

“For the matter of that, he owed nothing to M. le Marquis; the Caboffs, they say, are rich enough to buy up every inch of land in Gondriac.”

“Folks may owe more than money can pay,” retorted Peltran. “M. le Marquis was very kind to the old man when his sons were killed, and, whatever Caboff’s sins may have been, he had a fine sense of his natural obligations. It didn’t surprise me much when I saw how handsomely he paid off his debt to M. le Marquis.”

“They say that monseigneur swore to Mme. Caboff that if ever she asked him a favor, whatever it was, he would grant it,” said the neighbor.

“Very likely,” remarked the host. “M. le Marquis has a grand-seigneur way of doing everything. I hope the Caboffs will have the delicacy never to abuse it.”

Not many days after this conversation Mme. Caboff was to be seen walking across the moor on her way to the castle. She looked an older woman than she was; sorrow had broken her down, and it would take little now to destroy the frail tenure of life that remained to her.

This was the first time she had ever entered the castle. Under other circumstances the visit would have thrown the widow into some trepidation. She would have been pleasantly fluttered at the prospect of an interview with the great lord in his own halls, and would have been much exercised on her way thither as to what she should say to him; but her mind was full of other cares to-day.

M. le Marquis was at home. He had spent the morning over a letter from Captain Hermann de Gondriac, which contained a graphic personal narrative of the retreat from Moscow of that disastrous expedition from which, out of the fifty thousand cavalry who went forth, only one hundred and twenty-five officers returned. A pang of anguish and patriotic indignation wrung the old nobleman’s heart as he read and re-read the terrible story, but tears of deep thankfulness fell from the father’s eyes at the thought that his son was spared and was returning safe and unhurt with that decimated army of starved, exasperated spectres. The marquis was perusing the letter for the tenth time when Mme. Caboff was announced. He rose to receive her with a warmth of welcome that boded well for her petition.

“M. le Marquis, you made me give you a promise once—that night; do you remember it?” she said, holding his white hand lightly between her two black-kidded ones, and looking up into his face with the meek and hungry look of a dog begging for a bone which may be refused and a kick given instead.

“Remember it? Yes,” replied the Marquis, returning the timid pressure with a cordial grasp. “You are in trouble; sit down, madame, and tell me what there is that I can do to make it lighter for you.”

“My son, my last and only son, Marcel, is called out, M. le Marquis!”

“And you want to find a substitute for him. It shall be done. I will set about it without an hour’s delay.”

“M. le Marquis, it cannot be done; there are no more substitutes to be had. I would give every penny I possess to get one, but there are none left. The widows’ only sons were the last spared, and now they must go. Marcel has been to the prefecture, and they told him there was no help for it: he must join the new levy to-morrow at X——M. le Marquis, have pity on me! It will kill me to let him go; and, oh! it is so dreadful to see the boy.”

“He is frightened at the prospect of going to battle?” There was an imperceptible ring of scorn under the courteous tone of the aristocrat as he put the question.

“He is mad with delight, M. le Marquis; he has always been wild to follow his brothers and be killed as they were.”

“Brave lad! But he shall not have his wish; he shall not be made food for Bonaparte’s cannon,” said the Marquis. “Go home in peace, madame, and break the bad news to him as tenderly as you can.”

“Thank God! God bless you, M. le Marquis!” said the widow fervently. “But is it indeed possible? I can hardly believe in so great a joy.”

M. le Marquis was silent for a moment, as if making a calculation; then he said musingly:

“The emperor is in Paris to-day; I will start in an hour from this and see him to-night. He owes me something. I never thought to have asked a favor at his hands; but I will stoop to ask him that your son be exempted from the service.”

“O M. le Marquis!” Mme. Caboff began to cry with joy; but remembering suddenly that this great emperor was conquering the whole world and turning kings in and out like valets—for Gondriac heard of his fine doings and was very proud of them—it occurred to her that he might by possibility refuse a request proffered even by so great a man as M. le Marquis. “You think his majesty is sure not to refuse you, monsieur?” she added timidly.

M. de Gondriac was too well cased in his armor of pride to be touched by the poor woman’s unconscious insult; he smiled and replied with a quiet irony that escaped his visitor: “I think that is very unlikely, Mme. Caboff. Be at rest,” he continued kindly. “I pledge you my word that your son shall not be taken from you. Instead of going to-morrow to X——, he had better start off at once with a letter which I will give him to the prefect.”

He wrote the letter and handed it to Mme. Caboff.

* * * * *

It was late that evening when M. de Gondriac arrived in Paris. He drove straight to the Tuileries. Time was precious, and he had travelled in court dress, so as not to lose an hour at the end of the journey. It did not occur to him that there could be any delay in reaching the presence of the emperor. Petitioners of his class were not so common at the great man’s door that it should close upon them because of some informal haste in their demand for admittance. He handed in his card and asked to see the lord chamberlain. After some delay he was shown into the presence of that high functionary, to whom he stated his desire for an immediate audience of his majesty. The lord chamberlain smilingly informed him that this was impossible; mortals were not admitted into the august presence in this abrupt manner; but he—the lord chamberlain—would present the request at his earliest opportunity to-morrow, and communicate in due time with M. le Marquis.

“Things do not proceed so summarily at court,” he added graciously. The marquis felt his blood boil. This mushroom duke telling a De Gondriac how things were done at court!

“I know enough of courts to be aware that on occasions etiquette must yield to weightier reasons,” he replied. “Oblige me, M. le Duc, by taking my message at once to the emperor.”

There was something in his tone which compelled the obsequious courtier to obey. He withdrew, and returned presently with a face full of amazed admiration to announce to the visitor that his majesty was willing to receive him.

The emperor was standing with his hands behind his back in the embrasure of a window when M. de Gondriac entered. He did not turn round at once, but waited until the door closed, and then, walking up to M. de Gondriac, he said brusquely: “I have invited you many times, marquis, and you have never come. What brings you here to-night?” The speech was curt, but not insolent; it did not even sound uncivil.

“Sire, I am an old man, and it is so long since I have been at court that I have forgotten how to behave myself. My lord chamberlain was deeply shocked, I could perceive, at my breach of ceremony in coming to the palace in this abrupt way without going through the usual observances. My motive will, I hope, excuse me to your majesty.”

“Yes, yes, I will let you off easier than Bassano,” said the emperor. “But what do you want of me?” He had his hands still behind his back, and, without desiring his visitor to be seated, he turned to pace up and down the room.

“I have come to ask a favor of your majesty.”

“Ha! that is well. I am glad of that. Do you know, that boy of yours has behaved admirably,” he said, facing round and looking at the marquis.

“We are accustomed to fight, sire,” replied M. de Gondriac. “It came naturally to my son; he had, moreover, the advantage of drawing his maiden sword under a great captain.”

“I mean to keep him by me. I have appointed him on my own staff. We are not done with war. I am raising troops for a campaign in the spring.”

“Sire, I am aware of it; it is precisely about that that I have come to speak to your majesty. There is in my village a widow whose two sons have fallen in the service of the country; there remains to her one more son, a lad of nineteen....”

“And she is ambitious that he should share the glorious fate of his brothers; that is natural,” broke in the emperor.

“Sire, she is a widow, and this boy is all she has in the world. It is no longer possible to procure a substitute; therefore I come to crave at your hands his exemption from the service.”

“What! you would rob France of a soldier, when they are so scarce that gold cannot buy one? Is this your notion of duty to your country, M. de Gondriac? Is it thus you aristocrats understand patriotism?” The emperor confronted him with a flashing eye.

“My son has answered that question, sire.”

“Tut! And because, forsooth, your son has done his duty, you would have other men’s sons betray theirs! A peasant makes as good a soldier as a peer, let me tell you. Because your son condescended to share the glory of the grande armée you expect me to make you a present of a strong young soldier! I do not understand such sentimental logic.”

“Neither do I, sire. I was not putting forward the services of my son as a claim for this poor lad, but those of his two brothers who lost their lives, one at Wagram, the other at Friedland.”

“What better could have befallen them?”

“Nothing, in my estimation; but their mother....”

“France is their mother; she claims their allegiance and their life before any one. The man who puts his mother before his country is a fool or a coward!”

“This young man has not asked to be exempted; his mother came and besought me to have him spared to her, and, counting on your gratitude and generosity, sire, I have come to lay her petition at your feet. The boy himself is frantic to be off and die like his brothers.”

“Then he shall have his wish and France shall count one more hero. Tell his mother she shall have a pension. Give me her name, and it shall be done at once.”

“She is not in want of it, sire; she has wealth enough to buy a score of men, if they were to be had.”

“But they are not, and so her son must go.”

“This is your last word, sire?”

“Yes, marquis, my last.”

“Then I have only to crave your majesty’s forgiveness for my intrusion.” M. de Gondriac bowed and was moving towards the door, when the emperor called out:

“Stay a moment. What motive have you in pleading this widow’s cause so strongly?”

The marquis in a few words told the story of that memorable night when Caboff saved him at the cost of his own life. The emperor listened to the end without interrupting him; then he resumed his walk, and, speaking from the other end of the room, “You are naturally anxious to pay back so heavy a debt,” he said. “Would this feeling carry you the length of making some sacrifice?”

How could Bonaparte ask the question? Did not M. de Gondriac’s presence here to-night answer it exhaustively?

“I think I have proved that, sire,” he answered coldly.

The emperor was silent for a while; then, turning round, he looked fixedly at the marquis and said:

“I withdraw my unconditional refusal. I will let you know to-morrow on what terms I consent to exempt the son of your deliverer from dying on the field of battle.”

M. de Gondriac bowed low. “I have the honor to salute your majesty.”

“Au revoir, marquis.”

What did he mean, and what was this condition so mysteriously hinted at, and only to be declared after the night’s preparation?

M. de Gondriac was sitting over his breakfast next morning when an estafette rode up to his old hôtel, bearing a large official envelope stamped with the imperial arms and the talismanic words, “Maison de l’Empereur.” M. le Marquis broke the seal and ran his eye down the large sheet, and then tossed it from him with an exclamation of anger and contempt.

“Enter his service! Play lackey at the court of an upstart who is drenching my country in blood from sheer vanity and ambition—a usurper who is keeping my liege sovereign in exile, and the best part of my kindred in idleness, or else in a servitude more humiliating than the dreariest inactivity! A De Gondriac tricked out in the livery of a mountebank king like him! Ha! ha! M. de Bonaparte, when you give that spectacle to the gods, ... je vous en fais mon compliment!”

M. le Marquis laughed a low, musical laugh as he muttered these reflections to himself. But presently he ceased laughing and his face took a dark and troubled look. The emperor made his acceptance of this offer the price of Marcel Caboff’s exemption. If he rejected it, the lad must join. “Would gratitude carry you the length of a sacrifice?” When the question had been put to him, it seemed to M. de Gondriac that he had forestalled it; but the emperor evidently did not think so, and now he was putting him to the test. It was the severest he could have chosen. When Hermann de Gondriac took service under Bonaparte, the old nobleman considered his son was making a fine sacrifice of personal pride to patriotism; but the service here, at least, was a noble one, and rendered to France rather than to the upstart who had captured her. But this other was of a totally different order. Even in the bygone days, when France had a legitimate king and real court, the De Gondriacs had been shy of taking office in the royal household, preferring the service of the camp, diplomacy abroad, or statesmanship at home; to stoop now to be a courtier to Bonaparte was a degradation not to be calmly contemplated. If the tyrant had asked any sacrifice but this, M. le Marquis said to himself, he would have made it gladly; but this was impossible. It meant the surrender of his self-respect, of those principles whose integrity he had hitherto proudly maintained at no small personal risk and cost. Before he had finished his coffee, the question was settled, and he rose to write his answer.

Trifles sometimes affect us with the force of great repellant causes. The act of taking the pen in his hand brought before him vividly the last time he had held it: it was in his library at Gondriac; the widow sat watching him with a swelling heart, made glad by his promise solemnly given: “I pledge you my word that your son shall not be taken from you.” M. le Marquis laid down his pen and fell to thinking. “No, I can’t do it,” he said after a long pause. “I can’t belie the traditions of my race; I can’t stain the old name and turn saltimbanque in my old age.” He took up the pen and wrote to the emperor, declining his offer.

The next day the town of X—— was full of excitement. The new recruits were pouring in, sometimes in boisterous crowds, singing and hurrahing, sometimes in sober knots of twos and threes, sometimes singly, accompanied by weeping relatives, mostly women. There had been an official attempt to get up a show of warlike enthusiasm, but it had failed; people were growing sick of the glories of war, sick of sending sons and brothers and husbands to be massacred for Bonaparte’s good pleasure. The recruits were called out by name, and answered sullenly as they passed through the Mairie out to the market-place, where the sergeant was waiting to give them their first lesson in drill, showing them how to stand straight and get into position.

“Marcel Caboff!” called out the recruiting agent.

“Remplacé!”

“By whom?”

“Rudolf, Marquis de Gondriac!”

TO BE CONTINUED.

HIGHER.

I have lifted up my eyes unto the mountains, whence help shall come to me.—Ps. cxx.

Too late have I known thee, O Infinite Beauty! too late have I loved thee, O Beauty ever ancient and new!—St. Augustine.

I.

'Mid wide green meadows, made more fair with flowers— Tall, golden lilies, swaying in the sun, Slight, clustering rue that web of silver spun— I lingered dreaming through the day’s first hours. About me men in work-day toil were bent, Swift levelling the daisies’ drift of snow, The clover’s purple sweetness laying low, And ripened grain whose summer life was spent. I sat where leafy trees a shadow wrought Amid the broad, warm sunshine of the plain, Where, undisturbed, poured forth the wood-birds’ strain And fancy’s magic played with every thought: A whole life centred in each daisy-round, And work-day toil seemed but a slumbrous sound.

II.

Low rippling at my feet a loitering stream Slipt, murmuring music to each listening stone, Or flung its silver laughter where soft shone The slant sunbeam breaking the shadows’ dream; Betwixt the robins’ song the swift blue-bird Flashed like a heavenly message through the shade Where with the sunshine gentlest breezes played, And quiet shadows to soft motion stirred. Between me and the meadow’s smitten flow’rs The fresh June roses wreathed the rude fence bars, Frail elder trailed its galaxy of stars, While butterflies sped by in golden show’rs— Far, far beyond, the earth-haze shining through, Rose the great mountains’ dim and misty blue.

III.

So far and strange those misty hills! so near And intimate the little, shady nook, The skies reflected in the merry brook— Those distant heights so lonely and austere! Scarce e’en the busy mowers of the field Lifted their eyes to those dim gates of blue Where all their gathered harvest must pass through, Its grass and stubble be one day revealed. As grew the day, more clear the summits grew; Springing from shadow, radiant waterfalls Flung trails of sunshine o’er the stern rock-walls— Such sunshine as the valley never knew! Paled the June roses, fading in my hand, Tarnished the lowland river’s golden sand!

IV.

Then seemed to stir the trembling leaves amid, To mingle with the robins’ cheerful call, A low, sad voice, as if the hills let fall Faint, wandering echoes of sweet music hid In dark ravine, on solitary height. I dropped my roses, gone their ravishment; I passed the mowers o’er their harvest bent; I sought those distant mountain-lands of light. Wild, thorny brambles stretched across my way, Sharp rocks were weary pathways for my feet, Yet ever lured me on those accents sweet Whose very sadness was my weakness’ stay, With every step more intimate and near— “Take heart, poor child! ’tis I; have thou no fear.

V.

“Take heart, and I thy faltering steps will lead Above the earth-mists and the brier-strewn road To my far mountain-tops, the pure abode Of heaven-born stream, and fair enamelled mead Whose flow’rs immortal fells not any scythe. Long have I sought thee 'mid the withering flowers Wherewith thou smiling crown’dst the fading hours, Weaving fine fancies 'mid the murmuring blithe Of lowland stream, and birds, and pattering leaves; Long have I called thee, waiting for thy voice, So faint it rose above the troublous noise Of earthly harvesters among their sheaves; Long have I waited thy dear heart to win, So long desired to reign with thee therein.”

VI.

O sorrow-stricken Voice, so piercing sweet! Blinding my eyes with tears, smiting my heart Like some fire-pointed, swift-descending dart, And giving strength unto my climbing feet Seeking those dim and misty hills of blue. Lo! the great mountains at thy music thrilled, And all their deep recesses echoes filled— Near and more near the sunlit summits grew! The little birds that gathered, unafraid, On berry-laden boughs beside my way Mingled thy cadence with their roundelay— Its joyousness grown sweeter through thy shade. O Voice of love and grief, sad for my sin, What ways were thine so poor a thing to win!

VII.

O thou Almighty Lord of life and death, Thou that hast led me out the wilderness And shown me thy great hills’ pure strength to bless, Guard in my soul, lest still it perisheth! The cross thou gavest still I strive to bear— So light it grows that half, at times, I fear My trust is lost, sign of thy service dear— Dost thou bear all, dear Lord, for me no share? So in thy steps to follow still I seek, The wearing way thy patient feet have pressed, The blood-stained way thy heavy cross hath blessed— Dost thou hold me to suffer aught too weak? E’en when I strive one little thorn to grasp It turns to tender roses in my clasp.

VIII.

The very stones win smoothness from thy feet, Beneath whose tread immortal flowers spring, Holding within their snowy hearts no sting, And breathing spices for love’s incense meet. The lark, swift rising thy approach to greet, The fulness of his heavenly song to pour No higher than thy breast divine need soar, There hiding life and song in joy complete! Though sheltering trees o’ershadow not my way To ward the sultry glow of noonday sun, Yet 'neath thy cross the coolest shade is won That dims no ray of that eternal day That from yon unstained hills of peace doth shine, Whereto thou leadest me, O Love Divine!

IX.

Yet many bitter tears I needs must weep, Remembering the glimmer of the plain Where nodding lilies and the bending grain Seemed rarest treasure in their gold to keep; Those thoughtless hours ere I learned to look Beyond my roses to the misty hills— The far-off pastures only God’s hand tills; Where lost I in the laughter of the brook And song of earthly birds that loving Voice, That patient call, alas! too long denied. Still in my heart in weeping woe must bide, E’en in His breast who bids my soul rejoice, The mem’ry of that day’s ingratitude When God in vain for love his creature sued.

THE IRON AGE OF CHRISTENDOM.

Our period is emphatically one of historical studies, as we have had occasion to remark in a former article on the Life and Works of M. Ozanam. Among other illusions swept away by the light of truth which these laborious researches have let in upon the obscurity of the past, there is one great illusion about golden and iron ages. In respect to the Christian period, specifically, it is manifest that it is vain to look, in the apostolic, ante-Nicene, mediæval, or modern ages, for that ideal perfection in real, concrete existence which may have been in our imagination as a pleasing picture. There has never been an age of gold unmixed with baser metal for the church any more than for humanity in general. The analogy of the past, which is the only sure criterion we can apply to the future, forbids us to expect that there ever will be such a purely golden age on the earth. Moreover, those iron ages or dark ages, of Christian or pre-Christian, historic or pre-historic times, which have been imagined to precede or to interrupt the epochs of splendor and light, are seen on inspection not to have been all iron or all darkness. The progress of mankind towards its destination has been continuous from the beginning, although, in larger or smaller local extensions or numerical portions of humanity, there has been in various periods a stoppage or retrogradation of the movement, in appearance, and in respect to individual progress. The earth keeps its regular course, though men walk on its surface in an opposite direction, and they are carried with it unconsciously. The ship goes on and carries with it the passenger, while he is walking from the bow to the stern. Clouds, night, and eclipses are not a destruction or suspension of the irradiation of light from the sun on the earth, but its partial and temporary impediments. The ship which makes a long, dangerous, but successful voyage is making headway while plunging into the trough of the sea as well as while riding the crest of the waves; often is less delayed by beating against adverse winds than by calm weather and light breezes. The bark of Peter, freighted with the treasures of human hope and destiny, is steadily proceeding, under the guidance of her heavenly Pilot, over the waves of time, through calm and stormy seas, toward the port of eternity. Seldom does she seem to be in safety, and show the speed of her motion, to the uninstructed eyes of those who do not possess the sublime science of the stars and charts by which her celestial course is directed. “Never,” says Lacordaire, “is the triumph of the church visible at a given moment. If you look at any one point in the expanse of the ages, the bark of Peter appears to be about to be engulfed, and the faithful are always prompt to cry out: Lord, save us, we perish! But if you look at the whole series of times, the church manifests her strength, and you understand what Jesus Christ said in the tempest: Man of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”[75]

Footnote 75:

Conf. de Notre Dame, tome i. conf. iv. at the end.

There is nevertheless a difference in the character of epochs. The epochs of Constantine, Charlemagne, Gregory VII., of the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, are seen in the retrospect to have a special light of glory about them. The seventh, tenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth centuries present a dark aspect. The tenth century particularly, which we are at present bringing under review, is generally called “the iron age” even by our modern Catholic historians, and not without considerable reason, more especially in respect to the state and condition of the Roman Church and the sovereign pontificate. Nevertheless, the common notion, derived from compendious histories and the generalized statements which form the commonplaces of popular literature, respecting the tenth age of Christendom is not correct and is extremely confused. It was not an age of complete barbarism and universal ignorance. Ozanam says: “Indeed, letters did not, at any time, perish. The truth is that the period of complete barbarism, supposed at first to extend over a space of a thousand years, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the capture of Constantinople, then gradually reduced to narrower limits, until it remained finally restricted to the seventh and tenth centuries, vanishes away under a more severe scrutiny.”[76] Cantù remarks: “This epoch is justly called the iron age, because of the cruel sufferings endured by individuals and nations; but humanity made a sensible progress in the face of these trials. We cannot, therefore, concur in the judgment of those who consider it the most unhappy period of the human race.”[77] We cannot make logical divisions of history into epochs exactly corresponding with the numerical notation of years and centuries. It would be absurd to suppose that at 12 A.M. of January 1, A.D. 900, to borrow Carlyle’s expression, “the clock of Time struck and an era passed away”; and that the same venerable old timepiece, from its corner in the parlor of the universe, struck again in just a hundred years, announcing the end of the iron age and the beginning of another of some different metal. The boundaries of epochs are not quite so determinate, and centuries, periods, epochs, run into one another, mix, blend, elude precise delineation. Cantù’s tenth epoch is not the tenth century, but the period beginning A.D. 800 and ending A.D. 1096. This period, between Charlemagne and the Crusades, far from presenting the aspect of a desolate waste to the eye, is crowded and variegated with events and persons of the most important and interesting character, and their history is one great act in the European drama, advancing it sensibly toward the consummation which we are still, in our own age, hastening forward and awaiting in the near or distant future. Within this great period are other and lesser cycles, embracing epochs, phases, temporary states of ecclesiastical and civil prosperity or adversity, alternations of various kinds, in Christendom, in Europe, or in portions of the Christian commonwealth, each having its distinctive notes. That part of it which is in the centre presents the characteristics of an iron age more distinctly marked than the preceding or following periods. The latter half of the ninth and the earlier half of the tenth century, taken together, really constitute the period which can with strict propriety be called the iron age. And within this century a period of about forty years, including the end of the ninth and the first years of the tenth century, was a sort of crisis in which Christian Europe seemed to have reached the dead-point in her progress, and, having passed it, went on again under the attraction of a new force.

Footnote 76:

Dante, Disc. Prelim., sec. v.

Footnote 77:

Hist. Univ., ep. x. epilogue, tome ix. p. 478.

This statement must not be taken as rigorously and uniformly applicable to all Europe and Christendom. The Greek Empire and the degenerate Eastern Church were in a state of hopeless decadence, verging toward a permanent downfall. England and Spain, on the other hand, passed through their worst times earlier, and were going upward and onward, led by great men and heroes—Alfred and the forerunners of Ferdinand and the Cid—just at the time when the rest of Europe was in the most disordered and disastrous condition. The crisis of the iron age affected chiefly the countries which had constituted the great domain of Charlemagne—France, Germany, and Italy. Its phases were various, in respect to time and other conditions, in these very countries. The whole panorama, as presented to our view in the pages of historical narrative, is as shifting, varied, apparently capricious, as mountain scenery in the changing aspects of light and shade, produced by sunshine, clouds, and moonlight, by transforming mists and sombre night. It is only when we rise to the logical order and sequence of events, trace effects to their causes, enlarge our scope of vision, ascend into the upper regions of a true philosophy of history whose atmosphere is the Christian idea and whose light is celestial faith, that a real order, harmony, and progression toward an intelligible and grand result are clearly discernible.

Some few general statements borrowed from this higher branch of historical science must be premised before we can come at a satisfactory view of our particular and immediate topic and set its details in systematic order.

The actual evils and miseries which afflicted the Christian people of Europe during the iron age were invasions of Saracens, Scandinavians, and Hungarians, incessant wars among greater and lesser princes, terrible famines and pestilences, and, in general, a state of turbulence, insecurity, social and moral confusion. This whole state of things was a relapse into the condition brought about by the fall of the Roman Empire and the barbarian irruption in the seventh century. The great reason why it occurred is found in the fact that Charlemagne’s great empire and power passed away and that no unifying, organic power succeeded it until Europe had passed through a period of transition. The Roman Empire had to pass away to make room for Christendom, and for a time its débris and the new material lying on the ground for a reconstruction made a state of confusion. Charlemagne’s fundamental work was solid and lasting, but he had to make some temporary structures which were showy but not substantial, and therefore fell down or were torn down; causing more disorder for a time, until they were cleared away to make room for the permanent and splendid walls to be built up according to the idea of the divine Architect. The European, Christian Idea is not that of one, uniform political western empire, ruled by an autocracy which continues or succeeds to the old, imperial Roman power. It is that of a community of nations, bound together by a common faith, common principles, international law, mutual alliance and amity, and preserving full scope for distinct and beautifully various forms of free, spontaneous growth and culture. Its regenerating, vivifying, and controlling spirit is Christianity in the Catholic organization. Its centre of unity and force is Rome and the spiritual supremacy of the pope. The political supremacy of an emperor—understanding by an emperor a universal monarch ruling subordinate kings set over dependent kingdoms—is incompatible with this true idea of a Christendom. Even, supposing this universal political sovereignty united with the sovereign pontificate of the Pope, it is incompatible with that true idea, partly for the same reasons, partly for different reasons from those which militate against it, supposing the two distinct powers to exist separately. It was necessary that the pope should possess his own separate sovereignty in a kingdom of moderate size. It was also necessary that some one powerful king should be endowed by the pope with a special, sacred pre-eminence among other sovereigns, as the protector of his civil princedom and of his spiritual supremacy. This was the meaning of Charles the Great’s imperial coronation. He was, in fact, really the king of almost all Europe. But this was temporary. His kingdom was divided. The imperial dignity was conferred on different sovereigns of France, Italy, and Germany from time to time, and for above thirty years remained in abeyance for want of a proper subject to receive it, until it rested at last on the head of the first of the Saxon line, passing thence to the Franconian house, and afterwards to the Hohenstaufen. The German emperors were, however, by election kings of Germany, and as such governed their states; whereas they were made emperors by papal consecration, and in that capacity were protectors of the Holy See and the church. The authority which they lawfully exercised as emperors in the city and principality of Rome was the authority of a civil magistrate who was not the head but the right arm of the pope, the real political sovereign in his own state.

The European crisis of the tenth century was a period in which the Carlovingian dynasty was going into decadence, and the new dynasties of France and Germany had not yet arisen. There was a great want of able sovereigns, and especially of men who were strong enough to fulfil the functions of the imperial office. To turn now especially towards Italy and Rome, it was the lack of a strong hand to preserve peace and order among the petty princes and states of Italy, and to protect the pope and the Holy See from the rebellions and intrigues of powerful nobles and contending factions within and around the Roman principality, which was the chief cause of the long obnubilation of the sun of Christendom—the Roman Church—during the tenth epoch. We propose to enter now more minutely into the exposition of the historical truth respecting this period, so far as it relates to the popes and the Roman Church directly and immediately.

The ordinary accounts of this epoch in Roman and Italian history produce a singular impression on the mind of the reader. It seems as if the gas had been suddenly turned off and all had become dark, or as if an express-train filled with passengers had all at once been stopped by an impediment in the middle of the night at an obscure way-station, to the surprise and chagrin of all on board when they awoke in the morning. One is puzzled and disgusted by a confused, disconnected story which reads like the record of crimes and disasters in a modern newspaper. The persons mentioned seem to have no reality or distinct character—to be like the spectres of dreams or the personified abstractions in parables. The very names of the popes, such as Formosus, Marinus, Lando, Romanus, have a strange, unpapal sound. They appear and vanish with marvellous rapidity, leaving no trace behind. When we read that the world was generally expected to explode in the year 1000, we are not surprised, but rather wonder why it did not, and are quite relieved to find ourselves safe and sound in the eleventh century, and hear those “whom the Lord hath sent to walk through the earth answer the angel of the Lord, and say: We have walked through the earth; and behold, all the earth is inhabited, and is at rest.”[78]

Footnote 78:

Zacharias i. 10, 11.

One great difficulty in picking the thread of history out of this snarl is the paucity of contemporary documents. Another cause of misunderstanding and misrepresentation has been the flippant and mendacious character of the most extensive and minute of the chronicles of the period, that of Luitprand. The same kind of gossiping, scandal-mongering centres which exist among us may not have existed in the tenth century. There were no newspapers filled with libels and calumnies, falsifications of news, reports of the army of detectives of the press. But there were the same violent factions, party animosities, intrigues, mutual denunciations, raising a cloud of smoke and dust like that which overhangs a battle-field, in even more virulent activity then than we now behold them in our modern political mêlées. All the condensed scandal, partisan vituperation, indecent gossip, and malicious calumny of the time in which he lived are collected in the memoirs of Luitprand, and from these have been infiltrated through succeeding times, leaving great stains which only the acid of criticism has been able to efface. Even Fleury says of him that he is extremely passionate, excessive both in his abuse and his flattery, and given to buffoonery to a degree which transgresses the bounds of decency. He was originally a subdeacon of the church of Toledo in Spain, afterwards a deacon of the church of Pavia, during which time he was sent by Berenger, King of Italy, on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople. Later he became Bishop of Cremona, but was a disgrace to the episcopate. He was a courtier of Otho the German emperor, who sent him on another mission to Constantinople, a violent adherent of the German party, bitterly hostile to the Italian party and all the popes who favored it, and a participator in the schismatical proceedings of Otho’s anti-pope. His credit is now entirely lost. But at the time of the revolt of Luther all the incriminations of the popes and the Roman clergy, whether true, false, or doubtful, were gathered up and made the most of to sustain the bill of indictment against the Holy See. The same stories, repeated by numbers of writers, produced the effect of concurrent testimony on the general mind of the readers of history. Baronius and other Catholic historians, not having sufficient materials for testing and correcting all these accusations, let a number of them pass uncontradicted or admitted their truth. Fleury and some others of the lowest Gallican school, who always write like advocates who have taken out a brief against the Holy See, have in their historical works neglected and perverted facts in a manner which is equally shallow and perfidious, and as contrary to sound criticism as it is to orthodox doctrine. It is only since the discovery of Flodoard’s Lives of the Popes, the critical and learned researches of Muratori, and the great modern advance of genuine historical science, that the tissue of lies depending solely on the worthless testimony of Luitprand has been swept away. A better appreciation of the great course of events and the essential facts of history is now possible, and even easy. Men of genius, learning, and conscientious devotion to truth have lighted up these dark, buried crypts of the substructure of Christendom, as the zealous archæologists of York have done in the old minster, whose foundations were laid in the very period we are describing.[79]

Footnote 79:

See Mr. Ticknor’s Life, vol. i. p. 436.

In regard to many particular events and certain individuals whose names figure in connection with the transactions of an obscure epoch we cannot expect to acquire a perfect certainty. Nor is there anything of moment depending on the discovery of the truth in such cases. We have to be content with a probability or with a doubt in thousands of matters of detail. There are a considerable number of popes of whom we know next to nothing. In certain instances it is not easy to determine whether an election of a given individual was valid or invalid. Of the truth or falsehood of the accusations made against several popes and other persons of high ecclesiastical or civil rank, and of the reports of assassinations and other great crimes, which are so frequent in this period of disorder, we cannot always form a certain judgment. There is enough, however, of that which is certain or fairly probable to show the connection, the continuity, and the identity of principles both with the foregoing and the following epochs, and to furnish ample material for the vindication of the cause of the Holy See and the Papacy. There is a sequence in the progress through the struggles of transition; there are great and good men, noble and heroic achievements, interesting and curious episodes—in fine, there is a human and a Christian character showing its lineaments in place of the cloudy spectre with distorted features which has heretofore scared the imagination.[80]

Footnote 80:

We make here our acknowledgment of indebtedness to the series of articles in the Civiltà Cattolica entitled “I Destini di Roma,” which was begun Aug. 19, 1871, for a great part of what is to follow in this article.

We begin our historical sketch with Pope Formosus, who was elected A.D. 891. This is one of the popes of whom we have said above that they seem in our common histories like a mere shadow of a great name without a personal reality. Besides, there is a certain cloud on his memory, arising from the fact that he was deprived of his see of Porto by John VIII., and that he was the subject of a great outrage from his successor, Stephen VI. A careful examination of his history shows, however, that he was no common man and was both a good and an able pope. As Bishop of Porto he was one of the most conspicuous among the Italian prelates. He left his see to become a missionary among the Bulgarians, where he labored zealously and successfully in the work of their conversion. There is nothing to show that his censure by Pope John VIII., which seems to have been chiefly occasioned by his taking an active part in a political opposition to the Emperor Charles the Bald, involved in it any moral dishonor. He was restored by Pope Marinus, and the indignities inflicted on his memory by his successor were a wanton and causeless outrage, which was condemned and repaired by a subsequent pope with the approbation of the Roman people.

Europe was just then in the depths of the disorders and miseries caused by the decay of the imperial authority and the degeneracy of Charlemagne’s successors. Berenger was king in Northern Italy, but Guido, Duke of Spoleto, and his son Lambert had been crowned emperors in opposition to him and to all the French and German claimants. Toward the end of the short reign of Formosus, which lasted less than five years, and after the death of Guido, the dissatisfaction of the pope with the conduct of Lambert and his mother, Ermengarda, induced him to summon Arnulph, King of Germany, to come to the relief of the Holy See and of Italy. He obeyed the summons, made a forcible entry into Rome, where the Lambertine faction had gained the upper hand and thrown Formosus into prison, and was by him crowned emperor. This was the beginning of the appeals of the popes to Germany for intervention in Italian affairs, and of the never-ending conflicts between the Italian and German parties in Italy, whose finale we have but just witnessed in our own day in the exclusion of Austria from her dominion in Venetia. We have no doubt that it was necessary, and on the whole productive of good results, that the imperial crown should be transferred to the German sovereigns. But, without delaying to consider this point, we simply take note of the fact that this was one of the great questions of violent dispute and contention which disturbed the Roman Church and the papal elections so long as there were Italian princes who disputed the imperial dignity with the Germans. Arnulph returned almost immediately to Germany. Formosus died and was followed to the tomb a few weeks after by his immediate successor, Boniface VI. The party of Lambert succeeded in obtaining the election of Stephen VI., the first of the popes who grievously dishonored the tiara. His violent and shameful conduct caused a temporary reaction in favor of the opposite party, by whom he was imprisoned and strangled. Lambert was, nevertheless, acknowledged by the three succeeding popes, Romanus, Theodore II., and John IX., and by two successive councils, and the pact between the church and the empire was solemnly renewed. These three pontificates filled only a space of three years and closed the century. The year 901 saw a new competitor for the imperial crown, which death had taken from Lambert’s head, in the person of Louis of Provence, who was actually crowned by Benedict IV., but very soon driven away by Berenger, who was still reigning in the north of Italy. Berenger was an able and warlike sovereign, in many respects worthy of admiration, and capable of filling the imperial office with honor to himself and advantage to Italy. Circumstances were, however, extremely adverse. He maintained himself in possession of a certain pre-eminence among the petty sovereigns of Italy, and carried on vigorously wars against the Saracen and Hungarian invaders. He was even crowned emperor in 915, but was never able to establish his authority on a solid and permanent basis, and at last, in 924, he was assassinated by a conspiracy of Italian nobles. With him the imperial office became extinct, and remained so until it was resuscitated, thirty-eight years afterward, in the person of Otho the Great.

The failure of the imperial power which had been instituted in the person of Charlemagne left the Holy See and all Italy a prey to contending, petty sovereigns, to powerful and mutually hostile nobles and factions, and to fierce heathen invaders. The Roman pontiffs maintained with difficulty a restricted, often merely nominal, civil sovereignty in the city and principality of Rome. Between the years 900 and 914 six popes succeeded each other: Benedict IV., Leo V., Christopher, Sergius III., Anastasius III., and Lando. Of the nine popes who came between Stephen VI. and John X., it is certain that nearly all were worthy of their exalted position, and the grave accusations made against two of the number, Christopher and Sergius, rest on uncertain testimony. The average length of their reigns being less than two years, and that of the longest among them only seven, most of the number had no time to make a conspicuous figure in history, and their annals are so scanty that very little is known of the acts of their administration.

The reign of John X., which lasted fourteen years, from 914 to 928, was of a different character. He was one of the great popes, and proved himself fully equal to the emergencies of the time and the difficulties of his position. For nine years previously to his election to the Roman See he had been Archbishop of Ravenna, and the extraordinary ability which he had exhibited in his government of that important church had pointed him out as one capable of making head, in conjunction with Berenger, against the perils with which Rome and Italy were beset at this most dangerous crisis in their destinies. In fact, he was obliged to do the work alone; for Berenger was unable to help him, having his hands full in fighting Saracens and Hungarians in Northern Italy. There was no hope to be placed either in Germany or France. The only resource for the pope was to place himself at the head of his own barons and in alliance with the neighboring princes, and to lead the war against the Saracens in person. For this purpose he formed a league among the princes of Southern Italy, and, obtaining also auxiliaries from the Greek emperor, conducted a short and brilliantly successful campaign against the Saracens, by which they were completely discomfited and finally expelled from that part of Italy. The entire reign of John X. was in conformity with its glorious beginning; but soon after the violent and tragical overthrow of the noble Emperor Berenger by the turbulent Italian nobles, a similar catastrophe ended the career of the great pope, his friend and compeer. Alberic, Count of Tusculum, and Theophylact, senator of Rome, had been the two most powerful supporters, and the former had been the chief subordinate leader, of the great military operations of John X. The almost exclusive glory and credit which the popular voice ascribed to John for the liberation of the country from the Saracens, and the great increase and concentration of the sovereign authority under his vigorous administration, stirred up the jealousy and discontent of these great nobles. The wife of Theophylact was the famous Theodora, the younger Theodora was their daughter, and another daughter, Mariuccia, commonly called Marozia, was the wife of Alberic. These women, but especially the last mentioned, were remarkable for their beauty, talents, and ambition. The stream of filthy tradition which has come down through the sewer of Luitprand and the popular romances of the period has transmitted to posterity the names of these women, stained with every kind of foulness and cruelty. How much of calumny and exaggeration there may be in these scandalous stories we cannot determine. It is certain that the family exercised a great sway in Rome for many years both before and after the great coup d’état in which the intrigues of Marozia culminated and collapsed, as we are about to relate. One year after the murder of Berenger, Alberic was killed in an unsuccessful assault on Rome, and Marozia married Guido, Marquis of Tuscany. The sister of Guido, Ermengarda, Marchioness of Ivrea, was another of the group of Italian princesses of that period, remarkable in all respects, except in the special virtues of Christian women. In 926 Marozia set on foot, with these two accomplices, a revolution in Italy, by which Rodolph of Burgundy, the successful rival and successor of Berenger in the kingdom of Italy, was chased out to make room for Hugo of Provence, the half-brother of Guido. After the coronation of Hugo at Pavia, Guido and Marozia took possession of Rome by force of arms and imprisoned Pope John X., who died a few months afterward, it is suspected by violence. Guido also died within a year from his usurpation, and Marozia governed the city alone with the titles of senator and patrician. After the two short, and perhaps abbreviated, pontificates of Leo VI. and Stephen VIII., she caused the younger of her two sons by Alberic to be elected pope under the name of John XI. Still unsatisfied, she aspired to become queen of Italy, and empress, and for this purpose contracted a marriage—which by the ecclesiastical law was null and void[81]—with her brother-in-law, Hugo, the King of Italy. The marriage was celebrated in 932, and the imperial coronation was expected to follow in due time. But the violent and imperious temper of the Burgundian Hugo ruined all these plans. Alberic, eldest son of Marozia by her first husband, Alberic of Tusculum, was a youth who inherited all the brilliant qualities of both his parents, and whose character was certainly not derived from his mother or due to her influence. One day at dinner the princely youth was acting as page to the king, and by accident or design poured too much water on his hands, for which he received a buffet on the cheek from his rude step-father. He immediately left the room in a towering passion, and, running out upon the piazza, summoned the people, with words of burning eloquence, to vengeance and rescue. The Castle of St. Angelo was very speedily taken by assault, Hugo was forced to save his life by flight, and Marozia, banished from Rome, repudiated by her husband, thwarted in her wicked schemes, disappeared from view, and, it is to be hoped, passed the rest of her days until her death, which did not occur later than 945, in doing penance for her sins.

Footnote 81:

A dispensation may have been granted, but Hugo afterwards disavowed the marriage on the plea of the ecclesiastical impediment.

Now followed one of the most curious and interesting of episodes in the history of Christian Rome. Alberic reigned during his whole life-time—a period of twenty-two years—as absolute sovereign of Rome, with ability, justice, and popularity. He was in harmony with the popes, a protector of his kingdom and of the Holy See, a munificent patron of religious orders, a benefactor to the church and religion. The period of his reign is like an oasis in the desert of the tenth century. It is true that he kept his brother, John XI., in an honorable yet strict imprisonment during his life-time. Yet, although there is nothing recorded to the discredit of this pope, Alberic’s conduct toward the succeeding pontiffs shows that he must have had strong reasons for his treatment of his brother. The elections of popes during his reign were free and peaceful, and the best men among the Roman clergy were chosen. By degrees the legal form of the administration was so regulated that the sovereign rights and titles of the pope were preserved; and although the actual civil government was entirely in the hands of Prince Alberic, it was administered by him as the pope’s temporal vicar, without discord between the two powers. As a provisional arrangement it worked well, but Alberic was too wise and far-seeing to think its permanent continuance possible or desirable. By a singular stroke of policy he prepared for the restoration of the real sovereignty to the one who had not ceased to retain the title and the right. His son Octavian was educated as an ecclesiastic, and the chiefs of the clergy and nobility were induced to make a solemn engagement before Alberic’s death to elect Octavian pope on the first vacancy of the Holy See. He was accordingly elected pope soon after the death of his father, although he was but eighteen years of age, and assumed the name of John XII.

Of the personal and private character of this youthful pontiff, who died at the age of twenty-six after a reign of eight years, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to form an exact and certain estimate. The accusations made against him during his life-time are atrocious, and they are still repeated by modern writers, although the most judicious and moderate historians soften them down considerably. The learned writer in the Civiltà gives his judgment that as a pontiff all his acts were laudable, and, as a king, worthy of one who was the son of Alberic. In respect to his private morals, he considers that the accusations of his political enemies and of writers attached to the German, imperial party—the almost sole remaining source of information respecting that period—are to be distrusted; but that it is difficult to exculpate him altogether from the reproach of having lived more as secular princes are wont to do than as became the holy state of a bishop. The salient point of his administration was the calling in of the King of Germany, Otho the Great, and the subsequent imbroglio between the pope and the emperor. Otho, who well deserves the name of Great, notwithstanding grievous errors and wrongs in his conduct toward the Holy See, had been reigning twenty years when he was summoned to Rome and crowned emperor. The return of the old disorders in Italy made his intervention necessary, but he carried it too far, and John XII., probably with good reason, and certainly acting in a way which was natural in a high-spirited and youthful sovereign trained in the maxims and sentiments of an Italian prince, joined with the other princes of Italy in opposition to the German domination. A struggle between John and Otho was the consequence. The emperor, misled by the bad advice of Luitprand and other bishops, attempted to depose the pope and substitute an anti-pope, who called himself Leo VIII., in his place. John XII. died suddenly before this conflict had any decisive issue, and Benedict V. was elected in his place, but was soon after carried away into Germany by Otho and kept in captivity at Hamburg. On the death of the anti-pope, which occurred in March, 965, a few months after the death of John, the Romans requested the restoration of Benedict V., which was granted by Otho. The pope, however, died on his journey to Rome, venerated and regretted even by the emperor and by all with whom he had come into personal contact, as well as by the Romans.

The emperor and all the various parties by which Rome was divided agreed together and concurred in the election of John XIII., who favored the German party in politics, and had, on the whole, a peaceful and prosperous reign of six years, sustained by the imperial power, although it was interrupted by one violent sedition, which was repressed and punished in the severest manner.

The close of the reigns of the Pope John XIII. and the Emperor Otho the Great was marked by one extraordinary and most interesting event—the marriage of the young Emperor Otho II. with Theophania, a Greek princess of distinguished beauty, intellectual accomplishments, and personal virtues. She brought with her as dowry all the Greek possessions in Italy, and was regarded as an angel of peace between the two empires.

The death of Otho I. in 973 was the signal for new outbreaks and disturbances in Italy. In Rome a struggle began between two powerful families: the Crescenzi, who were the great lords of the Sabine territory, and the Conti—that is, the Tusculan counts—who were the principal barons of Latium. The latter favored, while the former opposed, the imperial power in Italy. Crescenzio, or Cencio, the first leader of the Italian faction, is supposed by many writers to have been a grand-nephew of Marozia. He attempted an imitation of Alberic, though not by the same honorable means, and endeavored to gain possession for himself of the Roman principality. The pope, Benedict VI., who had succeeded John XIII. a few months before the death of Otho I., was assaulted and dethroned by armed force, imprisoned in the Castle of St. Angelo, and at last strangled. An infamous ecclesiastic, a partisan and accomplice with Crescenzio in his crimes, was intruded into the chair of St. Peter while he was still, in the language of Pope Sylvester II., dripping with the blood of his predecessor. This so-called Pope Boniface VII., who is commonly regarded as an anti-pope, was dispossessed, after one month, together with his patron, Crescenzio, by a counter-revolution under the counts of Tusculum, and fled to Constantinople. At a later period he returned and succeeded in seizing on the government for a brief period, but came at length to a most tragical and ignominious end. Crescenzio ended his days in a monastery. It is uncertain whether there was or was not a pope named Donus II. who reigned for a few months after the death of Benedict VI. Benedict VII., a nephew of Alberic, Count of Tusculum, and Bishop of Sutri, was enthroned, according to Mansi, on the 28th of December, 974, and governed the Roman Church during his pontificate of nine years in such a manner as to leave no stain upon his reputation. One of his first acts was to excommunicate, in a council of bishops, Cardinal Franco, the anti-pope. In 980 he was obliged to call upon the young emperor, Otho II., to come to his assistance in Rome. He came, in fact, during the following year, but, after an unsuccessful campaign against the allied Greeks and Saracens, died in his imperial palace at Rome, Dec. 9, 983, in the twenty-eighth year of his age—a prince whose character made him worthy of his father, but who was less fortunate in his destiny. His premature death and the infancy of Otho III. seemed to threaten both Germany and Italy with great disasters. Germany was preserved from these menacing evils by the sanctity and ability of two noble and heroic women—St. Adelaide, the widow of Otho the Great, and Theophania, widow of Otho II., and imperial regent in the name of her son, who was but three years old, yet universally recognized as King of Germany and emperor-elect. Rome, however, had still to suffer, and remained for another half-century to come the foot-ball of rival factions. The son of Crescenzio, called Crescenzio Nomentano, obtained the upper hand in Rome, recalled the anti-pope, Boniface VII., imprisoned and put to death John XIV., the successor of Benedict VI., and made himself patrician and governor of Rome. The sudden death of Boniface, however, and the universal hatred in which his memory was held, enabled the clergy and people of Rome to elect a worthy pope in the person of John XV. (April, 986), who held the see ten years, governing with great prudence and success, notwithstanding the great difficulties of his position. In 989 the empress-mother, Theophania, came to Rome and held an imperial court. It was expected that she would put an end to the tyranny of Crescenzio Nomentano, but she was deceived by his extreme cunning and hypocritical promises so far that she confirmed him in his office as patrician. After her departure he became so much worse that the pope was obliged to leave Rome and take refuge with Hugo, Marquis of Tuscany, through whose intervention a pressing request was sent to the emperor-elect, Otho III., now seventeen years of age, to come in person to Italy. So great was now the fear of the imperial power that Crescenzio hastened to reconcile himself to the pope, who returned and was reconducted with great manifestations of honor to the Lateran palace.

On his arrival in Rome at the head of a large army, early in 996, Otho III., who, with precocious vigor of mind and character, had assumed the reins of government, found the Roman See vacant by the death of John XV., and his first care was the election of his successor. The one whom he proposed, and who was accepted by the electors, was a young ecclesiastic but twenty-four years of age, the son of the Duke of Franconia and his own cousin-german. His name was Bruno, and his accomplished education, joined with a mature virtue, made him worthy to fill the see of Peter. He assumed the name of Gregory V., and gave great promise of adorning the Holy See during a long pontificate, as Otho did of becoming an illustrious emperor of Germany. The hopes of the church and the empire were, however, frustrated by the early death of both. Crescenzio had been condemned to banishment, but, at the request of Gregory, his sentence was remitted. The generosity of the two youthful and confiding sovereigns was requited by Crescenzio, as soon as Otho’s back was turned, by an uprising against the German pope and the imperial officers, the expulsion of Gregory, and the creation of an anti-pope, who was John Philagathos, a Greek monk, Bishop of Piacenza, and lately ambassador of the emperor at the court of Constantinople. The bold plan of these two conspirators was nothing less than the restoration of the sovereignty of the West to the Greek emperor, under whose auspices each one hoped to be confirmed in his usurped authority at Rome. In 998 Gregory and Otho re-entered Rome together, and this time showed no clemency either to Crescenzio or Philagathos, both of whom were victims of a terrible vengeance.

Pope Gregory died in 999, in the twenty-seventh year of his age and the third of his pontificate. He was succeeded by the celebrated Gerbert, a French monk, formerly abbot of the famous monastery of Bobbio, and at this present time Archbishop of Ravenna, who took the name of Sylvester II. He had been the guide, the tutor, and the friend of Otho during his boyhood. In his earlier career he had been somewhat hot-headed, and had sustained a sharp and obstinate contest with Pope John XV. in respect to the see of Rouen. Now, however, he was an old man and a wise. No pope so truly great, in the sense of the word most appropriate to a bishop and an ecclesiastical ruler, had ascended the papal throne since the time of St. Nicholas the Great, in the middle of the ninth century. Otho remained always in Rome and Italy, for which he had a special predilection. Nothing can be more beautiful than the picture of this venerable and learned old man, with his gifted and loving pupil by his side, “pulchri Cæsaris pulcherrima proles,” filling together the throne of ancient, eternal Rome with their pontifical and imperial majesty. What a subject for a painter or a poet! Otho is one of the most winning characters to be found in all history. His mother, the Greek princess, had given him an exquisite mental culture, and his grandmother, St. Adelaide, a most pious education. There was something visionary and romantic in his nature which only adds to his personal attractiveness. He dreamed of great things for Rome and the empire, such as the Florentine seer who had the vision of the unseen world dreamed of, but which were not in accordance with the plans of divine Providence, and probably not with the views of Sylvester II. He died at a castle near Civita Castellana, in the twenty-third year of his age, in the arms of Sylvester, who followed him to the tomb in a little more than a year after, on the 12th of May, 1003.

The dreaded year 1000 had been passed and the eleventh century was begun. It was really one of the most fortunate of all the centuries for Rome and the popes, yet it began under dark and menacing auspices. The Crescenzi regained the predominance in Rome and kept it for twelve years during three pontificates—viz., those of John XVII., which lasted only five months, of John XVIII. and Sergius IV., both of whom ruled the church in peace and with honor to themselves, yet were obliged to tolerate the usurpation of the patrician Giovanni Crescenzio, who seems to have governed with more mildness than his father, Nomentano, had done. In 1012, after his death, the dominion of this family came finally to an end, being supplanted by that of the Conti Tusculani, who retained it for thirty years. Count Gregory, a descendant of Alberic and Marozia, whose later years were rendered illustrious by piety and good works of a splendid munificence, left at his death three sons, Alberic, Theophylact, and Romanus. The second of these became pope under the name of Benedict VIII., and governed the church as well as the Roman principality during twelve years with consummate ability, aided in his civil administration by his two brothers, and in perfect amity with the emperor, St. Henry II., who had succeeded his cousin, Otho III., but had always been prevented by wars and other pressing employments elsewhere from interfering in Italian affairs. In 1014 St. Henry was able to come to Rome with his queen, St. Cunegunda, to receive the imperial coronation from the pope. A rival king of Italy, Arduin, the last of the Italian kings who aspired to the iron crown of Lombardy until Victor Emanuel appeared, had been conquered, and, retiring to a monastery, passed the rest of his days in penance. Henry and Benedict together made successful war upon the Greeks and Saracens, putting an end to the troubles of Italy from both these enemies. The pope and the emperor both died at about the same time in 1024, and with Henry II. was ended the Saxon line of emperors, which was succeeded by the Franconian, called also the Ghibelline from the family castle of Waiblingen, and the Salic, from the tribal name Salii—i.e., dwellers by the river Sala. Benedict’s brother Romanus succeeded him on the pontifical throne under the name of John XIX., and united more strictly in his own person the functions of ecclesiastical and civil sovereignty than had been the case during the reign of his predecessor. His pontificate of eight years was a laudable administration, without any event of note which has been recorded, except the coronation of the first Franconian emperor, Conrad II. This coronation was marked by the presence of an unusually numerous and splendid assemblage of princes and prelates from all parts of Europe, among whom were Rudolph, Duke of Burgundy, and Canute the Great, King of Denmark and England. This grand ceremony was performed in the spring of 1027, but, notwithstanding the new splendor which seemed at that time to environ the Holy See, the greatest disgrace and scandal with which it was ever afflicted was close at hand and came upon it in the next pontificate. On the death of John XIX., in 1032, there was no one of the family of the Conti upon whose head the tiara could be placed with any sort of fitness and propriety. So great and so strongly fixed was the power of that family that they succeeded in securing the election and coronation of a young boy, Theophylact, nephew of the two preceding popes, and the son of Count Alberic, their elder brother. He is said by some historians to have been twelve years old, by others to have been perhaps seventeen. Under the name of Benedict IX. he continued during the thirteen years of his reign, under the protection of the emperor and supported by the power of his family, to harass his subjects by his capricious tyranny, and to afflict and desolate the church by the unrestrained license of his moral conduct. His scandalous life and maladministration of the government brought on a schism headed by an anti-pope calling himself Sylvester III., caused frequent and violent popular tumults, and excited universal contempt and odium against his own person. At last the discontent reached such an extreme that of his own free-will Benedict abdicated his office, that he might have greater freedom to live without any restraint upon his conduct. The most distinguished and the most respected priest of the Roman Church at this time was John Gratian, arch-priest of the church of St. John at the Latin Gate, the preceptor of St. Hildebrand, who was afterwards Pope Gregory VII. Desiring to put an end to the calamities of every kind which were the consequence of a sacrilegious pontificate, Gratian took the extraordinary course of offering a large subsidy in money to Benedict IX. on condition of a complete renunciation of all his rights to the Roman See. He was then himself canonically elected Pope under the name of Gregory VI., and began with zeal the work of reformation in both church and state. Nevertheless, the circumstance that he had given a sum of money to induce Benedict to resign gave occasion to such a plausible outcry of simony and personal ambition against Gregory, and the resistance of the anti-pope Sylvester as well as that of Benedict, who reclaimed his former office, was so violent, that it was necessary to call in the aid of the new emperor Henry III., and to summon a numerous council, that the rival claims might be adjudicated and sufficient measures be adopted for restoring peace and order. The council, which met at Sutri, set aside entirely both Sylvester and Benedict. The decision of his own case was referred to Gregory with great respect, but with a manifest wish that he should resign. The pope disclaimed in the most solemn manner all mercenary and selfish motives for what he had done, yet nevertheless, on account of the scandal which had been occasioned, he judged himself to be unworthy of the papal dignity, and abdicated it with many tears and expressions of humility. The council confirmed his resignation, which St. Hildebrand and many others regretted, but which the greater number, with St. Peter Damian, highly approved, notwithstanding their esteem for Gregory, who retired into a monastery, where he lived a secluded and holy life. Even Benedict at last repented, and spent the few remaining years of his life in prayer and penance in the monastery of Grotta-Ferrata, which his grandfather, Count Gregory, had founded.

On Christmas eve, 1046, Suidger, Bishop of Bamberg, was proposed by the emperor to the Roman clergy and people, and by them elected pope, taking the name of Clement II. He was enthroned on Christmas day, and on the same day crowned the emperor and empress, and, as a safeguard against the abuse of the power of the Roman patrician by the Italian barons, it was transferred to the emperor, who was thus made the recognized head of the Roman aristocracy, with a special right of superintending the election of the sovereign pontiffs. From this moment commenced the dawn of better and brighter days for Rome. The great work of reformation was begun by Clement; and, although his reign lasted but one year, and his successor, another German prelate of high character—Poppo, Bishop of Brixen, who became Damasus II.—survived his enthronization but twenty-three days, a saint was waiting to inaugurate the glorious series of the Hildebrandine popes.

Bruno, Bishop of Toul, who was St. Leo IX., having after long resistance been persuaded by the emperor and the most eminent prelates to consent to assume the tiara, stopped at Cluny to see Hildebrand, a young monk, who became St. Gregory VII. With difficulty he induced him to accompany him to Rome, on the condition that he would make the journey in pilgrim’s garb, and submit the imperial nomination without reserve to the free election of the clergy and people of the Roman Church. He was enthroned on the 12th of February, which was the first Sunday of Lent, 1049. The eleventh century was at its zenith, and the bright sun of a new era shed its rays upon Christendom, as a new St. Leo sat upon the throne of St. Peter, St. Leo the Great, St. Gregory, and St. Nicholas, chasing away the darkness and the clouds of the tenth century, and putting an end to the period of the obnubilation of the Roman Church.

We have confined our attention almost entirely to the local history of the popes, without noticing their administration of the universal church. The general ecclesiastical history of the whole period between St. Nicholas I. and St. Gregory VII. furnishes abundant proof of the universal recognition and continuous exercise of the papal supremacy in the East as well as in the West. Adrian II. celebrated the eighth œcumenical council at Constantinople in 870. John VIII., John X., and John XV. exercised throughout Europe the same spiritual authority which was exercised by Nicholas the Great. The local difficulties of the popes, and even the scandals which disturbed the Roman Church, had no effect throughout Christendom to diminish the authority of the Roman See. During the general anarchy and chaos caused by the new irruption of barbarians the unity and common life of Christendom was oppressed and enfeebled, and the corporate, organic action of the universal church could not manifest itself so vigorously as it had done before and did afterwards. When all the evils which had attacked the church and Christendom at the very centre of life in Rome reached their crisis in the pontificate of Benedict IX., it was certainly felt by all good and honest men that the very existence of the Papacy and the Catholic Church, of the whole European society, and of all civilization, morality, and order on the earth, was in imminent danger. The spectacle of a youth who was no better in morals, and no stronger in intellectual or princely qualities, than the weakest and most dissolute of the Carlovingian monarchs, seated on the throne of St. Peter, shocked and scandalized Christendom to such an extent that the loud outcry has not yet ceased to resound in our ears. Yet we perceive in the action of the Council of Sutri, and of the emperor, Henry III., in respect to Gregory VI., one of the most signal and splendid testimonies to the undoubting and unshaken faith of that age in the supremacy of the pope. Sylvester was judged and condemned to perpetual imprisonment as an intruder and a pseudo-pope. Benedict was set aside, not because the council pretended to judge him for his conduct while pope, but because he had executed a legal and valid abdication of his office. In respect to Gregory, the council examined and judged of nothing except the validity of his election, and, this being ascertained, left the judgment of his own case to his own supreme authority, to his conscience, and to Almighty God.

Just one rapid and parting glance we must cast over Christendom, to take in by a general view its movement through this segment of the great cycle of time, and the state into which it had grown in the middle of the eleventh century. The great barbarian and heathen irruption into Christian Europe was like the casting of an immense mass of fresh coals upon a glowing but gradually-expiring fire in a great foundry furnace. The general aspect was black and dead, and the momentary effect was a suspension of the great works commenced, but the result was a rapid kindling from the burning bed beneath, a stronger and hotter fire, and a more vigorous resumption of operations. The threatened Mohammedan conquest of Europe was averted, the Hungarian invasion completely and finally repelled, the Scandinavian eruptions changed into a most beneficial colonization and infusion of a new element of strength. Many other most remarkable and salutary political and social transformations were effected. The Scandinavians, Hungarians, Russians, and other Sclavonian nations were converted and added to the church. A beginning was made with the Prussians, even, by the martyrdom of their first apostle, St. Adalbert, although the work was not completed until near the close of the thirteenth century and proved to be short-lived. Since they have resumed the persecution of bishops, there may be, perhaps, a hope of their reconversion.

The calendars of the two centuries from 850 to 1050 are crowded with the names of great saints and other illustrious men and women. Among the popes flourished St. Leo IV., founder of the Leonine City, St. Nicholas I., John X., Benedict VIII., and Sylvester II. Among the emperors and kings we may single out Berenger, Henry the Fowler, Otho the Great, St. Henry II., Hugh Capet, Robert, Alfred, Canute, Edward the Confessor; Edward and Edmund, martyrs; Brian Boroihme, Ferdinand, St. Stephen, St. Olaf, Rollo, and Wladimir. In the brilliant group of Christian empresses and queens shine with special lustre Theodora, St. Adelaide, St. Cunegunda, St. Matilda, Theophania, and Olga. As illustrious specimens of the great number of bishops and abbots of high virtue and merit, we mention St. Anscharius, St. Methodius, St. Ignatius of Constantinople, St. Dunstan, St. Odo of Cluny, and St. Romuald. These two centuries contributed but little to the treasury of literature. There is, nevertheless, a considerable list of authors, among whom are worthy of mention Nithart, Flodoard, Suidas, Pascharius Radbert, Wuthikind the German annalist, and John Scotus Erigena. One of the most gifted and clever of the Latins, Luitprand, and the most intelligent and erudite of the Greeks, Photius, were unhappily both so morally despicable that they reflect disgrace rather than honor upon their age.

The epoch we are considering was more remarkable for action than for writing. The vast and strong foundations were laid for the future superstructure. Empires and kingdoms, smaller states, cities, towns, universities, monasteries, and great churches, rose in majesty during the latter part of this epoch upon the ruins made during its earlier period, or upon heretofore waste and desert land. The glorious orders of Cluny and Camaldoli, the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Cordova, several of the great minsters, and the first efforts of the new school of Christian art date from this period. It made scanty records of its own history, but it is crowded with the richest materials for the student and the literary artist. M. Ozanam projected a course of lectures at the Sorbonne covering the whole space from the fifth to the fourteenth centuries, but executed only the first and last part of his programme. The middle portion still lies open to any one worthy to complete his work. The Iron Age is worthy of more study than has been given to it, and, when it is carefully examined, there are many great discoveries to be made concerning the ages which preceded as well as those which have followed this hard era. When will intelligent Englishmen and Americans begin to read history and find out how they have been duped? When will the wretched little manuals such as Mrs. Markham’s History of England be driven out of our schools and children’s libraries and replaced by books which tell the truth? Let us lay bare history and search for the hard foundations of society and civilization, and we shall see with ocular evidence that the converging and diverging lines of all the centuries have but two centres, Jerusalem and Rome. The rocky height of Jebus, which David carried by craft and valor; the Capitoline Hill, where Romulus and Numa laid the foundations of Rome, are in the cycle of history what the two foci are in an ellipse. When the fortunes of Juda are at their lowest point, the supernatural providence of God over that royal tribe and the house of David is most signally manifested. It is impossible to read intelligently the history of the Roman See and the popes without perceiving a providence of a higher order, working on a more sublime plane, in the disasters as well as in the glories and triumphs of the New Jerusalem and its line of priestly kings, the vicegerents of David’s royal Son and Lord. The supernatural providence manifest in the destinies of Rome and its dependent Christendom makes also the supernatural end toward which God is conducting mankind equally manifest. The search after natural causes without regard to the first cause being proved absurd, the search for natural effects without respect to the final cause is equally absurd. The ideal kingdom on earth is not to be found. Not only are we unable to find it realized, we cannot even find a tendency toward a future realization. Royal power, national greatness, the achievements of art and science, the external order and splendor of the church, are all, manifestly, only means, and the end is in the spiritual order, in the souls of individual men. Everything external and temporal is built on the shifting, unstable sand of human free-will, and is therefore evanescent and changeable. The only permanent and eternal result is in the great, unknown mass of human beings who have found the gate and the way to the kingdom of heaven, and in the élite of the human race who have found the way to its highest places and wear its brightest crowns. The earth is only a palæstra, a school, an ingenious contrivance of divine art for the acquisition and exercise of virtue, for gaining merit, for nurturing the childhood of the destined citizens of the true and eternal city of God—Cœlestis Urbs, Jerusalem. The whole order of divine Providence in the church and the world, and its chief intention, must be changed, if any ideal and stable state of perfection is established on the earth; for this would require that no longer free scope should be given to the liberty of the human will. We conclude, therefore, that future ages will not differ essentially from those which are past. As the fourth and the seventh centuries differ, as the tenth and thirteenth, the fifteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries mutually differ, so there are possible cycles of change from worse to better, or the reverse, so long as the world continues. There is a perpetual progress toward that consummation which God has in view. But there is no change in the militant state of the Catholic Church. We are informed by divine revelation that the earthly sovereignty of Jesus Christ will continue only so long as he has enemies to conquer, and that when his conquest is completed he will give up this kingdom to the Father, that God may be all in all. His eternal reign, in which all the elect will share, consists in the glory won by merit. All the rest is only scaffolding to be torn down and thrown away for fire-wood; it is scenery and stage-costume, of no use when the play is over. The lessons of history teach us to discern all the illusions which have deceived past ages; if we are wise we shall learn also not to make new illusions for the future. We shall fear nothing for the eternal cause of truth and right, and we shall have no fanciful hopes of a coming millennium. We shall learn the one needful and useful maxim that all effort is a waste of time, except the one effort to make ourselves and others better and more virtuous.

SIX SUNNY MONTHS. BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC. CHAPTER XIV. THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE. CONCLUSION.

The morning they started for Monte Cassino the Signora had a Mass said for her intention, and the intention was that she might be enabled to decide speedily on her state of life, and to decide so clearly and wisely as never again to have a doubt about it. Never had she been nearer to accepting Mr. Vane, and never had she been more tremblingly afraid of doing so. The suspense and trouble were becoming intolerable. She felt that it must be settled within these three days.

But no sooner was the journey begun than all else was lost sight of. It was impossible to pass with a preoccupied mind amid all that beauty; impossible not to feel one’s individual life dwindle in view of the life of centuries there made visible. The Campagna slipped past like an old monotonous song that has been sung over one’s cradle, and heard in quiet intervals all up the years, till every note has grown to be something more than a simple sound, and is rather a long series of octaves caught along the heart-strings. Then

“The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,”

pressing near the track, and looking over each other’s heads at the train as it went, as if wondering what new Jason was ploughing with fiery-snorting monsters down through the green fields of the south. Dim, gray cities stood petrified on their heights, without a sign of life; and the torrent-beds on their sides were like silvery paths up which the souls of all the dead had climbed, and so faded off into space. What fancies went up those converging paths, and spread their wings in the shining clouds that moored themselves on crest after crest! Or, fair as any fancy, what brooks and torrents came rushing down in the rainy October and petulant April, catching the sunshine as they ran, and bringing flowers and harvests and fountains for the thirsty plains. On they went through the smiling, luxuriant paradise waving with solid green and bloom in the valleys. Dark forests hung suspended in gorges, cities lifted themselves between the mountains to look, here and there a castle sat on its rock like a king on his throne. They could no more have pointed out the rapidly-succeeding beauties to each other than they could have indicated the swift flashes of a tempest.

At length, and before they had begun to think they were tired, the cars stopped at the station of San Germano, and here a very tall old man, bent into the shape of a new moon, recognized them as the party he was on the watch for, and informed them that the donkeys were waiting for them outside, and that they were expected to dine at Monte Cassino.

They recollected that they were a little tired and a little hungry, and, very opportunely, a pretty young contadina presented herself with a basket of bread, fruit, boiled eggs, and wine. So they seated themselves in the waiting-room, a circle of admiring contadini standing about and watching every mouthful they ate, as a dog watches.

“Are we expected to take more than we want and give them what remains?” Isabel asked.

The Signora glanced over the company, and demanded to know which men had charge of the donkeys.

Five stout young fellows stood forward, and a sixth made haste to explain that four of them would attend to the party, and a fifth would carry their baggage up on another donkey.

“And have you anything to do with us?” she inquired politely of this informant.

“I belong to the hotel of San Germano,” he replied, and then went on to explain the situation still further.

“Oh! thanks; but don’t trouble yourself,” the Signora interrupted quite coolly. “You need not wait for us. Five men are quite enough to do all we want done.”

He withdrew a little, but did not go away. There was not the slightest sign of resentment or mortification. He was actuated by a simple and unadulterated desire for money, and meant to stay by till the last minute, in the hope that he might snatch at the chance of some small service which would give him a claim.

“Now, girls,” the Signora said, “don’t you give a penny to any one, unless I tell you. Here are twenty people on the watch for money. Don’t let any one do the smallest thing for you, except these five men. We will give them some bread and wine. That is all they will want. The Italian poor live on bread. What does that old man want of us?” she inquired of one of the donkey-men.

The old man, who had been constantly hovering near, came forward at once. He was the letter-carrier for the monastery.

“Oh! I did not know but you had something to do with the donkeys,” she remarked.

He came a step nearer. “I do not go up till evening,” he said with an insinuating smile.

“Go whenever you like,” she answered obligingly. “If you should bring us up any letters, however, we will give you a soldo for each one.”

He glanced longingly at the bread and wine, but she rose without taking any further notice of him.

“How much is your wine a bottle?” she asked of the pretty young vendor.

“Fifteen soldi, Signora,” was the innocent reply.

“Nonsense! I will give you five.”

Exclamations, deprecation, grieved reproach on the part of the young woman. The wine was too good for that, she protested. It was the best dry wine of the country, and sincere, as the Signora could see.

The Signora was not so new as they had supposed. She had bought better wine in larger bottles, in Genzano, close to Rome, for seven cents a bottle, and this was high at six. It was not, however, worth while to multiply words about it, and they made a compromise by paying seven soldi a bottle, with which the young woman seemed to be perfectly well satisfied.

Then they went out and mounted their donkeys, followed by the reproachful eyes and extended hands of fourteen men and children, and closely attended by the young hotel servant, who attached himself to Bianca. Marion, having visited Monte Cassino thoroughly not long before, had not accompanied them, being a little delicate, too, about joining himself to a party without an invitation from the monastery, though he would certainly have been included had his connection with the family been known.

Bianca dropped her pocket-handkerchief, and the young volunteer esquire rushed to pick it up and present it to her with a gallant touch of the cap and a smile that displayed a fine set of teeth. She accepted it with blushing thanks.

“My dear, he counts on half a lira for that,” the Signora remarked. “Don’t get any romantic ideas into your head. He would be as gallant as that to a witch, if he thought she would pay him. You must really put on a more severe expression. You have precisely the look at this moment of some young princess of fairyland who goes about giving bags of gold to everybody. If you keep on that sweet face, you will be as surrounded by beggars as a lump of sugar with flies.”

“You are a terribly forbidding and obdurate woman,” Mr. Vane said, looking into the Signora’s laughing face.

“I am sometimes,” she protested. “I pity one beggar, or two beggars, or sometimes three beggars; but when I see a score of healthy cormorants surround poor travellers, and ready for any pretence or any servility to get money out of them, I lose patience. I’ve been victimized too much in days that are gone to be very long-suffering now. Besides, I work for my money and have a feeling of indignation when I see a strong, healthy person stretch out a hand that has done me no service. Aren’t these donkeys little darlings? I do think they are the most useful, faithful creatures in the world.”

“If I could only know just where the backbone of mine is situated,” Isabel said pathetically; for her saddle had been constantly slipping either backward or forward ever since she mounted. “It really seems to me that I could ride a rail more securely. There I go! Oh!”

The hotel-servant rushed enthusiastically to catch the back of her saddle, and lift the rider from her nearly horizontal position, and help her off while they tightened the girths.

“It’s a sort of knack which you will soon learn,” the Signora said consolingly. “The poor little animals are as thin as a rail, but the saddles are like a chair. Just let yourself go, humor the motion of the donkey, and in a little while you will sit like—like Bianca there. Look at that child! All she wants is an infant in her arms!”

They had passed the narrow and stony loops of the path out of the town, and reached the mountain-side, and, as the Signora spoke, Bianca, leading the procession, went round a turn before them and came back higher up. She sat in the saddle as easily as if in a chair, upright, her hands folded in her lap, and her fair face uplifted as she gazed at the great pile of the monastery on the peak above them.

She needed, indeed, but an infant in her arms to be a ready picture of the Holy Mother and Child in the Flight into Egypt. She had taken off her hat and laid a large veil over her head. A blue mantle hung over her shoulders and came close to her white neck. The beast she rode, the saddle, the rocky path—all were perfect. She passed under a cypress-tree that pressed her eyes down with its black shadow, and, in that downward glance, caught their looks directed to her. She smiled, clasped her hands, and glanced around in mute rapture.

To and fro, to and fro they wound up the height, every turn unwinding and enlarging the scene below. The low hills of the plain disappeared, leaving only a vast level laid out in an exquisite mosaic of varied greens, with houses here and there, single or in clusters, forests that had dwindled to groves, and groves that looked like bouquets. The shining turns of a river lay amid that verdure, like a silver chain dropped and half-hidden in the grass. All round the mountains circled close and jealous, guarding this little paradise. Now they were skirted with trees; now they rose in harsh masses of stone that looked as if not even a blade of grass could find a foothold. A picturesque castle stood on a spur sent off from the mountain they were ascending.

Above them the vast square of the monastery, with its many windows and balconies, grew every moment nearer. After an hour’s ride trees shut them into an avenue, and they found themselves close under the grand walls of the building. They alighted at the lofty open archway and saw before them a long, ascending passage that looked strong enough to support even that pile on its solid arches. The first half was dim, and part way up, at the right, was a shrine in the wall, with its floating flame burning before some saintly face only half-visible behind the wire screen. The upper half was lighted by arched windows at the left, showing a double wall there, with some sort of room or passage between, arched openings in the inner wall answering to the windows. At the upper end of this avenue of stone shut the great black valves of a double iron door, studded thickly with nails, pierced with a little cluster of holes to peep through at one side, and showing the outline of a smaller door in the right valve.

The massive walls and doors, the long, sloping ascent, the light and shade, the one little golden flame, were like nothing of the nineteenth century. The action and business of such a place were not the action and business peculiar and suitable to our times. Ecclesiastical processions might go up there; the scarlet fire of a cardinal’s robe in the midst of a group of attendants would well befit that dim and echoing passage; a cavalcade of knights and ladies, with horn and hound and nodding plumes; a company of soldiers with shield and helmet—these were the figures to animate such a scene. Or, most perfect picture of all, one might imagine there that sublime company, the very thought of which brings tears to the eyes—that long procession of ecclesiastics and people, with their banners and crucifixes and candles, chanting funeral hymns as they ascended, bearing up to the mountain-top for burial the twin saint of the glorious founder and father of the monastery—Santa Scholastica. It is but yesterday, it seems, that the brother and sister parted, having their last conference together under a little roof down the mountain-side, while the tempest stormed about them. It is but this morning that St. Benedict has sent his monks down to bring the holy relics up and lay them in his own tomb under the grand altar, where soon he will join her. So the colossal saints of all time know how to recognize the grandeur of a true woman. These men are so near the most sublime and regal of creatures—the awful, immaculate Virgin—and the very type of penitents—the thrice-purified Magdalen—that the shining veil of the one and the sacred tears of the other flow about their sisters, and woman is honored in whatever work her Creator calls her to do. It was in the times, still illuminated by the twilight of the scarcely-departed presence of the Morning Star and the Son, that St. Gregory the Great ordered his mother’s portrait painted with the mitre of a doctor on her head, and one hand raised in benediction, while with the other she taught her son from the sacred Book on her knees—the queenly St. Sylvia! It was in such days that St. Chrysostom proclaimed that women may participate, as well as men, in combats for the cause of God and the church; that St. Melania, the younger, disputed so eloquently with the Nestorians that she converted many and frightened the rest, showing herself so powerful that Pelagius, who drew away priests and bishops, strove, but in vain, to convert her into an assistant; the same Melania who converted the persecutor, Volusianus, whom all the eloquence of St. Augustine could not convert. It was in such days that saintly women inspired the Fathers of the church to write, and that St. Gregory conceived his Treatise on the Soul and on Resurrection while sitting at his dying sister’s bedside and listening to her discourse on death, as she consoled him for the death of St. Basil.

And not only such thoughts and recollections, dear to women, flowed in as they went up the path that St. Scholastica had passed before them, but other recollections, dear to scholars and precious to the church and to civilization. Here was one of the citadels of learning in times when barbarous invasions overran the land and threatened to extinguish every spark of intellectual and spiritual wealth that the race of man had accumulated. Here the monks, with a zeal kindled to passion, hoarded and preserved the remains of their devastated treasures, and spent unwearied days and nights in multiplying copies of writings that must not die. Here, with the devotion of the bridegroom who brings the most precious gems he can procure to deck his bride, or of parents who shower upon their only child every gift in their power to bestow, genius the most exquisite consecrated itself to the work of adorning the page of the text of praise and prayer with such marvellous miniature beauty of form and color as only the fairy pencil of Nature can rival.

Wrapt and exalted in such recollections, the Signora moved as one in a dream, forgetting her companions entirely. It was only when the great iron doors swung open before her, and she saw a tall gentleman in a black robe hurrying forward, with his hand extended in cordial welcome to Mr. Vane, that she came back to the nineteenth century, and made an effort to salute in a sufficiently-composed manner the prior of Monte Cassino, Father Boniface.

But it was a very beautiful nineteenth century that she recalled herself to. They were within the monastery buildings, which completely surrounded them in a massive square, broken in the middle at the left by a long portico of white travertine supporting a superb terrace called the Loggia del Paradiso, and at the right, in the centre, also, by the grand stairs that go up to the higher level of the mountain peak, around which the monastery is built. This loggia and the grand stairs are at the opposite sides of a court with a picturesque well in the centre, and colossal statues of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. The paved court is between two others, which are turned into gardens, the three separated by double colonnades and surrounded by porticos. At the head of the stairs, which are the whole width of the court, another portico opens into the upper court—that of the church—and has a door at either side leading back to the Loggia del Paradiso. The church court, also surrounded by porticos and adorned with statues, is closed on one side by the church. This is built on the very mountain-top, the confession being hewn out of the solid rock.

This plan they caught at first, though but in a glance; for, after welcoming them all, the prior conducted them through two or three dimly-lighted rooms, all of stone, unfurnished and unadorned, into a bright parlor, where a balcony window gave them a view of all the beautiful valley with its surrounding mountains. In a few minutes dinner was announced as prepared in the next chamber, and here they found a table laid out with the freshest of linen, old silver as white almost as the cloth, and a well-cooked and well-served dinner.

Weakening their wine before drinking it, they all observed the quality of the water, limpid and light as some third element half-water and half-air, and the prior explained to them that the monastery used rain-water filtered.

“We have a great cistern, ninety feet square, hollowed out in the mountain under the central court. The well you saw there is in the centre of it. The water is thoroughly filtered. Moreover, the conduits that admit it to the cistern are closed during the four hot months, so that only cold water enters.”

This prior, the “urbane librarian” of Longfellow’s recollections of Monte Cassino, was not only a kind and generous host and an intelligent cicerone, but a most agreeable and interesting man. He had a noble figure and a handsome, bright face, and combined in his character qualities which might have been thought to be inharmonious; for he was at the same time an enthusiastic monk, proud of his venerable order, and devoted heart and soul to his monastery, and a man quite up to the times in all that the times have of praise-worthy.

After dinner he led them up to see the church, pointing out the statues as they went. Here were the father and mother of St. Benedict, and with them popes, royal dukes, kings, and emperors. Before entering they paused to look at the great door of bronze, cast in Constantinople, in which is written in silver letters the list of the possessions of the abbey at the time the door was made, in 1066. At this time, more than eight hundred years later, nothing was left of these riches.

Entering the church, they stood astonished. If it had been built of simple marble, moderately varied and ornamented, there would still have been enough to praise warmly in the beautiful form and proportions of the three naves, the grand altar by Michael Angelo, the raised tribune, and the beautiful paintings of the dome, roof, and eight chapels. But these were only the frame-work of a mosaic the most splendid covering every part of the edifice to the dimmest corner or the smallest nook behind a column. And this mosaic is not that comparatively simpler kind, made of small bits, but each flower and figure is cut from a single piece of marble or precious stone, and so perfectly fitted into the groundwork that the point of a pin could not be introduced between them. It was hard at first to believe that the whole was not exquisitely painted in every possible color and shade, and it needed a touch or a near sight of that fine, inimitable gloss of marble to convince one of the incalculable riches of the whole. The very floor was superb enough for the walls of a splendid church; the very steps of the tribune were set with mosaics.

The Signora took pencil and paper, and attempted to make a memorandum of only one chapel, to enumerate its alabaster columns, its flowers of mother-of-pearl, amethyst, agate, and lapis-lazuli, its infinitely-varied marbles and precious stones and its infinitely varied designs, and, after ten minutes’ rapid work, gave up the task. A week would have been necessary for that one chapel; and there were seven more, besides the altar, the confession, and the tribune.

“You like carved wood?” the prior asked, with a smile of anticipated triumph, as they went up the tribune steps.

“Who does not?” the Signora exclaimed. “Carved wood and lace are two of my passions. I have never stolen any lace, and I hope I never shall. Wood-carving is fortunately usually in too heavy pieces to suggest the possibility of being carried away in one’s pocket.”

“We must, however, first visit St. Benedict and Santa Scholastica,” said their guide, too charitable, as well as too enthusiastic for beautiful things, to be shocked at this little escapade.

Thirteen silver lamps burned before the screen at the back of the grand altar, and under that screen reposed the bodies of the twin saints. Above them, written in golden letters, was the inscription:

“Benedictum et Scholasticam Uno in terris partu editos, Una in Deum pietate cœlo Redetos, Unis Hic Excipit Tumulus, Mortalis depositi pro Aeternitate custos.”

Rising from their knees, they turned and faced the choir—a double row of stalls forming three sides of a large square open to the altar. Looked at from a little distance, these stalls had the appearance of having been closely overgrown at some past time with the finest of vines, which had turned black and petrified there, preserving perfectly every little leaf and tendril, and still covering entirely the plain wood beneath. Looking longer, one saw little figures and faces, and birds and animals. Going nearer scarcely dispelled the illusion, so finely was every particle carved—the vines and leaves in some places quite separated from the ground, so that one slipped the finger-tip behind them. Every stall was different, every one provoked a new exclamation of admiring wonder.

Then they went into the sacristy, a long hall with the sides completely lined with presses of dark wood with gilded metal ornaments. These presses also were carved finely, each department, in front of which a priest would vest himself for Mass, having a bas-relief of a subject suggesting some particular virtue, as that of the Pharisee and the publican in the Temple, suggesting humility.

Back of the sacristy was the relic-chamber, where, in addition to the more sacred treasures, the ladies admired especially two little antique caskets, one of smalt, bright as a jewel, the other of carved ivory of the most delicious tint of creamy white—that tint so soft that it seems as if the material itself must yield like down to the touch. They gave one glance at a crosier by Benvenuto Cellini, on the inner curve of which stood a tiny group, then tore themselves away. The afternoon was waning, and there was left them but a day and a half more, with

“Such rooms to explore, Such alcoves to importune.”

The air of this place was an ideal atmosphere; one breathed it like a fine wine that exhilarates delicately, but does not inebriate. It was soft but not warm, fresh but not chilly, and as pure as pure can be. The fresh, rosy faces of the troop of young students they met going out showed how this mountain air agreed with them.

“What a place to send boys to!” Mr. Vane exclaimed. “It is a little world in itself, where they can have every amusement and companionship, as well as instruction; and one has but to look at them to see that they are as happy as they are healthy.”

The boys were coming in from their afternoon walk down the mountain-side, and all glowing with just-subsiding fun. Each one, passing the prior, caught at his hand to kiss it; but as he would not permit himself to receive such an homage, they resorted to the amusing substitute of kissing their own hands after they had touched his.

“What beautiful recollections of their school-days those boys will carry with them through their lives!” Mr. Vane remarked, as they went out over the colonnade to the Loggia del Paradiso. “In no way, it seems to me, except by being educated here, unless one spend one’s life here, could one become perfectly familiar with the riches, visible and invisible, of the place; and such a familiarity would be of itself an education, especially for the impressible minds of the young.”

The front of the Paradiso fills the gap in the middle of one side of the monastery—that part opposite the church—and is on a level with the church, or the second story of the monastery. It is probably the same width as the church. Leaning on the parapet there, one looks off on a view which may well give the place its name—the beautiful plain and the beautiful circling mountains, with the still, blue splendor of the southern sky gazing down upon them as if enamored of their beauty. There was no need of imagination in such a place. Simple, literal eyes were enough to flood the soul with beauty.

Familiar as he was with the scene, the prior was sympathetic enough to say but little; and even Isabel, whose impressions, being more superficial, ran a good deal into words, hushed herself out of respect for the others.

“Until we reach Rome again,” the Signora remarked to her friends as they went down the stairs to the great court, “I should like to be excused from all social intercourse, except the mere being with you bodily. I don’t want to speak or be spoken to, except to learn of this place. We have no right to talk; we are ghosts. We have come here in a dream or a vision. Father Boniface talks, of course, because he is a part of the place.”

They laughed and agreed.

“But I hope,” the prior said, “that you are not too ghostly to taste the water they are just drawing up now. See how it sparkles!”

Two columns support a cross-piece over this beautiful well, and from the centre drops an iron chain with a copper bucket at each end. When one goes down the other comes up, dripping full of airy water.

They all drank silently—each, probably, to some friend, absent or present. Bianca blushed as she drank, and her pretty mouth seemed to kiss the water. Then, standing on the upper step of the well, they leaned over the stone curb and looked down to where, far below, the surface of the water shone like a huge black diamond set in a gray border.

Tired out with travel and with pleasure, the ladies were not sorry when the prior proposed that they should go down to the house where they were to sleep.

This house is the only building on the mountain except the monastery, and is under the control of the monastery. It was built merely to accommodate lady relatives of the students who might wish to see their sons, or brothers, or nephews without the fatigue of coming up and going down the mountain the same day, and without suffering the embarrassment of spending the whole day in a house inhabited and served only by men. Now and then some benefactress or a friend of the superiors of the monastery has the privilege of stopping there. The house is small and plain, and kept by a contadine and his wife. The ladies stopping there have their coffee in the house, but they dine always in a private dining-room at the monastery, from whence, also, their supper is sent down to them in the evening—supper being after Ave Maria, when the gates are closed.

Mr. Vane stayed with the prior, and the three ladies followed their guide. Their way led them a five minutes’ walk back as they had come up, then turned through an open gate in the stone wall at the right, where they found their lodgings. A contadina with dark cloth draperies pinned smoothly about her, and a huge white edifice of starched linen on her head, overshadowing a pair of bright eyes, met them at the gate and welcomed them with a pleasant voice, but in a tongue where the soft Roman consonants seemed to have each and every one turned itself into the hardest kind of a Z.

The windows looked out on a long terrace with a parapet, and outside the parapet the mountain dropped steeply to the plain.

A stair, which belonged entirely to the strangers’ house, led up to the second floor, and here they found three pleasant bed-chambers awaiting them. An hour later, as they sat at their windows looking out into the twilight, they saw their donna, Catarina, come into the terrace with a huge basket on her arm. Her head-dress and sleeves shone white in the light of the rising moon, and there was a soft richness where the scarlet stripe ran round her petticoat, and where the rainbow colors of the apron-like upper mantle bound her without a fold. Her solid step sounded on the stair the next minute, there was the spurt of a match in the outer room of the suite, and, looking through the open doors, they saw the woman, more like a picture than any picture they recollected to have seen, standing with a curious brass lamp in her hand, carefully lighting its wick, the basket she had brought sitting on the floor at her feet.

She came into the Signora’s room with that red light all over her from the lamp she carried in her hand, smiled so as to show two rows of snowy-white teeth, and, with a “Buona sera,” announced that their supper had come and would be on the table in a few minutes.

The three went out into the dining-room to witness the preparations and listen to the woman’s pleasant voice as she half-talked, half-sang an account of her life and adventures there, her manner of speech being that so common among the lower classes of Italy, especially at the south—almost a sort of chant, inexpressibly soft and touching. The peculiarity of this manner of speaking consists more, perhaps, in the ending of the sentences than in their progress; for they never come down to the definite tone that ends a period, but stop on some swinging note a little higher up, it may be only half a tone above. It is the voice of weeping, which never has a positive tone, as if the whole gamut were washed over and blurred by tears.

Talking so, the woman brought out from her basket a linen cloth for the table, next a pair of cruets with vinegar and oil, next a decanter of white-wine, next an omelette made with herbs, after that a salad that looked like sliced cucumbers, but was something else. Bread followed, then the necessary dishes.

“I’m ashamed to confess that I am hungry,” Isabel said. “It is a miserable coming down, but we won’t say anything about it.”

“My dear,” responded the Signora, “you are very ungrateful to say so. Let us be just. Our bodies have brought our souls up to this beautiful place, and carried them about from point to point of it, and kept as quiet as possible about their own affairs. Now, if they are hungry, let us feed them. Poor bodies! they have the worst of it. They are extremely useful, and we sublime creatures are always turning up our noses at them; they suffer, and we protest that we want to get rid of them, when, in nine cases out of ten, we have wantonly caused their suffering. Can a body take care of itself, or even know how it should be done? No; the soul has to do it, and ought to do it in gratitude for house-rent, or body-rent. Then, at last, the poor things have got to corrupt, and be devoured by worms, and go to dust. Fortunately, these sufferings will not be felt. It is also a satisfaction to know that this arrogant spirit, which is for ever crowing over its poor companion, will have to suffer consciously for it all and pay the uttermost farthing. You will please to recollect, Miss Isabel Vane, that if ever you should have the happiness of going to heaven, your body will go there too. Sometimes,” she said, holding her hand up before the light, which shone through and made a ruby of it,—“sometimes I think that my poor flesh has a glimmering, a presentiment of the possibility of being one day glorified.”

“Most worshipful body,” said Isabel to herself with great respect, “would you like a piece of that omelette—a large piece, a half of it, say, leaving the other half to those two? Yes? Well, you shall have it.” And she proceeded with all possible dignity to help herself to a hundred and eighty degrees of the circle of herbs and eggs before her.

The donna, who, of course, had not understood a word, looked with astonishment at this shocking piece of voracity; and when Bianca, in protection of her client, clasped her arms around the wine, and the Signora, with an air of determination, took possession of the salad, the poor creature evidently thought that she was waiting on a company of maniacs.

“Do let’s laugh,” said the Signora, and at once set the example. “We are frightening the poor soul to death.”

Their supper and their nonsense finished, the three took possession of their rooms.

A full moonlight was filling all the valley, or plain, which looked like the bottom of an emerald chalice full of golden wine. A pure and sacred silence reigned over all—the silence of peace and lofty contemplation. Had it been some such silence that suggested to Charlemagne, when, almost eleven hundred years before, he came to venerate the relics of St. Benedict, the beautiful thought of bestowing on the abbot, with all the other singular privileges he gave him, that of being the sole mediator between the emperor and the rebellious barons—the only person by whose means they could make their peace? It was doubtless by virtue of this ancient title that the prior had written “Pax” at the head of his letter to Mr. Vane.

Yes, Charlemagne came up here ages ago, and popes, and princes, and kings came, and the Saracens swarmed up with fire and sword, and the Lombards and the Normans; and the Crusaders came to pray at the shrine before going to the East. They had seen on the pilasters of the church the different crosses in precious mosaic of the orders of knights which had been formed under the Benedictine rule, among them the familiar names of Calatrava, Alcantara, St. Stephen, St. James of the Sword, and Templars. Ignatius of Loyola came up and stayed fifty days.

“But, signora mia,” said the lady who was going over all this part, as she gazed out into the night, “since you are not going to stay here fifty days, you will be so good as to shut your mind and your eyes and go to sleep.”

The next morning they went to see the monastery proper, for which they had a special permission from the Pope, and spent hours in the library, archives, printing and lithograph rooms. It would be vain to tell what old books—worth their weight in gold, printed on creamy vellum in characters that modern type has never excelled, if it has equalled—what drawers filled with scrolls, what autographs, what illuminations, they saw. It were vain to fancy with what feelings one sees for the first time the writing of Charlemagne, of Hildebrand, of Gregory the Great, of Frederick II., of Countess Matilda. Then there was the long, long dormitory of the boys, with a row of snowy beds at either side, and the immense arched window at the end framing a superb outside picture, with Monte Cairo in the centre, and long, long corridors that dwindled people seen from opposite ends, with cracks made by earthquakes in their walls, and solid groined arches that only an earthquake could shake down. Then the nooks, courts, and passages, which they came upon without guessing in the least in what part of the building they were; the round window in the wall—occhio, or eye, they call it—through which they looked as through a lens, and saw the three courts and the colonnades. Finally, coming down a stair with a wall at either side and a door at the foot, they were told: “When you have crossed that threshold you cannot return. The cloister ends there.”

“What!” exclaimed Isabel, “if I should run out a minute, couldn’t I come back on to the stairs again for another minute?”

The prior shook his head. “It would be excommunication. That seems unreasonable; but listen: This is a cloister which women can enter only by special permission of the Pope. That permission is not lightly granted, and is for but once. Your running back a minute would do no harm in itself, but would do harm to the principle. If you can return in one minute, you could come back in five, or ten, or half an hour, or an hour, or a day, and so on; and so one visit might be made to cover an indefinite time. The only way, you see, is to be strictly literal in excluding from a second entrance.”

That afternoon they were presented to the Abbot—“Abbot of Abbots” he was called in the palmy days of Monte Cassino—and received, not only his benediction, but each a little souvenir of the place: a tiny photograph of the tomb of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, with a wreath of flowers pressed round it that had been on the tomb, and at the back his own name written, with the date, and under it “Ora pro me.”

They stood in the church speaking with him a few minutes, then went out to the Paradiso.

A storm was coming up from the east, and round the angle of the building they could just see that the mountains in that direction were obliterated and mists fast filling the plain. Standing up against these mists, as if to impede their progress, was the lower end of a rainbow, set straight and solid on the green like a jewelled column. The cloud advanced and pushed the column before them.

“It is like the pillar of light leading the Israelites,” Isabel said.

The cloud unrolled itself above, and down through the rainbow ran a crinkling line of white fire.

“How plainly lightning asserts its own force!” Mr. Vane remarked. “Seeing it for the first time, without knowing what it was, one would know at once that it is an irresistible power. What an experience it would be to stand just near enough to a passing flash to perhaps hear it hiss through the air, to be between it and its thunder, and yet not so near nor so in its track as to be smitten!”

Little by little the sun was vanquished, and the rainbow grew dim, faltered, blushed along the line of the advancing shadows, and disappeared. There was an odd murmur growing up, fine and pervading—the sound of rain in the plain below. All the tiny noises of each falling drop joined in a multitude, countless nothings making themselves heard in pauses of the thunder. It was to solid sound as fine carving is to plain wood, as embroidery is to a fine web—a continued succession of millions of infinitesimal watery strokes separated by millions of infinitesimal silences.

The others went into the house at the first drop that splashed on the Paradiso, but the Signora went back to the portico and seated herself under its shelter. Behind her the court of the church looked weird and strange. The pillars of the porticos appeared to move as the lightnings came and went, the statues and busts behind them seemed to lean forward and retreat, and the one window in the church front looked blue, as if there were light inside it.

She took herself out of the draught, and went to lean on the wall between the doors. In front of her the grand stairs went down to the central court, and the gardens shone green and wet through the colonnades at either side. On a level with her, across the space, stretched the Paradiso, and under the portico that supported it a large, arched door led from the court out on to a beautiful loggia. Two or three monks, who had been standing in this loggia watching the storm, were driven in by the rain, and in a minute the whole place seemed to be deserted. The rain and the lightning had it to themselves and were washing and purifying all “so as by fire.”

This one visible witness felt her soul expand as she gazed. If only she also might be purified and enlightened in that time and place! If the littlenesses of life might be washed away from her, and only the realities remain!

“Come, Holy Spirit!” she said, and blessed herself.

Then, content and confident, without saying another word, she waited with her two inarticulate but eloquent companions—Art, consecrated to God, and Nature, informed by God—and felt above and about the illuminating Presence. For faith is the rod that calls the divine Lightning down, whether it came as a dove, or a tongue of fire, or a pointing finger, or a whispering voice.

The landscape of the plain, seen through the arched door under the Paradiso, was dim and gray with rain, or glittering and red with lightning; the mountain-tops above it, and the sky, were a changing tumult of shadows veined with threads of fire, and rolled hither and thither in visible thunders. The white pavement of the court below changed every instant into jaspers, the beautiful columns and curb and steps of the well became jewels, and one of the copper buckets that stood on the brink was like a vessel of red gold brimming over with red wine.

St. Benedict with his crosier, and St. Scholastica with her dove, stood immovable but living, and their calmness in that tumult was like a song of triumph. Did he sing with Moses?—“Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thy inheritance, in thy most firm habitation which thou hast made, O Lord; thy sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.” And did she reply, like Miriam with her timbrel?—“Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified, the horse and his rider he hath thrown into the sea.” Such silence in a tumult seems ever a singing.

When the Signora went down, slipping from colonnade to colonnade, dry-shod, the storm was spent. From the little balcony of the parlor, where she found her companions, she saw a grand arch of rainbow trembling out over the east, as if astonished at its own glory, trembling as it grew, but as strong and bold as light.

Flocks of birds were swinging by in a great circle, screaming impudently as they passed the balcony, as if to say, “Catch us, if you can!” There was a little parallelogram of garden under the window, with a rough pole frame-work supporting a dripping vine, and, below the dropping fields, a crest of land and rock, curling over like a pointed wave, rose boldly in the foreground; then, the plain.

Mr. Vane came to stand beside her, looking at her keenly one instant, then averting his eyes.

“Well,” he said, “what has the storm been saying to you up there?”

“It has washed the drift-wood out of my path, and made it as clear and white as one of those torrent-beds up the mountain-side,” she answered. “I think I ought to work a little harder for the future. Life is short, and I have, perhaps, sometimes played with my talents. They were given me for serious use. When you shall have left me alone, instead of sitting weakly down and thinking that it is rather lonely, I shall begin to carve a new book out of the next year. Do you know that year to come looks to me as the block of marble looked to Michael Angelo when he said, 'I will make an angel of it.’ I am not a Michael Angelo,” she added, smiling; “but I am something, and, firmly and intelligently set to work, I may do what need not be despised. My mind is clear.”

He was answered.

If a shade passed over his face, it was slight. If his lips were compressed a moment, she did not look to see. He stood and watched the rainbow grow and fade, and, as its colors went out, so faded out of his life a sweet hope. But he reflected: “Denials make strong. And the light that made the rainbow is not dead.”

“Yes, life is short,” he said presently, and half-turned away. “God bless you!” he added and hastily left her.

The next morning they made their last visit to the monastery, and the prior, after showing them the tower of St. Benedict and the fine collection of pictures there, had some of the choir-books brought into the parlor for them to see. There are fifty-seven in all of these great volumes, bound in leather, with metal corners and knobs. These are all in manuscript, beautiful black scores and lettering on white parchment. Every capital letter is painted, every one different and every one beautiful, and occasionally the page has a border, and in some cases a picture in the corner, so exquisitely beautiful that one could never tire of examining it—such leaves and flowers, and birds and figures and arabesques, fine as the finest pencil and most delicate imagination could make them, and so executed that one had to touch them to be sure they are not in relief. One long, silver leaf slightly curled over to show a golden lining; Bianca stretched her finger to touch, and drew it back immediately, fearing to break.

Not a tint was faded of them all, though they had been in constant use three hundred years. They are not used every day now, however.

One page was especially rich—the first page of the Christmas service. The whole ground of this inside the border is a deep velvety crimson, the score and text being of gold. On the border imagination had exhausted itself, and in the left upper corner is a picture of the Nativity, delicate and pure, with its cool, pale mountains of Syria, and the heavenly faces of the Mother and Child.

“You should see that at the Midnight Mass of Christmas,” the prior said, “with the light of all the candles shining on it as it lies open on the desk. It is splendid then. I copied that picture in the corner of the page to send the Pope on his great anniversary,” he added, “and it took me a year.”

For the prior was an artist as well, and not only made exquisite copies from these old manuscripts, but played the organ, and had the evening before done the honors of their grand instrument for his visitors, displaying its orchestra stops.

The hours slipped away, and regretfully at length they took leave of this beautiful and sacred place, and the kind host who had made it so pleasant for them. The donkeys stood ready at the gate, and they mounted and went down into the world again. In the valley, before going to the station, they stopped a minute and gazed back with a mute farewell to Monte Cassino. The Signora thought, but did not say aloud: “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh help.”

The road they took through the plain to the station ran along the river-side. This river—the Rapido—narrowed to a swift, yellow sluice that one could toss a penny across, to be caught by the beggar at the other side, did not look very imposing to American eyes, accustomed to the grand crystalline floods of the New World; but every drop of it moved to the tune of a memory, and farther on it meets the Carnello, and the two, the ancient Vinius and Liri, join to make the Garigliano, the river made famous by Bayard.

Then back to Rome, through crowding mountains at first. But, by dark, the mountains began to draw back, the level widened, they passed the city wall by the stars, and rolled into the Città vecchia.

“Now we must begin to look respectfully at the guide-book,” Mr. Vane said the next morning. “We have been sipping the foam of the wine as it came. We must drain the cup, if we can.”

There was nothing more to be said. Their story was finished, and the remaining few weeks were but a study of what all travellers study in Rome.

“I am laying up riches for my life,” Mr. Vane said to the Signora. “I have learned of you to work, and I hope that the last of my life will be more useful than the first has been. These memories that I am preparing now will be the only recreation of my future and my only dream.”

He did not trouble her with sadness or importunities, but took his life up with manly cheerfulness, and she honored him for it and liked him better than ever. But never for an instant did she waver in her decision. Her mind, once cleared, was cleared for ever. She would not have married him, nor any other man, to have possessed the world.

One bright October day they left her. There was sadness and tears, but no heart-break for any one. Marion’s tender sympathy threw a rainbow on Bianca’s gentle sorrow, and Isabel clung to her father’s arm and dropped her head on his shoulder, soothing and soothed.

“I shall never leave you, papa,” she whispered.

Did she suspect what he had missed?

The Signora watched the train roll away, then went back to her silent house, wiping her eyes as she entered.

“What a pity it is that you will have to be alone now!” said Annunciata.

“Alone!” the Signora’s eyes flashed out through the tears. “I am not alone. I never was alone in my life!”

She smiled as she shut herself into her room. “Alone? How little they know!”

What, indeed, did they, who cannot live a day without their gossip, without trying to fill their emptiness with the husks which make up by far the greater part of the world’s talk, of the life of one whose mind was as a fountain for ever overflowing, who had eyes in her finger-tips, and who listened with every pore of her body? What knew the readers of daily newspapers of the hoarded treasures of literature, ever ready with eloquent voices? What knew the Christians of one communion in the year, and one Mass when there was obligation, of long, delicious hours in churches when there was no function to stare at, nor music to talk through? The world has no such society as the cultivated mind can fill its house with; and there are no receptions so splendid as those given by the imagination. Bores never come, tattlers and enemies never are admitted, late hours never weary, and the wine never inebriates. And, better yet, those who are invited are always present and ready to stay. How the possessors of such a society laugh at the “societies” of the outer world, and how truly they can exclaim, “Alone? I never was alone in my life!”

DOUBTS OF A CONTEMPORARY ON THE DESTINY OF MAN.

The New York Sun gave us (March 25, 1877) a short but thoughtful and substantial review of a little work lately published by Rev. Dr. Nisbet, of Rock Island, Ill., on The Resurrection of the Body. The reviewer very justly affirms that the author’s conclusions are anti-Scriptural, and that his method of interpretation lays the way open to a general disregard of dogmatic truth; for if the Bible, as the doctor contends, does not really teach what the whole world has hitherto believed it to teach concerning the resurrection of the flesh, it is plain that we can never be sure that we understand the doctrine of the Bible, even when it seems perfectly clear; and, if this be so, we can have no definite knowledge of revealed truth. The critic makes some very pertinent remarks on the baneful effects that such works as the one he criticises are apt to produce; and, although he does not point out explicitly the root of the evil, yet he gives us a clue to it by averring that any interpretation of Scripture which conflicts with the universal and traditional interpretation received in the church is calculated to shake the very foundations of faith, and exposes every dogma to the attacks and sneers of unbelievers. This is to say that the Protestant principle of freely interpreting the Bible without regard to ecclesiastical tradition leads to infidelity—a truth which is painfully confirmed by daily experience, and which accounts for the sympathy of all the anti-Christian sects with Protestantism; but which the writer in the Sun—an excellent Protestant, we presume—could not very consistently insist upon. Yet the whole tone of his article shows his sincerity. He is evidently an intelligent scholar; and though he finds himself somewhat entangled in the solution of some important questions, yet he does not imitate the folly of such flippant scribblers as blaspheme what they do not understand, but he shows forbearance and circumspection, a wholesome reverence for religion, and an ardent love of truth, and expresses an earnest desire to be taught how the resurrection of the flesh and the immortality of the soul can be successfully established and vindicated against the allegations of modern sceptics.

As we anticipate that Protestant divines will probably not take the trouble to investigate the objections of the infidel school with which they too often sympathize and of which they are the unconscious props and promoters, we will consider the honest appeal of the writer as addressed to Catholic thinkers; and we intend to do briefly what we can, from our doctrinal point of view, to solve his difficulties and to set at rest his doubts. The more so because, as he remarks, whoever can furnish a way out of such difficulties will confer, by so doing, an immense benefit upon a whole world of anxious but sincere doubters on the subject of immortality.

“It cannot be denied,” says he, “that while the Christians generally believe in some kind of continuance of human existence after death, there is a great diversity of opinions among them in regard to its nature and characteristics. The men of the primitive church were not perplexed about the matter, as they were not about many others which are actively debated among us.”

This introductory remark is exceedingly important. The primitive church “was not perplexed” about the matter. Why? Apparently because the faithful were in the habit of accepting the Gospel with humility and simplicity as it was given to them by the apostles and by their successors; because the Protestant method of interpreting Scripture according to every one’s individual bias was not thought to be consistent with the profession of Christianity; because the teachers of the faith did not contradict one another, as our modern Protestant preachers and writers are wont to do to the scandal and ruin of their bewildered flocks. When we see that our Lord’s words, “This is my body,” can be construed by Protestant divines as meaning “This is not my body,” we may form an idea of what must be the result of the Protestant system of Scriptural interpretation. No one can be surprised that such a system creates perplexity, fosters debate, and ends in discord and ultimately in unbelief. But if there is “a great diversity of opinions” among Protestants, such is not the case with us Catholics. We members of the universal church are not perplexed about such matters. We still believe with perfect unanimity as the primitive Christians believed; our teachers teach all the same Gospel—the Gospel of Jesus Christ as transmitted to us by legitimate channels, not the contradictory gospels and the doctrinal crotchets of free-thinking divines. That is what makes the difference.

The critic whose words suggested to us these passing remarks will not fail to see that it is mainly to the rebellious spirit and presumption of the Protestant reformers that the present age owes its theological perplexities and the loss of religious unity. Would it not be better, therefore, to give up at last the gospels of men, and return to the Gospel of the primitive Christians?

“They believed,” as our critic points out, “that at the last day the bodies of the dead would be raised to life, and that the faithful would once more, in flesh and blood, inhabit their former abodes. The most ancient versions of the Apostles’ Creed teach explicitly the resurrection of the flesh, and the earliest Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, writing only a hundred years after the death of Christ, defends the doctrine by asking whether it be any more difficult for God to create a body anew from its dust than for him to create it the first time in its mother’s womb. And Mr. Nisbet concedes that all the succeeding Fathers of the church maintain the same view. Tertullian declares: 'The flesh shall rise again wholly in every man, in its own identity, in its absolute integrity.’ Irenæus agrees with him, and so do Jerome and Augustine.”

It would appear that these authorities, to which many more of the same kind might be added, should leave no doubt in the mind of a Christian about the legitimate interpretation of the dogma of resurrection. For, when an article of faith is clearly expressed in the Gospel and has been uniformly understood in all ages by the doctors of the universal church, it is difficult to see how a man who makes profession of Christianity can think himself authorized to twist it according to his individual bias. Yet this is what Dr. Nisbet has had the courage to do.

“It is remarkable,” says the reviewer, “with what confidence Dr. Nisbet overrides this primitive interpretation of Scripture and declares it to be incorrect. He allows no weight whatever to the obvious fact that men living so much nearer than he does to the days when the New Testament was written, and with whom its very language was still in colloquial use, would be more likely than he to perceive its true meaning. He lays great stress upon the famous passage in Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. xv. 35-53), which, he thinks, asserts the resurrection-body not to be of flesh and blood. But he fails to perceive that all that Paul is contending for is a finer and more glorious form of flesh and blood. Paul’s language is: 'The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed’ (v. 52). This he further explains in writing to the Thessalonians: 'We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord’ (1 Thess. iv. 15-17). It was the expectation of the apostolic church that the Lord would come again in their time, agreeably to his prediction in Matthew xxiv.: 'This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled’; and in John v.: 'The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.’ They know that the Lord had raised Lazarus and many others in their own flesh and blood, and had himself, after his resurrection, offered his body to the touch of Thomas; and they would have had to do violence to their own reasoning faculties had they conceived of any different fulfilment of his promises. When, therefore, Dr. Nisbet denounces, as he does, Mr. Talmage’s picture of the final resurrection, with its general scramble of souls for their old bodies, the flying of scattered limbs through the air, and their reconstruction in their pristine integrity, he discredits what has been for eighteen centuries the accepted faith of the Christian Church.”

One would scarcely expect that the writer, after so judicious a criticism, should hesitate to condemn Dr. Nisbet’s view; and yet he seems afraid of passing too severe a judgment on it, as he immediately adds: “Not that this proves him to be in the wrong, but only that, if he is in the right, no dogma, however venerable, is safe from attack.”

The conception that a man who professes Christianity may not be in the wrong while he throws discredit on the most venerable dogmas of Christianity is a monstrosity not only in a religious but also in a logical point of view. Unless the expressions of our critic can be construed as a figure of speech conveying under a mild and civil form the merited censure, every Christian reader will say that the critic himself is in the wrong. A pagan, or a man absolutely ignorant of the divine origin and glorious history of Christianity, might hesitate about the right or wrong of tampering with our revealed dogmas, for he would have to learn first how the fact of divine revelation has been ascertained; but a man who has read the New Testament, who lives in a Christian atmosphere, who knows the life, the miracles, the death, and the resurrection of Christ, and who consequently cannot conceal from himself the great fact of revelation—such a man, we say, astonishes us when he assumes that a Christian doctor may not be in the wrong, though he deal with revealed truth in such a loose manner as to expose every dogma, however venerable, to the attacks of our modern pagans. But let us proceed. To show how suicidal is Dr. Nisbet’s method of interpretation the reviewer says:

“In fact, men more daring and less respectful than Dr. Nisbet have employed his method of reasoning against the resurrection of what he calls the grave-flesh to controvert the idea of any resurrection at all. He assumes as unquestioned the proposition that human beings must in some way survive the death of the body, and is only solicitous to determine what that way is. But just as he shows the irrationality of expecting that the cast-off flesh and blood which served the soul for a tabernacle during life shall be taken up again, so do sceptics undertake to show the irrationality of expecting any kind of future existence whatever.”

The reviewer is perfectly right. If the teachers of Christianity are to be free to twist the word of God as they please, why shall their followers and other men be denied the same privilege? And what can be the ultimate result of such a reckless meddling with truth but universal unbelief? Faith must rest on unquestionable authority; when this latter is shaken, faith is replaced by doubt, opinion, perplexity, despondency, and all the vagaries of a weak, distracted reason. The present growth of unbelief is therefore nothing but the logical development of the Protestant method of free interpretation, which has engendered a thousand conflicting opinions and thwarted all honest efforts of its followers in the search after truth. The Catholic Church alone has a remedy for this plague of religious scepticism, for she alone has the power to teach with authority, as she alone has faithfully preserved in its primitive entirety the sacred deposit of revealed truths.

And now the reviewer comes to the most important part of his article, which consists of the objections urged by the modern unbelievers against both resurrection and immortality. He says:

“Let us briefly state some of the various reasons which they adduce, in the hope that Dr. Nisbet, or some other writer of ability, may be led to meet and overthrow these reasons, and to furnish the world at last with a solid and impregnable philosophical demonstration of the doctrine of immortality.”

It was after reading this passage that we resolved to write the present article. Not that we consider ourselves “a man of ability”; but we are in possession of truth, and are confident that we can vindicate it successfully, though we may lack the ability of our opponents. Let us proceed, therefore, without further observations, to the reviewer’s arguments.

“In the first place,” he says, “those who deny that there is any immortality of the individual human soul say it is contrary to all the analogies of nature to suppose that the death of the body does not end its individual being. Throughout creation, whenever any organization is destroyed, it is destroyed for ever. A new organization may arise similar to the old one, but it is not that one. A crystal crushed into powder ceases to be a crystal. Its particles may be dissolved and be crystallized anew; but they will form another and not the same crystal. Every vegetable runs its career from the seed to the mature plant, and, when resolved into its elements, perishes as a plant. If those elements be made to constitute a new plant, that plant begins its round as a new plant, and not as the old one. In like manner, when animals die and their bodies decay, they never reappear as the same animals. They may furnish materials for new forms of mineral, vegetable, and animal organisms, but these organisms are essentially new, and not the old ones under the new forms. And, in the same way, these sceptics contend, so far as our observation goes, human beings die once and finally, other men are born and succeed them, but they are other men and not the men who have died. Whether their dissolution took place yesterday or thousands of years ago, it is alike, so far as our ordinary experience goes, complete and irreparable.”

To answer this argument it suffices to point out that the resurrection of the flesh and the immortality of the soul are two distinct truths, of which the first is known to us by divine revelation only, the second by revelation and by reason. To say that “throughout creation whenever any organization is destroyed it is destroyed for ever,” is to say that we find nothing in the order of nature that authorizes us to infer the resurrection of our bodies. This, of course, is true; but what of it? No one pretends that the future resurrection will be brought about by natural causes acting in their natural manner and obeying natural laws. Resurrection will be the work of the Omnipotent. We believe it, not because it agrees with the analogies of nature, but because God himself, infallible truth, has informed us that he will raise us from death against all the analogies of nature. We concede, then, that whenever an organization is destroyed, it is, in the natural course of things, destroyed for ever; and consequently we concede that the course of nature affords no proof of our resurrection. But the course of nature is not the standard by which we have to judge of things supernatural. The analogies of nature did not prevent the resurrection of Lazarus, of the son of the widow, and of others of which we read in the Gospel and in other Scriptural books; nor did Christ respect the analogies of nature when he rose glorious from the tomb, as he had promised. Hence the argument from the analogies of nature has no strength whatever against the dogma of the resurrection.

Has it at least any weight against the immortality of the soul? On the contrary, it proves that the soul is naturally immortal. For, though nature can destroy the organic form, it has no power to destroy the substances of which the organism consists. The organic compound is destroyed, but all the components remain. If, then, no substance is ever destroyed by nature, how can we fail to see that the human soul, which is a substance, cannot naturally perish when the organism of the body is destroyed? We may be told that the sceptic does not concede that our soul is a substance; he rather believes that what we call the soul is a mere result of organic movements which must cease altogether when the organs are destroyed. But we answer that, if the sceptic honestly desires to be enlightened on this subject, he must not rely on the assertions of ignorant or perverse scientists who profess to know nothing but matter and force; he must read and meditate what has been written on the subject by competent men. If he has sufficient ability to understand their philosophical reasonings, he will come to the conclusion that the substantiality of the human soul is a demonstrated truth; if, on the contrary, he has too little stock of philosophy to be able to follow such reasonings, then he has no right to be a sceptic, and it becomes his duty humbly to recognize his incompetency, and to accept without demonstration what more cultivated minds consider a demonstrated truth. This last remark is very important. Scepticism and unbelief are the offspring of pride. Men pretend to see the why and the how of everything; but they often forget that they are born in ignorance, and that, as their knowledge of material things is the fruit of long and varied experience so, the knowledge of supersensible things is the fruit of long and methodic study. He who has not studied astronomy, may say very honestly that he does not know how to determine the mass of the sun or the distance of the moon; but he cannot honestly deny what astronomy teaches on the subject. To do this, to declare himself sceptic, would be accounted folly. How, then, can those be justified who, without having applied to philosophical studies, refuse to accept the soundest conclusions of philosophy about the nature of the soul? If they are at all anxious to know how to prove the substantiality of the soul, let them apply to philosophy; and they will learn that matter, owing to its inertia, cannot think, and that the organic movements cannot be the thinking principle.

The writer in the Sun answers the preceding objection in the following manner:

“In answer to this it is usually alleged that, though the body of a man dies and decays, his soul survives, and either, as Dr. Nisbet maintains, continues its existence in a purer or more ethereal world, or, as the Christian Church believes, retaining its potentiality of life, will clothe itself again, at some future time, with a bodily form and enter upon a new career.”

Let the writer take notice that, according to the doctrine of the Christian Church, the soul, when separated from the body, retains not a mere “potentiality of life,” but actual life and the exercise thereof. The life of the soul does not depend on the organism of the body; its spiritual operation has no need of organs; for reason and will are not organic faculties, though in the present life they are associated with the sensitive faculties which work through the organs. The potentiality of life, in the language of philosophy, means the capability of receiving life; and it is the organism, not the soul, that has such a potentiality.

The writer continues:

“This idea of the distinction between soul and body is as old as the history of the world. The ancient Greeks illustrated it by the example of the butterfly emerging from the hard chrysalis and winging its flight through the air. Like the butterfly, the soul of man, they said, when it casts off its material envelope, soars aloft in the enjoyment of a purer atmosphere. The symbol, and the argument drawn from it, have been adopted by moderns, and they represent the common opinion on the subject. The assertion is that the soul exists within the body as a separate entity, and that when the body dies the soul is merely set free.”

We wonder if any “argument” has ever been drawn from the example of the butterfly to prove that the soul survives the collapse of the body. Similitudes are simple illustrations of things, and they serve to help the imagination, not to convince the intellect. Yet the author seems to believe that the common opinion which holds the soul to be a substance distinct from the body owes its demonstration partially to an “argument” drawn from the butterfly; and he undertakes to show that such an “argument” has no weight. He says:

“But those who maintain this view fail to note that the butterfly, like the worm, is visible to the eye and subject to the laws of matter; and, moreover, that the butterfly, when it has fulfilled its function in the economy of creation, perishes and is never seen or heard of more. If the soul is enveloped in the body as the butterfly is in the worm, it should appear to sight when its covering is removed. This notoriously does not happen, and therefore the argument is unsatisfactory.”

Of course the “argument” would be unsatisfactory; and therefore it is that philosophers do not use it. But the critic should not condemn the similitude as wrong on the ground that “the butterfly is visible to the eye and subject to the laws of matter,” whilst such is not the case with the soul. Similitudes are used for illustrating something different from them; hence they cannot agree in all points with the things illustrated. When the visible is used as a symbol of the invisible, it is by no means pretended that we can see the one as we see the other, or that there is in the one every property of the other. A genius may be compared to an eagle; but the eagle has feathers, a beak, and a tail, which the genius has not. So the butterfly is visible to the eye, subject to the laws of matter, and perishable; and in all this it differs vastly from the human soul. But it is not on these points that the comparison is based. Hence it is idle to argue from these points against the use of the comparison.

The writer concludes the preceding in these words:

“The argument from analogy, therefore, does but little towards supporting a belief in the future existence of the soul either separately or in connection with a restored body.”

We admit that the analogies of nature, as alleged by the writer, do very little indeed towards proving a future resurrection; but we have seen that the same analogies afford an irresistible proof of the natural immortality of the human soul: No power in nature can deprive a substance of its being; the human soul is a substance; therefore no natural power can deprive it of its being. We have, then, in this argument, a first demonstration of the natural immortality of the soul. But let us follow the reviewer. He mentions four proofs adduced by philosophers and divines in favor of the immortality of the soul—namely, the reasonableness of immortality, the promises of Scripture, the legendary stories of apparitions, and, in our time, the phenomena of what is called spiritualism.

“Without in any way admitting the sceptic’s proposition,” he says, “we must yet recognize the striking fact that in the construction of the argument from reasonableness, or the à priori demonstration of the survival of the soul, our philosophers have not, so far, got one step beyond the point arrived at by the old Greeks two thousand years ago. No one has written more convincingly on the subject than Plato in his Phædo, nor is there any more thorough and exhaustive presentment of it extant than the one given by that diligent student of Greek literature, Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations. Plato begins by appealing to the general belief of men in their immortality, which is like appealing to the general belief in fairies and witches as a proof of their existence. He then argues, from the soul’s readiness in acquiring knowledge, that it must have learned the same things in a previous state of existence; and hence, as it existed before the body, it will exist after the body ceases to be, which nowadays is not worth refuting. Next he says that the soul, being uncompounded and invisible, is indissoluble, and therefore immortal; but this is begging the question. Finally, he argues that the soul is in itself life and the opposite of death, and therefore cannot die; which is another petitio principii. In a similar manner Cicero enumerates in favor of the soul’s immortality the wide-spread conviction that it is immortal; the thirst for fame which inspires heroic deeds, and which would be absurd if death were the end of all existence; the volatile nature of the soul, which preserves it from destruction; and its superior powers over those of the body.”

We beg to remark that this passage is full of gratuitous assertions. What the writer calls “a striking fact” is not a fact. Our philosophers, as he himself proceeds to show, have added much to the reasonings of the old Greek philosophers. How can it be true, then, that they have gone “not one step beyond the point arrived at two thousand years ago”? And if this were true, how could the writer disclaim any intention of admitting “the sceptic’s proposition,” considering that the old proofs of immortality are, in his opinion, quite unsatisfactory?

A second gratuitous and unwise assertion is that to appeal to the general belief in immortality is “like appealing to the general belief in fairies and witches as a proof of their existence.” To say nothing of witches (for we need not enter into this controversy), it is not true that belief in fairies is, or has been, general, except perhaps among nursery children. But let this pass. There is a difference between belief and belief. The belief of men in the immortality of the soul does not originate in nursery tales, but in natural reason; nor is it a belief extorted by imposition, but a conclusion of which thinking men find sufficient evidence in their own nature. It is because the nature is common that the belief in immortality is common. To question it is to ignore the sensus naturæ communis, and to forfeit all claim to a fair philosophical reputation.

A third assertion, equally gratuitous and manifestly false, is that we cannot, without begging the question, infer the soul’s immortality from its simplicity. It is not easy to understand how the writer could fall into such a tangible error. The simplicity of the soul and its spirituality are demonstrated independently of the question of immortality. This being the case, it is plain that no begging of the question is possible in arguing from the known spiritual simplicity of the soul to its immortality. The writer might probably object that to assume the simplicity and spirituality of the soul is to assume its immortality. This is to say that to assume the premises is to assume the conclusion. But, if the premises are only assumed after demonstration, the conclusion which they involve will be based on demonstration and will be demonstrated. And this is the case with the soul’s immortality. If the simplicity and spirituality of the soul were assumed without proof, the argument would be worthless; but, since both are established by independent considerations, the conclusion is unquestionably valid.

The fourth gratuitous assertion consists in denouncing as a petitio principii the argument which says that the soul cannot die, “because it is life in itself.” The words “the soul is life in itself” mean that the life of the soul is not, like that of the body, borrowed from a distinct vital principle, but constitutes the very being of the soul and is involved in its essence. Hence, if the substance of the soul cannot be blotted out of existence by natural agencies, the soul is naturally immortal; for its very existence is life. And, since it is known and admitted that natural agencies are wholly incompetent to cause any created substance to vanish out of existence, the consequence is that the soul, as Plato very justly remarks, cannot naturally lose its life.

To complete the demonstration, however, something more is needed. For, although the preceding arguments show that the soul cannot be destroyed by natural agencies, they do not prove that the Author of nature, who has created it, will keep it in existence after its separation from the body. In other terms, it is necessary to show that the soul is no less extrinsically than intrinsically immortal. This the Greek philosophers, owing to their pagan notion of Divinity, have been unable to do; but it has been done by Christian philosophers, as our writer himself recognizes. He says:

“One argument, indeed, is employed by Christians which the heathens do not seem to have thought of—namely, the necessity of a future existence to compensate men for their sufferings, and to punish them for their misdeeds, in this world, and thus vindicate God’s mercy and justice. Virtuous human beings, it is said, are more or less unhappy in this life, while the wicked are happy; and therefore we must suppose that so just and benevolent a being as God will reward the one class and punish the other in a life to come.”

To this argument nothing can be objected. God cannot be more partial to the wicked than to the good. Such a course would evidently conflict with his sanctity, which necessarily loves all that is right, and necessarily hates all that is wrong. Hence the prosperity of the wicked and the trials of the good, though permitted by God for our present probation, are not final, but must be reversed when the time of probation is over—that is, at the end of the present life. A final triumph of virtue and a final punishment of vice are therefore as certain to come after this life as it is certain that God cannot forfeit his sanctity. Nevertheless, the writer in the Sun thinks that he can get rid of the argument by remarking that, if it proved anything, it would prove top much.

“As if God’s goodness,” he says, “does not much more require him to reward the virtuous here, if it requires him to reward them at all, and as if an uncertain future punishment, in a problematical state of existence, would offset a present sin.”

But this reply is extremely futile; for how can it be proved that God’s goodness requires him to reward the virtuous here? The assertion is quite arbitrary, not to say absurd; for if God’s goodness does not actually reward the virtuous here, it is evident that God’s goodness does not require that they should have their reward here. Then the writer seems to question the very necessity of reward and punishment; but he gives no reason for his doubt, as in fact no reason could be found for assuming that the moral law can be either observed without profit or violated with impunity. If there be no retribution, right and wrong are empty names, virtue becomes vice, and vice virtue. If no happiness is to be expected after death, he is most reasonable and virtuous who strives to satisfy all his passions, and he is most vicious and unreasonable who renounces his present gratification for the sake of morality. The sceptic, therefore, who denies a future life is constrained logically to admit that all virtue is foolishness, and all wisdom consists in self-indulgence and pleasure. The evident absurdity of this conclusion shows the falsity of the opinion from which it proceeds.

The writer imagines also that the future punishment is “uncertain,” and that after death there is only a “problematical” state of existence. To this we need not make a new answer, as we have seen that a future retribution is absolutely certain and not at all problematic.

“It may still further be said,” adds our writer, “that when we turn to the Scriptures, we do not find them by any means so clear and positive in regard to the survival of the soul as people generally suppose. The five books of Moses are absolutely destitute of all allusion to the subject. The Jews were told by the great lawgiver nothing whatever concerning a life beyond the grave. They were promised rewards in this world if they behaved well, and threatened with punishments in this world if they behaved ill. Their whole subsequent history illustrates this fundamental principle. When they rebelled against Jehovah and worshipped other gods, they were smitten with war, pestilence, famine, and captivity. When they were obedient to him, they were blessed with peace and plenty, and victory was granted them over their foes. In the prophetical writings, full as they are of rebukes and warnings, there is no more explicit teaching of a future life than in the Pentateuch; and, down to the advent of Christ, the sect of Sadducees, who prided themselves of their adherence to the faith of their fathers, stoutly denied it.”

Let us make a few remarks on this argument. First, were we to concede that Moses is absolutely silent about a future life, it would make no difference as to the question of the soul’s immortality. For if we argue with Christians, Moses’ silence is abundantly compensated for by other inspired writers; and if we argue with unbelievers, we know that Moses with them is no authority whether he speaks or remains silent.

Secondly, it is not true that “the five books of Moses are absolutely destitute of all allusion to the subject.” We are not going to write a dissertation on this Biblical question; it will suffice to point out a few passages which would have no meaning apart from a belief in a future life. We read in Genesis (xv. 1) that the Lord said to Abraham: “I am thy protector, and thy reward exceedingly great.” Can these words have any other meaning than “protector in the troubles of thy present life, and reward exceedingly great after the end of the struggle”? Again we read that Jacob at the approach of his death, while blessing his children, exclaimed: “I will look for thy salvation, O Lord” (ib. xlix. 18)—that is, “though I shall soon die, yet my soul will not cease to rejoice in the earnest expectation of the Redeemer who is to come”—Salutare tuum expectabo, Domine. And the same patriarch, when mourning for his son (Joseph), “would not receive comfort, but said: I will go down to my son into hell, mourning” (ib. xxxvii. 35). He therefore believed that his soul would survive its separation from the body. It is not true, then, that the books of Moses are absolutely destitute of all allusion to a future life. Nor is it lawful to argue that, because the great lawgiver promised rewards and threatened punishments of a temporal order, the eternal rewards and the eternal punishments must have been unknown to the children of Israel; for we must reflect that Moses’ menaces and promises were made to the nation or the political body, not to individual persons, and that the political body was not destined to last for ever; whence it follows that all the promises and all the menaces addressed to the nation ought to refer exclusively to the temporal order.

Thirdly, it is not true that the prophetical writings do not teach a future life. We read in Daniel (xii. 2) that “many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some unto life everlasting, and others unto reproach.” These words are decisive. Death is but a sleep; we shall awake to a new life, and this future life will last for ever. “On the last day,” says Job, “I shall rise out of the earth, and I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God” (c. xix.) David says: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations that forget God. For the poor man shall not be forgotten to the end: the patience of the poor shall not perish for ever” (Psalm ix.) “Thy dead men,” says Isaias, “shall live, my slain shall rise again: awake, and give praise, ye that dwell in the dust” (c. xxvi.) Ezechiel (c. xviii.) intimates to the wicked that they shall die, while the just shall live; where living and dying cannot refer to the course of natural events, but must be interpreted as meaning salvation and damnation. David says again: “But God will redeem my soul from the hand of hell, when he shall receive me” (Psalm xlviii.) These passages, to which many others might be added, suffice to show that our writer is not more accurate in speaking of the prophetical writings than he is in speaking of the Pentateuch.

Fourthly, he does not seem to know that the Sadducees, notwithstanding their “priding themselves of their adherence to the faith of their fathers,” were nothing but a heretical sect; they denied the resurrection of the flesh, just as modern Protestants deny transubstantiation; and it is as absurd to appeal to the Sadducees for the right understanding of the Jewish faith as it would be to appeal to our modern heretics for the interpretation of the Catholic doctrine.

The writer adds:

“The historical books, indeed, show that in later days the doctrine gained admission into some Jewish minds, having most probably been communicated to them from their Assyrian, Persian, and Babylonian captors; but the form it took on was that of the resurrection of the flesh, which, Dr. Nisbet says, was erroneously adopted by the Christian Church. If, therefore, the Old Testament be silent on the topic, and the New Testament, as interpreted by contemporary critics, teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept, what is there in the Bible to require a belief in any resurrection whatever?”

We have shown that the immortality of the soul was known to the Jews from the time of the patriarchs. The Assyrians, the Persians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians were also acquainted with the same truth, but they seem to have been altogether ignorant of a future resurrection, and many of them thought that their souls were destined to transmigrate from one body to another. These errors may have been communicated to some Jews by their captors; as we know that the Sadducees denied the resurrection, and most of the Pharisees believed in metempsychosis, according to Josephus (Antiquit. l. xviii. c. 2). But if the captivity of the Jews may have been the source of these errors, it has certainly not been the origin of the belief in immortality and resurrection, which pre-existed among the Jews long before their captivity.

As to the argument which the author draws from Dr. Nisbet’s view of resurrection, we need hardly say that, if it may have some weight against Dr. Nisbet, it can have none against the Christian doctrine. The New Testament, “as interpreted by contemporary critics”—that is, by Dr. Nisbet—“teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept.” What then? Then, concludes the writer, “there is nothing in the Bible to require a belief in any resurrection whatever.” We are at a loss to understand the logical connection of the consequence with the antecedent. Can we not suppose that there is something in the Bible which requires a belief in the resurrection of the flesh, and that Dr. Nisbet, whose infallibility is far from being demonstrated, has failed to understand it? When a man is bold enough to say that the Christian Church has “erroneously adopted” a doctrine which has been preached by the apostles and believed in without interruption for eighteen centuries by the Christian world, there is little doubt that such a man is himself in error, and that his assertions cannot be made the ground of any argumentation. On the other hand, if Dr. Nisbet “contends for a resurrection in a form composed of finer substances than flesh and blood,” he may indeed err theologically, but we fail to see how he thereby “teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept.” In fact, reason is incompetent to decide what mode of resurrection should be accepted and what rejected; it being evident that in a question of this sort the province of reason is to submit to revelation, and to accept the doctrine universally received by the members of the church. If therefore the Old or the New Testament, or both, as interpreted by the Fathers of the church, teach a doctrine against which reason has nothing whatever to object, it is the duty of every wise and reasonable man to accept the doctrine without the least regard to the vagaries of “contemporary Protestant critics.” Now, this is the case with the doctrine of immortality and resurrection.

But our writer has more to say:

“Moreover, it is urged, if the survival of the soul is a fact at all, it is a fact to-day as much as it ever was, and, like other facts, susceptible of proof. There are departed souls enough now, if there ever were any, to make it easy to demonstrate their existence. If it be true, as so many multitudes believe, that when the body dies the soul of the man, the woman, or the child who inhabited it survives as a real man, woman, or child, with all that is requisite to personal identity, why, ask the doubters, does it not in some way manifest itself? From every home on this planet there go up daily and hourly passionate demands for the return of loved ones whom death has snatched away. Were they still in the flesh, no obstacle would prevent their hurrying to join the objects of their affection; and the sceptic finds it inconceivable that if, as is said, they hover about us in spirit form, they should not make their presence felt in some undeniable way.”

It is perfectly true that the survival of the soul is, like other facts, susceptible of proof. Yet not all facts are proved by the same kind of proofs. There are, even in the natural sciences, facts which must be proved by reasoning, owing to the impossibility of ascertaining them directly by the experimental method. We must not expect, therefore, that souls, which are spiritual and invisible, should, after departing from their bodies, give sensible signs of their survival in a different state. Nor do we need any such sensible proof of their survival; for we have proofs of a higher order, by which we show that the human soul cannot die. We therefore establish not only the fact of its survival, but also the necessity of the fact. On the other hand, if a soul were to appear before us, we might suspect the objective reality of the apparition; at best we might simply conclude that such a soul has been kept in existence; but we would have no ground for concluding that all other human souls are likewise kept in existence, and that they must remain in existence for ever. In fact, could not that soul be annihilated some time after its apparition? Or could we logically maintain that the survival of one soul suffices to prove the survival of all other souls? It is therefore impossible to prove the immortality of all human souls by means of individual apparitions; to establish it a general principle is indispensable, and this principle is drawn from the very essence of the soul and from the sanctity and justice of its Creator.

But “why does not the soul in some way manifest itself”? This question is very easily answered. The departed souls are either in heaven, or in hell, or in purgatory. If in hell or in purgatory, they are there like prisoners, and cannot freely roam about. If, on the contrary, they are in heaven, they have none other than spiritual relations with this world, except by special dispensation of divine Providence. And again, why should departed souls manifest themselves in a sensible manner? To convince us that the Scriptural doctrine of immortality is true? As if our faith in the word of God were based on the testimony of our senses, not on the authority and truthfulness of God himself. “Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed,” said our Lord to his sceptical disciple: “blessed are they that have not seen and have believed.” Miracles, in the present order of Providence, are not the rule, but the exception: hence the sensible manifestation of departed souls, as being above the requirements of nature, is not to be made the test of their survival.

“Were they still in the flesh,” we are told, “no obstacle would prevent their hurrying to join the objects of their affection.” Certainly; for if they were still in the flesh they would belong to this world; but, since they are no more in the flesh, they now belong to the world of spirits, which is invisible to our eyes of flesh, and from which they cannot communicate with us in sensible forms without a special command or permission of God. It is not true that they “hover about us in spirit form”; this is a pagan conception. Nor is it true that the soul survives “as a real man, woman, or child.” Souls have no sex, and man cannot be without a body; hence no departed soul is either man, woman, or child: it is a soul simply, and its “personal identity” consists in its being the same soul which was in the body.

To the question, “Why do not souls manifest themselves in a sensible way?” a second answer can be given by replying that many souls have thus manifested themselves. This answer, good and legitimate as it is, is ridiculed by sceptical critics, who, while constantly appealing to facts, are invariably determined to spurn all facts contrary to their theories. Our writer says:

“Equally inconclusive is the little we have of positive testimony on the subject. It is true that in all ages there have been some who have asserted the power of actually seeing and speaking with departed souls, and the whole tribe of spirit-mediums pretend to it now. As to what has happened in bygone times it is, of course, impossible now to base any conclusion upon it. The circumstances cannot be inquired into, and, moreover, one single witness coming before us and submitting his testimony to our scrutiny is worth more than a thousand who are out of our reach. The question is: Does anybody at this day really have intercourse with the spirits of the dead? The spirit-rappers and their followers say Yes, but the great incredulous world, after hearing all they have to present in confirmation of their assertions, still says No. There is so much fraud and nonsense connected with the business that the scientific mind rejects it contemptuously. The very phenomena themselves are clouded with a suspicion of jugglery and deceit, while there is a wide divergence of opinion as to their interpretation, even granting them to be honestly produced.”

We agree with the author that spiritists have no intercourse with the spirits of the dead, and we add that no mortal has the power to call back to this world a departed soul. This, we think, is certain both by authority and philosophy. Hence, if any spirits are really made to appear and to answer questions—which we know to be a fact, though not so frequent as simpletons are apt to believe—those spirits are not the souls of the departed, but the lying spirits of hell, who volunteer to play nonsensical tricks for the amusement and the perversion of their foolish consultors. But that departed souls have now and then appeared to men in visible form is a fact established on indisputable historical evidence. Do we not read in the Bible that the ghost of Samuel appeared to Saul, rebuked his recklessness, and intimated to him the impending defeat of his army and his own death? Nor can it be objected that the ghost was a devil, for devils do not know the future actions of men; nor can it be said that the apparition was a delusion, for the ghost was seen by the witch before it was seen by Saul; and the whole narrative of the sacred writer is so worded as to exclude the possibility of explaining away the fact by such a loose interpretation. It will be said, however, that “the scientific mind” rejects all such facts with absolute contempt. To which we may reply that “the scientific mind” has no right whatever to reject historical facts. Science is based on facts; its duty is to account for them by a sufficient reason, not to deny them when they transcend our comprehension. We know that there is a class of modern scientists who contend that everything must be explained by the properties of matter, and that no exception can be admitted in favor of supernatural facts. But we do not see how this mental disposition can be called “scientific.” If physicists refuse to acknowledge all the facts which transcend the limits of their sphere, why could not the musician reject all the phenomena which transcend his musical knowledge, or the chemist ridicule all the astronomical calculations? It is evident that every science must dwell within its proper limits, and therefore no weight can be attached to the opinions of mere physicists when they presume to decide questions entirely extraneous to their profession. Thus the facts remain, and all attempts at discrediting them must be accounted idle and unscientific talk. Lazarus, dead and buried, at the voice of Christ revived. The fact was public and recognized by Christ’s enemies. “The scientific mind” will not deny it. But then, we ask, how could the soul of Lazarus retake possession of his body, if it had ceased to exist? and what else was the rising of the body from its tomb than a sensible manifestation of the soul returned to its primitive office? We read in the Gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in ecclesiastical history of many dead recalled to life either by Christ or by his disciples and followers. In all such facts souls have manifested themselves. We might mention a great number of genuine apparitions well known to all readers of the lives of saints; but as we have neither time nor intention to enter into a critical discussion of the evidence by which they are supported, we shall content ourselves with citing the glorious apparitions of Lourdes, of La Salette, and of Marpingen, which, as all the world knows, are unquestionable facts, accompanied and followed by a continuous series of public miracles, to which “the scientific mind” of modern thinkers has found nothing to object, though it has been formally and repeatedly challenged to disprove them by its pretended superior knowledge. Our Catholic readers know most of the facts to which we allude; but it is probable that the writer to whom we reply is not acquainted with them, and we would suggest to him to read M. Lasserre’s book on the apparition of Lourdes, where he will find, we trust, sufficient evidence concerning the reality and nature of the facts just mentioned. But we repeat that a Christian and a philosopher has no need of sensible manifestations to believe in the immortality of the human soul. Reason and the Gospel afford such a strong evidence of this truth that all further evidence may seem superfluous. When unbelievers ask for apparitions or sensible manifestations, we may answer them as Abraham answered the rich man: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if one rise again from the dead” (Luke xvi. 31).

Our writer sums up his arguments as follows:

“The fact, then, seems to be—and we would earnestly press it upon the attention of religious thinkers of every kind, and especially upon theologians and clergymen, whose peculiar duty it is to deal with such subjects—the fact seems to be that analogy, reason, revelation, and human testimony alike fail to establish the doctrine that man can exist as a man without a material body. Books such as that of Dr. Nisbet rather add to than remove the philosophical difficulties of the subject so long as they leave the main question untouched. Moreover, in explaining away the popular interpretation of the Scriptures in regard to it, they tend to produce very much the same results as have been produced by the efforts to reconcile Genesis with geology. The conclusion that the Bible does not teach science correctly has been followed by the conclusion that it does not teach science at all; and so, if we agree with Dr. Nisbet that what it says about the resurrection is not to be taken literally, we shall be in great danger of rejecting its testimony altogether.”

This is to say that the Scriptures, in the Protestant system of free interpretation, lose all authority, inasmuch as the word of man is thereby substituted for the word of God. Thus far we agree with the writer. But that religious thinkers, theologians, and clergymen should undertake a new demonstration of the soul’s immortality and of the resurrection of the flesh, we consider unnecessary. Theologians and clergymen have done their duty on this point with such completeness as to make all sceptics inexcusable. All that is wanted is that the sceptics themselves undertake to study the works of such theologians and philosophers as have answered the objections of the materialists of the last century. Scepticism is ignorance. There is no remedy for it but study—the study of that special branch of knowledge on which the solution of any given question depends.

Our writer imagines that some “efforts” have been made “to reconcile Genesis with geology.” This, however, is not the case. The truth is that a class of scientists have made some “efforts” to turn geology against Genesis, and that those efforts have been unsuccessful. A science which denies to-day what it considered yesterday as demonstrated, and which is apt to deny to-morrow what it teaches to-day, needs none of our “efforts” to be reconciled with Genesis. When the facts of geology shall be well known, and when the theories built on those facts shall be logically correct, then we shall have no need of “reconciling” geology with Genesis; for geology will teach us nothing in opposition to the revealed origin of things.

As to the conclusion “that the Bible does not teach science correctly,” or “that it teaches no science at all,” we will only remark that the Biblical record of creation is a history of facts, not a treatise of science. Hence the proposition that the Bible does not teach science correctly has no meaning, whilst the proposition that the Bible teaches no science at all is perfectly true, although the facts themselves which it relates must be looked upon as the groundwork of geological science.

But our writer seems to take a different view of the subject. He says:

“Many believers in Christianity deny that the world was made in six days, although the Bible says it was made in six days; deny that a flood ever covered the tops of the mountains, that there ever were witches and magicians, and that Joshua made the sun and the moon stand still, although the Bible asserts all these things; why may they not likewise safely deny as unscientific the dogma of a future existence of all individual human beings? This is the dilemma into which speculations like those of Dr. Nisbet bring us; and if he and his school can furnish a way out of it, they will confer an immense benefit upon the whole world of anxious but sincere doubters upon this great subject.”

Such is the end of the article we have been examining. We would tell the writer that if there are believers in Christianity who deny anything revealed by God in the Bible, such believers are not consistent with themselves; for why should they believe in Christianity if they disbelieve the Bible? If the word of God in the Old Testament does not command their assent, why should the same word of God in the New Testament cause them to believe? It is clear that, if they believed on God’s authority, they could not reject anything based on that authority. A belief of this sort is not divine faith, but human opinion; it is not submission to God’s authority, but a denial of God’s authority in all things which man chooses to disbelieve; and consequently such a belief is not that faith “without which it is impossible to please God.” It is, however, the faith of many advanced Protestants; and thus we are not surprised that the writer considers such an irrational form of belief as consistent with the mutilated form of “Christianity” with which he is familiar. But we Catholics—we heirs of the apostolic doctrine transmitted to us in an uninterrupted manner by the universal church—we believe everything that has been revealed either in the Old or in the New Testament. We do not question the fact that there have been witches and magicians, nor do we see any reason for questioning it; we believe in like manner what the Bible says about the Flood, the six days of creation, Joshua’s great miracle, and everything else; by which we mean that those facts which we read in the Bible, whether we have a true appreciation of them or not, are all true, and that the difficulties we may find in their explanation arise from our ignorance, which the modern progress of science has done very little to dispel. Thus, while we are free to choose among the various explanations of Biblical facts, we all agree in believing the facts themselves. But, if this is true of those passages of Scripture whose meaning is obscure, and whose interpretation has not been settled by the authority of the church or by the consensus of the doctors, it is not true of those other passages whose meaning is obvious and unmistakable, or whose interpretation has been sanctioned by the unanimous decision of the universal church. Hence, while we may freely discuss the six days of creation and the astronomical result of Joshua’s dealings with the sun, we have no reasonable ground for discussing or doubting “the dogma of a future existence of all individual human souls.” To say that this dogma is “unscientific” is to assume what neither has been nor can be proved; unless, indeed, we call “unscientific” every truth which ranges above the compass of experimental science; in which case even logic itself would be utterly unscientific.

Whether Dr. Nisbet or his school can furnish a way out of the difficulties complained of by our writer we do not know. It is probable, however, that neither Dr. Nisbet nor any other doctor of the same school can successfully combat the invading spirit of infidelity so long as they do not give up their Protestant method of reasoning and their Protestant profession. Protestantism is itself one kind of infidelity; it cannot contribute in any way towards the restoration of sound philosophical or theological ideas; it can only sow doubt, discord, and inconsistency, thus paving the way for religious scepticism and its concomitant evils. The history of Protestantism is sufficient evidence of the fact. It is vain, therefore, to hope that Dr. Nisbet or his school will “confer any benefit upon the whole world of anxious but sincere doubters” by establishing either the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the flesh on impregnable proofs. Let, then, all anxious but sincere doubters turn to Catholic doctors and Catholic books; let them hear the church—the old, calumniated church, the column of truth, the heir of the apostles, of the prophets, of the patriarchs, and the spouse of Christ. She will teach them how to reconcile reason with faith and religion with science, so as to believe rationally and consistently whatever God has revealed, while preserving the fullest liberty of judgment in regard to all other things. Yet we must warn these “anxious but sincere doubters” that no benefit will accrue to them, if they approach our divines or read our books with that spirit of contention which is so common among all the Protestant sects. If they are “anxious” to know the truth, they must not rely exclusively on the strength of their reasoning powers, but must be ready to yield to authority in all things connected with Christian faith. If they are “sincere,” humility must be a part of their sincerity.

To conclude: We have met and answered the reasons alleged by the writer in the Sun against the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the flesh; and although we have scarcely developed the reflections suggested by those reasons, yet we confidently believe that our brief remarks will be found sufficient to set at rest the arguments of the sceptic. As to the doctrine of immortality in particular, of which the same writer desired “a solid and impregnable philosophical demonstration,” we have shown that the human soul neither can be destroyed by any created cause nor will be destroyed by God; accordingly, the human soul is intrinsically and extrinsically immortal. Our proofs have been few, but simple and intelligible; and we trust that the writer who gave us occasion to speak of this subject, if he chances to read these pages, will soon acquire the conviction that the doctrine of immortality was really in no need of a new philosophical demonstration.

SANNAZZARO.

One Sunday morning, while at Naples, we went to hear our Mass of obligation in the church of the Servites, erected by the poet Sannazzaro in honor of the divine Maternity of Mary, and called after his famous poem, De Partu Virginis. It stands on the Mergellina, that pezzo di cielo caduto in terra, as the Neapolitans say—“a fragment of heaven to earth vouchsafed”—and certainly the most beautiful shore on which the sun shines. It was this shore that inspired the ardent Stazio. Not far off is the tomb of Virgil, and the place where Pollio lived, and the grove where Silius Italicus conceived the idea of his Punica. Here, too, Sannazzaro had a charming villa which tempted the very Muses to descend from the mountain to dwell on the sandy shore, as Ariosto says:

“Alle Camene Lasciar fa i monti e abitar le arene.”

Here he wrote most of his poems and gathered around him all the wit and talent of Naples on those Dies geniales, which were as famous at that time as the Noctes Ambrosianæ of Christopher North at Edinburgh in our younger days, though not quite so convivial, perhaps. This villa had about it a certain perfume of antiquity of which we know nothing in these times, and which we affect to despise. It was the natural atmosphere of this Virgilian region, and it had an inspiration of its own which must be taken into account in reading the works of Sannazzaro. He has celebrated his villa in an ode worthy of Horace. He did not, however, notwithstanding his classical tastes, dedicate his household altar to Apollo, or even to Venus—he was too genuine a Christian for that—but to the tutelar care of San Nazzaro, whom he reckoned among his ancestors. When nearly done with life, he built a church on the spot, in memory of that divine Birth which he had so sweetly sung, and attached thereto a convent of Servite monks, to whom he gave the income of eight thousand florins for the solemn celebration of Christmas and certain expiatory services for himself, his ancestors, and King Frederick III. of Naples. Here he also set up an altar to San Nazzaro, and ordered his own tomb to be built.

We had repeatedly passed the Church del Parto without being able to find it, so embedded is it among houses on the side of the cliff. And the entrance is from a side terrace, to which you ascend by a flight of steps, as to the court of a private dwelling. This terrace commands a view that surpasses all the most vivid imagination could conceive. The Castel del Ovo advances directly before you into the incomparable bay, the waters of which, generally blue as the heavens, were at this early hour all crimson and gold and amethyst, with great floods of silver coming in from the sea. Behind them were islands, such as we see in dreams, rising out of the magic waves: Capri, with its marvellous grottos, clouded with the memory of Tiberius; Procida, with its fort on the volcanic rocks; and Ischia, where the beautiful Vittoria Colonna, beloved of Michael Angelo, retired to mourn her husband’s loss, and beneath which the giant Typhœus, transfixed by a thunderbolt from Jupiter, lies imprisoned, at long intervals groaning with pain, and sending forth in his rage fearful eruptions of burning lava. On the inner curve of the bay sits Naples like a queen, with her palaces, her citadels, her white villas gleaming like jewels—her glance all flame, and her heart all fire. Beyond rises Mount Vesuvius, with its cone of perfect symmetry, full of mystery and terror, its summit now flecked with patches of snow, looking like great white flowers that bloom

“Around the crater’s burning lips, Sweetening the very edge of doom.”

A light vapor, rather than smoke, issued from the top, no longer dark and foreboding like the evil genius whose vase was unsealed, but of soft, dove-like hues, as if some pacific herald. At its foot sleep fair villages among peaceful olive-trees, wreathed with vines, and lulled into forgetfulness by the gentle waves that caress the shore. Harmonious tints blend earth and sky and sea, but they are constantly varying with the rolling hours. There is nothing monotonous here, except the languid air which wearily plays among the odorous trees without the force to agitate their branches. Nature is here a genuine siren, half-earth, half-sea, whose magic voice wooes many a wanderer still to forget his native shore. We feel its charm as we survey the matchless landscape. An electric fire comes over the soul—admiration, wonder, emotions no words can express. Poetry is in the golden air, the bright waves, the enchanting shores, the intense hues that color everything—yes, even in the awful scars and lava streams that furnished the ancients with their ideas of Tartarus, and made Virgil place his descent thereto near the tenebrosa palus—the gloomy lake of Avernus, formed from the overflowing of the Acheron—

“Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep.”

The church bell awoke us from this delightful vision, and we entered the open door. It is a small building whose walls within are tinged a delicate sea-green, and have white mouldings, as if to harmonize with the foam-crested waves of the bay without. The windows are mere lunettes, high up in the arches, and below are five or six deep recesses with altars and paintings. The white marble basin at the entrance, for holy-water, looks like a flower on its tall, slender stem. On it is graven a shield like a chess-board—perhaps the arms of some noble of this farniente land to whom life was a mere game. We were at once struck by a singular crucifix on a kind of a tripod, under a canopy like a penthouse. Near by stood the Addolorata—the Madonna of Many Sorrows—in black like a nun, with wimple and veil, a stole embroidered with gold, and a wheel of gilt arrows piercing the silver heart on her breast. One poor dim lamp was burning before her. Opposite was a more cheerful altar with the Virgin del Parto, the titular of the church, gaily dressed after the Italian taste, and surrounded with lights and flowers. These two Madonnas seemed to personify Bethlehem and Calvary—the Alpha and Omega of the Christian mysteries—and between them we knelt to hear Mass.

The church was nearly full of people in bright holiday attire, quite absorbed in their devotions, and, though mostly of the lower classes, so-called, they all responded in Latin to the litany at the close of the service. Near by us, in the pavement, was a tomb-stone with the bas-relief of a boy with a book under his head, another in his hand, and one at his feet. This was a promising youth named Fabrizio Manlio, who so loved the Mergellina that, when ill, he wished to be brought here to die, and here be buried, as his touching epitaph relates. But that was three hundred years ago, and the father who here records the tears he shed long since rejoined his son, and now there is not a smile the less at sunny Naples. Why lay aught too much to heart?

In a recess at the right is a noted painting, generally known at Naples as the Diavolo di Mergellina. This is no new fiend, but the old outcast from heaven vanquished by St. Michael, the great captain of the heavenly host, a picture by Leonardo da Pistoja, a Tuscan painter of the Da Vinci school. The archangel, “severe in youthful beauty,” is girded with a vest of heavenly azure, and from his shoulders spring broad wings of many hues—green, yellow, and purple—with rays like long arrows of gold. His right hand seemingly disdains to use its sword—“Satan’s dire dread”—but holds it behind him, while with the left he thrusts his long spear through the demon’s neck and nails him to the ground. His face is perfectly passionless, as if not even so terrible a combat could ruffle the serenity of his angelic nature. The Diavolo is one of those strange demons that entice souls down to the gulf of perdition, common in the middle ages, with two faces, not Janus-wise, but with the second face on the bowels, of most startling character. The fiend before us has the beautiful face and bust of a woman, said to be the genuine portrait of a lady who became passionately enamored of Diomedes Carafa, Bishop of Ariano, who lies buried at the foot of the altar beneath, with the triumphant inscription: Et fecit victoriam, halleluja! which may be applied both to the bishop and the archangel. The round arms of this fair demon are drawn up under her head. Her long, golden locks

“In masses bright Fall like floating rays of light”

around her shoulders and half-veil her bosom. Her youthful face is deadly pale, but not contracted, and her eyes are cold and vigilant. The lower face, on the contrary, is old and convulsed, as if crying with pain. The hair is grizzled and witch-like. The legs are like two scaly serpents, twisted and writhing, and the bat-like wings shade off to a lurid brown and yellow. The contrast in these two faces is very striking and has a deep moral. It is a common proverb at Naples to compare too tempting a project, or too seducing a beauty, to the Diavolo di Mergellina.

The high altar of the church is of inlaid marble. At the sides are niches containing statues of SS. Jacobo and Nazzaro, the patrons of the founder. On what is called the arch of triumph over the head of the nave is an old painting of the Annunciation, the Virgin in one spandrel with the dove on her hand, and the angel in the other with the lily stem. Along the connecting arch is the distich from Sannazzaro:

“Virginitas Partus discordes tempore longo, Virginia in gremio fœdera pacis habent.”[82]

Footnote 82:

Virginity and Maternity, long at variance, have made peace in the womb of the Virgin.

In a neighboring recess is an Adoration of the Magi, which contends with that of the Castello Nuovo as being the one given Sannazzaro by Frederick of Aragon, painted by Van Eyck, and said by Vasari to be the first oil-painting ever brought to Italy.

We searched a long time in vain for the tomb of Sannazzaro. Chapels, flagstones, and mural inscriptions, all underwent a severe scrutiny; and, supposing it must have been destroyed in some political convulsion, when even death itself is not respected, we were on the point of leaving the church when it occurred to us to go behind the high altar. We found there a door which we made bold to enter, remembering how often we had been repaid for exploring sacristies and odd nooks. There was the tomb directly before us, in the smallest of choirs in which ever monk lost his voice “with singing of anthems.” It is the most quiet, secluded spot in the world—dim, frescoed, and crowded with a dozen stalls, on which cherubs’ heads are carved. It is more like a little chantry than a choir, and nothing ever breaks the silence but the voice of holy psalmody. The poet’s tomb is of white marble, chiefly sculptured by Fra Giovanni da Montorsoli. It is surmounted by his bust crowned with laurel. The face is somewhat haggard, but the features are noble. He wears a cap like that we see in pictures of Dante. Beside him are two putti, one with a book and the other bearing a helmet, in allusion to the different ways in which Sannazzaro distinguished himself. The sarcophagus beneath rests on an entablature, below which, in delicate relief, are Neptune and his trident—doubtless in allusion to the Piscatoriæ—and Pan with his reeds, accompanied by fauns and satyrs, with jovial faces and shaggy sides, as if to sing the praises of the author of the Arcadia. Along the base of the monument is an inscription by Bembo, which shows he believed Virgil to have been buried at Naples:

“Da sacro cineri flores: hic ille Maroni Syncerus musa proximus ut tumulo.”[83]

Footnote 83:

Strew this sacred tomb with flowers. Here, near Virgil, lies Syncerus, his brother in the Muses.

At the sides are fine statues of Apollo and Minerva by Santa-croce.

Iacopo Sannazzaro, the inspired poet of the Virgin, was born at Naples in 1458. He sprang from an illustrious family of Spanish origin that had fallen from its former grandeur, but was left not without considerable means. His mother, on becoming a widow, withdrew into the country in order to bring him up in retirement, uncontaminated by the world; but he soon displayed such uncommon abilities that she was persuaded to return to Naples and there watch over his education. It is said he showed a talent for poetry at eight years of age; but it must be remembered he belonged to a land where poesy is like the flowers that spring up spontaneously from the soil at every season. Of course his education was chiefly classical; for he belonged to an age when Greek and Latin literature was regarded as the standard of excellence, and the very mysteries of religion were sung in the measure of Homer and Virgil. When of sufficient age he chose as his master Giovanni Pontano, called “the Trojan Horse” on account of the great number of illustrious poets, orators, and warriors that sprang from his school. Pontano was then director of the celebrated Accademia Napolitana, in which he figured as grammarian, philosopher, historian, orator, and poet. He was the literary autocrat of Naples,

“Whose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate.”

He was regarded as the favorite of Apollo and the Aonides, and from his lips was said to flow a river of gold:

“Quel bel tesoro D’Apollo e delle Aonide sorelle, Che con la lingua sparge un fiume d’oro.”

His astronomical discoveries were announced in Latin verse. It is said he was the first in modern times to revive the idea of Democritus that the Milky Way is composed of myriads of stars.

Sannazzaro succeeded his master at the Academy of Naples, which at that time held its meetings at Pontano’s residence, near which was the Cappella Pontaniana—a gem of art, erected by Pontano in honor of the Virgin and the two St. Johns. Here were set up the wise maxims of the founder, graven on stone, which we translate from the original Latin:

“It is noble but difficult to restrain one’s self in opulence.

“He who never forgets injuries forgets that he is man.

“Whatever thy fortune, be mindful of Fortune herself.

“Integrity promotes confidence, and confidence friendship.

“He who decides too hastily on doubtful occasions repents too late, though he repent quickly.

“It is in vain the law cannot reach him whose conscience absolves him not.

“The sky is not always serene, nor does prudence always ensure safety.

“In every condition of life the chief thing is to know thyself.

“It belongs to the upright to despise the injuries of the wicked, whose praises even are a disgrace.

“Let us bear the penalty of our faults rather than the state should expiate them to its injury.

“Content not thyself with being upright, but find others who resemble thee to serve thy country.

“It is by boldness and conquest a kingdom is enlarged, and not by those counsels that seem to the timid full of wisdom and prudence.”

Such were the maxims instilled into Sannazzaro’s youthful mind. They have a flavor of antiquity. The Academy of Naples still exists, but holds its meetings in the cell of St. Thomas Aquinas at San Domenico’s, where royalty itself used to attend the lectures of the Angelic Doctor. In the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples—where Tasso found shelter—there is a striking group of figures in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, gathered in sorrowful attitudes around the dead Christ—all life-size likenesses of celebrities in the time of the artist, Modanin of Modena. Sannazzaro is represented as Joseph of Arimathea; Pontano as Nicodemus; Alfonso II. as St. John, with his son Ferdinand beside him.

Sannazzaro has celebrated a young Neapolitan girl in classical measure, under the Greek names of Amarante, Phyllis, and Charmosyne, which signify joy, love, and the immortal; but he veiled his passion, if it was one, under mythological allusions. He took as his device an urn of black pebbles, among which was a single white one with the motto, Æquabit nigras candida sola dies, as if in time he hoped to please his lady. But she died young, and he bewailed her in suitable elegies. In spite of this somewhat fantastic attachment—perhaps only a poetic fancy—it is sure Sannazzaro was all his life rather a votary of Diana than of Venus, as became one destined to sing the praises of the Purissima.

Admitted to familiarity with Frederick of Aragon, son of King Ferdinand of Naples, Sannazzaro was appointed director of the royal festivities, and in this capacity composed dramas in the language of the lazzaroni for the amusement of the court. These soon became as popular in the streets as in the palace, and were the germs of the modern Italian comedy, which finds its broadest expression in Pulcinella’s farces at San Carlino. One of these plays is spoken of with particular admiration, composed in 1492 to celebrate the conquest of Granada, and acted at the Castello Capuano in presence of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.

Sannazzaro became so attached to his royal patron that he accompanied him in an expedition against the Turks, where he acquired the reputation of a courageous soldier. And when the prince was deprived of the throne to which he had succeeded, and retired to France, the poet, more faithful in misfortune than Pontano to Frederick I., generously sold two paternal estates to provide for his sovereign’s wants, and accompanied him into exile. It was in the following lines he bade adieu to Naples, which to leave is a kind of death:

“Parthenope, mihi culta; vale, blandissima siren, Atque horti valeant, Hesperidesque tuæ; Mergellina, vale, nostri momor; et mea flentis Serta cape, heu domini numera avara tui; Maternæ salvete umbræ, salvete paternæ.”[84]

Footnote 84:

Farewell, adored Parthenope; sweet siren, farewell! Farewell, enchanted gardens of the Hesperides! Farewell, Mergellina, be mindful of me; accept these tears of regret from the master who has naught else to offer thee! Farewell, shade of my mother; my father’s shade, farewell!

Sannazzaro remained with Frederick III. till his death at Tours, and then returned to Naples, where he devoted himself wholly to literature. The Arcadia, which he finished in France, was published in 1504. This is a romance of mingled prose and verse after the manner of Boccaccio’s Ameto. It caused a great sensation in Italy, and is still regarded as one of the happiest inspirations of the Italian muse. His pleasant villa on the Mergellina had been respected during his exile, and here he established himself at his return. It became a rendezvous for all the literary men of the city. On Thursdays in particular, when the scholars and barristers had a holiday, all that was brilliant at Naples assembled here for a frugal repast, at which poems and epigrams were recited. Sannazzaro was very popular, and to be his friend was regarded as a brevet of immortality.

“Dipinto io sia nell’opre eterne e belle Del mio bel Sannazzaro, vero Sincero, Ch’allora io giugnero fino alle stelle,”[85]

Footnote 85:

Let me be depicted in the immortal works of my glorious Sannazzaro, so worthy of the name of Sincerus, and I shall be exalted to the very stars.

wrote Cariteo. Sannazzaro, it should be remarked, had, after the fashion of the time, taken the more classical name of Actius Syncerus, to which allusion is made on his tomb.

But the greatest festival of the year on the Mergellina was the birthday of Virgil, for whom Sannazzaro had a kind of passion. He celebrated this anniversary—perhaps in imitation of Silius Italicus, who offered an annual sacrifice to the manes of the bard of Mantua—by a banquet, to which he invited his most intimate friends, such as “Alessandro, the jurisconsult, whose works, so long popular, furnish curious details respecting the public and private life of the Romans; Cariteo, who sang in his heterodox style the human soul formed by the Creator, from which nothing is concealed in heaven before it assumes its earthly veil, but which, coming below, as if fallen from some star into a human body, no longer retains any memory of the past; Andrea Acquaviva, who dismounted from his war-horse to take the lyre and drink from the fount of Hippocrene; Girolamo Carbone, who preferred the Tuscan language to the Latin, then so popular, and whose rhythm is a kind of music to the ear; and, finally, Pontano, the master of Sannazzaro, the restorer of the Neapolitan academy founded by Panormita.”[86] These repasts were served by Hiempsal, a young African slave whom Sannazzaro had freed and taught to sing the elegies of Tibullus to an air he himself had composed. It was after one of these Virgilian feasts the poet went to hear Egidio, an Augustinian monk, preach. He was as celebrated for his eloquence as his learning, and was a favorite of two popes, one of whom (Leo X.) afterwards made him cardinal. Egidio, in declaiming with his usual animation against the vices of the time, made a happy citation from Virgil, which delighted his hearer and led to a friendship between them. It was this or some other sermon of his that suggested to Sannazzaro the idea of his great poem, De Partu Virginis, to which he devoted twenty years of his life—a poem of which Mr. Hallam says “it would be difficult to find its equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification.” Pope Leo. X., who appreciated genius in whatever way it found expression, whether by pen, chisel, or pencil, sent the poet a brief in 1521 to encourage him in singing the mysteries of the Christian faith, and to express his satisfaction that, at a time when the voice of a monk was troubling the peace of the church, the Catholic faith should find a defender among the laity—another David, as it were, to smite the new Goliath and appease with his lyre another Saul; and he declared the poem an honor to religion and to his pontificate. Clement VII. also wrote him a brief, accepting the dedication, which alone, he said, was enough to immortalize the pontiff thus honored.

Footnote 86:

Audin.

The De Partu Virginis is the most remarkable poem of the Renaissance, and its publication was an event in the literary world. It was everywhere eulogized, and the author was styled the Christian Virgil. Egidio of Viterbo, after reading it, thus wrote to the author: “When I received your divine poem, I eagerly hastened to make myself familiar with its contents. God alone, whose inspiration suggested so wonderful a creation, can reward you suitably—not by admitting you to the Elysian Fields, the fabulous abode of Linus and Orpheus, but to a blessed eternity.” This poem still merits attention, if for no other reason, at least because of its effect on religious art in the sixteenth century—an influence which has been compared to Dante’s. Mrs. Jameson says she can trace it in all the contemporary productions of Italian art of all schools from Milan to Naples. She regards this influence, however, as perverse. But let us take a brief glance at a poem which has excited so much admiration and criticism down to the present day.

The De Partu Virginis is an epic poem, in which the birth of Christ is sung with the harmonious flow, the variety of imagery, and the elevated tone of Virgil. But, strange to say, none of the sacred characters introduced are called by their real names—perhaps because unknown to the Latin muse. Even the names of Jesus and Mary are expressed by Virgilian paraphrases. The former is called Divus Puer and Numen sanctum; the latter Alma parens, Dia, and Regina. St. Joseph is the Senior Custos; St. Elizabeth the Matrona defessa ævo; and the Supreme Being is styled the Regnator, Genitor superum, etc. The author calls upon the inhabitants of heaven (cœlicolæ) to reveal to his limited vision the profound secrets of the mystery he is about to sing, and invokes the sacred Aonides as the natural protectresses of virginal purity. “Dear delight of poets,” says he, “ye sacred Muses who have never refused me your favor, allow me once more to take a long draught at your clear fount. Ye who derive your glorious origin from heaven, and have so singular a regard for what is pure, aid me in singing of heavenly themes and celebrating the glory of a Virgin. Drive away the darkness of my mind and show me the way by which to rise to the highest summit of your celestial mount. These lofty mysteries were not unknown to you. You must have beheld the sacred grotto of the Nativity. You must have heard the sweet music of the angels that surrounded it. And it is hardly credible you did not admire the splendor of the star that led from the extremity of the Orient three powerful princes to render homage to the new-born Child.

“I have not herein the less need of thy aid, thou constant Hope of men and gods, at once Maid and Mother! If I have taken delight every year in adorning the walls of thy temple with festoons and garlands of flowers; if, on this delicious cliff of the Mergellina, that seems from its proud height to disdain the waves of the sea and promise safety to the boatmen who hail it from afar, I have hewn out for thee altars of eternal duration; if, following the footsteps of my ancestors, I have taken pleasure in singing thy praises and celebrating thy honor with the immense crowds of devout people who, with lively joy, hallow the for ever memorable day of thy happy deliverance, guide my steps in these unfrequented paths, give me the courage to accomplish what I have undertaken, and abandon me not in a task at once so glorious and so difficult.”

The poet goes on to relate how the Regnator Superum, seeing the human race in danger of falling into Tartarus, a prey to the fury of Tysiphone, wishes, as all this evil has been brought about by woman, that by woman it should be repaired. He therefore despatches one of his ministering spirits to announce to the purest of virgins the sublime destiny that awaits her. The messenger finds her plunged in meditation with the prophetic page of the Sibyl open before her, and, saluting her with reverence, he makes known the advent of the Numen sanctum who would deliver mankind from the horrors of the Styx. Fame everywhere publishes the tidings of this mysterious event. Hell itself is told of it. The Eumenides tremble. Alecto, Cerberus, and all the monsters of paganism shudder with fear. The souls of the Fathers—those genuine heroes, as Sannazzaro, after St. Jerome, calls them—rejoice. David himself repeats his prophetic Psalms, and sings the life of Christ, his Passion, Death, and Descent into Limbo.

But it is the great Governor of the universe himself who reveals to the inhabitants of heaven his designs of mercy towards mankind. And when the time of the Nativity comes, he summons Joy (Lætitia) to his presence, whose privilege it is to appease the anger of the Thunderer and diffuse serenity over his face:

“Hæc magni motusque animosque Tonantis Temperat et vultum discussâ nube serenat,”

and sends her to announce the glad tidings of the divine Birth. Putting wings to her feet, she leaves heaven, guarded by the Hours, and proceeds to earth, where she reveals the great event to the shepherds. Two of them, Lycidas and Egon, recite a part of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, applying it to the new-born Child. The birth of Christ is related with delicacy and poetic grace. There is a sublime energy worthy of Dante in the lines that speak of the Incarnation, and the astonishment of nature in view of the prodigy. Angels in the air celebrate it by sports and combats in the style of Homer’s heroes, with the instruments of the Passion for arms. Other angels, like Demodocus, sing the creation, renovation of nature, the seasons, etc. The Jordan, leaning on its urn, is moved to its depths, and relates to the Naiads gathered about him the wonderful event on its shores. An angel comes to bathe the Child in its waters. A dove hovers above. The water-nymphs bend around in veneration. The Jordan, amazed, stays its current with respect, and recalls the prophecy of old Proteus, that the time would come for it to be visited by One who would raise the glory of the Jordan above the Ganges, the Nile, or the Tiber. After which the river, wrapped in its mantle, wonderfully wrought by the Naiads, returns majestically to its bed.

This is too brief an outline of the splendid crown Sannazzaro has woven for the Blessed Virgin, set with so many antique gems. Many have been shocked by the mingling of paganism and Christianity in this poem, but to us it is as if the waters of the Permessus had been turned into the Jordan. All these pagan deities and profane allusions that sprinkle its pages seem to sing the triumph of Christianity. They are in harmony, too, with the Virgilian region in which the poem was written, as well as with the spirit of the age. There was such a passion for antiquity and for Greek and Latin authors in the sixteenth century that even religion and art put on a classic air. Nor was Leo X., to whom it has been made a subject of reproach, the only dignitary of the church that has felt this fascination. St. Jerome himself was called by the accusing spirit, Non Christianus, sed Ciceronianus, and he used to fast before reading the works of the great orator, so much did he fear their ascendency.

Virgil was especially dear to the middle ages on account of the tenderness and melancholy of his noble nature and his strange presentiment of the future. We all remember the famous passage: “The last age of the Cumæan song now approaches; the great series of ages begins again; now returns the Virgin (Astrea), now return the Saturnian kingdoms; now a new progeny is sent from high heaven. Be propitious, chaste Lucina, to the boy at his birth, through whom the iron age will first cease, and the golden age dawn on the world.”

The learned at that time regarded Virgil as a prophet; and the people, as a magician. It was common to have recourse to his writings, as well as Homer’s and other authors, to obtain prognostics. But this was not exclusively a mediæval superstition. It was in use before the Christian era, and has not in these days wholly disappeared. The author of Margaret Fuller’s life says: “She tried the sortes biblicæ, and her hits were memorable. I think each new book which interested her she was disposed to put to this test and know if it had somewhat personal to say to her.” The church has condemned this practice, even by a similar use of the Holy Scriptures.

Dante shared in the general passion for Virgil. He makes him his guide—“My guide and master, thou”—through the lower realms; not in Paradise, whence he is excluded,

“For no sin except for lack of faith.”

Petrarch, too, loved Virgil and planted a laurel—“the meed of poets sage”—at his tomb, but it was long since done to death by the cruel hands of tourists.

A touching sequence was long sung in the church of Mantua, in which St. Paul is represented visiting the tomb of Virgil at Naples, and weeping because he had come too late for him.

In the time of Sannazzaro, Plato was also in great repute. Every one remembers the festival instituted in his honor by Lorenzo de’ Medici at his villa on the side of Fiesole, in which Ficino, Politian, and all that was brilliant in the intellectual world of Florence took part. The bust of the divine Plato, presented by Jerome Roscio of Pistoja, was set up at the end of a shady avenue and crowned with laurel, and, after a grand repast, they all gathered around it and sang cantos in his honor. Ficino even pretended to find in Plato’s writings the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist, etc. He used to address his audience as “My brethren in Plato,” and he makes Christ, in his descent into Limbo, snatch Plato from the jaws of hell to place him among the blessed in Paradise. This reminds us of the great Erasmus, who says: “There are many in the society of the saints who are not in the calendar. I am every instant tempted to exclaim: Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis, and to recommend myself to the Blessed Flaccus and Maro.”

Another of these academies that sought to revive the antique spirit was that of Pomponio Leto at Rome, which has brought so many unmerited reproaches on Pope Paul II. because it was for a time suppressed by him for carrying its passion for antiquity to a pernicious degree. One historian after another has declared him an enemy of the sciences on the principle of their tending to heresy! Hallam, Roscoe, and Henri Martin all echo the calumnies of Platina against this pope. M. de l’Epinois has proved the falseness of this accusation. As if a pope, as he says, who was all his life an amateur of ancient manuscripts, a numismatist of the first class, and an able judge of painting and sculpture, who took pleasure in doing himself the honors of his collections, and provided liberally for the education of poor children that showed an aptitude for study, was an enemy of science! Francesco Filelfo did not think so when he thus wrote to Leonardo Dati: “What do not I and all learned men owe to the great and immortal wisdom of Paul II.?”

As for the Academy of Pomponio Leto, there was a general conviction that it was pagan and licentious in its tendency, if not in actual practice. Canensius, in his life of Paul II., says explicitly: “The pope dissolved a society of young men of corrupt morals, who affirmed that our orthodox faith was not so much founded on the genuine basis of facts as on the jugglery of the saints, and maintained that it was permissible for every one to indulge in whatever pleasure he liked.” And the Chevalier de Rossi, in the Roma Sotteranea, quotes the following passage from a letter of Battista de Judicibus, Bishop of Ventimiglia, written to Platina a short time after the affair in question: “Some call you more pagan than Christian, and affirm that you follow pagan morals rather than ours. Others circulate the report that Hercules is your deity. Another says it is Mercury, a third that it is Jupiter, a fourth that it is Apollo, Venus, or Diana. They say you are in the habit of calling these gods and goddesses to witness, especially when in the company of those who give themselves up to like superstitions—people whom you associate more willingly with than others.” M. de Rossi has also found several inscriptions which prove that a secret hierarchy was established by this society, of which it is reasonable to suppose Pope Paul II. was as aware as of their other anti-Christian practices. Additional suspicion was excited by their secret meetings from the report at this very time that a conspiracy was formed against the life of the Sovereign Pontiff—the more readily credited because only nine years previously the streets of Rome had been deluged with blood by an insurrection. However, the pope, so far from being the farouche and sanguinary ruler M. Martin styles him, let off the academicians with a short confinement, and in 1475 Pomponio and his companions were once more quietly pursuing their studies, having profited by so beneficial a lesson. The academy became more flourishing than ever, and counted among its members a great number of bishops and prelates of the church.[87] Pope Leo X. himself, before his elevation to the papacy, was in the habit of attending its reunions. Archæology, poetry, and music all had a part in them, as well as other sciences, and all these Leo X. sincerely loved. “I have always loved letters,” wrote he to Henry VIII. “This love, innate in me, age has only served to increase; for I have observed that those who cultivate them are heartily attached to the dogmas of the faith, and are the ornaments of the church.” Notwithstanding this love of literature, especially ancient, Leo X. himself realized that too excessive an application to such pursuits might be prejudicial to the spiritual life. Though at Florence he participated in the general admiration for Plato, after his elevation to the Papacy he recommended to the pupils of the Roman College to give themselves up to serious studies, and renounce Platonic philosophy and pagan poetry as tending to injure the soul. So also St. Odo, Abbot of Cluny, was so fond of Virgil that it finally became injurious to his spiritual interests, and, falling asleep one day while reading one of his Eclogues, he saw in a dream a beautiful antique vase full of serpents. He understood the allusion and gave up profane reading.

Footnote 87:

See essay of M. de l’Epinois.

Sannazzaro’s poem, therefore, is only an expression of the tastes of his age. It may also be considered in harmony with those of the primitive church, which adorned the very walls of the Catacombs with pagan symbols, and blazoned them in the mosaics of their churches. There we find Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur, beside David slaying Goliath. The Jordan is represented as a river-god leaning on an antique urn, his head crowned with aquatic plants and his beard dripping with moisture; Cupids flutter among the vines around the form of the Good Shepherd; and Orpheus is made the emblem of our Saviour.

The De Partu Virginis is like one of those beautiful Madonnas so often met with in Italy, not seated in a humble chair at Nazareth, but robed like a queen, occupying a throne covered with mythological subjects and antique devices—an emblem of the church enthroned on the ruins of paganism.

A BIRTH-DAY SONG. TWENTY-ONE.

Bright summer sun, to-day Mount with thy glancing spears, a cohort proud, O’er cliff and peak, and chase each threatening cloud, Each gathering mist, away.

Fair, fragrant summer flowers, Lily and heliotrope and spicy fern, Exhale your sweets from leaf and petaled urn Through all the golden hours.

Thou deep-voiced western wind, The stately arches of the forest fill, Till oak and elm to thy andante thrill As mind replies to mind.

Take up the song and sing, O summer birds! until the joyous strains Ring through the hills, chant in the blooming plains, Gurgle in brook and spring.

And thou, O river deep! Send from the shore thy message calm and plain, As, bearing ship and shallop to the main, Thy mighty currents sweep.

Sing, while the golden gate Swings open, and reveals the thronging hopes, Wingèd and crowned, that crowd the flowery slopes Of Manhood’s first estate.

Yet soft and low! The door Is closing, as ye sing, on Childhood’s meads; The garrulous trump of Youth’s heroic deeds Is hushed for evermore;

And shining shapes, that blaze Like loadstars, with occasion wait to lure The dazzled soul o’er crag and fell and moor From Wisdom’s peaceful ways.

Tell him, O sunshine bright! How clouds of lust and mists of evil thought By Chastity’s white beams are brought to naught Through Virtue’s silent might.

Tell him, ye blossoms sweet, How Charity divine her perfume rare Exhales alike in pure or noxious air, With holy love replete.

O brook and bird and spring! Babble your simple sermon; say, Behold Contentment, better far than gems or gold, Or crown of sceptred king.

Tell him, thou deep-voiced wind, How a brave, earnest spirit may awake Responsive thought, till distant cycles take Their orbits from his mind;

And thou, O river wide! Tell how a steady purpose gathers strength From singleness of aim, until at length On its resistless tide

It bears both great and small With equal, silent, comprehensive love To that great sea whose calm no storm can move, God’s grace o’er-arching all.

So may his spirit clear, Untroubled by the scoff, the sneer, the sting Of clashing creeds, find heaven a real thing, And walk with seraphs here.

Thou great Triune! thy sign Is on his forehead. May he, manful, fight Under thy banner, till upon his sight Fair Paradise shall shine;

Till, crown and palm-branch won, He shall before thee stand without a fear, Wearing the bright and morning star, and hear The Master say, Well done.

JANE’S VOCATION.

“O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum pervenire.”—ST. AUGUSTINE.

She sat upon an enormous sea-washed cliff of granite, in a flood of golden light from the stooping western sun behind her. Beneath her the sea-waves rippled lightly against the cliff. Far out before her the broad expanse of sea extended till it met the sky. But on neither sea nor sky were the girl’s eyes fastened. She was looking steadily across the narrow gulf that separated the high promontory where her home was from the fishing town on the mainland. Behind her was a farm-house with its prosaic surroundings, and a few huts for drying fish were close at hand. Not far beyond these the stage-road ran, and coming over the brow of the promontory was the lumbering stage.

She did not hear the wheels as they went rumbling by, and did not know how closely she was scanned. Next the driver a youth was sitting, whose face bespoke the artistic temperament as plainly as did the portfolio and hastily-traced sketch upon his knee. Like a flash he caught the loveliness of the picture—its glorious framework of nature’s beauties, its central point of that girlish figure in its graceful pose: the upraised head, the hands clasped round the knee as she sat bending slightly forward, the sense conveyed of absorbed, pathetic yearning for something more and higher than the farm life of her home.

“Who lives there?” asked the young man of the driver; and the driver made answer, glancing for very pleasure at the boyish, handsome face, stamped, in spite of its vanity, with the impress of a singularly clean and happy heart:

“Nobody much, mister: old Jake Escott and Marm Escott and Jane. That’s Jane sitting there. She’s their niece, and the best o’ the lot.”

“Jane!” repeated the youth to himself; but to the driver he said: “Do they take boarders there?”

The man chuckled, as if the very idea was absurd.

“Much as they can do to board themselves, I guess. Shiftless set. 'Tan’t so much lack of money, though, as of go-aheadativeness. ’Twould be too much trouble.”

“Think I’d be a trouble?”

The man laughed again. “Don’t know 'bout that. You’re as clever a chap and as taking a chap to talk with as I’ve seen this many a day. You’re a real true, good-hearted gentleman, you be, sir; but you’re city-bred for all that. Reckon you’d want white napkins every meal, and all sorts of finified stuff. Marm Escott couldn’t give you such. 'Cause why? She’s no idea what they are.”

“I’ll try it,” the traveller said, shutting his portfolio decisively and speaking like one who always had his way. “Can’t you stop at the turn—there’s a good fellow—and let me and my traps down?”

“Well, well! You never meant to come here; that’s certain. Where ye bound?”

“Nowhere.” Then, seeing the driver’s puzzled look, “Anywhere,” the youth added merrily. “I’m come to do what I please, and stop where I please, and stay as long as I please. This is the loveliest place I have seen yet, and I must sketch it. Why, surely you have carried passengers before who had no settled destination, but liked to stop where it suited them.”

“Ye—es,” was the doubtful response. “Yes, mister. But never one quite like you. You’re a wide-awake chap and a merry, but you look as dainty as any city lady I ever met.”

The words were evidently taken as a compliment, in whatever way they might have been meant. The youth slung his knapsack over his shoulder, concealing the long name which had puzzled the driver for the whole journey—Van Stuyvesant Van Doorm—leaped lightly down from the coach almost before it stopped, doffed his cap courteously, and with a gay farewell was on his way along a narrow path to the house.

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