The Catholic World, Vol. 26, October, 1877, to March, 1878 (part 3 of 6)

The Catholic World, Vol. 26, October, 1877, to March, 1878 (part 3 of 6)

Father Ramière maintains that this theory is the creation of the commentators on Aristotle and St. Thomas, but does not properly belong to the system of either, and can be refuted by arguments drawn from the works of both these great doctors. This is rather startling and contrary to the prevalent supposition. The Thomist writers, many of whom are men of the most remarkably acute power of analysis and thoroughly conversant with the works of these great masters, honest also and candid withal, have certainly not imputed a theory to Aristotle and St. Thomas which is a pure invention, or without plausible grounds and apparent reasons. Father Ramière gives an explanation which is at least ingenious and merits consideration. In the first place, he argues that the two doctors of peripatetic philosophy did not reason from à priori principles respecting the composition of bodies. They both taught that celestial bodies are composed of what they called materia quinta, which is incorruptible by reason of the inseparability of its form from the matter. The separability of matter and form in earthly bodies, therefore, belongs to them as a peculiar kind of bodies, composed from what were supposed to be the four simple elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The fact that these elements are transformed one into the other in the transmutation of substances led to the conclusion that there was a common substratum underlying all, which remained under different substantial forms. But since chemistry has discovered the really simple bodies which are not susceptible of mutual transmutation, and cannot be resolved into other substances by mechanical or chemical agents, Father Ramière argues that the very principles enunciated by Aristotle and St. Thomas respecting materia quinta require that oxygen, hydrogen, etc., should be placed with it under the same category. Moreover, he maintains that the permanence of what we now know to be simple substances and irresolvable in combination, was really taught under another concept and with different terms by Aristotle and St. Thomas; that is, that certain virtualities were recognized as remaining and exercising an active force in the compound or transformed substance, which is incompatible with the supposition that only nude matter remains, acted upon by a wholly different and entirely new active force. In regard to the human body, in particular, he shows an incompatibility between the explanation of the cause of death which St. Thomas gives and the peripatetic theory. The reason of death given by St. Thomas is that contrary forces are combined in the human body which are dominated by the vital force of the soul only to a limited extent and with a limited duration. When, by the laws of nature, these contrary forces begin to free themselves from the dominating vital force, decay commences, and is continued until they have freed themselves to such an extent that they destroy the aptitude of the body for receiving the mode of being from the soul which is called sensitive life. The soul then necessarily ceases to inform the body, and the two comparts of the human substance or essence are separated. The soul, being a self-subsisting, incorruptible form, an immortal spirit, departs to the sphere of spirits, and the body is dissolved by the force of natural decomposition. Now, according to the peripatetic theory, the soul, being the only substantial form or active force in the body, giving to the nude first matter of the body its first being or physical, corporeal existence, must be itself the active cause of decay and death. This is contrary to the teaching of St. Thomas that the soul gives only life to the body, and, so far from ceasing of itself the vital influx, would continue to exert it for all eternity, and thus make the body immortal, if other and contrary forces did not work within the body to make it incapable of receiving this influx, and thus force the soul to abandon it to itself and to the power of death.

Father Ramière acknowledges that it is difficult to make all the texts of Aristotle and of St. Thomas harmonize with each other, and to bring out a completely distinct and finished theory from their writings. He advances a conjecture, with some plausible appearance of probability, that some texts found in the works of St. Thomas have been interpolated by disciples who were more zealous than honest in their efforts to maintain their own system. The same conjecture has been made heretofore in regard to passages relating to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Be this as it may, we think it is quite sufficient to explain obscurities of any kind which are found in the dogmatic or philosophical system of the Angelic Doctor, that he either had not time or any pressing motive for a thorough investigation and elucidation of the matters in question, or had not the requisite data before him for the deductions and conclusions pertaining to the case. It is more to the purpose to discuss the doctrine of the composition of bodies on its own merits, using all the facts discovered by experiment, and rational argumentation, aided by the light of all previous investigations, both physical and metaphysical. Left to its own intrinsic probability, the peripatetic theory is sustained by a kind of argumentation which seems to be more ingenious than conclusive. Several of its ablest advocates have acknowledged that it is incapable of demonstration. It rests its claim to acceptance chiefly on aliunde considerations. And on the other side there are certain arguments which have not yet, so far as we know, received a satisfactory answer.

Father Ramière advances some of these with his usual subtlety and force, and at the same time with the most courteous moderation and respect toward his opponents.

It is admitted—as it indeed must be, for there is no escape from evident facts—that a chemical re-agent applied to a composite substance like water brings back the component elements in their former proportions. Water gives up its eighty-eight parts of oxygen and its eleven parts of hydrogen. What is the producing cause of these so-called new substantial forms which invariably make their appearance ex nihilo sui? When the soul, which is said to be the only substantial form of the body, leaves it in its nudity as first matter, without first being, quiddity, or quality, and, as it would seem, doomed to annihilation, what is the cause which produces the cadaverous form, that suddenly appears to actuate the matter and give it being as a corpse? Here Father Ramière has made one of his most dexterous logical passes—one which it will require great dialectical skill to parry. The editor of the Scienza Italiana replies thus to the question as to where these forms come from:

“Certain forms do not come to the subject from an extrinsic cause, but spring up within the subject, by educing them (traendole) from the potentiality of the same subject.” Father Ramière desires to be informed “what is the object to which the active verb traendole is referred; what is that which educes these forms from the potentiality of the subject?” If no sufficient cause can be assigned by which substantial forms are educed, the theory becomes untenable.

Father Ramière devotes a considerable part of his treatise to a consideration of the important question, What is the true sense of the proposition that the rational soul is the form of the human body? This proposition, maintained by Aristotle and received by sound scholastic philosophy, has been defined as Catholic doctrine by the Council of Vienne and by Pius IX. Father Ramière refers to Father Palmieri, S.J., the author of a recent philosophical text-book of high repute, who “proves that the Council of Vienne by no means intended to condemn a doctrine maintained at that time and since by perfectly orthodox theologians. The error proscribed by the council is that which ascribes to the human body another vital principle besides the rational soul.” The Catholic doctrine is that the soul is forma corporis, in the sense that it is the life-giving principle of the composite, corporeal, organic structure which constitutes the human body in its physical though incomplete nature, as one compart of the total human composite, or complete human nature. Father Palmieri calls the bodily part a complete substance but an incomplete nature, as likewise the spiritual part, which is the soul. Father Ramière adheres to the common terminology which denominates each part an incomplete substance. As considered in distinction from the soul, it lacks its due complement, the vital principle which makes it a living body and sentient. The soul also, as distinct from the body, lacks the complement of its inferior vital force, which is an eminent kind of sensitive and vegetative principle contained in the same subject to which the attribute of rationality belongs, and giving to the subject—that is, to the soul—an exigency for a body as its essential compart. The soul and body complete each other in the human essence or nature. The body is passive and inert in respect to every vital force and function, without the soul. The soul remains in a merely potential state in respect to its inferior faculties, when separate from the body. In the composite essence, the human nature composed of soul and body, the body stands in the relation of materia to the soul, the soul in the relation of forma to the body. Thus is constituted the human, rational suppositum or persona, and the specific essence and unity of the human being, of man, according to his logical definition as animal rationale. We will let Father Ramière speak for himself, and explain at length in his own language what his own view is on this important topic:

“Between spiritual substance and body there is a complete opposition, and it is consequently absurd to suppose that a body can borrow from a spirit that by which it becomes body. Since the substantial form of a being is that which makes it formally to exist as such, the soul cannot be the substantial form by which a body exists as body, unless it is itself corporeal. It is the same with all forms essentially material, and consequently with all those which belong to the essence of the elementary substances. These forces, not being in the soul, cannot be destroyed when the elements pass into the body;[82] yet they no longer exist in their former state of independence. They are seized upon and controlled by the superior force of the soul, elevated in a certain sort above their natural condition, and employed as instruments of the vivification of the matter of the body. Heretofore these elements formed so many independent unities; henceforth they become fractions of a whole to which the soul must give the specific determination. Their entire force continues to subsist; their being is not destroyed; but, under the domination of a new form, it acquires a new formal existence. It is thus that the soul is the principle of the substantial unity of man. It does not destroy the variety of the elements, but it unites them; it does not suppress completely their mutual opposition, but tempers it so far as to establish a condition of harmony. There is really but one substantial form in man—the reasonable soul, because this soul alone gives to the entire totality of the human being its substantial determination; it alone reduces the diversity of elements to unity. It confers upon the body, by its union with the same, something which is not a mere accident but a new being, the being of humanity, which raises it above all purely corporeal beings, and constitutes it within the generic class of rational substances.

“The modern theory, understood in this sense, is in perfect agreement as to its substance with the peripatetic doctrine, and safe from all the dangerous tendencies imputed to it. There is no just cause for repeating any longer the accusation heretofore made against this theory that it suppresses the substantial unity of bodies, since, as we have shown, so far from destroying this unity it presents it as it subsists in various grades, proportioned to the relative degrees of perfection in substances, much better than the other systems. There is even less foundation for the pretext that the theory in question is in opposition to the definitions of the church regarding the union of soul and body in man. What, in fact, do these definitions affirm? That the soul is the true form of the human body, which it informs and vivifies, not accidentally or mediately, but immediately and essentially. Now, all this is perfectly verified in our theory, which supposes that the body receives its life, its specific nature, its existence as human body, without any interposing medium, from the soul. Moreover, its union with the soul, so far from being regarded as accidental, is shown to be, on the contrary, substantial, in whatever aspect it is considered, whether on the side of the soul or on the side of the body: on the side of the soul, which without this union would be unable to exercise several faculties proceeding from its essence; on the side of the body, which receives from this union the substantial complement of its elements. When, therefore, we examine closely that argument which is the strongest, if not the only, one sustaining the contrary theory,[83] we perceive that it resolves itself into a mere equivocation. The partisans of this theory, who sometimes reproach their adversaries with equivocating in respect to the words ‘substantial and accidental,’ do not perceive that they themselves commit this fault. They confound that which is indispensable to a being that it may exist, with that which is indispensable to it that it may possess the integrity of its nature. Union with the body is not essential to the soul in the former sense, as all acknowledge, but it is certainly not allowable to conclude from this that it is purely accidental to it. We may very justly call substantial, and even essential, all that which is exacted by the nature of anything. Now, union with the body is certainly exacted by the nature of the soul, which differs mainly from pure spirits by this exigency. Nothing could be more contrary to the principles of scholastic philosophy than to regard that property pertaining to the soul which adapts it to be the form of the body as a simple accident; but if this is an essential property, union with the body cannot be considered as purely accidental, even admitting that the body is composed of elements endowed with their proper forms. Let us apply the same reasoning to the elements, which are themselves made in order to unite themselves with other elements, as the soul is made in order to unite itself with the body; and by this simple distinction of the two senses of the word substantial we shall eliminate the doctrinal misunderstanding which makes a division between us.

“How, then, could it happen that this division has been so long continued? It is because the distrust of the defenders of traditional philosophy has been provoked by the presentation of the theory at the present day generally adopted by scientists, as an innovation. This distrust will have no longer any object, and harmony cannot fail to be re-established, from the moment when it shall be recognized that the modern experimental science is in perfect harmony with the principles laid down by Aristotle and accepted by St. Thomas.”

The professor of physics who prepared the Exposé given in Father Ramière’s appendix presents very distinctly and strongly what is the common sentiment, especially of those who are devoted to the study of physical science, in our modern Catholic schools:

“The peripatetic system on the composition of bodies is rejected by the greater number of Catholic philosophers, because this system, considered metaphysically, sustains itself solely on equivocations and the begging of questions (Card. Tolomei), and has no demonstrative force (P. Zigliara); considered psychologically, it gives a handle to materialism; considered in the aspect of the chemical sciences, it is in evident contradiction to their experimental facts; considered historically, it has been, so far as its psychological part is concerned, always combated by the school of Alexander de Halès, St. Bonaventure, Scotus, and the Franciscans; was condemned in the thirteenth century by all the doctors of the English universities, together with a majority of those of the Sorbonne; and in the eighteenth century was commonly repudiated by all the schools, with the exception of the most rigid Thomists.”

There is certainly no chance whatever that this theory will ever regain any considerable sway from the mere weight of authority which belongs to it from the traditions of the past. As Father Ramière justly remarks:

“We must not forget that the present discussion appertains to the purely scientific order, and must consequently be definitively decided not by authority but by reason. So long as the rational arguments which overturn the theory contrary to our own have not been refuted, nothing will be gained by the effort to prove from a literal interpretation of some texts that this theory belongs to St. Thomas. The only interpretation admissible in this case is the rational interpretation, which clears up obscure texts by the perfectly clear principles which the holy doctor loudly proclaimed. It is thus that we explain many difficult passages in the works of the eagle of Hippo; and those who act otherwise, far from proving in this way their respect for him, really inflict an outrage on his memory by putting him in opposition to himself and to the truth. Let us not do a similar wrong to St. Thomas. As he was always attentive to correct himself even to the end of his short career, we can be sure that, if his mortal existence had been prolonged to our day, he would not have failed to clear up that which remained in obscurity in his writings, and to complete, by the aid of new discoveries in science, what was necessarily incomplete in his theories. Let us act in the same manner, and not fear to show ourselves more faithful to the spirit of the doctrine of St. Thomas than to the letter of a certain number of texts found in his writings.”

Father Ramière could not have expected to put an end to the controversy by his short essay, and, in fact, the only immediate result of Dr. Frédault’s larger work and his own briefer piece of argument has been to call forth rejoinders from the Scienza Italiana and the Civiltà Cattolica. Some of the advocates of the peripatetic theory are unquestionably as well versed in the physical sciences as their opponents. Their studies in chemistry and other branches of science have made them dissatisfied with the prevalent modern theories on the constitution of bodies, and they have for this very reason sought for a more philosophical doctrine in the ancient metaphysics. It is not to be supposed that they will yield to anything short of cogent reasoning, or that any agreement in unity of doctrine can be produced, unless some really solid, satisfactory, and conclusive theory is presented with such convincing proof and evidence that it must command general assent. Until this is done there is no choice except to continue the discussion. If it is interminable, then all sides must agree to differ, and in such a case it is quite natural to fall back on the authority of great men who are supposed to have been gifted with extraordinary perspicacity of intellect, and to have seen into things more clearly and deeply than modern men are able to do, perhaps by the aid of supernatural light. If the constitution of bodies is an impenetrable mystery, we must be content to remain in our ignorance, and accept whatever formulas of metaphysical or physical statement seem to us the best expression of the vague and confused notions we possess. We are not quite prepared to accept this situation as inevitable, and it is certain that not only on the European continent, but in England and America also, the reviving interest in metaphysical studies and the necessity of combating materialism will stimulate an effort toward a more perfect evolution of the truth contained in the ancient philosophy by the help of mathematical and experimental science. It may be asked what metaphysics and theology have to do with these matters, which seem to belong to the domain of physics. We reply to this question in the words of Father Ramière:

“The question what is in general the nature of material beings, and what is in particular the nature of man as appertaining by his corporeal part to the material world, does not belong, at least exclusively, to physics; it is also within the domain of philosophy and theology. The special object of physics is the study of the sensible properties of bodies, the observation of the phenomena by which the different forces with which they are endowed manifest themselves, and the determination of the laws which regulate the exercise of these forces. The investigation of the essential properties which enter into the very idea of body and distinguish it from spiritual being belongs to metaphysics. And since, in man, the body, united with the spirit, participates in its destiny; since, in Jesus Christ, the corporeal world has been associated to the divine dignity, theology cannot give us a perfect knowledge of our destiny and our deification by the divine Person who assumed humanity, without availing itself of the aid which is furnished by an exact notion of the nature of bodies.”

It seems to us that the real point of difficulty and of controversy respecting the “nature of bodies” lies deeper than any of the questions proposed by Father Ramière, and that the whole discussion must start from this point in order to be thorough and decisive. It is no solution at all of the question, What is the nature of corporeal being? to tell us that bodies are material substances endowed with determinate forces, or composites of such substances. The drop of water, mechanically divided, gives us only minuter and minuter molecules of water. But since, chemically divided, it gives oxygen and hydrogen in composition with each other to form these minutest molecules, there must be in each of these molecules others of such minute quantity as to elude experiment, which are composed of still smaller distinct molecules of oxygen and hydrogen. One of these molecules of oxygen, considered apart from all other corporeal beings, must be itself constituted by smaller molecules or of some more simple elements. We must come at last to these simple elements, and ask the question, What constitutes the entity and first actuality of these elements? Boscovich and Leibnitz, two of the most original thinkers of modern times, both of them well versed in mathematics as well as eminent in metaphysics, have presented the theory of simple monads, which are dynamic centres radiating in space upon each other the active forces which produce extension, quality, motion, and every kind of material substance with all their specific differences. Father Bayma, in his remarkable work Molecular Mechanics, has presented the hypothesis that these simple elements are each separately endowed with only one force—that is, either the attractive or repulsive. The laws of molecular mechanics have been exposed in this treatise with rigid and complicated mathematical demonstrations. The metaphysical part of this hypothesis has been fully developed, so far as its primary and essential principles are concerned, in the pages of this magazine. The arguments by which this hypothesis is sustained and the contrary ones overturned we have never seen fairly and distinctly answered. Certain objections are made, such as these: that a force is not a being in itself, but needs a substance to support it; that dynamism takes away the reality of matter, that it makes material substance like spiritual substance, that it gives no basis for extension and continuous quantity, etc. We think there is some misunderstanding of terms and concepts in the minds of those who make these objections. We understand in this theory such terms as “active force” to denote not an attribute or product without subject or cause, but a principle from which force proceeds, which is also a passive principle upon which active force terminates. It is a real being, simple, unextended, not a body or a spirit, having position but not quantity, marking by its existence a point in space, the first element of the primary composite body or molecule, distinguishable in respect to its matter and form, but not separable, any more than the centre and circumference of a circle are separable. It is a substance, standing in se et per se, in respect to existence, but expressly created for entering into composition with similar entities, in order to make bodies with the various attributes and accidents, active powers and passive potencies, which experience shows them to possess. It is not a spirit, because it has no capability of consciousness, intelligence, or volition, but is simply determined by its grade of being to act in space by means of motion. It is ens mobile, and the beginning of physical quantity, as the point is the beginning of abstract quantity in geometrical science. As to the difficulty of conceiving how extension arises without a first material continuum to begin with, we think this objection is counteracted by the arguments proving that such a continuum is an absurdity and an impossibility.

The great desideratum in the question of matter is to find the invariable and indestructible element, which remains, and will forever remain, the same amid all transmutations of bodies, the ultimate substance endowed with a perpetual existence in se, and competent from its potency and active power to be the principle of every possible combination and mode of being within the limits of the purely corporeal essence. Such a principle seems to be furnished by the theory of Boscovich and Leibnitz, as corrected and developed by Father Bayma. The simple beings endowed with attractive or repulsive force proceeding from a centre which marks a point in space, and having both a form and a material principle which are naturally inseparable, are capable of existing, each one alone by itself, and absolutely indestructible, except by annihilation. Though utterly useless and inoperative, except as existing in multitude and mutually acting on each other in their chemical and mechanical combinations they furnish the substratum of every kind of matter and form which can be predicated of corporeal being as ens mobile. The primary molecules of the simple bodies formed by the first combinations of simple elements are so firmly bound together that no power of which man can avail himself suffices to separate them, and we may suppose there is no power in nature which can break up their unity. Nor is there any difficulty in supposing that God can make bodies of any magnitude or composite perfection which are likewise incorruptible, in accordance with the ancient conception of materia quinta, or celestial, incorruptible bodies. The reasoning by which this dynamic hypothesis is sustained and contrary theories refuted seems to be extremely probable, and even, in certain parts, demonstrative, from its premises and data. If these include all which must be included, and nothing pertaining to the essence and integrity of the matter of demonstration is left out, the hypothesis is sufficient to account for all which must be accounted for, and by its simplicity recommends itself to the mind as proposing enough, and no more than enough, for a distinct notion of the nature of body and its specific difference from soul and spirit. Just here, it seems to us, comes in the need for more full explanation and evolution of the theory, and a more minute discussion between its advocates and those who advocate the theories of the rigid peripatetic system or the system favored by Father Ramière. We would like to see a more complete proof given that all which can be predicated of material substance, as such, can be referred to its nature as ens mobile, and accounted for by the two primitive forces of attraction and repulsion.

Especially when we consider the phenomena of organized, living bodies, vegetable and animal, the most important questions arise, demanding from each one of the different philosophical schools the answers which they are able to furnish, and an exposition of the way in which they seek to harmonize this particular portion of their respective systems with the first principles of philosophy, of physics, and of theology. The notions of potential matter and substantial form assume here a new import and present difficulties of the first magnitude, the solution of which in one way or another introduces most considerable modifications into the metaphysics and the theology of each different party in the controversy.

What is the principle of vegetable life and reproduction? If all the facts and phenomena of vegetable life can be explained by the laws of molecular mechanics and chemistry, the need for a distinct, simple form, vital principle, or vegetable soul, is removed; otherwise the hypothesis fails to meet the exigency of the case, and the reasoning of the peripatetic philosophers remains, in this respect, unanswered.

The question of the animal soul stands by itself, and is more important. Molecular mechanics and chemical combinations cannot produce a sentient subject or account for the sensible cognition which animals possess. There is certainly in the animal a distinct form giving to animal nature a potency and a power not reducible to attraction and repulsion between molecules, not a modification of mobility and motion. The ingenious scholastic theory gives us a formula which answers very well as a verbal statement of the difference between the irrational and the rational soul, between the brute and man. According to this theory, the animal soul is not a substance, is not capable of existing in se, depends on the body and is destroyed by its death, is not immediately created, but is educed, ex nihilo sui, from the potentiality of matter by the physical agencies and laws of generation. What is startling and puzzling about this theory is that it makes an organized, material body exercise sensible cognition. The soul is a mere substantial form, higher than the aqueous or igneous or cadaverous form, but of the same genus. It is educed from the potentiality of matter, and therefore matter is in potency to the sentient faculty, as it is in potency to have quantity, figure, color, and weight. Second causes suffice to evolve from its potency this new form of being in which it can see, hear, feel, imagine and remember, simulate many of the processes and actions of rational beings, enjoy and suffer, recognize friends and enemies, invent stratagems, play tricks, exercise courage, fidelity, fortitude, and constancy in affection, and show forth all those remarkable phenomena which make the animal, in one point of view, the greatest marvel of creation. If the animal soul is not a distinct substance, immediately created and having existence in se, the peripatetic theory, pure and simple, with all its mysteriousness, is preferable to any other, and its failure to give demonstration and satisfy the ingenium curiosum of many searchers into the secrets of nature is a necessary consequence of the impenetrable mystery which shrouds the essence of material being.

If the animal soul is a substance, we must admit a grade of being between the corporeal and the rational natures, an inferior kind of spirit, similar to the human soul in respect to that which makes it fit to be the animating principle of an organic body, destitute of intelligence and incapable of activity independent of its bodily organs, yet, as a substance in itself and a simple being, not destructible by corruption. It is a maxim in philosophy that there is no destruction of anything once created by annihilation. It continues to exist, therefore, after the death of its bodily compart. If the anima belluina is imperishable, what becomes of it when the animal dies? Even the human spirit, though capable by its intellectual faculties of living a separate life, has an intrinsic exigency for a body which it can animate; much more, then, the anima belluina, which is a principle of animal life and activity, and nothing more. There is nothing superfluous or useless in nature, yet this kind of soul, continuing to exist without a body, is a useless thing. Moreover, although the more perfect animals manifest qualities which can easily be taken to indicate the presence of a vital principle which is a distinct substance, what shall we say of those which can be divided into sections, each of which continues to live; and of those which approach so near to the line of demarcation between animal and vegetable life that the difference between the two seems to reach a vanishing-point, and they shade into each other by nearly imperceptible gradations?

This is enough to show how serious is the task of reconciling philosophical parties, and settling the disputes about the constitution of bodies, matter and form, and all their cognate topics, and making a perfect synthesis of physics and metaphysics. Mathematics come in also, with the consideration of quantity, space, infinites and infinitesimals, demanding a place in a really complete synthetical exposition of fundamental and universal philosophy. There is room enough for a great genius who shall be a continuator of the work of St. Thomas. If such a man should arise, he would need to have all the intellectual gifts and all the knowledge of a great metaphysician, a great mathematician, and a great physicist, combined under one form. There has been but one Aristotle and one St. Thomas, and we cannot tell whether or no any other man like them, or even equal to Suarez, will be granted to the science of philosophy. It seems that we need some man of that kind to deal with the obscurities and ambiguities, the new aspects and new relations of scholastic metaphysics, and with the peculiar mental attitude and habits of thought and expression belonging to our own time. The English-speaking part of the educated world certainly needs the service of some really original thinker, as well as learned and acute expositor, to make all that is certain or highly probable in the Thomistic philosophy thoroughly intelligible, and to accomplish whatever is requisite and possible in advancing this philosophy toward a desirable completion. Able and learned expositors of the ancient philosophy are not lacking in Italy and Germany, but it seems to us that some higher degree of original power of thought and expression than is found even in the most eminent of these authors is desirable for the masterly handling of certain questions of present controversy.

Father Ramière considers that the time has come to hope for and attempt the construction of “the majestic temple of Catholic science, whose base is laid in the infallible dogmas of faith and the immovable principles of reason, whose stories are erected by the co-operating labor of observation and reasoning, whose circuit embraces the entire expanse of human knowledge, in which facts and laws, experimental and abstract sciences, the truths of the natural and those of the supernatural order, complete, strengthen, and embellish each other by their mutual agreement.” That “complete synthesis, to which all the particular sciences are attached as branches of a tree to the trunk,” he considers to have been fifty years ago apparently impossible, though the conception of it may have been latent in some minds, but at present to be really within the power of combined and rightly-directed intellectual effort to achieve.

So far as essentials are concerned, we are convinced that the learned and pious Jesuit is not without a solid ground for his enthusiastic prognostication of the advancement of Catholic science. In respect to the special topics of which we have been writing in the present article, we are not very sanguine of a speedy adjustment of the controversies which divide Catholic philosophers and others, whether physicists or metaphysicians, who investigate and argue upon the nature of material substance. There is yet a good deal of discussion and controversy to be gone through, and we confess we are in doubt how far it will ever terminate in a conclusive and final result. There are limitations to human knowledge which are not precisely determined. The space of the unknowable lies around our restricted sphere of the known and the knowable. Happily, it is not necessary for the substantial solidity and practical utility of rational metaphysics and ethics, much less for theological certainty in the matters of real moment, that all the interesting and abstruse questions of controversy between different schools should be decided. Apparent “antinomies of reason” may furnish a pretext to the sceptical and captious, but they prove only the limitation of intellect and reason, our imperfect and inadequate conceptions of the terms and premises which we reason about and from which we draw conclusions, and the defectiveness of language as the medium of thought. The certainties of reason, of history and experience, of the judgments of the human conscience, of divine revelation, of Catholic authority, of the common sense of mankind, are amply sufficient for refuting every kind of infidel or heretical error which cloaks itself under a scientific pretext, and for proving and defending all that belongs to sacred dogma in faith or morals, or is in proximate connection with it. Unity and harmony in these things need not be disturbed by differences and discussions respecting all manner of scientific questions. We understand that this is what Father Ramière principally aims at, and he himself gives a good example of free and earnest controversial discussion conducted in the irenical spirit. We have always found his writings luminous, interesting, and profitable. We trust that he and his confrères will continue their labors in the same direction. We shall look also with great interest for the arguments by which the learned writers for the Civiltà Cattolica and Scienza Italiana and other advocates of strict Thomism maintain their own opinions. The Sovereign Pontiff, in his recent letter to the rector of the University of Lille, has declared that he desires all learned Catholics “should with one accord, although they follow different systems, turn all their energies to put down materialism and the other errors of our age.” This shows that, in the judgment of the Holy Father, agreement in these matters of actual difference is not a necessary condition precedent to combined and successful polemics against materialism and the other dangerous errors of our time. The Holy Father also exhorts “all whom it may concern” not to “scatter their forces by disputing with one another on questions which are matters of free opinion.” We understand this to mean that discussions should not degenerate into disputes of that kind which is hostile to the spirit of unity and charity, and not that discussion should be altogether abandoned. For, in another paragraph, he exhorts learned Catholics to “keep within the bounds of moderation and observe the laws of Christian charity while they discuss or attack systems in nowise condemned by the Apostolic See.” This may suffice for the present, and we trust that our readers who hold metaphysical articles in aversion will tolerate this one, in consideration of the long time they have been spared a similar trial of their patience.

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TOTA PULCHRA.[84]

Can God so woo us, nor, of all our race, Have formed one creature for his perfect rest? Must the Dove moan for an inviolate nest, Nor find it ev’n in thee, O “full of grace”— In thee, his Spouse? Or could the Word debase His Godhead’s pureness when he fill’d thy breast, Tho’ Moses treasured up, at his behest, The typical manna in a golden[85] vase? Who teach that sin had ever aught in thee, Utter a thought the demons may not share— Not tho’ they prompt it in their fell despair: For these, while sullenly hating the decree That shaped thee forth Immaculate, “All Fair,” Adore it still—and must eternally.

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THE MYSTERY OF THE OLD ORGAN.

In one of the least-visited churches of Ghent stands the most curious and characteristic thing in it—its organ: a contrast to the defaced wood-work and mouldering Renaissance plaster, to the unused and deserted chests in the vestry and the few benches in the choir. The paintings, the removable carvings, even some of the monuments, the choir-stalls and the stained-glass windows, disappeared long ago; the very name by which the church goes in the popular speech is ill-omened and mysterious. Old women cross themselves and shake their heads as they whisper the name of the Apostate’s church, and tradition tells the rare inquirer that this was a private chapel, the property of a once renowned family, noble and brave, but fierce and fanatical, well known in the town annals for centuries, and only struck from the roll of citizens and householders at the end of the great Flemish struggle of the sixteenth century, when the Protestants left Spanish ground for ever and found a new country in Holland. The disappearance of all valuable objects in the deserted church is ascribed—and perhaps truly—to many combining causes. Some were destroyed during the occasional image-breaking raids that distinguished the wars of the Reformation; some were sold or carried off by the family whose property they were, some confiscated or stolen by the triumphant Spanish government, or by no less indignant relations of the family, who, remaining behind, were anxious to prove by deeds their freedom from complicity with the apostate and fugitive Stromwaels. Such were the fragments of information to be picked up by any one in whom the simple people of the neighborhood had confidence; but whether every fragment was historical is another question. The church was in a lonely quarter of the town, the least altered by progress, where stood only small shops supplying the local wants, which in such populations and such places vary very little from those of five or six generations ago. A few spacious, comfortable houses showed among more cramped and less ornamented ones, but the aspect of all, if rather dead-alive, was very picturesque. The church stands in a narrow street and far from the house of its patrons, now used as a storehouse by the few wholesale dealers of this quarter, who each have one floor. In the attics live a few workmen and one or two nondescript, eccentric, and inoffensive persons, supposed to be pensioners of one of the dealers. One of these is a bookworm and supposed to know much of local legends and history. Being very poor, he frequents only the public library and such private ones as are accessible gratis to students; and when he wants to preserve information which he cannot purchase in the shape of printed books, he copies it assiduously on miscellaneous paper, recruited from old ledgers, bank and register books, large parcels, etc., besides the little he buys or has been given to him. His notes thus present a very curious appearance, which he sometimes complacently connects with the possible researches and comments of scholars of two hundred years hence. One of his many little sheaves of manuscript came into my hands not long ago while I was poking about the neighborhood, looking for anything out of the way, and I was induced to go and see him. He was very shabby and commonplace, and a good deal smeared with snuff; neither his appearance nor his home was in keeping with the outward look of the houses, and there were no artistically-dilapidated surroundings to fill out the romantic sketch which my imagination had made before I was introduced to him. Travellers seldom mention their disappointments, and always make the most of their agreeable surprises, so that stay-at-home people are often deluded into a belief that every one on the European continent is more or less like a Dresden figure or an actor in a mediæval play. My friend, however substantial the entertainment might be which his manuscript and his narrative gave me, was decidedly a failure personally, but none the less was he to me a very important and, in a degree, even an interesting vehicle of information. A free translation of his manuscript is all that I can give; as to his absorbed manner in speaking, his evident interest in the past, and his self-forgetfulness when he got upon the subject of the stories he had dug out or pieced together from ancient papers, and his own impressions concerning whatever was uncertain—these it is impossible to convey to others. He asked me first whether I had examined the organ in the chapel. I had done so, and found its case a very beautiful piece of carving; the keys were kept speckless, and the front contained a remarkable group of figures, carved in wood and painted, representing our Lord and the twelve apostles. The instrument stood in a high tribune looking into the choir, and reached by a separate staircase, narrow and winding. A carved railing gave this tribune something of the look of a balcony, but it scarcely projected forward into the chapel; the carved front of the organ and the gilt pipes were visible from below, and a tapestry curtain hung from an iron rod on each side of the instrument, concealing the back entrance into the tribune. The peculiarity about this organ was that it was all but dumb, and had never given a satisfactory sound since its maker had bid it be silent. It emitted some doleful sounds, if struck, but for all musical purposes it was useless. The situation it was in, and the defects in its interior, besides a third reason still unforgotten by the popular mind, accounted for its having been left when the rest of the church treasures were carried off. As a relic of antiquity it was valuable, exhibiting as it does the state of mechanical art at the beginning of the sixteenth century; but it was still more interesting as the tangible proof of a story connected with its maker, the organist of the church in 1505. This my old friend of the attic had written out in the queer-looking manuscript I have mentioned.

* * * * *

Nicholas Verkloep was born a servant of the Stromwaels, and brought up in their household in the very house where I read the story. His parents kept the outer gate, and the boy passed through the usual stages of service common to lads of his position, now a favorite, now a butt, according to the humor of his master and each member of the family, but all the spare time at his command was devoted to music. He haunted the churches, and begged his way into choirs and libraries, learnt all the church music he could pick up by his ear, the hints of choristers, and the few explanations in the manuscript chant-books of the time, and at last begged to be allowed to blow the organ-bellows at the family chapel. Meanwhile, he joined in the services, and drew on himself the notice of the old organist, who grew so fond and proud of him that he taught him all he knew, taught him to play the organ, and asked the Count Stromwael to allow him to bring the boy up as his successor. Nicholas was fifteen when this request was granted, and henceforth he nearly lived in the chapel. Not only the music of the organ fascinated him; he grew absorbed in studying its mechanism, and would crouch for hours within the instrument, getting his eyes used to the darkness, and learning by heart the “feel” of each piece. This developed all sorts of oddities in him: he grew absent-minded, and often unconsciously moved his fingers as if at work. Soon after he began to make models of various parts of an organ, indifferently the inside and the outside; for carving seemed as natural to him as mechanical dissection. He had not the same conservative feeling about things as is common among our present musicians, and the fact that the Stromwael instrument was a hundred and fifty years old, and had gone through many repairs as time went on and new improvements succeeded each other, did not prevent him from feeling certain that he could make a much better organ in a very short time. His plans were manifold; the subject grew and grew in his mind; the additional stops which he added in imagination disgusted him with the music he could draw from the instrument at present; and while every one in the town was excited about the wonderful young player who bade fair to be a prodigy, he himself was impatiently bewailing his drawbacks.

He told no one but his old master of his hopes and his expectations, and this confidant was certainly the safest he could have; for the old musician was a contented and patient man, used to his old ways, firm in his old traditions, not caring to travel out of his old grooves, and rather resentful of the idea that what had been good music and perfect mechanism in his time should not be good enough to satisfy the fastidious taste of a young beginner. Yet he was fond of his pupil, who used to soothe him by the saying that each generation had a new door to open and a new room to explore in the house of knowledge, and that he ought not to grudge him his appointed advance, any more than Moses grudged Josue his succession to the leadership. In truth, the old man was secretly proud of his clever scholar, and, perhaps unconsciously to himself, expected even more of him than the youth did of himself. The two lived together in the house of their patron, but had little intercourse with the rest of the mixed household, more gay and more ignorant than themselves, and my snuffy old friend nursed the belief that he had discovered the room which was home to these two. It was a small attic chamber looking towards the church, and in a chest in it had been found remnants of wood, wire, and leather, as well as some strange-looking models and bits of carving, with rough sketches on strips of parchment, all of which I had seen in their case in the museum at the Town-hall. On the walls were some doggerel Latin verses and some rather indistinct marks, which, nevertheless, the most learned musician in the town had pronounced to be, most likely, a sort of musical short-hand, understood only by its author. All this I also saw, and, having no opposite theory to uphold, was glad to believe remains of Nicholas.

Now, says the manuscript, there were found notes and jottings besides plans and sketches, and it seems plain from these that the young organist wished eagerly to make a new organ, on which no one but himself should work; indeed, this idea grew to be a monomania, and he devoted to it all the energy and interest which a man generally spends on wife, children, friends, home, profession, and advancement. But the count was an obstinate conservative, and scouted the idea of replacing his time-honored family organ by a new one, the work of a crazy youth, even though he were the best player and composer that ever breathed. The old organist and his pupil had many anxious talks on the subject. In those days it was not easy to transfer your domicile and allegiance to a patron better suited to you; family bondage still held good in practical matters; the Stromwaels had given him all the home and education he had, and, in fact, he belonged to them. Besides, the count was as proud of his human possession as he was of his ancient organ, and set as much store by the reputation of the marvellous young musician whom he owned as he did by that of his best-bred falcon, dog, or horse. He would not have given up any of these; they were all ornaments to his name, and it was fitting that he should not be beneath or behind any of his townsmen. He was not old enough to give room to hope for a change of circumstances through his death, and Nicholas became every day more discontented at his prospects. He was more reserved, morose, and morbid than ever, and as he grew odder the more was his music admired. Strangers from neighboring towns came to hear him play; the towns-people begged him to teach their sons; women looked up at the gallery where he sat with his back to them, with eyes that told of as ready an inclination to love the player as to admire the music; wealthy foreigners sent him presents of money or jewels, after the fashion of the times; but nothing seemed to elate, or even interest, him.

One day, while he was sitting at the old organ, poring over his plans for a new one, and contrasting the existing instrument with the possible one, a man lifted the curtain which then, as now, covered the entrance to the tribune. He was a stranger to Nicholas, and seemed elderly; he was very quietly dressed in black, and wore a sword. The young man looked up in bewilderment, but rose and welcomed the unknown, who sat down with great composure by his side on the wide carved bench in front of the organ. He spoke Flemish, but Nicholas thought with a foreign accent, which, however, he could not localize.

“You will forgive my curiosity,” he said, “in coming here. I have often heard you play from below, and to-day, passing by the open door, I came into the chapel in hopes of hearing something, but met your little blower lying asleep on the altar steps, woke him up, made inquiries, and decided to come up.”

“You are very welcome,” said Nicholas in a low voice, politely but not cordially, and speaking with that resignation which well-bred but much tried misanthropes have but too much occasion to practise in all times and companies.

“I want to speak of something else than mere conventionalities,” said the stranger abruptly, “and I will begin by telling you that I quite understand and appreciate your distaste to general fellowship with your kind; I see no reason why I should be an exception, so you need not resort to courteous commonplaces. I have heard what is your aim, and only seek you because I think I may be of some use to you.”

Nicholas looked up, at first eagerly, then a shadow came over his face. Any allusion to future success fired him even against his will, but experience had always hitherto gone the opposite way. Taking the stranger’s permission literally, he said nothing, but looked at him inquiringly. The other went on after a pause:

“I think I can promise you the certainty, within ten years, of accomplishing your wish and seeing your organ, if not in this place, at least in some other quite as advantageous. I have oddities and fixed ideas myself, and understand them in others. In short, it rests mainly with you whether you like to accept my proposal or not.”

“There are conditions, then?” asked Nicholas, whom the belief of his time with regard to compacts with the devil imbued quite as strongly as if he had not been a genius, and who, in consequence, immediately jumped to the conclusion that this visit was not wholly natural.

“Yes,” said the stranger in his metallic voice, unimpassioned but compelling attention by some quality indefinable to Nicholas’ mind, yet surely present to his perception, “I always hedge in business with conditions; otherwise I should be a mere Haroun-al-Raschid, an experimenter in benevolence, which, though an amiable character, is a weak one. I hate weakness and I hate foolishness. I judged you to be neither fool nor weakling, and so sought you out. The conditions are very simple: I want you to bind yourself to my secret service for ten years, and in return I promise you the fulfilment of your wish at the end of that time. In the meanwhile your fame will increase, your powers as a musician will be unrivalled; you will play and compose so as to rouse the jealousy of all your profession; you will be in danger, but will never be struck down; you will have full time for work and study, yet you must always be ready to leave everything instantly when I call upon you; you will be my right hand, but no one will suspect it; but if you once fail in your allegiance to me during these ten years, your object will be frustrated at the end of that time.”

“But,” said Nicholas, who had listened, growing more fascinated as the stranger spoke, and by his eagerness and play of features guiding unconsciously the latter’s fast-increasing promises—“but what power have you to bring such things about? Count Stromwael is a great man, besides being obstinate and perverse; how can you dispose of his property, and even his will?”

“And how,” quickly retorted the stranger with a cold smile, “can you be so imprudent as to speak thus unguardedly of your master’s defects to one whom you saw to-day for the first time, and whose name, position, and motives are unknown to you? Do you know that you put yourself in my power by these words? But I will partly answer your question. I know something of Count Stromwael, and what I know gives me the right to offer you what I do; and as I happen to want your services—they will never conflict with your outward allegiance to your patron—I make you the only proposal, as an equivalent, for which you care. If you cared for the common things—women, money, position—you would not be the person I want; such vassals can be bought by the cart-load, in every station in life, from the Countess of Flanders or the first lord of her household down to the ragged beggars or the sleek hypocrites who crowd the city. I want you, my fancy has chosen you, and I ask you will you buy success at the price of ten years of your life?”

“But why,” persisted the eager but uneasy Nicholas, “only ten years? Why not ask for my whole life?”

The stranger laughed oddly. “And your future life too?” he said. “Yes, I see what you are thinking of: that I want your soul. I will not deny your imputation; you flatter me by identifying me with one whose power is as dread as you have been taught to believe the devil’s to be, but I am quite truthful in saying that I do not crave more than a promise of ten years’ faithful and blind service. You may, if you can, redeem the sacrifice by a long after-life—I only ask ten years; at your age it is not much to give.”

“And if I should die before the ten years are over?”

The stranger raised his eyebrows, but without opening his eyes perceptibly wider.

“You insist on continuing the parallel?” he asked. “I only said ten years of life; if you die you escape me, but you lose your own chance. What should I want with a dead man? The loss would be as much mine as yours.”

“If you can guarantee, as you said, that I should be in danger but should not be struck down, perhaps you can promise me that I shall not die till our contract is fulfilled on both sides?”

“My dear friend, one would need to be deathless one’s self to make such a promise. Even a doctor could only promise life provided such and such circumstances were certain.”

“If you can dispose of Count Stromwael’s will and property,” said Nicholas doggedly, “you can ensure me ten years’ life.”

“Is your life dearer to you than your success, then?”

“No; but the latter depends on the former, and if you must hedge in business by conditions, I must be sure that I do not give you in advance all you want without being sure of my reward at the end.”

“I should not have expected so much foresight in you; I respect you for it. I will see that you have this assurance, but how do I know whether you will believe in it? You see you are so much shrewder than ordinary enthusiasts that I may be taking a spy or a critic into my service.”

“I have never thought about business or guarantees before, because I care for nothing but the success of my organ, and only that would have made me eager to bind you to your promise,” said Nicholas, still uneasily; “but since you only ask ten years’ service, I think I may safely say yes.”

The stranger smiled again, as oddly as before, and drew out a roll of parchment from a little bag. “According to tradition, you should sign this with your blood,” he said, “but I shall be quite content if you sign it with common ink. Here is a horn and a pen; only write your name. But first read the bond.”

Nicholas looked suspiciously at the stranger, who calmly handed him the paper; the latter’s face showed neither interest nor triumph. The deed was very simply worded: “I, Nicholas Verkloep, promise to owe unfailing and unquestioning obedience in all things to Marcus Lemoinne for the space of ten years from this day and hour, in return for the success of my organ at the end of that time, and for all the help he may give me in the interval.” The date was already filled in, being the day on which the above conversation took place, and the hour was marked two hours after noon. Nicholas glanced at the clock behind him in the chapel; the hands pointed to ten minutes to that hour. The stranger followed his glance, quietly rose from the bench, and turning his back upon him, knelt down on the narrow board fixed for this purpose to the front of the tribune.

Nicholas quickly turned things over in his mind: as to his silence about it when the promise was signed he had decided; as to his fulfilment of his obligations to the letter he was as loyally certain; as to the individual whom this man either was or represented he had very little doubt. Very few in his time would have thought otherwise; perhaps few would have hesitated so much after having made up their minds not to ask the advice of any one either before or after the contract was made. Nicholas was only an average Christian, and had no strong feelings except on the subject of his art; everything was in favor of his giving ten years’ life for the success of his scheme. As the clock struck the hour the stranger rose, touched his shoulder, and said, “Well?”

Nicholas, with something like a start, took the pen and signed his name as quickly as he could, whereupon the other also wrote in a fair and scholarly hand these words: “I, Marcus Lemoinne, promise to ensure the success of Nicholas Verkloep’s organ at the end of ten years, in return for his obedience to me during that time.”

No commonplaces passed at parting, and Nicholas went home soon after. His old master noticed that he was a little more excited than usual, and began to make plans and preparations with more energy, but he was used to these phases of mind. The young man (he was now twenty-three) procured beautiful and costly wood for carving, besides ivory, paints, and other materials, and set to work on a complete model. Now began the oddest experiences of his life: his mind seemed doubled, for he was conscious of a never-ceasing expectation, an alertness, and a watchfulness hitherto unknown to him. In the streets, in church, in bed at night, he was always looking for Lemoinne or ready to obey his summons, yet his attention, when he bestowed it on his work, was not disturbed or lessened by this parallel current of thought. His mind grew stronger, brighter, quicker, more ingenious; his fanatical devotion to his art increased daily, and with it his powers, until his fame grew to be just such as the stranger had foretold. This stimulated him further, and he made unheard-of progress, so that his old friend and teacher was half-crazy with joy and pride. The count sent for him to play in the hall before his guests on a small organ of no great power or value, and Nicholas drew from it such sounds as the great men of the profession could not draw from the most magnificent church instruments. That they were jealous of him he knew, but he feared no jealousy, as he courted no admiration. He refused repeatedly to take advantage of his reputation and increase his fortune by travelling to the various art-loving cities of the Netherlands and of Italy, or even by performing in public on great occasions, so that the crowds of his persistent admirers had to content themselves with hearing him at his own old organ in the Stromwael chapel. Even the popular preachers of the day were envious of him. Meanwhile, he worked first at the model, then at the separate pieces of his future organ. The count had given no permission, nor hinted at any, and Lemoinne had made no call on his time, but his belief in the efficacy of the bond never flagged for a moment. It did not occur to him to wonder why he never heard the man’s name mentioned as among those who, whether merchants, artists, or statesmen, had public or secret power; his unspoken suspicion of his identity prevented all such ideas, but it did strike him as odd that for ten months after the signing of the contract nothing was required of him. He felt morbidly that he did not belong to himself, and knew that, do what he would, a secret influence sat within, master of his heart and will, master even of his dreams, and, he feared, of his art also. Was it himself that he put forth in his compositions? When the ten years were ended he would be able to tell, but it was a long time to look forward to. Yet during that time his fame would have been made, and if his power then suddenly deserted him and his suspicions came to be confirmed, he could easily retire on his former laurels and compose no more. Retire at thirty-three? Well, there was the monastery; many men had made a second career, more creditable even than the first, by devoting their worldly gifts, their wealth, and their fame to religious purposes when circumstances made the world distasteful to them at an earlier period than usual. If his suspicions should be true, an after-life of atonement would be fitting, and it would give him time for studies which he longed to undertake, but had no leisure or opportunity for at present. The spiritual element counted for nothing in his calculations; there were many doors still closed in his nature. As he wandered in fancy, his fingers worked and produced beautiful or weird things. The face of Lemoinne, so constantly present to his mind, often came out in wood under his touch, and always, when finished, gave him a start of surprise; for, surely, that was not the expression he remembered? And yet, in carving the likeness, he must have had the recollection before him? A year after the interview in the chapel his old teacher the organist died, and the first strange thing that he had ever said to his pupil he said on his death-bed.

“My son,” he began, as he lay with his hand in that of Nicholas, “there is one thing I feel I must say to you before I go; it is my duty, and young men sometimes forget it. With you it is more dangerous than with most. Be your own master; do not lose the ownership of yourself. Men who do generally commit crime, and, if the slavery be to a woman, they often do base, mean things. I have sometimes feared that you were losing the mastery of yourself, and yet at other times I saw you absorbed in what has been your only idol for twelve years or more.”

“There is no woman that shares that idolatry,” answered Nicholas evasively, starting at the old man’s anxious looks and awakened insight.

“Well,” said the dying man, “I do not grudge you a wife, but I fear any one, man or woman, whose influence over you is not entirely supported and controlled by reason. In God’s name, Nicholas, and as a dying man, I beseech you, if you are in any toils, break through them as quickly as you can.”

“My dear master,” said his pupil, “when you are in heaven pray that I may be guided aright, for I shall have lost the only guide on earth whose help or advice was of use to me.”

“That is no answer, Nicholas,” said the old man reproachfully and wearily; “but remember what I said.”

“Yes, I will remember it,” said the other in an altered tone, “and, if I can, I will heed it.”

After the old man’s death Nicholas led a very lonely life, but his increasing labors at his organ cheered him and occupied his time. His fame kept at its high pitch, and the jealousy of his brother artists was well known.

Fourteen months after his first interview with Lemoinne the latter came again, this time to his home (possibly the attic before described). Nicholas told him how surprised he had been at hearing nothing from him for so long.

“One does not use one’s best and rarest tools often,” said the other with his indescribable smile, “though the highest price paid for them is none the more begrudged on that account; and, again, the finest instruments are used to do what seems the least important work. You know how a glass-cutter uses a diamond? Now, all I want you to do is to ride to a certain place and deliver this letter; you will find the horse ready saddled at St. Martin’s Gate; you have twelve hours to do it in, and by daybreak you will find the same man ready to take the horse at the same place from which you start. The fleetest government messenger would take sixteen hours; but I know the horse and his powers; of his rider I know enough to make me trust him equally.”

The implied trust flattered Nicholas, who took the letter, and, seeing the direction, started a little, but said: “If you say it can be done, it can, but the distance would take a common rider nearer twenty hours than sixteen. Shall I go at once?”

“Yes, and remember your trust goes no further than the delivery of this package to whoever opens the door of that house to you.”

It would take too long to describe the night ride, or even the state of mind in which Nicholas found himself while careering along at a headlong speed towards his goal. This was the first service he had performed for his strange master—an easy and safe one apparently, though secret; the man’s fascination of manner or voice—which was it?—had evidently not lessened since his last appearance. Nothing special occurred; he gave the letter to a commonplace looking person at the door of an ordinary, rather shabby house, and returned by dawn. As to curiosity concerning his errand, it struck him as odd that he should feel none; yet he had never been of a gossipy turn of mind, and these things were, after all, only details in the scheme. This business of Lemoinne’s was probably connected with politics, about which he cared nothing. He did not see his patron again for months, and his work progressed wonderfully.

The next figure which bore the man’s likeness was that of a physician, pouring a liquid from one vial into another, and the expression was that of absorbed attention. The organ-case was to be ornamented with figures representing various saints, the patrons of music, of the Stromwaels, of the chapel, and of the city; then figures typifying the various city guilds; then nine figures emblematic of the traditional nine choirs of angels; but a space was left in the centre, just over the key-board, for the crowning masterpiece. A rose-tree hedge was to run round the instrument, and the pedals were each to be carved so as to represent the seven deadly sins, which, by being trodden under foot, contribute to make the music of the soul before God. Fantastic ideas and odd devices were constantly springing up in his brain and being realized beneath his touch, and in these he encouraged himself to indulge. In one corner of the case, however, was to stand a beautiful, dignified, venerable figure, the glorified likeness of his old master, with no corresponding figure opposite, and robed like a prophet, holding a tablet on which in letters of gold were to be carved in Latin these words: “Be master of thyself.”

His life as a solitary artist and mechanic was a monotonous one to record; even his few tests of obedience to Lemoinne were neither romantic nor terrible. Once he was sent in the disguise of a page to a court entertainment, with orders to follow and observe a high official of the state (who afterwards was proved a traitor and put to death accordingly); another time he was instructed to detain for half an hour a professor of one of the great universities, by which delay the man lost an appointment he much coveted; and another time he was sent to a young man of great position and wealth, but an orphan, to recommend a servant to him. From this, however, sprang some other circumstances worth recording. The young man, Count Brederode, took a violent fancy to him, visited him at his home, entered into his hopes and plans, and begged him to be a friend and brother to him. Nicholas felt drawn to the count, but reminded him of the difference between their stations, and only agreed so far as circumstances would allow. This young man was his very opposite—bright, garrulous, sociable. He always had a love affair on hand, and always confided it to Nicholas, whose words on the subject were never, however, very encouraging. He wasted his money in a way that distressed his prudent friend, and his time in a thousand pursuits for which he had no better excuse than that “gentlemen generally did so and so.” The best-employed part of his day was that which he sometimes spent watching Nicholas at work. At last one day he said suddenly:

“Do you know I am to marry Count Stromwael’s favorite niece, whom he brought up as a sister with his own only daughter? And upon this occasion I am going to ask him a favor, which I am sure he cannot refuse: to let you put up your organ in place of his, which I will take for my chapel in the country.”

Nicholas stared at him in silence. Was this a roundabout fulfilment of Lemoinne’s promise, or a wild, boyish freak, likely to result in nothing?

“Your organ is sufficiently far advanced to put up and play on, is it not?”

“It will be in six months.”

“Then six months hence you shall transfer your workshop to the chapel tribune,” said Brederode confidently.

Nicholas said nothing, but the other was used to that. The famous musician grew more silent every day; things got complicated in his mind, and he was always puzzling himself. His brain was clear only for his work; at all other times he walked in a dream of expectation, conjecture, and dread. Each day the seemingly light burden weighed more upon him; the horror of being entangled in conspiracies of which he was ignorant, and concerned in wrongs which he could neither prevent nor reconcile to himself, haunted him; and yet in actual facts there was nothing to complain of, nothing even to describe. It seemed incomprehensible to him that Lemoinne should have made so solemn an appeal and promise for so little reward, and should have used his power so sparingly. The very blandness of the passing years made him fear some awful test towards the last. Meanwhile, Brederode’s generous, boyish friendship cheered and soothed him. But a year after he first knew him, and two months after Count Stromwael had yielded to his nephew-in-law’s vehement pleading for the Verkloep organ, Nicholas, at work in the chapel, saw him enter with an unusually serious face. The young man began to make dark confidences on political subjects, which Nicholas instinctively repelled, and, without knowing why, he said:

“I entreat you, Count Brederode, do not make me the repository of plans and intentions that may end dangerously for you. I wish to know nothing of anything which is likely to make the state rake up all your habits and intimacies, and use them as the Philistines did Delilah.”

“I would sooner trust you than my own wife,” laughed the young man, “and no one will suspect such a maniac as you are, you know!”

“If you insist upon it,” said Nicholas sadly, “let me at least solemnly swear to you, by my hope of salvation, that nothing shall make me betray you in the slightest thing.”

“I would trust you without an oath,” cried Brederode.

“Then you are not of the stuff of which conspirators are made,” said Nicholas, “and I wish you would retire from a position unsuited to you. You have no interest even in it.”

“None but the fun of secrecy and excitement—except this,” he added more seriously: “that having once promised to give others the shield of my name and the support of my money, I am bound in honor not to run away.”

“True, but break with them honorably and frankly.”

“I cannot.”

“You will not?”

“No, it is not that; there are other games almost as exciting, but my wife’s brother is involved, and I must stand by him. Let us treat it only as an escapade; I want to tell you about it.”

“I repeat my oath, then, and pray Heaven to strike me deaf, dumb, and palsied before I have anything to do in this to your disadvantage.”

“You make it so serious that it loses its fun. But....” And Brederode went on to explain a scheme which the spirit of the times and its prejudices alone made dangerous, but which, if frustrated and discovered, surely entailed capital punishment. Nicholas listened moodily, striving to abstract his mind, endeavoring not to take in his friend’s talk, and all the while feeling a miserable consciousness that, however it might come about, he was nearing one of the tests of his hateful bondage. The day passed, and he still felt uneasy; each step on the stairs frightened him; he could hardly work. At night Lemoinne came to see him. Few words passed; Lemoinne bade him in the same cool, metallic voice, indifferent yet compelling attention, denounce Brederode and his fellow conspirators. He pleaded his oath.

“No oath that conflicts with your promise is worth anything.”

“But he is my friend, and his wife the niece of my patron.”

“No harm shall come to you through denouncing him; your name will be unknown. You shall appear only as an agent—my agent—and not even Brederode himself shall have the chance of upbraiding you.”

“But, since you know the whole affair, why not act yourself?”

“I do not know the whole, but you do, and I mean you to tell me and write it down; I will sign it alone. I am known and have power in many places, but it is useful to have instruments; I have bought mine, and only wish to use what I purchased. Sit down and write.” Nicholas stood sullen and silent. “Do you fancy, because your organ is partly built and placed, that no accident may happen to it? I can do more than you think; you weigh an act with which no one but I shall be acquainted against the possible destruction of your favorite, the fall of your ambition, the collapse of your whole life.”

“No one can put it to me more forcibly than I have done to myself,” said Nicholas moodily; “but, unluckily for me, I have a conscience left.”

“Forget it for twenty-four hours.”

“You do not ask me to forget it, but to disregard it, to gag it. I know what I lose in breaking my bond, and I believe in your power sufficiently to be sure that even my friend would not have opportunity to rebuke me in life.”

“Why do you talk about it?” interrupted Lemoinne with the cold smile peculiar to him. “To discuss a thing, and weigh pros and cons, is to yield; you do not reason against what you have made up your mind to refuse.”

Nicholas gazed at the man in horror. Who was he to go thus mercilessly to the heart of the question, to see his hidden thoughts, to interpret the secret of all the uneasiness he had felt ever since his friend had spoken those light but fatal words? Who? A master stronger than himself; one whom it was little use to resist now, no doubt, since he had not had the fortitude to resist him at first. It ended in his yielding, but not without the most terrible self-contempt; self-reproach was nothing to it. He wrote what he knew; as he wrote it all came back to him, much as he had honestly tried not to hear or understand the details. Lemoinne alone signed the paper, and bade him take it to a certain address before morning.

“If you change your mind or try to deceive me, I shall know it,” he said coldly as he left, “and all the difference will be that you will lose your hopes, as well as Brederode his life.”

Nicholas did as he was bidden, and from that day the little peace he had had before fled. The day of the execution came, and he could not resist going to see his friend pay the penalty of his treachery. His tongue was parched and his eyes bloodshot; he skulked behind people in the crowd, and wore his cap as low as he could over his forehead; but nothing availed him, and when the axe fell he felt as if his own soul had been under it instead of the head of his friend. Feverishly and recklessly, all but despairingly, he returned to his work, but though his brain and hands had not lost their cunning, the impressions of that day clouded everything else in his mind, and he had no heart for anything. Two years sped on, and Nicholas Verkloep, with his glowing reputation, was more of an enigma than ever; but it would be impossible to describe the many phases of his mental delirium tremens during that time. The organ was near completion, and Count Stromwael was now as proud of it as the maker. Lemoinne visited Nicholas once more before the end, and this time at the place where the contract was first made. It was the same hour, too. He began by congratulating him on his success so far, then examined the carvings, and smiled as he noticed his own face repeated many times.

“And here is Brederode’s,” he said, as he pointed to the figure personifying the Choir of Thrones. “What made you put him in?”

“Because, as you well know, his face is always with me,” said Nicholas, emboldened by his very complicity with his terrible master. “It was a relief to me to make the image a sort of reality, to give tangible expression to my remorse.”

“Yes; I see you have made the carvings a sort of history of your mind: I see the venerable prophet and the device he bears; the rose-hedge with the prominent and unnaturally-multiplied thorns; the haunting imps of dreams, your own face and mine, and so on. It is only a year and a few months now to the time when our contract ends, and hitherto we have kept it well. I think it likely we shall not meet again till the day is over. Nothing but silence now will be your burden. If you speak of or hint at anything of our transactions, remember the bond is cancelled; but, of course, after the expiration of the ten years you are free to publish the whole.”

He smiled scornfully, and, with another expression of admiration as to the work, left the tribune. It was now that Nicholas put in just over the key-board the groups of our Saviour and the twelve apostles (Judas, with the bag of money, bore Lemoinne’s likeness), but, instead of being, as they are at present, immovable, the figures went in and out by a spring hidden among the stops, so that at the Consecration they could be brought forward, and after the Communion return to the interior of the organ, in the same way as some of the famous figures of the clock in Strassburg Cathedral. The day of the public opening of the completed organ came, the tenth anniversary of the day of the contract, and the reader may imagine all the paraphernalia of a great mediæval fête, half-religious and half-secular.

Lemoinne sat among the guests at Count Stromwael’s banquet; it was the first time Nicholas had met him in public. The strange man seemed utterly unconscious that they had ever met before, and his eyes met the organist’s fully as he complimented him in set phrases and handed him a golden gift with a small roll of parchment attached. Stromwael laughed as he remarked:

“Is that the title-deed to a mortgaged estate, or a share in one of your ships?” Nicholas clutched it in silence and tried to smile; the talk around him seemed to point to his strange master being a banker, but he held to his first suspicions. As soon as he was alone he looked hastily at the hateful bond and thrust it into the fire. It seemed odd to him that he did not yet feel free; he had expected the release to be instantaneous. Weeks passed, and still the same old watchfulness and uneasiness went on. Brederode’s face came to him more constantly; all his faculties were centred in horrible recollections and vague and still more horrible expectations. All Flanders raved about the wonderful organ, and requests for similar ones made under his directions and supervision poured in from distant parts. He vowed to himself never to touch such a thing again, or even give directions for it; it was to his fancy an accursed thing, associated with all the horror and despair of his life. He refused all offers; and this grew to be even more of a mania with him than the making of the instrument had been before. Now that his dream had been fulfilled, he only longed to die; his servitude was still unbroken, though the letter of the bond was now a dead letter; he felt himself miserably fettered, haunted, paralyzed. To the rather imperious demand of Count Stromwael’s cousin, himself a powerful personage, for an organ with the same group of the twelve apostles, he returned a flat denial, and neither threats nor promises could shake him. At last the power of the two nobles combined threw him into prison; they made sure of reducing him to obedience by violence and temporary ill-treatment. The prison was what all mediæval dungeons were—damp, filthy, unhealthy, dark. His food was bread and water, and a very scanty measure of both. For a month he was treated as a criminal, but nothing made any impression on the moody, prematurely-aged man. He had made up his mind that only death would make him free, only death would make him able to explain and excuse himself to his dead friend. He cared for no bodily tortures; for ten years he had suffered a mental hell. His friends and his patrons came alternately to coax and tempt or to threaten and abuse him; he would not yield.

Neither wealth, marriage, nor a patent of nobility tempted him; neither the wheel, the rack, nor the block frightened him. He grew weaker and weaker. His eyes saw Lemoinne and Brederode all over the narrow cell; the one seemed like a fiend, and the other always like a corpse, with the head half-severed, yet still conscious with a kind of ghastly life. Physicians examined him and confidently pronounced him sane, and priests visited him and pronounced him certainly not possessed, but both agreed that something unusually terrible must be preying on his mind. He never told what he saw or felt, and answered all questions evasively. At last Stromwael, furious at his vassal’s obstinacy, threatened to put his eyes out and prevent him from ever taking pleasure in work again. He only said:

“You cannot take away my sight, even if you put out my eyes; would to God you could!”

Before this last measure was resorted to he received a visit from Lemoinne, who, in the calm tone of a cynic and a man of the world, begged him to reconsider his decision.

“Nothing could tempt me!” said Nicholas. “Not even you could compel me; it is not in the bond, and I am free.”

“Of course,” said the other, smiling. “I only ask you to yield for your own good. Why should you object?”

“Because the thing is accursed; it has wrecked my life, and I will have no more to do with it,” said Nicholas violently.

“But you are free now?”

“Am I?” said Nicholas, with savage meaning.

“You do me too much honor,” said Lemoinne sarcastically, “in believing my power to be supernatural. Shall I tell you who I am, and what was both my object and the secret of my influence?”

“You can tell what lies you like.”

“I dare say your superstition is greater than my falsehood,” said the man with a smile; “and if I told you, you would be convinced against your will and still remain of the same opinion. Well, you are free now, and show your freedom by throwing away the very gift you sold yourself to obtain.”

“If I could undo the past ten years,” said Nicholas, “I would give up not my organ only, but my art. But as it is, I shall never be free while I live, and I will do nothing that may save or lengthen my horrible life—a mockery, indeed, of freedom!”

“If that is your last decision, I will say no more,” said Lemoinne; “but remember, though our pact is over, I am still your friend, and, should you wish anything between this and death which your jailers would deny you, send me word.”

Nicholas looked at him in surprise and suspicion.

“Yes, they know me here by the same name as you do, and I can generally find means to do what I wish. It is not the first time I have been here or made a like offer to a condemned man.”

“I believe you,” said Nicholas shortly, and his visitor left him. Two days elapsed before the threat was carried into execution, but the prisoner, full of his own trouble, hardly dwelt upon the coming trial. He prayed wildly that the red-hot iron which was to take away his bodily sight would blot out his phantom companions from his mental vision; the horrors of his disturbed brain appalled him more than any earthly punishment, and his half-description or hints of it to one person who visited him constantly was such that the latter compassionately got leave for one of his jailers to sleep with him in his dungeon. The day of the horribly unskilful torture came, and with common iron rods, heated red-hot, the famous artist’s eyes were put out. He writhed and moaned, but the bodily pain was only a faint image of the agony of his mind. Was it madness? Was it possession? Were all the learned men wrong, and he alone right, in thinking that he carried hell within his brain? There was no peace from the gnawing remorse of his betrayal of friendship; no assurance that his repentance was of avail comforted him; no obstinate affirmations could make him feel that the unholy fetters of his bond were in truth broken. It was not his blindness that was killing him; it was his mania. He felt life ebbing, and was fiercely glad, yet at times furious that, with such gifts as his, he should go prematurely to the grave. A chaos of schemes floated through his brain and maddened him yet more: he saw a long array of the works he might have accomplished before he died—Masses, antiphons, fugues; the improvements in the organ-stops and the internal machinery of the instrument; a school he might have founded—if he had been content to rely upon his own industry and the slow path of trust in Providence. He had sold his birthright, and what was the farce of a ten years’ contract, when he knew that at this present moment even the wreck that was left of him was not his own? “If I am still his, at least he shall help me once more,” he thought suddenly, as Lemoinne’s offer occurred to his mind. “I will end this suspense at once.” He asked the man who brought him his meals to tell Lemoinne that he wanted him; and as he began the message he watched with fear and curiosity to see how it would affect the bearer of it. Strange! nothing but a common assent; evidently the request was not a novel one. Lemoinne came that very evening, and Nicholas asked him for a sharp knife. He produced his own, which Nicholas felt all over and took, saying:

“When you hear of my playing on my organ for the last time, come to the tribune and claim your knife. I shall make the request, and feel sure they will grant it.”

“What do you mean to do with the knife?”

“Nothing which you would disapprove; but since you say I am free, let me prove it by not answering this question.”

“I do not press you,” said Lemoinne with his usual icy smile. Nicholas felt the look he could not see, and his very heart seemed to tighten and writhe within him. He had guessed truly; when he asked Count Stromwael to allow him to play once more on the organ before he died—for he felt that he should not live long, he said—the request was quickly granted. His persecutors fancied that he would be less on his guard now, and that somehow, while he played, they could surprise the secret which they wanted to discover. He was taken to the chapel and seated before his instrument. Stromwael, his cousin, and Lemoinne were there, besides other less important persons. All watched eagerly. After half an hour’s playing, as divine as the player’s mind was storm-driven and despairing, Nicholas asked:

“Are the apostles out or in?”

“In,” was the answer.

He pressed a spring and the group came slowly out—our Lord’s figure from the centre, and those of six apostles from each side. Then, with a quick and deft touch, he cut something, and a snapping sound was heard within; his fingers moved again, the knife gleamed, and a wailing sound came from the notes on which his left arm now leaned; then, turning round with a smile of triumph that looked ghastly on the blank face and mutilated eye-sockets, he said:

“I am free now. I am ready to die.”

Lemoinne quickly took up the knife that Nicholas dropped, and smiled as if another character-play had come to an end and he had solved another riddle; Stromwael burst out into wild and furious threats of purposeless revenge. Nicholas sat unmoved and said:

“This organ will be my only monument, and, if a man’s curse can follow another, may mine follow whoever shall attempt to remove or to repair my organ.”

To this day the instrument stands a witness to the tradition of its maker’s fate; the group is immovable, and the few sounds the notes produce are worse than dumbness. Nicholas died two months after, in prison, his mind more and more delirious each day. It is said that, when Lemoinne heard of his death, he remarked to one of his associates:

“That man was the most perfect tool I ever knew. If I had sworn to him that I was a banker, a merchant, a usurer, a spy—an unscrupulous eccentric, whose one mania was the possession of secret power, and whose conscience was dead to any obstacle—he would still have believed in his own theory. But I own I overshot the mark and drove him too far.”

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THE GERMAN ELEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.

The social, moral, and political influence of the German-born and German-descended population of the United States upon their fellow-citizens has already been perceptible; that this influence will vastly increase in the future is highly probable. We may state here one of the many reasons for this belief. The intellectual and political leaders of the Germans in America have hitherto mainly confined their public utterances, in the press or on the platform, to the German language. The German newspapers are very numerous; their circulation is large; they are written for the most part with much ability; their treatment of social and political questions is often marked by a breadth of view and a soundness of logic too frequently wanting in many of their English contemporaries. Their influence upon the minds of their readers is also greater than that wielded by the majority of our newspapers printed in the English language. We have heard this fact attributed to the superior honesty with which the German press is conducted; but upon this delicate ground we shall not enter. Our point at present is that German thought and opinion, as expressed through the German periodical press, influence for the most part only the German population. Few of us who are not Germans read a German journal; what the German leaders in politics, morality, and literature are saying, day after day, is for the most part wholly unknown to the rest of us. Occasionally an American editor translates a leading article from a German journal and gives it to his readers; still more frequently he avails himself of the ideas and the arguments of his German contemporaries and reproduces them as his own.

In the next generation this state of things will be modified; more Americans will read German literature, and more Germans, or German-Americans, will write in English journals, speak in English at public conventions, and sit in our legislative assemblies. The barrier of language, which has hitherto tended to separate Germans from the rest of us to so great an extent, will gradually yield and disappear. The German language will be learned by increasing numbers of our non-German citizens; the common use of the German language by the German-Americans will be dropped, and the English tongue adopted in its stead, not only in business affairs, but in politics, literature, religion, and social intercourse. The English language has made many conquests, but in America it has only to hold its own. It is the language of the country, of the legislature, of the courts, of the markets and exchanges, and of society. Our German citizens must acquire it, or enter handicapped into all the relations of life.

The ability with which the German journals here are conducted does not prevent nearly the whole of them which are not avowedly Catholic from being inspired by an antagonism to religion. The genius of the German mind has little sympathy with socialism or communism, and the theories of socialism and communism find expression among our German citizens only through the writings or speeches of a few insignificant and uninfluential men in New York and some of our other large cities. But the German who is not a Catholic is most often an atheist; and he differs from the French atheist in wishing his wife and children to be atheists also. The non-Catholic German press faithfully represents this phase of the German mind; and it sneers at religion with the same pertinacity and often with more skill than is shown in a like direction by too many of our English-written newspapers.

The total immigration into the United States from the close of the War of Independence to the end of 1876 was 9,726,455 souls. The records of the government do not furnish an ethnological classification of all these; it is only since 1847 that this classification has been made. But every one knows that the bulk of our immigrants have come from Ireland and Germany. At the port of New York alone the total number of Irish immigrants from 1847 up to September 1 of the present year was 2,009,447; of German immigrants 2,345,486; of all others 1,265,240. An estimated classification of those arriving before 1847, added to the above figures, gives 2,463,598 Irish, 2,622,556 German, and 1,542,311 of other nationalities. The present Secretary of the Interior is the only American citizen of German birth who has ever held a cabinet appointment; we believe that he is the only citizen of German birth who has ever sat in the Senate. But among the senators at the last session of the Forty-fourth Congress there were seven who were either of foreign birth or the sons of foreigners; and in the lower House of the same assembly there appears to have been but one German to twelve naturalized citizens of other nationalities. The Secretary of the Interior owes the prominent political position which he fills less to his statesmanlike and philosophical acquirements than to his command of the English language and to his grace and power as a public speaker. No doubt there are among our German citizens many who are his equals in learning and political wisdom, but who are almost wholly unknown outside the German-speaking community, for the reason that they confine themselves, on the platform or in the press, to the use of the German language. The coming generation of Americans of German descent will not subject themselves to this disadvantage; and thus the influence of German thought will be widened and deepened.

Upon this portion of our subject we may as well reproduce in substance, although not with literal exactness, the observations made to us by a German ecclesiastic, a member of one of the German religious orders which are working here with so much zeal and success. In his opinion the German element now in the United States will ere long be greatly increased by a revival of immigration. Immigration from Germany may not again attain the vast proportions which it reached in 1852–53–54, nor during the seven memorable years 1866–1872, but it will still be very large. All other things being equal, the proportion of Catholics immigrating from Germany will be greater in the future than in the past. In looking at the future of the country we should reckon that the German element here will for many years to come steadily and rapidly increase. But it is not probable that, after the passing away of the present generation, our German population will so tenaciously retain its distinctive national or ethnological features. It will become absorbed in, amalgamated with, the rest of the community, but through this very absorption and amalgamation it will leaven the whole mass for good or for evil; and most probably the good will preponderate.

In our present German population, especially the younger portion of it, there is a very perceptible disposition to be a little ashamed of their German origin. This feeling, which has long existed, received a check during and immediately after the triumph of Germany over France in 1870 and the erection of the German Empire. But it has now revived and prevails with more force than before. Our German citizens feel that the golden apples of victory have turned to ashes in the grasp of the conquerors. The milliards wrung from France have sunk into the ground or vanished in the air, and Germany is poorer than before the war—much poorer than France, which Prince Bismarck imagined had been crushed into nothingness. All the glory that Germany won by her conquest of France in the field has been eclipsed by the peaceful victory of France—a victory the effects of which were made manifest at our International Exhibition last year. More serious still than this, in the opinion of the learned and acute ecclesiastic whom we are quoting, is the dislike and contempt with which the iniquitous, unnecessary, and tyrannical policy of the German government toward the church is regarded not only by Catholic Germans in America, but by those of their non-Catholic compatriots here who are not swayed by sectarian hatred of the church. This policy is justly regarded as at once an evidence of weakness and a prolific source of future trouble, and among the non-Catholic German-Americans the remark is common that “between the Red-coats and the Black-coats—the Communists and the Catholics—the empire is in great danger of destruction.” For these reasons, and other slighter ones, our German fellow-citizens are becoming less and less disposed to boast of their nationality, and more and more inclined to Americanize themselves and their children. The “Watch on the Rhine” gives place to “Yankee Doodle”; the suggestive inquiry as to the precise locality and boundaries of the Faderland is not so popular as “Hail Columbia.” Certain considerations of a utilitarian nature aid powerfully in leading our German citizens in the same direction. Their common sense enables them to see that their own advancement in life, and the prosperity and happiness of their children, materially depend upon their thorough Americanization—their complete identification with the rest of the community in which they live. The first step towards this end is the acquirement and use of the English language, and in this the children often outstrip the wishes of their parents. In the German-American schools, secular as well as religious, the study of the English language is compulsory, and necessarily so. The children appear to have a natural affinity for the English tongue; they acquire its use rapidly and soon begin to speak it in preference to their native language. It is not uncommon to meet with families where the parents address the children in German and the children reply in English. The truth is that the English language as now spoken, largely Teutonic in its composition and structure, but enriched and softened by Celtic, Latin, and Greek accretions, more easily adapts itself to the expression of the necessities, the emotions, and the ideas of the age. An amusing illustration of this self-asserting power of the English language was afforded by the experience of a village in Indiana, on the Ohio River, which was settled a few years ago by an exclusively German colony consisting of about three hundred families. Nothing but German was at first spoken in the houses, but in a very brief space of time the language in the streets was found to be English, and ere long that became the prevailing dialect of the place, appearing, as one of the residents said, to have sprung up and taken root there just as the weeds in the fields.

We should not omit to mention, however, a fact which to a very large degree tends to show that the Americanization of our German citizens is not so rapid as it might be. Intermarriages between Germans, or descendants of Germans, and Americans of other descent are not regarded with favor by the older Germans of the present generation, and such marriages are of rare occurrence. This is to be deplored, especially for the sake of the non-German party. In all the domestic virtues the Germans are richly endowed. The influence of the mother in the family is supreme within certain limits, and this influence is almost always exerted for good. The German husband does not regard his wife as a pretty plaything, a fragile and expensive doll to be dressed in gay raiment and paraded for the gratification of her own and his vanity. On the contrary, the German husband, if at fault at all in this respect, looks upon his wife too much in the light not merely of a helpmeet, but of a servant in whose zeal, industry, and faithfulness he can repose the utmost confidence. Americans too often make useless idols of their wives; the German husband may seem to regard his spouse from too utilitarian a point of view. In the German household, here as in the Fatherland, there is not, as there is too often in American homes, one bread-winner and one or more spenders. The wife, whenever it is needful or expedient, not only manages the domestic affairs of the family with economy, prudence, and good sense, but takes a full share of the burden of providing its income. If one journeys through those portions of the West where the Germans are largely engaged in agricultural pursuits, he will see the wife and daughters working in the fields alongside of the husband and the brothers; in the towns, while the husband is pursuing his trade or laboring in the streets, the wife is keeping a shop or a beer-saloon, or otherwise earning her full share of the family income, and aiding her husband to lay up the nest-eggs of their future fortune. The will of the wife is most frequently supreme in all domestic affairs, and even in matters of business; and this, too, without the husband feeling himself at all “hen-pecked.” His wife is his equal; he shares with her his amusements as well as his toils. Nothing is more pleasant than the spectacle of German families, on fête days or on summer evenings, taking their pleasure together in the beer-gardens. The presence of the women and children does not lessen the gayety of the men; but it prevents them from excess and compels propriety of conversation and deportment. With these habits, and with the gift of living well and wholesomely, on plain but abundant food, without wastefulness, the Germans prosper, and they acquire competences sooner and more generally than other classes. When wealth comes, their frugal and sensible habits of life are not laid aside for extravagant display, nor is the influence and sway of the mother weakened or lessened. The daughters, even of the wealthiest and most cultured German families, are taught how to become good and useful wives to poor men, and are thus prepared for reverses of fortune. By some of our American women these virtues of their German sisters may be regarded with contempt and dislike; but many American men, we are inclined to think, would lead happier lives and escape much pecuniary trouble, if they won for themselves wives from among the daughters of their German neighbors. There are but few such marriages now. The German parents dislike them; and there is, moreover, a little ignorant prejudice on the American side. The next generation or two, we trust, will be wiser.

The limits of our space and the scope of our article forbid us to do more than merely glance at a branch of our subject which is in itself worthy of a separate essay—the influence exerted by our German fellow-citizens upon the rest of us by their works in music and in the fine arts. Here the barrier of language does not exist; the genius of music and of art is universal. A certain degree of cultivation of the ear and eye is necessary, of course; but, this being attained, the music of a German composer, the painting, the sculpture, the architecture, or the decoration of a German artist, is appreciated, admired, and imitated as well by those ignorant of his language as by those of his own nationality. There is reason to believe that American taste in music and in art owes vastly more to German influence than is generally supposed or conceded. Perhaps the strongest evidences of this would result from a critical examination of the extent to which German ideas have modified, enlarged, beautified, and spiritualized our architecture, our dramatic, domestic, and ecclesiastical music, and all those phases of our daily life wherein the fine arts play a part.

Among German-American architects may be mentioned G. F. Himpler, a student at Berlin and Paris, and a thoroughly-educated master of his art—the builder of fine churches in St. Louis, Detroit, Sandusky, Elizabeth, Rome (New York), Atchison, and other places; among historical painters, Leutz—now dead, but whose works at Washington and elsewhere have given him a national fame—Lamprecht and Duvenech (the latter a native of this country), Biermann and Lange; among decorative painters, Thien, Ertle, and Muer; among sculptors and designers, Schroeder, Allard, and Kloster—the latter a very distinguished young artist; among German singers, as well known here as in Germany, Wachtel, Hainamns, Lichtmay, and Tuska; among actors. Seebach, Janauschek, Taneruscheck, Lina Meyer, and Witt.

But we can only hint at these things, and hasten on to remark, in passing, that our German citizens, even more generally and zealously here than in Germany, seek to provide for and to secure the education of their children. “The first thing that a colony of German emigrants settling in America seeks to establish is the school,” said to us a high authority. “If they are Catholics, or even zealous Lutherans, the church is built simultaneously with the school; but in every case the school must be set up, and the children must attend it at whatever cost to the parents.”

Thus far we have written of our German population as a whole. We now turn our attention to that portion of it which belongs to ourselves—i.e., the German Catholics of the United States. United with us by the bond of faith, their welfare is especially dear to us, and in their spiritual and material progress, prosperity, and happiness we have a deep and abiding interest.

Prior to 1845 the German emigration to the United States had been numerically insignificant, and consisted chiefly of the peasant class. The revolution of 1848 had the effect not only of greatly increasing this emigration but of materially changing its character. An official report recently made by Dr. Engel, Director of the Bureau of Statistics at Berlin, states that the number of Germans who emigrated to the United States from 1845 to 1876, both years inclusive, was 2,685,430. Dr. Engel remarks that a very large proportion of these emigrants (considerably more than 1,000,000 of them) were “strong men”; there were few old or infirm people among them; those of them who were not adult males in the vigor of their manhood were chiefly young and middle-aged women and children. A goodly proportion of these emigrants must now be living among us; we know by the census of 1870 that our German-born population even then numbered 1,690,410. The German race is hardy and prolific; its women are good mothers; their thrift, industry, and economical habits enable them to live in comfort upon modest resources; without being teetotalers, they are seldom intemperate. The German-born and German-descended population of the United States at present—including in the latter class only those whose parents on both sides or on one side or the other were natives of Germany, but who were themselves born here—is believed to be about 5,500,000 souls. The great bulk of this population is in the Central, Western, and Northwestern States; the six States of New York, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Missouri contain nearly two-thirds of the whole number.[86]

The German Empire as at present constituted contained at the latest census (1875) 42,723,242 people. Of these not quite one-third are Catholics. Had the immigration from the states which now form the German Empire borne this proportion, we should have in the United States a German Catholic population of about 1,800,000 souls. But the immigration was largely from the Protestant states, or from those in which the Protestants were in the majority. We should be satisfied, and more than satisfied, when we learn that the German Catholics in the United States, according to the latest and most accurate computation, numbered 1,237,563 souls. It is a very large number—large enough to establish the fact that the Catholic Germans arriving here have not lost their faith, but have preserved and guarded it for themselves and their children. These 1,237,563 German Catholics in America are not mythical or hypothetical persons; in making up the numeration care was taken to include only those who were known as practical Catholics, frequenters of the sacraments, careful observers of their duties as Catholic parents or Catholic children. In this connection we may add some figures for which we are indebted to the courtesy of a German priest and statistician, and on the accuracy of which our readers may depend. First, however, let us state, upon the best authority, that the church in America loses very few of her German children. We were extremely gratified with the unanimous testimony which rewarded our inquiries on this matter. It very rarely occurs that a young German Catholic of either sex strays or is stolen from the fold. Neither the false philosophy of the infidel or Protestant German schools, nor the seductions and ridicule of their infidel or Protestant American neighbors, lure them from the faith. We have observed in our own visits to the German churches in New York, especially at the early Masses, the large proportion of male adult worshippers. “Our old people, of course, never leave us,” said a learned German priest, “and our young people rarely, very rarely, stray away. They are faithful in their duties, and they appear to love their religion with all their hearts. When they marry and have children, they look after them as Catholic parents should do. Our parochial schools are well attended; our higher schools and academies are prosperous. Our teaching orders, of men and women, have their hands full of work, and they are almost without exception well supported. One of the bishops in a Western diocese, the greater part of whose flock are Germans, has the happiness of knowing that all the children of his people are in attendance either in his parochial schools or in other schools of which the teachers are Catholics.”

Our 1,237,563 German Catholics in America are ministered to in spiritual things by 1,373 German priests. They have 930 church edifices, while there are 173 other congregations of them regularly visited by priests, but as yet without church buildings. The whole number of Catholic priests in the United States, according to the Catholic Directory for this year, is 5,297, of churches 5,292, and of chapels and stations 2,768. Thus it will be seen that the German priests number a little more than one-fourth of our American ecclesiastical army. There is a German priest for every 900 German Catholics. How faithfully they discharge their duties, and how zealously the people, on their part, assist their pastors, may be estimated by the fact that the baptisms by these German priests last year numbered 71,077—an average of more than one each week for each priest; and that the number of children in the German parochial schools was 137,322—an average of almost exactly 100 children for each priest. The following table will show with approximate exactness the number of German Catholic priests and German Catholic laymen in the various States or dioceses:

Priests. Laymen.

New York 149 134,100

Baltimore 103 92,700

Pennsylvania 75 67,500

Ohio 200 180,000

Indiana 132 118,800

Michigan 33 29,700

Kentucky 43 38,700

Wisconsin 163 146,700

Kansas 13 11,700

Illinois 135 121,500

Missouri 80 72,000

Minnesota 74 69,600

Louisiana 38 34,200

Other 135 120,363 localities

—— ————

1,373 1,237,563

The education of the juvenile portion of this large army of German-American Catholics is partly in the hands of the teaching orders of the church, male and female; partly in the hands of the parish priests; and partly confided to private instructors. The “German Sisters of Notre Dame,” for example, 923 in number, in 79 congregations, have charge of the parochial schools and instruct 25,557 children. They have also 15 academies, in which 1,375 pupils are receiving higher education; and 11 orphan asylums with 1,400 children. Another branch of the same sisters have their houses in 17 congregations, and in these 63 teaching sisters are instructing 9,000 children; they have also 3 academies with 700 pupils. The German Franciscan Sisters, in 19 congregations, have 53 teaching sisters educating 5,700 children; and one academy. The Sisters of the Precious Blood, in 11 congregations, employ 17 of their number in teaching 900 children. The German Dominican Sisters, whose houses are in New York, Williamsburg, and Racine, Wisconsin; and the Sisters of Christian Charity, at Melrose and elsewhere, are among the many religious orders chiefly engaged in educational work among the German Catholics. Prince Bismarck has done us a very good turn without wishing it. The expulsion of the religious orders of men and women caused by the persecution of the church in Germany compelled these servants of God to seek new homes. Many of these orders already had houses in this country; driven from Germany, they found not merely a refuge but a warm welcome and abundant work with their brothers and sisters here. Others of them, not previously established in this country, and being robbed by the paternal government of Prussia of all their property, arrived here in poverty; but they were joyfully received and speedily supplied with means for commencing their work in these new and inviting fields. The German branch of the Christian Brothers—“Christliche Schulbrüder”—has experienced a marvellous growth, and is accomplishing splendid results in the primary and higher education of the German Catholic youth.[87]

A visit to a German Catholic church can scarcely fail to be interesting and profitable to an American Catholic. He will see much that is edifying and highly pleasing. The congregations at the early Masses on week-days—we speak now only of what we have ourselves observed in New York—are generally large and are composed of a fair share of men; at all the Masses on Sundays the attendance is still more numerous. On days of obligation, other than Sundays, these churches are thronged to their utmost capacity; at the nine o’clock Mass on last Corpus Christi we saw the great Church of the Redemptorists, on Third Street, packed from the altar rails to the doors, and even the spacious vestibule filled with kneeling worshippers. On this occasion, as on many others, nearly or quite one-half of the congregation were men—a fact which we emphasize, as it contradicts the mistaken idea that the faith is losing its hold upon our men and is mainly cherished only by women. There are thirteen German Catholic churches in this city. The good sense, thrift, and wise management of the Germans have borne their natural fruit in their churches and religious houses as well as elsewhere. For example, attached to each of the two Capuchin churches is a large, handsome, and substantial convent for the use of the fathers and for their schools. We were astonished at the extent, the good arrangement, and the solidity of these edifices, and our astonishment was not lessened when we learned that they had both been erected within the last ten years.

It would be well, we think, if the relations between our German Catholics and the rest of us were made more close and intimate. The bond of faith, we know, unites us in all essential things; but it would be well for us to come nearer together in every way. Our German co-religionists are worthy of all esteem. They are already strong in numbers. They will constantly became stronger. The Pall Mall Gazette recently contained a most interesting summary of a report made by Vice-Consul Kruge upon the subject of German emigration. We quote the following portion of this summary:

“Emigration from Germany, particularly to the United States, increased steadily after the memorable year 1848, and assumed very large proportions immediately after the chances of a war between Austria and Prussia in 1852 and 1853. The largest number of emigrants of any year left in summer, 1854, or after the declaration of the Crimean war—the United States alone receiving 215,009 German immigrants in that year. There appears a considerable falling off from 1858 to 1864, but already in 1865, when a probability of a war between Austria and Prussia became more and more visible, the number of emigrants began to increase very much. The years from 1866 to 1870, most likely in consequence of the suspicious relations between France and the North German Confederation, which ultimately brought on the war in 1870, give very large figures. Even the year 1870 has the large number of 91,779 emigrants. ‘Strange to witness,’ says Consul Kruge, ‘after the close of the Franco-German war, when the German Empire had been created, and a prosperity seemed to have come over Germany beyond any expectation, when wages had been almost doubled, and when, in fact, everything looked in the brightest colors, a complete emigration fever was raging in all parts of Germany’; and the years 1871, 1872, 1873 show an almost alarming tendency to quit the Fatherland. This movement would no doubt have continued but for the natural check it received through the financial and commercial crisis in the United States. There are however, at present again unquestionable signs that a very large emigrating element is smoldering in Germany, stimulated by political and economical embroilments which will break forth as soon as sufficient hope and inducements offer themselves in transatlantic countries in the eyes of the discontented and desponding Germans. The general political aspect and the decline of German commerce and industry at the present period are, observes Consul Kruge, such that an emigration on a large scale must be the natural consequence of the ruling state of affairs. Among other illustrations of the causes of a desire on the part of the Germans to leave their native land, Consul Kruge mentions the religious ‘Kulturkampf,’ which, he says, in its practical results may, at least up till now, be rightly termed an unsuccessful move on the political chessboard, and has been brought home by degrees to the Roman Catholic population in an irritating, harassing form. Between the priests on the one hand and the Government on the other the lives of the Roman Catholic peasantry are made one of ‘perfect torment’; and these people naturally desire to leave that country where, rightly or wrongly, they believe their religion attacked or endangered. The relations between France and Germany also act powerfully to promote emigration, and the huge expenses of maintaining the army, besides a navy of considerable size, contribute to swell the emigration tendency of the country. Consul Kruge thinks that if the Australian colonies care to have the largest portion of the coming German emigration, at no time have they had a better chance of creating an extensive movement to their shores than at present.”

These remarks strongly confirm the opinions expressed by ourselves when writing on the same subject four months ago.[88] But when the wave of German emigration again rises to its former height, it will turn toward this country, as before, and not to Australia. Here the German population is already so large and so well-to-do that the new-comers will find themselves at home upon their arrival. Especially will the United States be attractive to the German Catholics; for here they will find their exiled priests and nuns, already settled in their new homes, with churches and schools prepared for them. The return of moderate prosperity to the United States will probably give the signal for the commencement of the new German exodus; and we are scarcely too sanguine in believing that this return to prosperity will not be delayed much longer.

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AT THE CHURCH-DOOR.

The city lights still glimmered in the square, Shivered with morning’s chill the winter air, Scarce yet the eastern line of light broke through The starlit darkness of the deep skies’ blue.

Upon the sparkling snow clear shadows lay The moon flung eastward,—as if so the day, Whose unseen coming seemed to fill the air, They yearning sought with outstretched arms of prayer.

A sound of bells from far-off towers broke, The frosty silence with their pealing woke, And answering bells flung back across the sky The Christmas morning’s glad, earth-echoed cry.

Dark, muffled figures with quick, constant tread O’er glittering ice and snowy pathway sped— A gathering train, crowding from lane and street, To lay love’s homage at the Child-Christ’s feet.

A soft gleam from the church’s windows fell Across the square, as if in peace to tell Of light less clouded shining pure within, Of peace more eloquent cleansed souls should win.

As, with the thronging crowd, my feet drew near The open doorway whence the light streamed clear, The accents of a language not my own Broke through the hurrying footsteps’ monotone—

Quick-spoken words of soft Italian speech: So far the simple utterance seemed to reach, To Roman skies my dreaming thoughts it bore, While home’s familiar walls new aspect wore.

Seemed it almost, beneath that dark of dawn, As if my feet fell Roman pavement on, The lights that twinkled through the open door Burning some altar, centuries old, before,

Whose glow, in truth, fell soft on northern fir O’er whose dark shadow shone the face of her, The lowly Mother-Maid, Lady of Grace, Foligno’s Queen watching the holy place.

And shrined within lay martyr-saint of Rome— Vial and bones from ancient catacomb Of that far city that seemed far no more, Whose faith and speech met at the low church-door.

Seeming that speech true witness of the peace Won years ago, when weary earth’s release The angels chanted in the midnight sky, And earth’s Redeemer waked with infant cry:

He who had come the narrow bonds to break Of race and nation, who frail flesh did take That Jew and Gentile might one Father claim, And win all sweetness through one Brother’s name.

Scarce foreign seemed the stranger’s vivid word; Nay, rather was it as if so I heard The Christian speech of some old saintly age Claiming in faith an earlier heritage.

Before one altar soon our knees should bend, In one heart’s-worship soon our prayers ascend, Within those sacred walls—our common home— As children kneel of one true mother—Rome.

One faith was ours, one country all our own, Wherein all petty landmarks are o’erthrown: Not worshipping as Latin, Saxon, Gaul— The children of one God who made us all.

Ours an inheritance so full and great, Each lowliest handmaid clothed in royal state; No heart so poor but that it throne may be For Heaven’s King in his infinity.

From Rome this guerdon of our faith we hold: What though its light o’er broken seas is rolled? Unfaltering it shines through storm-clouds’ shade, Unfailing beacon! by God’s Spirit fed.

A foreign faith! Ay, so, of that strange land Whereof as citizens our free souls stand, Whose earthly pasture is the church’s shrine— Earth’s limits lost within her realm divine.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A SWEET REVENGE.

CONCLUSION.

IV.

At this moment the door-handle was touched on the outside, and M. Rouvière sprang hastily from his chair and stationed himself with his back to the fire, looking very straight and stiff and aggressive. The door slowly opened and Mme. Dupuis entered, pushing out, at the same time, the unfortunate cat which was trying to slip in with her.

“No, no, pussy,” said the lady, “you got yourself turned out, and you must stay out. O the naughty men!” she exclaimed, laughingly, as she closed the door, “they have been smoking.”

“Have we been smoking?” said Rouvière, sniffing. “Bless me! I really believe we have; it shows how absent-minded one can be. I hadn’t perceived it, so absorbed were George and I in our great project.”

“What project?” asked madame as she took off her hood and cloak. “Are you going to stay with us, M. Rouvière?”

“Not exactly,” replied the guest, “but for George and me the result is the same. Are you good at guessing riddles, madame?”

“You are not going to take George away with you, are you?” asked the wife, her brown eyes resting firmly on his.

“With your permission, dear lady,” answered Rouvière, bowing with ironical politeness.

“No, no, it cannot be!” exclaimed Mme. Dupuis, with a forced, flickering smile, looking at him inquiringly and speaking low and hurriedly. “You will think me very silly to take a joke so seriously, but I cannot help it. You are playing with my life-spring. Tell me—I pray you tell me, dear M. Rouvière, that you are not going to take my husband away.”

“I shall certainly leave his heart with you, my dear lady,” answered the triumphant friend, “but it is a fact that I am going to carry off his body for a while. The long and the short of it is this: for some time past George has been meditating a return to the land of the living, and he is glad to seize this opportunity to start at once, thus obviating all minor hindrances.”

Mme. Dupuis listened silently, her eyes cast down; she had not taken a seat since her entrance into the room, and she continued standing, leaning against an arm-chair in front of her guest.

“It is true, then,” she murmured when Rouvière ceased speaking.

“Do you hear him?” cried her tormentor, laughing, as a heavy thump was heard on the floor of the room above them. “The madcap! what a row he is making up there with his trunk. He’s dragging it about as if it were a triumphal car. Come, now, madame, you really ought not to feel surprised that, after living thirty consecutive years in Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, a man like George....”

“Do not trouble yourself to enter into any explanations—I understand,” interrupted Mme. Dupuis dryly. “Where are you taking him?”

“Why, to tell the truth, my dear lady, everywhere; first....”

“For how long a time?” again interrupted the victim.

“How long? Well, a year, perhaps, or two years ... at most. Ah! my dear Mme. Dupuis, what pleasant hours he is preparing for you,” continued M. Rouvière, who waxed each minute more and more vainglorious and jubilant. “How vastly will your remarkable collection of curiosities be enriched by his few months of travel! He will bring you back a dozen authentic reliquaries, and as many rosaries, blessed by the Holy Father himself ... propria manu! What say you to that?”

But Mme. Dupuis had ceased to listen; she had thrown herself into the arm-chair before her and was weeping bitterly. “O my God! my God!” were the only words she spoke between her sobs.

“Good!” growled Rouvière, scowling at the unhappy woman—“the elegiac style. Come, now,” he continued, making a step towards her and forcing himself to speak gently—“come, now, my dear lady, you are not reasonable. What is all this crying about? A journey. A journey don’t kill a man; am not I a proof of that? And, good God! sailors’ wives—what do they do? Really, this is too bad; you are placing me in a most annoying position, madame,” suddenly changing his gentle tone to one of vexation. “You are rendering my mission excessively painful.”

“Excuse me, sir,” sobbed the stricken wife, raising her wet face for a moment. “You see I ... I can’t....” She could not go on.

M. Rouvière began to pace the room angrily; his tactics were at a loss, and he found his task more difficult than he had anticipated; the little “provinciale” did not resemble the old Indian vixen as much as he had imagined. Presently he stopped in front of the weeping lady. “You are doing, madame,” said he sternly, “precisely what I was instructed to tell you George wishes to avoid.”

“Shall I not see him before he goes?” asked Madame Dupuis with a frightened look, half-rising from her seat as she spoke.

“You shall see him, if you can recover your equanimity,” replied Rouvière; “if you cannot, it will be better for you and for him not to meet. His resolution is not to be changed.”

“Oh! I will be calm, I promise you,” exclaimed the wife, great drops flowing fast down her pale cheeks; “in a few minutes ... give me a few minutes more.... I cannot ... all at once.... O God! merciful God!” Again she wept despairingly.

“I am compelled to make the remark, madame,” observed Rouvière harshly, “that all this despair is quite out of proportion with the cause. The deuce take it! I’m not carrying your husband off to the war.”

“No, no; I believe that he will come back again,” sobbed Mme. Dupuis, trying to wipe away her tears.

“You are a pious woman, madame, and now’s the hour to show your piety. Religion does not consist in only going to church. You are not to think of yourself solely in this world.”

“But you see, M. Rouvière,” replied the good little woman, making a great effort to control her emotion, “he’s not accustomed, like you, to a life of continual fatigue; his health is more delicate than you suspect. You will take care of him,” she added, suddenly seizing her enemy’s right hand with both of hers—“you will take care of him, will you not?”

“Why, certainly, madame, certainly,” answered Rouvière a trifle more gently; “you may rely on me for that. I promise to bring him back to you as fresh and rosy as any lad in Cotentin. I give you my word of honor. You understand me, do you not? But now, I beg you, let us have no more tears, especially no scene at parting.”

“I will do all you wish me to do.” And Mme. Dupuis forthwith smiled tearfully on the hard, cold man who had so wantonly upset her happiness.

“Look,” she cried presently, as she wiped away the last hot drops, “it can’t be perceived that I have been crying.”

“That’s right, madame; that’s the way! I’ve great esteem for strong, single-hearted women; for wives who are truly Christian and self-sacrificing. And now that you’ve recovered your calmness, allow me to repeat to you that there really never was any reason for such great grief. What is a year? Gracious heavens! it is nothing. You will probably spend six months of it with your daughter, and the remaining six months you will pass here in the midst of your remembrances. George will not be more than half absent, for everything around you will bring him constantly before you; you will meet him at every step!”

“Take care, sir, take care!” said Mme. Dupuis, shaking her head at him with a faint smile, “lest, while you seek to comfort me, you increase the pain, ... which you cannot understand!”

“I beg your pardon, madame; I understand it perfectly,” replied Rouvière, an angry gleam lighting up his eyes for an instant, “and I thought that I was proving to you that I do.”

“O sir! believe me, I wish to cast no reflection either on your intelligence or your kindness; be quite sure of that!”

“Madame!” exclaimed the gentleman.

“But there are things,” continued Mme. Dupuis, giving at last free utterance to her feelings—“there are things which are not to be guessed. Have you thought how different your life has been to ours? You have been very wise; you have never allowed your heart to be bound by any of those ties whose number and strength are only recognized when they come to be broken. Yes, you may well say that everything here, the very hearthstone itself, forms a part of our united lives, of our remembrances, making our very thoughts the same. Everything around us loves us, everything is dear to us.... So, at least, I believed until now! A few minutes ago how dearly I prized the simple objects this room contains—all so familiar to us both during so many years, all bearing traces of our habits; each one reminding us of the projects, the pleasures, the sorrows we have shared together! And now they are nothing to me—they can be nothing to me but the ruins of a false happiness, the wrecks of a dream!”

“Really, madame, you exaggerate strangely,” replied Rouvière coldly; “admitting that this journey throws a shade over the present, the past, at least, remains intact.”

“You are mistaken, sir,” returned Mme. Dupuis. “This journey is doubtless not much in itself, but it answers cruelly a question which I have been accustomed to ask myself in secret nearly all my life: Is George happy? No, he was not happy; I alone was happy. I know the truth at last! He was resigned”—she struggled a moment to contain her emotion—“but he was not happy. And yet my heart—I feel it, I am sure of it—was worthy of his; in every other respect I was inferior to him, and I felt it bitterly. What companionship could a mind like his find in the conversation of a poor, provincial girl, ignorant of everything, knowing nothing but how to love him?”

“You undervalue yourself,” remarked her attentive listener; “as for me, I declare that the more I know you, the better I appreciate George’s choice of a wife.”

“You flatter me, M. Rouvière,” replied Mme. Dupuis, smiling; “you see me unhappy, and you are generous. I will be so too, and forgive you all the pain you have occasioned me.... I have hated you for years.”

“Me? Impossible! What had I done to deserve it? But first tell me”—and his voice was quite kind and gentle—“you feel better now, do you not? I don’t know how it is, but really you look ten years younger!”

“Possibly,” said Mme. Dupuis, with a quiet smile; “I think that I am a little feverish—so much the better!”

“Come, come, cheer up! And tell me, now, what painful part have I played in your existence?”

“Well, M. Rouvière,” she began calmly, but became more and more excited as she went on, “I need scarcely tell you that every woman, from the very morrow of her wedding-day, finds herself in presence of a formidable rival—her husband’s unmarried life. Nor need I explain how difficult is the task to make him forget all that he has given up for his wife; how almost impossible it is to allay his regret for the golden age that is gone—regret which grows stronger as those past days recede farther and farther into the distance and youth fades away. I, sir, soon perceived that your name, incessantly on his lips, was George’s favorite symbol of lost pleasures—the incarnation of all the illusions of by-gone years. In his dear thoughts you represented liberty, adventure, and the days of fleeting sorrows and of infinite hopes; while I—I was positive life, paltry domestic economy, and daily anxiety. I was prose and you were poetry. It was with you then that I had to struggle, and I did so with all my strength and with all my soul. Alas! it was in vain; you were stronger than I. Each day George grew more thoughtful, and it seemed to me as if every one of those moments of sadness was a triumph for you. How often have I wept secret tears over my defects, here, seated by this hearthstone, or under the willow-trees in our little garden! But I was young then, and God took pity on me and gave me my daughter, and you were overcome. Now”—her voice fell and she paused a moment—“now the angel of our home is gone, and victory is once more yours.”

“Who knows?” replied Rouvière, his voice strangely hoarse and trembling. “The last word is not yet spoken. You are going to see George. Speak to him. You can still prevent his journey.”

“I have promised you that I will not try to do so,” she answered gently.

“But I give you back your promise!” cried her guest vehemently. “I will not be your evil genius. I am abrupt, madame, selfish too, sometimes—that’s a bachelor’s profession, you know; but I am not bad—pray, believe it.”

“I do believe it,” she replied, looking him frankly and smilingly in the eyes, “but I know George. All my efforts would be useless; they would irritate him, and nothing more. Besides, even if, by dint of tears, I could keep him at home, I would not do it now. I should only be adding another new and bitter regret to those which have already poisoned his life. And my heart would seem to reproach me with my victory every time that I saw him silent or sad. No; he must go!”

“All you say is true—too true,” said Rouvière after a short pause. “There is nothing to reply; you are right. But depend on me, madame, to shorten his absence.”

“I will depend on you; thank you.” She rose from her seat as she spoke and offered her hand to him. The repentant guest clasped it in both of his and kissed it, bowing low as he did so. At the same moment a loud noise as of something falling down the stairs, followed by a great confusion of tongues, was heard outside.

“My God! what is the matter?” exclaimed Mme. Dupuis, pale as death. “It is he; I hear his voice!”

She rushed towards the door, but before she could reach it her husband entered, boiling over with passion, and followed by Marianne.

“You’re an awkward dunce! Be silent, I command you!” he shouted, as the maid tried to excuse herself. “You can’t make me believe that you find this trunk, which has nothing but a few shirts in it, too heavy for you to carry. The stupid creature,” he continued, turning to his wife, “actually let my trunk roll from the top to the bottom of the staircase!”

“Well, the fact is,” cried Marianne, “ever since you told me that you were going to Rome I’ve lost all strength in my arms and legs. I’ve no strength at all. Going to Rome, indeed! What next?”

“The woman is crazy,” said Dupuis, red with indignation. “What business is it of yours, I should like to know?”

“I don’t say that it’s my business,” replied the maid, who was as red and angry as her master, “but, all the same, it’s a queer idea to leave mistress here all alone, at her age too, while you go to Rome. You’ll be lucky if you find her again when you come back. I won’t answer for it.”

“Marianne, take care!” cried Dupuis, who had listened, speechless with amazement, to his old servant’s impertinence. “You must see that I am far from pleased.”

“I’m not surprised at that,” returned she; “you’re not pleased with others, because you’re not pleased with yourself. That’s always the way.”

“I dismiss you from my service,” cried her master, in a fury.

“Go down stairs directly, Marianne,” said her mistress sternly.

“I dismiss you,” repeated Dupuis; “though they should be the last words I have to speak in my own house, they shall be obeyed. I dismiss you from my service! It is your fault also, my dear Reine,” he added when the maid had gone from the room; “you allow your servants to be too familiar with you. You see the consequence. I hope you understand that I have dismissed that woman?”

“Yes, George,” answered the lady gently; “I will settle her wages to-morrow morning, if you do not change your mind.”

“Change my mind!” exclaimed her husband. “Am I accustomed to change my mind every five minutes? Am I a weathercock, or do you deem me so weakened by age that I can submit to be lectured by my own servants?”

“I beg you, dear, not to say another word on the subject. She shall go away to-morrow. But I want to know, George, if you have all you need. Let me look into your trunk, will you? Men don’t know much about wearing-apparel, and when one is travelling the merest trifle that is missing suffices to put one out of sorts for the whole day. I know that you can buy whatever you want, but where’s the use when you can avoid it? And then, too, I wish to make you think of me all the time, you gadabout!”

“Do as you like, love,” said George; “here are the keys.”

“Well, Tom,” he continued, when the lady had closed the door behind her, “it seems to me that she received the news very well indeed.”

“Perfectly; do you know, George, your wife possesses some great qualities?”

“I know she does,” returned Dupuis, looking inquisitively at his friend’s serious, almost downcast countenance.

“She is shy and excessively timid, and that does her wrong,” went on Rouvière.

“I told you so, my dear friend,” cried Dupuis eagerly. “She was afraid of you at dinner. Now, I would bet any sum that, the ice once broken, you hardly recognized her.”

“It is true. Under the influence of deep emotion—for I will not conceal that she was at first very much affected—she found expressions, directly from her heart, which astonished me.”

“She has plenty of heart, that’s certain!” exclaimed the gratified husband.

“And you may add,” said his friend, “that she possesses a most refined and elevated mind.”

“I know it, Tom—I know it well!” cried Dupuis with delight. “I’m not a blockhead, hey? Do you suppose that I should have married her, if I had not known all that? And if it had to be done again, I should do it again. I am not only happy in the woman I have chosen, Tom, but I am proud of her! She has some slight defects—I see them as well as any one—but, bless me! of what consequence is a little awkwardness, or perhaps a few parish prejudices, when you find in the same woman the most self-sacrificing tenderness, the most exquisite good sense and uprightness, the most fervent and unassuming piety—in short, all the virtues that can captivate an honest man?”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Rouvière, slapping him caressingly on the shoulder. “An honest man—there you are! Well, well! all right.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dupuis, astonished.

“I mean,” replied Rouvière, “that the conclusion of your little speech is perfectly clear: thinking better about our journey, and estimating more coolly the value of the treasure that remains in the house, you have lost the courage to leave it. In short, you are about to let me go away alone.... I can understand perfectly that it should be so.”

“But I swear ...” cried Dupuis.

“Say no more, say no more,” interrupted his friend. “I understand it all perfectly, I tell you.”

“You _mis_understand, you mean,” said Dupuis angrily. “I have never, for one moment, forgotten my wife’s good qualities, but, were she ten times the saint she is, it is not less true that I have been living the life of a snail. Good heavens! I shall be better able to appreciate her many virtues when no consciousness of intellectual degradation is present to spoil my enjoyment.”

“You are too absurd, George! You make me laugh with your ‘intellectual degradation.’”

“You did not laugh half an hour ago,” retorted Dupuis, “when you depicted it in colors ... well, in colors which not even your friendship for me could soften.”

“Is it possible that you did not perceive that I was jesting? How singular it is that there’s not an intelligent man in France who, if he is condemned to live in the provinces, far from Paris, does not fancy that he is becoming idiotic! I had a presentiment that you suffered from this monomania, and I amused myself by exciting it. I had been drinking, you know; let that be my excuse.”

“However that may be,” answered Dupuis, a cold, stubborn expression stealing over his face and fixing itself there, “I am more than ever resolved to travel; if I hesitated before, I do so no longer. I confess that I was afraid of the effect my intention would produce on my wife, but her calmness removes all my scruples.”

“Listen to me, George, I beg you,” replied his friend earnestly: “don’t trust too much to appearances; your wife affects a firmness she is far from feeling. I know....”

“You know!” interrupted Dupuis. “You know that you begin to think that I shall be in your way, and so you want to cast me over.”

“No, George, no—nothing of the kind. You don’t understand me. I sincerely believed, from what you said, that you had changed your mind. I thought that I was anticipating your wishes in giving back your promise to go with me. But if you really persist in your intentions, all right ... I am delighted.”

“Here are the horses,” bawled Marianne, opening the door suddenly and then shutting it with a bang.

“That old woman would take my life, if she could,” said Rouvière, laughing. “Now, then,” he continued, taking up his cloak, “let’s gird up our loins. By the bye, I think I remember that you never can sleep in a coach.”

“I beg your pardon, I can sleep perfectly well.”

“So much the better. Allons! Bravo! Are the horses put to, I wonder? Does this window look out upon the street?” Rouvière opened the sash as he spoke, but closed it quickly. “What a wind! It’s terrible—cold enough to split a rock! Now I think of it, one of the glasses of the post-chaise is broken. I’m afraid you’ll be frozen to death, George.”

“Don’t trouble yourself about me,” replied Dupuis, putting on his overcoat. “I can bear cold like a Laplander.”

“All right!”

The clock at this moment struck nine, and Madame Dupuis entered the room, carrying a soft India shawl suspended from her arm. The poor lady was very pale.

“Everything is ready,” she said with a trembling voice, “and here are your keys, dear. You will see that I have added some few little things that you had forgotten. And here is a comforter for you. I’ve cut my old cashmere shawl in two, and half of it will be very nice to wrap round your throat; it is very warm.”

“How foolish of you to cut up your shawl!” cried Dupuis. “However, since ’tis done, I accept; but it really was very foolish of you.”

“Here is the other half for you, M. Rouvière,” said madame, presenting it with a kind smile.

“For me!” cried Rouvière, taking it from her with respectful eagerness. “Thank you, thank you most sincerely!”

“You will remember your promises, will you not?” asked the lady gently, fixing her eyes on his.

Rouvière bowed and turned away abruptly.

“You will write to our daughter, George? You will not fail?”

“I will write to her—to both of you—often, often,” answered George in a husky voice, and pulling his travelling-cap over his eyes.

“The 12th of January!” suddenly exclaimed Rouvière, who was warming his feet at the fire, while he examined an almanac placed on the chimney-piece. “Is it really the 12th of January to-day?”

“It really is,” replied Mme. Dupuis. “Why do you ask? Is there any particular remembrance attached to that date?”

“It is a date which interests me only,” replied Rouvière in a tone of infinite sadness. “Five years ago this very evening, almost at this same hour, I was passing through an ordeal I shall never forget. Now, George, are you ready?” he added with abrupt impatience.

“What kind of an ordeal? What had happened to you? An accident?” asked George, with intense interest.

“No, not an accident, but I was very ill, which is always a misfortune—and ill in an inn, which is horrible.”

“People are ill everywhere,” remarked Dupuis sententiously.

“True; but the impressions made on you by sickness and death vary according to the circumstances in which they surprise you; you can scarcely conceive how much, unless you have had the experience.”

“Pshaw! death is death under all circumstances; it is always equally unpleasant!” cried Dupuis.

“Ah! you think that.... I should like to have seen you.... Well, I’ll tell you my story. It happened at Peschiera, on the Lago di Guardia—a lovely country; we’ll pass through it, and I’ll show you the house. I was detained there by a fever of a somewhat pernicious character. All went on well, however, during eight days—for I was delirious the whole time, and knew nothing of what was passing—till one fine evening, the evening of the 12th of January, when I suddenly came to myself, so weak in body, so anxious in spirit, and at the same time with such an extraordinary lucidity of mind that I felt convinced I was at the point of death. I have passed through many bitter moments in the course of my life—cruel moments—which nevertheless I can think of now with a kind of pleasure; but when I recall to mind my awakening in that inn-chamber, a cold shiver runs through me; I shudder!”

Rouvière paused as Marianne entered the room; Mme. Dupuis signed to her imperatively not to interrupt, and the maid remained standing near the door.

“What did you see that could make such a fearful impression on you?” asked George, moving a little nearer to his friend.

“Nothing very horrible; only some people who were waiting for me to die, an old woman and a young doctor who were conversing together in a corner, and a priest who was kneeling at the foot of my bed.

“They formed to my eye a picture whose accessories were the dirty, faded curtains of the couch on which I was stretched and the tarnished, heterogeneous furniture of a lodging-house. But the ignoble surroundings, the preparations for death even, caused me no emotion; what revolted me—stirred up my very soul to protest—was the neglect, the brutal lack of charity—saving the presence of the priest—the desolate isolation, the void of all human sympathy in which I realized that I was at that moment dying. How distinctly I can recollect the pitiful, suppliant look with which I gazed around me, as if trying to interlink the life that was escaping me with any, the slightest, earthly object; as if seeking to discover some sign of interest, of pity even, in the impassible faces which looked so calmly on me! My agonized heart longed for any trifle—a picture, a vase, a chair—which had known me, and to which I could say farewell. But all was strange.”

“Death never can be agreeable,” remarked Dupuis crabbedly. “When the last hour is upon us it is dismal to be alone, I don’t say the contrary; but I can’t see that it is more cheerful to be surrounded by a weeping family.”

“I think that you would have felt as I felt then,” replied Rouvière with melancholy gravity; “the death which God has ordained for men—the death which most men die, which finds consolation and resignation in the tears of tender regret shed by loving friends—that death appeared to me, in my solitary agony, like a sweet, untroubled feast.... I made many a singular reflection that night! But come, George, are you ready?”

“When you will; ... but, first, what were your reflections?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I lost somewhat of my self-sufficiency. And then I congratulated myself a little less on the path I had chosen for my life’s journey. Why not say it? The book of life seemed suddenly to be opened before me, and I read on every page, traced by God’s own hand, the words ‘duty and sacrifice.’ I had rejected that law. Hitherto I had only seen its hardships; now I recognized its benefits. I had avoided its bonds that I might live independently, and exile and isolation had been my lot. I had fancied that, by escaping the usual dull routine of humble duties, I should win for myself a happiness unknown—pleasures inconceivable to the vulgar crowd. Alas! I found that I had experienced nothing save a loveless youth, a solitary old age, and an unlamented death. Then, George—then I understood what an erroneous price we pay for the indulgence of our selfishness.”

“Were you long in this agitated state?” asked Dupuis.

“Long enough for it to be indelibly impressed on my memory,” replied his friend. “When the young physician perceived that I was looking at him, he arose and approached me, and I felt the touch of his hand, cold and indifferent as his heart. I pushed it away and closed my eyes. And then a vision of my father’s death-bed flashed before me, distinct and clear. I saw again, grouped around it, the faithful friends of his youth—our ancient servants, the old doctor, the white-haired priest, and, dearest of all, my mother, my good mother. They leaned over him, they wiped his damp brow, they smiled at him through their tears; they had gladdened his life, and they were beside him now, to cheer and sustain him as he passed away! My dried-up heart melted within me as I gazed on this vision of a scene I had long since ceased to recall, and I burst into tears; they saved me!”

Rouvière stopped, overpowered by his emotion, and, covering his eyes with his hand, leant forward against the mantle-shelf.

“These recollections are too painful,” said Dupuis gently.

“They are painful,” replied Rouvière, his voice hoarse and trembling, “and everything I see around me here awakens them. Oh! how alike these old houses are,” he continued, speaking to himself and looking around the room. “All this is familiar to me. There stood my mother’s little work-table near the window, just as that is—I always found her seated at it when I came home for a holiday—and there, in the chimney-corner, was the great arm-chair in which my father always sat. And the family portraits looked down from the walls just as these do. There, as here, the trace of two lives closely entwined, never to be separated, was visible everywhere. Why did I not learn by their example? Why was I compelled to drag my weary, vagrant life, my unceasing remorse, all over the wide world, ere I could comprehend that they were happy? Did they know that they were happy? I doubt it. How often I have heard my father speak with envy of the very pleasures I have found so hollow! How often they confided to me their mutual grievances! And yet when one went the other could not stay. Dear old father! dearest mother!”

“My dear friend!” whispered George.

“And I,” continued Rouvière, with increasing emotion—“I sold their home as soon as it was empty—I had the heart to do that! I sold the room where I was born; I sold all our family traditions; I sold the ancient, faithful friendships which seemed to adhere to the house and soil. I alienated my patrimony.... I riveted the chain of egotism I was so eagerly forging. I did my work well; no kind care, no friendly companionship will ever be the solace of my old age. I have nothing to offer in return—not even the bribe of a legacy. I cannot even buy back that humble home; my last days may not be sheltered by those walls whose very shadows I have learned to love. I may not even die there. Come! let us go,” he added with vehemence, dashing away the tears which suddenly inundated his face.

“Yes, Tom, we will go”—and George seized his friend’s hand—“we will go, if you refuse to accept a brother’s place by my fireside. And you, Reine,” he said, turning to his wife, “dry your tears and forget this hour’s ingratitude. It was the first; it shall be the last!”

“O George, my husband!” sobbed the sweet little woman as she gave him the kiss of pardon; then, approaching Rouvière with gentle grace, she said softly and beseechingly:

“Will not the happiness you have restored to us tempt you to remain with us? We should be so glad to share it with you!”

“Madame, dear, good friends,” stammered the guest.... “O George! you have caught me in the very snare I spread for you.”

He sank into a chair, overcome by his emotion, while George and Reine stood by him, clasping his hands in theirs. “Oh!” sighed he at last, “it is too sweet a dream for such a forlorn wretch as I am.”

“He will stay with us!” exclaimed Mme. Dupuis joyfully.

“And I will go and make his bed in the best blue chamber,” cried Marianne, wiping her eyes with her apron. The poor girl had been standing quietly near the door, an involuntary listener, during almost the whole of Rouvière’s confession.

“What! the deuce! Marianne!” growled Rouvière, rising hastily from his seat.

“I’m going to make your bed, sir!” cried Marianne, in great good-humor.

“Very well, then; but don’t let the head be lower than the heels, my good creature, as you house-maids generally manage it. Slope it down gently from head to foot, mind you, and....” He stopped a moment, then smilingly resumed: “Make it as you will, Marianne; I’m sure it will be first-rate. You see,” he added, turning toward his hosts when Marianne had left the room, “how this disgusting egotism crops up incessantly; ... you must try to cure me of it. Oh! what a rest I’m going to have now,” he exclaimed as he threw himself on the sofa.... “Madame, dear madame, will you do me a favor? I know what the pains of exile are by sad experience—pray, let the cat come in!”

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THE RECENT PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION AND CONGRESS.

This convention, which met in Boston on the 3d of October and continued in session for twenty days, was the triennial “Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.” The bishops sat in a house by themselves and conducted their proceedings in secret, following in this the precedent of the Anglican Church as well as the custom of the Roman Catholic Church in its provincial and plenary councils. The House of Deputies consisted of one hundred and eighty clergymen and one hundred and eighty laymen, representing forty-five dioceses, and eight clergymen and eight laymen representing eight “missionary jurisdictions.” These sat in public, and a verbatim report of their proceedings is before us. Among the lay delegates were several gentlemen of national fame—the Hons. John W. Maynard, of Pennsylvania; Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, the Democratic candidate for the Vice-Presidency at the recent election; John W. Stevenson, of Kentucky; John W. Hunter and L. Bradford Prince, of Long Island; Gen. C. C. Augur, U. S. Army; Daniel R. Magruder and Montgomery Blair, of Maryland; Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts; General J. H. Simpson, U. S. Army; Hamilton Fish, Cambridge Livingston, and W. A. Davies, of New York; Morrison R. Waite, of Ohio; and Geo. W. Thompson and Richard Parker, of Virginia. It is not probable that any of the other sects could marshal laymen like these to sit in its councils. We mention their names because the list affords some explanation of the fact that the social and political influence of the Protestant Episcopalians is vastly out of proportion to their numerical strength. At a preliminary session, the bishops and deputies being together, Dr. Williams, the Bishop of Connecticut, preached a sermon in which he introduced a subject that subsequently occupied much of the attention of the convention—“the most threatening social evil of our time, the growing lack of sympathy between different classes and individuals of such classes.” “To-day,” he said, “we see great chasms opening everywhere because of this, which threatens church and state alike with sad disaster.” And he added:

“I think those chasms are more entirely unrelieved and ghastly in this country than in almost any other. I know that we have not been wont so to think or speak, and I know that to say this involves some chance of incurring severe displeasure; but I fully believe it to be true. In most lands there are things—I speak of things outside of Christian sympathies and labors—that somewhat bridge over these threatening severances. There are ancient memories; ancestral offices and ministries that in their long continuance have almost become binding laws; relations, long enduring, of patronage and clientship; and many other things besides. With us—we may as well face the fact—those things have, for the most part, no existence. The one only helping thing we have—still apart from what was just alluded to—is political equality. And how much virtue has that shown itself to have in pressing exigencies and emergencies? When, all at once, in the late summer months, that yawning chasm opened at our feet which appeared to threaten nearly everything in ordinary life, how little there seemed to be to turn to! There stood on either side contending forces in apparently irreconcilable opposition, and everywhere we heard the cry about rights! rights! rights! till nothing else was heard. If some few voices dared to speak of duties they were lost in the angry clamor. And yet those voices must be heard. Those words about duty on the one side and the other must be listened to, if ever we are to have more than an armed truce between these parties—a truce which may at any time burst out into desolating strife.”

Dr. Williams’ remedy was, of course, that the Protestant Episcopalians should teach the people their duties. To do this, however, they must first get the hearing of the people. But this is just what they have failed to get, and will always fail in getting—certainly so long as they provide fine churches with eloquent preachers for the rich, and a very different order of preachers and churches for the poor. The Catholic Church, before whose altars all distinctions of earthly rank and position disappear, can and does teach the people what their duties are, and she does it with effect, since her priests speak with authority and by virtue of an incontestably divine commission—two things quite unknown among the sects. This is what Rev. Hugh Thompson felt and acknowledged when, in the Episcopal Church Congress held in this city, he said:

“What is the worth of a church in this world except as a moral teacher—except this: to get the Ten Commandments kept on earth? The church canons are usually busy with questions affecting garments, gestures, postures, and the orthodoxy of the Prayer-Book, but rarely do we find any moral legislation. There are plenty of instructions to the clergy and bishops, and we are led to think what a wicked lot of people these clergy and bishops must be to need all these laws, and what a good and pious laity we must have when they have no need of such legislation! The church gives no real expression of opinion on the complicated questions of marriage, so that one minister may bless a union while another would not do so under any circumstances. Is it right that the church should evade such responsibilities as these? The church must place itself plainly on record. The church must be to a millionaire and beggar the same, must demand equal justice for all—for the railway president and the railway brakeman, for the worshipper in the gilded temple and in the ordinary meeting-house. Such a church, with the courage and fearlessness and ability to tell and enforce the eternal truth, without fear or favor, is what this country is waiting for, and would have an influence here unequalled since the days of Athanasius.”

The first two days of the convention were spent chiefly in rather unseemly discussions upon a proposition to print fifteen hundred copies of Dr. Williams’ sermon, to appoint a committee “to consider the importance of the practical principles enunciated in it,” and in attempts to begin a debate upon three amendments to the constitution proposed three years ago by the last convention. Much interest was excited by some remarks by the Rev. Dr. Harwood, of Connecticut, who thought that one of the most pressing duties of the convention would be the invention of a method whereby clergymen who had grown tired of their work might be retired without incurring disgrace. It is curious to observe how the Catholic doctrine, “once a priest always a priest,” still lingers among the laity of this Protestant body, while its clergymen, or some of them, seem anxious to destroy it. Dr. Harwood complained that although at present the regulations of his church permitted any clergyman to “withdraw from the ministry for causes not affecting his moral character,” nevertheless “somewhat of a stigma rests upon the man, and people may even point to his children and say, ‘There go the children of a disgraced clergyman.’” This state of things was found to be “a grievous burden”; for there were numbers of good fellows who feel that “they are out of place in the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church,” and who still continue in that service because they fear to incur disgrace by leaving it. Dr. Harwood drew a pitiful picture of the condition of these unhappy persons: “They may have changed their minds about some doctrine; they may believe too much or too little; they may be drifting towards a blank unbelief or towards a wretched superstition; they may feel that they have mistaken their calling and cannot do their work, for neither their hearts nor their minds are in it.” We agree with Dr. Harwood that his church would be better off without such parsons; and it is sad to record that his proposition, looking towards the adoption of a cheap and easy, although “honorable,” method of getting rid of them, was not finally successful.

On the third day of the convention the Rev. Dr. De Koven, of Wisconsin, brought forward the question of changing the name of the Protestant Episcopal Church. This proposition was made in the interest of that section of it which follows the Anglican ritualists. This section has a real or affected horror of the word “Protestant”; its members wish to persuade themselves that they are Catholics—and the wish is very natural and most praiseworthy—but they are resolved never to seek the reality and yield to the living authority of the Catholic Church. In order to avoid this submission, they set up the claim that they are themselves the Catholic Church, or rather “a branch” of it. To make this claim a little less absurd the elimination of the word “Protestant” would be advisable; and for some time past, it appears, an industrious propaganda for this purpose has been carried on. Certain of the bishops, many of the clergymen, and a number of the journals of the Protestant Episcopalians have been enlisted in the proposed “reform,” and its advocates mustered all their forces in the convention. Dr. De Koven introduced the matter by reading a paper adopted in the diocese of Wisconsin last June, and moving a resolution. The paper was as follows:

“Whereas, The American branch of the Catholic Church universal [sic] includes in its membership all baptized persons in this land; and

“Whereas, The various bodies of professing Christians, owing to her first legal title, do not realize that the church known in law as the ‘Protestant Episcopal Church’ is, in very deed and truth, the American branch of the one Catholic Church of God; therefore, be it

“Resolved, That the deputies to the General Convention from this diocese be requested to ask of the General Convention the appointment of a constitutional commission, to which the question of a change of the legal title of the church, as well as similar questions, may be referred.”

Dr. De Koven accordingly presented a motion for the appointment of this commission and moved its reference to the Committee on Constitutional Amendments. The absurd side of the assumptions made in the preamble is apparent; but the ridicule and scorn which they excite should not blind one to the arrogant claim therein set up. It is laughable to assert that a sect with less than 270,000 communicants, and with a history of less than a century, claims as its members all the baptized persons in the United States, including seven or eight millions of Roman Catholics; it is still more ludicrous to be told that the reason why we and all the other “baptized persons” do not recognize this sect as our mother the church is that up to this time she has chosen to call herself by a false name. The name—the name’s the thing wherewith to catch the conscience of the people! Let us only call ourselves something else, and then “all the baptized persons in this land”—Papists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, and all the rest—will hasten to exclaim, “Our long-lost mother! Behold your children!” This is the ludicrous side of the business, and it is funny enough. The serious side of it is the fact that a claim so arrogant should be seriously presented in a convention composed of respectable, and in some cases eminent, American gentlemen. Let us see what became of it.

Dr. De Koven’s motion immediately caused an animated debate. An attempt to get rid of it by laying it on the table was lost; and after a disorderly and heated discussion, in which the president seemed occasionally to lose his head, the motion for reference to the committee was carried. On the eighth day of the session the committee, through Mr. Hamilton Fish, reported that it was “inexpedient to institute any commission to revise and amend the constitution of the church,” for the reason, among others, that such a commission would be unlimited in its powers and might upset everything. On the tenth day another committee, to whom had been “referred certain memorials and papers looking to a change in the legal title of the church,” reported that such a change might impair the legal right of property in the several dioceses, and that it would be better to make no change. The two reports came up for decision on the twelfth day of the session, and the ball was opened by Dr. De Koven in a long and clever speech. He proposed the adoption of a new resolution providing for the appointment of a commission to consider and report upon the best method of “removing apparent ambiguities,” and “the setting forth our true relations to the Anglican communion as well as to the whole Catholic Church.” He drew a very curious and not at all a pleasant picture of his church as at present constituted. So far as the laity are concerned, anybody may be a lay member, if he “merely goes to church a few times a year” and pays money for the support of the minister. “He need not be baptized; he need not be confirmed; he need not be a communicant. He may even be Jew, Turk, or infidel, if you please, provided he has the money qualification which makes up the franchise of the church.” Here, indeed, is a pitiable state of things; a society composed of unbaptized persons can scarcely be called a Christian association. “Underneath it all,” Dr. De Koven went on to say, “lies this money qualification. The parish elects its vestry, and its vestry need not be communicants. The vestry and parish elect the lay delegates to the diocesan convention, and they need not be communicants. The diocesan convention elects the lay members of the standing committees, and they need not be communicants.” The truth is that the ruling laymen of the sect need not be, and probably are not, Christians at all, and that they “run the machine” for social and political purposes, just as they would manage a club or a political party. If the laymen are of this stripe, what can be said of the priests? “Like people, like priest,” said Dr. De Koven; “As you go through the land and witness the sorrow, the trials, the degradation of the parochial clergy, you are quite well aware that underneath all lies this simoniacal taint.” The bishops are almost in as sad a state. Their councils of advice are the standing committees; these may be composed of unbaptized men, and the bishops have no voice in their nomination; and “thus you have the marvellous spectacle of a bishop sitting at the head of his diocesan synod, but bound by laws which that synod (possibly composed of non-Christians) makes, and in the making of which he has had no voice whatever, either of assent or dissent.” It could scarcely be supposed, however, that evils so great as these would be removed simply by a change of name, and Dr. De Koven found himself at last willing to admit as much. He was willing, he said, to go on for a while longer with the old name, although as long as it was retained such evil consequences would follow. But he insisted that “the day will come when this church shall demand, not that an accident of its condition, not that a part of its organization, should represent it to the world, but that its immortal lineage shall represent it.”

The church may demand what it pleases, and may call itself by whatever name it chooses to invent; but its history is written and cannot be changed. Men will always know that it is the daughter of that creature whose father was Henry VIII. and whose nursing mother was Queen Elizabeth. A delegate from Illinois pleaded for the change of name, for the reason that he was tired of saying on Sundays, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,” and all the rest of the week, “I believe in the Protestant Episcopal Church.” Mr. Hamilton Fish declared that it was “too late to change the name of Protestant Episcopal,” and that if the sect was not Protestant it was nothing. His great objection, however, was that if the change were made the church would be in danger of losing its property. Finally, on the thirteenth day of the session, the resolution for the appointment of the constitutional committee to consider this and other changes was voted down by a vote of 16 to 51; and a separate resolution, that no change should be made in the name of the church at present, was carried by an almost unanimous vote.

The convention also touched upon marriage and divorce, but rather gingerly. The House of Bishops passed a resolution repealing the present canon on this subject, and adopting the following in its place:

“SECTION 1. If any persons be joined together otherwise than as God’s Word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful.

“SEC. 2. No minister of this church shall solemnize matrimony in any case where there is a divorced wife or husband of either party still living, and where the divorce was obtained for some cause arising after marriage; but this canon shall not be held to apply to the innocent party in a divorce for the cause of adultery, or to parties once divorced seeking to be united again.

“SEC. 3. If any minister of this church shall have reasonable cause to doubt whether a person desirous of being admitted to holy baptism, or to confirmation, or to the holy communion, has been married otherwise than as the word of God and discipline of this church allow, such minister, before receiving such person to these ordinances, shall refer the case to the bishop for his godly judgment thereupon; provided, however, that no minister in any case refuse the sacrament to a penitent person in extremis.

“SEC. 4. No minister of this church shall present for confirmation or administer the holy sacraments to any person divorced, for any cause arising after marriage, or married again to another in violation of this canon, or during the lifetime of such divorced wife or husband; but this prohibition shall not extend to the innocent party where the divorce has been for the cause of adultery, nor to any truly penitent person.

“SEC. 5. Questions touching the facts of any case arising under this canon shall be referred to the bishop of the diocese, or, if there be a vacancy in the episcopate, then to some bishop designated by the Standing Committee, who shall thereupon make enquiry by a commissionary or otherwise, and deliver his godly judgment in the premises.

“SEC. 6. This canon, so far as it affixes penalties, does not apply to cases occurring before its taking effect, according to canon iv., title iv.”

From the Roman Catholic point of view there are at least two objections to this canon. There is no authority pointed out whereby it may be decided what it is that “God’s word doth allow” respecting marriage; and the permission for the re-marriage of one of the parties in a divorce is repugnant to the rule of the church, and could not for a moment be assented to by any one who holds the Catholic and Christian doctrine of marriage. In the debate upon the canon it was urged that the second section could not be enforced among the Indians nor among the negroes; and some of the clergymen objected to the section which provides for the reference of doubtful cases to the bishop. Especial ridicule was cast upon the sixth section, which, as one delegate expressed it, asserts that “the longer a man has continued in sin the less sin he has.” More than one clerical delegate, on the other hand, lifted up his voice in favor of “greater freedom in the matter,” and they drew pathetic pictures of the sad condition of a woman divorced from her husband for incompatibility of temper, for example, and, under this canon, unable to marry again. But at length the canon was passed.

Our readers can scarcely be expected to take much interest in the other proceedings of the convention. There was a debate, lasting through several days, upon a proposed canon for the creation and development of orders of deaconesses, or “sisterhoods,” in imitation of our own societies of holy women. The bishops wished to retain strict control over these possible organizations; the lower house desired them to be left quite free, or subject only to the supervision of the parish clergyman. The two houses could not agree, and the matter was dropped. A still more tedious debate arose from propositions for the adoption of a “shortened service,” lay preaching, and the permissible use of the English Lectionary. There was very little talk about dogma; and it is noticeable that the quarrels between the Ritualists and the Evangelicals were kept entirely suppressed during the convention. The only doctrinal breeze which animated the gathering was caused by the introduction of a paper by Mr. Judd, of Illinois, which, on the whole, is so queer that we reproduce it here:

“Whereas, A majority of the bishops of the Anglican communion at the Lambeth Conference, held in the year of our Lord 1867, while solemnly ‘professing the faith delivered to us in Holy Scripture, maintained in the primitive church and by the fathers of the English Reformation,’ did also ‘express the deep sorrow with which we view the divided condition of the flock of Christ throughout the world, ardently longing for the fulfilment of the prayer of our Lord, “that all may be one,”’ and did furthermore ‘solemnly record’ and set forth the means by which ‘that unity will be more effectually promoted’; and

“Whereas, The Lambeth declaration was not only signed by all the nineteen American bishops then and there present, but the whole House of Bishops, at the General Convention of 1868, also formally resolved that they ‘cordially united in the language and spirit’ of the same; and

“Whereas, Our fervent prayer, daily offered, ‘that all who profess and call themselves Christians may hold the faith in unity of spirit,’ cannot receive fulfilment unless there be a clear and steadfast clinging to ‘the faith once for all delivered to the Saints’; and

“Whereas, The restoration of this ‘unity of spirit’ in the apostolic ‘bond of peace’ among all the Christian people, for which we thus daily pray, ought also to be the object of our most earnest efforts; and

“Whereas, This unity manifestly cannot be restored by the submission of all other parts to any one part of the divided body of Christ, but must be reached by the glad reunion of all in that faith which was held by all before the separation of corrupt times began; and

“Whereas, The venerable documents in which the undisputed councils summed up the Catholic faith are not easily accessible to many of the clergy, and have never been fully set forth to our laity in a language ‘understanded of the people’; therefore

“Resolved, by the House of Deputies of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, That a memorial be presented to the Lambeth Conference at its second session, expressing our cordial thanks for the action of its first session in 1867, in which it enjoined upon us all the promotion of unity ‘by maintaining the faith in its purity and integrity, as taught by the Holy Scriptures, held by the primitive church, summed up in the creeds, and affirmed by the undisputed general councils’; and, in furtherance of the good work thus recommended and enjoined, we humbly request the said Lambeth Conference, by a joint commission of learned divines, or otherwise, to provide for the setting forth of an accurate and authentic version, in the English language, of the creeds and the other acts of the said undisputed general councils concerning the faith thus proclaimed by them, as the standards of orthodox belief for the whole church.

“Resolved, also, That the House of Bishops be respectfully requested to take order that this memorial shall be duly laid before the next session of the Lambeth Conference by the hand of such of its members as may be present thereat.”

The debate on this paper was somewhat amusing. It was pointed out that rather serious consequences might follow the general dissemination of “an accurate and authentic version, in the English language, of the creeds and the other acts of the said undisputed general councils concerning the faith”; and the awful question was asked, “Who is to decide how many undisputed councils there have been?” But at last the preamble and resolution were adopted, and we congratulate our Protestant Episcopalian brethren upon that decision. Many of them—clergymen as well as laymen—said they did not know what even the first six œcumenical councils had decided. If they now acquire this knowledge, they will learn enough to convince them that they are living in heresy, and that their first duty is to seek for admission into the church.

“The Church Congress,” which commenced its sessions in New York on the 30th of October and continued to sit for four days, was in some degree a supplement to the “convention.” At the congress, however, nothing was to be done; affairs were simply to be talked about. In four days much can be said: the papers read and the speeches made before the Congress will make a large volume when collected. A Catholic would arise from their perusal with a feeling of profound melancholy. He would see the blind leading the blind and tumbling into the ditch. In Protestantism the opinion of one man is as good as that of another; views the most discordant may be expressed on the same platform, and there is no arbiter to pronounce with infallible voice what is truth. In the congress, for instance, several of its clerical members took occasion to lavish praises upon the Roman Catholic Church—one of them declared that the true spirit of the Roman Catholic Church had always been “tender, true, and noble”; another, a bishop, extolled the work of our missionaries among the Indians, saying that they “had done the best work,” and that their conduct was in glorious contrast with that of the missionaries of the sects, who acted too often like “carpet-baggers.” These declarations did not prevent other members when speaking from indulging in bitter denunciations of “Romanism.” Bishop Potter, at the opening of the congress, warned the members that they must not expect to settle anything; the only good to be expected from their discussions was such as might follow the interchange of opinion. A discussion on church architecture was ended by a minister who said that churches should be built wholly with respect to acoustics, and that the ideal church would be a plain hall where the voice of the preacher could be distinctly heard. The question of the relation of the church to the state and to society was discussed at much length—some of the speakers arguing for a union of church and state, and others advocating strict abstinence on the part of the church from all political affairs. Bishop Littlejohn, of Long Island, declared that

“The most urgent duty of the church to the nation was first to vindicate its moral fitness to sway all in and around it. It should show that its charter was divine. It should be able to say to the grosser personality of the nation, ‘Come up higher; this is the way, walk ye in it.’ The first duty of the church to the national life was to put its own house in order. Again, the church having elevated itself to the level whence it had a right to teach and authority to guide, its habitual attention should not be diverted from its great duties to society and to the nation. The church’s best work was at the root and upon the sap of the social tree of life, not with the withered and dead branches. It was here that the church was to exercise its highest functions upon society and upon the nation. Let it keep before it that one of its highest duties was to show, both to society and the individual, that they did not derive their personality from each other, but from God. There was a warrant for such teaching, for it rested upon a theological principle. Humanity, in the genuine whole and in the individual man, had its foundation in Christ, and, therefore, for each there was infinite sacredness, even in Christ himself. But the church had instructions for society, and especially for American society. It had some teaching for those who in dreams and in revolutions cried out for liberty, equality, and fraternity. By how many was this cry raised, even to those who would have no sloping sides, no top, but all bottom to the social pyramid! It seemed that that was a cry which the church might answer. Liberty, equality, fraternity! The land was full of false idols under those names. The perversion was of man; the movement itself was of God. The perversion could be brought about by forgetting the movement itself. God in Christ not only willed that all men should be free and equal, but he told them in what sense and how they were to become so. It was by the ministry of the word, not by the sword, not by the law, not by abstract speculation, that man was to learn what these things were for which he so thirsted. Modern society and the Gospel must be reconciled, and to do this there was no competent authority except the church.”

Bishop Littlejohn, when speaking of “the church,” has in his mind his own body. That society can never accomplish the work he points out; men know that it has no authority to teach them, and those who speak in its name speak with divided and inconsistent voices. The church of God, however, can do this work and is doing it. She has no need “to vindicate her moral fitness” or to “elevate herself to the level whence she has a right to teach and authority to guide.” She had all this done for her eighteen hundred years ago, when her divine charter was given her. And that charter never has been and never will be revoked.

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THE CIVILTA CATTOLICA ON THE FORTIFICATIONS OF ROME.

There is no European periodical which treats of the great political movements of the day with more complete knowledge and consummate ability and sagacity than the Civiltà Cattolica, especially in respect to all that has a bearing on the Roman question. In the number of October 6 an article of great interest takes up the topic of the fortifications around Rome and Civita Vecchia which have been ordered by the Italian government, and casts some light on the motives which have induced the persons at the head of Victor Emanuel’s administration to adopt this extraordinary measure.

The pretext put forth, that it is necessary to protect Rome against armed invasion by the reactionary party of the clericals, is so ridiculous that it has deceived no one, but has excited the ridicule even of the Italian liberals. But one probable and credible reason can be given for an undertaking involving such a great expenditure at a time when the finances of the state are in such a wretched condition. This reason is that the measure has been undertaken by the dictation of Bismarck, in virtue of a secret treaty between Prussia and Italy, and in view of a proposed war of the two combined powers against France. The Italian kingdom was set up, as is well known to all, by Napoleon III. for the sake of using its alliance and employing its military power to the advantage of the French Empire. The control of this convenient instrument was, however, wrested from the unfortunate emperor by his conqueror and destroyer, Bismarck, who has continued to govern not only William and his empire, but Victor Emanuel and his kingdom, to the great and increasing disgust of the majority of Italians, including a large portion even of the liberals. The intention of Bismarck to seize upon the speediest convenient opportunity of making a new invasion of France has been too openly manifested to admit of any doubt. The execution of this purpose has been delayed at the instance of Russia, in order to leave that power more free and unembarrassed for its great enterprise of destroying the Ottoman Empire and taking possession of Constantinople. In the Bismarckian scheme the war against the Papacy and the Catholic Church, against France and Austria, is all one thing, with one motive and end—the exaltation of the infidel Teutonic empire on the ruins of Latin Christianity and civilization; and the possession of Constantinople by the Russians as the capital of another great schismatical empire, dividing with Prussia the hegemony of the world, harmonizes with this scheme, as planned long ago by the two astute and powerful chancellors, Gortchakoff and Bismarck.

The papers have been saying of late that Bismarck, whose ambitious mind triumphs over the shattered nerves and dropsical body which seem soon about to become the prey of dissolution, has been lately threatening Europe with a general war for the coming vernal equinox. This means, of course, that he is preparing an equinoctial storm of “blood and iron” to mark for ever in history the close of his own career as the beginning of a new European epoch. The sagacious writer in the Civiltà considers the order for fortifying Rome and Civita Vecchia as a strong confirmation of the fact of a military alliance between the anti-Christian government of Italy and the Bismarckian empire, and of the probability of an approaching war by the two allied powers against France. He prudently abstains from carrying his prognostics any further, wittily observing that it would be proof of a scanty amount of brains if he were to attempt anything of the kind. We can easily understand that, for men writing and publishing in Florence, a certain caution and reserve are necessary in the open, explicit expression of the hopes and expectations which they know how to awaken in other minds by a significant silence. Nevertheless, as we happily enjoy more liberty of speech than is conceded to Italians when they happen to be clericals, we will run the risk of passing for a man of “scarso cervello,” and give utterance to a few of the conjectures which sprang up in our own mind upon reading the remarks of our able contemporary.

Both the Bismarckian and the Cavourian political fabrics are in a precarious condition. It is perhaps less desperate to undertake a hazardous enterprise on the chance of success than to remain quiet with the certainty of being swept away by the current of coming events. Nevertheless, the ruin may be hastened, and even directly brought about, by the very means which are used to avert the crisis, if the undertaking is really desperate. Perhaps the bête noir which harasses the sleepless nights of the Prussian, which the servile Italian minister threatens upon the people grumbling at their excessive taxation, which the political apes of French radicalism pretend to dread, may be the nightmare of a prophetic dream. As the unhappy victims of a divine fate in the Greek tragedies accomplish the direful woes foretold at their birth by the very means used to avert them, the accomplices in the anti-Christian conspiracy may bring upon themselves the catastrophe they seem to fear—a reactionary movement in which they will be submerged. If Italy consents to incur the unknown risks of an alliance with Prussia, and play the part of a subservient tool to the insane ambition of Bismarck, one of the consequences may be that her speedily and falsely constructed unity will be shattered. Russia is at present too deeply engaged in her deadly struggle with Turkey to be either a formidable ally or enemy to any other great power for some time to come, even if she comes off victorious in the end. In respect to Russia, Austria has now her favorable, perhaps her last, opportunity to secure her own stability and equality by a repression of her other antagonist, Prussia. An invasion of France makes Austria, with her army of one million, the natural ally of France. There are urgent motives which might draw England into the same coalition. And what is there improbable in the conjecture that one of the great events in such a war would be the occupation of the Pontifical States by the allied troops, and the restoration of the pontifical sovereignty? If the Pope recovers his royal capital well fortified, the advantage of the fortifications will be his, and make him more secure in future against lawless invasion of banditti.

We are not at all certain that a prospective triumph of Russia bodes so much good to the party of anti-Christian revolution as many suppose. The interest, the safety even, of that empire requires of her that she should exert all her power, and co-operate with every other legitimate power exerted in Europe, to put down Freemasonry and restore the Christian political order in the civilized world. It is very probable that when the European congress meets, after the present cycle of wars, to pacificate Europe and readjust the equilibrium of nations, neither Gortchakoff nor Bismarck will be numbered among living statesmen; and that the catalogue of disasters by which the enemies of the Holy See are punished will be so far completed for the present century, as to serve a salutary purpose in warning and instructing the rising and coming statesmen and sovereigns of Christendom.

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SONNET.

There is a castle of most royal state, Wherein no warder watches from the walls, Nor groom nor squire abides in court or halls: Silent are they, grass-grown and desolate. A thousand steeds a thousand knights await, Sleeping, all harnessed, in the marble halls Until the Appointed One upon them calls, Winding the horn that hangs beside the gate. Then shall the doors fly open, and the steeds Neigh, and the knights leap, shouting, to the selle, And they shall follow him and do such deeds All men must own him master. But the spell Who knows not and, uncalled, essays the horn, Falls at the fated doors and dies forlorn.

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THE IRISH HEDGE-POETS.

The music of the ancient Irish has been preserved because no interpreter was needed to translate its beauties into another tongue. The poetry which accompanied the music has well-nigh perished, and what remains attracts but little attention. For this there are two reasons: the students of Celtic literature have been few, and of those who have endeavored to translate its poetry into English there are but one or two who have succeeded in any fortunate degree in retaining the spirit and beauty of the original. The best as well as earliest collection of Irish poetry is Hardiman’s Minstrelsy of Ireland, but it is accompanied by feeble and conventional translations. A literal translation of the poetry would make this a most valuable collection for the general reader; as it stands, it is only of worth to those who can read the original Irish. Several other collections, smaller and of less value, are in existence, but a real and full collection of Irish poetry has yet to be made. We are aided in the present article by two small volumes entitled Munster Poetry, collected by John O’Daly, a well-known Dublin bookseller and antiquarian, and translated, the first series by the unfortunate James Clarence Mangan, and the second by Dr. George Sigurson. They do not attempt to deal with the general subject, but only profess to be a collection of popular poetry current in Munster from eighty to one hundred years ago, and composed by the last of the Irish bards who sang in their native tongue, and were called “hedge-poets.”

The race of bards or hedge-poets—whichever title may be preferred—who sang in their native language virtually became extinct at the beginning of the present century. The history of their lives, as well as most of their poetry, exists only in tradition, and, but for a few incomplete collections, would soon vanish for ever. It is not too late, however, to form some picture of them, and the value of their poetry is such as to make us deeply regret that no more has been preserved. And, even without intrinsic merit, the national poetry of a people is always worth preserving.

During the eighteenth century, as is well known, the Celtic Irish were at a very low stage of political fortune. The entire subjugation of Ireland, for the time, occurred at the battle of Limerick. The flower of the army of Sarsfield followed its gallant leader to the plains of Minden, and made the reputation of their race as soldiers under the French banners. Those who remained in Ireland were crushed into outward subjection. The tyranny of the conquerors, exasperated by the doubtful and desperate struggle, placed no bounds to the humiliation which it endeavored to inflict. The penal laws were cruel and barbarous beyond those of any nation on record. All intellectual as well as religious education was denied the Irish people, and it was only by stealth that they could gratify their thirst for either.

The spirit of the Celtic population was crushed, but not degraded. They were conquered, and were aware that another struggle was hopeless for the present. None the less they preserved all their national feelings. The language of the common people in their daily intercourse was Irish; their only pride was in Irish tradition, and their only poetry was in the same melodious tongue. This continued long after English was the language used for business. It must not be supposed that, although the Celtic Irish were poor and deprived of all religious and political rights, they were entirely ignorant or uncultivated. The average Irish peasant of the last century was likely to have more learning than his English compeer. The hedge-schoolmaster was abroad in the land, and the eagerness with which Irish peasant lads sought for knowledge under difficulties was only second to the fervency of their religious faith under persecution. The education was not of the most valuable or practical cast in all particulars, but that it was cultivated so earnestly is the highest proof of the undegraded character of the people. The hedge-schoolmasters were more learned in Latin than in science, and taught their pupils to scan more assiduously than to add. The traditionary Irish history, the exploits of Con of the Hundred Battles, and the prophecies of Columbkille were expounded more particularly than the battles of Wolfe or Marlborough or the speeches of Chatham. This was but natural. The Irish then felt no share in English victories or interest in English literature. Poetry was especially a branch of learning in those days as it has never been since. The hedge-schoolmasters were often poets as well as pedagogues, and the amount of verse produced of one sort or another was enormous. Much of it was naturally worthless, but among the crowd of poetasters was here and there a poet who had the heart to feel and the tongue to express the woes of his country and the passions of his own heart in the language of nature. The hearts of the people answered them, and their memories treasured their songs. They were no longer bards entertained in the halls of the great. They were the wandering minstrels of the poor, but some of them were genuine poets whose power and grace were visible under every disadvantage.

In considering the fragments of this poetry three things must be kept in mind: first, that it has been preserved mostly by oral tradition; secondly, that it is translated from a language whose idiom is especially hard to be rendered into English; and, thirdly, that the lyrical form imposes additional difficulties in adequate rendering. By far the larger number of the productions of the hedge-poets are of an allegorical cast. The poet in a vision sees a queenly maiden, of exquisite beauty and grace, sitting lonely and weeping on some fairy rath by moonlight, by the side of some softly-flowing stream, or by the wall of some ruined castle of ancient splendor. He is at first confounded by her beauty. Then he takes courage at her distress, and asks whether she is Helen of old who caused Troy town to burn, or she that was the love of Fion, or Deirdre, for whom the sons of Usnach died. These are the three types of beauty almost invariably used. The lady replies, in a voice that “pierces the heart of the listener like a spear,” that she is neither of these three; she is Kathleen ni Ullachan, or Grauine Maol, Roisin Dubh, the Little Black Rose, or Sheela na Guira, these being the figurative names for the female personification of Ireland. She laments to the poet’s ear that her heroes brave, her Patrick Sarsfield, her John O’Dwyer of the Glens, are driven across the seas, and that she is the desolate slave of the Saxon churls. Then she rises into a strain, half-despairing, half-exulting, that the heroes will soon return with help from the hosts of France and Spain; that the fires of the Saxon houses shall light every glen, and the “sullen tribe of the dreary tongue” be driven into the sea; that God shall soon be worshipped once more on her desolate altars, and the kingly hero, her noble spouse, her prince of war, shall once more clasp her to his arms and place three crowns upon her head. This is the outline of almost every one of these patriotic visions, and it will be seen at once how beautiful was the conception and how capable of exhibiting the highest pathos. The Irish minstrels had to sing of their country in secret, for the ear of the conquering race must not hear of their hopes and fears. In this disguise they would give voice to their patriotic passion as to an earthly mistress, and their country’s woes and hopes could be imparted with a double intensity. This personifying the country in the form of a beautiful and desolate woman is not peculiar to Irish poets, but seems the form of expression for the passionate patriotism of all oppressed countries. It is common to the Italian, the Polish, and the Servian poets.

In the description of the beauty of the forlorn maiden one poem bears a great resemblance to another, and those beauties which are peculiar to Irish girls are her distinguishing features; thus, the long, flowing tresses, the coolun, or head of fair locks, is often most beautifully painted.

“Her clustering, loosened tresses Flowed glossily, enwreathed with pearls, To veil her breast with kisses And sunny rays of golden curls” —Sheela ni Cullenan, by Wm. Lenane.

“Her curling tresses meet Her small and gentle feet. Her golden fleece—the pride of Greece, Might shame those locks to greet.”

“The dew-drops flow down Her thick curls’ golden brown.” —The Drooping Heart, by MacColter.

“Sunbright is the neck that her golden locks cover.” —The Cuilshon.

“Her hair o’er her shoulders was flowing In clusters all golden and glowing, Luxuriant and thick as in meads are, the grass-blades That the scythe of the mower is mowing.” —The Vision of Conor Sullivan.

From these specimens it may be guessed that either blonde beauty was more common among Irish maidens than now, or that its rarity made it doubly prized. It appears to have been as much in demand as in these days, which have witnessed the grand rage for fair locks at the expense of bleaching-irons and Pactolian dye. It is only occasionally that some poet dares to express his preference for cean dubh dheelish—the dear black head.

The pure brow of wax in fairness and radiance is not forgotten:

“Whose brow is more fair than the silver bright; Oh! ’twould shed a ray of beauteous light In the darkest glen of mists of the south.”

—The Melodious Little Cuckoo.

Narrow eyebrows finely arched were a peculiar mark of distinction. For the eyes there is almost a whole new nomenclature of comparison and compliment. The peculiar and most often repeated color is “green,” which is the uncompromising English translation of the delicate Irish epithet which means

“The grayest of things blue, The greenest of things gray”

—that shade of the most beautiful and brilliant eyes well known to Spanish as well as Irish poets, and which Longfellow and Swinburne have not hesitated to describe by the naked and imperfect English adjective. This is the way in which one of these ignorant minstrels expresses what he means, and renders it with a new grace:

“I gave you—oh! I gave you—I gave you my whole love; On the festival of Mary my poor heart you stole, love, With your soft green eyes like dew-drops on corn that is springing, the music of your red lips like sweet starlings singing.” —Fair Mary Barry.

A beautiful and apt comparison for the sweet, rosy bloom, nowhere found in such perfect charm as in Ireland, was the apple blossom and the berry.

“On her cheek the crimson berry Lay in the lily’s bosom wan.”

—Sheela ni Cullenan.

“The bloom on thy cheek shames the apple’s soft blossom.”

Among the finest and most delicate comparisons, however, is this:

“Like crimson rays of sunset streaming O’er sunny lilies her bright cheeks shone.”

The fair one’s bosom is declared to be like to the breast of the sailing swan, to the thorn blossoms, to the snow, to the summer cloud, in a variety of beautiful expressions:

“Her bosom’s pearly light Than summer clouds more bright, More pure its glow than falling snow Or swan of plumage white.” —Beside the Lee, by Michael O’Longen.

“Her breast has the whiteness That thorn-blossoms bore.”

Her hands are pure and white as the snow, and never without being accomplished in the art of embroidery. There is scarcely a poem in the whole collection in which the skill of the heroine in this particular is not mentioned. She does not play upon the harp. That was a manly profession. Embroidery was the fashionable accomplishment for Irish ladies, and the maiden who typified Ireland must be pre-eminent in it.

“Her soft, queenly fingers Are skilful as fair, While she gracefully lingers O’er broideries rare. The swan and the heath-hen, Bird, blossom, and leaf, Are shaped by this sweet maid Who left me in grief.”

The voice was that of the thrush singing farewell to the setting sun, the cuckoo in the glen, or the lark high in air. Bird-voiced was the universal epithet. The branch of bloom, the bough of apple-blossoms, was the whole lovely creature.

Such were the beauties and accomplishments of the heroines of the hedge-poets, largely, doubtless, derived from the earlier bards, but often exclusively their own. They were chiefly applied to the ideal figure who represented in her beauty and her sorrow their forlorn country, but sometimes to the earthly mistress of flesh and blood whose smiles they sought. Seldom anything so natural and so delicate is to be found in any national poetry. The false and artificial compliments of English amatory poetry, equally with the overstrained comparisons of Oriental verse, seem tasteless and tawdry beside these simple blossoms of nature. They give out health and perfume, while the English love-songs are like wax, and the gorgeous verse of the East is, like its vegetation, magnificent but often odorless.

Those poems which we have described form much the larger portion of the remains of the hedge-poets; but there are others, devoted purely to love, to satire, and to lamentation. There are some which are a sort of dialogue and courtship in rhyme. The minstrel “soothers” the damsel with all the arts of his flattering tongue. He calls her by every sweet name he can think of; tells how deep is his passion and how renowned he will make her by his verse. The rustic coquette replies with a recapitulation of all his faults and failings, his poverty, his fondness for drink, his disgrace with all his relations, and his general unfitness for the yoke of matrimony, and then very often yields to his flattery and goes away with him; or else she listens to his string of endearments without a word, and then dismisses him with stinging contempt. Sometimes the bard sits down in sorrow, generally in a tap-room over an empty glass, and details the charms of the fair one who has wrought his woe; or sometimes, though rarely, it is one of the opposite sex, who has been driven from home by the curses of her kindred, and, sitting by the roadside, tells her tale of woe or despair. Such cases, however, are infrequent, and the general purity of both theme and verse is worthy of all praise. The number of lamentations is much less than would naturally be expected among a people whose vehemence of grief is noted, and where the keener’s extemporaneous mourning reached such a height of impassioned eloquence. From whatever reason, but few appear to have been preserved. Those that are, however, are characterized by profound strength and pathos. The keen of Felix MacCarthy for his children is one of the saddest lamentations ever put into verse. It is entirely too long for quotation, but these two verses, describing the mother’s appearance and grief, will show something of its genuineness and power:

“Woe is me! her dreary pall, Who royal fondness gave to all, Whose heart gave milk and love to each— Woe is me! her ‘plaining speech”

“Woe is me! her hands now weak With smiting her white palms so meek. Wet her eyes at noon, and broken Her true heart with grief unspoken.”

A lament for Kilcash, or rather for its patroness, is also very powerful.

The romantic love-tales are few in comparison with the number among the Irish street-ballads of to-day. The rich young nobleman who falls in love with the pretty girl milking her cow, and the fair lady of great estate who picks out her lover from the tall young men in her own service, make but few appearances. The only ballad of this kind in the collection is not after the usual pattern. The heir to “land and long towers white” certainly falls in love with a rustic maiden, but, instead of flying with him on his roan steed and becoming mistress of his castle, she tells him with great prudence that he will find other maidens better suited to his degree:

“I’m not used at my mother’s to sit with hosts, I’m not used at the board to have wines and toasts, I’m not used to dance-halls with music bold, Nor to couches a third of them red with gold.”

And, in spite of his fervent and eloquent protestations, she refuses to go with him.

Such are the themes and characteristics of the last age of Celtic poetry in Ireland. If we have failed to show that the minstrels who sang in such poverty and oppression had natural genius of a high order, we have not accomplished our purpose. We think that true poetry is visible in almost all that remains of their productions. Like all sectional and class poets, they resembled each other very much. The same species of imagery, the same terms of thought and peculiar epithets, were common to them as to the Troubadours, the Scandinavian minstrels, and to all other classes of poets singing to a confined audience and having little or no acquaintance with other forms of poetry. It is through them alone that the voice of the Irish people of their day can be heard. All other forms of the expression of the oppressed race have perished. In the music and poetry of Ireland is made manifest, so that the dullest ear cannot mistake it, the sorrow of a nation in bondage, tinging all mirth, all hope, and all love with an indefinable cadence of melancholy as plainly as in the real outbursts of lamentation and despairing cries of woe.

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RELIGION ON THE EAST COAST OF AFRICA.

The marvellous success of the indomitable Stanley has attracted the attention of all to Africa, that region of mystery, marvel, and malaria. The Catholic would naturally learn something of the work of the church in that continent, and of the religious condition of its population. But the subject is too vast for anything less than a large volume, and it will be more profitable to confine our attention to the dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar. This region has a double interest. Zanzibar is the starting-point of almost every Central African expedition. Thence Livingstone, Speke and Grant, Cameron, and Stanley on two occasions, have struck into the interior and made valuable discoveries. It is also the old centre of the East African slave-trade, which, though it has received a severe check, is not yet abolished. Moreover, Zanzibar is a microcosm—a little world in itself. There one meets with the Arab, the Hindoo, the Persian, the Malagashi, the Banian, the Goa Portuguese, the negro, and the European.

The most important portion of the Sultan of Zanzibar’s territory is the islands of which Zanzibar is the chief. The name was once applied to the whole coast, and it is probable that that must have been the meaning of Marco Polo when he says (on hearsay evidence) that the island of Zanzibar is two thousand miles round. The term is supposed to signify the “Land of the Blacks.” The island is in about 6° south latitude, 48 miles long by 18 broad. It is separated from the mainland by a strait only 20 miles in breadth. As one approaches Zanzibar from the north the coast appears bare, rocky, and surrounded by low cliffs. Here dwell some wild people, almost completely cut off from the more civilized portion of the inhabitants, and following debasing and degrading superstitions. But as we sail southwards, between the island and the main, the shore becomes low and flat, the beach covered with sand of silvery whiteness, and the whole backed by rising ground not more than 300 feet high, on which grow in rich abundance cocoanut and other feathery-leaved palms. Soft breezes, laden with sweet odors from the groves of spice-trees, blow from the shore. The island is rich in fruits; mangos, oranges, limes, pummalos or shaddock, pineapples, jack-fruit, guavas, bananas, and cashew abound. But about four years ago a hurricane visited Zanzibar for the first time; almost all the dhows in the harbor were wrecked, many lives were lost, and the greater part of the trees were destroyed. On one estate known to the writer only four per cent. of the trees remained standing, and the ground, strewn with palms, was a lamentable sight.

At the entrance of Zanzibar harbor are several beautiful islands of emerald green. One of these, called French Island, is used as a burial-place for Europeans, and many wooden crosses and boards mark the last resting-place of seamen of the British navy, cut down by the fever which is so fatal on this coast. The heat is not excessive, seldom rising to 90°, but there is a feeling of depression in the atmosphere, and a short residence in this climate serves to take the energy out of most people.

Now we arrive at the city of Zanzibar, the most important place in East Africa. Its name, in the native language, is Unguja. For miles before reaching the city we have seen large white, square buildings close to the shore—the country residences of wealthy Arabs. The appearance is very pleasing, and so is that of the city from the sea, as similar houses stand near it. These are the English, French, American, and German consulates, over which wave the flags of their respective nations; also the sultan’s palace, the custom-house, and residences of rich Arabs and Hindoos. They are built of coral covered with the whitest plaster, only relieved by regular rows of windows, the brightness reflected from these houses being almost blinding. But on entering the town you cease to wonder at the bad name it has earned. With scarcely an exception Zanzibar is a heap of rubbish; the narrow lanes, or paths which do duty for streets, are surrounded by low hovels formed of earth plastered over wooden frames, roofed with palm-leaves, and possessing no means of ventilation but the doorway, the interior being consequently dark, stifling, and filthy. Many buildings have been allowed to go to utter ruin, and the very mosques are hardly presentable. But the bazaars form the sight of the city. They are, perhaps, a little wider than the other thoroughfares, and the fronts of the houses are occupied by small stalls, on which are piled articles the most incongruous—soap, fish, plantains, cotton goods, medicine, oil, etc. In the midst is seated, cross-legged, a fat old Banian, stripped to the waist, with his naked foot in a basket of grain, or a pretty dark-eyed girl with a ring in her nose. The market produce of all kinds is heaped on the ground without any attempt at order, and, as every one present is screaming at the top of his voice in his own language, the Babel of tongues is complete.

The government is in the hands of the Arabs. This people have from time immemorial had trading-stations on the coast, but Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1499, and the Portuguese soon superseded the Arabs and held the coast for a couple of hundred years, when the Arabs succeeded in dislodging them, and they are now confined to Mozambique and Quilimane, at the mouth of the Zambesi.

Remains of Portuguese forts are scattered up and down the shores of the mainland, and the writer assisted once in whitewashing Vasco da Gama’s column at Melinda, which makes an excellent harbor mark. Near the fort at Zanzibar numerous Portuguese cannon, cast in a European arsenal in the present century, lie on the ground, a proud trophy for the Arabs and a humiliating spectacle for Europeans. Fifty years ago Sayid Said, the Imaum of Muscat, visited Zanzibar and fixed his residence there. At his death one of his sons succeeded to his African and another to his Arabian possessions, the former paying an annual tax of forty thousand dollars to the Imaum. Sayid Barghash, the present sultan, succeeded his brother Sayid Majid seven years ago. He had previously been exiled to Bombay at the instance of the English, whose protégé Majid was. His policy has been one of economy and retrenchment. Though the government may be called an absolute monarchy, yet it answers rather to the old feudal constitutions of Europe in the middle ages, the sultan being checked by members of his own and other powerful families.

The Arab statute-book is the Koran interpreted by what may be called the priesthood. But witchcraft is a great power, not only with the heathen but also with Mahometans, in Africa, and, after consulting his sheiks and sherifs, the sultan often has recourse to the heathen Mganga. One is reminded of the Witch of Endor, Pharao’s magicians, and many of the old superstitions which we find recorded in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures.

The population of the city may be one hundred thousand, and that of the remainder of the island rather more; but one cannot decide this with any accuracy, as it is against Moslem principles to take a census. Who are they to count the favors of God? Of the mongrel population of Zanzibar the Arab is the dominant race, though there are few, if any, pure Arabs—sometimes that name being applied to a man as black as a negro. But the better class of them are fine, handsome men, splendidly dressed, and very dignified and self-possessed. They are ignorant, however, bigoted, supercilious, and licentious. They are also very indolent and have few redeeming features. Lower classes of Arabs there are, who are soldiers, sailors, traders, and so on, and from them are drawn the villains who carry on the iniquitous slave-traffic.

There are about seven thousand British subjects—Banians and other Indian peoples. The commerce of the East African coast is chiefly in their hands, and they are the bankers and represent the moneyed interest. Those owning slaves are in danger of losing them, if the British consul discover the fact; but it is hardly possible for them not to trade in slaves, as they are always sold with landed properties, and without them labor could hardly be obtained.

Most of the army, which numbers nine hundred, is composed of Belooches, who are a motley set of rascals, brutal, lazy, and cowardly. But somehow they contrive to live, and arm themselves too, on three dollars a month, and seem to be pretty prosperous. The artillerymen are Persians—tall, handsome men with black moustaches, high black sheepskin caps, green tunics, and loose trowsers. But their battery, which is full of small brass and iron guns overlooking the sea, is a poor affair, ridiculous from a military point of view, and better adapted for firing salutes than for purposes of warfare.

There are about two thousand men from the Comoro Islands, but no one seems to have anything good to say of them.

The mass of the population is composed of blacks from the east coast. These are almost entirely slaves, and are made to work for the support of the lazy Arabs. A person acquainted with the country easily distinguishes members of the different tribes from each other; they may be known by the tribe marks—mostly punctures in the forehead—and by their general appearance. The slaves are capable of much endurance; the writer once paid thirty or forty slave women eight cents each for a day’s work, which consisted of walking thirty miles, carrying weights on their heads half the way. They did not seem at all exhausted after this arduous task. Great cruelties are perpetrated in the capture of the slaves and in conveying them to Zanzibar, but, as a rule, they are treated fairly enough when once they are received into a family, being allowed one day a week to work for themselves, besides other extra time.

There are only sixty or seventy white people—American, English, Scotch, French, and German—but without them the commerce of the place would collapse. The chief exports are spices, ivory, ebony, cocoanuts, and gum-copal. The imports are cotton fabrics, pocket-handkerchiefs of bright colors, crockery, etc.

The climate of Zanzibar is healthier than that of the mainland, though it is quite bad enough; the wonder is that any one can live there. The city lies very low, almost surrounded by a shallow lagoon, over which the water flows at every tide, leaving a deposit of reeking filth. No attempt at drainage has been made; sanitary reform is totally unknown; and the smell of the beach caused Livingstone to suggest that the name should be changed to Stinkibar. The year before the great hurricane there was a cholera epidemic which is supposed to have killed ten thousand people. Strangely enough, the Europeans, who mostly suffer much from fevers, were totally exempt, and the natives got the notion that the devil, who gave them the cholera, was afraid to attack the redoubtable Myungoo; so they sometimes whitewashed a man who showed symptoms of the disease, to cheat the devil, but the devil refused to be cheated so easily. The physical is far superior, however, to the moral condition of Zanzibar; in fact, the place is a Sodom where morality is unknown.

To arrive at an idea of the religious condition of the peoples it is necessary to consider each race separately, and try to understand their habits and modes of thought. First let us take the negro—the most numerous class. Even so we shall be generalizing for the different tribes and nations of the interior, as distinct from each other and the races of Europe.

The writer has had considerable opportunities of judging of the black man, having served in a British man-of-war engaged in the suppression of the slave-trade, and having for some time been in charge of an establishment of liberated slaves—mostly boys. The negro character is a strange series of contradictions, and it takes some time to understand him. He is profoundly conscious of his inferiority. An English officer adopted a little slave boy taken from a dhow, and we taught him a few elements of religion, which he eagerly grasped. Amongst others he was much struck by the idea of a future state. One day he was being chaffed: “Ah! you nigger—thick lips—flat nose,” when he replied: “If I’m a good nigger, after I die I shall get up again, not black then, but white as you are.” It was a long time, though, before he could believe that a negro could rise again, though it did not seem unreasonable to him for an Arab or white man to rise.

Passing with this same boy, Mumbo, through a graveyard at Zanzibar, he pointed to a grave. “Who’s there?” he said. “Arab man,” I answered, recognizing it to be so from the concrete with which the grave was covered. “He get up again?” “Yes,” I replied, after which the boy was thoughtful and silent for a while. “Who’s buried there?” he repeated, pointing to a grave marked by a wooden cross. “A Msungu” (white man), I answered. “He get up again?” “Yes.” Another pause. “And who’s there?” the boy again asked, pointing to a mean grave unmarked by cross or stone. “A nigger man,” said I. “He get up again?” But on replying in the affirmative he would not believe it, and continued obstinately sceptical for some time.

Selfishness seems to be the most prominent feature of the negro character. Civilized people mask the repulsive feeling, but not so the black. Everything is for himself and his own present sensual gratification. They have not a particle of gratitude, and if you show them kindness or give them a present it is considered a sign of weakness, and their contempt for their benefactor is apparent. There is no word expressive of thanks in the Swahili language, though the “Santa” of the Arab, accompanied by a bow, the right hand placed on the heart, is most graceful and pleasing. On taking charge of the boys’ house, in the benevolence of my heart I invested in numbers of stalks of bananas—a large one can be obtained for eight cents—and distributed them. But no word of thanks was heard, and the boys began to consider fruit as a right, and to grumble if it were not forthcoming; so I grew rather disgusted and discontinued scattering largesse amidst such a graceless set. Neither do they show much affection. This, perhaps, is hardly to be wondered at, as the slave-traffic, which has existed from time immemorial, must, by constantly separating families, have weakened and almost destroyed all ties of kindred. A gentleman well acquainted with the people told me that the only known affection amongst them was that between a son and his mother. Several slave boys whom we had liberated and kept on board the ship, on our leaving the coast were wisely sent on shore to the mission, only the one of whom I have previously spoken remaining. He wept piteously and sobbed himself to sleep. We were touched, and fancied that, after all, we had formed too low an estimate of the negro, till on waking he appeared to have completely forgotten his friends, and never spoke of them again. It then appeared that his grief had been purely selfish; for, as he phrased it, he would have no one “to skylark with.” “What will you give me?” is the view a negro takes of his neighbor, and in this the Ki-Swahili, and even the Arab, very much resemble him. One’s ear soon grows familiar with the cry of “Lata paca”—“Bring pice”—pice being little Indian copper coins which form the currency at Zanzibar. This question is asked you in the streets or country roads, not merely by the poor, but even by well-to-do people. I was one day walking home from a feast to which I had been invited by the proprietor of a sugar plantation—a Swahili man. These people are mulattoes, partly Arab, but mostly negro. They are Mahometans and call themselves Arabs. We had been hospitably fêted, and I was accompanied by a brother of my host, a nice-looking young fellow, upright as a dart—as they all are—and dressed in the graceful long white linen robe which they always wear. He was proceeding to his home, a well-built stone house, but before leaving me I was astonished at his asking in Swahili for a few pice! Doubting my ears, I asked a boy who understood English what he had said, and he told me that I had not mistaken his meaning; so I gave him two or three coppers, and he went away well pleased.

Negroes are very improvident, like most savage races. They take no thought for the morrow—not from faith, but from utter recklessness. They are also fond of desertion for the mere sake of change. Slaves sometimes leave their masters and hire themselves out for a year or two to some one else, returning afterwards as if nothing had happened, and receiving no punishment, the master fearing that he might revenge himself on him or desert again, and also arguing that it is his nature and that no better can be expected of him. I was once on a shooting party in the Kingani River, and placing one of the boats in charge of a quartermaster, left with him a Seedee boy, or black seaman, to clean the jaws of a hippopotamus that I had shot on the previous day. I went up the river in the other boat with the remaining seamen for a day’s shooting, and on my return in the evening was informed that the black had decamped, and we never saw any more of him. In the ship he was receiving about four times as much pay as he could possibly earn elsewhere, and, in addition to this, he left clothes and money behind. Yet we afterwards learnt that before leaving the vessel he had told his friends of his intention to run.

The negro is, in Africa as elsewhere, exceedingly indolent, and, nature having provided him with abundance of the necessaries of life, he indulges his laziness to the full when he possibly can—that is, in his native country or at Zanzibar, if he can manage to possess a few slaves to work for him.

He is also obstinate and headstrong. Going on shore on the beautiful island of Pemba, north of Zanzibar, to trade for provisions, they were uniformly refused us, whatever price we offered. Yet next day the natives brought the things to the ship, some miles from the shore, and offered them for sale. A little bit of a boy was so obstinate that he would not obey orders unless he chose, even if thrashed with a rhinoceros-hide whip; neither did he flinch nor utter a cry under punishment. But when he left the ship, where he had been petted by the sailors, being sent to the French Mission, he was so disgusted that the first thing he did was to roll on the beach and completely destroy his new clothes, and the missionaries were compelled to restore him his old sailor costume. Still he sulked, and when I left they had not managed to get him to speak.

Negroes are subject to sudden fits of fury almost amounting to madness, and then they cry, shout, vociferate, and argue in the most ridiculous manner. They love to eat and are very greedy, but are still more fond of drinking, and in their own country begin the day by copious potations of beer. However, at Zanzibar drunkenness would be punished by imprisonment; and that is no trifle, the prisoners being placed in a yard enclosed by four walls, and receiving no food, unless they have a friend to bring them some. They are also exceedingly depraved, and, when brought into contact with the semi-civilization of the coast, they become, if anything, worse than before. A stranger is astonished at the cool manner in which they enter a strange house, if they see the door open. They place their spear in a corner, set themselves in the best place, and talk till they are tired (they are especially fond of hearing themselves talk), when they rise and leave. It is no good trying to exclude them; their curiosity must be satisfied, and they insist on seeing and learning about everything—examining and handling your clothes and asking the value of each article.

Negroes have the redeeming feature of being mostly good-tempered and pleased by a very little. They delight in a joke, yet their wit is of the most elementary character. They are exceedingly fond of music; neither does its unvaried monotony pall on them. I once passed an old man amusing himself by drumming with two sticks on a plank; returning after some hours, I found him continuing the performance, which he had evidently kept up all the time. You will see them on a moonlight night, or even in the daytime, dancing and flinging their limbs about in the most ridiculous and ungraceful manner to the tune of tomtoms and fifes; yet they keep perfect time. A circle is formed, and a performer waltzes rapidly around the inner space, looking up to the sky, till she becomes giddy and falls into the arms of her friends. Whatever work they are engaged in, these people always sing, and in the streets you constantly hear the chant of porters, who carry tusks of ivory or bales of goods slung between two of them on a pole which rests on their shoulders.

The East African negro has been completely debased by centuries of oppression and slavery. “All the good qualities appear crushed out of the African race,” said an experienced missionary at Zanzibar to me. Their religion is the same as that of the natives of the west coast—fetichism. I believe this word is derived from the Portuguese feitiço, a doing—that is, of magic. Nature has colored the black man’s thoughts, but not with the sublime and beautiful. He sees nothing in nature but the terrible, vast, threatening, and hostile. The dense jungle with huge trees, concealing poisonous snakes, fierce lions, and spotted leopards; the fever-breeding swamp; the devastating cyclone—these have produced a feeling of dread, helplessness, and terror on his debased mind. He has but a very vague, unformed idea of a Supreme Being, and does not at all conceive of the spiritual and eternal side of man. To him death is destruction. Yet he believes that the ghost of the departed person remains, and he always imagines it to be harmful and hostile. In fact, he is for ever in terror of ghosts and witchcraft, and his religion consists in the propitiation of natural objects. The African’s creed may be reduced to two articles: the first demonology, or the existence of spectres of the dead; the second witchcraft, or black magic. Their native superstitions the slaves carry with them to Zanzibar or wherever they are taken, and so deeply rooted are these beliefs in their minds that I have often been surprised to hear negroes who have been Protestant Christians for years, and daily attending public Christian worship, speak of witchcraft in ordinary conversation as much as a matter of course as they would of any every-day occurrence. For instance, missing some pice from my drawers, I asked my servant to find out who had taken them. He replied that he could not do so, but that a man had been there years ago who “made plenty witchcraft”; he would have told me, but now he was gone. Some very good Christian boys, as I was walking with them one day, suddenly dropped their voices and told me that it was a “plenty bad place.” I imagined that fever or ague was intended, as it was low, marshy ground; but no such thing. They had once witnessed some “witchcraft” or other there.

There are Mganga—wizards and witches—who are partly impostors and partly dupes of their own imagination. To these people the negroes have recourse in any calamity or sickness. Their office is to transfer the evil from which they suffer to some one else. Of course payment is the preliminary—no pay, no work. And an African must have present payment; he attaches no value to promises of future reward, though ever so near. These Mganga endeavor to entice ghosts from possessed persons and transfer them to some inanimate object, striving to effect it by music, dancing, and drinking. Thus, they nail pieces of cloth to trees to coax the devils into them. Epileptic fits are very common, and it is not astonishing that they should regard them as the effect of seizure by some external agent. On the mainland they attempt to discover the workers of magic by most cruel ordeals.

There are also rain-makers. It does not require an exceptionally weatherwise person to infer what the weather will be in a country of regular monsoons and seasons; still, they sometimes make a mistake, and then the false prophets have to escape as best they can.

The Arabs have the utmost contempt for the negroes, and, so far from trying to convert them, purposely leave them to perdition; if they made them Mahometans they would be their equals, and this they do not at all desire.

Such is the character and religious belief of these unhappy people. We will see later on what the church can do for them, but in this inquiry one important subject must be considered—that is, the slave-trade. Slavery on the White Nile is admirably described by Sir Samuel Baker in his Nile Basin, and it is much the same on the east coast. The petty native chieftains are constantly at war with each other, the object being plunder. They try to surprise a neighboring village at night, fire it, and surround it with armed men. As the luckless inhabitants rush out to escape from the flames, their enemies shoot down the men and seize the women and children for slaves, carrying off the cattle. Sometimes a thieving Arab slaving party joins one chief who has a grudge against a neighboring village, assisting him to destroy it in the manner just described and sharing the plunder. The Arabs then manage to quarrel with their allies, and so obtain their goods also.

As long as this state of things exists mission work in the interior will be impossible. The Protestant English mission, under Bishop Mackenzie, some years ago established itself in the interior near the Zambesi, and gathered together some hundreds of natives whose improvement they hoped gradually to effect. But a powerful tribe attacking the one amongst which they dwelt, they had to perform the uncongenial task of driving off the invaders with their rifles. Their friends were saved for the time, but many of the missionaries had died from fever, and the small remainder was obliged to retire. Shortly after this the tribe with which they had been was swept away and destroyed. The slave-trade naturally prevents all progress and the increase of population. It also weakens all family ties, parents killing their offspring if they are in want. Great cruelties are practised, not only in the capture of slaves, but in their transit to the place of destination. The Arabs are very improvident, and sometimes, having failed to provide sufficient food for their caravan, they leave some of the slaves in the desert to starve, not even removing the yokes by which they are fastened together. I was told of a woman who was carrying a bale of cloth, and on the journey gave birth to a child. She could not carry both the baby and the goods; the latter were the more valuable, so the infant was brained against the nearest tree and left on the ground.

About four years ago a treaty was signed between the Sultan of Zanzibar and the British government, by which the importation of slaves was prohibited, but the Arabs were permitted to retain the slaves they already possessed. Strong pressure had to be brought to bear on the Arabs to compel them to sign this treaty; but even now a considerable traffic is carried on by the east coast with Arabia, Pemba, and Madagascar. The negroes are crowded into the slave-dhows, and their sufferings from hunger and filth must be extreme on a voyage. Many die and are thrown overboard, and the remainder land in a miserably reduced condition. But the household slaves are treated kindly and well fed; this the owner finds politic, or the slave might desert. They are addressed as “Ndugu-yango”—“My brother”—and considered part of the family.

There are two sorts of slaves in the islands—the Muwallid, or domestic, born in slavery, and the wild imported slave. The former class are much better treated than the others. Even young captured slaves are not so tractable as they, but the older ones are very obstinate and contrary and given to thieving and disorder. Sometimes in revenge they attempt the life of their master or try to get him into serious trouble, yet they are seldom punished for it, any more than with us a vicious animal would be. They are slaves, and it is their nature, and they themselves give this as their excuse when convicted of the most abominable crimes. But slaves often rise to a very important position; and as Abraham sent his servant to Mesopotamia to negotiate his son’s marriage, so slaves are entrusted by their masters with the command of trading caravans to the interior, they preferring to remain comfortably at home. Free negroes have been known to sell themselves for slaves, and, when asked about it, to reply: “What can a dog do without a master?” Also, slaves often own slaves of their own. The pilot of Zanzibar, an official of some importance called Buckett, was a slave, and, when seen habited in a naval officer’s old coat and a handsome turban on his head, he appeared a person of much distinction.

It is difficult to see how slavery can be kept up at Zanzibar, now that importation is forbidden; for the annual loss from death and desertion is thirty per cent., and the average annual importation a few years ago was estimated at thirteen thousand. Slavery, as it has been there, is an abominable institution and a complete bar to improvement.

Though the negro is so ignorant, superstitious, and debased, yet it has been abundantly shown that he is capable of improvement. I once visited the well-ordered estate of Kokotoni, in the north of Zanzibar Island, the property of Capt. Fraser. I found it in charge of an intelligent Scotchman, who said that they had about five hundred laborers resident on the plantation—half men and half women. They required them all to marry, gave them cottages, provision, grounds, and two dollars and a half each per month, and they were an orderly and well-conducted people. The overseer had taught them different trades—as that of wheelwright, necessary for the work of the estate—and, though they sometimes deserted in true negro fashion, yet the truants were sure to return again.

At Zanzibar and Bagomoyo, twenty-five miles off on the mainland, at the mouth of the Kingani River, the Société du Saint-Esprit, the parent house of which is in Paris, have most flourishing establishments. The town house is in the centre of Zanzibar, its corrugated iron roof, towering above the neighboring buildings, being a conspicuous object. On entering you will be greeted in good French by very civil negro boys dressed in blue blouse and trowsers and wearing a black glazed hat. They will conduct you to a spacious sitting-room decorated with pictures of religious subjects, and before long the superior, Père Etienne, appears. He is a tall, slight man, and has not lost the cavalry swagger which he acquired as captain in a Lancers regiment, and which forms a strange contrast to his black soutane. He is a most affable and agreeable priest, and conducts one round the interesting establishment. There is a beautiful little chapel on the first floor, and when I was last in it the walls were being stencilled. In the workshops trades are taught to the boys by the lay brethren, such as working in metals, carpentering, and boat-building. The pupils belong to the mission, they having been either handed over to it by the British consul from captured slave-dhows, or purchased by the mission in the slave-market in the old times before slavery was abolished. At Bagomoyo there is a still larger establishment under the care of Père Horner, where about ten clergy and the same number of sisters have charge of an agricultural colony on which are several hundred Christian negroes. At first the mission did not mean to Christianize the natives, thinking that they were so degraded that it would take several generations to raise them to that point; but they found them capable of more than was originally expected. The mission establishment is half a mile from the town of Bagomoyo, which contains about five thousand people, but it has the appearance of a small town itself. The grounds are laid out in a most orderly manner; it is a pleasure to walk along the straight, well-kept paths between fields of maize, millet, and sweet potatoes.

The captain of the ship in which I served was one day up the Kingani River in his boat, accompanied by a young Alsatian lay brother from the mission. Shooting a hippopotamus cow, the calf, only a week or two old, would not leave the mother’s carcase, and the captain, who had to return to his ship, giving money to the brother, advised him to obtain assistance and catch the little animal, which he presented to the mission. A few months after, as we were visiting the good fathers, the lay brother took us to a large tank surrounded with a fence, which they had formed for the accommodation of the hippopotamus. Standing at the gate, the brother called the animal by name, and it came snorting out of the water, ran up to its master, looking up into his face, and followed us about the garden and into the house like a dog. Here he was fed from a bottle with flour and milk. He was taken to the Zoölogical Gardens at Berlin shortly afterwards, and must have sold for at least six thousand dollars. Hippopotami are inimical to the crops of rice which grow near the rivers, as they come on shore in the night and devour enormous quantities of the young tender shoots, so that the fields have to be carefully watched. But more dangerous animals are found on the coast, and Père Horner told us a story of a huge lion which had carried off several of their cattle. They constructed a trap of a deserted hut, into which they enticed the animal, which, finding himself imprisoned, aroused all the establishment from their midnight slumbers by his roarings. He was shot by one of the brethren.

The fathers give their guests a good dinner of many courses in true French style, but one should not conclude, as does Stanley in his How I Found Livingstone, that champagne is their ordinary beverage. On the contrary, when I was there they could offer us nothing but a little white rum which had been sent them from our ship, and the champagne with which they welcomed Mr. Stanley was some of a small present which they had received.

Their mode of work is undoubtedly the true one: to get a certain number of negroes, isolate them as much as possible from the licentious society of their heathen brethren, and hope of them to form the nucleus of a future Christian population.

The Church of England has a mission at Zanzibar, and has also some settlements on the mainland; and as I had several friends there, I know something about it from personal observation, and regret that its members are not Catholics, for a more devoted set of workers it would be hard to find. They have a house on a shamba, or estate, two miles from the town, in which there are a number of liberated slave boys, who are instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and are taught such trades as carpentering and field labor. Dr. Steere, the third bishop of this mission, which was set on foot by the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge at the instance of Livingstone, is a linguist, being the authority on Swahili, the language commonly spoken at Zanzibar and on the coast. He has written a Swahili grammar, and translated into the language great parts of the Bible, prayers, hymns, and school-books, and these are excellently printed in the mission press by some of the pupils, a few of whom he took to England to perfect themselves in the trade at a large London printing establishment. All the printing done in Zanzibar is their work. They have a beautiful chapel, where there are daily morning and evening services, and these are attended by all the establishment; and I am told that many of the boys show great devotion, kneeling for a quarter of an hour together in the chapel. I am inclined to fear, though, that the African Anglican’s notion of religion is something which will propitiate an angry, hostile power—in fact, a relic of demonology. “Our Father” has no meaning to one who had perhaps been sold to an Arab by his parent for a bowl of rice. Two miles beyond the English mission’s boys’ house is a similar establishment for girls under the charge of women. The girls look fatter and healthier than the boys, a large proportion of whom are affected by the terrible skin diseases so prevalent amongst the blacks.

The mission had a devoted young clergyman there some years ago, who, being possessed of large means and wealthy friends, purchased the old slave market in Zanzibar, on which a handsome stone church with groined roof, and different school buildings, were erected. But he sacrificed his life, as most of the workers of this mission have done, by his zeal, and fell a victim to fever; his funeral was attended by parties from the English men-of-war in the harbor, and by some of the Catholic missionaries, and many of the European residents who wished to pay a last tribute of respect to the memory of a brave and devoted, if mistaken, man. He once told me that some of his pupils asked him a very pertinent question: Why, if the Christian religion was one, the French and English missions were not united? He evaded it by replying that they taught in English, but the others in French! When his death was announced in England a young clergyman, who had formerly worked in the same mission, was preaching for it in an English church and exhorting his hearers to give money and, if possible, their personal services to the cause. He was astonished afterwards at a young woman presenting herself and offering herself for the work. Neither pictures of fever, discomfort, nor death could deter her from going to Zanzibar, as I believe she afterwards did.

Bishop Steere used to give a weekly address in the native language in the city of Zanzibar to any who chose to attend, and I have heard that the rich Arabs used to flock to it in crowds, coming to the bishop’s house afterwards to discuss the different Christian doctrines of which they had heard. But if any Arab became a Christian he would probably be assassinated by his comrades, so great is their bigotry. Singularly, the part of the Bible which has most interest for an Arab is the genealogies; for, as is well known, they are most careful in preserving such records, even of their very horses.

The Mahometan residents at Zanzibar and on the coast, both Arab and Ki-Swahili, go to school at seven years of age, and in two or three years learn to write, and read the Koran. They are also taught a few prayers and hymns and some Arab proverbs, and this completes their education. In two points a good Moslem puts ordinary Christians to shame—in prayer and temperance. In the East one often sees even the poorest people prostrating themselves towards Mecca on their praying-mat, and repeating the accustomed prayers at the stated hours, which occur five times a day. I have seen a naked black laborer praying in a coal-lighter during an interval of work. One is reminded of the quaint old Belgian cities, where it is common to see female figures, in their long black cloaks, kneeling before a crucifix in some open space. Temperance the Arab rigidly observes; and how can one expect them to become Christians when they daily witness the drunkenness of white seamen? In fact, this objection has been urged upon me by natives, and the answer which one makes, that our religion does not permit drunkenness, is not satisfactory to them. “If we got drunk,” they say, “our sultan would put us in prison.”

Strict Mahometans are very Pharisaical. We once had great trouble with a Mahometan priest or schoolmaster who visited our ship. He refused the coffee which we offered him because it was made by a Christian, and would only condescend to drink some lime-juice out of a glass which we assured him had never been used, and even this beverage had to be prepared by his own servant. Some Arab gentlemen who accompanied him and dined with us, being prevented from eating anything that we had cooked, could get nothing but oranges.

The Hindis are a sect of Mahometans who are not recognized by the Arabs, but the exact nature of their differences I have not been able to learn. Neither could I arrive at the religion of the Banians. Their mortality at Zanzibar is very great, and you may daily see processions of Banian men going to the beach beyond the town, where they raise a funeral pyre of wood, on which their deceased friend is consumed, the remains being washed away by the rising tide.

On the coast the people are much the same as those who inhabit the island of Zanzibar. There are the lazy, cowardly Belooch soldiers and their families, and these swashbucklers are thoroughly despised and hated. The towns are ruled by headmen, who are subject to the Sultan of Zanzibar, but who enrich themselves by extortion. The Washenzi are day-laborers, and are barbarians from the interior. Banians are always found prospering in trade. The Ki-Swahili—which means people of the coast, degenerate Arabs—are ignorant and vicious. They have a great fear and hatred of the white man, particularly of the English, whom they called Beni Nar—Sons of Fire. They think that, if once the white man’s foot has been placed on the land, he is sure to obtain possession of it in the end; and in this they are not far mistaken. The Wamrina are a coast clan even more debased and vicious than the latter people, and they appear to have little reason. They are cowardly and cautious, but very cunning, and, as most of the inhabitants in those parts, lie habitually, even when there is no object to be gained thereby.

There are a number of small towns on the coast from Magadoxo, a little north of the equator, to Kilwa, the great slave-mart in the south. The chief ones are Brava, Lamu, Marka, Melinda, and Mombas. At both of the latter are Portuguese remains, and at Mombas is a Protestant mission which at the time of my visit had been established thirty years, and had cost a large amount of money, but had apparently done very little good. The celebrated Dr. Krapf, who had been four years in Abyssinia, was the first to go there, starting from Zanzibar. This was in 1844. He was the first to draw up a Ki-Swahili grammar, in which he was assisted by Dr. Rebmann, who arrived two years afterwards. Their journeys from Mombas, which is situated in 4° south latitude, are well known. They discovered Kilima Njaro, a snow-clad mountain 22,814 feet high, only 3° south of the equator, and what they heard from the natives of vast lakes in the interior, where nothing but sandy deserts had hitherto been supposed to exist, led to the famous travels which have exposed a new world to the wondering eyes of men and opened up new fields for the glorious labors of the missionary.

Dr. Rebmann was living near Mombas at the time of my visit, though old and blind, and, I hear, has since died. I did not see him, though I started to do so with one of the missionaries. I was so disgusted by this man’s narrow sectarianism in the midst of heathendom—he commencing to abuse the mission of his own church at Zanzibar—that I preferred to spend the night on the river in a boat with our seamen rather than, with my friends, accompany him to the Rabai Mission. We came across a pamphlet written by them for their English supporters, containing a lot of pious texts: “Come over and help us”; “The fields are white to the harvest”; “A wide door and effectual is open,” and so on; but it struck us as being great nonsense. However, I am told that they have since that started a large establishment of liberated slaves. The Wesleyans have a mission in the neighborhood, but of them I know nothing, as we did not visit them.

The Sultan of Zanzibar visited England two years ago, offered to place his dominions under British protection, and has exerted himself to put a stop to the slave-trade, though he fought hard against its abolition at first, as from it he derived the principal part of his revenue. If a stop could be put to this evil and peace established in the interior, a splendid field for mission-work would be the result, the black having such respect for the superior knowledge and intellect of the white man that many tribes would receive the missionary with a hearty welcome.

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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY, WITH A VIEW OF THE STATE OF THE ROMAN WORLD AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. By George P. Fisher, D.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale College. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.

Dr. Fisher has taken up a line of argument of great interest and importance, which has employed the minds and pens of a number of able writers before him, but which cannot be too frequently or copiously treated. The author informs us in his preface that he has prepared the work as now published from a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute of Boston. The principal portion of his argument presents precisely what is needed by a large number of educated persons in New England, especially in Boston, where a reckless, extravagant rationalism and neologism, borrowed from Germany, are rapidly undermining all belief in the genuineness, historical truth, and doctrinal authenticity of our earliest Christian documents, together with those of Judaism. This modern infidelity saps the historical basis of Christianity, that it may be free to criticise it as a theory, a mere natural phenomenon, a phase of human evolution. Any one who turns their own historical and critical methods against these sceptics does good service to truth. We are pleased to recognize the many merits, both in respect to matter and diction, in the essay of the learned professor. The five chapters on the Roman policy, and Greco-Roman religion, literature, philosophy, and morals, are admirable. The geographical accuracy and distinctness with which, as on a map, the Roman Empire is graphically delineated, makes a characteristic and noteworthy feature of this part of the work, which is enriched with a great number of happy classical quotations. The succinct review of historical Judaism during the important but much-neglected period of five centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ is interesting and valuable. A very able critical defence of the genuineness of the New Testament history, of the truth of the miracles and resurrection of our Lord, his superhuman character and divine mission, completes a solid and unanswerable argument for the historical basis of Christianity as a divine and supernatural religion.

The author has shown the convergence of all the lines of movement drawn in the past history of the world towards the moment of Christ’s appearance. This is one of the strongest proofs of his divine mission, inasmuch as it shows that the Author and Ruler of the world is also the Author of the Christian religion. The complement to the argument should point out the divergence of the lines from the same point through the post-Christian times, and the work of human regeneration historically fulfilled—the second and even greater proof of the divine legation of Christ. The author shows very conclusively that those destructive critics and sceptics who deny the true historical idea of Christ as presented in the New Testament take away all sufficient cause for the effect produced in Christianity.

The foundation for a complete argument from cause to effect and effect to cause, in the relation between the historical idea of Christ and the historical idea of his regenerating work, is laid by establishing his supernatural character, mission, and works. Thus far Dr. Fisher gives us complete satisfaction. When he proceeds to develop his own conception of the true Christian idea—the plan, namely, of human regeneration, and the means for executing the plan—we do not find it complete and adequate. As compared with the view heretofore prevalent among evangelical Protestants, it is, nevertheless, a marked approximation to the Catholic idea. We consider that Dr. Fisher’s argument requires a complement, in order to make the historical circle embracing all ages and centred in Christ perfect in its circumference. To explain our statement and adduce reasons for it would require many pages, and we must for the present refrain from anything beyond a mere expression of our judgment.

There is only one passage which we have thus far noticed in a perusal of nearly the whole of Dr. Fisher’s volume which has jarred upon our feelings as out of tune with his prevalent mode of philosophical candor and historical justice. On page 238 it is written: “Pharisaism, like Jesuitism, is a word of evil sound, not because these parties had no good men among them, but because prevailing tendencies stamped upon each ineffaceable traits of ignominy.”

We are persuaded that in the great number and variety of studies which have absorbed his time and attention the writer of the foregoing passage has never found leisure to read the books which would give him the true notion of the institute and history of the Jesuits. We give him credit for great sincerity and love of truth, and yet we cannot help thinking that there is still a remnant of prejudice left in his mind, which in this case causes, to use his own words, “groundless, gratuitous suspicion, such as, in the ordinary concerns of life, is habitually repelled by a healthy moral nature.”

As a production of learning, philosophical thought, and literary taste, the Beginnings of Christianity deserves, in our opinion, a place among the best works of New England scholars. We will close this notice by an extract which shows the philosophical and religious tone and quality of the great argument presented in the volume:

“When we look back upon the ancient philosophy in its entire course, we find in it nothing nearer to Christianity than the saying of Plato that man is to resemble God. But, on the path of speculation, how defective and discordant are the conceptions of God! And if God were adequately known, how shall the fetters of evil be broken and the soul attain to its ideal? It is just these questions that Christianity meets through the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. God, the head of that universal society on which Cicero delighted to dwell, is brought near, in all his purity and love, to the apprehension, not of a coterie of philosophers merely, but of the humble and ignorant. There is a real deliverance from the burden of evil, achieved through Christ, actually for himself and potentially for mankind. How altered in their whole character are the ethical maxims which, in form, may not be without a parallel in heathen sages! Forgiveness, forbearance, pity for the poor, universal compassion, are no longer abstractions derived from speculation on the attributes of Deity. They are a part of the example of God. He has so dealt with us in the mission and death of his Son. The cross of Christ was the practical power that annihilated artificial distinctions among mankind and made human brotherhood a reality. In this new setting, ethical precepts gain a depth of earnestness and a force of impression which heathen philosophy could never impart. We might as well claim for starlight the brightness and warmth of a noon-day sun” (p. 189). This fine passage is supplemented by two condensed statements in another place, that the end in view of the plan of Jesus was “the introduction of a new life in humanity,” and the plan itself “the establishment of a society of which he is the living head” (p. 467). This really comprehends the whole Christian Idea in germ. Its true and perfect evolution, and an accurate commentary upon it, would present a complete philosophy of Christianity.

DE DEO CREANTE: Prælectiones Scholastico-Dogmaticæ quas in Collegio S.S. Cordis Jesu ad Woodstock, Maxima Studiorum Domo Soc. Jesu in Fœd. Americæ Sept. Statibus, habebat A.D. MDCCCLXXVI.-VII., Camillus Mazzella, S.J., in eod. Coll. Stud. Præfectus et Theol. Dogm. Professor. Woodstock, Marylandiæ: Ex Officina Typographica Collegii. 1877. 8vo, pp. xxxv.-935.

This treatise is a complete exposition and defence of the Catholic doctrine on creation and its kindred topics as handed down in the church by tradition from the earliest ages to the present day. As the title of the book indicates, the subject is considered not merely from a dogmatic point of view; all the errors of the ancients as well as of their modern imitators being taken up in turn and refuted. A glance at the general divisions of the work will show the wide range of topics treated: I. “De Creatione Generatim”; II. “De Angelica Substantia”; III. “De Hominis Origine et Natura”; IV. “De Hominis Elevatione ad Statum Supernaturalem”; V. “De Humanæ Naturæ Lapsu”; VI. “De Hominis Novissimis.”

Each of these subjects is developed with the greatest detail. Take, for example, the seventeenth proposition in the third disputation, on the origin of the human race. In the introductory remarks to this proposition the author first explains our descent from Adam, the first man, according to revelation, and then devotes some ten pages to a concise but thorough exposition of Darwinism and its companion errors. After this he lays down the following thesis: “Primi parentes, prout ex divina revelatione constat, non modo quoad animam, sed etiam quoad corpus, immediate a Deo conditi sunt. Quam certissimam veritatem frustra evertere aut infirmare nituntur qui nunc audiunt Transformistæ: principium enim quod assumunt arbitrarium est, atque experientiæ repugnans; media, quæ assignant, ad transformationem efficiendam sunt insufficientia; probationes, demum, quas adducunt, nihil omnino evincunt.” This he proves directly by a large array of arguments from the Holy Scriptures, the fathers and the doctors of the church. He then proceeds to show the untenableness of the opposite theories, demonstrating that animals can only be propagated by others of the same species; that the ablest practical scientists of the day have acknowledged the arbitrariness of the transformation theory, and that many have proved it contrary to known facts; that the means suggested by the evolutionists are insufficient to explain the origin of man, etc., etc. He introduces a large and well-marshalled army of quotations from American, British, and Continental scientists to back up his position.

The divisions of the work and the order in which they are treated lay no claims to originality, which the author has very sensibly considered as worse than out of place in a theological text-book, since it tends only to perplex the student and to introduce confusion into the schools of divinity. The fate of writers who have, even in our own day, adopted a different course proves clearly the correctness of this view. Nevertheless, the method pursued in the treatment of particular questions is at once novel and useful, and, as far as we know, peculiar to Father Mazzella. As a general rule, theological writers, after having briefly explained the meaning of the proposition and touched on the errors of their adversaries, enter at once on the demonstration. This done, they devote a great deal of space to the solution of difficulties and the refutation of objections; and it is on this last point especially that they rely for making the sense of their thesis clear. Father Mazzella has adopted a different mode of proceeding. The development of each of his propositions contains two distinct parts: in the first he presents a complete exposition of the subject-matter in all its bearings; in the second he proves the point at issue. He starts out by giving a summary of the decisions of the church regarding the question under discussion. Then, if there be any diversity of opinion amongst Catholic doctors, he explains each system and notes the degree of probability contained in it. Finally, he proceeds to the exposition of contrary errors or heresies, and of the various senses, false and true, in which the doctrine may be interpreted. All this opens the way to the second part, in which the thesis is proved from Scripture, the fathers, and reason, and the few difficulties that perhaps remain are answered.

This manner of developing a subject seems to us to confer a twofold benefit on the student: it gives him a clear and comprehensive conception of the positive doctrine, and at the same time supplies him with general principles by means of which he may readily solve any new objections that may chance to arise in discussion. It is not sufficient for the young theologian to have learned by heart a number of proofs, and the answers to the long string of difficulties given in his text-book. He must be imbued with the whole spirit of Catholic doctrine, and thus he will form within himself a new theological sense, if we may use the expression, by which he can easily discern what is consonant with, and what is repugnant to, the truths contained in the deposit of faith. Such is the result aimed at in Father Mazzella’s method. Hence he devotes but little space to the answering of objections; for he has already disposed of them in the exposition of his thesis. Most difficulties, in fact, arise from a misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine; hence it is plain that they must readily disappear, if the dogmas of the church be clearly explained.

As is proper for a theologian, the author makes abundant use of Scripture and tradition. Whilst avoiding all needless excursions into the fields of philology and hermeneutics, he does not refuse to handle the difficulties brought from these sciences. An instance of this is his vindication of the true sense of the famous [Greek: eph ô]—in quo—in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Whenever the question under discussion has been defined by the church, the decrees are carefully given and explained. We frequently find a series of definitions on the same subject, taken from councils held at various periods, proving the wonderful unity of the church’s teaching in various ages. Father Mazzella makes frequent use of the fathers and great scholastic writers. He generally quotes them word for word, thus ensuring conviction as to their real opinion, and familiarizing the reader with their peculiar modes of thought and expression, taking care, however, to explain all obscurities in the text.

Every student of theology is aware of the importance of mental philosophy in our days, when the repugnance of the supernatural to reason is so loudly and boldly asserted. Hence the author constantly appeals to it, but is careful to admit only such opinions as are approved by the authority of the schools, taking as his guides only St. Thomas and the ablest commentators of the Angelic Doctor, especially Suarez.

In the third disputation the author has made the natural sciences come to the aid of theology, especially when treating of the Mosaic cosmogony, of the origin and antiquity of the human race, etc. Certain devotees of modern experimental science, whose principles are built on mere hypotheses, and who insist on our taking mere possibilities as established facts, have declared a deadly war against revelation. It is difficult to convince such men of their errors by appealing to pure reason; for they are in a remarkable degree wanting in the logical faculty. You can overcome them only by opposing facts to facts, and by proving that their own pet studies contradict their theories. This Father Mazzella has aimed at doing; and he supports his position by bringing forward a mass of facts and disclaimers from the latest writings of the ablest scientists. The style is clear, simple, and straightforward—a most necessary quality in a book of the kind. Difficult terms are always explained, and neither order nor precision is ever sacrificed to a show of learning or rhetorical skill.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY, FROM DESCARTES TO SCHOPENHAUER AND HARTMANN. By Francis Bowen, A.M., Alford Professor of Natural Religion and Moral Philosophy in Harvard College. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.

The preface of Prof. Bowen prepossesses us at once in his favor. “No one,” says he, “can be an earnest student of philosophy without arriving at definite convictions respecting the fundamental truths of theology. In my own case, nearly forty years of diligent inquiry and reflection concerning these truths have served only to enlarge and confirm the convictions with which I began, and which are inculcated in this book. Earnestly desiring to avoid prejudice on either side, and to welcome evidence and argument from whatever source they might come, without professional bias, and free from any external inducement to teach one set of opinions rather than another, I have faithfully studied most of what the philosophy of these modern times and the science of our own day assume to teach. And the result is that I am now more firmly convinced than ever that what has been justly called[89] ‘the dirt-philosophy’ of materialism and fatalism is baseless and false. I accept with unhesitating conviction and belief the doctrine of the being of one personal God, the creator and governor of the world, and of one Lord Jesus Christ in whom ‘dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily’; and I have found nothing whatever in the literature of modern infidelity which, to my mind, casts even the slightest doubt upon that belief.... Let me be permitted also to repeat the opinion, which I ventured to express as far back as 1849, that the time seems to have arrived for a more practical and immediate verification than the world has ever yet witnessed of the great truth that the civilization which is not based upon Christianity is big with the elements of its own destruction” (pp. vi., vii.).

These are sound and wise words, which we welcome with peculiar pleasure as emanating from a chair in Harvard University. The scope of Modern Philosophy is more restricted, as the author distinctly premises, than the general title indicates. The authors whose systems are discussed ex professo are Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Pascal, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Hartmann. There is also a general discussion of those great topics of metaphysics, the origin of ideas and the nature of the universals, of the freedom of the will and of the system of positivism, with an exposition of the relation of physical to metaphysical science. It is quite proper for the learned professor to select a particular range in modern philosophy for his lectures, but we respectfully submit that a less general title would have been more accurately definitive of his real object, and that he identifies too much the course of European thought with the direction of certain classes of thinkers. The revival of the philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas in modern times is certainly worthy of notice, and is exercising a strong and decisive influence on modern European thought. The questions of ideology and the universals can hardly be adequately presented without consideration of their treatment by the able modern expositors of scholastic philosophy. We do not agree with Mr. Bowen in his estimate of Descartes, or in his general views of the superiority of modern to ancient and mediæval philosophy. Neither are we in accordance with his special views of ideology. Nevertheless, we recognize a current of very sound and discriminating thought throughout his whole course of argumentation, which tends always toward the most rational and Christian direction, taking up the good and positive elements which it meets with on the way, and rejecting their contraries. The author seems to have a subtle intellectual and moral affinity for the highest, most spiritual and ennobling ideas of the great men of genius, both heathen and Christian. Plato, Malebranche, and Leibnitz seem to be those with whom he is most in sympathy. His most marked antipathy is shown for the degrading pessimism of Schopenhauer. We feel sure, from the tone of his reasoning and the quality of his sentiments, that he would find the greatest pleasure in the perusal of the writings of such Catholic philosophers as Kleutgen, San Severino, Liberatore, Stöckl, and perhaps more than all of Laforet, on account of his Platonizing tendencies.

Mr. Bowen’s style is remarkably and elegantly classic. He throws a literary charm and glow over his discussions and expositions of abstruse ethical and metaphysical topics which we do not often find, except in the works of Italian authors, although some who write in English are beginning to cultivate this style, in which logical severity is combined with rhetorical grace. No one could write with more modesty and suavity of manner, or in a more calm and amiable temper. We hope this truly excellent volume, in such contrast with the common run of jejune and debasing trash which passes for science and philosophy, will be very much read, especially in the neighborhood of Boston, where it is sadly needed.

HISTORY OF THE SUPPRESSION OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS IN THE PORTUGUESE DOMINIONS. By the Rev. Alfred Weld, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.)

This able work of Father Weld throws a flood of light on a very sad and gloomy page of history. Never was the Society of Jesus so fearfully tried and persecuted, and never did its virtues shine more conspicuously, than in the period referred to by the author—that is, during the twenty years preceding the entire suppression of the order by Clement XIV. in 1773.

We behold its holy and self-sacrificing members spreading themselves over the New as well as the Old World, making countless conquests for Christ, bearing every hardship and danger in order to teach the truths of faith to the most barbarous tribes and peoples, planting the standard of the cross in the most distant regions, and watering the seed of the Gospel by their blood. Wherever they went they gave evidence, in their own persons, of the highest apostolic virtues.

God could not but bless the efforts of such disinterested and self-sacrificing followers of his divine Son, and their labors were crowned with astonishing success. Take, for example, the history of their missions in Paraguay. No brighter or more cheering picture was ever displayed to the world than the fatherly government of the Jesuits over these poor children of the forest. Here civilization and religion went hand in hand, and peace and prosperity reigned. But the very success of the missionaries raised up against them powerful and bitter enemies. The more saintly they were, the more envy they excited; the more learned and influential, the more jealousy arose, until at last their enemies vowed their destruction.

Chief among those enemies, and most powerful in his opposition, was Carvalho, Marquis of Pombal, the chief minister of state under Joseph I., King of Portugal. Having, by sycophancy, flattery, and deception, made himself master of this weak sovereign, and always finding means to prevent his evil designs from becoming known, he labored to destroy the authority of the Holy See throughout the kingdom of Portugal, and to establish, as nearly as possible, a national church. He saw that the faithful Society of Jesus would be an insuperable obstacle in his way. He accordingly determined on its destruction, or, if he could not effect this, at least its expulsion from the Portuguese dominions. Knowing the high esteem in which the learned body was held throughout Europe by kings, princes, nobles, and people, and, above all, by each succeeding Sovereign Pontiff, he made use of every means, and means always the most malicious, in order to destroy the character and influence of the Jesuits. There was no insinuation too low, no instrument too vile, no slander too base, of which he did not make use to effect their injury and ruin. He spread throughout Europe, especially in the principal courts, the grossest libels (many of them written by himself) against the society, and all under the hypocritical plea of serving religion, law, and order. Every species of tyranny that human malice, aided by a deeper malice, could invent or call into being to injure the glorious institute founded by that great soldier of Christ, St. Ignatius, Pombal exercised.

During his ministry nine thousand innocent persons, many of whom were of the noblest families in the kingdom or ecclesiastics of the highest character, were condemned either to prison or to death, without any trial, and often without even knowing the cause for which they were deprived of their life or liberty.

The sufferings of the poor Jesuits, many of whom had spent the chief portion of their lives as apostles in South America and had been brought back in chains to the dungeons of Portugal, were of the most harrowing description. Not a few died in their wretched prisons, and the few that survived at the end of eighteen years, when they were released by order of the Queen, were but miserable wrecks of their former selves.

On the day of the queen’s coronation, May 13, 1777, Francis da Silva, Judge of the Supreme Court, pronounced his memorable address, in which he thus denounces, in the name of the whole nation, the tyranny from which they were just freed: “The blood is still flowing from the wounds with which the heart of Portugal has been pierced by the unlimited and blind despotism from which we have just ceased to suffer. He (Pombal) was the systematic enemy of humanity, of religion, of liberty, of merit, and of virtue. He filled the prisons and the fortresses with the flower of the kingdom. He harassed the public with vexations and reduced it to misery. He destroyed all respect for the pontifical and episcopal authority; he debased the nobility, corrupted morals, perverted legislation, and governed the state with a sceptre of iron, in the vilest and most brutal manner that has ever been seen in the world.”

All the machinations of this politician are laid bare, and his miserable agents in this fearful persecution exposed to view, in this work of Father Weld. He does not ask us to take for granted his simple declarations, but fortifies every position which he takes by the clearest and most undeniable proofs. He has had access to authentic documents, which he has put to the best use. His style is clear and forcible, and in the arguments which he uses and the proofs with which he sustains them he gives us a noble, just, and triumphant vindication of the great society of which he is a member.

In reading this work we could not but call to mind the prophecy of St. Ignatius that “the heritage of the Passion should never fail the society”—“A prophecy,” says the Protestant writer Stewart Rose, “fulfilled up to this time; for they (the Jesuits) are still, as for three hundred years past, indefatigable in the saving of souls, perversely misrepresented and stupidly misunderstood.”

ANTAR AND ZARA, AND OTHER POEMS, MEDITATIVE AND LYRICAL. By Aubrey De Vere.

THE FALL OF RORA, AND OTHER POEMS, MEDITATIVE AND LYRICAL. By the same. London: Henry S. King & Co. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.)

These two volumes “comprise the author’s secular poetry previous to the ‘Legends of St. Patrick’ (1872), together with many poems composed before that date, though not published.” “His religious poems will be collected later in a separate volume.”

Antar and Zara, with many shorter pieces, first appeared in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. It was in those pages that the writer made Mr. De Vere’s acquaintance; and not a few of our readers, probably, are indebted to the same source for their introduction to the great Catholic poet of the day. To such it will be a welcome surprise, as it is to us, to find his cultured muse so prolific. The variety of themes, too, within these volumes affords a frequent ramble “to fresh fields and pastures new.” The poet himself has travelled. With Byron, he has “stood on the Alps,” and pondered in the “City of the Soul,” and basked in the “eternal summer” that “yet gilds the Isles of Greece.” At home, again, he has sung Erin’s glories and woes as though he had taken down the old Bardic harp from “Tara’s walls.”

As a poet, however, he shows the influence of two other great masters than Byron and Moore—though some of his Irish ballads remind us of the latter. He is chiefly a disciple of Wordsworth, while he has studied to good purpose the scholarly verse of Tennyson. With most imitators of Tennyson the classic perfections of the Laureate are turned to mere affectations. Not so with Mr. De Vere, who is equally a scholar himself. This scholarly taste, indeed, would have prevented him, we are sure, from adopting Wordsworth’s theory of poetic diction, even had Tennyson never arisen to recall English poetry from the loose, inaccurate style into which his great predecessors, with the exception of Coleridge, had thrown so much splendid thought.

This conviction of ours regarding the combined influence of Tennyson and Wordsworth on our author’s poetry is confirmed by the discovery that Antar and Zara is dedicated to the former by “his friend”; and, again, of the sonnet “Composed at Rydal, September, 1860,” with the two following sonnets “To Wordsworth, on Visiting the Duddon.” Antar and Zara, particularly in the shorter metre of Zara’s “song,” is eminently Tennysonian. For example:

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

“‘Were I a vine, and he were heaven, That vine would spread a vernal leaf To meet the beams of morn and even, And think the April day too brief.

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

“‘It would not shrink from wintry rime Or echoes of the thunder-shock, But watch the advancing vintage-time, And meet it, reddening on the rock.’”

And again:

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

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

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

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

Here are the sonnets:

“COMPOSED AT RYDAL,

“SEPT, 1860.

“The last great man by manlier times bequeathed To these our noisy and self-boasting days In this green valley rested, trod these ways, With deep calm breast this air inspiring breathed. True bard, because true man, his brow he wreathed With wild-flowers only, singing Nature’s praise; But Nature turn’d, and crown’d him with her bays, And said, ‘Be thou my Laureate.’ Wisdom sheathed In song love-humble; contemplations high, That built like larks their nests upon the ground; Insight and vision; sympathies profound, That spann’d the total of humanity: These were the gifts which God pour’d forth at large On men through him; and he was faithful to his charge.”

“TO WORDSWORTH, ON VISITING THE DUDDON.

I.

“So long as Duddon, ’twixt his cloud-girt walls Thridding the woody chambers of the hills, Warbles from vaulted grot and pebbled halls Welcome or farewell to the meadow rills; So long as linnets pipe glad madrigals Near that brown nook the laborer whistling tills, Or the late-reddening apple forms and falls ‘Mid dewy brakes the autumnal red-breast thrills; So long, last poet of the great old race, Shall thy broad song through England’s bosom roll. A river singing anthems in its place, And be to later England as a soul. Glory to Him who made thee, and increase, To them that hear thy word, of love and peace!”

II.

“When first that precinct sacrosanct I trod Autumn was there, but Autumn just begun; Fronting the portals of a sinking sun, The queen of quietude in vapor stood, Her sceptre o’er the dimly-crimsoned wood Resting in light. The year’s great work was done; Summer had vanish’d, and repinings none Troubled the pulse of thoughtful gratitude. Wordsworth! the autumn of our English song Art thou: ’twas thine our vesper psalms to sing: Chaucer sang matins; sweet his note and strong; His singing-robe the green, white garb of Spring: Thou like the dying year art rightly stoled— Pontific purple and dark vest of gold.”

Wordsworth was a giant at the sonnet. His sonnets are, in our judgment, by far his best productions, and those in which his theory of diction jars one least. We congratulate Mr. De Vere on following in the master’s footsteps by cultivating the sonnet, and without the defects of the leader. We are also proud to see him disregard the Petrarchian sonnet as the only correct type—a form in which the English language would be sadly monotonous, were it never allowed to vary the order of rhymes, particularly in the minor system. Surely our language has every right to a sonnet of its own—and that flexible.

We will only add that the objections commonly made to Mr. De Vere’s poetry—to wit, that it is elaborate and requires much thought—are of no weight against his mission as a poet. He aims, we presume, at interesting the cultured few rather than the uncultured many. A poet’s highest function is, we say, to teach. And a true Catholic poet, like our author, can reach intelligences, both within and without the church, through doors at which “divine philosophy” in dull, prosaic garb must knock in vain.

SADLIER’S ELEMENTARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By a Teacher of History. New York: William H. Sadlier. 1877.

This is a very pleasing and useful little manual for children. It presents the chief events of the history of this country in the form of question and answer, giving a prominence much needed to the great part which Catholics have played in the struggles of the Republic, and its material and social development. The plan was well conceived, and has been well executed. It is the last work of the enterprising and much-lamented young Catholic publisher who was so suddenly carried off at the opening of what promised to be a most useful and honorable career.

ANCIENT HISTORY. From the French of Rev. Father Gazeau, S.J. Revised and corrected, with questions at the end of each chapter. By a pupil of the Sisters of Notre Dame. First American edition. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1877.

This is another and useful addition to the Catholic Publication Society’s educational series. It is a very interesting, clear, and comprehensive history, embracing the chief powers and peoples of ancient times, and ending with the death of Alexander the Great and the division of his empire. The questions at the end of each chapter form an improved feature on the original, and the translation runs as smoothly as could be desired.

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THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXVI., No. 154.—JANUARY, 1878.

BETWEEN THE YEARS.

1877–1878.

Rogate, quæ ad pacem sunt, Jerusalem: et abundantia diligentibus te.—Ps. cxxi.

I.

Old with its sorrow, weary with the load Of angry strife and murderous thought of wrong It hath with such sad patience borne so long, The year draws near the judgment-seat of God. Signed at its birth with Heaven’s holiest name, Blessed with the chrism of self-sacrifice, It brought men gifts of more than royal price; Asked in return a pure and generous fame; Life’s book it opened at a clean white page— Whereon fell not the shadow of a stain— Set in man’s hand a consecrated pen Whose script should be the future’s heritage. Lo! we have written; shall we dare to see The closed book opened in eternity?

II.

Jesu, Redemptor! at thy feet we kneel, Who burn the tapers round the dying year; Rest we beseech for him that lieth here, And on the blotted page thy mercy’s seal. Through this dark night we wait with hope the day, Ready the handmaid of thy grace to greet Who hear the rhythm of her strong, young feet— The fair New Year, advancing swift this way. Jesus, most patient, does thy morning break? Shall she we wait for, with thy Spirit’s breath Stir to new life a world that slumbereth? Shall last year’s thorns to fleecy blossom wake? Cometh thy kingdom? Shall thy will be done, And Calvary’s shade be lost in Thabor’s sun?

III.

To thee we look, O Jesus, our true light! With eyes, tear-dimmed, that, straining, gaze along The future’s ways the past o’ershades with wrong; That dread the glitter of this earthly night, Where every star is rivet of a cross. Still in the light of Child-blessed Bethlehem We feel the portent of Jerusalem, We hear the echoes of sad Rama’s loss. In thee we trust, and in her, crucified, Our holy mother Rome, thy spouse divine, In whose dear face eternal light doth shine, In whose maimed hands thy perfect gifts abide. In thee we rest, who know the future thine; Shape thou our deeds unto thy will divine.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1878.

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CHRISTIANITY AS AN HISTORICAL RELIGION.[90]

The doctrine of natural development or evolution may be apprehended and presented in theoretical form under two diverse phases or aspects. One of these resembles the old scholastic theory of the eduction of forms from the potentiality of matter. The indeterminate something which is almost nothing takes on all kinds of specific determinations, which chase away and supplant one another, each one vanishing into nothingness like a melody when the harp-strings cease to vibrate. The animal soul, the highest of these determining principles, is only one of the evanescent forms, depending for existence on the body it animates, becoming extinct, like a sound or the trace of a bird in the air, as soon as death takes place. So, in the theory of pure natural evolution, history, polity, ethics, theology, science, educe themselves from the potential, determinable substratum of humanity, without efficient or final causes, in evanescent forms; and their animating spirit is no more than an anima belluina.

The other theory may be likewise illustrated from the same philosophy, comparing it with the doctrine of the rational soul, immediately created, self-subsisting, entering into composition with body but not immersed in it; like a swimmer in water, with head and shoulders above the surface; animating matter, but dominating over it and subordinating it to serve by its development and life the higher end of the spirit, which reaches beyond the temporal and sensible toward infinity and eternity. Thus all human development—though it is nature which is developed, though natural processes subserve its evolution, and its history is the history of human events, acts, thoughts, polities, religions—is informed and dominated by a superhuman, a divine spirit, power, action, for a supra-mundane end.

The true philosophy of history is constructed on this theory—meaning by theory what Aristotle and the Greeks meant, not a visionary conjecture, but an intellectual speculation by which the mind has true vision of intelligible realities, as it has of sensible objects by ocular vision. This true philosophy of history is partly identified with theology, or the science of God and all that which is divine; not only in so far as theology is the highest part of rational philosophy, but also inasmuch as it transcends reason. The knowledge of God and that which is divine transcending natural intelligence and reason, is the revelation of God in and through the Word, who “enlighteneth every man coming into this world,” and consequently casts light on everything pertaining to humanity. The creation, destination, fall, redemption and glorification of humanity in and through the Word, “who was made flesh and dwelt among us,” is the object of Christian theology, to which the immediate object of history is subordinate. The Incarnate Son of God is the central figure in human history, its circumference is drawn around this centre, and all its diameters pass through it.

A number of great historians have perceived this truth, and made universal history render up its testimony, which is sometimes latent and sometimes patent, to Christ and to his divine work of human regeneration. Leo, for instance, having first convinced himself of the truth of divine revelation by the study of history, made his entire work on the universal history of mankind a splendid and irrefutable demonstration of Christianity. The course of time and events before Christ is a preparation for his coming. The one great event in human history is the divine Epiphany, the visible manifestation of God in the Person of the Word through his assumed human nature, in which he was conceived and born of the Virgin, lived among men, died, and rose again to an immortal and glorious life, for the fulfilment of the divine purpose in creation and the consummation of the destiny of mankind. The course of time and events after Christ is the successive fulfilment of this divine purpose, to be completed in the final consummation at the end of the present order of the world.

In the six centuries immediately preceding Christ the preparation and convergence of events become more distinct and manifest; the features of human evolution are more marked; the progress and tendency of the universal movement are apparently accelerated in the direction of the common point of convergence; all human affairs, the objects of history, seem to rise out of its dim horizon, looming up in increasing magnitude, like the great ships of a squadron hastening from all points of the compass over a broad sea to their rendezvous. Before this period the expanse of time is to our eye almost like the waste solitudes of ocean. Confucius collected some remnants of Chinese historical documents going back to the ninth century b.c. Some imperfect records of Hindoo antiquity have been brought to light in modern researches. Hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions, like traces of a caravan on the sand, present to the curious modern eye vestiges of a remote past. Berosus wrote in the reign of Seleucus Nicator, Manetho in that of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Herodotus four centuries and a half before Christ. Varro, the most learned of the Romans, dates the beginning of authentic Roman history from the first Olympiad, B.C. 776. Authentic written history does not go back as far as Solomon, except as we find it in the sacred writings of the Old Testament. These priceless documents are the family records of the house of Nazareth, the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the history of his predecessors and precursors; of inchoate Christianity, of the prophecy and providence, the promises and laws, the typical rites and preliminary covenants, the elementary revelations and the other preludes, by which, in divers places, times, and manners, the Word of God prepared the way for his coming upon earth to fulfil all prophecy and accomplish the expectation of all nations.

About five centuries and a half before Christ the prophet Daniel made his celebrated prediction of the great period of seventy weeks—i.e., four hundred and ninety years—from the rebuilding of the temple and city of Jerusalem to the Messias. This period is marked as the one of immediate expectation and preparation. As the time of the great Prophet drew near the succession of the minor prophets in Judea ceased. The Jewish people became less exclusively isolated, and came into relations with other nations which were quite new and marked with a transitional tendency. The Greek Scriptures of the second canon, like the writings of St. Paul in the New Testament, are more like the classic works of other nations than those of the first canon, which are marked with the peculiar Hebrew characteristics. A diffusion of the Jews, of their books and ideas; a general dissemination of the Greek language and literature, a world-wide unification of civilized, and in part of barbarous peoples under the Roman polity; a remarkable advancement of the human mind in the great works of philosophy, poetry, literature, art, and every species of civilization; are the principal second and concurrent causes directed by divine Providence to fulfil a purpose, analogous to the mission of St. John the Baptist, among the nations predestined to a Christian vocation.

There is nothing in this view which favors rationalism. Grace supposes nature, and God is the author of both. Natural and supernatural providence are distinct but not separate. Rational science and revealed doctrine are portions of the universal truth which has its measure in the divine intelligence and its primal origin in the divine essence. It is, moreover, characteristic of the divine operation to act on the rule of parsimony in the use of means. Where second causes are sufficient the first cause does not immediately intervene and supersede their action; where natural forces are sufficient they are not supplanted by those which are supernatural. What a long period elapsed before the earliest of the inspired books was written! How few have been the prophets, how comparatively few and rare miracles of the first order! In the beginning, religion, the church, the whole spiritual order, was identified with the common social and civil order. The special intervention of God in the calling of Abraham, the legation of Moses, the entire Jewish system, was a renovation of the more ancient and universal dispensation, confined within the limits of one nation, protected by special legislation, sanctioned by miracles, manifested in revelations through inspired men and prophets. As the time draws near when the church and religion were to become once more and finally Catholic, the supernatural providence of God over the Jewish people becomes less extraordinary, and his natural providence over the other nations more conspicuous. The great Prophet himself, the Messias, the Son of God in human form, performs miracles and appeals to them, as it were, with reserve and reluctance, hides his wisdom and power from men, refuses to exert his dominion over men and nature in defence of his own life, discloses himself after his resurrection to a few only, and departs, so to speak, incognito from the earth to return to his heavenly abode with the Father. The gift of inspiration, by virtue of which the written documents of revelation are completed, is imparted to a small number only; their writings fill but a small compass; within fifty years from the opening of the New Testament canon by the first Gospel it is closed by the last book of the last of the apostles, St. John. No new David, or Isaias, or Daniel, or Paul, or John is henceforth to appear in the church. All this shows the purpose of God not to oppress the human by the divine in the deification of humanity, not to supersede the natural by the supernatural, or to supplant the activity of the human intelligence and will by an overbearing divine power. The Spirit of God brooded over the face of chaos in the beginning, gradually bringing it into form and order, and the same Spirit has been waving his wings[91] over the waters of human history during the entire period of the explication of God’s creative act in time and space through human actions and events. Where creative power is required—i.e., where it is the will of God to give being to a term educed from non-existence and from no pre-existing subject—God acts alone and immediately as first cause with no concurrent cause. He has created and continues to create all simple substances. Where supernatural power is required to bring from created substances certain results which presuppose a new form of being in them above their intrinsic substantial actuality, or some other augmentation of their natural force by an immediate divine act, God intervenes directly as the efficient cause of the effect produced. He is the author of second causes and principles, of the first germs of evolution, of generative powers, of all origin, and of all that is called in the German language Urwesen. He preserves everything, concurs with everything, directs everything toward proximate, remote, and final ends, bringing the creation which proceeded from him as first cause back to himself as final cause. And therefore, whenever there is a sufficient reason, he intervenes directly to overrule the order of second causes and the natural laws he has himself established. The especial reason for this is to prevent the thwarting of the legitimate action of beings endowed with con-creative power, through the illegitimate interference of other beings endowed with the same power. All spiritual beings have this con-creative power by virtue of intelligence and free-will. They may fail to exercise it when they should; they may be hindered from exercising it by equal or superior force. The order of moral probation requires that great freedom of movement should be allowed to these forces in voluntary efforts and in conflicts. But the final cause of this probation also exacts that the predetermined plans of God shall be infallibly executed, and that he shall overrule the wills both of men and angels for the fulfilment of his own sovereign will.

The natural and the supernatural are, therefore, not separate, much less disconnected, least of all hostile, in the order of divine providence, although they are distinct and placed in logical opposition to one another. Sacred and secular history, religion and civilization, theology and science, the eternal and temporal interests of mankind, cannot be separated from each other and relegated to mutually distant or hostile kingdoms, like the kingdoms of light and darkness in the system of the Manicheans. Any view which considers mankind as separated into two divisions of the elect and the reprobate by an antecedent decree, is false. The doctrine that the nature of man has become totally depraved, and that his entire rational and physical activity develops only sin which tends fatally to perdition, is utterly unchristian as well as unphilosophical. It is only from this doctrine that we could deduce a theory by which the society of the elect would be considered as a separated, isolated tribe, a small invisible church, without any real relation through a spiritual bond with the mass of mankind. The Catholic doctrine is expressed by the author of the Book of Wisdom in these beautiful words: “God created all things that they might be: and he made the nations of the earth for health: and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor kingdom of hell upon the earth. For justice is perpetual and immortal.”[92]

The true philosophy of Christianity must, therefore, take into view the providence of God over the Gentiles, their history, philosophy, polity, and civilization, in order to appreciate the period of preparation for the Messias who was the expected of the nations. The philosophy of history, also, must take into view the whole cycle of special acts of divine providence recorded in the books of the Old Testament, and fulfilled between the epochs of the calling of Abraham and the appearance of the Messias in the history of the peculiar people of God. Mr. Formby, with his peculiar originality and vigor of thought, has brought out into more striking relief than any other author we know of the idea common to several excellent modern writers respecting the position of the two cities, Jerusalem and Rome, in the historical order of divine Providence. They are, as it were, the two great citadels of God, the two great capitals of the universal kingdom of Christ. During the thousand years immediately before the Incarnation the city of David, the seat of the royal ancestors of Jesus Christ our Lord, was the citadel of all the highest interests of humanity. All the hopes, the whole future destiny, of mankind were in David’s royal line, the sweet psalmist, the prophet, the king of Israel. For seven centuries God was preparing Rome, first the ally, then the arbiter, and finally the conqueror of Judea, to take the place of Jerusalem, and by its world-wide polity to serve as a medium for the promulgation and extension of the divine religion throughout the whole earth.

The true philosophy of history sets aside all theories which are exclusive on the one side or on the other—those which exclude the ordinary providence of God over all mankind under the natural law, and those which exclude his extraordinary providence over the church under the supernatural law—and includes both under one synthesis. The one exclusive view proceeds from an à priori theological principle resulting in a conclusion with which a logical induction from facts cannot be reconciled, and therefore denies or misrepresents the facts. The other proceeds from an à priori metaphysical principle with a similar result. The one is a pseudo-supernaturalism, the other a pseudo-naturalism. The first pretends to be the genuine spiritual religion, or pure Christianity; the second professes to be the genuine rational philosophy, or pure science. Both are counterfeits of the truth. The best corrective of these theoretical tendencies is to be found in the correct knowledge and exposition of history. Lacordaire has well said: “On ne brûle pas les faits.” Facts are incombustible; they cannot be made to evaporate in the gaseous elements of transcendental metaphysics, or vanish in clouds of smoke from the pipes of German neologists. Each of these make their gas or blow their clouds from products of their own imagination adroitly substituted for facts. Facts resist with an invincible inertia every combination with false theories of supernatural religion. In all branches of science pure reasoning and the investigation of facts must go together in harmony and mutually complete each other. Even in divine revelation God is careful to present facts with their evidence in connection with doctrine, and a large portion of the Bible is made up of historical records. The divine legation of Moses and the divine mission of Jesus Christ are great historical facts, and they are in synthetical connection with all the great events and epochs of human universal history. In this concurrence and harmony we find the most evident and tangible proof and corroboration in the order of natural reason of the truth revealed by God in Jesus Christ, which is the object of divine faith, and the soul of the complete substance of Christianity.

Jesus Christ came on the earth at the very juncture of the ages, at the moment for crystallization, at the epoch of crisis in human affairs, when Judaism, Grecian culture, and Roman jurisprudence combined with Roman valor, were ready to blend in a new combination; when the three strands spun by no blind fate, but by all-seeing Providence, were ready to be intertwined: the pure tradition of the patriarchs, the philosophy of the heathen sages, the organic polity of the imperial legislators—an electric cable to bind the earth and transmit the new movement of divine impulse. The Jews preserved and handed down the pure doctrine of monotheism, the promise of redemption, and the moral law—the germ of revealed doctrine and ethics, which, in the state of development, is the faith and law of Christianity. The Greeks furnished the intellectual human culture in philosophy, poetry, and art, of which the Christian religion availed itself, as of a precious vase in which to detain its subtle and sublime essence—an ideal atmosphere for the communication of its influence to the minds and imaginations of men in all ages and countries. Rome opened the way for diffusion and unification. Immobility in tradition, mobility in intelligence, motive power in organization, are the characters of Jewish, Greek, and Roman civilization, which were united in Christianity under a higher and controlling vital force.

They were each and all temporary and insufficient, subject to a law of internal decay, evanescent in their nature, and about vanishing when Jesus Christ came on the earth. That he came just in time to supersede them and to begin the universal regeneration of mankind; that he really did so without any purely human and natural means which were sufficient causes of the effects produced; is a proof that the God whose providence rules the world sent him to fulfil this mission, and that his work was a divine operation. God’s hand alone could spin and twine the threads of human destiny and make Time’s noiseless, incessant shuttle weave the woof and web into the successive figures of historical embroidery.

The miracles and resurrection of Jesus Christ, historically proved as certain, indubitable facts, authenticate his divine mission; they stamp a divine seal on his credentials as the Messias promised from the beginning of the world. This divine legation gives divine authority to his word and precepts. Whatever he teaches in the name of God is a divine revelation, and whatever he commands is a divine law. The authentic record of these miracles, the record of what Jesus said and did; the authentic account of his teaching respecting his own person, plan, doctrine, and law—that is, of the principles and the foundation of the Christian religion—is historical; it is an authentic testimony respecting facts. The authentic record of the actual founding of Christianity on the principles and plan of the Master, by the disciples to whom he entrusted the work of carrying his design into effect, is historical. This divine design necessarily embracing all that is contained in the idea of a continuity and development of divine providence over human affairs and destinies from the beginning to the end of the world, its actual carrying out through successive ages becomes matter of history for the time present in respect to times past. Its principles of continuity and development, in connection with the order of providence anterior to Christ, and with the progress of its movement from the apostolic age through the ages following, are to be sought for in its history, not to the exclusion of reasoning from abstract principles, but in connection with it. The historical documents of the New Testament, considered merely as credible testimony and apart from their inspiration, are of paramount importance in respect to the inquiry into the nature of the genuine, authentic Christianity promulgated and established as a world-religion by its Founder and his apostles. After these come all other documents containing historical record or indirect evidence respecting the earliest age of the Christian religion. In this aspect the study of dogmas of faith, of laws and rites, of the spirit and the organization of Christianity, is directed toward an historical term. The object of the inquiry is to ascertain what is Christianity, what was its legitimate development, where is to be found through all ages the real continuation, uninterrupted succession, perpetual life, and progressive expansion which connote the identity of its essence and its specific unity in all its distinct moments, as it proceeds from its beginning towards its end. Although its intrinsic truth and authority are established simultaneously with the exposition of its historical character, the argument is nevertheless distinct, in respect to its conclusive force in this direction, from the pure manifestation of the real essence and nature of the religion. The question as to its essential constituents and their logical connection is logically distinct from the question as to its material truth, although they are metaphysically one by an inseparable composition. Christ, manifesting himself in history, is a revelation of the infinite wisdom, power, and goodness of God in his divine works, which transcend the reach of all created and dependent forces. It is the Eternal Word speaking efficiently, as when he said: “Let there be light: and there was light.” If we can only see all objects by this light, through a pure medium, we cannot fail to be enlightened by the knowledge of the truth.

The able work of Dr. Fisher, the title of which is prefixed to this article, and which was briefly noticed in our last number, is based on the idea we have set forth in these preliminary remarks, although we do not profess to have given an exposition of the learned author’s precise thesis, or ascribe to him a view identical in all particulars with the one we have presented. We will employ his own language for this purpose, of showing his own individual conception of the historical environment of Christianity, and the conclusions to which investigation and reflection on the great facts and events connected with its beginnings have led him.

“Christianity is an historical religion. It is made up of events, or, to say the least, springs out of events which, however peculiar in their origin, form a part of the history of mankind.... The Apostle Paul refers to the birth of Christ as having occurred ‘when the fulness of time was come’ (Gal. iv. 4).

“His thought evidently is not only that a certain measure of time must run out, but that a train of historical events and changes must occur which have the coming of Christ for their proper sequence. Of the nature of these antecedents in the previous course of history he speaks when he has occasion to discuss the relation of the Mosaic dispensation to the Christian, and to point out the aims of Providence in regard to the Gentile nations. It was formerly a mistake of both orthodox and rationalist to look upon Christianity too exclusively as a system of doctrine addressed to the understanding. Revelation has been thought of as a communication written on high and let down from the skies—delivered to men as the Sibylline books were said to have been conveyed to Tarquin. Or it has been considered, like the philosophical system of Plato, a creation of the human intellect, busying itself with the problems of human life and destiny; the tacit assumption in either case being that Christianity is merely a body of doctrine. The truth is that revelation is at the core historical. It is embraced in a series of transactions in which men act and participate, but which are referable manifestly to an extraordinary agency of God, who thus discloses or reveals himself. The supernatural element does not exclude the natural; miracle is not magic. Over and above teaching there are laws, institutions, providential guidance, deliverance, and judgment. Here is the groundwork of revelation. For the interpretation of this extraordinary and exceptional line of historical phenomena prophets and apostles are raised up—men inspired to lift the veil and explain the dealings of Heaven with men. Here is the doctrinal or theoretical side of revelation. These individuals behold with an open eye the significance of the events of which they are witnesses or participants. The facts of secular history require to be illuminated by philosophy. Analogous to this office is the authoritative exposition and comment which we find in the Scripture along with the historical record. The doctrinal element is not a thing independent, purely theoretic, disconnected from the realities of life and history. These lie at the foundation; on them everything of a didactic nature is based. This fact will be impressively obvious to one who will compare the Bible, as to plan and structure, with the Koran.

“The character of revelation is less likely to be misconceived when the design of revelation is kept in view. The end is not to satisfy the curiosity of those who ‘seek after wisdom,’ by the solution of metaphysical problems. The good offered is not science, but salvation. The final cause of revelation is the recovery of men to communion with God—that is, to true religion. Whatever knowledge is communicated is tributary to this end.

“Hence the grand aim, under the Old Dispensation and the New, was not the production of a book, but the training of a people. To raise up and train up a nation that should become a fit instrument for the moral regeneration of mankind was the aim of the old system.... Under the new or Christian system the object was not less the training of a people; not, however, with any limitations of race. The fount of the system was to be a community of men who should be ‘the light of the world,’ and ‘the salt of the earth....’

“The grand idea of the kingdom of God is the connecting thread that runs through the entire course of divine revelation. We behold a kingdom planted in the remote past, and carried forward to its ripe development, by a series of transactions in which the agency of God mingles in an altogether peculiar way in the current of human affairs. There is a manifestation of God in act and deed. Verbal teaching is the commentary attached to the historic fact, ensuring to the latter its true meaning.”

This is sound and Christian philosophy, admirably expressed and containing many fruitful germs of thought. What we have quoted may suffice to show that the historical nature of Christianity is the fundamental idea of Dr. Fisher’s argument in the work under review.

He recognizes also a law of historical and continuous development through all time in Christianity as resulting from its vital force, which differs from the previous historical stage in this: that “in the giving of revelation, at each successive stage, and especially at the consummation, there was an increment of its contents,” whereas “this is not true of Christianity since the apostolic age.” The touchstone and test of normal development, in the sense to which the signification of the term is restricted when it is used of the post-apostolic age, is that “it springs out of the primitive seed”—namely, the deposit of revealed truth contained in the teaching of Christ and the apostles in its state of ultimate completeness.

The historical method of determining the real origin and nature of Christianity is contrasted with the method which is purely à priori and exclusively metaphysical in the following passage:

“The historical basis of Christianity marks the distinction between Christian theology and metaphysical philosophy. The starting-point of the philosopher is the intuitions of the mind; on them as a foundation, with the aid of logic, he builds up his system. His only postulates are the data of consciousness. In Christian theology, on the contrary, we begin with facts recorded in history, and explore, with the aid of inspired authors, their rationale. To reverse this course, and seek to evolve the Christian religion out of consciousness, to transmute its contents into a speculative system, after the manner of the pantheistic thinkers in Germany, is not less futile than would be the pretence to construct American history with no reference to the Puritan emigration, the Revolutionary war, or the Southern Rebellion. The distinctive essence of Christianity evaporates in an effort, like that undertaken by Schelling in his earlier system, and by Hegel, to identify it with a process of thought.”[93]

Farther on in his argument Dr. Fisher shows how this perverse employment of the à priori method has produced the sceptical theories of the Tübingen school of criticism:

“As regards the credibility of the Gospel history, it ought to be clearly understood that the modern attack by Baur, Strauss, Zeller, and others is founded upon an à priori assumption. It is taken for granted beforehand that whatever is supernatural is unhistorical. The testimony into which a miracle enters is stamped at once as incredible. Christianity, it was assumed, was an evolution of thought upon the natural plane. At a later day Strauss fell into a materialistic way of thinking, which rendered him, if possible, more deaf to all the evidence which, if admitted, implies the supernatural. From the point of view taken in the sceptical school, therefore, the New Testament histories, so far as they relate to the wonderful works of Christ, and his resurrection and manifestation to his disciples after his death, must be discredited. But their principle, or prejudice, carries the negative critics farther. It must affect their judgment as to the authorship of the narratives which record the miracles. It is rendered difficult to believe, if not quite improbable, that these histories emanate from apostles, eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus. The myths, or the consciously-invented stories, the product of a theological ‘tendency’ in the primitive church, cannot well be ascribed to the immediate followers of Christ. The fact that the New Testament histories contain accounts of miracles also tends to weaken and vitiate their general authority, in the estimation of the sceptical school. That is to say, the credulity of the Gospel writers, or their willingness to deceive, as evinced in the supernatural elements embraced in their books, makes them less entitled to trust in their record of ordinary events into which the miracle does not enter....

“Connected with the unscientific assumption first noticed, other assumptions were adopted by the Tübingen school which are equally unsound. It was assumed that Christianity is an evolution of thought according to the scheme of the Hegelian logic, where it is held as a law that a doctrine in an undeveloped form must divaricate into two opposites, to be recombined afterwards in a higher unity. Thus, it was assumed that Paulinism, and the sharply-defined Judaizing system attributed to Peter, were the antagonistic types of opinion which sprang out of the seed of doctrine planted by Christ, and which were reunited in the old Catholic theology, the evangelical legalism of the fathers of the second century.”[94]

This statement is supplemented by another succinct and pregnant passage containing the elements of an argument of great comprehension and irrefragable conclusiveness. After affirming that “the mythical theory is wrecked upon a variety of difficulties which it cannot evade or surmount”—a statement which has much more force, taken in connection with the entire context of thorough critical reasoning, than it can show as a mere isolated quotation—the learned professor proceeds:

“What is the rationalistic theory of the origin of the Christian religion? It is that Jesus, a carpenter of Nazareth, with no prestige derived from birth or social standing, taught in Galilee for about a year—for to this period the class of whom we speak would limit his public work. From these brief labors, made up wholly of verbal instruction, came that profound impression of his superhuman dignity which was made indelibly upon his disciples, and which his crucifixion as a criminal did not weaken, and that transforming power which went forth upon them, and, in ever-increasing measure, upon all subsequent generations. The Apostolic Church, the conversion of Paul, and his Epistles, the narratives of the four Gospels, with all that they contain, and Christianity, as it appears in the history of mankind, all spring from that one year of mere teaching! The effect is utterly disproportionate to the cause assigned.”[95]

We must take notice that the author, with a competent knowledge of the theories and arguments of the German Biblical critics, has carefully refuted them, and presented solid proofs of the genuineness and authenticity of the historical books of the New Testament, before arriving at this part of his argument. He is summing up his plea after an examination and discussion of evidence. His reasoning is not, therefore, based on mere hypothesis, but is the conclusion of a well-sustained thesis, with all the weight derived from his precedent proofs. And he is therefore logically entitled to make the demand that Christianity shall be estimated by the historical measure, according to the full value of its miraculous facts and supernatural qualities, to the exclusion of any hypothesis which pretends to be rational but is really only fantastic, and therefore unphilosophical as well as unchristian.

“It is much more consistent with a sound philosophy, instead of taking refuge in an unreasonable denial of facts historically established, to seek to comprehend them. At the outset the notion should be banished that miracles are repugnant to nature; that the supernatural is anti-natural. There is one system; and supernatural agency, however it may modify the course of nature, does no violence to the universal order. For there is no such unbending rigidity in the course of nature that it cannot be modified by the interposition of voluntary agency. A steamship, cutting its way through the billows in the teeth of wind and tide, moves by the force of machinery which is contrived and directed by the human will.[96] The volitions of man produce an effect which nature, independently of this spiritual force, could never occasion. Now, of the limits of the possible control of matter by the power of spirit, any more than of the essence and origin of matter itself, we cannot speak. It is a presumptuous affirmation that there is no being in the universe who can infinitely outdo the power of man, vast as it is, in this direction.”[97]

In this brief and sententious manner, with a few heavy and well-directed strokes of sound reason, the author effectually demolishes all the brittle ware of transcendental nonsense which calls itself rationalism. We are reminded of a sentence we once heard uttered by that singular genius, Henry Giles, in a railway carriage, respecting a matter quite different: “Such theories are shattered like rotten glass by a single thump of common sense.”

We find no reason for quoting anything from Dr. Fisher’s exposition of the historical preparation for Christianity in the propædeutic system of Judaism. For the present we will only refer to the notice which he takes of the dispersion of the Hebrews over the world at the epoch of the birth of Christ, adopting the language of Mommsen, which designates Judaism as “an effective leaven of cosmopolitanism” working in the same direction with the imperial Roman polity toward a blending of nationalities in the more general solidarity “the nationality of which was really nothing but humanity.” Of the providential office of Greece and Rome in connection with that of Judea he thus speaks:

“These were three nations of antiquity, each of which was entrusted with a grand providential office in reference to Christianity. The Greeks, whatever they may have learned from Babylon, Egypt, and Tyre, excelled all other races in a self-expanding power of intellect—in ‘the power of lighting their own fire.’ They are the masters in science, literature, and art. Plato, speaking of his own countrymen, made ‘the love of knowledge’ the special characteristic of ‘our part of the world,’ as the love of money was attributed with equal truth to the Phœnicians and Egyptians. The robust character of the Romans, and their sense of right, qualified them to rule, and to originate and transmit their great system of law and their method of political organization. Virgil lets Anchises define the function of the Roman people in his address to Æneas, a visitor to the abodes of the dead:

“‘Others, I know, more tenderly may beat the breathing brass, And better from the marble block bring living looks to pass; Others may better plead the cause, may compass heaven’s face, And mark it out, and tell the stars their rising and their place; But thou, O Roman! look to it the folks of earth to sway; For this shall be thine handicraft: peace on the world to lay, To spare the weak, to mar the proud by constant weight of war.’

“Greece and Rome had each its own place to fill; but true religion—the spirit in which man should live—comes from the Hebrews.”[98]

Dr. Fisher places the relation of sympathy or affinity between the mythological religion and Christianity in three things: first, in the stimulus and scope given to subjective religious sentiments; second, in the impulse towards “a goal hidden from sight,” the object of “an unfulfilled demand in the religious nature” of men seeking after God, whom they, in the language of St. Paul on Mars’ Hill, at Athens, “ignorantly worshipped”; third, in a growing “monotheistic tendency.”[99]

The topic of the relation of Greek philosophy to Christianity is handled by the learned author in a very judicious and discriminating manner, although we are disposed to take a considerably different view of the philosophy of Aristotle as compared with Platonism. We are pleased to observe his high estimate of the writings of Cicero. The chapter on this topic is thus introduced:

“The Greek philosophy was a preparation for Christianity in three ways: it dissipated, or tended to dissipate, the superstitions of polytheism; it awakened a sense of need which philosophy of itself failed to meet; and it so educated the intellect and conscience as to render the Gospel apprehensible and, in many cases, congenial to the mind. It did more than remove obstacles out of the way; its work was positive as well as negative: it originated ideas and habits of thought which had more or less direct affinity with the religion of the Gospel, and which found in this religion their proper counterpart. The prophetic element of the Greek philosophy lay in the glimpses of truth which it could not fully discern, and in the obscure and unconscious pursuit of a good which it could not definitely grasp.”[100]

In treating of “the close relation of the Roman Empire to Christianity” Prof. Fisher notices the extension of Roman citizenship, the cosmopolitan polity of Cæsar, the unifying influence of Roman jurisprudence, the assimilation of mankind in language and culture by the spread of the Romano-Hellenic civilization and the Greek and Latin languages, travel and intercourse, commerce and a general mingling of mankind from various causes, the mingling of religions, and the resuscitation of the idea of a common humanity. Without overlooking the external agency of Rome in paving the way for Christianity, the author more distinctly accentuates another kind of influence:

“The effect of the consolidation of so large a part of mankind in one political body, in breaking up local and tribal narrowness, and in awakening what may be termed a cosmopolitan feeling, is in the highest degree interesting. The Roman dominion was the means of a mental and moral preparation for the Gospel; and this incidental effect is worthy of special note. The kingdom of Christ proposed the unification of mankind through a spiritual bond. Whatever tended to melt down the prejudices of nation, and clan, and creed, and instil in the room of them more liberal sentiments, opened a path for the Gospel. Now, we find that under the political system established by Rome a variety of agencies co-operated to effect such a result. Powerful forces were at work whose effect was not limited to the creation of outward advantages for the dissemination of the religion of Christ, but tended to produce a more or less genial soil for its reception. We have, then, to embrace in one view the influence of the Roman Empire in both of these relations, in shaping outward circumstances, and in favoring a mental habit, which were propitious to the introduction of the new faith.”[101]

What the author proposes in the last clause of this quotation he fulfils in a very satisfactory manner in one of the most splendid chapters of his work.

The outline of the historical basis of Christianity having been drawn, and the principles of the sound historical construction of a true and logical theory or philosophy of the Christian religion established, the outline of the actual foundations, and the first course of the great structure itself, determining its plan of architecture, next demands our consideration. In plainer language, the actual “beginnings of Christianity” in the apostolic age, the earliest history of the religion of Christ, in respect to all its constitutive principles, presents itself for examination. What is Christianity in its essence, nature, integrity of organic constitution, its proper attributes; with a due distinction of its substance from its accidents, of its genuine and normal germs of future development from everything of a parasitic nature or in any way abnormal? This is the great question to be studied in the authentic records of the antiquities of Christianity, with all the light and aid which can be obtained from every source accessible to research.

The long-continued, widely-extended preparations of divine Providence for the great event of the coming of the Messias of the Jews and Gentiles, the immensity of the ground prepared to be the theatre of the future Christian history, the vast and mighty instrumentalities made ready to serve the fulfilment of the plan of Jesus and of the apostolic mission, all point toward something proportionate in grandeur to the grandeur of the inchoate order which preceded. The anticipation of Christ in history demands a corresponding realization of his actual presence and operation in the “fulness of time,” the age of the completion and consummation of human destinies on the earth. Moreover, the stupendous miracles, especially the crowning one of the Resurrection, which are among the first facts and events of historical Christianity, logically and rationally require that an ideal of Christianity shall be presented which justifies such an outlay of supernatural power, and the position of causes containing such infinite potential force. The end of all previous human history being found in the beginning of Christianity, the new beginning of all human history must be likewise found there. If the normal, legitimate development in later ages is tested by its origination from the primitive seed planted in the apostolic age, the nature and qualities of that seed must be correctly ascertained. If we would recognize the true genius of Christianity in its real manifestations from the days of the apostles to our own, and discriminate it from simulated apparitions, we must know what this genius really is, or the original error will falsify all subsequent processes of judgment and reasoning, like an ambiguous middle in a syllogism.

But we have proceeded as far as our limits will permit in the present article, and must postpone the consideration of what was actual Christianity in the apostolic age, and of the learned author’s theory on the subject, to a future opportunity.

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TO THE WITCH-HAZEL.

“Last of their floral sisterhood, The hazel’s yellow blossoms shine, The tawny gold of Afric’s mind!” J. G. WHITTIER.

I.

No mocking dream art thou of summer sun, No fading shadow of the autumn’s gold; Thy sunset stars their yellow light unfold As some pale planet, when the day is done, Giveth unfailing promise of the night With its blessed hours of rest, its sparkling fields— The glittering harvest that the darkness yields Of unknown worlds far reaching out of sight. In the year’s twilight thy pale blossoms shine With faithful promise of the winter’s night— The broad, white fields with nameless stars a-light, The crystal glitter far outshining thine. In the late daylight that about thee lies, How soft thy radiance to sun-weary eyes!

II.

The brave arbutus fair foretold the spring With gleam auroral of the coming slow Of perfect summer’s full life’s noon-day glow, With undimmed sunshine, earth illumining. Thy stars, wan hazel, break amid the blaze Of gold and scarlet wherewith burn the hills— As when the pomp of royal burial fills The clouded skies that mourn the dying days. The gold grows spent, ashen the scarlet fires, The night too near for any song of bird; ‘Mid voice of streams and rustling leaves, foot-stirred, The grieving summer’s last earth-prayer expires. Brighter thy glow as golden pomp grows sere, O pale-hued Hesper of the westering year!

III.

No dreary harbinger art thou of woe, Of barren days, and warm life lost in death: On heav’n-kissed peaks is born the icy breath Whose touch unfolds the flowers of the snow. Spring’s buds, close-folded, lie along the bare And shivering boughs where calls the wild-voiced wind, And fine the leafless tracery is lined On blue undimmed as summer heavens wear. Hearts glow the warmer for the bitter wind, Stars are but brighter for the frosty night, Of earth despoiled love climbeth holy height, New, blossoming paths her feet, untiring, find. Thought of thy promise shining in dim skies Fills darkest hour with lights of Paradise.

IV.

Among thy boughs almost the sound I hear Of Christmas bells breaking on wintry gloom; Foretelling so, the glimmer of thy bloom The kindliest feast of all the saint-crowned year. O happy year! that for its twilight crown Wears the dim radiance of thy peaceful stars, Hears song of angels, where no harsh note jars, Filling the woods whence latest bird hath flown. O wailing bloom! bud forth thy prophecies, Thine earnest of a life fore’er renewed, Thy light in darkness, with fair hope imbued, Thy golden gift of love’s amenities. O conjurer’s wand! thy jewelled staff bend low, Show the bright waters living ‘neath the snow.

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THE WOLF-TOWER.

A BRETON CHRISTMAS LEGEND.

I.

Long ago in Brittany, under the government of St. Gildas the Wise, seventh abbot of Ruiz, there lived a young tenant of the abbey who was blind in the right eye and lame in the left leg. His name was Sylvestre Ker, and his mother, Josserande Ker, was the widow of Martin Ker, in his lifetime the keeper of the great door of the Convent of Ruiz.

The mother and son lived in a tower, the ruins of which are still seen at the foot of Mont Saint-Michel de la Trinité, in the grove of chestnut-trees that belongs to Jean Maréchal, the mayor’s nephew. These ruins are now called the Wolf-Tower, and the Breton peasants shudder as they pass through the chestnut-grove; for at midnight around the Wolf-Tower, and close to the first circle of great stones erected by the Druids at Carnac, are seen the phantoms of a young man and a young girl—Pol Bihan and Matheline du Coat-Dor.

The young girl is of graceful figure, with long, floating hair, but without a face; and the young man is tall and robust, but the sleeves of his coat hang limp and empty, for he is without arms. Round and round the circle they pass in opposite directions, and, strange to tell, as the legend adds, they never meet, nor do they ever speak to each other.

Once a year, on Christmas night, instead of walking they run; and all the Christians who cross the heath to go to the midnight Mass hear from afar the young girl cry: “Wolf Sylvestre Ker, give me back my beauty!” and the deep voice of the young man adds: “Wolf Sylvestre Ker, give me back my strength!”

II.

And this has lasted for thirteen hundred years; therefore you may well think there is a story connected with it.

When Martin Ker, the husband of Dame Josserande, died, their son Sylvestre was only seven years old. The widow was obliged to give up the guardianship of the great door to a man-at-arms, and retire to the tower, which was her inheritance; but little Sylvestre Ker had permission to follow the studies in the convent school. The boy showed natural ability, but he studied little, except in the class of chemistry, taught by an old monk named Thaël, who was said to have discovered the secret of making gold out of lead by adding to it a certain substance which no one but himself knew; for certainly, if the fact had been communicated, all the lead in the country would have been quickly turned into gold. As for Thaël himself, he had been careful not to profit by his secret, for Gildas the Wise had once said to him: “Thaël, Thaël, God does not wish you to change the work of his hands. Lead is lead, and gold is gold. There is enough gold, and not too much lead. Leave God’s works alone; if not, Satan will be your master.”

Most assuredly such precepts would not be well received by modern industry; but St. Gildas knew what he said, and Thaël died of extreme old age before he had changed the least particle of lead into gold. This, however, was not from want of will, which was proved after his death, as the rumor spread about that Thaël did not altogether desert his laboratory, but at times returned to his beloved labors. Many a time in the lonely hours of the night the fishermen, in their barks, watched the glimmer of the light in his former cell; and Gildas the Wise, having been warned of the fact, arose one night before Lauds, and with quiet steps crossed the corridors, thinking to surprise his late brother, and perhaps ask of him some details of the other side of the dreaded door which separates life from death.

When he reached the cell he listened and heard Thaël’s great bellows puffing and blowing, although no one had yet been appointed to succeed him. Gildas suddenly opened the door with his master-key, and saw before him little Sylvestre Ker actively employed in relighting Thaël’s furnaces.

St. Gildas was not a man to give way to sudden wrath; he took the child by the ear, drew him outside, and said to him gently:

“Ker, my little Ker, I know what you are attempting and what tempts you to make the effort; but God does not wish it, nor I either, my little Ker.”

“I do it,” replied the boy, “because my dear mother is so poor.”

“Your mother is what she is; she has what God gives her. Lead is lead, and gold is gold. If you go against the will of God, Satan will be your master.”

Little Ker returned to the tower crestfallen, and never again slipped into the cell of the dead Thaël; but when he was eighteen years old a modest inheritance was left him, and he bought materials for dissolving metals and distilling the juice of plants. He gave out that his aim was to learn the art of healing; for that great purpose he read great books which treated of medical science and many other things besides.

He was then a youth of fine appearance, with a noble, frank face, neither one-eyed nor lame, and led a retired life with his mother, who ardently loved her only son. No one visited them in the tower, except the laughing Matheline, the heiress of the tenant of Coat-Dor and god-daughter of Josserande; and Pol Bihan, son of the successor of Martin Ker as armed keeper of the great door.

Both Pol and Matheline often conversed together, and upon what subject, do you think? Always of Sylvestre Ker. Was it because they loved him? No. What Matheline loved most was her own fair self, and Pol Bihan’s best friend was named Pol Bihan. Matheline passed long hours before her little mirror of polished steel, which faithfully reflected her laughing mouth, full of pearls; and Pol was proud of his great strength, for he was the best wrestler in the Carnac country. When they spoke of Sylvestre Ker it was to say: “What if some fine morning he should find the secret of the fairy-stone that is the mother of gold!”

And each one mentally added:

“I must continue to be friendly with him, for if he becomes wealthy he will enrich me.”

Josserande also knew that her beloved son sought after the fairy-stone, and even had mentioned it to Gildas the Wise, who shook his venerable head and said:

“What God wills will be. Be careful that your son wears a mask over his face when he seeks the cursed thing; for what escapes from the crucible is Satan’s breath, and the breath of Satan causes blindness.”

Josserande, meditating upon these words, went to kneel before the cross of St. Cado, which is in front of the seventh stone of Cæsar’s camp—the one that a little child can move by touching it with his finger, but that twelve horses, harnessed to twelve oxen, cannot stir from its solid foundation. Thus prostrate, she prayed: “O Lord Jesus! thou who hast mercy for mothers on account of the Holy Virgin Mary, thy mother, watch well over my little Sylvestre, and take from his head this thought of making gold. Nevertheless, if it is thy will that he should be rich, thou art the master of all things, my sweet Saviour!”

And as she rose she murmured: “What a beautiful boy he would be with a cloak of fine cloth and a hood bordered with fur, if he only had means to buy them!”

III.

It came to pass that as all these young people, Pol Bihan, Matheline, and Sylvestre Ker, gained a year each time that twelve months rolled by, they reached the age to think of marriage; and Josserande one morning proceeded to the dwelling of the farmer of Coat-Dor to ask the hand of Matheline for her son, Sylvestre Ker; at which proposal Matheline opened her rosy mouth so wide, to laugh the louder, that far back she showed two pearls which had never before been seen.

When her father asked her if the offer suited her she replied: “Yes, father and godmother, provided that Sylvestre Ker gives me a gown of cloth of silver embroidered with rubies, like that of the Lady of Lannelar, and that Pol Bihan may be our groomsman.”

Pol, who was there, also laughed and said: “I will assuredly be groomsman to my friend Sylvestre Ker, if he consents to give me a velvet mantle striped with gold, like that of the castellan of Gâvre, the Lord of Carnac.”

Whereupon Josserande returned to the tower and said to her son: “Ker, my darling, I advise you to choose another friend and another bride; for those two are not worthy of your love.”

But the young man began to sigh and groan, and answered: “No friendship or love will I ever know, except for Pol, my dear comrade, and Matheline, your god-daughter, my beautiful play-fellow.”

And Josserande having told him of the two new pearls that Matheline had shown in the back of her mouth, nothing would do but he must hurry to Coat-Dor to try and see them also.

On the road from the tower to the farm of Coat-Dor is the Point of Hinnic, where the grass is salt, which makes the cows and rams very fierce while they are grazing. As Sylvestre Ker walked down the path at the end of which is the Cross of St. Cado, he saw on the summit of the promontory Pol and Matheline strolling along, talking and laughing; so he thought:

“I need not go far to see Matheline’s two pearls.”

And, in fact, the girl’s merry laughter could be heard below, for it always burst forth if Pol did but open his lips; when, lo and behold! a huge old ram which had been browsing on the salt grass tossed back his two horns, and, fuming at the nostrils, bleated as loud as the stags cry when chased, and rushed in the direction of Matheline’s voice; for, as every one knows, the rams become furious if laughter is heard in their meadow.

He ran quickly, but Sylvestre Ker ran still faster, and arrived the first by the girl, so that he received the shock of the ram’s butting while protecting her with his body. The injury was not very great, only his right eye was touched by the curved end of one of the horns when the ram raised his head, and thus Sylvestre Ker became one-eyed.

The ram, prevented from slaughtering Matheline, dashed after Pol Bihan, who fled; reached him just at the end of the cliff, and pushed him into the sea, that beat against the rocks fifty feet below.

Well content with his work, the ram walked off, and the story says he laughed behind his woolly beard. But Matheline wept bitterly and cried:

“Ker, my handsome Ker, save Bihan, your sweet friend, from death, and I pledge my faith I will be your wife without any condition.”

At the same time, amid the roaring of the waves, was heard the imploring voice of Pol Bihan crying:

“Sylvestre, O Sylvestre Ker! my only friend, I cannot swim. Come quickly and save me from dying without confession, and all you may ask of me you shall have, were it the dearest treasure of my heart.”

Sylvestre Ker asked:

“Will you be my groomsman?”

And Bihan replied:

“Yes, yes, and I will give you a hundred crowns. And all that your mother may ask of me she shall have. But hasten, hasten, dear friend, or the waves will carry me off.”

Sylvestre Ker’s blood was pouring from the wound in his eye, and his sight was dimmed; but he was generous of heart, and boldly leaped from the top of the promontory. As he fell his left leg was jammed against a jutting rock and broke, so there he was, lame as well as one-eyed; nevertheless, he dragged Bihan to the shore and asked:

“When shall the wedding be?”

As Matheline hesitated in her answer—for Sylvestre’s brave deeds were too recent to be forgotten—Pol Bihan came to her assistance and gaily cried:

“You must wait, Sylvestre, my saviour, until your leg and eye are healed.”

“Still longer,” added Matheline (and now Sylvestre Ker saw the two new pearls, for in her laughter she opened her mouth from ear to ear)—“still longer, as limping, one-eyed men are not to my taste—no, no!”

“But,” cried Sylvestre Ker, “it is for your sakes that I am one-eyed and lame.”

“That is true,” said Bihan.

“That is true,” also repeated Matheline; for she always spoke as he did.

“Ker, my friend Ker,” resumed Bihan, “wait until to-morrow, and we will make you happy.”

And off they went, Matheline and he, arm-in-arm, leaving Sylvestre to go hobbling along to the tower, alone with his sad thoughts.

Would you believe it? Trudging wearily home, he consoled himself by thinking that he had seen two new pearls behind the smile. You may, perhaps, think you have never met such a fool. Undeceive yourself: it is the same with all the men, who only look for laughing girls with teeth like pearls.

But the sorrowful one was Josserande, the widow, when she saw her son with only one eye and one sound leg.

“Where did all this happen?” she asked with tears.

And as Sylvestre Ker gently answered, “I have seen them, mother; they are very beautiful,” Josserande divined that he spoke of her god-daughter’s two pearls, and cried:

“By all that is holy, he has also lost his mind!”

Then, seizing her staff, she went to the Abbey of Ruiz, to consult St. Gildas as to what could be done in this unfortunate case; and the wise man replied:

“You should not have spoken of the two pearls; your son would have remained at home. But now that the evil is done, nothing will happen to him contrary to God’s holy will. At high tide the sea comes foaming over the sands, yet see how quietly it retires. What is Sylvestre Ker doing now?”

“He is lighting his furnaces,” replied Josserande.

The wise man paused to reflect, and after a little while said:

“In the first place, you must pray devoutly to the Lord our God, and afterward look well before you to know where to put your feet. The weak buy the strong, the unhappy the happy; did you know that, my good woman? Your son will persevere in search of the fairy-stone that changes lead into gold, to pay for Pol’s wicked friendship and for the pearls behind the dangerous smiles of that Matheline. Since God permits it, all is right. Yet see that your son is well protected against the smoke of his crucible, for it is the very breath of Satan; and make him promise to go to the midnight Mass.”

For it was near the glorious Feast of Christmas.

IV.

Josserande had no difficulty in making Sylvestre Ker promise to go to the midnight Mass, for he was a good Christian; and she bought for him an iron armor to put on when he worked around his crucibles, so as to preserve him from Satan’s breath.

And it happened that, late and early, Pol Bihan now came to the tower, bringing with him the laughing Matheline; for it was rumored around that at last Sylvestre Ker would soon find the fairy-stone and become a wealthy man. It was not only two new pearls that Matheline showed at the corners of her rosy mouth, but a brilliant row, that shone, and chattered, and laughed, from her lips down to her throat; for Pol Bihan had said to her:

“Laugh as much as you can; for smiles attract fools, as the turning-mirror catches larks.”

We have spoken of Matheline’s lips, of her throat, and of her smile, but not of her heart; of that we can only say the place where it should have been was nearly empty; so she replied to Bihan:

“As much as you will. I can afford to laugh to be rich; and when the fool shall have given me all the gold of the earth, all the pleasures of the world, I will be happy, happy.... I will have them all for myself, for myself alone, and I will enjoy them.”

Pol Bihan clasped his hands in admiration, so lovely and wise was she for her age; but he thought: “I am wiser still than you, my beauty: we will share between us what the fool will give—one half for me, and the other also; the rest for you. Let the water run under the bridge.”

The day before Christmas they came together to the tower—Matheline carrying a basket of chestnuts, Pol a large jug, full of sweet cider—to make merry with the godmother. They roasted the chestnuts in the ashes, and heated the cider before the fire, adding to it fermented honey, wine, sprigs of rosemary, and marjoram leaves; and so delicious was the perfume of the beverage that even Dame Josserande longed for a taste.

On the way Pol had advised Matheline adroitly to question Sylvestre Ker, to know when he would at last find the fairy-stone. Sylvestre Ker neither ate chestnuts nor drank wine, so absorbed was he in the contemplation of Matheline’s bewitching smiles; and she said to him:

“Tell me, my handsome, lame, and one-eyed bridegroom, will I soon be the wife of a wealthy man?”

Sylvestre Ker, whose eye shot forth a lurid flame, replied:

“You would have been as rich as you are beautiful to-morrow, without fail, if I had not promised my dear mother to accompany her to the midnight Mass to-night. The favorable hour falls just at the first stroke of Matins.”

“To-day?”

“Between to-day and to-morrow.”

“And can it not be put off?”

“Yes, it can be put off for seven years.”

Dame Josserande heard nothing, as Pol was relating an interesting story, so as to distract her attention; but while talking he listened with all his ears.

Matheline laughed no longer, and thought:

“Seven years! Can I wait seven years?” Then she continued:

“Beautiful bridegroom, how do you know that the propitious moment falls precisely at the hour of Matins? Who told you so?”

“The stars,” replied Sylvestre Ker. “At midnight Mars and Saturn will arrive in diametrical opposition; Venus will seek Vesta; Mercury will disappear in the sun; and the planet without a name, that the deceased Thaël divined by calculation, I saw last night, steering its unknown route through space to come in conjunction with Jupiter. Ah! if I only dared disobey my dear mother.”

He was interrupted by a distant vibration of the bells of Plouharnel, which rang out the first signal of the midnight Mass. Josserande instantly left her wheel.

“It would be a sin to spin one thread more,” said she. “Come, my son Sylvestre, put on your Sunday clothes, and let us be off for the parish church, if you please.”

Sylvestre wished to rise, for never yet had he disobeyed his mother; but Matheline, seated at his side, detained him and murmured in silvery tones:

“My handsome friend, you have plenty of time.”

Pol, on his side, said to Dame Josserande:

“Get your staff, neighbor, and start at once, so as to take your time. Your god-daughter Matheline will accompany you; and I will follow with my friend Sylvestre, for fear some accident might happen to him with his lame leg and sightless eye.”

As he proposed, so was it done; for Josserande suspected nothing, knowing that her son had promised, and that he would not break his word. As they were leaving, Pol whispered to Matheline:

“Amuse the good woman well, for the fool must remain here.”

And the girl replied:

“Try and see the caldron in which our fortune is cooking. You will tell me how it is done.”

Off the two women started; a large, kind mother’s heart, full of tender love, and a sparrow’s little gizzard, narrow and dry, without enough room in it for one pure tear.

For a moment Sylvestre Ker stood on the threshold of the open door to watch them depart. On the gleaming white snow their two shadows fell; the one bent and already tottering, the other erect, flexible, and each step seemed a bound. The young lover sighed. Behind him Pol Bihan in a low voice said:

“Ker, my comrade, I know what you are thinking about, and you are right to think so; this must come to an end. She is as impatient as you are, for her love equals yours; for both of you it is too long to wait.”

Sylvestre Ker turned pale with joy.

“Do you speak truth?” he stammered. “Am I fortunate enough to be loved by her?”

“Yes, on my faith!” replied Pol Bihan, “she loves you too well for her own peace. When a girl laughs too much, it is to keep from weeping—that’s the real truth.”

V.

Well might they call him “the fool,” poor Sylvestre Ker! Not that he had less brains than another man—on the contrary, he was now very learned—but love crazes him who places his affections on an unworthy object. Sylvestre Ker’s little finger was worth two dozen Pol Bihans and fifty Mathelines; in spite of which Matheline and Pol Bihan were perfectly just in their contempt, for he who ascends the highest falls the lowest.

When Sylvestre had re-entered the tower Pol commenced to sigh heavily and said:

“What a pity! What a great, great pity!”

“What is a pity?” asked Sylvestre Ker.

“It is a pity to miss such a rare opportunity.”

Sylvestre Ker exclaimed:

“What opportunity? So you were listening to my conversation with Matheline?”

“Why, yes,” replied Pol. “I always have an ear open to hear what concerns you, my true friend. Seven years! Shall I tell you what I think? You would only have twelve months to wait to go with your mother to another Christmas Mass.”

“I have promised,” said Sylvestre.

“That is nothing; if your mother loves you truly, she will forgive you.”

“If she loves me!” cried Sylvestre Ker. “Oh! yes, she loves me with her whole heart.”

Some chestnuts still remained, and Bihan shelled one while he said:

“Certainly, certainly, mothers always love their children; but Matheline is not your mother. You are one-eyed, you are lame, and you have sold your little patrimony to buy your furnaces. Nothing remains of it. Where is the girl who can wait seven years? Nearly the half of her age!... If I were in your place I would not throw away my luck as you are about to do, but at the hour of Matins I would work for my happiness.”

Sylvestre Ker was standing before the fireplace. He listened, his eyes bent down, with a frown upon his brow.

“You have spoken well,” at last he said; “my dear mother will forgive me. I shall remain, and will work at the hour of Matins.”

“You have decided for the best!” cried Bihan. “Rest easy; I will be with you in case of danger. Open the door of your laboratory. We will work together; I will cling to you like your shadow!”

Sylvestre Ker did not move, but looked fixedly upon the floor, and then, as if thinking aloud, murmured:

“It will be the first time that I have ever caused my dear mother sorrow!”

He opened a door, but not that of the laboratory, pushed Pol Bihan outside, and said:

“The danger is for myself alone; the gold will be for all. Go to the Christmas Mass in my place; say to Matheline that she will be rich, and to my dear mother that she shall have a happy old age, since she will live and die with her fortunate son.”

VI.

When Sylvestre Ker was alone he listened to the noise of the waves dashing upon the beach, and the sighing of the wind among the great oaks—two mournful sounds. And he looked at the empty seats of Matheline, the madness of his heart; and of his dear mother, Josserande, the holy tenderness of all his life. Little by little had he seen the black hair of the widow become gray, then white, around her sunken temples. That night memory carried him back even to his cradle, over which had bent the sweet, noble face of her who had always spoken to him of God.

But whence came those golden ringlets that mingled with Josserande’s black hair, and which shone in the sunlight above his mother’s snowy locks? and that laugh, ah! that silvery laugh of youth; which prevented Sylvestre Ker from hearing in his pious recollections the calm, grave voice of his mother. Whence did it come?

Seven years! Pol had said, “Where is the girl who can wait seven years?” and these words floated in the air. Never had the son of Martin Ker heard such strange voices amid the roaring of the ocean, nor in the rushing winds of the forest of the Druids.

Suddenly the tower also commenced to speak, not only through the cracks of the old windows when the mournful wind sighed, but with a confusion of sounds that resembled the busy whispering of a crowd, that penetrated through the closed doors of the laboratory, under which a bright light streamed.

Sylvestre Ker opened the door, fearing to see all in a blaze, but there was no fire; the light that had streamed under the door came from the round, red eye of his furnace, and happened to strike the stone of the threshold. No one was in the laboratory; still the noises, similar to the chattering of an audience awaiting a promised spectacle, did not cease. The air was full of speaking things; the spirits could be felt swarming around, as closely packed as the wheat in the barn or the sand on the sea-shore.

And, although not seen, they spoke all kinds of phantom-words, which were heard right and left, before and behind, above and below, and which penetrated through the pores of the skin like quicksilver passing through a cloth. They said:

“The Magi have started, my friend.”

“My friend, the Star shines in the East.”

“My friend, my friend, the little King Jesus is born in the manger, upon the straw.”

“Sylvestre Ker will surely go with the shepherds.”

“Not at all; Sylvestre Ker will not go.”

“Good Christian he was.”

“Good Christian he is no longer.”

“He has forgotten the name of Joseph, the chaste spouse.”

“And the name of Mary, the ever Virgin Mother.”

“No, no, no!”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

“He will go!”

“He will not go!”

“He will go, since he promised Dame Josserande.”

“He will not go, since Matheline told him to stay.”

“My friend, my friend, to-night Sylvestre Ker will find the golden secret.”

“To-night, my friend, my friend, he will win the heart of the one he loves.”

And the invisible spirits, thus disputing, sported through the air, mounting, descending, whirling around like atoms of dust in a sunbeam, from the flag-stones of the floor to the rafters of the roof.

Inside the furnace, in the crucible, some other thing responded, but it could not be well heard, as the crucible had been hermetically sealed.

“Go out from here, you wicked crowd,” said Sylvestre Ker, sweeping around with a broom of holly-branches. “What are you doing here? Go outside, cursed spirits, damned souls—go, go!”

From all the corners of the room came laughter; Matheline seemed everywhere.

Suddenly there was profound silence, and the wind from the sea brought the sound of the bells of Plouharnel, ringing the second peal for the midnight Mass.

“My friend, what are they saying?”

“They say Christmas, my friend—Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!”

“Not at all! They say, Gold, gold, gold!”

“You lie, my friend!”

“My friend, you lie!”

And the other voices, those that were grumbling in the interior of the furnace, swelled and puffed. The fire, that no person was blowing, kept up by itself, hot as the soul of a forge should be. The crucible became red, and the stones of the furnace were dyed a deep scarlet.

In vain did Sylvestre Ker sweep with his holly broom; between the branches, covered with sharp leaves, the spirits passed—nothing could catch them; and the heat was so great the boy was bathed in perspiration.

After the bells had finished their second peal he said: “I am stifling. I will open the window to let out the heat as well as this herd of evil spirits.”

But as soon as he opened the window the whole country commenced to laugh under its white mantle of snow—barren heath, ploughed land, Druid stones, even to the enormous oaks of the forest, with their glistening summits, that shook their frosty branches, saying: “Sylvestre Ker will go! Sylvestre Ker will not go!”

Not a spirit from within flew out, while all the outside spirits entered, muttering, chattering, laughing: “Yes, yes, yes, yes! No, no, no, no!” And I believe they fought.

At the same time the sound of a cavalcade advancing was heard on the flinty road that passed before the tower; and Sylvestre Ker recognized the long procession of the monks of Ruiz, led by the grand abbot, Gildas the Wise, arrayed in cope and mitre, with his crosier in his hand, going to the Mass of Plouharnel, as the convent-chapel was being rebuilt.

When the head of the cavalcade approached the tower the grand abbot cried out:

“My armed guards, sound your horns to awaken Dame Josserande’s son!”

And instantly there was a blast from the horns, which rang out until Gildas the Wise exclaimed:

“Be silent, for there is my tenant wide awake at his window.”

When all was still the grand abbot raised his crosier and said:

“My tenant, the first hour of Christmas approaches, the glorious Feast of the Nativity. Extinguish your furnaces and hasten to Mass, for you have barely time.”

And on he passed, while those in the procession, as they saluted Ker, repeated:

“Sylvestre Ker, you have barely time; make haste!”

The voices of the air kept gibbering: “He will go! He will not go!” and the wind whistled in bitter sarcasm.

Sylvestre Ker closed his window. He sat down, his head clasped by his trembling hands. His heart was rent by two forces that dragged him, one to the right, the other to the left: his mother’s prayer and Matheline’s laughter.

He was no miser; he did not covet gold for the sake of gold, but that he might buy the row of pearls and smiles that hung from the lips of Matheline....

“Christmas!” cried a voice in the air.

“Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!” repeated all the other voices.

Sylvestre Ker suddenly opened his eyes, and saw that the furnace was fiery red from top to bottom, and that the crucible was surrounded with rays so dazzling he could not even look at it. Something was boiling inside that sounded like the roaring of a tempest.

“Mother! O my dear mother!” cried the terrified man, “I am coming. I’ll run....”

But thousands of little voices stung his ears with the words:

“Too late, too late, too late! It is too late!”

Alas! alas! the wind from the sea brought the third peal of the bells of Plouharnel, and they also said to him: “Too late!”

VII.

As the sound of the bells died away the last drop of water fell from the clepsydra and marked the hour of midnight. Then the furnace opened and showed the glowing crucible, which burst with a terrible noise, and threw out a gigantic flame that reached the sky through the torn roof. Sylvestre Ker, enveloped by the fire, fell prostrate on the ground, suffocated in the burning smoke.

The silence of death followed. Suddenly an awful voice said to him: “Arise.” And he arose.

On the spot where had stood the furnace, of which not a vestige remained, was standing a man, or rather a colossus; and Sylvestre Ker needed but a glance to recognize in him the demon. His body appeared to be of iron, red-hot and transparent; for in his veins could be seen the liquid gold, flowing into, and then in turn retreating from, his heart, black as an extinguished coal.

The creature, who was both fearful and beautiful to behold, extended his hand toward the side of the tower nearest the sea, and in the thick wall a large breach was made.

“Look,” said Satan.

Sylvestre Ker obeyed. He saw, as though distance were annihilated, the interior of the humble church of Plouharnel where the faithful were assembled. The officiating priest had just ascended the altar, brilliant with the Christmas candles, and there was great pomp and splendor; for the many monks of Gildas the Wise were assisting the poor clergy of the parish.

In a corner, under the shadow of a column, knelt Dame Josserande in fervent prayer, but often did the dear woman turn toward the door to watch for the coming of her son.

Not far from her was Matheline du Coat-Dor, bravely attired and very beautiful, but lavishing the pearls of her smiles upon all who sought them, forgetting no one but God; and close to Matheline Pol Bihan squared his broad shoulders.

Then, even as Satan had given to Sylvestre Ker’s sight the power of piercing the walls, so did he permit him to look into the depth of hearts.

In his mother’s heart he saw himself as in a mirror. It was full of him. Good Josserande prayed for him; she united Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the holy family, whose feast is Christmas, in the pious prayer which fell from her lips; and ever and ever said her heart to God: “My son, my son, my son!”

In the heart of Pol Sylvestre Ker saw pride of strength and gross cupidity; in the spot where should have been the heart of Matheline he saw Matheline, and nothing but Matheline, in adoration before Matheline.

“I have seen enough,” said Sylvestre Ker.

“Then,” replied Satan, “listen!”

And immediately the sacred music resounded in the ears of the young tenant of the tower, as plainly as though he were in the church of Plouharnel. They were singing the Sanctus: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts! The heavens and the earth are full of thy glory. Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!”

Dame Josserande repeated the words with the others, but the refrain of her heart continued: “O Jesus, Infinite Goodness! may he be happy. Deliver him from all evil and from all sin. I have only him to love.... Holy, holy, holy, give me all the suffering, and keep for him all the happiness!”

Can you believe it? Even while piously inhaling the perfume of this celestial hymn the young tenant wished to know what Matheline was saying to God. Everything speaks to God—the wild beasts in the forest, the birds in the air, even the plants, whose roots are in the ground.

But miserable girls who sell the pearls of their smiles are lower than the animals and vegetables. Nothing is beneath them, Pol Bihan excepted. Instead of speaking to God, Pol Bihan and Matheline whispered together, and Sylvestre Ker heard them as distinctly as if he had been between them.

“How much will the fool give me?” asked Matheline.

“The idiot will give you all,” replied Pol.

“And must I really squint with that one-eyed creature, and limp with the lame wretch?”

Sylvestre Ker felt his heart die away within him.

Meanwhile, Josserande prayed: “O ever Virgin Mother! pray for my dear child. As Jesus is your adorable heart, Sylvestre Ker is my poor heart....”

“Never mind,” continued Bihan, “it is worth while limping and squinting for a time to win all the money in the world.”

“That is true; but for how long?”

Sylvestre Ker held his breath to hear the better.

“As long as you please,” answered Pol Bihan.

There was a pause, after which the gay Matheline resumed in a lower tone:

“But ... they say after a murder one can never laugh, and I wish to laugh always....”

“Will I not be there?” replied Bihan. “Some time or other the idiot will certainly seek a quarrel with me, and I will crack his bones by only squeezing him in my arms; you can count upon my strength.”

“I have heard enough,” said Sylvestre Ker to Satan.

“And do you still love this Bihan?”

“No, I despise him.”

“And Matheline—do you love her yet?”

“Yes, oh! yes, ... but ... I hate her!”

“I see,” said Satan, “that you are a coward and wicked like all men. Since you have heard and seen enough at a distance, listen, and look at your feet....”

The wall closed with a loud crash of the stones as they came together, and Sylvestre Ker saw that he was surrounded by an enormous heap of gold-pieces, as high as his waist, which gently floated, singing the symphony of riches. All around him was gold, and through the gap in the roof the shower of gold fell and fell and fell.

“Am I the master of all this?” asked Sylvestre Ker.

“Yes,” replied Satan; “you have compelled me, who am gold, to come forth from my caverns; you are therefore the master of gold, provided you purchase it at the price of your soul. You cannot have both God and gold. You must choose one or the other.”

“I have chosen,” said Sylvestre Ker. “I keep my soul.”

“You have firmly decided?”

“Irrevocably.”

“Once, twice, ... reflect! You have just acknowledged that you still love the laughing Matheline.”

“And that I hate her; ... yes, ... it is so, ... but in eternity I wish to be with my dear mother Josserande.”

“Were there no mothers,” growled Satan, “I could play my game much better in the world!”

And he added:

“For the third time, ... adjudged!”

The heap of gold became as turbulent as the water of a cascade, and leaped and sang; the millions of little sonorous coins clashed against each other, then all was silent and they vanished. The room appeared as black as a place where there had been a great fire; nothing could be seen but the lurid gleam of Satan’s iron body.

Then said Sylvestre Ker:

“Since all is ended, retire!”

VIII.

But the demon did not stir.

“Do you think, then,” he asked, “that you have brought me hither for nothing? There is the law. You are not altogether my slave, since you have kept your soul; but as you have freely called me, and I have come, you are my vassal. I have a half-claim over you. The little children know that; I am astonished at your ignorance.... From midnight to three o’clock in the morning you belong to me, in the form of an animal, restless, roving, complaining, without help from God. This is what you owe to your strong friend and beautiful bride. Let us settle the affair before I depart. What animal do you wish to be—roaring lion, bellowing ox, bleating sheep, crowing cock? If you become a dog you can crouch at Matheline’s feet, and Bihan can lead you by a leash to hunt in the woods....”

“I wish,” cried Sylvester Ker, whose anger burst forth at these words—“I wish to be a wolf, to devour them both!”

“So be it,” said Satan; “wolf you shall be three hours of the night during your mortal life.... Leap, wolf!”

And the wolf Sylvestre Ker leaped, and with one dash shattered the casement of the window as he cleared it with a bound. Through the aperture in the roof Satan escaped, and, spreading a pair of immense wings, rapidly disappeared in an opposite direction from the steeple of Plouharnel, whose chimes were ringing at the Elevation.

IX.

I do not know if you have ever seen a Breton village come forth after the midnight Mass. It is a joyous sight, but a brief one, as all are in a hurry to return home, where the midnight meal awaits them—a frugal feast, but eaten with such cheerful hearts. The people, for a moment massed in the cemetery, exchange hospitable invitations, kind wishes, and friendly jokes; then divide into little caravans, which hurry along the roads, laughing, talking, singing. If it is a clear, cold night, the clicking of their wooden shoes may be heard for some time; but if it is damp weather the sound is stifled, and after a few moments the faint echo of an “adieu” or Christmas greeting is all that can be heard around the church as the beadle closes it.

In the midst of all this cheerfulness Josserande alone returned with a sad heart; for through the whole Mass she had in vain watched for her beloved son. She walked fifty paces behind the cavalcade of the monks of Ruiz, and dared not approach the Grand-Abbot Gildas, for fear of being questioned about her boy. On her right was Matheline du Coat-Dor, on her left Bihan—both eager to console her; for they thought that by that time Sylvestre Ker must have learned the wonderful secret which would secure him untold wealth, and to possess the son they should cling to the mother; therefore there were promises and caresses, and “will you have this, or will you have that?”

“Dear godmother, I shall always be with you,” said Matheline, “to comfort and rejoice your old age; for your son is my heart.”

Pol Bihan continued:

“I will never marry, but always remain with my friend, Sylvestre Ker, whom I love more than myself. And nothing must worry you; if he is weak I am strong, and I will work for two.”

To pretend that Dame Josserande paid much attention to all these words would be false; for her son possessed her whole soul, and she thought:

“This the first time he has ever disobeyed and deceived me. The demon of avarice has entered into him. Why does he want so much money? Can all the riches of the world pay for one of the tears that the ingratitude of a beloved son draws from his mother’s eyes?”

Suddenly her thoughts were arrested, for the sound of a trumpet was heard in the still night.

“It is the convent-horn,” said Matheline.

“And it sounds the wolf-alarm!” added Pol.

“What harm can the wolf do,” asked Josserande, “to a well-mounted troop like the cavalry of Gildas the Wise? And, besides, cannot the holy abbot with a single word put to flight a hundred wolves?”

They had arrived at the heath of Carnac, where are the two thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine Druid stones, and the monks had already passed the round point where nothing grows, neither grass nor heath, and which resembles an enormous caldron—a caldron wherein to make oaten porridge—or rather a race-course, to exercise horses.

On one side might be seen the town, dark and gloomy; on the other, as far as the eye could reach, rows of rugged obelisks, half-black, half-white, owing to the snow, which threw into bold relief each jagged outline. Josserande, Matheline, and Pol Bihan had just turned from the sunken road which branches toward Plouharnel; and the moon played hide-and-go-seek behind a flock of little clouds that flitted over the sky like lambs.

Then a strange thing happened. The cavalcade of monks was seen to retreat from the entrance of the avenues to the middle of the circle, while the horn sounded the signal of distress, and loud cries were heard of “Wolf! wolf! wolf!”

At the same time could be distinguished the clashing of arms, the stamping of horses, and all the noise of a ferocious struggle, above which rose the majestic tones of Gildas the Wise, as he said with calmness:

“Wolf, wicked wolf, I forbid you to touch God’s servants!”

But it seemed that the wicked wolf was in no hurry to obey, for the cavalcade plunged hither and thither, as though shaken by convulsion; and the moon having come forth from the clouds, there was seen an enormous beast struggling with the staffs of the monks, the halberds of the armed guard, the pitch-forks and spears of the peasants, who had hastened from all directions at the trumpet-call from Ruiz.

The animal received many wounds, but it was fated not to die. Again and again it charged upon the crowd, rushed up and down, round and round, biting, tearing with its great teeth so fearfully that a large circle was made around the grand abbot, who was finally left alone in face of the wolf.

For a wolf it was.

And the grand abbot having touched it with his crosier, the wolf crouched at his feet, panting, trembling, and bloody. Gildas the Wise bent over it, looked at it attentively, then said:

“Nothing happens contrary to God’s holy will. Where is Dame Josserande?”

“I am here,” replied a mournful voice full of tears, “and I dread a great misfortune.”

She also was alone; for Matheline and Pol Bihan, seized with terror, had rushed across the fields at the first alarm and abandoned their precious charge. The grand abbot called Josserande and said:

“Woman, do not despair. Above you is the Infinite Goodness, who holds in his hands the heavens and the whole earth. Meanwhile, protect your wolf; we must return to the monastery to gain from sleep strength to serve the Lord our God!”

And he resumed his course, followed by his escort.

The wolf did not move; his tongue lay on the snow, which was reddened by his blood. Josserande knelt beside him and prayed fervently. For whom? For her beloved son. Did she already know that the wolf was Sylvestre Ker? Certainly; such a thing could scarcely be divined, but under what form cannot a mother discover her darling child?

She defended the wolf against the peasants, who had returned to strike him with their pitch-forks and pikes, as they believed him dead. The two last who came were Pol Bihan and Matheline. Pol Bihan kicked him on the head and said, “Take that, you fool!” and Matheline threw stones at him and cried: “Idiot, take that, and that, and that!”

They had hoped for all the gold in the world, and this dead beast could give them nothing more.

After a while two ragged beggars passed by and assisted Josserande in carrying the wolf into the tower. Where is charity most often found? Among the poor, who are the figures of Jesus Christ.

X.

Day dawned. A man slept in the bed of Sylvestre Ker, where widow Josserande had laid a wolf. The room still bore the marks of a fire, and snow fell through the hole in the roof. The young tenant’s face was disfigured with blows, and his hair, stiffened with blood, hung in heavy locks. In his feverish sleep he talked, and the name that escaped his lips was Matheline’s. At his bedside the mother watched and prayed.

When Sylvestre Ker awoke he wept, for the thought of his condemnation returned, but the remembrance of Pol and Matheline dried the tears in his burning eyes.

“It was for those two,” said he, “that I forgot God and my mother. I still feel my friend’s heel upon my forehead, and even to the bottom of my heart the shock of the stones thrown at me by my betrothed!”

“Dearest,” murmured Josserande, “dearer to me than ever, I know nothing; tell me all.”

Sylvestre Ker obeyed; and when he had finished Josserande kissed him, took up her staff, and proceeded toward the convent of Ruiz to ask, according to her custom, aid and counsel from Gildas the Wise. On her way men, women, and children looked curiously at her, for throughout the country it was already known that she was the mother of a wolf. Even behind the hedge which enclosed the abbey orchard Matheline and Pol were hidden to see her pass; and she heard Pol say: “Will you come to-night to see the wolf run round?”

“Without fail,” replied Matheline; and the sting of her laughter pierced Josserande like a poisonous thorn.

The grand abbot received her, surrounded by great books and dusty manuscripts. When she wished to explain her son’s case he stopped her and said:

“Widow of Martin Ker, poor, good woman, since the beginning of the world Satan, the demon of gold and pride, has worked many such wickednesses. Do you remember the deceased brother, Thaël, who is a saint for having resisted the desire of making gold—he who had the power to do it?”

“Yes,” answered Josserande; “and would to heaven my Sylvestre had imitated him!”

“Very well,” replied Gildas the Wise, “instead of sleeping I passed the rest of the night with St. Thaël, seeking a means to save your son, Sylvestre Ker.”

“And have you found it, father?”

The grand abbot neither answered yes nor no, but he began to turn over a very thick manuscript filled with pictures; and while turning the leaves he said: “Life springs from death, according to the divine word; death seizes the living according to the pagan law of Rome; and it is nearly the same thing in the order of miserable temporal ambition, whose inheritance is a strength, a life, shot forth from a coffin. This is a book of the defunct Thaël’s, which treats of the question of maladies caused by the breath of gold—a deadly poison.... Woman, would you have the courage to strike your wolf a blow on his head powerful enough to break the skull?”

At these words Josserande fell her full length upon the tiles, as if she had been stabbed to the heart; but in the very depth of her agony—for she thought herself dying—she replied:

“If you should order me to do it, I would.”

“You have this great confidence in me, poor woman?” cried Gildas, much moved.

“You are a man of God,” answered Josserande, “and I have faith in God.”

Gildas the Wise prostrated himself on the ground and struck his breast, knowing that he had felt a movement of pride. Then, standing up, he raised Josserande, and kissed the hem of her robe, saying:

“Woman, I adore in you the most holy faith. Prepare your axe, and sharpen it!”

XI.

In Brittany, when this legend is repeated, the relater here adds a current proverb of the province: “Christians, there is nothing greater than Faith, that is the mother of Hope, and thus the grandmother of Holy Love, that carries one above to the Paradise of God.”

In the days of Gildas the Wise intense silence always reigned at night through the dense oak forests of the Armorican country. One of the most lonely places was Cæsar’s camp, the name given to the huge masses of stone that encumbered the barren heath; and it was the common opinion that the pagan giants supposed to be buried under them rose from their graves at midnight, and roamed up and down the long avenues, watching for the late passers-by to twist their necks.

This night, however—the night after Christmas—many persons could be seen about eleven o’clock on the heath before the stones of Carnac, all around the Great Basin or circle, whose irregular outline was clearly visible by moonlight.

The enclosure was entirely empty. Outside no one was seen, it is true; but many could be heard gabbling in the shadow of the high rocks, under the shelter of the stumps of oaks, even in the tufts of thorny brambles; and all this assemblage watched for something, and that something was the wolf, Sylvestre Ker.

They had come from Plouharnel, and also from Lannelar, from Carnac, from Kercado, even from the old town of Crach, beyond La Trinité.

Who had brought together all these people, young and old, men and women? The legend does not say, but very probably Matheline had strewn around the cruel pearls of her laughter, and Pol Bihan had not been slow to relate what he had seen after the midnight Mass.

By some means or other the entire country around for five or six leagues knew that the son of Martin Ker, the tenant of the abbey, had become a man-wolf, and that he was doomed to expiate his crime in the spot haunted by the phantoms—the Great Basin of the Pagans, between the tower and the Druid stones.

Many of the watchers had never seen a man-wolf, and there reigned in the crowd, scattered in invisible groups, a fever of curiosity, terror, and impatience; the minutes lengthened as they passed, and it seemed as though midnight, stopped on the way, would never come.

There were at that time no clocks in the neighborhood to mark the hour, but the matin-bell of the convent of Ruiz gave notice that the wished-for moment had arrived.

While waiting there was busy conversation: they spoke of the man-wolf, of phantoms, and also of betrothals, for the rumor was spread that the bans of Matheline du Coat-Dor, the promised bride of Sylvestre Ker, with the strong Pol Bihan, who had never found a rival in the wrestling-field, would be published on the following Sunday; and I leave you to imagine how Matheline’s laughter ran in pearly cascades when congratulated on her approaching marriage.

By the road which led up to the tower a shadow slowly descended; it was not the wolf, but a poor woman in mourning, whose head was bent upon her breast, and who held in her hand an object that shone like a mirror, and the brilliant surface of which reflected the moonbeams.

“It is Josserande Ker!” was whispered around the circle, behind the rocks, in the brambles, and under the stumps of the oaks.

“’Tis the widow of the armed keeper of the great door!”

“’Tis the mother of the wolf, Sylvestre Ker!”

“She also has come to see....”

“But what has she in her hand?”

Twenty voices asked this question. Matheline, who had good eyes, and such beautiful ones, replied:

“It looks like an axe.... Happy am I to be rid of those two, the mother and son! With them I could never laugh.”

But there were two or three good souls who said in low tones:

“Poor widow! her heart must be full of sorrow.”

“But what does she want with that axe?”

“It is to defend her wolf,” again replied Matheline, who carried a pitch-fork.

Pol Bihan held an enormous holly stick which resembled a club. Every one was armed either with threshing flails or rakes or hoes; some even bore scythes, carried upright; for they had not only come to look on, but to make an end of the man-wolf.

Again was heard the chime of the Matin-bells of the convent of Ruiz, and immediately a smothered cry ran from group to group:

“Wolf! wolf! wolf!”

Josserande heard it, for she paused in her descent and cast an anxious look around; but, seeing no one, she raised her eyes to heaven and clasped her hands over the handle of her axe.

The wolf, in the meantime, with fuming nostrils and eyes which looked like burning coals, leaped over the stones of the enclosure and began to run around the circle.

“See, see!” said Pol Bihan, “he no longer limps.”

And Matheline, dazzled by the red light from his eyes, added: “It seems he is no longer one-eyed!”

Pol brandished his club and continued:

“What are we waiting for? Why not attack him?”

“Go you first,” said the men.

“I caught cold the other day, and my leg is stiff, which keeps me from running,” answered Pol.

“Then I will go first!” cried Matheline, raising her pitch-fork. “I will soon show how I hate the wretch!”

Dame Josserande heard her and sighed:

“Girl, whom I blessed in baptism, may God keep me from cursing you now!”

This Matheline, whose pearls were worth nothing, was no coward; for she carried out her words, and marched straight up to the wolf, while Bihan stayed behind and cried:

“Go, go, my friends; don’t be afraid! Ah! but for my stiff leg I would soon finish the wolf, for I am the strongest and bravest.”

Round and round the circle galloped the wolf as quickly as a hunted stag; his eyes darted fire, his tongue was hanging from his mouth. Josserande, seeing the danger that threatened him, wept and cried out:

“O Bretons! is there among you all not one kind soul to defend the widow’s son in the hour when he bitterly expiates his sin?”

“Let us alone, godmother,” boldly replied Matheline.

And from afar Pol Bihan added:

“Don’t listen to the old woman; go!”

But another voice was heard in answer to Dame Josserande’s appeal, and it said:

“As last night, we are here!”

Standing in front of Matheline, and barring the passage, were two ragged beggars with their wallets, leaning upon their staffs. Josserande recognized the two poor men who had so charitably aided her the night before; and one of them, who had snow-white hair and beard, said:

“Christians, my brethren, why do you interfere in this? God rewards and punishes. This poor man-wolf is not a damned soul, but one expiating a great crime. Leave justice to God, if you do not wish some great misfortune to happen to you.”

And Josserande, who was kneeling down, said imploringly:

“Listen, listen to the saint!”

But from behind Pol Bihan cried out:

“Since when have beggars been allowed to preach sermons? Ah! if it were not for my stiff leg.... Kill him, kill him! ... wolf! wolf! wolf!”

“Wolf! wolf!” repeated Matheline, who tried to drive off the old beggar with her pitch-fork.

But the fork broke like glass in her hands, as it touched the poor man’s tatters, and at the same time twenty voices cried:

“The wolf! the wolf! Where has the wolf gone?”

Soon was seen where the wolf had gone. A black mass dashed through the crowd, and Pol Bihan uttered a horrible cry:

“Help! help! Matheline!”

You have often heard the noise made by a dog when crunching a bone. This was the noise they heard, but louder, as though there were many dogs crunching many bones. And a strange voice, like the growling of a wolf, said:

“The strength of a man is a dainty morsel for a wolf to eat. Bihan, traitor, I eat your strength!”

The black mass again bounded through the terrified crowd, his bloody tongue hanging from his mouth, his eyes darting fire.

This time it was from Matheline that a scream still more horrible than that of Pol’s was heard; and again there was the noise of another terrible feast, and the voice of the wild beast, which had already spoken, growled:

“The pearls of a smile make a dainty morsel for a wolf to eat. Matheline, serpent that stung my heart, seek for your beauty. I have eaten it!”

XIII.

The white-haired beggar had endeavored to protect Matheline against the wolf, but he was very old, and his limbs would not move as quickly as his heart. He only succeeded in throwing down the wolf. It fell at Josserande’s feet and licked her knees, uttering doleful moans. But the people, who had come thither for entertainment, were not well pleased with what had happened. There was now abundance of light, as men with torches had arrived from the abbey in search of their holy saint, Gildas the Wise, whose cell had been found empty at the hour of Compline.

The glare from the torches shone upon two hideous wounds made by the wolf, who had devoured Matheline’s beauty and Pol’s strength—that is to say, the face of the one and the arms of the other: flesh and bones. It was frightful to behold. The women wept while looking at the repulsive, bleeding mass which had been Matheline’s smiling face; the men sought in the double bloody gaps some traces of Pol’s arms, for the powerful muscles, the glory of the athletic games; and every heart was filled with wrath.

The legend says that the tenant of Coat-Dor, Matheline’s poor father, knelt beside his daughter and felt around in the blood for the scattered pearls, which were now as red as holly-berries.

“Alas!” said he, “of these dead stained things, which when living were so beautiful, which were admired and envied and loved, I was so proud and happy.”

Alas! indeed, alas! Perhaps it was not the girl’s fault that her heart was no larger than a little bird’s; and yet for this defect was not Matheline most cruelly punished?

“Death to the wolf! death to the wolf! death to the wolf!”

From all sides was this cry heard, and brandishing pitch-forks, cudgels, ploughshares, and mallets, came rushing the people toward the wolf, who still lay panting, with open jaws and pendent tongue, at the feet of Dame Josserande. Around them the torch-bearers formed a circle: not to throw light upon the wolf and Dame Josserande, but to render homage to the white-haired beggar, in whom, as though the scales had suddenly fallen from their eyes, every one recognized the Grand-Abbot of Ruiz, Gildas the Wise.

The grand abbot raised his hand, and the armed crowd’s eager advance was checked, as if their feet had been nailed to the ground. Calmly he surveyed them, blessed them, and said:

“Christians, the wolf did wrong to punish, for chastisement belongs to God alone; therefore the wolf’s fault should not be punished by you. In whom resides the power of God? In the holy authority of fathers and mothers. So here is my penitent Josserande, who will rightfully judge the wolf and punish him, since she is his mother.”

When Gildas the Wise ceased speaking you could have heard a mouse run across the heath. Each one thought to himself: “So the wolf is really Sylvestre Ker.” But not a word was uttered, and all looked at Dame Josserande’s axe, which glistened in the moonlight.

Josserande made the sign of the cross—ah! poor mother, very slowly, for her heart sank within her—and she murmured:

“My beloved one, my beloved one, whom I have borne in my arms and nourished with my milk—ah! me, can the Lord God inflict this cruel martyrdom upon me?”

No one replied, not even Gildas the Wise, who silently adjured the All-Powerful, and recalled to him the sacrifice of Abraham.

Josserande raised her axe, but she had the misfortune to look at the wolf, who fixed his eyes, full of tears, upon her, and the axe fell from her hands.

It was the wolf who picked it up, and when he gave it back to her he said: “I weep for you, my mother.”

“Strike!” cried the crowd, for what remained of Pol and Matheline uttered terrible groans. “Strike! strike!”

While Josserande again seized her axe the grand abbot had time to say:

“Do not complain, you two unhappy ones, for your suffering here below changes your hell into purgatory.”

Three times Josserande raised the axe, three times she let it fall without striking; but at last she said in a hoarse tone that sounded like a death-rattle: “I have great faith in the good God!” and then, says the legend, she struck boldly, for the wolf’s head split in two halves.

XIV.

A sudden wind extinguished the torches, and some one prevented Dame Josserande from falling, as she sank fainting to the ground, by supporting her in his arms. By the light of the halo which shone around the blessed head of Gildas the Wise, the good people saw that this somebody was the young tenant, Sylvestre Ker, no longer lame nor one-eyed, but with two straight legs and two perfect eyes.

At the same time there were heard voices in the clouds chanting the Te Deum. Why? Because heaven and earth quivered with emotion at witnessing this supreme act of faith soaring from the depth of anguish in a mother’s heart.

XV.

This is the legend that for many centuries has been related at Christmas time on the shores of the Petite-Mer, which in the Breton tongue is called Armor bihan, the Celtic name of Brittany.

If you ask what moral these good people draw from this strange story, I will answer that it contains a basketful. Pol and Matheline, condemned to walk around the Basin of the Pagans until the end of time, one without arms, the other without a face, offer a severe lesson to those fellows who are too proud of their broad shoulders and brute force, and gossiping flirts of girls with smiling faces and wicked hearts; the case of Sylvestre Ker teaches young men not to listen to the demon of money; the blow of Josserande’s axe shows the miraculous power of faith; the part of Gildas the Wise proves that it is well to consult the saints.

Still further, that you may bind together these diverse morals in one, here is a proverb which is current in the province: “Never stoop to pick up the pearls of a smile.” After this ask me no more.

As to the authenticity of the story, I have already said that the chestnut-grove belongs to the mayor’s nephew, which is one guaranty; and I will add that the spot is called Sylvestreker, and that the ruins, hung with moss, have no other name than “The Wolf-Tower!”

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MR. FROUDE ON THE DECLINE OF PROTESTANTISM.[102]

We have seen what Mr. Froude thinks of the “Revival of Romanism.” Let us now see what he has to say on a subject nearer his heart—the decline of Protestantism.

He has much to say; and, to use an ordinary phrase, he makes no bones about saying it. At the outset we would dispose of what seems a fair objection. If, it may be urged, you make Mr. Froude so very untrustworthy a witness against Catholics and the Catholic Church, why should he not be equally untrustworthy when assailing Protestantism?

The objection is more plausible than real. Mr. Froude is a professed Protestant. In the cause of Protestantism he is earnest even to aggressiveness. He believes in and loves it with all his heart and soul, as really as he disbelieves in and detests Catholicity. He can say nothing that is too good of the early Protestant Reformers and of their “Reform.” He doubts about nothing, apologizes for nothing, attempts to palliate nothing either in the Reformers or their Reform. He sees nothing in either to apologize for or to palliate. He can only regret that, so far as Protestant belief and work and workers go, the nineteenth century is not as the sixteenth. He is altogether on his own ground here; and we submit that the testimony of such a man in such a matter is of value, the more so when it is confirmed to-day by concurrent Protestant testimony on all sides. The only difference between Mr. Froude and the great mass of non-Catholic writers on this subject is that he is more frank than they, and lays his finger unshrinkingly on very tender Protestant spots.

Of the actual state of Protestantism he has little that is good or hopeful to say, with one notable exception—North Germany—which will be considered later on. Protestantism to-day Mr. Froude finds weak-kneed as well as weak-headed. It has not that aggressive strength of the early teachers and preachers of Reform. The modern teachers have lost that pronounced faith in themselves and in their doctrines, that burning zeal, that fierce hatred of Catholicity, of falsehood, and of sham, that Mr. Froude is pleased to discover in the early Reformers.

“Religion speaks with command,” he says very rightly. It “lays down a set of doctrines, and says, ‘Believe these at your soul’s peril.’ A certain peremptoriness being thus of the essence of the thing, those religious teachers will always command most confidence who dare most to speak in positive tones.” All of which is, of course, most true.

Speaking “in positive tones,” however, does not necessarily imply a divine mission, or even an erroneous sense of a divine mission. It may be bluster; it may be calculated lying; it may be the mistaken enthusiasm of a weak intellect and fervid imagination. To be real it must stand the severest tests. Of a man who asserts his mission from heaven as a teacher of religion something more than his own word is demanded, however positive that word may be. In the preaching and the teaching of the truth there is in all ages a unity of voice, a community of feeling and of purpose, a singleness of eye, of aim, of method, a union of heart and of soul, that is unmistakable and carries conviction with it. There is no change in it; no fleck or flaw. What is new agrees with what is old; is generally a consequence flowing out of the old. It preaches only one God and one law from the beginning. It never contradicts itself; it never narrows or broadens its moral lines to suit the convenience or the whim of persons or of nationalities. It never compromises with humanity. It enlightens the intellect while appealing to the heart of man. It makes no divisions between men or nations; no special code for this or for that. It is awful in its inflexibility; majestic in its calm; eternal in its vigilance; “the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” This is living Truth; this is God’s; and he who speaks the word of God is known by these signs.

Mr. Froude is at a loss to find this spirit now abroad in the world. The nearest approach to it he finds, oddly enough for him, in the Catholic Church. But, of course, that is owing to some devilish ingenuity of which the Catholic Church alone has the secret. As for Protestants, “it is no secret,” he says, “that of late years Protestant divines have spoken with less boldness, with less clearness and confidence, than their predecessors of the last generation.” “They are not to be blamed for it,” he adds, and we quite agree with him. “Their intellectual position has grown in many ways perplexed. Science and historical criticism have shaken positions which used to be thought unassailable” (p. 99). We pointed out one of those “positions”—the Protestant Reformation in England—but that is not in the contemplation of Mr. Froude. To him, even if to him alone, that position still stands, “unassailable.”

“Doctrines once thought to carry their own evidence with them in their inherent fitness for man’s needs have become, for some reason or other, less conclusively obvious. The state of mind to which they were addressed has been altered—altered in some way either for the worse or for the better. And where the evangelical theology retains its hold, it is rather as something which it is unbecoming to doubt than as a body of living truth which penetrates and vitalizes the heart” (p. 99).

It is to be regretted that Mr. Froude does not specify these “doctrines.” He fails to do so in any place, and in such matters, as indeed in all, there is nothing like accuracy in order to arrive at a clear understanding of what is wrong. Some of them, however, may be easily guessed at. In these days it would be hard to discover what precise “doctrines” “evangelical” or any but Catholic theologians do hold, if hard pushed and driven to make an explicit statement of what they do and what they do not believe. The expression “evangelical theology” may help to enlighten us as to Mr. Froude’s meaning. That we take to mean a theology based on the Bible as the first, final, and only guide to man’s knowledge of God and all implied in that knowledge. This view of his meaning is confirmed by another passage (p. 100), wherein, contrasting the doctrinal position of the Catholic and Protestant, he says:

“It” (the Catholic Church) “stands precisely on the same foundation on which the Protestant religion stands—on the truth of the Gospel history. Before we can believe the Gospel history we must appeal to the consciousness of God’s existence, which is written on the hearts of us all.”

There is a mistake here which will be obvious to any instructed reader. There is no more reason “to appeal to the consciousness of God’s existence” for the truth of “the Gospel history” than for the truth of any other history. As a history, history it is and no more, to be judged as to its accuracy on the known laws of historical criticism. It contains a written record of events, and stands or falls on the truth of what it records, just as does Mr. Froude’s own history. If it can be shown that it is false, there is an end of it; false it is, and no man is bound to believe it. The foundation of Protestantism, as Mr. Froude very rightly says, stands “on the truth of the Gospel history”—that is, on the Bible, and the Bible alone. Christ, however, did not build his church on the Bible, but on Peter, the chief of the apostles: “I say to thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Those are very plain, strong, and unmistakable words; and in their comprehension lies a fundamental difference between Catholics and Protestants.

Out of this difference comes a singular effect, more noticeable in these than in former days. Catholics reverence the Bible more really because more truly than do Protestants. Over-reverence is irreverence. They never made the mistake of accepting the Bible as the foundation of Christ’s church, any more than in human affairs we should take a history of a commonwealth, with the digest of its laws, the sayings of some of its wise men, their documents to their contemporaries and to posterity, as the commonwealth itself. Protestants withdrew from the body of the church, which may have had, and had, sore spots and diseased members; they took up the written record and said: Here are the laws; here are the words of Christ; here are the sayings of the fathers; here is truth; here let us build our church anew—each one judging for himself as to what the church was and ought to be. Difficulties that were essential to such a position and that are obvious at sight arose at once and continued all the way down, until at last, in these days of all others, there sprang up in the very bosom of Protestantism a school of assailants of the Bible itself. This is the school of modern scientists, which rejects revelation, rejects God, rejects the truth of the Bible history, rejects Christ—rejects, in a word, everything, save what approves itself to it by so-called positive testimony. Hence arises the perplexity of the “intellectual position” of Protestant divines, which Mr. Froude notices. The very foundation of their creed is questioned, and questioned at every inch. So, until everything is satisfactorily cleared up and the “scientists” absolutely refuted, Protestantism is in a state of dissolution. It has no foundation on which to stand, while Catholics have their living church, to which they adhered steadfastly from the very beginning, which existed, and was called into being, entirely independent of the Bible, and which would have been what it is had the Bible never been written at all. So that, per impossibile, even were the Bible shown to be false, it would not affect the fundamental Catholic position. Of course we do not intimate for a moment that the Bible is false, and that the scientists can prove anything against it. We only bring forward this instance of an essential difference between Catholics and Protestants, and the effect of it on their minds, as showing the reason why Catholics take the criticism of the new school of inquirers very calmly, while the result of this criticism on Protestants is disastrous.

Catholics are just as steadfast in their belief as they ever were; Protestants are daily becoming less and less so. Inquiry, or “criticism,” as it is called, while it strengthens, if possible, Catholicity, destroys Protestantism. Truth can stand all things. “Science and historical criticism have shaken positions which used to be thought unassailable” by Protestants, who find themselves in the false position of being compelled to question or reject as false what their fathers pinned their faith to—Germany always excepted, according to Mr. Froude. It is a hard thing indeed to preach and teach as divine truth a doctrine, or by our very profession to subscribe to a doctrine, which in our heart we doubt about or disbelieve. This is a moral phenomenon which Protestantism presents to us every day, and in no one of its infinite branches more conspicuously than in the Anglican.

If men are preaching what they disbelieve or are in grave doubt about, it is simply natural that “where truth” (or what was taken for truth) “was once flashed out like lightning, and attended with oratorical thunders, it is now uttered with comparative feebleness.”

“The most honest, perhaps, are the most uncomfortable and most hesitating, while those who speak most boldly are often affecting a confidence which in their hearts they do not feel” (p. 99). “From some cause, it seems they” (Protestant preachers) “dare not speak, they dare not think, like their fathers. Too many of them condescend to borrow the weapons of their adversaries. They are not looking for what is true; they are looking for arguments to defend positions which they know to be indefensible. Their sermons are sometimes sophistical, sometimes cold and mechanical, sometimes honestly diffident. Any way, they are without warmth and cannot give what they do not possess” (p. 100).

This is a very heavy indictment; we leave to others to judge of its truth. It is a mistake, however, to draw the line at “their fathers.” These men are what their fathers have made them. The characteristics that mark the present teachers of Protestantism run down the whole line of the Protestant tradition. Incoherency and inconsistency, not to use harsher terms, necessarily stamped Protestantism from the first.[103] These characteristics are only more apparent to-day because the constant fire of criticism has exposed and brought them more prominently into view.

The practical results of teaching what is necessarily and inherently contradictory scarcely need to be pointed out. “The Protestant,” says Mr. Froude, “finding three centuries ago that the institution called the Church was teaching falsehood, refused to pin his faith upon the Church’s sleeve thenceforward. He has relied on his own judgment, and times come when he is perplexed.” The whole story is told here. It was too late in the day to find that “the Church was teaching falsehood.” The Christian Church can err or it cannot err. There is room for no via media here. If it can err, it could have erred just as easily in the first century as in the fifteenth or sixteenth. If it could err at all there is no necessary reason to suppose that it ever was right; there is no belief to be placed in the promise of Christ; there is no belief to be placed in Christ himself more than in any other man. And again, if it could err, who was right, and who was going to set it right? The church being abandoned as a teacher of falsehood, there is no hope of escape from constant perplexity to the Christian mind; for the Bible itself, being left to private judgment, is of course open to any interpretation that private judgment may be pleased to extract from it. And this in itself is destruction, quite apart from the assaults of hostile criticism. To make the church at all, or at any time, or by any possibility a teacher of falsehood is to strike the divinity from it and convert it into a human institution of the most monstrous assumptions and absurd pretensions.

This is Protestantism, which never had any spiritual life in itself. It was from the beginning, as it still is, a convenient and very powerful political agent, as was Mahometanism. Mr. Froude says very truly, what all men are coming to say, that “there is no real alternative between the Catholic Church and atheism” (p. 100), which leaves Mr. Froude and his fellow-Protestants in a pleasant position.

In the general perplexity of the Protestant mind “the Romanist,” as Mr. Froude graciously puts it, “has availed himself of the opportunity.”

“His church stands as a visible thing, which appears [appeals?] to the imagination as well as the reason. The vexed soul, weary of its doubts, and too impatient to wait till it pleases God to clear away the clouds, demands a certainty on which it can repose—never to ask a question more. By an effort of will which, while claiming the name of faith, is in reality a want of faith, it seizes the Catholic system as a whole. Foregoing the use of the natural reason for evermore, it accepts the word of a spiritual director as an answer to every difficulty, and finds, as it supposes, the peace for which it longed, as the body which is drugged with opium ceases to feel pain” (p. 101).

Such is Mr. Froude’s picture of conversion to the Catholic faith. A man is drugged into Catholicity, and remains drugged to the end of the chapter. Whenever a gleam of his lost reason returns he hurries to the confessional box; his “spiritual director” administers another dose, and the drowsy patient slumbers away again content. We do not pretend to Mr. Froude’s singular gift of prescience which enables him to read so readily the hearts of thousands of men and women who to all the world save Mr. Froude are intellectually and morally strong. He has traced their secret emotions and followed them up even into the confessional box. He has seen the opiate administered and satisfied himself of the process. To ordinary persons the conversion of a man to the Catholic faith is the result of a long and most painful struggle which only the strongest conviction of right can bring about. Leaving him there, deprived of “the use of the natural reason for evermore,” let us see what becomes of those who retain the use of their natural reason and all the noble gifts and faculties that accompany it. Protestants alone see clearly the roads to heaven and hell, according to Mr. Froude; which road do they take?

We have seen the position of their preachers. Were we not deprived of “our natural reason for evermore,” we should describe that position as most pitiable, where it is not dishonest and intellectually immoral. The God of Protestantism, if we believe its expounders, is truly a strange being. He teaches everything, or he teaches nothing, with equal facility and pleasing variety. He teaches that there are three persons in one God; he teaches no such doctrine. He teaches that Christ is truly God and truly man; he is rather doubtful about the matter. He teaches the eternity of punishment; he teaches no such monstrous doctrine. He commands that all men be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, if they would enter the kingdom of heaven; he does not know of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. His views of baptism and its necessity are rather mixed. There is no baptism unless a man is wholly immersed. It is just as good a baptism if a man’s feet be immersed. It is equally good if water be poured on a man’s head. A man is just as fit for the kingdom of heaven, and just as good a Christian, if he be not baptized at all. God teaches that the Blessed Sacrament is really and truly the body and blood of Christ, and to be adored. He teaches that it is only a figure of Christ, and that to adore it is to commit the sin of idolatry. He teaches that man has free-will; he teaches that man has not free-will, and that all he can do is worthless, heaven or hell being portioned out for him from all eternity quite apart from his own endeavor. He teaches that good works as well as faith in him are necessary for salvation; he teaches that faith alone is necessary, and that provided a man believe right he may do wrong. And so on ad infinitum down to the grossest and most abhorrent tenets.

But this is Protestantism, or reliance on one’s “own judgment.” One’s own judgment is very apt to favor one’s own self. One’s own judgment makes a god of self, and right and wrong matters of whim, appetite, and inclination. Let us see its outcome as pictured by Mr. Froude.

In section iv. of his study he considers the “Causes of Weakness in Modern Protestant Churches.” The words “modern” and “churches” are themselves contradictory of unity and of a church built on Christ. He sets out by drawing a glowing picture of what the early “Reformers” did and what they were, which we may let pass as not immediately bearing on our present purpose. “After the middle of the seventeenth century,” he says (p. 111), “Protestantism ceased to be aggressive.”

... “As it became established it adapted itself to the world, laid aside its harshness, confined itself more and more to the enforcement of particular doctrines, and abandoned, at first tacitly and afterward deliberately, the pretence to interfere with private life or practical business.”

Is this true? Did Protestantism cease to be aggressive after the middle of the seventeenth century? We have already said that Mr. Froude was generally the best refutation of Mr. Froude. He shall be his own judge.

Did Protestantism cease to be aggressive in Ireland, for instance, after the middle of the seventeenth century? We might bring many unimpeachable witnesses on the stand to prove our point. Mr. Froude will suffice for us, and we quote him at some length because his words here set forth in the strongest contrast what Protestantism can do to degrade a people, and what Catholicity can do to lift a people out of the slough of degradation. Herein we see the spirits of both in deadly conflict, and the lesson of the struggle is a lesson for to-day, when the same spirits are locked again in strife.

Writing not of the middle of the seventeenth, but of the beginning of the eighteenth, century (1709), Mr. Froude thus describes the second Act against Popery in Ireland:

“The code of law which was designed to transfer the entire soil of Ireland to members of the Established Church, and reduce the Catholics to landless dependents, was finally completed.... By the new act every settlement, every lease on lives, every conveyance made by a Catholic owner since 1704, by which any Protestant or Protestants had been injured,[104] was declared void, and the loop-holes were closed by which the act of that year had been evaded. To defeat Protestant heirs, Catholics had concealed the true value of their property. Children were now enabled to compel their fathers to produce their title-deeds and make a clear confession. Catholic gentlemen had pretended conversion to qualify themselves for being magistrates and sheriffs, for being admitted to the bar, or for holding a seat in Parliament, while their children were being bred up secretly in the old faith. The education of their families was made a test of sincerity, and those whose sons were not brought up as churchmen remained under the disabilities.

“Nor, if words could hinder it, were the acts directed against the priests to be any more trifled with. Fifty pounds reward was now offered for the conviction of any Catholic archbishop, bishop, or vicar-general; twenty pounds reward for the conviction of friar, Jesuit, or unregistered parish priest.... It was now made penal for a priest to officiate anywhere except in the parish church for which he was registered, and the last rivet was driven into the chain by the compulsory imposition of the Abjuration Oath, which every priest was made to swear at his registration. As if this was not enough, any two magistrates received power to summon any or every Irish subject above the age of sixteen, to offer him the oath, and to commit him to prison if he refused it. They might also, if he was a Catholic, ask him where he last heard Mass, and by whom it was celebrated. If the priest officiating was found to have been unregistered he was liable to be transported.

“A fatal clause was added that any Protestant whatever who discovered and was able to prove before a Protestant jury the existence of any purchase or lease of which a Catholic was to have secretly the advantage, should himself be put in possession of the property which was the subject of the fraud” (pp. 332–334).[105]

Even Mr. Froude cannot help remarking on this last clause that “the evasion of a law so contrived that every unscrupulous scoundrel in Ireland was its self-constituted guardian became impossible”; and he adds with gratifying frankness: “That it was unjust in itself never occurred as a passing emotion to any Protestant in the two kingdoms, not even to Swift, who speaks approvingly of what he deems must be the inevitable result.”

Writing still of the Penal Laws, he says that “the practice of the courts” in regard to them “was a very school of lying and a discipline of evasion. No laws could have been invented, perhaps, more ingeniously demoralizing” (p. 374).

Writing of a period still later in the eighteenth century, after the Protestant emigration and the ruin of Irish trade and industry had been brought about by English legislation, he thus describes the condition of the Irish peasant class, who composed the bulk of the population:

“The tenants were forbidden in their leases to break or plough the soil. The people, no longer employed, were driven away into holes and corners, and eked out a wretched subsistence by potato gardens, or by keeping starving cattle of their own on the neglected bogs. Their numbers increased, for they married early, and they were no longer liable, as in the old times, to be killed off like dogs in forays. They grew up in compulsory idleness, encouraged once more in their inherited dislike of labor, and enured to wretchedness and hunger; and, on every failure of the potato crop, hundreds of thousands were starving.”

Horrible as such a picture is, it is but a faint sketch of the reality. All readers of Irish history know it, and no student of English legislation should forget or pass over that dark chapter in England’s history. Our own readers have seen the whole system vividly sketched in these pages recently in the series of papers on “English Rule in Ireland.” What, in human nature and human possibilities, was to become of a people thus submitted to so long and unbending and systematic a course of degradation? They had nothing left but their faith, and the eternal truth of the promise that this is the victory which overcometh the world; and that our faith shall make us free was never more gloriously and wondrously made manifest than in the case of the Irish people.

Ignorance was made compulsory by this Protestant government. The statute law of Ireland forbade Catholics to open schools or to teach in them. The Irish people, of all peoples, have ever had a craving for knowledge. What was left to them to do?

“The Catholics,” says Mr. Froude, “with the same steady courage and unremitting zeal with which they had maintained and multiplied the number of their priests, had established open schools in places like Killarney, where the law was a dead-letter. In the more accessible counties, where open defiance was dangerous, they extemporized class teachers under ruined walls or in the dry ditches by the roadside, where ragged urchins, in the midst of their poverty, learnt English and the elements of arithmetic, and even to read and construe Ovid and Virgil. With institutions which showed a vitality so singular and so spontaneous repressive acts of Parliament contended in vain.”

Ignorance is esteemed to be the prolific mother of vice. The social condition of the Irish people was made as bad as legislation could make it. Where was the room for morality in such a case? In vainly trying to explain away that most brutal project of law for the mutilation of the Irish priests, Mr. Froude says (vol. i. p. 557): “They (the Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council) did propose, not that all the Catholic clergy in Ireland, as Plowden says, but that unregistered priests and friars coming in from abroad, should be liable to castration”; and he adds in a note:

“Not, certainly, as implying a charge of immorality. Amidst the multitude of accusations which I have seen brought against the Irish priests of the last century, I have never, save in a single instance, encountered a charge of unchastity. Rather the exceptional and signal purity of Irish Catholic women of the lower class, unparalleled probably in the civilized world, and not characteristic of the race, which in the sixteenth century was no less distinguished for licentiousness, must be attributed wholly and entirely to the influence of the Catholic clergy.”

Mr. Froude cannot be wholly generous and honest in a matter of this kind, but what is true in this is sufficient for our purpose without inquiring into what is false. It is plain from his own words that the one thing that saved the Irish people from perdition, body and soul, was their Catholic faith. Yet this is the man who, having thus testified to the rival effects of Catholicity and Protestantism on a people, has the effrontery to tell us in the “Revival of Romanism” that

“If by this [conversions] or any other cause the Catholic Church anywhere recovers her ascendency, she will again exhibit the detestable features which have invariably attended her supremacy. Her rule will once more be found incompatible either with justice or intellectual growth, and our children will be forced to recover by some fresh struggle the ground which our forefathers conquered for us, and which we by our pusillanimity surrendered” (p. 103).

With his own testimony before us we may well ask in amazement, Of which church is he writing? It would seem as though Heaven, which through all ages has looked down upon and permitted martyrdom for the faith, had in this instance called upon, not a tender virgin or a strong youth, not an old man tottering into the grave or an innocent child, to step into the arena and offer up their life and blood for the cause of Christ, but a whole people. And the martyrdom of this people was not for a day or an hour; it was the slow torture of centuries. A legacy of martyrdom was “bequeathed from bleeding sire to son.” Life was hopeless to the Irish people under the Penal Laws; the world a wide prison; the earth a grave. They could only lift their eyes and hearts to heaven and wait patiently for merciful death to come. This was the supreme test of faith to a noble and passionate race, as it was faith’s supremest testimony. No work of the saints, no writings of the fathers, no Heaven-illumined mind ever brought to the aid of faith stronger reason for conviction than this. As words pale before deeds, as the blood of a martyr speaks more loudly to men, and cries more clamorously to heaven, than all that divine philosophy can utter or inspired poet sing, so the attitude of the Irish people, so opposed to all the instincts of their quick and passionate nature, bore the very noblest testimony to the reality of the Christian religion. A world looked down into that dark arena and waited for some sign of faltering in the victim, for some sign of pity in the persecutor. Neither came. The victim refused to die or sacrifice to the gods; the persecutor to relent. The struggle ended at length through the sheer weariness of the latter, and brighter times came because darker could not be devised.

Faith conquered. The Irish people arose from its grave, and at once spread abroad over the world to preach the Gospel and to plant the church which for two centuries it had watered with its blood. The Act of Catholic Emancipation was the first real sign of resurrection, and that was only passed in 1829.

So much for Protestantism having “ceased to be aggressive after the middle of the seventeenth century.” How aggressive are certain Protestant powers to-day all men know.

Another thing happened to Protestantism after the middle of the seventeenth century:

“It no longer produced men conspicuously nobler and better than Romanism,” says Mr. Froude, “and therefore it no longer made converts. As it became established, it adapted itself to the world, laid aside its harshness, confined itself more and more to the enforcement of particular doctrines” (of no doctrines in particular, we should be inclined to say), “and abandoned, at first tacitly and afterward deliberately, the pretence to interfere with private life or practical business.”

In plainer words, Protestantism, having secured its place in this world, left the next world to take care of itself, and left men free to go to the devil or not just as they pleased. Mr. Froude faithfully pictures the result:

“Thus Protestant countries are no longer able to boast of any special or remarkable moral standard; and the effect of the creed on the imagination is analogously impaired. Protestant nations show more energy than Catholic nations because the mind is left more free, and the intellect is undisturbed by the authoritative instilment of false principles” (p. 111).

This strikes us as a very easy manner of begging a very important question. However, we are less concerned now with Mr. Froude’s Catholics than with his Protestants.

“But,” he goes on, “Protestant nations have been guilty, as nations, of enormous crimes. Protestant individuals, who profess the soundest of creeds, seem, in their conduct, to have no creed at all, beyond a conviction that pleasure is pleasant, and that money will purchase it. Political corruption grows up; sharp practice in trade grows up—dishonest speculations, short weights and measures, and adulteration of food. The commercial and political Protestant world, on both sides of the Atlantic, has accepted a code of action from which morality has been banished; and the clergy have for the most part sat silent, and occupy themselves in carving and polishing into completeness their schemes of doctrinal salvation. They shrink from offending the wealthy members of their congregation.” (We believe we heard concordant testimony to this from distinguished members of the late Protestant Episcopalian Convention and Congress.) “They withdraw into the affairs of the other world, and leave the present world to the men of business and the devil.”

Mr. Froude having thus placidly handed Protestantism over to the devil, we might as well leave it there, as the devil is proverbially reported to know and take care of his own. And certainly, if Protestantism be only half what Mr. Froude depicts it, it is the devil’s, and a more active and fruitful agent of evil he could not well desire. One thing is beyond dispute: if Protestantism be what so ardent an advocate as Mr. Froude says it is, it is high time for a change. It is time for some one or something to step in and dispute the devil’s absolute sovereignty. If this is the result of the Protestant mind being “left more free” than the Catholic, the sooner such freedom is curtailed the better. It is the freedom of lethargy and license which has yielded up even the little that it had of real freedom and truth to its own child, Materialism, the modern name for paganism.

“They” (the Protestant clergy), says Mr. Froude, “have allowed the Gospel to be superseded by the new formulas of political economy. This so-called science is the most barefaced attempt that has ever yet been openly made on this earth to regulate human society without God or recognition of the moral law. The clergy have allowed it to grow up, to take possession of the air, to penetrate schools and colleges, to control the actions of legislatures, without even so much as opening their lips in remonstrance.”

Yes, because they had nothing better to offer in its place. And this Mr. Froude advances with much truth as one of the causes of the “Revival of Romanism”:

“I once ventured,” he tells us, “to say to a leading Evangelical preacher in London that I thought the clergy were much to blame in these matters. If the diseases of society were unapproachable by human law, the clergy might at least keep their congregations from forgetting that there was a law of another kind which in some shape or other would enforce itself. He told me very plainly that he did not look on it as part of his duty. He could not save the world, nor would he try. The world lay in wickedness, and would lie in wickedness to the end. His business was to save out of it individual souls by working on their spiritual emotions, and bringing them to what he called the truth. As to what men should do or not do, how they should occupy themselves, how and how far they might enjoy themselves, on what principles they should carry on their daily work—on these and similar subjects he had nothing to say.

“I needed no more to explain to me why Evangelical preachers were losing their hold on the more robust intellects, or why Catholics, who at least offered something which at intervals might remind men that they had souls, should have power to win away into their fold many a tender conscience which needed detailed support and guidance” (pp. 112–113).

One ray of light in the universal darkness now enshrouding Protestantism shines before the eyes of Mr. Froude. It falls on the present German Empire. Here at least the weary watchman crying out the hours of heaven may call “All is well” to the sleepers. Here Protestantism had its true birth; here it finds its true home. In this blessed land lies hope and salvation for a lost world. But the picture is so graphic that we give it in Mr. Froude’s own words:

“As the present state of France,” he says, “is the measure of the value of the Catholic revival, so Northern Germany, spiritually, socially, and politically, is the measure of the power of consistent Protestantism. Germany was the cradle of the Reformation. In Germany it moves forward to its manhood; and there, and not elsewhere, will be found the intellectual solution of the speculative perplexities which are now dividing and bewildering us” (pp. 130–131).

“Luther was the root in which the intellect of the modern Germans took its rise. In the spirit of Luther this mental development has gone forward ever since. The seed changes its form when it develops leaves and flowers. But the leaves and flowers are in the seed, and the thoughts of the Germany of to-day lay in germs in the great reformer. Thus Luther has remained through later history the idol of the nation whom he saved. The disputes between religion and science, so baneful in their effects elsewhere, have risen into differences there, but never into quarrels” (p. 132).

“Protestant Germany stands almost alone, with hands and head alike clear. Her theology is undergoing change. Her piety remains unshaken. Protestant she is, Protestant she means to be.... By the mere weight of superior worth the Protestant states have established their ascendency over Catholic Austria and Bavaria, and compel them, whether they will or not, to turn their faces from darkness to light.[106] ... German religion may be summed up in the word which is at once the foundation and the superstructure of all religion—Duty! No people anywhere or at any time have understood better the meaning of duty; and to say that is to say all” (pp. 134–135).

These glowing periods are very tempting to the critic; but it is a mark of cruelty and savagery to gloat over an easy prey. We forbear all verbal criticism, then, and simply deny in toto the truth of Mr. Froude’s statement. It is so very wrong that we can only think he wrote from his imagination—a weakness from which he suffers oftenest when he wishes most to be effective. Had he searched the world he could not have found a worse instance to prove his point than North Germany.

Prussia is the leading North German and Protestant state, and in various passages Mr. Froude shows that he takes it as his beau-ideal of a Protestant power. How stands Protestantism in Prussia to-day?

The indications for more than a quarter of a century past have been that Protestantism in Prussia was little more than the shadow of a once mighty name. These indications have become more marked of late years, especially since the consolidation of the new German Empire. Earnest German Protestants are continually deploring the fact; the press proclaims it; the Protestant ministers avow it, and all the world knew of it, save, apparently, Mr. Froude. “Protestantism in Prussia” formed the subject of a letter from the Berlin correspondent of the London Times as recently as Sept. 7, 1877. His testimony on such a subject could scarcely be called in question, but even if it could be the facts narrated speak for themselves.

“Forty years ago,” he says, “the clergy of the Established Church of this country, including the leading divines and the members of the ecclesiastical government, almost to a man were under the influence of free-thinking theories.

“It was the time when German criticism first undertook to dissect the Bible. History seemed to have surpassed theology, and divines had recourse to ‘interpreting’ what they thought they could no longer maintain according to the letter. The movement extended from the clergy to the educated classes, gradually reaching the lower orders, and ultimately pervaded the entire nation. At this juncture atheism sprang forward to reap the harvest sown by latitudinarians. Then reaction set in. The clergy reverted to orthodoxy, and their conversion to the old faith happening to coincide with the return of the government to political conservatism, subsequent to the troublous period of 1848, the stricter principles embraced by the cloth were systematically enforced by consistory and school....

“The clergy turned orthodox twenty-five years ago; the laity did not. The servants of the altar, having realized the melancholy effect of opposite tenets, resolutely fell back upon the ancient dogmas of Christianity; the congregations declined to follow suit. Hence the few ‘liberal’ clergymen remaining after the advent of the orthodox period had the consolation of knowing themselves to be in accord, if not with their clerical brethren, at least with the majority of the educated, and, perhaps, even the uneducated, classes.”

He proceeds to mention various cases of prominent Lutheran clergymen who denied the divinity of Christ, or other doctrines equally necessary to be maintained by men professing to be Christians, and of the unsuccessful attempts made to silence them. As the correspondent says “irreverent liberal opinion on the case is well reflected in an article in the Berlin Volks-Zeitung,” which is so instructive that we quote it for the especial benefit of Mr. Froude:

“As long as Protestant clergymen are appointed by provincial consistories officiating in behalf of the crown our congregations will have to put up with any candidates that may be forced upon them. They may, perhaps, be allowed to nominate their pastors, but they will be impotent to exact the confirmation of their choice from the ecclesiastical authorities. Nor do we experience any particular curiosity as to the result of the inquiry instituted against Herr Hossbach. In matters of this delicate nature judicious evasions have been too often resorted to by clever accused, and visibly favored by ordained judges of the faith, for us to care much for the result of the suit opened. A sort of fanciful and imaginative prevarication has always flourished in theological debate, and the old artifice, it is to be foreseen, will be employed with fresh versatility in the present instance. Should the election of Herr Hossbach be confirmed, the consistorial decree will be garnished with so many ‘ifs’ and ‘althoughs’ that the brilliant ray of truth will be dimmed by screening assumptions, like a candle placed behind a colored glass. Similarly, should the consistory decline to ratify the choice of the vestry, the refusal is sure to be rendered palatable by the employment of particularly mild and euphonious language. In either case the triumph of the victorious party will be but half a triumph.... It is not a little remarkable that the Protestant Church in this country should be kept under the control of superimposed authorities, while Roman Catholics and Jews are free to preach what they like. The power of the Catholic hierarchy has been broken by the new laws. Catholic clergymen deviating from the approved doctrine of the Church are protected by the Government from the persecution of their bishops. Catholic congregations are positively urged and instigated to profit by the privileges accorded them, and assert their independence against bishop and priest. Jewish rabbis, too, are free to disseminate any doctrine without being responsible for their teaching to spiritual or secular judges. Only Protestant congregations enjoy the doubtful advantage of having the election of their clergy controlled, and the candor of their clergy made the theme of penal inquiry.... And yet Protestant congregations have a ready means of escape at their disposal. Let them leave the church, and they are free to elect whomsoever they may choose as their minister. As it is, the indecision of the congregations maintains the status quo by forcing liberal clergymen into the dogmatic straight-waistcoat of the consistories.”

“In the above argument one important fact is overlooked,” says the Times’ correspondent.

“Among the liberals opposed to the consistories there are many atheists, but few sufficiently religious to care for reform. Hence the course taken by the consistories may be resented, but the preaching of the liberal clergy is not popular enough to create a new denomination or to compel innovation within the pale of the church. The fashionable metaphysical systems of Germany are pessimist.”

A week previous to the date of this letter the Lutheran pastors held their annual meeting at Berlin. The Rev. Dr. Grau, who is referred to as “a distinguished professor of theology,” speaking of the task of the clergy in modern times—certainly a most important subject for consideration—said:

“These are serious times for the church. The protection of the temporal power is no longer awarded to us to anything like the extent it formerly was. The great mass of the people is either indifferent or openly hostile to doctrinal teaching. Not a few listen to those striving to combine Christ with Belial, and to reconcile redeeming truth with modern science and culture. There are those who dream of a future church erected on the ruins of the Lutheran establishment, which by these enterprising neophytes is already regarded as dead and gone.”

“The meeting,” observes the correspondent, “by passing the resolutions proposed by Dr. Grau, endorsed the opinions of the principal speaker.” And he adds:

“While giving this unmitigated verdict upon the state of religion among the people, the meeting displayed open antagonism to the leading authorities of the church. To the orthodox pastors the sober and sedative policy pursued by the Ober Kirchen Rath is a dereliction even more offensive than the downright apostasy of the liberals. To render their opposition intelligible the change that has recently supervened in high quarters should be adverted to in a few words. Soon after his accession to the throne the reigning sovereign, in his capacity as summus episcopus, recommended a lenient treatment of liberal views. Though himself strictly orthodox, as he has repeatedly taken occasion to announce, the emperor is tolerant in religion, and too much of a statesman to overlook the undesirable consequences that must ensue from permanent warfare between church and people. He therefore appointed a few moderate liberals members of the supreme council, accorded an extensive degree of self-government to the synods, at the expense of his own episcopal prerogative, and finally sanctioned civil marriage and ‘civil baptism,’ as registration is sarcastically called in this country, to the intense astonishment and dismay of the orthodox. The last two measures, it is true, were aimed at the priests of the Roman Catholic Church, who were to be deprived of the power of punishing those of their flock siding with the state in the ecclesiastical war; but, as the operation of the law could not be restricted to one denomination, Protestants were made amenable to a measure which, to the orthodox among them, was quite as objectionable as to the believing adherents of the Pope. The supreme council of the Protestant Church, having to approve these several innovations adopted by the crown, gradually accustomed itself to regard compromise and bland pacification as one of the principal duties imposed upon it.”

The correspondent ends his letter thus:

“When all was over orthodoxy was at feud with the people as well as with the authoritative guardians of the church. Yet neither people nor guardians remonstrated. For opposite reasons both were equally convinced they could afford to ignore the charges made.”

So important was the letter that the London Times made it the subject of an editorial article, wherein it speaks of “the singular revival of theological and ecclesiastical controversy, which is observable in all directions,” having “at last reached the slumbering Protestantism of Prussia.” It confesses that

“The state of things as described by our correspondent is certainly a very anomalous one. The Prussian Protestant Church has, of late years at least, had but little hold on the respect and affections of the great majority of the people; they are at best but indifferent to it when they are not actively hostile. We are not concerned to investigate the causes of this lack of popularity; we are content to take it as a fact manifest to all who know the country and acknowledged by all observers alike.”

“German Protestantism was a power and an influence,” it says,

“To which the modern world is deeply indebted, and with which, now that ultramontanism is triumphant in the Church of Rome and priestcraft is again striving in all quarters to exert its sway, the friends of freedom and toleration can ill afford to dispense. There is no more ominous sign in the history of an established church than a divorce between intelligence and orthodoxy. This is what, to all appearances, has happened in Prussia.”

We could corroborate this by abundance of testimony from all quarters; but surely the evidence here given is sufficient to convince any man of the deplorable state of Protestantism in Prussia. Why Mr. Froude should have chosen that country of all others for his Protestant paradise we cannot conceive, unless on the ground that he is Mr. Froude. “The world on one side, and Popery on the other,” he says, “are dividing the practical control over life and conduct. North Germany, manful in word and deed, sustains the fight against both enemies and carries the old flag to victory. A few years ago another Thirty Years’ War was feared for Germany. A single campaign sufficed to bring Austria on her knees. Protestantism, as expressed in the leadership of Prussia, assumed the direction of the German Confederation” (pp. 135–136).

And whither does this leadership tend? To the devil, if the London Times, if Dr. Grau, if every observant man who has written or spoken on this subject, is to be believed. The only religion in Prussia to-day is the Catholic; Protestantism has yielded to atheism or nothingism. The persecution has only proved and tempered the Catholic Church; not even a strong and favoring government can infuse a faint breath of life into the dead carcase of Prussian Protestantism. It is much the same story all the world over. Mr. Froude sees clearly enough what is coming. Protestantism as a religious power is dead. It has lost all semblance of reality. It had no religious reality from the beginning. It will still continue to be used as an agent by political schemers and conspirators; but in the fight between religion and irreligion it is of little worth. The fight is not here, but where Mr. Froude rightly places it—between the irreligious world and Catholicity, which “are dividing the practical control over life and conduct.”

And thus heresies die out; they expire of their own corruption. Their very offspring rise up against them. Their children cry for bread and they give them a stone. The fragments of truth on which they first build are sooner or later crushed out by the great mass of falsehood. The few good seeds are choked up by the harvest of the bad, and only the ill weeds thrive, until all the space around them is desolate of fruit or light or sweetness, or anything fair under heaven. Then comes the husbandman in his own good time, and curses the barren fig-tree and clears the desolate waste. It will be with Protestantism as it has been with all the heresies; Christians will wonder, and the time would seem not to be very far distant when they will wonder that Protestantism ever should have been. It will go to its grave, the same wide grave that has swallowed up heresy after heresy. Gnosticism, Arianism, Pelagianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, Protestantism, all the isms, are children of the same family, live the same life, die the same death. The everlasting church buries them all, and no man mourns their loss.

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A RAMBLE AFTER THE WAITS.

“CHRISTMAS comes but once a year, So let us all be merry,”

saith the old song. And now, as the festal season draws nigh, everybody seems bent on fulfilling the behest to the uttermost. The streets are gay with lights and laughter; the shops are all a-glitter with precious things; the markets are bursting with good cheer. The air vibrates with a babble of merry voices, until the very stars seem to catch the infection and twinkle a thought more brightly. The faces of those you meet beam with joyous expectation; huge baskets on their arms, loaded with good things for the morrow, jostle and thump you at every turn, but no one dreams of being ill-natured on Christmas Eve; mysterious bundles in each hand contain unimagined treasures for the little ones at home. And hark! do you not catch a jingle of distant sleigh-bells, a faint, far-off patter and scrunching of tiny hoofs upon the snow? It is the good St. Nicholas setting out upon his merry round; it is Dasher and Slasher and Prancer and Vixen scurrying like the wind over the house-tops. And high over all—“the poor man’s music”—the merry, merry bells of Yule, the solemn, the sacred bells, peal forth the tidings of great joy. Is it not hard to conceive that the time should have been when Christmas was not? impossible to conceive that any in a Christian land should have wished to do away with it—should have been willing, having had it, ever to forego a festival so fraught with all holy and happy memories?

Yet once such men were found, and but little more than two centuries ago. It was on the 24th day of December, 1652—day for ever to be marked with the blackest of black stones, nay, with a bowlder of Plutonian nigritude—that the British House of Commons, being moved thereto “by a terrible remonstrance against Christmas day grounded upon divine Scripture, wherein Christmas is called Antichrists masse, and those masse-mongers and Papists who observe it,” and after much time “spent in consultation about the abolition of Christmas day, passed order to that effect, and resolved to sit upon the following day, which was commonly called Christmas day.” Whether this latter resolution was carried into effect we do not know. If so, let us hope that their Christmas dinners disagreed with them horribly, and that the foul fiend Nightmare kept hideous vigil by every Parliamentary pillow.

But think of such an atrocious sentiment being heard at all in Westminster! How must the very echoes of the hall have shrunk from repeating that monstrous proposition—how shuddered and fled away into remotest corners and crevices as that

“Hideous hum Ran through the arch’d roof in words deceiving”!

How must they have disbelieved their ears, and tossed the impious utterance back and forth from one to another in agonized questioning, growing feebler and fainter at each repulse, until their voices, faltering through doubt into dismay, grew dumb with horror! How must “Rufus’ Roaring Hall”[107] have roared again outright with rage and grief over that strange, that unhallowed profanation! What wan phantoms of old-time mummeries and maskings, what dusty and crumbling memories of royal feast and junketing, must have hovered about the heads of those audacious innovators, shrieking at them what unsyllabled reproaches from voiceless lips, shaking at them what shadowy fingers of entreaty or menace! And if the proverb about ill words and burning ears be true, how those crop-ears must have tingled!

Within those very walls England’s kings for generations had kept their Christmas-tide most royally with revelry and dance and wassail. There Henry III. on New Year’s day, 1236, to celebrate the coronation of Eleanor, his queen, entertained 6,000 of his poorer subjects of all degrees; and there twelve years later, though he himself ate his plum-pudding at Winchester, he was graciously pleased to bid his treasurer “fill the king’s Great Hall from Christmas day to the Day of Circumcision with poor people and feast them.” There, too, at a later date Edward III. had for sauce to his Christmas turkey—not to mention all sorts of cates and confections, tarts and pasties of most cunning device, rare liquors and spiced wines—no less than two captive kings, to wit, David of Scotland and John of France. Poor captive kings! Their turkey—though no doubt their princely entertainer was careful to help them to the daintiest tidbits, and to see that they had plenty of stuffing and cranberry sauce—must have been but a tasteless morsel, and their sweetbreads bitter indeed. Another Scottish king, the first James, of tuneful and unhappy memory, had even worse (pot) luck soon after. Fate, and that hospitable penchant of our English cousins in the remoter centuries for quietly confiscating all stray Scotch princes who fell in their way, as though they had been contraband of war, gave him the enviable opportunity of eating no less than a score of Christmas dinners on English soil. But he seems to have been left to eat them alone or with his jailer in “bowery Windsor’s calm retreat” or the less cheerful solitude of the Tower. It does not appear that either the fourth or the fifth Henry, his enforced hosts, ever asked him to put his royal Scotch legs under their royal English mahogany. Had Richard II. been in the place of “the ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke,” we may be sure that his northern guest would not have been treated so shabbily. In his time Westminster and his two thousand French cooks (shades of Lucullus! what an appetite he must have had, and what a broiling and a baking and a basting must they have kept up among them; the proverb of “busier than an English oven at Christmas” had reason then, at least) were not long left idle; for it was their sovereign’s jovial custom to keep open house in the holidays for as many as ten thousand a day—a comfortable tableful. It was his motto plainly to

“Be merry, for our time of stay is short.”

Such a device, however, the third Richard might have made his own with still greater reason. That ill-used prince, who was no doubt a much better fellow at bottom than it has pleased Master Shakspeare to represent him—if Richmond had not been Queen Bess’ grandpapa, we should like enough have had a different story and altogether less about humps and barking dogs—made the most of a limited opportunity to show what he could do in the way of holiday dinner-giving. The only two Christmases he had to spend as king at Westminster—for him but a royal stage on his way to a more permanent residence at Bosworth Field—he celebrated with extraordinary magnificence, as became a prince “reigning,” says Philip de Comines, “in greater splendor than any king of England for the last hundred years.” On the second and last Christmas of his reign and life the revelry was kept up till the Epiphany, when “the king himself, wearing his crown, held a splendid feast in the Great Hall similar to his coronation.” Wearing his crown, poor wretch! He seems to have felt that his time was short for wearing it, and that he must put it to use while he had it. Already, indeed, as he feasted, rapacious Fortune, swooping implacable, was clawing it with skinny, insatiable claws, estimating its value and the probable cost of altering it to fit another wearer, and thinking how much better it would look on the long head of her good friend Richmond, who had privately bespoken it. No doubt some cold shadow of that awful, unseen presence fell across the banquet-table and poisoned the royal porridge.

What need to tell over the long roll of Christmas jollities, whose memory from those historic walls might have pleaded with or rebuked the sour iconoclasts planning gloomily to put an end to all such for ever; how even close-fisted Henry VII.—no fear of his losing a crown, if gripping tight could keep it—feasted there the lord-mayor and aldermen of London on the ninth Christmas of his reign, sitting down himself, with his queen and court and the rest of the nobility and gentry, to one hundred and twenty dishes served by as many knights, while the mayor, who sat at a side-table, no doubt, had to his own share no fewer than twenty-four dishes, followed, it is to be feared, if he ate them all, by as many nightmares; how that meek and exemplary Christian monarch, Henry VIII., “welcomed the coming, sped the parting” wife at successive Christmas banquets of as much splendor as the spoils of something over a thousand monasteries could furnish forth;[108] how good Queen Bess, who had her own private reading of the doctrine “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” sat in state there at this festival season to accept the offerings of her loyal lieges, high and low, gentle and simple, from prime minister to kitchen scullion, until she was able to add to the terrors of death by having to leave behind her something like three thousand dresses and some trunkfuls of jewels in Christmas gifts; or what gorgeous revels and masques—Inigo Jones (Inigo Marquis Would-be), Ben Jonson, and Master Henry Lawes (he of “the tuneful and well-measured song”) thereto conspiring—made the holidays joyous under James and Charles. Some ghostly savor of those bygone banquets might, one would think, have made even Praise-God Barebone’s mouth water, and melted his surly virtue into tolerance of other folks’ cakes and ale—what virtue, however ascetic, could resist the onslaught of two thousand French cooks? Some faint, far echo of all these vanished jollities should have won the ear, if not the heart, of the grimmest “saint” among them. Or if they were proof against the blandishments of the world’s people, if they fled from the abominations of Baal, could not their own George Wither move them to spare the cheery, harmless frivolities, the merry pranks of Yule? Jovially as any Cavalier, shamelessly as any Malignant of them all, he sings their praises in his

“CHRISTMAS CAROL.

“So now is come our joyful’st feast, Let every man be jolly; Each room with ivy leaves is drest, And every post with holly. Though some churls at our mirth repine, Round your foreheads garlands twine, Drown sorrow in a cup of wine, And let us all be merry.

“Now all our neighbors’ chimneys smoke, And Christmas blocks are burning; Their ovens they with bak’d meats choke, And all their spits are turning. Without the door let sorrow lie; And if for cold it hap to die, We’ll bury’t in a Christmas pye. And evermore be merry.

“Now every lad is wondrous trim, And no man minds his labor; Our lasses have provided them A bagpipe and a tabor. Young men and maids, and girls and boys, Give life to one another’s joys; And you anon shall by their noise Perceive that they are merry....

“Now poor men to the justices With capons make their errants; And if they hap to fail of these, They plague them with their warrants: But now they feed them with good cheer, And what they want they take in beer; For Christmas comes but once a year, And then they shall be merry....

“The client now his suit forbears, The prisoner’s heart is eased, The debtor drinks away his cares, And for the time is pleased. Though others’ purses be more fat, Why should we pine or grieve at that? Hang sorrow! care will kill a cat, And therefore let’s be merry....

“Hark! now the wags abroad do call Each other forth to rambling; Anon you’ll see them in the hall, For nuts and apples scrambling. Hark! how the roofs with laughter sound; Anon they’ll think the house goes round, For they the cellar’s depths have found. And there they will be merry.

“The wenches with the wassail-bowls About the streets are singing; The boys are come to catch the owls, The wild mare[109] in is bringing. Our kitchen-boy hath broke his box, And to the kneeling of the ox Our honest neighbors come by flocks, And here they will be merry.

“Now kings and queens poor sheep-cotes have, And mate with everybody; The honest now may play the knave, And wise men play at noddy. Some youths will now a-mumming go, Some others play at Rowland-boe, And twenty other gambols moe, Because they will be merry.

“Then wherefore, in these merry days, Should we, I pray, be duller? No, let us sing some roundelays, To make our mirth the fuller; And, while we thus inspired sing, Let all the streets with echoes ring— Woods and hills and everything Bear witness we are merry.”

Or Master Milton, again, Latin secretary to the council, author of the famous Iconoclastes, shield (or, as some would have put it, official scold) of the Commonwealth, the scourge of prelacy and conqueror of Salmasius—he was orthodox surely; yet what of Arcades and Cornus? Master Milton, too, had written holiday masques, and, what is more, they had been acted; nay, he had even been known more than once, on no less authority than his worshipful nephew, Master Philips, “to make so bold with his body as to take a gaudy-day” with the gay sparks of Gray’s Inn. Alas! such carnal-minded effusions belonged to the unregenerate days of both these worthy brethren, when they still dwelt in the tents of the ungodly, before they had girded on the sword of Gideon and gone forth to smite the Amalekite hip and thigh. Vainly might the menaced festival look for aid in that direction. So far from saying a word in its favor, they would now have been fiercest in condemnation, if only to cover their early backsliding; if only to avert any suspicion that they still hankered after the fleshpots. Poor Christmas was doomed.

So, by act of Parliament, “our joyful’st feast” was solemnly stricken out of the calendar, cashiered from its high pre-eminence among the holidays of the year, and degraded to the ranks of common days. All its quaint bravery of holly-berries and ivy-leaves was stripped from it, its jolly retinue of boars’ heads and wassail-bowls, of Yule-clogs and mistletoe-boughs, of maskers and mummers, of waits and carols, Lords of Misrule and Princes of Christmas, sent packing. Then began “the fiery persecution of poor mince-pie throughout the land; plum-porridge was denounced as mere popery, and roast-beef as anti-Christian.” ’Twas a fatal, a perfidious, a short-lived triumph. The nation, shocked in its most cherished traditions, repudiated the hideous doctrine; the British stomach, deprived of its holiday beef and pudding, so to speak, revolted. The reign of the righteous was speedily at an end. History, with her usual shallowness, ascribes to General Monk the chief part in the Restoration; it was really brought about by that short-sighted edict of the 24th of December, 1652. Charles or Cromwell, king or protector—what cared honest Hodge who ruled and robbed him? But to forego his Christmas porridge—that was a different matter; and Britons never should be slaves. So, just eight years after it had been banished, Christmas was brought back again with manifold rejoicing and bigger wassail-bowls and Yule-clogs than ever; and, as if to make honorable amends for its brief exile, the Lord of Misrule himself was crowned and seated on the throne, where, as we all know, to do justice to his office, if he never said a foolish thing he never did a wise one.

And from that time to this Christmas has remained a thoroughly British institution, as firmly entrenched in the national affections, as generally respected, and perhaps as widely appreciated as Magna Charta itself. Sit on Christmas day! A British Parliament now would as soon think of sitting on the Derby day. To how many of their constituents have the two festivals any widely differing significance perhaps it would be wise not to inquire too closely. Each is a holiday—that is, a day off work, a synonym for “a good time,” a little better dinner than usual, and considerably more beer. Like the children, “they reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond the cake and orange.” “La justice elle-même,” says Balzac, “se traduit aux yeux de la halle par le commissaire—personage avec lequel elle se familiarise.” His epigram the author of Ginx’s Baby may translate for us—English epigrams, like English plays, being for the most part matter of importation free of duty; e.g., that famous one in Lothair about the critic being a man who has failed in literature or art, another consignment from Balzac—when he makes Ginx’s theory of government epitomize itself as a policeman. So Ginx’s notion of Christmas, we suspect, is apt to be beef and beer and Boxing-night—with perhaps a little more beer.

Certainly the attachment of the British public to these features of the day—we are considering it for the moment in the light in which a majority of non-Catholics look upon it, apparently, as a merely social festival, and not at all in its religious aspect (though to a Catholic, of course, the two are as indistinguishably blended as the rose and the perfume of the rose)—has never been shaken. If one may judge from a large amount of the English fiction which at this season finds its way to the American market—and the novels of to-day, among a novel-reading people, are as straight and sure a guide to its heart as were ever its ballads in the time of old Fletcher of Saltoun—if one may judge from much of English Christmas literature, these incidents of the day are, if not the most important, certainly the most prominent and popular. What we may call the Beef and Beer aspect of the season these stories are never tired of glorifying and exalting. Dickens is the archpriest of this idolatry, which, indeed, he in a measure invented, or at least brought into vogue; and his Christmas Stories, as most of his stories, fairly reek with the odors of the kitchen and the tap-room. Material comfort, and that, too, usually of a rather coarse kind, is the universal theme, and even the charity they are supposed to inculcate can scarcely be called a moral impulse, so much as the instinct of a physical good-nature, well-fed and content with itself and the world—of a good-humored selfishness willing to make others comfortable, because thereby it puts away from itself the discomfort of seeing them otherwise. It is a kind of charity which, in another sense than that of Scripture, has to cover a multitude of sins.

One may say this of Dickens, without at all detracting from his many great qualities as a writer, that he has done more, perhaps, than any other writer to demoralize and coarsen the popular notion of what Christmas is and means; to make of his readers at best but good-humored pagans with lusty appetites for all manner of victuals and an open-handed readiness to share their good things with the first comer. These are no doubt admirable traits; but one gets a little tired of having them for ever set forth as the crown and completion of Christian excellence, the sum and substance of all that is noble and exalted in the sentiment of the season. Let us enjoy our Christmas dinner by all means; let the plum-pudding be properly boiled and the turkey done to a turn, and may we all have enough to spare a slice or two for a poorer neighbor! But must we therefore sit down and gobble turkey and pudding from morning till night? Should we hang up a sirloin and fall down and worship it? Is that all that Christmas means? Turn from the best of these books to this exquisite little picture of Christmas Eve in a Catholic land:

“Christmas is come—the beautiful festival, the one I love most, and which gives me the same joy as it gave the shepherds of Bethlehem. In real truth, one’s whole soul sings with joy at this beautiful coming of God upon earth—a coming which here is announced on all sides of us by music and by our charming nadalet[110] Nothing at Paris can give you a notion of what Christmas is with us. You have not even the midnight Mass. We all of us went to it, papa at our head, on the most perfect night possible. Never was there a finer sky than ours was that midnight—so fine that papa kept perpetually throwing back the hood of his cloak, that he might look up at the sky. The ground was white with hoar-frost, but we were not cold; besides, the air, as we met it, was warmed by the bundles of blazing torchwood which our servants carried in front of us to light us on our way. It was delightful, I do assure you; and I should like you to have seen us there on our road to church, in those lanes with the bushes along their banks as white as if they were in flower. The hoar-frost makes the most lovely flowers. We saw a long spray so beautiful that we wanted to take it with us as a garland for the communion-table, but it melted in our hands; all flowers fade so soon! I was very sorry about my garland; it was mournful to see it drop away and get smaller and smaller every minute.”

It is Eugénie de Guérin who writes thus—that pure and delicate spirit so well fitted to feel and value all that is beautiful and touching in this most beautiful and touching service of the church. To come from the one reading to the other is like being lifted suddenly out of a narrow valley to the free air and boundless views of a mountain-top; like coming from the gaslight into the starlight; it is like hearing the song of the skylark after the twitter of the robin—a sound pleasant and cheery enough in itself, but not elevating, not inspiring, not in any way satisfying to that hunger after ideal excellence which is the true life of the spirit, and which strikes the true key-note of this festal time.

But Eugénie de Guérin is perhaps too habitual a dweller on those serene heights to furnish a fair comparison; let us take a homelier picture from a lower level. It is still in France; this time in Burgundy, as the other was in Languedoc:

“Every year, at the approach of Advent, people refresh their memories, clear their throats, and begin preluding, in the long evenings by the fireside, those carols whose invariable and eternal theme is the coming of the Messias. They take from old pamphlets little collections begrimed with dust and smoke, ... and as soon as the first Sunday of Advent sounds they gossip, they gad about, they sit together by the fireside, sometimes at one house, sometimes at another, taking turns in paying for the chestnuts and white wine, but singing with one common voice the praises of the Little Jesus. There are very few villages, even, which during all the evenings of Advent do not hear some of these curious canticles shouted in their streets to the nasal drone of bagpipes.

“More or less, until Christmas Eve, all goes on in this way among our devout singers, with the difference of some gallons of wine or some hundreds of chestnuts. But this famous eve once come, the scale is pitched upon a higher key; the closing evening must be a memorable one.... The supper finished, a circle gathers around the hearth, which is arranged and set in order this evening after a particular fashion, and which at a later hour of the night is to become the object of special interest to the children. On the burning brands an enormous log has been placed; ... it is called the Suche (the Yule-log). ‘Look you,’ say they to the children, ‘if you are good this evening Noel will rain down sugar-plums in the night.’ And the children sit demurely, keeping as quiet as their turbulent little natures will permit. The groups of older persons, not always as orderly as the children, seize this good opportunity to surrender themselves with merry hearts and boisterous voices to the chanted worship of the miraculous Noel. For this final solemnity they have kept the most powerful, the most enthusiastic, the most electrifying carols.

“This last evening the merry-making is prolonged. Instead of retiring at ten or eleven o’clock, as is generally done on all the preceding evenings, they wait for the stroke of midnight; this word sufficiently proclaims to what ceremony they are going to repair. For ten minutes or a quarter of an hour the bells have been calling the faithful with a triple-bob-major; and each one, furnished with a little taper streaked with various colors (the Christmas candle), goes through the crowded streets, where the lanterns are dancing like will-o’-the-wisps at the impatient summons of the multitudinous chimes. It is the midnight Mass.”

There you have fun, feasting, and frolic, as, indeed, there may fitly be to all innocent degrees of merriment, on the day which brought redemption to mankind. But there is also, behind and pervading all this rejoicing and harmless household gayety, the religious sentiment which elevates and inspires it, which chastens it from commonplace and grossness, which gives it a meaning and a soul. The English are fond of calling the French an irreligious people, because French literature, especially French fiction, from which they judge, takes its tone from Paris, which is to a great extent irreligious. But outside of the large cities, if a balance were struck on this point between the two countries, it would scarcely be in favor of England.

This, however, by way of episode and as a protest against this grovelling, material treatment of the most glorious festival of the Christian year. As we were about to say when interrupted, though Christmas regained its foothold as a national holiday at the Restoration, it came back sadly denuded of its following and shorn of most of its old-time attractions. So it fared in old England. In New England it can scarcely be said ever to have won a foothold at all, or at best no more than a foothold and a sullen toleration. Almost the first act of those excellent Pilgrim Fathers who did not land at Plymouth Rock was to anticipate by thirty years or so the action of their Parliamentary brethren at home in abolishing the sacred anniversary, which must, indeed, have been a tacit rebuke to the spirit of their creed. They landed on the 16th of December, and “on ye 25th day,” writes William Bradford, “began to erect ye first house for comone use to receive them and their goods.” And lest this might seem an exception made under stress, we find it recorded next year that “on ye day caled Christmas day ye Gov’r caled them out to worke.” So it is clear New England began with a calendar from which Christmas was expunged. In New England affections Thanksgiving day replaces it—an “institution” peculiarly acceptable, we must suppose, to the thrift which can thus wipe out its debt of gratitude to Heaven by giving one day for three hundred and sixty-four—liquidating its liabilities, so to speak, at the rate of about three mills in the dollar. In the Middle States and in the South the day has more of its time-old observance, but neither here nor elsewhere may we hope to encounter many of the quaint and cheery customs with which our fathers loved to honor it, and which made it for them the pivot of the year. Wither has told us something of these; let a later minstrel give us a fuller picture of what Merry Christmas was in days of yore:

“And well our Christian sires of old Loved, when the year its course had rolled, And brought blithe Christmas back again, With all its hospitable train. Domestic and religious rite Gave honor to the holy night: On Christmas Eve the bells were rung; On Christmas Eve the Mass was sung; That only night of all the year Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear. The damsel donned her kirtle sheen; The hall was dressed with holly green; Forth to the wood did merry men go To gather in the mistletoe. Then opened wide the baron’s hall To vassals, tenants, serf, and all. The heir, with roses in his shoes, That night might village partner choose; The lord, underogating, share The vulgar game of ‘post and pair.’ All hailed with uncontrolled delight, And general voice, the happy night That to the cottage, as the crown, Brought tidings of salvation down.

The fire, with well-dried logs supplied, Went roaring up the chimney wide; The huge hall-table’s oaken face, Scrubbed till it shone, the day to grace, Bore then upon its massive board No mark to part the squire and lord. Then was brought in the lusty brawn By old blue-coated serving-man; Then the grim boar’s head frowned on high, Crested with bays and rosemary.... The wassail round in good brown bowls, Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls. There the huge sirloin reeked; hard by Plum-porridge stood and Christmas pye. Then came the merry masquers in And carols roared with blithesome din; If unmelodious was the song, It was a hearty note and strong. Who lists may in their mumming see Traces of ancient mystery.... England was merry England then— Old Christmas brought his sports again; ’Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale; ’Twas Christmas told the merriest tale; A Christmas gambol oft would cheer A poor man’s heart through half the year.”

Let Herrick supplement the picture with his

“CEREMONIES FOR CHRISTMASSE.

“Come, bring with a noise, My merrie, merrie boyes, The Christmas log to the firing; While my good dame, she Bids ye all be free And drink to your hearts’ desiring.

“With the last yeeres brand Light the new block, and For good successe in his spending On your psaltries play, That sweet luck may Come while the log is a-teending.

“Drink now the strong beere, Cut the white loafe here, The while the meate is a-shredding For the rare mince-pie, And the plums stand by To fill the paste that’s a-kneading.”

Does the picture please you? Would you fain be a guest at the baron’s table, or lend a hand with jovial Herrick to fetch in the mighty Yule-log? Are you longing for a cut of that boar’s head or a draught of the wassail, or curious to explore the contents of that mysterious “Christmas pye,” which seems to differ so much from all other pies that it has to be spelled with a y? Well, well, we must not repine. Fate, which has denied us these joys, has given us compensations. No doubt the baron, for all his Yule-logs, would sometimes have given his baronial head (when he happened to have a cold in it) for such a fire—let it be of sea-coal in a low grate and the curtains drawn—as the reader and his humble servant are this very minute toasting their toes at. Those huge open fireplaces are admirably effective in poetry, but not altogether satisfactory of a cold winter’s night, when half the heat goes up the chimney and all the winds of heaven are shrieking in through the chinks in your baronial hall and playing the very mischief with your baronial rheumatism. Or do we believe that boar’s head was such a mighty fascinating dish after all, or much, if anything, superior to the soused pig’s head with which good old Squire Bracebridge replaced it? No, every age to its own customs; we may be sure that each finds out what is best for it and for its people.

Yet one custom we do begrudge a little to the past, or rather to the other lands where it still lingers here and there in the present. That is the graceful and kindly custom of the waits. These were Christmas carols, as the reader no doubt knows, chanted by singers from house to house in the rural districts during the season of Advent. In France they were called noels, and in Longfellow’s translation of one of these we may see what they were like:

“I hear along our street Pass the minstrel throngs; Hark! they play so sweet. On their hautboys, Christmas songs! Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire!...

“Shepherds at the grange Where the Babe was born Sang with many a change Christmas carols until morn. Let us, etc.

“These good people sang Songs devout and sweet; While the rafters rang, There they stood with freezing feet. Let us, etc.

“Who by the fireside stands Stamps his feet and sings; But he who blows his hands Not so gay a carol brings. Let us, etc.”

In some parts of rural England, too, the custom is still to some extent kept up, and the reader may find a pleasant, and we dare say faithful, description of it in a charming English story called Under the Greenwood Tree, by Mr. Thomas Hardy, a writer whose closeness of observation and precision and delicacy of touch give him a leading place among the younger writers of fiction.

Very pleasant, we fancy, it must be of a Christmas Eve when one is, as aforesaid, toasting one’s toes at the fire over a favorite book, or hanging up the children’s stockings, let us say, or peering through the curtains out over the moonlit snow, and wondering how cold it is out-doors with that little perfunctory shiver which is comfort’s homage to itself—there should always be snow upon the ground at Christmas, for then Nature

“With speeches fair Woos the gentle air To hide her guilty front with innocent snow”;

but let us have no wind, since

“Peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the world began. The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kist, Whispering new joys to the wild ocean, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charméd wave”—

at such a time, we say, it would be pleasant to hear the shrill voices of the Waits cleaving the cold, starlit air in some such quaint old ditty as the “Cherry-tree Carol” or “The Three Ships.” No doubt, too, would we but confess it, there would come to us a little wicked enhancement of pleasure in the reflection that the artists without were a trifle less comfortable than the hearer within. That rogue Tibullus had a shrewd notion of what constitutes true comfort when he wrote, Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem—which, freely translated, means, How jolly it is to sit by the fireside and listen to other fellows singing for your benefit in the cold without! But that idea we should dismiss as unworthy, and even try to feel a little uncomfortable by way of penance; and then, when their song was ended, and we heard their departing footsteps scrunching fainter and fainter in the snow, and their voices dying away until they became the merest suggestion of an echo, we should perhaps find—for these are to be ideal Waits—that their song had left behind it in the listener’s soul a starlit silence like that of the night without, but the stars should be heavenly thoughts.

These are ideal Waits; the real ones might be less agreeable or salutary. But have we far to look for such? Are there not on the shelves yonder a score of immortal minstrels only waiting our bidding to sing the sacred glories of the time? Shall we ask grave John Milton to tune his harp for us, or gentle Father Southworth, or impassioned Crashaw, or tender Faber? These are Waits we need not scruple to listen to, nor fail to hear with profit.

Milton’s Ode on the Nativity is, no doubt, the finest in the language. Considering the difficulties of a subject to which, short of inspiration, it is next to impossible to do any justice at all, it is very fine indeed. It is not all equal, however; there are in it stanzas which remind one that he was but twenty-one when he wrote it. Yet other stanzas are scarcely surpassed by anything he has written.

“Yea, Truth and Justice then Will down return to men, Orb’d in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing Mercy will sit between, Thron’d in celestial sheen, With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering, And heaven, as at some festival, Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

“But wisest Fate says, No, It must not yet be so; The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy That on the bitter cross Must redeem our loss, So both himself and us to glorify; Yet first to those ychained in sleep The wakeful trump of doom must thunder thro’ the deep,

“With such a horrid clang As on Mount Sinai rang, While the red fire and smould’ring clouds out-brake. The aged earth, aghast With terror of that blast, Shall from the surface to the centre shake; When at the world’s last session The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

—————

“The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathèd spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

“The lonely mountains o’er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard and loud lament. From haunted spring, and dale Edg’d with poplar pale, The parting genius is with sighing sent. With flower-inwoven tresses torn, The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thicket mourn.”

Seldom has Milton sung in loftier strains than this. What a magnificent line is that:

“The wakeful trump of doom shall thunder through the deep.”

The poet evidently had his eye on that wonderful verse of the Dies Iræ:

“Tuba mirum spargens sonum Per sepulchra regionum, Cogit omnes ante thronum,”

but the imitation falls little short of the original. Dr. Johnson characteristically passes this ode over in silence—perhaps because of his opinion that sacred poetry was a contradiction in terms. His great namesake, and in some respects curious antitype, was more generous to another poem we shall quote—Father Southwell’s “Burning Babe.” “So he had written it,” he told Drummond, “he would have been content to destroy many of his.”

“As I, in hoary winter’s night, stood shivering in the snow, Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear, Who, scorchéd with exceeding heat, such floods of tears did shed As though his floods should quench his flames with what his tears were fed; ‘Alas!’ quoth he, ‘but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I. My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns; Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shames and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals; The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiléd souls; For which, as now in fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.’ With this he vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrank away, And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas day.”

The fire is getting low in the grate, the stars are twinkling pale, and though the minstrels are many we should have been glad to introduce to the reader—grand old St. Thomas of Aquin; silver-tongued Giacopone, whose lately-discovered Stabat Mater Speciosa is one of the loveliest of the mediæval hymns; rapturous St. Bernard—they must wait a fitter time. We can hear but another of our Christmas waits—one of the most effective English poems on the Nativity, considered as mere poetry, it has been our fortune to meet. The author is the hero of Browning’s verses, “What’s become of Waring?”—Alfred H. Dommett; a poet who, perhaps, would be better known had he been a worse poet. And with this we must wish our readers “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

“It was the calm and silent night! Seven hundred years and fifty-three Had Rome been growing up to might, And now was queen of land and sea. No sound was heard of clashing wars; Peace brooded o’er the hushed domain; Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars Held undisturbed their ancient reign In the solemn midnight Centuries ago.

“’Twas in the calm and silent night! The senator of haughty Rome Impatient urged his chariot’s flight, From lonely revel rolling home. Triumphal arches, gleaming, swell His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; What recked the Roman what befell A paltry province far away In the solemn midnight Centuries ago?

“Within that province far away Went plodding home a weary boor; A streak of light before him lay, Fallen through a half-shut stable-door, Across his path. He passed; for naught Told what was going on within. How keen the stars! his only thought; The air how calm and cold, and thin! In the solemn midnight Centuries ago.

“O strange indifference! Low and high Drowsed over common joys and cares; The earth was still, but knew not why; The world was listening unawares. How calm a moment may precede One that shall thrill the world for ever! To that still moment none would heed; Man’s doom was linked, no more to sever, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago.

“It is the calm and solemn night! A thousand bells ring out and throw Their joyous peals abroad, and smite The darkness, charmed and holy now! The night, that erst no name had worn, To it a happy name is given; For in that stable lay, new-born, The peaceful Prince of earth and heaven, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago.”

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THE DESCENT OF MAN.

Mr. Charles Darwin, in his Descent of Man, proposes to himself to show that man is nothing more than a modified beast, and that his remote ancestors are to be found among some tribes of brutes. A paradox of this kind, in a work of fiction such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, would not offend an intelligent reader; but in a work which professes to be serious and scientific it is extremely offensive, for it amounts to a deliberate insult to all humanity in general and to every human being in particular. Mr. Darwin’s work violates the dignity of human nature, blots out of our souls the image and likeness of our Creator, and totally perverts the notions most cherished by civil and Christian society. This effort does certainly not entitle him to credit for wisdom. A man of ordinary prudence, before he undertakes to maintain in the face of the public a theory which conflicts with a doctrine thoroughly established and universally received, would examine both sides of the case, and ascertain that he is in possession of sufficient evidence to make good his assertions and to defend them against the arguments of the opposite side. Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, seems to have satisfied himself that a man of his eminence in natural history had a right to be believed, whatever he might venture to say, even though he was to give no satisfactory evidence in support of his views, and no answer to the objections which he ought to refute.

We do not say that Mr. Darwin did not do his best to prove his new doctrine on man; we only say that he has signally failed in his attempt, and that his failure is as inexcusable as it is ignominious. A man of his ability should have seen that the origin of man was not a problem to be solved by physiology; and he ought also to have considered that a man of science could only stultify himself by submitting to the test of science a historical fact of which science, as such, is entirely incompetent to speak. Indeed, we scarcely know which to admire most in Mr. Darwin, the serenity with which he ignores the difficulty of his philosophic position, or the audacity with which he affirms things which he cannot prove. What a pity that a man so richly endowed by nature has been so entirely absorbed by the study of material organisms as to find no time for the more important study of philosophy, especially of psychology, without which it is impossible to form a rational theory respecting the origin and the destiny of man! Shall we add that a sound scientific theory cannot be the outcome of illogical reasoning? And yet it is a plain fact, though our advanced thinkers will deny it, that Mr. Darwin’s logic, to judge from his Descent of Man, is as mischievous as most of his assumptions are reckless.

It would be impossible within the limits of our space to enter into a detailed examination of the logical and metaphysical blunders to which the Darwinian theory owes its existence. We shall, therefore, at present confine ourselves to a short criticism of the first chapter of the work in question; for, if we are not mistaken, every impartial reader will be able, after a sufficient analysis of this first chapter, to judge of the kind of logic that characterizes the whole treatise.

Mr. Darwin begins thus:

“He who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some pre-existing form would probably first inquire whether man varies, however slightly, in bodily structure and in mental faculties; and, if so, whether the variations are transmitted to his offspring in accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals. Again, are the variations the result, as far as our ignorance permits us to judge, of the same general causes, and are they governed by the same general laws, as in the case of other organisms—for instance, by correlation, the inherited effects of use and disuse, etc.? Is man subject to similar malconformations, the result of arrested development, of reduplication of parts, etc., and does he display in any of his anomalies reversion to some former and ancient type of structure? It might also naturally be inquired whether man, like so many other animals, has given rise to varieties and sub-races, differing but slightly from each other, or to races differing so much that they must be classed as doubtful species? How are such races distributed over the world; and how, when crossed, do they react on each other in the first and succeeding generations? And so with many other points.”

This preamble, which superficial readers may have considered perfectly harmless, contains the seed of all the mischievous reasonings scattered through the rest of the work. It comes to this: “If we find that man varies, however slightly, according to the same laws which prevail with the lower animals, we shall be justified in concluding that man is a modified descendant of some pre-existing form.” Now, this assertion is evidently nothing but clap-trap for the ignorant. In the first place, Mr. Darwin takes for granted that mankind wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some pre-existing form. This gratuitous supposition implies that mankind is still ignorant or doubtful of its true origin; which is by no means the case. We have an authentic record of the origin of man; and we know that the first man and the first woman were not the descendants of any lower pre-existing form. The Bible tells us very clearly that God created them to his own image and likeness; and so long as Mr. Darwin does not demolish the Biblical history of creation he has no right to assume that there may be the least reasonable doubt regarding the origin of man. Mr. Darwin, it is true, makes light of the Biblical history; but contempt is no argument. On the other hand, philosophy and common sense, and science, if not perverted, unanimously agree with the Mosaic record in proclaiming that the origin of man must be traced to a special creation. Thus there has never been, nor is there at present, among thinking men, any real doubt as to the origin of our race; whence we infer that the question raised by the Descent of Man is a mere fiction which would deserve no answer but a smile of pity.

In the second place, granting for the sake of argument that there may be an honest doubt about the origin of man, and that physiology and other kindred sciences are competent to answer it, would the inquiry suggested by Mr. Darwin convince an honest doubter that man is the descendant of a lower animal? Suppose that “man varies, however slightly, in bodily structure and in mental faculties”; suppose that “such variations are transmitted to his offspring in accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals”; and suppose that all the other conditions enumerated by Mr. Darwin are verified—would we then be justified in concluding that “man is a modified descendant of some pre-existing form”? Evidently not. The utmost that logic would allow us to grant is that the present form of human beings, owing to the slight variations transmitted to us by our human ancestors, may exhibit some accidental features slightly different from those which were possessed by the primitive men, yet without any change of the specific form, which must always remain essentially the same. But Mr. Darwin is not content with this. His peculiar logic allows him to confound the accidental and unimportant variations that occur within the limits of any single species with a gradual transition from one species to another—a transition which science no less than philosophy utterly rejects. Nowhere in nature do we find an instance of such a pretended transition. Varieties are indeed very numerous, but none of them show the least departure from the species to which they belong. The oak emits every year thousands of leaves, of which each one differs from every other in some accidental feature; but who has ever seen the oak-leaves change into fir-leaves, or fig-leaves, or maple-leaves, or any other leaves? If nature admitted such a specific change, a thousand indications would awaken our attention to the fact. The transition, being gradual, would leave everywhere innumerable traces of its reality. There would be all around us a host of transitional forms from the fish to the lizard, from the lizard to the bird, from the bird to the ape, and from the ape to man. But where do we find such transitional forms? Science itself proclaims that they have no existence. Hence to affirm the transition from one species to another is a gross scientific blunder, whatever Mr. Darwin and his eminent associates may say to the contrary.

In the third place, even admitting that a gradual transition from one species to another were not rejected by science, Mr. Darwin’s view would still remain a ludicrous absurdity. In fact, the pretended transition from a form of a lower to a form of a higher species would be an open violation of the principle of causality; and therefore, if any transition were to be admitted at all, it could only be a transition from a higher to a lower species. Thus, the transition from a human to a brutish form by continual deterioration and degradation, though repugnant to other principles, would not conflict with the principle of causality, inasmuch as deterioration and degradation are negative results, which may be brought about by mere lack of intellectual, moral, and social development. But the transition from a brutish to a human form would be a positive effect without a positive proportionate cause. The lower cannot generate the higher, because to constitute the higher something is necessary which the lower cannot impart. Just as a force = 10 cannot produce an effect = 20, so cannot the irrational brute produce the rational man. To assume the contrary is to assume that the less contains the greater, that emptiness begets fulness—in a word, that nature is a standing contradiction.

A full development of this last consideration would lead us too far from our line of argument, as it would require a psychological treatment of the subject. We will merely remark that rational and irrational differ not only in degree but in kind; that the human soul is not produced by the forces of nature, but proceeds directly and immediately from God’s creative action; and that Darwinism, which ignores the soul’s spirituality and immortality, is, on this account also, a monument of philosophical ignorance.

But let us proceed. The author considers it an important point to ascertain “whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate as to lead to occasional severe struggles for existence, and consequently to beneficial variations, whether in body or in mind, being preserved, and injurious ones eliminated.” This is another of Mr. Darwin’s delusions. It is not in the nature of man that the stronger should murder the weaker. Man, as a rule, is benevolent towards his kind, and even savages respect the life of the weak; whereas it is always the stronger that go to battle and fall in the struggle. Thus a struggle for existence, occasioned by a too rapid increase, would deprive the race of its best men and mar its further development. On the other hand, if at any time or in any place there has been a struggle for existence, it is in our large cities that we can best study the nature of its results. Is it in London, Paris, Berlin, or Vienna that we meet the best specimens of the race? Surely, if there is a tremendous struggle for existence anywhere, it is in such capitals as these; and yet no one is ignorant that such proud cities would, in a few generations, sink into insignificance, were they not continually refurnished with new blood from the country, where the best propagators of the race are brought up in great numbers and without any apparent struggle for existence. But we need not dwell any further on this point. A struggle for existence presupposes existence; and if man existed before struggling, the origin of man does not depend on his struggle. Hence the so-called “important point” has really no importance whatever.

Then he asks: “Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct?” and he answers the question in the affirmative. To this we have no objection. We only remark that “races” and “species” are not synonymous; hence it is surprising how a naturalist of Mr. Darwin’s celebrity could show the least hesitation which of the two terms he ought to apply to mankind.

He proceeds to examine “how far the bodily structure of man shows traces, more or less plain, of his descent from some lower form,” and he contends that the existence of such “traces” can be proved, first, from the similarity of bodily structure in men and beasts; secondly, from the similarity of their embryonic development; thirdly, from the existence of rudimentary organs, which show that man and all other vertebrate animals have been constructed on the same general model.

Bearing in mind that Mr. Darwin’s object is to prove that there are “traces,” more or less plain, of man’s descent from some lower form, we cannot help expressing our astonishment when we find that he has failed to see the necessity of grounding his proofs on a secure foundation. That the bodily structure of man has some resemblance to the structure of other mammals; that all the bones of his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal; that this comparison may be extended to his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and internal viscera; that the brain, the most important of all organs, follows the same law, etc., etc., are indeed well-known facts, from which we rightly infer that man is constructed on the same general type as other mammals. But can these same facts be considered as “traces,” more or less plain, of man’s descent from any lower form? Mr. Darwin says Yes; but instead of giving any conclusive reason for his assertion, he loses his time in accumulating superfluous anatomical and physiological details which, however instructive, have no bearing upon the thesis he has engaged to prove.

To prove his assumption he ought to have made a syllogism somewhat like the following:

Wherever there is similarity of bodily structure or development there are “traces” of a common origin or descent;

But man and other mammals have similar bodily structures and a similar development;

Therefore man and other mammals show “traces” of a common origin or descent.

This argument would have left no escape to the most decided adversary of the Darwinian view, if its first proposition had been susceptible of demonstration. But Mr. Darwin, seeing the utter impossibility of demonstrating it, and yet being unable to dispense with it, resorted to the ordinary trick of his school, which consists in assuming latently what they dare not openly maintain; and thus he turned the whole attention of his reader to the second proposition, which had no need of demonstration, as it was not questioned by instructed men. Thus the twenty pages of physiologic lore with which Mr. Darwin in this chapter distracts and amuses his readers may be styled, in a logical point of view, a prolonged ignoratio elenchi—an effort to prove that which is conceded instead of that which is denied—a blunder into which men of science of the modern type are sure to fall when they presume to meddle with matters above their reach.

There is one sense only in which it may be affirmed that the similarity of bodily structure in men and lower animals proves their common origin, and it is this: that men and animals have been made by the same Creator on a similar ideal type of homogeneous organic arrangements; in other terms, that their organic similarity proves them to be the work of the same Maker. Man was destined to live on this earth among other inferior animals and surrounded by like conditions. His animal life was therefore to be dependent on similar means of support, exposed to similar influences, and subject to similar needs. It is not surprising, then, that he should have received from a wise Creator an organic constitution similar to that of the inferior creatures that were placed around him. This fully accounts for the similarity of the human organism with that of other mammals. But to say that because the bodily structure of man is similar to that of the ape, therefore man is the descendant of the ape, is as nonsensical as to say that because the bodily structure of the ape is similar to that of man, therefore the ape is the descendant of man. How was it possible for Mr. Darwin to lay down such an absurd principle, and not foresee how easily it might be turned against his own conclusion?

Thus the argument drawn from the similarity of bodily structure is a mere delusion. It avails nothing to say that man is liable to receive from the lower animals, and to communicate to them, certain diseases, as hydrophobia, variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, herpes, etc. This fact, says Mr. Darwin, “proves the similarity of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far more plainly than does their comparison under the best microscope or by the aid of the best chemical analysis.” But this is a mistake; for the evidence afforded by the microscope as to existing diversities cannot be negatived by any guesses of ours respecting the communication of diseases and its conditions; it being evident that what is obscure and mysterious is not calculated to weaken the certitude of a fact which we see with our own eyes. Nor does it matter that “medicines produce the same effect on them [monkeys] as on us,” or that many monkeys “have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors,” or even that a certain monkey “smoked tobacco with pleasure” in Mr. Darwin’s presence. These and other details of the same nature may be interesting, but they are no indication of a common origin, except in the sense which we have pointed out—viz., that they are the work of the same Maker.

But, says Mr. Darwin, “the homological construction of the whole frame in the members of the same class is intelligible, if we admit their descent from a common progenitor, together with their subsequent adaptation to diversified conditions. On any other view the similarity of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat, etc., is utterly inexplicable. It is no scientific explanation to assert that they have all been formed on the same ideal plan.” These words, which occur at the end of the chapter we are examining, show how little Mr. Darwin understands the duty of his position as author of a new theory. To say that an explanation is not scientific is a very poor excuse for setting it aside. Science, if not perverted, is an excellent thing, but it does not profess to give an explanation of every subject we may think of. Its range is co-extensive with the material world, but only with respect to matter and its modifications as known by observation and experiment. This means that there are numberless things about which science is altogether incompetent to speak, because such things do not fall under observation and experiment. To pretend, therefore, that an explanation which is not scientific has no claim to be heeded by a man of science, is like pretending that a man of science, as such, must remain in blissful ignorance of everything which transcends experiment and observation. Will Mr. Darwin reject historical explanations of historical events, philosophical explanations of philosophical conclusions, mathematical explanations of mathematical questions? The origin of things is not a scientific but a philosophic problem. Science cannot speak of creation, of which it can have no experimental knowledge; it gives it up to the philosopher and the theologian, who alone know the grounds on which it must be demonstrated. The question, then, whether mammals have all been formed on the same ideal plan, is not scientific, and therefore it needs no scientific explanation. The plea that the explanation is not scientific might be held valid, if Mr. Darwin had humbly acknowledged his inability to rise above matter, and his incompetency to give a judgment in philosophic matters; but his disregard of the explanation shows that, when he calls it not scientific, he desires his reader to believe that it is anti-scientific or irreconcilable with science; and this is as absurd as if he pretended that reason and science destroy one another.

On the other hand, what shall we say of the pretended “scientific” explanation offered by Mr. Darwin? “The homological construction of the whole frame in the members of the same class is intelligible, if we admit their descent from a common progenitor.” Is this appeal to a common progenitor a scientific explanation of the fact in question? If a common progenitor accounts scientifically for the fact, why should not a common Creator account scientifically for it? Science—that is, Mr. Darwin’s science—does not know a common Creator; it knows even less of a common progenitor; and yet it sets up the latter to exclude the former, and boasts that its gratuitous and degrading hypothesis is a “scientific” explanation! Yet all true scientists aver that no instance has ever been found of a transition from one species to another; philosophers go even further, and show that such a transition is against nature. Hence Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis, far from being scientific, contradicts science and philosophy, observation and experiment, reason and fact. The descent from a common progenitor, even if it made “intelligible” the similarity of different mammals, would still be unscientific. The ancients accounted for the movement of the heavenly bodies by putting them under the control of intellectual agents. This hypothesis made the astronomical phenomena intelligible. The fall of heavy bodies was accounted for by assuming that all such bodies had a natural intrinsic tendency to a central point. This hypothesis, too, made the fall of bodies intelligible. Even in modern physics a number of hypotheses have been proposed regarding light, magnetism, electricity, chemical changes, etc., to make phenomena intelligible. But hypotheses, however satisfactory at first, are soon discarded when a deeper study of the facts reveals new features and new relations for which such hypotheses cannot account. This is why the hypothesis of the descent of all mammals from a common progenitor, even if it seems to make their homological construction intelligible in a manner, must be rejected. For in every species of mammals we find features for which the hypothesis cannot account, and relations of genetic opposition by which the hypothesis is reduced to nothing.

Mr. Darwin says that, “on any other view, the similarity of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat, etc., is utterly inexplicable.” We do not see any great similarity between the hand of a man and the foot of a horse or the flipper of a seal, etc. We would rather say, with Mr. Darwin’s permission, that we see in all such organs a great dissimilarity. Each of them has a special adaptation to a special end, and each of them is constructed on a different specific pattern. Their similarity is therefore generic, not specific; and, accordingly, each species must have its own distinct progenitors. We might make other remarks, but we are afraid that we have already taxed the patience of the reader to a greater extent than the case requires; and therefore we will now pass to the second argument of the author.

This second argument is drawn from the consideration of the embryonic development. “Man,” says Mr. Darwin, “is developed from an ovule about the 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals.” This is a very reckless assertion. For how does Mr. Darwin happen to know that the human ovule “differs in no respect” from the ovules of other animals? When a man of science lays down an assertion as the groundwork of his doctrine, he must be able to show that the assertion is true. Hence we are entitled to ask on what foundation our great scientist can maintain his proposition. Will he appeal to the microscope? Probably he will, but to no purpose; for he has just declared, as we have seen, that the best microscope does not reveal everything with sufficient distinction. On the other hand, if he resorts to the mode of reasoning which he has just employed while speaking of diseases—that is, if he argues from the effects to the causes—he cannot but defeat himself; for, as similarity of diseases was, in his judgment, a proof of similar organic structure, so now the dissimilarity of the final development of two ovules will be a proof that the two ovules are really dissimilar. One ovule constantly develops into a monkey, another constantly develops into a dog, and a third constantly develops into a man. Is it conceivable that the three ovules are identically the same, so as to “differ in no respect”? We do not know what Mr. Darwin will reply. At any rate he cannot reply on scientific grounds; for science neither knows the intimate constitution of the ovules, nor is it likely ever to know it, as the primordial organic molecules baffle the best microscopic investigations.

“The embryo itself,” he adds, “at a very early period can hardly be distinguished from that of other members of the vertebrate kingdom.... At a somewhat later period, when the extremities are developed, ‘the feet of lizards and mammals,’ as the illustrious Von Baer remarks, ‘the wings and feet of birds, no less than the hands and feet of man, all arise from the same fundamental form.’ It is, says Prof. Huxley, ‘quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape.’”

If these assertions and quotations are intended as a proof that the human ovule “differs in no respect” from the ovules of lower animals, we must confess that our advanced scientific thinkers are endowed with a wonderful power of blinding themselves. We have two ovules: the one develops into hands and feet; the other develops into wings and feathers; and yet we are told that they are both “the same fundamental form”! What is the fundamental form? Who has seen it? We are sure that neither Prof. Huxley nor the illustrious Von Baer has had the privilege of inspecting and determining the proper form of the mysterious organism known under the name of ovule. Much less have they, or has Mr. Darwin, discerned what is fundamental and what is not in its constitution. They are, therefore, not more competent to judge of the fundamental sameness of two ovules than is the blind to judge of colors; and their view, as founded on nothing but presumption and ignorance, must be considered altogether unscientific.

The same view is also, as we have already shown, eminently unphilosophic. If two ovules are essentially the same and “differ in no respect” from one another, what is it that causes them invariably to develop into different specific organisms? Does a constant difference in the effects countenance the idea that they proceed from identical causes? It is evident that a theory which resorts to such absurdities for its support has no claim to be accepted, or even tolerated, by lovers of reason and truth. The very boldness of its affirmations, its air of dogmatism, its allegation of partisan authorities, and its contempt of fundamental principles prove it to be nothing but a flippant attempt at imposition.

Although Mr. Darwin has insisted so strongly on the similarity between our bodily structure and that of the lower animals, and although he has endeavored to convince us that the human ovule differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals, yet he is compelled by abundant evidence to admit that there is something in man which does not exist in the lower animals, and something in the lower animals which does not exist in man. How does he account for these organic differences? Men of science, only twenty years ago, would have explained the fact by the old philosophical and scientific axiom, Omne animal generat simile sibi, which means that each species of animals has progenitors of the same species; whence they would have inferred by legitimate deduction that animals of different species owe their specific differences to their having issued from progenitors of different species. This explanation was universally received, as it was supported by an induction based on centuries of observation, without a single example to the contrary. It was, therefore, a truly scientific explanation. But twenty years are passed, and with them (if we believe Mr. Darwin) the axioms, the logic, and the experimental knowledge of all centuries have disappeared from the world of science, to make room for higher and deeper conceptions. It was not an easy task, that of giving the lie to a uniform and perpetual experience; but to Mr. Darwin nothing is difficult. He needs only a word. With one word, “Rudiments,” he is confident that he will transform the objections of the old science into arguments in his favor, just as King Midas by the touch of his hand transmuted everything into shining gold.

The world has hitherto believed that man has only two hands, whereas the monkey has four. But we must not say this in Mr. Darwin’s face. If we did, he would inform us that we are strangely mistaken. Man, he pretends, belongs to the order of quadrumana; hence he has four hands no less than the monkey, though two of them are used as feet, which may be considered as rudimentary or undeveloped hands. If we were to remark in his presence that monkeys have a tail, whilst man can boast of no such elegant appendage, he would immediately confound our ignorance by informing us that we all possess a rudimentary tail, which might be made to develop and grow by mere local irritation.

In this way he explains all the organic differences which separate one species from another. Every difference is made to depend either on the development in man of an organ which is undeveloped and rudimentary in lower animals, or on the development in lower animals of some organ which is rudimentary and undeveloped in man. To explain this theory he reasons as follows:

“The chief agents in causing organs to become rudimentary seem to have been disuse at that period of life when the organ is chiefly used (and this is generally during maturity), and also inheritance at a corresponding period of life. The term ‘disuse’ does not relate merely to the lessened action of muscles, but includes a diminished flow of blood to a part or organ from being subjected to fewer alterations of pressure, or from becoming in any way less habitually active. Rudiments, however, may occur in one sex of those parts which are normally present in the other sex; and such rudiments, as we shall hereafter see, have often originated in a way distinct from those here referred to. In some cases organs have been reduced by means of natural selection, from having become injurious to the species under changed habits of life. The process of reduction is probably often aided through the two principles of compensation and economy of growth; but the later stages of reduction, after disuse has done all that can fairly be attributed to it, and when the saving to be effected by the economy of growth would be very small, are difficult to understand. The final and complete suppression of a part already useless and much reduced in size, in which case neither compensation nor economy can come into play, is perhaps intelligible by the aid of the hypothesis of pangenesis.”

On this passage, which forms the main foundation of the Darwinian theory of rudiments, much might be said; but we must limit ourselves to the following obvious remark. Science and philosophy reason on ascertained facts, but do not invent them; whereas Mr. Darwin in this very passage, as in many others, not only invents with poetic liberty all the facts which he needs to build up his theory, but also violates the laws of reasoning by drawing from his imaginary facts such conclusions as even real facts would not warrant. Philosophy would certainly not allow him to assume without proof that “organs become rudimentary”; for this is not an ascertained fact. Nor would philosophy permit the gratuitous introduction of rudiments derived “from the corresponding organs of other more developed animals”; for there is no evidence that such has ever been the case. Nor would philosophy sanction “the final and complete suppression of a part already useless”; for on the one hand we have no means of knowing whether a part be really useless, and on the other no total suppression of organic parts has ever been known to occur (except in monsters) within the range of any given species. Nor would philosophy permit an appeal to the hypothesis of pangenesis or to the principle of compensation to evade the difficulties of which the new theory cannot give a solution; for the hypothesis of pangenesis is itself in need of proof, and the principle of compensation involves, in our case, a begging of the question, inasmuch as it assumes the mutability of species—the very thing which the theory is intended to demonstrate.

But, says Mr. Darwin, perhaps the hypothesis of pangenesis would make “intelligible” the suppression of a useless part. Let it be so, though we hold the contrary to be true; what then? Is all hypothesis to be accepted which would make a thing “intelligible”? The succession of days and nights was intelligible in the Ptolemaic hypothesis; the loss of a battle becomes intelligible by the hypothesis of treason; the death of an old woman is intelligible by the hypothesis of starvation; but no man of sense would mistake the hypothesis for a fact. The truth is that Mr. Darwin, before attempting the explanation of what he calls “the final and complete suppression of a part,” was bound to prove that the absence of such a part was a real suppression of the pre-existing part. This he has not done; in fact, he had no means of doing it. Hence all his reasonings on this subject are paralogistic, and his theory of rudiments is a rope of sand.

The preceding remarks are fully applicable to the other examples of rudiments given by the author in the fourteen remaining pages of the chapter. Thus, “rudiments of various muscles have been observed in many parts of the human body.” We flatly deny the assertion. “Not a few muscles which are regularly present in some of the lower animals can occasionally be detected in man in a greatly-reduced condition.” We answer that such muscles are not at all in a reduced condition, but in the condition originally required by the nature of the individual. “Remnants of the panniculus carnosus in an efficient state are found in various parts of our bodies; for instance, the muscle on the forehead by which the eyebrows are raised.” On what ground can this muscle be called a remnant? “The muscles which serve to move the external ear are in a rudimentary condition in man.... The whole external shell (of the ear) may be considered a rudiment, together with the various folds and prominences which in the lower animals strengthen and support the ear when erect.” Where is the proof of such rudimentary condition? “The nictitating membrane is especially well developed in birds, ... but in man it exists as a mere rudiment, called the semilunar fold.” How is it proved that the semilunar fold is a mere rudiment, and not a special organism, purposely contrived by the hand of the Creator at the first production of man?

Mr. Darwin goes on making any number of assertions of the same kind, not one of which is or can be substantiated, and yet at the end of the chapter closes his argumentation in the following triumphant words:

“Consequently, we ought frankly to admit their community of descent [of man and other vertebrate animals]. To take any other view is to admit that our own structure, and that of all the animals around us, is a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment. This conclusion is greatly strengthened, if we look to the members of the whole animal series, and consider the evidence derived from their affinities or classification, their geographical distribution and geological succession. It is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our forefathers declare that they were descended from demi-gods, which leads us to demur to this conclusion. But the time will before long come when it will be thought wonderful that naturalists who were well acquainted with the comparative structure and development of man and other mammals should have believed that each was the work of a separate act of creation.”

This conclusion, though well known, and already famous throughout the scientific world, is here given in the proper words of the great naturalist, that the reader may see what unbounded confidence a man of science can place in himself and in his speculations. All the scientific world, excepting a few sectarian unbelievers, is against him; he knows it, and he is not dismayed. If you listen to him, his opponents are “arrogant”; they demur to his conclusion only because they pretend to be “the descendants of demi-gods.” He alone is right, he alone understands science. Buffon, Cuvier, Quatrefages, Agassiz, Elam, Frédault, and a host of other naturalists are evidently wrong. In fact, all philosophers are wrong; Mr. Darwin alone knows how to interpret scientific results; and he is so sure of this that he ventures to prophesy his approaching triumph over those benighted naturalists who, though “well acquainted with the comparative structure and development of man and other mammals,” are nevertheless so foolish as to believe that each species is the work of a separate act of creation. Such is his modesty!

Perhaps we, too, may be allowed to venture a little prophecy. Mr. Darwin is not young, and before many years, we are sorry to say, death will snatch him from us; his scientific friends in England and in Germany will shed a cold tear on his dead “mammalian structure,” while his spiritual and immortal soul will be summoned before the God he has insulted in the noblest of his creatures, to account for the abuse of his talents, and to receive the sentence due to those who know and disregard truth. Then the Descent of Man will soon be a thing of the past; and those who now sing its praises in all tunes, and feign such an enthusiastic conviction of its coming triumph, will become the laughing stock of cultivated society, unless they put a timely end to their “scientific” jugglery. This is the fate which the common sense of mankind keeps in store for the Darwinian theory.

Mr. Darwin, in formulating his conclusion, sums up the whole discussion in a single sentence: “To take any other view is to admit that our own structure, and that of all the animals around us, is a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment.” No doubt a “snare” is laid; not, however, by the Author of nature, but by the author of the Descent of Man. The homologousness of animal structures does not prove a common genetic descent: it only proves, as we have shown, that all such structures are the work of the same Maker; hence the arbitrary substitution of a common progenitor for a common Creator is “a mere snare” laid by Mr. Darwin to entrap the judgment of the ignorant. We say of the ignorant; for he who knows anything about philosophy will simply wonder at the audacity of a writer who derives reason from unreason, and intellect from organism; and he who knows anything about divine revelation will rebuke him for his disregard of the Mosaic history, than which no document has greater antiquity or higher authority; whereas he who knows anything of zoölogy will be scandalized at the impudence of a man who dares to contradict in the name of science what he knows to be an unquestionable fact and a fundamental principle of science—viz., the unchangeableness of species.

To “strengthen” his worthless conclusion Mr. Darwin bids us look to “the members of the whole animal series” and consider “the evidence derived from their affinities or classification, their geographical distribution and geological succession.” But it must be evident to every intelligent reader that the considerations here suggested by Mr. Darwin are not calculated to “strengthen” his position. Between the members of the animal series there are not only affinities, but also specific differences and incompatibilities, which a man of science ought not to ignore, were they ever so embarrassing to his inventive genius. And as to the “geological succession” of animal forms, need we remind Mr. Darwin that the geological remains and their succession afford the most peremptory refutation of his theory? He himself acknowledges that no transitional forms from one species to another have been dug up from the bowels of the earth; whereas his theory requires a succession of animal remains of all transitional forms and in all stages of development. It would have been wiser for him to have kept back all mention of geology; but, alas! those who lay snares for others sometimes succeed also in entrapping themselves.

This may suffice to give an idea of the first chapter of the Descent of Man, and even of the whole work. Everywhere we find the same want of rigorous logic, the same absence of method, the same disregard of principles, and the same abundance of fanciful assumptions. Such is not the proceeding of science. “I believe,” says Prof. Agassiz, “that the Darwinian system is pernicious and fatal to the progress of the sciences.” “This system,” says Dr. Constantin James, “starts from the unknown, appeals to evidences which are nowhere to be found, and falls into consequences which are simply absurd and impossible. One would say that Darwin merely undertook to blot out creation and bring back chaos.”[111] We cannot, without trespassing on the limits prescribed to this article, give the scientific arguments by which these and other eminent writers set at naught the assumptions, the reasonings, and the conclusions of our eccentric “mammalian,” but we venture to say that if the reader procures a copy of Dr. James’ work, and examines the Darwinian theory in the light of the facts that the learned author has culled from physiology, palæontology, and other branches of science connected with the history of the animal world, he will be fully satisfied that the Descent of Man is nothing but a congeries of blunders.

But we may be asked: How is it possible to admit that a theory so manifestly absurd should have been received with enthusiasm and lauded to the skies by men of recognized ability and scientific eminence? The answer is obvious. Scientific eminence, as now understood, means only acquaintance with the materials of science, and is no warrant against false reasoning. “There can be fools in science as well as in any other walk in life,” says a well-known English writer: “in fact, in proportion to the small aggregate number of scientific men, I should be disposed to think that there is a greater percentage in that class than in any other.” But the same writer gives us another remarkable explanation of the fact.

“I have read,” says he, “the writings of Mr. Darwin and Prof. Huxley and others, and had the advantage of personal talk with an eminent friend of theirs who shares their views, and I have read without prejudice, but failed to find that they advanced one solid argument in support of their views. I am quite certain that, if this controversy could be turned into a law suit, any judge on the bench would dismiss the case against the evolutionists with costs, without calling for a reply. The eminent friend I allude to, himself one of the first of living mathematicians, and an intimate associate of Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, etc., and sharing their views, was candid enough to admit that the theory was beset with difficulties, that quite as many facts were against it as for it, that it hardly seemed susceptible of proof. And when I asked why he held the theory under such a condition of the evidence; why, on the assumption of this law, Dr. Tyndall chaffed and derided prayer, and Prof. Huxley gnashed his teeth at dogma and chuckled over the base descent of man, his reply was: ‘We are bound to hold it, because it is the only theory yet propounded which can account for life, all we see of life, without the intervention of a God. Nature must be held to be capable of producing everything by herself and within herself, with no interference ab extra, and this theory explains how she may have done it. Hence we feel bound to hold it, and to teach it.’ Shade of Bacon! here is science!”[112]

These words need no comment of ours. We knew already from other evidences that a conspiracy had been formed with the aim of turning science against religion, and we now see its work. We have here a candid avowal that the enthusiasm of certain scientists for the new theory has its root in malice, not in reason, and is kept up, though with ever-increased difficulty, in the interest not of science but of a brutal atheism. In fact, science has nothing to do with the origin of man; and the very attempt at transforming a historical event into a scientific speculation clearly reveals the wicked determination of obscuring, corrupting, and discrediting truth. To carry out their object the leaders of the conspiracy organized a body of infidel scientists, doctors, professors, lecturers, and journalists; they took hold of the scientific press, which was to illustrate the names and magnify the merits of such men as Moleschott, Louis Büchner, Wolff, Von Baer, or such men as Clausius, Tyndall, Spencer, and Comte, or as Huxley, Draper, and Häckel—a task not at all difficult, as these men, and others whom we might name, were all bound together in a mutual-admiration society, in which the celebrity of each member was an honor and an encouragement for all the other members, and the praises lavished upon each one were repaid with interest to all the others. Thus they have become great scientific oracles, each and all; and by ignoring as completely as possible the writings, the discoveries, and even the existence of those men of science who did not fall on their knees before the new ideas, they succeeded in creating a belief that they alone were in possession of scientific truth, and they alone were enlightened enough to point out with infallible certainty the hidden path of progress.

Their success, to judge from the number and tone of their scientific publications, must have been very flattering to their vanity. It is probable, however, that their noise is greater than their success. The profligate and the sceptic may, of course, relish a theory which assimilates them to the ape or the hog, makes the soul a modification of matter, and suppresses God; but the honest, the pure, the thoughtful are not easily duped by the low hypotheses of these modern thinkers. Society in general rejects with disgust a doctrine which aims at degrading humanity and destroying the bases of morality, religion, and civilization. If there is no God, rights and duties, the main ties of the social body, must be given up; justice will become an unmeaning word, and civil and criminal courts a tyrannical institution. If man is only a modified beast, if his soul is not immortal, if his end is like that of the dog, then why should the stronger refrain from hunting and devouring the weaker? Do we not hunt and kill and eat other animals? Alas! the progress of humanity towards barbarism and cannibalism is so intimately and inevitably connected with Darwinism that even the most uncivilized of human beings would protest against its admission.

That society is still unwilling to submit to the dictation of this advanced science, and that common sense is yet strong enough to silence the present scientific blustering, is a fact of which we find an implicit confession in the writings and addresses of anti-Christian thinkers. Nature, a weekly illustrated journal of science, the Popular Science Monthly, and other publications of the infidel party, do not cease to inculcate the introduction of science (materialism, evolution, pantheism, etc.) into the schools frequented by our children. They have found that our schools are not godless enough to secure the triumph of unbelief: they are godless in a negative sense only, inasmuch as they ignore God; but now they must be made positively godless by teaching theories which do away with creation, which deny providence, which leave no hope of reward, and ridicule all fear of punishment in an after-life; and they must be made positively immoral by teaching that man is always right in following his animal proclivities, as all other animals do, and that no human being can be justly called to account for his doings, it being demonstrated by science that what we call “free-will” is an organic function subject to invariable laws, like everything else in the material world, with no greater freedom to choose its course than a stone has under terrestrial attraction. These doctrines are widely circulated in printed works, but make few converts, owing to the fact that they come too late, and find the minds of men already imbued with principles of an opposite nature; and, therefore, it is now proposed to instil all this poison into the minds of the young, who have no antidote at hand to counteract its destructive action. We hope that this new attempt will be defeated; but when we see that the attempt is considered necessary for a successful diffusion of the false scientific theories of the day, we cannot be much mistaken if we infer that the success of such theories up to the present time has been less satisfactory to the infidel schemers than their publications pretend.

As for the Descent of Man, however, no amount of sophistry, in our opinion, will succeed in making it fashionable. The Darwinian theory is utterly unscientific and unphilosophical. Common sense, geology, and history condemn it; logic proclaims it a fraud; and human dignity throws upon it a look of pity and dismisses it with ineffable contempt. Mr. Darwin may yet live long enough to see his theory totally eclipsed and forgotten, when he will ask himself whether it would not have been better to devote his talents, his time, and his labor to striving to elevate rather than striving to debase his kind.

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MICKEY CASEY’S CHRISTMAS DINNER-PARTY.

In a large, gloomy, bald-looking house in Merrion Street, Dublin, lived a red-faced, red-haired little attorney rejoicing in the name of Mickey Casey. There is no man better known in Green Street than Mickey, and no member of the profession whose services are more eagerly retained by the luckless ones whose “misfortunes” have brought them within range of the “blessing of the recorder.” Mickey knows the exact moment to bully, concede, or back out; and as for the law, it has been said of him that there is not a dirty lane or alley in the whole of the Acts of Parliament in which he has not mentally resided for the benefit of his clientèle, as well as to his own especial emolument. When Mr. Casey was put up for membership of the Law Club, there was much muttering and considerable frowning in the smoking-room of that legally exclusive establishment while his chances of success were being weighed in the balance and found wanting; but the election being judiciously set down for the long vacation, and Mickey having offered several of the leading members unlimited shooting over his trifle of property in the neighborhood of Derrymachulish—which, as all well-informed people are aware, lies in the very heart of the County Tipperary—somehow or other he pulled through by the “skin of his teeth,” and became socially, as he was by act of Parliament, a gentleman in the profession.

Mickey was a cheery little man, who loved a drop of the “crayture” not wisely but too well, and whose whole soul was wrapped up in his only child, a daughter, a mincing young lady, who was now close upon her nineteenth birthday, and who bore a most unmistakable resemblance to her sire in the color of her hair, her “chaney blue” eyes, and a bulbous-shaped—vulgarly termed thumbottle—nose.

“I’ve spent oceans of money on me daughter’s education, sir,” Mickey would exclaim. “Oceans—Atlantic and Pacific. She’s had masters and mistresses, and tutors and governesses, and short lessons and long lessons, some at a guinea apiece, sir—yes, begar, a guinea for thirty minutes jingling on a piana. But she’s come out of it well; I’ve got her through, and the sentence of the court is that she’s as fine a performer as there is in Dublin in the way of an amatewer.”

Mrs. Casey was a very stout, very florid, very untidy lady, whose face never bore traces of any recent lavatory process, and whose garments appeared to have dropped upon her from the ceiling by chance, retaining their original pose. The parting of her hair bore a strong resemblance to forked lightning, and her nails reminded the visitor of family bereavement, so deep the mourning in which they were invariably enshrined. She, in common with her husband, was wrapped up in her daughter, and lost to every consideration other than the advancement of her child’s welfare and happiness.

Matilda Casey was spoiled in her cradle, spoiled at school, spoiled at home. Her word was law, her every whim gratified, her every wish anticipated. Her parents were her slaves. Dressed by Mrs. Manning, the Worth of Dublin, at fancy prices, the newest Parisian toilettes were flaunted upon Miss Casey’s neat little figure, whilst her mother went in greasy gowns of antiquated date and old-world pattern. The brougham was at her beck, and Mrs. Casey was flattered beyond measure when offered a seat in it. She asked whom she pleased to Merrion Street, and many people came and went whom her mother never even saw. In furtherance of her musical talents she had boxes at the Theatre Royal and Gaiety for any performance it pleased her Serene Highness to select, while she forced her father to run the gauntlet of musical societies in order to ensure the necessary vouchers of admission.

And yet Matilda Casey was by no means a bad sort of girl. Her heart was in the right place, but her brains were blown out—to use a homely metaphor—by the flattery and incense which were being perpetually offered up at her shrine, until she was seized with a mad craving to enter the portals of the best society.

Hitherto she had but stood at the gate, like the Peri, gazing through the golden bars, and was more or less inclined to accept her position; but there came a time when she resolved upon endeavoring to force her way through.

The task that lay before her was a terrible one—a task full of weeping, and wailing, and mortification, and heart-burning, and gnashing of teeth. Society in Dublin is as exclusive as in the Faubourg St. Germain. The line is so distinctly drawn that no person can cross it by mere accident. “No trespassers admitted” is written up in letters of cold steel. The viceregal “set” won’t have the professional set, save those whose offices entitle them to the entrèe, and then they are but tolerated. The professional set won’t know the mercantile set, and here society stops short. A shopkeeper, be his store as large as Stewart’s and be he as wealthy as Rothschild, has no chance. He is a Pariah, and must pitch his tent out in that wilderness peopled by nobodies. The great struggle lies with the mercantile people to become blended with the professionals. This is done by money. Of course there are exceptional cases, but such a case is rara avis in terris.

Matilda Casey was in no set. The people with whom she was acquainted, though not amongst the outcasts, held no position whatsoever. Clerks in the Bank of Ireland residing at Rathmines; commercial travellers; custom-house employés; attorneys of cadaverous practice, or of a practice that meant no weight in the profession; needy barristers perpetually kotowing to her father for business, and obsequiously civil to her as business—these people with their wives formed her surroundings, and she was sick of them, tired, disgusted, bored to death. Why should she not be acquainted with the daughter of Mr. Bigwig, Q.C., who resided next door? Surely she played better than Miss Bigwig, and dressed better, and rode in her brougham, while Miss B. trudged in thick-soled boots in the mud. She had left cards on the Bigwigs upon their coming to Merrion Street, but her visit had never been returned, while that shabby little girl, Miss Oliver, was for ever in and out there; and what was Miss Oliver’s papa but an attorney?

Why was she not at some of the balls perpetually going on around her?—the rattling of the cabs to and from which, during the night and morning, kept her awake upon her tear-bedewed pillow.

Why did the Serges, of the firm of Serge & Twist, the linen-drapers in Sackville Street, leave her out of their invitations to their afternoon teas? Assuredly they were no great swells, and she had driven Miss Serge on more than one occasion in her brougham, and had sent Mrs. Serge a bouquet of hot-house flowers when that lady was laid up with the measles.

How came it that their social circle never increased save in the wrong direction? Had she not persuaded her papa to give a brief to young Mr. Bronsbill, who was possessed of as much brains as a nutmeg-grater, and whose advocacy cost Mr. Casey’s client his cause, in order to become acquainted with his family?—Mr. B. having informed her—the treacherous villain!—that his mother and sisters intended to call upon her.

Had she not thrown open the house to Mr. and Mrs. Minnion, whom she had met at the Victoria Hotel, Killarney, the preceding summer, in the hope of those delightful introductions which the artful Mrs. M. had held out like a glittering jewel before her entranced and eager gaze? Had not Mr. and Mrs. Minnion eaten, drunk, and slept in Merrion Street? And whom did they introduce? A little drunken captain of militia, who insisted upon coming there at unlawful hours of the night, and in calling for brandy and soda-water, as if the establishment was a public-house, and not even a respectable hotel!

But Fortune is not for ever cruel, and the wheel will turn up a prize at possibly the least expected moment.

Mickey Casey knew his daughter’s heart-burning, and strove might and main to ease it by even one throb. He gave dinner-parties to the best class of men with whom he was acquainted, feeding them like “fighting-cocks” upon petit dîners served by Mitchell, of Grafton Street, and giving them wines of the rarest vintages from the cellars of Turbot & Redmond.

“Ye’ll come to see us again, won’t ye?” he would say to his guest. “And I say, just bring your wife the next time. Me daughter will send the brougham—cost a hundred and fifty at Hutton’s—say Monday next.”

The guest would declare how delighted his wife would be to make the acquaintance of so charming a young lady as Miss Casey; but when the Monday came round, and with it a dinner fit for the viceroy, the guest would arrive wifeless, the lady being laid up with a cold, or “that dreadful baby, you know,” or “visitors from the country,” and the banquet would be served in a lugubrious silence, save when the daughter of the house ventured upon some cutting sarcasm anent snobbery and stuck-up people.

Matilda Casey could make such a guest wish himself over a mutton-chop in his own establishment, instead of the salmi of partridge or plover’s eggs served in silver dishes at Number 190 Merrion Street: and she did it, too.

“I’ve news for ye, Matilda,” exclaimed Casey one evening as he took his seat at the dinner-table. “I’ve news for ye, pet. I defended old Colonel Bowdler in a case in which a servant sued him for wages, and got him off at half-price. He’s on half-pay, lives with his wife in Stephen’s Green, and is a tip-topper, mixing with the lord-lieutenant’s household as if they were his own.”

“Well, and what is that to me?” exclaimed Miss Casey with considerable asperity.

“This, me darling: he was so pleased at the way I got him out on half-pay—ha! ha! ha!—that he and his wife—wife, mind ye—are coming to call on you to-morrow.”

Mrs. Casey was never taken into account, Matilda being the central figure.

“Pshaw! I wonder you can be such a fool, papa. It’s the old story,” retorted his daughter. “This colonel will come here, eat our dinners, drink our wine, and perhaps drop his wife’s card without her knowledge, as Mr. Neligan did—as we found out to our mortification when we went to return a visit that was never paid, and were politely told by Mrs. Neligan that her husband had never even mentioned our names to her.”

“Never fear, Matilda. We’re in the right box this time. They’ll be here to-morrow, you may depend upon it.”

Casey had his own good reasons for believing that the colonel would bide tryste—of which more anon. The morrow came, and with it Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler.

The colonel was a chatty, elderly gentleman of imposing aspect and dyed hair; his wife a tall, gaunt female, with a vulture-like appearance, and a sort of sergeant-major-in-petticoats look—the outcome of many a hard-fought campaign. The colonel had sketched Casey and Casey’s social desires, and Mrs. Bowdler, like the shrewd veteran that she was, took in the situation at a glance.

The flutter of excitement at 190 Merrion Street was intense when the thundering knock came to the door, accompanied by a crashing pull at the bell.

“Be awfully civil to these people, Jemima,” whispered the colonel as he entered, “and we can forage here three times a week. Promise them the moon.”

Mrs. Casey fled to her bedroom for the purpose of arranging her person in a gorgeous mauve moire-antique all over grease-spots, and Matilda rushed frantically to the drawing-room, in order to be en pose to receive the welcome visitors.

The coachman, who acted also in the capacity of butler, was feverishly hurried from his den at the back of the house, bearing with him a gentle aroma of the stable, and, even while opening the hall-door, was engaged in thrusting his arms into the sleeves of a coat—a perfect suit of mail in buttons.

“Mrs. Casey at home?” asked Mrs. Bowdler.

“I dunno whether the misthris is convaynient, ma’am, but Miss Casey is above in the dhrawin’-room. Won’t yez come in anyhow?” And the man motioned them to ascend with considerable cordiality and welcome.

“Take these cards, please.”

“Well, ma’am, me hands is a thrifle dirty; but av it obliges ye—” and hastily brushing the fingers of his right hand upon the legs of his trowsers, he took the extended pasteboard in as gingerly a manner as if he expected it to explode there and then.

The visitors stood in the hall, and so did Luke Fogarty.

“What am I for to do wud this ma’am?” he asked, eyeing it with a glance full of concern.

“Hand it to Miss Casey,” replied Mrs. Bowdler.

“Oh! that’s it, is it?” And he darted up-stairs with an alarming alacrity.

“This is a charming ménage,” said Mrs. Bowdler.

“A fine open country, my dear; no concealed enemy.”

“Yez are for to folly me,” shouted Fogarty from the top of the stairs.

Matilda was enchanted to see them, and ordered sherry and cake. Mrs. Bowdler professed herself charmed to make Miss Casey’s acquaintance, and declared she quite resembled the lord-lieutenant’s youngest daughter “And in manner, too, Miss Casey, you quite remind me of her. We are perpetually at the Viceregal Lodge, and very intimate with the Abercorns. We are asked to everything, and—he! he! he!—it costs us a small fortune for cabs.”

“You can have my brougham, Mrs. Bowdler.”

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