The Catholic World, Vol. 26, October, 1877, to March, 1878 (part 4 of 6)

The Catholic World, Vol. 26, October, 1877, to March, 1878 (part 4 of 6)

“Oh! dear, no, my dear young lady, that would never do; but if you lend it to me occasionally to take out dear Lady Maude Laseilles, who is such an invalid. Do you know her?”

Matilda replied in the negative.

As a matter of fact, no such person existed, but it suited Mrs. Bowdler to create her, Mrs. B. being a lady who would make a shilling do duty for half a crown. She was a veteran of infinite resources, who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and who was now bent upon taking her change out of the world. She had heard of the craving to enter the portals of society that was devouring Matilda Casey—the attorney had openly confided the fact to the colonel—and was resolved upon making the most of the situation. The Bowdlers were hangers-on at the Castle, mere hacks, who attended the drawing-rooms, the solitary state ball to which they were annually invited, and St. Patrick’s ball with undeviating punctuality. They resided in a pinched-looking house in Stephen’s Green, where Mrs. Bowdler “operated” the colonel’s half-pay with the financial ability of a Dudelac, stretching every sixpence and racking the silver coin to its final gasp. They went everywhere, accepting every invitation, “foraging on the enemy” as the colonel expressed it, giving no return. Trading upon his military rank, they managed to go about a good deal amongst very third-rate people, who were glad to have a colonel to dinner, and a lady who could talk so familiarly of half the peerage as his wife. A more singularly worthless or selfish pair was not to be found, or a pair who better knew how “to work the oracle,” than Colonel Brownlow Bowdler, late of Her Majesty’s Fifty-ninth Regiment of Infantry, and Jemima, his consort.

Mrs. Casey came smilingly into the drawing-room and almost embraced Mrs. Bowdler.

“What will ye take, now? Sure ye must take something. Matilda, make Mrs. Colonel Bowdler take something. Colonel, you’ll take a bottle of champagne—do, now, that’s right; and I’ll get a little jelly for Mrs. Colonel Bowdler, and then Matilda will play for ye. She plays lovely.”

“O mamma!” exclaimed Matilda.

“Now, ye know ye do, darling.” And Mrs. Casey, who is the soul of hospitality, joyously descended to the lower regions, in order to send up the delicacies she so temptingly set forth.

“Are you going to the ball the Twelfth are giving at the Royal Barracks?” asked Mrs. Bowdler.

“I am not, Mrs. Bowdler, but I wish I was,” replied Matilda.

“Colonel, do you hear that? Miss Casey has not received a card for the Twelfth ball. You must take care that she gets one.”

“I’ll go to Major McVickers at once—the old rascal and I served in India together—and see what can be done.”

He had been to Major McVickers five times already to secure invitations for himself and wife, but without success.

Luke Fogarty entered with an enormous silver salver bearing the champagne, jelly, fruit, and cake. He would have preferred to have been behind a runaway horse, ay, and down-hill to boot. He regarded the jelly with a savage eye, muttering “Woa! woa!” in an undertone as it shook from the movement of the tray, accompanying the exclamation by that purring sound so dear to grooms when closely applying the curry-comb.

“Open the champagne, Fogarty,” said Matilda in a tone of lofty command.

“To be shure I will, miss,” replied the willing retainer, diving into the pockets of his trowsers in search of an iron-moulded corkscrew, which he eventually brought to the surface after considerable effort. “I’ll open it in a jiffy.”

He tortured and twisted the wires until he was nearly black in the face from sheer exertion, but, although yielding to his pressure, they still clung perplexingly to the cork.

“Bad cess to thim for wires! but they have the fingers nearly cut aff o’ me. Curse o’ the crows on them!” making another despairing effort; “but I’m not bet yit.”

The wire, slipping suddenly aside, gave freedom to the cork, which bounded gaily against the colonel’s nose, and, ricochetting, lodged in the bosom of Mrs. Bowdler’s dress, while the froth spurted high in the air, descending in seething showers upon the gallant warrior’s head, disarranging the few brown hairs which were carefully laid across his bald, shining pate, resembling cracks upon an inverted china bowl, and causing him to utter maledictions strong and deep.

“See that, now!” exclaimed Fogarty, clapping his hand on the opening of the bottle. “It’s livelier nor spirits. Hould yer glass, colonel, or the lickher ‘ill be lost intirely.”

“Champagne is my favorite wine,” said Mrs. Bowdler, tossing off her glass without winking.

“And mine,” added the colonel, filling it for her again, and then replenishing his own.

“Oh! dear me, I’m so glad to know that. Fogarty, bring another bottle. We’ve heaps of it in the cellar at ninety-six shillings a dozen—a top price. You’ll always get good wine here,” said Mrs. Casey.

“The man who would give his guest bad wine ought to be blown from the muzzle of a gun,” observed the colonel, plunging at the jelly.

This came strangely from an individual who, whenever he gave a visitor a drink, gave it of a liquor warranted to kill at fifty yards. Young Bangs, of the Tenth, whose father instructed him to visit Bowdler, was laid up for an entire week after a teaspoonful of the colonel’s tap.

The second bottle of champagne appeared.

“Ye’d betther open this combusticle yerself, gineral,” suggested Fogarty; “an mind ye hould on to the cork, or it ‘ill give ye the slip as shure as there’s a bill on a crow.”

“I must introduce your dear daughter here to the Dayrolles,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, “and to the Fitzmaurices. You will like Lady Fitzmaurice, Miss Casey, and I know she will like you.”

“Do you hear that, Matilda? Now, won’t ye play for Mrs. Colonel Bowdler?”

“I’m a very poor player,” simpered Matilda.

Nevertheless, she proceeded to the piano and dashed off a morceau of Chopin with considerable vigor, during which the colonel improved the occasion by pocketing a bunch of grapes and a good-sized cut of seed-cake.

“Bravissima!” he cried, as if in rapture. “Lord St. Lawrence must hear that, Jemima; we must try and get him to name a night.”

“We can reckon on Lady Howth.”

“Certainly. She’s always too glad to be asked.”

“And the Powerscourts?”

“By the way, that reminds me: we owe a visit at Powerscourt, do we not?”

“I can’t say, colonel, until I look at my list. We have such an enormous visiting list, Mrs. Casey,” turning to that lady, who was nearly caught in a feeble attempt at winking at her daughter, in order to beget that young person’s special attention to the delightful conversation going on between the visitors, and who was perfectly overwhelmed with dismay and apprehension lest she should have been perceived. “I put my engagements down alphabetically, and—he! he! he!—I’m so glad to think that you are so high on our list.”

The Bowdlers took their departure, after having promised to dine in Merrion Street on the following day.

“To-morrow will be Thursday, and we dine with the Commander of the Forces. Friday we dine at Lord Newry’s.”

“Never mind, my dear,” interposed the colonel, “I’ll come here. I’m heartily sick of those fearfully ceremonious banquets; besides,” he added, “we are not asked here every day, and Newry or Strathnairn will be glad to get us when they can.”

When Mickey Casey returned that evening from his office he found his wife and daughter in ecstasies over their newly-made acquaintances. There were no words in the English language sufficiently strong to convey a tithe of the admiration they entertained for them. Such elegance, such urbanity, such distinguished manners, such amiability!

“I’m going to the Twelfth ball,” cried Matilda, “and to be introduced to Lady Fitzmaurice and the Dayrolles, and dear Mrs. Bowdler is going to give a party for me, and to ask Lady Howth and Lord St. Lawrence and Lord Powerscourt all to hear me play. What shall I play? I must begin to practise at once. I’ll go to Pigott’s to-morrow for something new—the newest thing—and I’ll get Mrs. Joseph Robinson to give me six lessons.”

“I’ve asked them to dinner here,” said Mrs. Casey; “and only to think, Mick, I—”

“I do wish you’d say Mr. Casey, or at all events Michael, mamma,” burst in Matilda. “You see how dear Mrs. Bowdler addressed her husband. You’ll find it much more genteel.”

“Whatever you say, me darling. Well, Mister Casey—oh! I can’t do that after Micking him for twenty years,” she cried. “Well, Mick, what do you think, but the colonel gave up a dinner at the Commander of the Forces’ to come to us on Thursday.”

“Thursday, did ye say, Mary?”

“Yes.”

“That’s awkward; that’s to-morrow, and your brother Tim Rooney comes up in the morning to stop for a month.”

Mrs. Casey glanced timidly at her daughter, who gave a little shriek.

“It will never do, mamma. Uncle Timothy is too rough, too vulgar, and too careless of what he says and does, to meet Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler. It would destroy us at once. You must telegraph him, papa, not to come till Friday or Saturday.”

“I can’t, me honey, for he started this morning; and may be it’s in Tullamore he is while I’d be wiring to Inchanappa.”

Matilda clasped her hands in a sort of mute despair.

“He cannot dine at this table to-morrow,” she cried. “I’d rather put off the Bowdlers, first.”

“Suppose ye give him an early dinner and plenty of liquor, and send him with Fogarty to the play.”

“We will want Fogarty, papa. His livery opening the door looks very genteel.”

“It won’t do to insult him. Tim has twenty thousand pounds, and you’re his god-daughter, me darling,” said Casey.

“I wonder, if we told him that these people were very ceremonious and very grand, if he’d consent to dine alone,” suggested Matilda.

“That would only rouse Tim, my pet,” observed Mrs. Casey. “He’d just come in on purpose then, and if he got a sup in there would be no holding him.”

“What is to be done?” cried Matilda, starting from her chair and pacing the floor with long and hasty strides.

At this moment a short, sharp double knock was heard at the hall-door.

“That’s Tim,” groaned Mrs. Casey.

“A telegraph!” roared Fogarty, bursting into the room as if a human life depended upon his celerity.

“Yer in luck, Matilda, my pet; it’s from your uncle. Read it.”

It ran thus:

“_From Tim Rooney, ‘The Ram’s Tail,’ Inchanappa, County Tipperary, to Mickey Casey, 190 Merrion Street, Dublin_:

“I can’t stir for a couple of days. I have to bolus a horse, and Phil Dempsey is after drinking a cow on me, the blackguard!”

“What a relief!” cried Matilda Casey, throwing herself into an easy-chair.

The dinner at 190 was supplied by Murphy, of Clare Street, the Gunter, the Delmonico of Dublin.

“I don’t care a farden about the price,” said Mickey to the smiling caterer. “I want it done tip-top, and let the ongtrays be something quite out of the common; for Colonel and Mrs. Colonel Bowdler are to dine with us, and me wife is very anxious to have everything spiffy.”

Mrs. Casey was in a fever of preparation the livelong day, washing glasses, getting out wine, laying the table, while Matilda with her own fair hands fitted up the épergne with rare hot-house plants and crystallized fruits.

“Papa will take Mrs. Colonel Bowdler in to dinner, and Colonel Bowdler will take you, mamma.”

“Oh! no, me pet; I’d rather he’d take you.”

“But it’s not etiquette.”

“Oh! bother etiquette,” exclaimed Mrs. Casey, wiping her face in a napkin.

“It’s all very fine to say bother etiquette; but if we do not show it now, what will Colonel and Mrs. Colonel Bowdler think of us?”

The appalling consequences attendant upon her refusal to be led to the banquet by the gallant colonel smote the mind of Mrs. Casey with such considerable force that she at once assented to the proposal, lauding her daughter’s foresight to the very skies.

“You’re a wonderful child, dear; ‘pon me word, you think of everything.”

“The colonel will sit here, and I’ll put this bouquet opposite his chair with the menoo card; and Mrs. Bowdler will sit here, Fogarty,” addressing Luke, who was standing by with a portion of harness about his neck. “Take care that Colonel Bowdler gets enough of champagne.”

“Be me faix, thin, Miss Matilda, ye’d betther lave out a dozen anyhow, for he lapped it up yistherda like wather,” replied that functionary with a broad grin.

“And see that Mrs. Colonel Bowdler’s glass is always full.”

“I’m thinkin’ she’ll see to that herself wudout thrubblin’ me,” muttered Fogarty.

“Ask Colonel Bowdler if he’ll take sherry or Madeira with his soup.”

“To be sure he will, miss.”

“I say ask him which he’ll take.”

“I’ll make bould to say he’ll take the both o’ thim,” grinned Fogarty, who, with that quick perception characteristic of his race, had already “measured his man.”

“Be very particular about the ongtray.”

“I will, miss, an’ the tay-thray too.”

“And above all things keep sober, Fogarty.”

“He’s a teetotaler,” chimed in Mrs. Casey. “Aren’t ye a teetotaler, Luke?”

There was a comical expression upon Luke’s face as he stoutly replied: “I am, ma’am; but I’m not a bigoted wan.”

At about four o’clock a note arrived from Mrs. Bowdler.

“Oh! my gracious, I hope there’s no disappointment,” cried Matilda, turning very pale, while dire apprehension was written in the pallid features of her mamma.

“I hope not; that would be awful, me pet.”

The note ran thus:

“292 STEPHEN’S GREEN, 3.30 o’clock.

“MY DEAREST MISS CASEY: Our dear friend Major Beamish and his charming daughter, nearly related to the Beamishes of Cork, have just written to say that they will dine with us to-day. I must, therefore, with the MOST painful reluctance, ask of you to allow us to cancel our engagement to you. I cannot tell you how sincerely this grieves me, but the B.’s, though very old friends, are people of that haute distinction that one cannot treat as one possibly could wish.

“With kindest regards to your dear mamma, and with united kind regards from the colonel to all chez vous, I am, my dearest Miss Casey, yours affectionately,

JEMIMA BOWDLER.”

“This is agonizing!” cried Matilda, ready to burst into tears.

“Our lovely dinner!” moaned Mrs. Casey.

“There is some fatality about us.”

“Wan pound five a head without wine, and seventeen and six extra for a pineapple.”

“Was ever anything so provoking? It’s enough to drive one mad!”

“I suppose Mick must ask in the apprentice to eat the dinner, as we’ve to pay for it. Such food for to cock up an apprentice with!” sighed Mrs. Casey.

Miss Casey perused the letter again, and finding P. T. O. in the corner, turned the page and read a postscript as follows:

“P. S.—The colonel has just come in, and what do you think he has the audacity to suggest?—that we ask your permission to bring the Beamishes to your dinner to-day. The colonel has taken such a fancy to you, dearest young friend, that he treats you as if he had been on intimate terms for years. He insists upon my writing this, but please to blame him for this piece of audacity.

J. B.”

Miss Casey’s joy knew no bounds. The Beamishes of Cork, one of the oldest families in Ireland—such a charming addition to the party. She would order round the brougham, and drive over to dear Mrs. Colonel Bowdler’s at once to thank her for such a signal mark of kindness; as for the colonel, she could have hugged the gallant veteran from sheer gratitude.

She did not know that the Bowdlers wished to shelve the hungry major and his daughter in a polite way, and provide them with a sumptuous repast at the expense of Mickey Casey. Not she, indeed; so she stepped into her carriage, and having driven, first, round to the caterer’s to order reinforcements, proceeded to Stephen’s Green, where she was received by Mrs. Bowdler in a small, dingy front room minus a fire, although it was late in December and bitterly raw and cold.

Mrs. Bowdler kissed her, and gushed over her, and begged to be excused for hurrying her away for the tyrant post, as she was compelled to finish a letter to her dearest friend, the wife of the governor-general of India. Miss Casey cut short her stay, as in duty bound, and Mrs. Bowdler ascended to the drawing-room, where three or four visitors were assembled around a fairly decent fire—one of the ladies, during the temporary absence of the hostess, having surreptitiously stirred it up—to whom she imparted the intelligence that she had just parted from the governess to Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby, whom that aristocratic personage had sent over in the Ponsonby brougham with a request that she and the colonel would dine in Fitzwilliam Place upon that day, whereat the visitors declared that Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby was evidently very desirous of Mrs. Bowdler’s company, and that it was a very remarkable instance of her esteem and regard.

At 6.30, military time, the company arrived, and were ushered into Mickey Casey’s study in order to uncloak. Major Beamish wore a short brown wig on the top of a very high, a very bald, and very shiny head. His eyes were small and watery, and his moustache, greased with a cheap ointment, lay like a solid cushion of hair beneath a nose with nostrils as expansive as those of a rocking-horse. He was attired in a faded suit of evening clothes, his shirt-bosom bearing the indelible imprint not only of the hand of Time, but of the hand of a reckless laundress, who hesitated not to use her nails upon the sierras of its coy and threadbare folds.

Miss Beamish was a gushing maiden of twenty anything, possessed of a profusion of frizzly fair hair, done in a simple and childlike fashion, and bound by a fillet of blue ribbon over a vast expanse of forehead. Her eyes were greenish gray, and not quite free from a suspicion of a squint. Her nose resembled that of her sire, and her mouth was almost concealed by her thin and bloodless lips. Her gaunt frame was enveloped in a gauzy substance over a pink silk, which betrayed the recent presence of the smoothing-iron. Bog-oak ornaments rattled around her neck, at her ears, and upon her lean and sinewy arms.

“Colonel an’ Missis Bowhowdler,” roared Fogarty, as the guests entered the drawing-room. “Major an’ Missis Baymish.”

“Miss, fellow, Miss,” impatiently cried the major.

“Miss Baymish, I mane,” adding in an undertone: “It’s not but she’s ould enough and tough enough for to be a missis tin times over.”

“This is so good of you,” said Matilda, shaking hands all round, “and so good of dear Mrs. Bowdler to give us the pleasure of having you.”

“Monstrous fine gal. Right good quarters,” observed the major to the colonel, glancing round the room at the superb mirrors, buhl cabinets, inlaid tables, rich hangings, and furniture upholstered in yellow satin.

“You might do worse than take this girl. Casey’s good for twenty thousand,” suggested the colonel.

“If Tibie was once quartered on the enemy I’d enlist again—I would, sir, by George! I’d take the shilling from that seductive and dangerous recruiting sergeant, Hymen,” exclaimed the major, wagging one soiled white glove and posing himself after a gratified and prolonged glance in the mirror.

“Miss Matilda,” whispered Fogarty, who had just entered, and who was endeavoring to attract her attention. “Miss Matilda! Miss Tilly!”

“What is it, Fogarty?” asked Miss Casey at length; and upon perceiving him, “What is it?” she repeated somewhat testily, as Mrs. Bowdler was engaged in narrating a delightful conversation with the lady-lieutenant.

“The masther’s clanin’ himself, an’ he wants a lind av yer soap, miss, as there’s not a screed in the house, be raisin’ av the misthris washin’ the glass an’ chany wild the rest av it.”

The guests filed down in the order prescribed by Matilda, save that she fell to the arm of Major Beamish, who overwhelmed her with compliments, which only lasted until the soup was served, as from that moment his attention became concentrated upon the delicacies placed before him, on which he opened so murderous and effective a fire as almost to paralyze the energies of the ubiquitous and perspiring Fogarty, and the solicitous attentions of a young lady from the kitchen, whose stertorous breathing made itself heard above the din and clatter of knives, forks, and conversation, in a distinct and somewhat alarming manner.

“Hi! some more soup. Another cut of fish. I’ll try that entrée again. Let me have that last entrée once more. Some turkey and ham. Why don’t you look alive with the champagne? A slice of roast beef—underdone. Some pheasant; ay, I’ll try the woodcock. Jelly, of course.” And the gallant major kept the servants pretty busily engaged during the entire repast.

Matilda was in a shimmer of delight. Her darling hopes were being realized at last, and society was budding for her. A colonel and his wife, a major and his daughter—why, what higher rank need any person desire? How friendly, how gracious, and how charmingly they ate and drank and praised everything! This was life—a life worth living; this was that delicious glow of which she had read in Lothair and other novels portraying fashionable existence.

While these rosy thoughts were coursing through her brain a noise was heard in the direction of the hall, and a man’s voice in tones of angry expostulation.

“Your servants are quarrelling, Mrs. Casey,” observed Mrs. Bowdler, holding up her hand to enjoin silence.

“It’s that Luke Fogarty; he can’t keep his fingers off the dishes, and the girl is—”

At this moment the individual in question burst into the apartment with an expression as if some fearful catastrophe had just happened.

“What is the matter, Fogarty?” demanded Mrs. Casey, glancing at her retainer with an inquiring eye.

“We’re bet, ma’am,” responded Fogarty in a half-whisper.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re bet up intirely. Misther Tim has came.”

Mrs. Casey felt as if she would have fainted, while Matilda bit her lips till the blood came; and as they were still gazing at each other in the direst consternation, Mr. Timothy Rooney entered the apartment, clad in a bulgy Ulster that had known fairs and markets and race-courses for several previous years, a felt hat of an essentially rakish and vulgar description, his pants shoved into his muddy boots after the fashion of a Texas ranger, while his hands were swollen and the color of beet-root.

“Company, be the hokey crikey!” he exclaimed, as he advanced to embrace the reluctant hostess. “Ah! Mary, ye didn’t expect me,” giving her a kiss that made the glass drops upon the chandelier jingle again.

“No, we didn’t expect you, Tim,” gasped his sister.

“No, of course not. Shure I sent ye a telegraph that that villyan of a Phil Dempsey drank me best cow on me—tellin’ ye that—”

“Won’t you take some dinner in your own room?” interposed his niece, now the color of a peony.

“Come over here and kiss your uncle, ye young rogue. Up-stairs, indeed! What would I do that for?”

“You are not exactly dressed for dinner.”

“Oh! I’ve a shirt on under this Ulster, and I’ll show a bit of the bussom, as the man said, never fear. Well, Mickey, me hearty, how goes it? Put it there,” extending his beet-root fist to his brother-in-law.

“My brother, a regular character, immensely wealthy; obliged to put up with his ways,” explained Mrs. Casey, while her daughter retired with Mr. Rooney, with a view to inducing that gentleman to refrain from again putting in an appearance.

“A very fine, joyous son of the Emerald Isle,” cried the colonel, helping himself to champagne.

“When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” observed the major, following the good example of his senior officer, “we had just such a joyous, devil-may-care fellow in the Tenth. He resided in the bungalow with me, the compound being in common. One morning, while enjoying chotohassary—the major aired his Indian experiences and Hindoo acquirements upon all occasions— I happened to call my kitmagar as well as my consumar, who was—”

The narrative was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Rooney and his despairing niece. Tim had given his face what is commonly known as a “Scotch lick,” causing it to shine again. He was about forty years of age, rough-looking as a Shetland pony, and a “warm man”—i.e., the possessor of a few thousands in the bank and of a well-to-do, well-stocked farm.

“I’m tidy enough now, I think; at all events, yer friends will be aisy on a traveller. Why don’t ye introduce us, Mick? Where are yer manners?”

He was presented in due form by the abashed Casey, and, after having shaken hands with all round, commenced a vigorous attack upon a slice of turbot with his knife, plunging that useful instrument two or three inches into his mouth at every helping, until Miss Beamish, who was seated opposite, shuddered with apprehension.

“Is there anything the matter with ye, ma’am?” he demanded, upon observing a ghastly contraction of the muscles of her face.

“N-nothing,” she stammered.

“Ye haven’t got a pain?”

“Uncle, help yourself to champagne,” shrilly interposed Matilda.

“Pshaw! get me some whiskey, me pet,” adding, as he winked facetiously upon Mrs. Bowdler, “champagne is taydious.”

“By and by, uncle,” said the agonized girl.

“A little drop wouldn’t harm Miss Baymish there, Matty; she looks as if—”

“Take some more beef, Tim,” put in Mrs. Casey.

“Well, just wan skelp more, Mary. Room for wan inside, as the man said.”

When the ladies had retired Mr. Rooney stretched his legs beneath the table and his body on the chair until his chin was nearly on a level with the table.

“Now, Mickey, in with the hot water, and let the girl put a kettle under the pump. Are ye fond of sperrits, major?”

“Well, the fact is that spirits don’t agree with me.”

“Oh, then, Mickey Casey has some that will oil the curls of yer wig for ye.”

“When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” observed the major hastily, “there happened to be a very rollicking, gay, charming fellow of our mess, who shared my bungalow with me—the compound being in common. One morning I was engaged at chotohassary and—”

“What the dickens is chotohassary?”

“Breakfast, Mr. Rooney.”

“I never heard it called by that name before. Go on, you old son of a gun.”

“Well, sir,” continued the major somewhat stiffly, “I had occasion to call my kitmagar.”

“Kit who?” asked Tim.

“Kitmagar, one of my servants.”

“An Irishman, of course.”

“No, sir, a Hindoo.”

“Well, this flogs; are ye listening to this, Mickey?” addressing Casey, who had drawn off the colonel.

“Am I listening to what?” asked the host rather gruffly.

“To this old fogy here.”

“Really, Mr. Rooney—” began the offended major.

“Don’t mind him, Major Beamish,” cried Casey, “but pitch into the claret; it’s Château Lafitte of a comet vintage. At least, Redmond told me so, and he ought to know.”

“It’s a very fine wine, Casey—a soft wine, sir, in superb condition, and heated to perfection,” observed the major, tossing off a glassful and quickly replacing the goblet.

“Goes down like mother’s milk,” added the colonel, following suit.

“Well, major, go on about Kit Megar,” urged Rooney.

“Coffee is in the dhrawin’-room, jintlemin,” yelled Fogarty, entering.

“Well, let it stay there, Luke.”

“Shall we join the ladies?” asked Casey, with a society air.

The colonel looked at the major, the major looked at the colonel, and both looked at the claret jugs.

“Oh! hang it all, no,” responded the major; “this wine is too good—much too good.”

“More power to yer elbow, Baymish! An old dog for a hard road,” laughed Tim Rooney. “Eh, Luke, this is a knowing old codger.”

Mr. Fogarty, being thus appealed to, gave a willing assent: “Up to every trick in the box.”

After the gallant warriors had sufficiently punished Casey’s cellar they repaired to the drawing-room. As they ascended the stairs they compared notes.

“Did you ever meet such a queer customer as this brother-in-law?”

“Never. He’s the most vulgar, insolent blackguard I ever encountered.”

“He has lots of money.”

“I wonder does he play loo?”

“We can ask him.”

“He’d play a lively game.”

“And could be plucked like a green gosling.”

To the intense relief of the Casey family, Mr. Rooney stoutly refused to adjourn to the upper regions, but remained in the dining-room smoking a short clay pipe and drinking whiskey-punch.

Miss Beamish, upon hearing that he was enormously wealthy and unmarried to boot, began to build a castle in Spain, in which she figured as châtelaine, while the uncultured proprietor was gradually toned down by those feminine influences which smooth the angles of the most rugged natures.

“I do like this child of nature, Miss Casey,” she gushed; “it is sweet to hear the wild bird in the full, untutored sweetness of its note. Shall we see your uncle again to-night?”

“I hope not,” was Matilda’s reply.

“Oh! why? He reminds me so much of an arrière pensée, a bright oasis in the desert of my life, that I feel as if I could—but why recall recollections that are fraught with bitterness, why strike a chord which produces but—discord?” letting her pointed chin drop upon the bog-oak necklet, which responded by a dull rattle.

Matilda played for the major—who marked her as the successor of the late Mrs. B——, wagging his be-wigged pate to the music and applauding with maudlin vigor.

“Exquisite! Divine! When I was quartered at Dum Dum—” And he jogged over the same road, to arrive as far as the consumar, when Mrs. Bowdler intimated that it was time to leave.

“But ye won’t go without supper? Just a sandwich and a glass of wine,” entreated Mrs. Casey.

Of course they wouldn’t go, and they didn’t go until they had partaken largely of both.

“Never was more charmed in my life,” exclaimed the colonel, as he bade good-night. “Right glad I refused Lord Howth.”

“I thought it was the commander-in-chief,” said Mrs. Casey artlessly.

“Ahem! of course, and so it was; but I have so many invites, you see, that I forget.”

Gentlemen who draw upon their imagination for their facts must needs possess accurate memories.

“You’ll all dine with us on Christmas day,” said Mrs. Casey.

“Oh! yes, do, please,” added Matilda.

“Do, colonel; do, major, like good fellows,” urged Casey.

“Well, really, my dear, I don’t know what to say,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, “but I fear we cannot get out of going to Lady Meath’s.”

“Oh! hang Lady Meath; you may go to her, I’ll come here,” laughed the colonel.

“It’s fixed,” said Casey; “and you, major?”

“I couldn’t say no to such a good offer. When I was quartered in Dum Dum—”

“Is this old fogy at it still?” asked Tim Rooney, emerging from the dining-room into the hall where they were now all assembled.

“We are coming to dine here on Christmas day, Mr. Rooney,” said Miss Beamish, casting a languishing look at him.

“Are ye? Thin upon me conscience ye’ll git a tail end of beef that will feed you for a fortnight—wan of me own cows. And all Mary here has to do is see that the wisps of cabbage is plenty.”

With great hand-shaking, and a general buzz of pleased excitement, the guests took their departure.

“What a success!” exclaimed Matilda, throwing herself on a sofa that had been wheeled out of the dining-room into the hall in order to make room, “except for”—nodding towards Tim, who was endeavoring to light a bedroom candlestick with a singularly unsteady hand.

“They all took to him,” whispered Mrs. Casey.

“I never got such a turn as when he came in. O mamma! I thought I should have died.”

“Well, aren’t the Bowdlers nice, agreeable people, Matilda?” demanded Mr. Casey.

“Delightful, exquisite! Such elegant refinement. And the Beamishes are equally well bred.”

“That major is a downy old bird.”

“He is a most perfect gentleman. How he did praise my playing!”

The Caseys did not see much of the Bowdlers during the next few days, the colonel having over-eaten himself, and his wife being laid up with an attack of bronchitis; but Major Beamish and his daughter were most constant in their attentions, calling, staying to dinner, going to the theatre—Casey paying for all, cabs included—coming home to supper, and other attentions equally delicate and one-sided. The major was very prononcé in his manner toward Matilda, who, while she accepted his homage, did not for a moment imagine it meant more than that excessive and chivalrous politeness which distinguishes the vieux militaire of any nationality.

Miss Beamish lay in wait for Tim Rooney, and spun her web as deftly as the uncouth movements of this desirable fly permitted. She adroitly learned his hours for going out, and invariably intercepted him.

“I’m always meeting that wan,” he observed to his sister. “She’s for ever in the street.”

“She’s a very elegant lady, Tim.”

“Elegant enough, but, as tough as shoe-leather.”

By degrees, however, the fair Circe interested him, and when the others were engaged in listening with rapt attention to the major’s oft-repeated story commencing, “When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” Tibie Beamish, eyes plunged into those of the Tipperary farmer, would hang upon his accents as he detailed his own “cuteness” in the purchase of a drove of heifers at the great fair of Ballinasloe, or how he palmed off a spavined pony upon a neighboring but less wide-awake grazier.

If a woman wants to win a man, let her listen to him, if he be fond of narrating his personal experiences; and what man does not revel in ego?”

“She is a nice little girl, Mary, and is not above learning a trifle. I’ll be bail she could go into Ballinasloe fair next October and finger a baste as well as that villyan Phil Dempsey, from the knowledge I give her.”

The spell was working.

* * * * *

Christmas day came, bright, crisp, and joyous. Snow had fallen for the previous few days, and was now hard and shining in the streets, rendering walking somewhat hazardous and sliding almost unavoidable.

Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler arrived very early at Merrion Street—in fact, just in time for luncheon—and by a strange coincidence Major Beamish and his daughter dropped in almost at the same moment. A walk was proposed, but abandoned, and the party, broken up into two camps, sat chatting around the fires in the back and front drawing-rooms.

Everybody is hungry on Christmas day. Everybody thinks of the boiled turkey, Limerick ham, roast beef, plum-pudding, and mince-pies. Why, then, should the guests of Mickey Casey prove an exception to the rule?

Fogarty announced the dinner in a voice that savored of a joyous anticipation. He had had a private and confidential snack with the cook, but merely enough to make him wish for more.

“That’s me tail end of beef,” exclaimed Tim Rooney, as the huge mound of golden fatted meat was uncovered, behind which the host sat in a state of total eclipse—“that’s me tail end, and a lovelier baste never nipped grass, nor the—”

“Will you carve this turkey, Tim?” interrupted his sister.

“To be sure I will, Mary; but ye must let me do it me own way,” divesting himself of his coat and proceeding to work with a will.

“O Tim!”

“O uncle!”

“Let him alone,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, whose teeth were watering for a slice of the breast. “Such a gigantic bird requires to be carved sans cérémonie.”

“When I was quartered at Dum Dum—” began the major.

“See here, now, me ould codger, we’ve had enough of that singsong.”

The major smiled grimly and tossed off a glass of Amontillado.

“You are a character, Rooney,” he said.

Tim acquitted himself admirably, cutting the bird and innumerable jokes at the same time, many of them of a personal nature, such as allusions to the gallant major’s wig, which he called a “jasey,” the scragginess of Mrs. Bowdler, and the rosy tip at the extremity of the colonel’s nasal appendage. However, as everybody was in good-humor, his facetiæ passed off without exciting ill-feeling, and all went as merry as a marriage-bell.

The dinner had disappeared, and the company sat tranquilly over the dessert. Tim, having resigned his post of honor, returned to his chair beside Miss Beamish, to whom he whispered a good deal, to the intense amusement of his brother-in-law, who declared that Tim Rooney had been hit at last.

“There’s many a true word said in jest, Mick,” retorted Tim. Miss Beamish hung down her head and tried to blush, and, failing in this, essayed a cough, which proved more successful.

“Oh! Tim is an old bachelor,” cried Mrs. Casey, “and a most determined one.”

“It’s never too late to mend, Mary.”

“You’ll never mend, Tim.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” ogling his fair neighbor, who again tried a cough, which, however, terminated in a hoarse gurgle.

Tim Rooney was possessor of twenty thousand pounds, all in the Bank of Ireland. His farm was valued at ten thousand, and his stock at five thousand more. He was Matilda’s godfather, and, as a matter of course, all these good things would revert to her in time. It was a standing joke at Merrion Street that Tim should get married without delay.

“Not a bit of it,” he would retort. “I’ll keep looking at them during the winter, and I’ll take another summer out of myself.”

His joking now on the subject of Miss Beamish was exquisite fun to the family of Casey, who enjoyed it only as family jokes can be enjoyed.

“You’ll ask me to the wedding, uncle?” said Matilda.

“Sure you’ll be a bridesmaid, Matty.”

“And you’ll have to give me a new dress, a real Parisian one; won’t he, Miss Beamish?”

Miss Beamish bashfully tittered.

“When is it to be, Tim?” asked Mr. Casey.

“Next Thursday, then,” he grinned.

“That’s mighty quick.”

“Delays is dangerous.”

“Right, Tim,” cried Casey. “If I hadn’t asked your sister on the Friday, Joe Mulligan, the tailor would have—”

“Papa, do see that Colonel Bowdler takes his wine,” almost shrieked Matilda.

O agony! he was about informing their patrician guests that his rival had been a—tailor!

“Well, see here, Mickey, and see here, Mary, and see here, Matty,” said Mr. Rooney, rising, “I’ll give ye all a toast.”

“Oh! toasts are vulgar; are they not, Colonel Bowdler?” interposed Matilda.

“Well, ahem! except upon special occasions they are not in vogue,” replied that gallant warrior.

“Well this is a special occasion, and a very special occasion”—Hear! hear! from the host—“and wan that calls for particular mention; an’ it’s health, long life, and happiness to Mrs. Tim Rooney that is for to be. Ye must all drink it on yer legs.”

Anything to humor Tim, now that the Bowdlers and Beamishes tolerated him. So with much laughing on the part of the gentlemen, and much giggling on the part of the ladies, the toast was drunk with all honor.

“And now, Mick, Mary and Matty,” cried Tim, “I may as well let the cat out of the bag. Me and Miss Tibie is to be married on Thursday.”

Had a bombshell fallen in their midst greater consternation could not have shown itself upon the countenances of the Casey family.

“Yer not in airnest, Tim,” said Casey, endeavoring to smile a sickly smile.

“Tim must have his joke,” observed Mrs. Casey, her face as white as a sheet.

“Uncle is so full of fun,” tittered Matilda, dire apprehension in every lineament.

“It’s no jest; is it, Tibie?” asked Tim of his fiancée.

“No, Timothy, I am proud to say it is not,” responded Miss Beamish, placing her hand in the arm of her lover.

* * * * *

“And to think I gave that Bowdler a hundred pounds for to lose us forty thousand,” groaned Casey, as, seated with his weeping wife and daughter, he grimly surveyed the wedding-cards of Mr. and Mrs. T. Rooney. “This comes of yer infernal tomfoolery wantin’ to get into society that wouldn’t touch ye with a forty-foot pole. Serve ye right.”

“Serve us right indeed!” echoed the two ladies.

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

CATHOLIC “CIRCLES” FOR WORKING-MEN IN FRANCE.

Immediately after the German invasion and the Paris Commune there existed already at Paris a Catholic “Circle” of working-men, distinct, if not in appearance, yet in reality, from the associations of young apprentices called by this name, or under the more appropriate one of Patronages. It was, in fact, a working-men’s association—a little Christian republic; self-governing, by means of a council chosen from among its own number, the members of which council were considered as irremovable. On its festivals the whole association assembled in the chapel belonging to the circle; there its elected functionaries were received into office at the foot of the altar, there they made frequent communions, and thence, in accordance with the customs of the ancient confraternities of craftsmen, they bore in procession the banners of their patron saints. There were formed earnest men, accustomed to hear the language of duty, and ready to make the sacrifices it demands, as those of their number who died in the war had testified, as well as the many more who did not cease to incur, with patience and steadfastness, the persecutions of their scoffing companions in the ateliers.

This association was the work of a religious of the Institute of St. Vincent de Paul—M. Maignen, Director of the Circle of Montparnasse. The subscriptions of the circle, however, which had previously sufficed for its support, were unequal to the burden incurred by its installation, and the external subscriptions which had hitherto aided it had become few in number and small in amount.

M. Maignen then resolved to assemble in council, on the evening of Christmas day, a group of capitalists, among whom were three deputies, three well-known writers, and three military officers, scarcely known to each other except by name; but they were all good and earnest Catholics, and had, moreover, suffered and fought for their country. After uniting in prayer they resolved to seek, in the definitions of the church in regard to her relations to civil society, the germ of the sole social force capable of saving France from the consequences of her errors; and this force, they decided, should be constituted in the form of Catholic Circles for Working-men, similar to the one in which they were met together.

They began, in the first place, by addressing to the Holy Father the expression of their resolution, to which he granted his benediction. In the next they sent, by thousands of copies, an energetic appeal to all “men of good-will.” “The revolution,” they said, “has descended from the brains of (so-called) philosophers into the minds of the people. Are we to leave our misguided working-men to perdition—a perdition in which they will also involve their country—or, by drawing a supernatural strength from the heart of Jesus—himself a working-man—shall we not oppose the associations of men who love darkness rather than light by the Catholic Association, and meet the lessons of materialism by those of the Gospel, and a cold cosmopolitanism by the love of our country?”

Then the little group of men who signed the engagement further united themselves by a religious bond—the daily recital of a prayer, and an annual communion for the intentions of the work, the duties of which the members distributed among themselves according to their respective facilities.

Each section set to work under the direction of a chief: the first for the general promulgation of the work, the second for its foundations, the third for the creation of resources, and the fourth for the popular diffusion of its teaching. The sections worked independently of each other, but met in committee when there was any need for arranging or deciding as to any general plan of action. For the purpose of directing and controlling the action of the fourth section the committee also appointed a council under the name of Jésus-Ouvrier. Thus the work was constituted in its first committee—that is to say, the first association of the directing class—on the principle of its first “circle,” the Catholic declaration and the division of responsibilities, and, lastly, as a sign and pledge of the union of the active members of the work, the religious bond.

The association thus organized bore marvellous fruit, and in a few months the committee found itself able to relieve the Cercle Montparnasse by creating two similar ones in the quarters (of evil notoriety) of Belleville and Montmartre, which were chosen with the intention of a public expiation, and to furnish each of the circles with a council of its quarter.

This was the golden age of the work, which was, as it were, crowned by the high testimony it received at the Congress of Directors of the Catholic Working-men’s Associations assembled at Poitiers under the auspices of Mgr. Pie. It obtained also an exceptional éclat from the remarkable eloquence of one of its initiators at the Cercle Montparnasse—the intrepid Count Albert de Mun—as well as from the fact of there being several other military officers among them. The work appeared to be marked with a providential character, having at its outset the stamp of trial, followed by that of rapid expansion, and possessing another in the saintly character of its first founder; for, although God may be pleased to employ unworthy instruments to promote his merciful designs, it will always be found that, in the first instance, they have been deposited, as in a chalice, in a holy and devoted soul.

The impetus was given. The large towns of France answered the appeal by requesting the initiators to form, within them, committees like the Directing Committee at Paris. The principles of the constitution never varied; i.e., Catholic affirmation by the acceptance of the religious bond, and the general bases of the work, division of labor among the members of the local association, and periodic communication with the secretariate general.

This in a short time was carried out at Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Lille, and many other places of importance, numerous smaller towns, and even villages, asking for the same institution. And everywhere it bore fruit, the formation of a committee being in every instance followed by the opening of a circle.

At the same time the Council of Jésus-Ouvrier, and, following its example, the committees of the large towns, opened public conferences in popular quarters, where the people were addressed in frank and energetic language, inspired by the intimate union of religious and social faith, and the doctrines of liberalism boldly denounced, which substitute for the precepts “Love one another” and “Bear ye one another’s burdens” that of “To each according to his work”—a maxim good enough in itself, but which the employer translates into “Each one for himself,” and the employed into “My turn next for enjoyment.” These declarations, repeated simultaneously in all parts of France, gave the work a remarkable unity of spirit, which was amply manifested at the first general assembly of its members, held in the spring of 1873.

Difficulties, however, arose in proportion to the progress made. Few adherents were obtained from among the manufacturing chiefs, on whom depends the whole economy of the working-classes; while the committees, formed of men little accustomed to study the laws of labor, did not well observe its divisions, and thus dwindled away. That of Paris, to which had been allotted the most complete autonomy, and which was more especially devoted to the general propagation of the work, gave way beneath its accumulated burden.

“We then” (to quote the words of one of the members in his address to the Congress at Rheims)—“We then turned our eyes with confidence to her who is the help of Christians, our ever Blessed Lady, resolving to go all together and invoke her aid in one of the sanctuaries of France where she has most anciently manifested her power, and where formerly the kingdom was dedicated to her by a solemn vow—Notre Dame de Liesse. The funds of the Paris committee were already exhausted and the year only half over. We collected ten thousand francs, and unhesitatingly devoted them to defray the expenses of this distant pilgrimage.

“The committees of the north were invited to join it at the head of the circles they had formed, and on the 17th of August, 1873, twenty-five hundred pilgrims arrived from their respective towns to form one procession to Notre Dame de Liesse. Half of the number, in spite of the fatigues of the way, there received Holy Communion, and we returned with renewed strength and confidence to our posts.”

We will not here give a detailed account of the toils and progress of the year which succeeded the pilgrimage. A brief of the Holy Father confirmed the constitution of the work by the grant of duly specified indulgences attached to it; it also received the canonical protection of a cardinal of the church.

These favors brought a timely encouragement to the promoters of the work; for with its progress its trials also increased. Among the most painful were those of seeing it misunderstood by many persons who might have been expected to prove its warmest advocates. Some of these lost sight of its social character, and preferred to seek the good of a few individual souls instead of helping forward a Christian restoration of society; while others, again, mistook the part to be taken in the committees by the upper classes. “Of what use,” they asked, “is a committee, unless to provide resources for an ecclesiastical director?”

This is a question which has been frequently asked. But it must be borne in mind that if the circle establishes among its members social fraternity, the director could not himself alone represent its paternity. To do this would be to deter other Christians of the upper classes from the unmistakable command they have received to exercise this social paternity which they have from God in the very advantages of their social condition.

For why are riches and honors bestowed upon the few—why the benefits of education, of leisure, of cultivation of the mind—unless it be that they are to be consecrated to the moral guidance and material assistance of the classes who are deprived of such advantages? In regard to this social paternity, as in regard to that which creates the family, the priest must be the consecrator: but, in his turn, the father who would abandon to the priest the charges and responsibilities of the dignity which, by divine right, is his own, would only disappear from among his fellow-men to be confounded before the Eternal Father—he and the two complaisant accomplices of his culpable abdication.

After establishing social fraternity by the circles, and social paternity by the committees, it remained to restore the social family—that is, to associate Christian families in the benefits of the work, after having associated in it the heads of families of various conditions.

The family is, in fact, the first association by natural right, and therefore every constitution which embraces it and does not take it for its foundation is vitiated and sterile. The founders of the work knew this, and were, moreover, not allowed to forget it by the daily reproaches they received—“You are destroying the family; you are destroying the parish!”—and what not. But how to reach the family so as to be of service to it instead of injurious was not for some time made clear. The Circle of Montparnasse, the prototype of the rest, had avoided rather than faced the difficulty by disposing of its active functions in favor only of its unmarried members. But this was plainly not the solution.

The solution had, however, been discovered, at no great distance from Rheims, in the great manufacturing region which has for the motive power of its machines the waters of the Suippe, for its boundary the extensive woods which form an oasis of verdure in the burning plains of Champagne, and for its population factory-men, who wander, at the bidding of the industrial fluctuations of the time, to and from the looms of the north, of Rheims, or of St. Quentin—a population exceptionally indigent, since the struggle between capital and wages, inaugurated by liberalism, has become the normal condition of the producer and the consumer.

In the hamlet of Val-des-Bois, in the centre of this district, an industrial family settled about half a century ago, and brought with it the example of every Christian virtue. Kind towards their workmen, generous even beyond their gains, Messieurs Harmel assembled around their vast establishment all the religious and philanthropic institutions by means of which it has hitherto been attempted to re-establish harmony in the world of labor.

As is but too frequently the case, they failed in this attempt completely. But they were not daunted, nor did they rest satisfied with their past endeavors; for, if they loved the working-men, they loved their Lord still more, and desired as earnestly as ever that he should reign in the hearts of those in their employ.

Not many years ago it occurred to one of them to introduce among the population of their factories—which did not count a single practising Christian—the principle of the Catholic Association. He determined to ask four men to join together to form the nucleus of a circle, and three young girls to be received as Enfants de Marie and wear the badge. In proportion as the associations developed themselves he multiplied them according to the sex, age, and condition of each individual; and this with such success that at the present time the twelve hundred souls who people Val-des-Bois are united in a marvellous aggregation of pious confraternities, among whose members are made, in the course of a year, more than ten thousand communions, in the intention of making reparation to our Lord for the outrages he receives in the modern factory.

Then, also, as earthly goods are often increased abundantly to those who seek first the kingdom of God, the principle of Catholic Association applied to the families of the Factory of the Sacred Heart (l’Usine du Sacrè-Cœur)—for it bears this name—has realized there innumerable economical benefits, a fact which will not surprise those who know the power of this principle. Assistance of every kind, clothing, food, and fuel at very reasonable prices, schools free of expense to the parents, and occasional holidays for recreation, have brought with them, together with economy, the comfort also and prosperity of the families. All these institutions, economic, charitable, and religious, are governed by those personally interested. The circle, which brings together the fathers of families, is, as it were, the centre of this machinery; and the master, who is its motive power, associates with himself not only all the members of his own family and the chaplain of the factory, but also his principal employés, to fulfil the paternal function of a protecting and directing committee, and so to secure to the association the chances of continuance as well as the fruits of example. To this end delegates are annually appointed, who, under the presidency of the master, are the guardians of the corporation.

We will give the result of all these well-considered combinations in M. Harmel’s own words:[113]

“By the persevering endeavors of many years we have attained the end at which we aimed. Families are reconstituted, peace and love have taken the place of quarrels and disorder around the domestic hearth; the mother rejoices at the change wrought in her husband and children; the father finds in a new life the courage and happiness of labor; his home is delightful to him from the respect of his children, the ready cheerfulness of his wife, and the love of all. Economy has put an end to debts and created savings; the anniversary festivals of the family bring back that affectionate gayety and warmth which give repose amid the fatigues of life, and inspire fresh ardor to go bravely on the way. When we are in the midst of these good and honest faces transformed by Christian influences, we read there confidence and love, and thank the good God who has made the large family of Val-des-Bois.” Such are the experiences there obtained, as if to complete those of the Cercle Montparnasse.

Alone among the many excellent men who, after the war and Commune, arose to attempt some means of healing the internal wounds of France, the members of the Œuvre Ouvrière took a solemn engagement, the terms of which were marked out with precision. Each member affixes his signature to an individual and public act of devoted adhesion to the doctrines defined by the Syllabus of the Errors of Modern Society. Preserved, therefore, from the liberalism which in reality puts oppression into the hands of the strongest, and the socialism which demands it for the masses, they will pursue more efficaciously than either of these the vindication of the popular interests, such as the due observance of the Sunday and the protection of the family and home, and, guided by grace and supported by prayer, will find Christian solutions for all the social questions of labor.

The work of the Catholic circles has set on foot a periodical for the study and discussion of these questions—namely, the review which borrows its title from one of the principles of the work: L’Association Catholique. It is open to all questions, but not to all doctrines, for a work which, at the head of its statutes, invokes the definitions of the Catholic Church cannot admit the errors which she has condemned. It numbers among its contributors some of the best social economists and solid Christian writers of the time, and thus provides weapons of proof to the polemics of the Catholic press, besides furthering the great social effort made by the association, which now reckons three hundred circles in all parts of France.

In conclusion, we would mention that it must be borne in mind that the important part in this good work is not the exclusive institution of circles, this being only the first and one of the different forms under which the principle is brought to act. That principle is the direction and protection of the working-classes by the higher and more educated, and the association of the interests of both, as opposed to the lamentable antagonism of the same different classes which is, in our times, the great difficulty of social government and the source of increasing disorder and conflict. These associations are intended to react, by every possible means, against the erroneous social theories so numerous and so impotent for good, and to bring into practice the only true and effectual social law—namely, conformity to the social duties of Catholics. Our religion has remedies for all evils; its practice is supreme political and social wisdom, and in the alarming state of society among the working-classes there cannot be, nor ever will be, found any other course to be adopted than to return to the rules of Christian life. It is evident, then, how wide a field is opened by such a desire breaking forth in the hearts and minds of fervent Christians such as M. de Mun and his friends, and it would be impossible to show in few words all that it has produced and is producing by the grace of God; and although this work of charity has originated in France, and at present exists only in France, it may, it is to be hoped, give rise to similar laudable efforts in all countries, where also, among their associations of Catholic circles for the working-classes, shall, as in this country, be raised the labarum of Constantine and its sacred motto: “In hoc signo vinces.”

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

THE RIVER’S VOICE.

I.

Through the long hours the day’s strong life had flowed In sunshine, working good deeds silently, In clouds whose shadows set new harmony Among the hills—God’s justice’ old abode. Through mountain hollows had the wind swept down, Turning green leaves to silver in the sun, Winning the meadows in broad waves to run Where still unlevelled shone their grassy crown. The troubled river had no vision borne Of gleaming hill and tree-o’ershadowed shore; The birches, bending their lost mirror o’er, Met but the driven waves’ unwilling scorn; Yet heaven’s blue the broken waters bore, The breeze but strengthened as it hurried o’er.

II.

Lightening their labor with a careless song, Birds o’er the meadow swept with busy wing, Flashed in and out the forests’ sheltering, While clamorous council held the crickets’ throng. Swift fell the grass beneath the mower’s stroke To win its perfect ripeness ‘ere day’s end, When should, the harvest bearing, meekly bend The mild-eyed oxen ‘neath the unwieldy yoke. Broken with sound was even the noonday rest— Shrill-piping locust called imperiously, Impetuous bee proclaimed its industry, And blue-mailed flies pursued an endless quest; Only from throbbing river rose no song Blending its music with life’s murmuring throng.

III.

Day closed, and busy life lay down to rest. A shade that moved not held in cold embrace The yielding meadows and the hills’ calm face, About whose silence burned the cloudless west. No leafy murmur rose from darkening wood, Hushed the pure gladness of the robins’ trill; Called from low covert some lone whip-poor-will Only to heighten eve’s still solitude. The wind asleep, the quiet waters bore Vision of sky and mountains’ deepening shade, And touch of bending birches, softly laid, As the still stream gave back their glance once more. Clear, through the silence, drifted rippling tones— The patient river singing to the stones.

IV.

So, through the day, had flowed the river’s song, So borne the stream its burden of strong life Spite of its troubled waters’ windy strife— Heaven in its breast—and, as it sped along, Bearing its loyal service to the sea, Praising the stones that gave it voice to sing, With constant sweetness, whose soft murmuring, Unwearying ever in its melody, Was hidden in life’s song that filled the day With chords confused of labor manifold. Only with evening’s peaceful skies of gold Came the lost music of the river’s lay— Like some brave life whose sweetness but is known When holy silence doth world-sounds dethrone.

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

PAPAL ELECTIONS.

I.

The succession of the Roman pontiffs rests on the word of God; other lines of princes may fail, their line shall last until the end of the world. Still, although there will ever be a series of legitimate successors in the Papacy, the manner of succession has varied, being left to human prudence, which accommodates itself to times and places, yet ever under an overruling Providence that directs to its own ends no less the vices than the virtues of men.

The election of a pope is the most important event that takes place in the world. It affects immediately several hundred millions of Catholics in their dearest hopes of religion, and it touches indirectly the interests of all other people on the earth besides. In the pope the world receives a vicar of Christ, a successor of St. Peter, and an infallible judge in matters of faith and morals. The Papacy was always conferred regularly by way of election—from the chief of the apostles, chosen by our Lord himself, to Pius IX., now reigning, who was selected by the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church on the 17th of June, 1846. Between these there have been two hundred and sixty popes, if we follow the number given by the Gerarchia Cattolica, which is published annually at Rome.

On the 25th of July, 1876, our Holy Father, in a discourse to the students of the several colleges in Rome subject to the Propaganda, took occasion to speak quite earnestly of attempts that were being made in Italy to unsettle the minds of Catholics on papal elections by teaching that they were originally popular ones, and that the natural right of the laity in them (which, it was asserted, had been exercised without question for twelve hundred years) was arbitrarily and unlawfully taken away by Pope Alexander III. The errors of this new schismatical party may be reduced to two points—viz., that the share which the people were once usually allowed to take in the election of sacred ministers was a right and not a privilege accorded by the visible head of the church to ages of faith and fervor; and that Alexander III. deprived the Romans of this right in the election of their chief pastor.

Let us state, in the first place, that it is heretical to maintain that the laity have a strict—i.e., inherent or divine—right to elect their pastors, and historically false to assert that such a right was ever allowed by the rulers of the church or was ever exercised by the Christian people. The authorities to confirm our statement are so numerous as to cause almost an embarras de richesses. Besides the great collections which are the common sources of ecclesiastical erudition—the Fathers, the councils, annals, papal bulls; the Bollandists, and particularly, as regards papal elections, the Propylæum ad septem tomos Maji; the works of Thomassin, Gretser, Bellarmine, and others—we may cite here Selvaggio’s Antiquitatum Christianarum Institutiones, lib. i. par. i. cap. xxi.; Mamacchi’s Origines et Antiquitates Christianæ, tom. iv. lib. iv.; and Colenzio’s Dissertationi intorno varie Controversie di Storia ed Archeologia Ecclesiastica, diss. vi. Del preteso dritto del popolo cristiano nell’ clezione dei Sacri Ministri.

The earliest manner of electing the popes was by the votes of the Roman clergy cast in the presence of the faithful, who assisted as witnesses to the godliness of the subject proposed, and to testify that besides his personal merits he was an acceptable person on account, perhaps, of his birth, his nationality, his appearance, or of some other adventitious circumstance which enhanced his popularity with the great body of the people, and would cause him, also, to be looked upon with less disfavor by them who are without.[114] Although these elections belonged to the clergy and laity of the Roman Church—or we should say, rather, to the higher clergy and the representatives of the laity—the relative rights or parts of each class of electors were not apparently determined by express enactment, but upon grounds of common sense and equity; such, for instance, as that Episcopus deligatur, plebe præsente, quæ singulorum vitam plenissime norit, et uniuscujusque actum de ejus conversatione prospexit,[115] or that Nullus invitis detur episcopus.[116] Bellarmine,[117] Sixtus Senensis,[118] Petrus de Marca,[119] and Thomassin[120] prove that the people’s part in such elections was more perfunctory than real, since testimony of a man’s good repute could be otherwise obtained, and that even an expression of preference was not always heeded; as we learn from the same Pope Celestine, who wrote to the bishops of Apulia and Calabria: Docendus est populus, non sequendus; nosque si nesciunt, eosquid liceat quidve non liceat, commonere non his consensum præbere debemus.[121] The Roman people, then, did not and could not have, except by usurpation and abuse, a decisive voice in the election of the pope; for such an act is by God’s ordinance placed beyond the jurisdiction of the laity.

After the martyrdom of St. Fabian, in January, A.D. 250, the Holy See remained vacant for a year and a half, until in the month of June, 251, Cornelius was raised to that post of perilous dignity under a tyrant like Decius, who had declared that he would sooner see a new pretender to the empire than another bishop of Rome. This election, although made almost unanimously by all orders, gave rise to the first schism, because Novatian, who headed the rigorous party in the affair of the Lapsi, was consecrated bishop and set himself up as anti-pope. We have an invaluable testimony to the election of St. Cornelius from the pen of St. Cyprian: Factus est autem Cornelius episcopus de Dei et Christi ejus judicio, de clericorum pæne omnium testimonio, de plebis, quæ tunc adfuit, suffragio et de sacerdotum antiquorum et bonorum virorum collegio, cum nemo ante se factus esset, cum Fabiani locus id est cum locus Petri et gradus cathedræ sacerdotalis vacaret.[122] From this passage of the great Bishop of Carthage we can obtain, says Baronius,[123] a tolerably good idea of a papal election in the early ages. Prayers were first offered up to God to obtain his assistance in making a choice; the desire of the faithful, or rather of their representatives, and such testimony to the worth of the subjects proposed as they were prepared to give was heard; the wish of the Roman clergy, and their willing assent to the proceedings, were inquired into and sought; and after maturely weighing the for and against, the bishops of the vicinity, with any others in communion with the Holy See who happened to be in Rome at the time, went into executive session and gave the decisive votes—in commitiis suffragia ferebant. With regard to those among the laity who took part in these elections, we must observe that in the beginning, as long as the majority of Christians was composed of persons who had embraced the faith from pure and unworldly motives, whose aim was to behold the church prosperous and glorious, and whose charity, being yet warm, sought not their own end but that which is another’s,[124] the whole body of Christians who had reached mature years and belonged to that sex which alone had a voice in the church[125] gave their testimony and assent in favor of that one whom it was proposed to elect;[126] but the evils of anything like a popular election in a great city were so manifest[127] that attempts were soon made to leave the choice of such on the part both of clergy and laity—but earlier in the case of the latter order—to a select body or committee, a general suffrage being gradually superseded by the votes of approval given by the rich only and the high in station.

We find, perhaps, a germ of this even in the earliest times.[128] The Council of Laodicea (A.D. 365) clearly desired that the choice should be made by some definitely-organized body, and not by a mere mass-meeting; St. Leo and the Roman council of A.D. 442, and again the former in Epist. lxxxix.cvi., expressly mention the “Honorati,” the magnates at such elections.[129] The influence of the principal personages in a city was not to be ignored through the clamor of those who too often formed only a mob.[130] A letter of Pope Cornelius to Fabius, Bishop of Antioch, has fortunately been preserved by Eusebius,[131] which gives us the exact number of the Roman clergy of every grade, and a clue[132] to what may have been the Christian population of Rome, in the middle of the third century. According to these precious statistics, there were then belonging to the Roman clergy 46 priests, 7 deacons, 7 subdeacons, 42 acolytes, 52 exorcists, readers, and ostiarii. Fifteen hundred widows and orphans were provided for by the church, whose children composed an immense population in the capital of the empire. Hence we may rest assured that deliberations for the election of the Roman pontiff could not have been open to all of either clergy or laity, but must necessarily, in the interests of good order, and by reason of the small size of places of public meetings then possessed by the Christians, have been confined to a select number.

The ancient records of the Roman Church reaching back to the beginning of the early middle ages, which have been published by Mabillon and Galletti, show us its clergy divided into three distinct classes—viz., priests, dignitaries, and inferior ministers. The priests were the seven cardinal suburbican bishops and the twenty-eight cardinal-priests; the dignitaries were the archdeacon and the seven palatine judges (prothonotaries-apostolic); the inferior ministers were the subdeacons, acolytes, and notaries without office at court. The laity was likewise divided into three classes—viz., citizens, soldiers, and commoners; i.e., the nobility, the army, and the Third Estate.[133]

After the death of Pope Zozimus, on the 26th of December, 418, a majority of the clergy and people elected the cardinal-priest Boniface to succeed him. A serious dispute immediately arose. Eulalius, the archdeacon, who, as such, had been practically the most important personage of the Holy See after the pontiff himself, and felt indignant at having been passed over in the election, held possession of the Lateran Palace, where he was chosen pope by a few of the clergy, to whose faction, however, all the deacons and three bishops belonged.[134] The fear of future contests suggested to Pope Boniface I., who is described by Anastasius as unambitious, of mild character; and devoted to good works, to obtain from the Emperor Honorius, in the year 420, a rescript by which it was decreed that, in the contingency of a double election, neither rival should be pope, but that the clergy and people should proceed to another choice. The decree was almost textually inserted in the canon law.[135] This difference between St. Boniface and Eulalius, or rather the latter’s schism, gave occasion to the first interference of the secular arm in the election of the Roman pontiffs. St. Hilary, who was elected in the year 461, convened a council of forty-eight bishops at Rome, and, among other provisions for filling worthily the Holy See, declared that no pope should ever appoint his own successor. Despite this recent enactment, Boniface II.—in whose favor, however, it must be said that he sought to preclude, as even a greater evil than a passing violation of the canons, the threatened interference of the Gothic king, who wanted to put a partisan on the papal throne—called a council at St. Peter’s in the year 531, and there designated the celebrated deacon Vigilius as his coadjutor with future succession. Subsequently, repenting his action, he called another council, and with his own hand burned the paper appointing him.[136]

Although the actual naming of his successor by the pope has never been tolerated, there have been several, and some very opportune, cases in which a pope on the point of death has recommended a particular person, more or less efficaciously, to the body of electors as one well fitted to succeed to the vacant throne. This was done by St. Gregory VII., who proposed three candidates to the cardinals—namely, Desiderius, Cardinal-Abbot of Monte Casino; Otho, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia; and Hugh, Archbishop of Lyons—and particularly recommended the election of the first as the only one of the three who was in Italy at the time. Desiderius became Pope Victor III. Other similar, but not always equally successful, recommendations were made by popes of that era. In order finally to put the strongest official check upon the election of his own successor by a pope, Pius IV., after exposing in consistory his age and infirmities, reminded the cardinals that he was well aware how under his predecessor, Paul IV., the question was mooted whether this could be done, and that some theologians and cardinals held to the affirmative,[137] but that he would pronounce in the negative, and intended to issue a bull—as in fact he did, on the 22d of September, 1561[138]—declaring that no pope could do so, even with the consent of the Sacred College. His immediate predecessor had reaffirmed in 1558 an ordinance increasing the penalties of its violation, which had originally been passed over a thousand years before by Pope Symmachus in a council of seventy-two bishops convened at Rome in the year 499, forbidding, under pain of excommunication and loss of all dignities, to treat of a successor during the lifetime of the reigning pontiff.[139] From this we learn how some of the best and greatest popes have tried to frame such wise provisions as might assure an untainted election to the Papacy; yet they could not succeed in every case, because even the most stringent laws must be well executed to be effective, and must find docile subjects to obey them. The Romans do certainly appear to have been a stiff-necked people during many generations; and while we think it ungenerous continually to throw in their teeth the wretched opinion St. Bernard must have had of them, as we see by his treatise De Consideratione, addressed to Pope Eugene III., and hardly fair in the annalist Muratori to transfer so much of the blame for factious elections from the German emperors to the Roman populace, the least that even their best friend can honestly say is that they might have done better.[140]

The election of the pope, says Cardinal Borgia,[141] was perfectly free during the first four centuries, being made by the clergy in presence of the people; but in process of time, as the papal dignity increased in wealth and splendor of temporal authority, it often became an object of human ambition, of which secular rulers were not slow to avail themselves, that by iniquitous bargains and preconcerted plans they might bind, if possible, the priesthood to the empire, and derive the immense advantage of the spiritual power administered by a subject or a dependant. The first instance of direct interference by the state in a papal election—for the decision in the case of Boniface and the anti-pope was an arbitration invited by the church—appears towards the close of the fifth century. Odoacer, a Gothic chief of the tribe of the Heruli, having deposed Romulus Augustulus, in whom the Western Empire came to an end, was proclaimed King of Italy, rejecting the imperial style of Cæsar and Augustus for a title which he expressly created for himself. It would seem—although even this is not beyond dispute—that Pope Simplicius had requested Odoacer, in whom the powers of the state were now vested, to stand ready, in the common interests of order and good government, to repress the civil commotions which he foresaw were likely to arise after his death on the election of a successor. However this may be, the king went beyond a merely repressive measure, and, pretending that Simplicius had commissioned him to do so, published an edict on the pope’s death in 483, forbidding the clergy and people of Rome to elect a successor without his intervention or that of his lieutenant, the prefect of the prætorium. When, therefore, the elective assembly met in St. Peter’s to fill the vacant see, Basil the patrician came forward and claimed in his master’s name, and by virtue of the dying wish and even command of Simplicius, the right of regulating its acts and of confirming the election it might make. This pretension was firmly repelled, and, disregarding the tyrant, Felix III. was elected on March 8, 483. Baronius is of opinion that Simplicius never addressed such a requisition to the king, but that the story of his having done so was fabricated a few years later by the party of Lawrence, the anti-pope. The document purporting to emanate from Simplicius was rejected by a Roman council in 502 without further investigating its genuineness, than by exposing that it lacked the pope’s signature, and was in any case opposed to the sacred canons and ipso facto null and void.[142] On November 22, 498, St. Symmachus was elected pope, but a minority set up a certain Lawrence, and both were consecrated on the same day. Civil strife was imminent, and, although the most regular mode of action would have been to call a council of the provincial bishops, delay was too dangerous, and the prompt interference of Theodoric was asked and submitted to.

Although this monarch was an Arian, he had protected the Catholics on many occasions, and had for prime minister the celebrated Cassiodorus, whose virtues, justice, and wisdom were renowned throughout Italy. Such considerations as these must have led the Roman clergy to submit a purely ecclesiastical matter to the court of Ravenna. On the advice of his minister the king decided that the one who had been first elected and had received the greatest number of votes should be recognized as the legitimate pope. Both conditions were verified in Symmachus. His first pontifical act was to summon a council in the basilica of St. Peter on March 1, 499, to regulate more effectively the mode of future elections. Seventy-two bishops, sixty-seven priests, and five deacons composed the council. Three canons were drawn up relative to this matter. By the first it was ordained that if any clergyman be convicted of having given or promised his suffrage for the pontificate to any aspirant during the pope’s lifetime he shall be deposed from his office; by the second it was provided that if the pope die suddenly, and a unanimous election cannot be reached, the candidate receiving a majority of the votes shall be declared elected; by the third immunity from prosecution was promised to accomplices who should reveal the intrigues of their principals to obtain an unfair election.[143]

Theodoric the Goth, having once been appealed to, now thought to take the initiative in the election of a successor to John I., whom he had left to die of starvation and neglect on his return from Constantinople, where he had spoken rather according to his conscience than in favor of the Arians, as the king expected. On his recommendation St. Felix IV. was elected pope on the 12th of July, 526. The Roman clergy and senate protested against this stretch of royal authority, although they had no objection to the nominee, who was simple, mild, and charitable. The affair was not adjusted until a compromise was effected under Athalaric, whereby the Roman clergy by their votes, and the Roman people by their assent, were to elect the Roman pontiff, who would then be confirmed by the king as a matter of course. The popes were elected in this way until the extinction of the Gothic kingdom of Italy in the person of Teias, who was defeated and killed by Narses, general of Justinian, in the year 553. The Greek emperor, having recovered his sway in Italy, continued the abuse, to which the Romans had submitted only through fear of the barbarians, and arrogated to himself and successors the right of confirming the election of the pope. Hence, as Baronius remarks, arose the prudent custom at Rome of electing to the Papacy those members of the clergy who had been Apocrisiarii—i.e., agents or nuncios of the Holy See at Constantinople, where it was presumed they had won the favor of the court and become versed in matters of state. Thus the right of confirmation was reduced in practice to a mere formality, although in principle ever so wrong. In this way were elected Vigilius in 550, St. Gregory I. in 590, Sabinian in 604, Boniface III. in 607, and others who were personally known to the Byzantine rulers.

Avarice, or a love of money under some pretext or another, was a besetting sin of the Greeks, and from it arose a new and more degrading condition imposed on papal elections. The imperial sanction was given only on payment by the Holy See of a tax of 3,000 golden solidi, a sum equal to thirteen thousand dollars of our money.[144] The Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, at the request of the papal legates to the Fourth General Council of Constantinople in 681, exempted the Holy See from the further payment of the tax. He was moved to do so by the sanctity of St. Agatho; but he still retained the assumed right of forbidding the pope’s consecration until his election had been confirmed. A few years later, however, he granted a constitution to Benedict II., his personal friend, and to whose guardianship he left his two sons, Justinian (II.) and Heraclius, in which he for ever abrogated this arbitrary law. The concession was ungratefully revoked by Justinian; and Conon, who was elected on October 21, 686, was obliged to ask the consent of the exarch of Ravenna, viceroy of the emperor, to his consecration. This necessity generally occasioned a delay of from six weeks to two months. The exarchs of Ravenna, having command of the troops and the key to the imperial treasury in the west, felt themselves in a position to abuse authority and try to set up creatures of their own in Rome. Often did the Roman clergy and many popes protest against their irregular acts. The choice of Pelagius II., in 578, was not submitted to the customary ratification, because the Lombards around Rome had cut off all communication with the outer world.

The historian Novaes says that although the Holy See resisted the interference of secular princes, yet the turbulent spirit of the Romans, often stirred up by unscrupulous ministers or by the sovereigns themselves, obliged the popes to have recourse to these same princes to maintain order at their consecration. Nothing, we think, better confirms the necessity of a temporal dominion whereby the popes can exclude the exercise of foreign influence in Rome, and themselves vindicate the character of good government for which they are responsible. Papal elections were of an absolutely peaceful nature only after Goths, Lombards, Greeks, and Germans ceased to support an armed force in Rome or its vicinity. Guarantees are deceitful; and a mere personal sovereignty of the pope without a territory attached would be insufficient to assure the independence of the Holy See.

A very remarkable law found its way into Gratian’s decree, under the name of Pope Stephen, by which it is ordained that the newly-elected pontiff shall be consecrated in presence of the imperial ambassadors.[145] The learned are divided in their opinion about which pope passed this law. Baronius, Papebroch, Natalis Alexander, and others attribute it to Stephen IV., elected in 816; Pagi inclines to Stephen VI., alias VII.; Mansi to Deusdedit, elected in 615; while some think that it belongs to John IX., because it is found among the acts of a council held by him in 898. Novaes suggests that this council may only have given a more solemn sanction to an older law. When Eugene II. was elected on the 5th of June, 824, he concerted with Lothair, son of the Emperor Louis, who had named him King of Italy and his colleague in the empire, to put a stop to cabals and disorders among the Roman people. He issued a decree enjoining upon the Roman clergy to swear fealty to the Frankish emperors, but with this significant reservation: “saving the faith that I have pledged to the successor of St. Peter”—Salva fide quam repromisi Domino Apostolico[146]—and not to consent to an uncanonical or factious election of a pope. The same pope also voluntarily offered to bind the Roman pontiffs to be consecrated in the presence of the so-called Rex Romanorum, if he were in the city, otherwise of his envoy.[147] Pagi thinks that this was done to propitiate in advance these growing monarchs of the north, and distract them from the idea of continuing the policy of the Eastern emperors, who, as we have seen, would not allow the popes to proceed to consecration until their election had been confirmed. Eugene’s act seems to us to have been a subtle stroke of diplomacy. While it flattered, by conveying the impression that the presence of Cæsar (as he was pompously called) or of his legates gave splendor and magnificence to the ceremony of consecration, it disarmed the emperor by implying the right of the popes to be consecrated at their own convenience; for if his meaning had been that the presence of the king or of his ambassadors were a necessary condition to the legality of the act, he would have deliberately placed himself and successors in the same relation to these new rulers that his predecessors had been obliged, though under protest, to assume toward the emperors of the East—which is manifestly absurd.

Nevertheless, both the Frank and Saxon emperors frequently claimed the right to something more than a mere honorary part in papal elections, which led to long years of party strife and discord between church and state. Leo IV., in 847, confirmed the decree of Eugene, although, on account of the Saracens around Rome, he was consecrated without waiting for the imperial ambassadors; and the same was the case, but without any ostensible reason, with Stephen V., alias VI. This shows that the presence of the envoys was an honorary privilege, which conferred no authority to go back of or revise the election itself, as Hadrian III., Stephen’s immediate predecessor, expressly affirmed in a decree given by Martinus Polonus,[148] Mabillon,[149] and Pagi.[150]

It is but fair to confess that this decree is not considered authentic by all; but what historical document has not been called in question by some hypercritic or other, especially in Germany? That it is not apocryphal is shown by the fact that one of Hadrian’s successors—John IX., elected in 898—annulled it in view of the peace ensured by the presence of the ambassadors, and restored the earlier ordinance of Eugene.

The text of the canon law, and especially the passage Canonico ritu et consuetudine, has been often appealed to by Cæsarists and Protestant historians, as though it demonstrated that a papal election not made according to its requirements was uncanonical and invalid. In the first place, Cardinal Garampi[151] remarks that Eugene’s decree was a personal privilege Advocatiæ given to the princes of the Carlovingian line; and in the second place Thomassin observes upon John’s decree[152] that the imperial ambassadors were not admitted to the election, but only to the subsequent consecration; that they were there to overawe the turbulent; and that in time their presence became a custom and was looked on as a part, so to speak, of the external rite of consecration. It had, besides, become so useful as a repressive measure against the enemies of the Holy See that it received the high sanction of being countenanced by the canon law itself. Pope Nicholas II., in the eleventh century, explained the text Quia Sancta in the same sense. It must be said, to the discredit of the Othos and the Henrys, that they too often slipped from the inch of privilege to the ell of (pretended) right, and went so far as to interfere in a direct and absolute sense at papal elections, intruding some less worthy subjects into the Papacy; but when once these occupied the seat of Peter they were to be recognized and respected on the same principle that the high-priests were in the irregular age of the Seleucidæ and the Romans when they sat upon the chair of Moses. Yet even the imperial influence, says Kenrick,[153] was beneficially exercised in several instances, particularly those of Clement II. and St. Leo IX. Dr. Constantine Höfler has written a work[154] replete with information about the German popes and the physical aspect, the morals, manners, and customs of the Romans in their time. Charles Hemans’ books (we cannot seriously call them works) on Ancient and Mediæval Christianity and Sacred Art in Italy, while they show considerable acquaintance with the best authorities on the subject, manifest a detestable animus against the Holy See, which shows their writer to be as great an adept in the “art of putting things” as the far more learned author of the eight-volume History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, Ferdinand Gregorovius. While the corruption of some popes and the depravity of the tenth century have been exaggerated by many historians, the condition of the Papacy at that time is certainly a warning against the interference of secular princes in the elections; for, as the great Baronius remarks (ad an. 900), Nihil penitus Ecclesiæ Romanæ contingere potest funestius, tetrius nihil atque lugubrius, quam si principes seculares in Romanorum Pontificum electiones manus immittant.[155]

In the middle of the eleventh century a movement was begun to reform the method of conducting papal elections, which eventually limited them within the legitimate circle of ecclesiastical prerogatives, totally excluding the direct influence of the inferior clergy and the aristocratic and popular element of the laity. Pope Nicholas II., having assembled a synod of one hundred and thirteen bishops in the Lateran Palace in the month of April, 1059, passed a law to the following effect: On the death of the pope the cardinal-bishops shall first meet in council and with the utmost diligence treat of a successor; they shall next take joint action with the cardinal-priests, and finally consider the wishes of the rest of the clergy and of the Roman people. If a worthy subject can be found among the members of the Roman (higher) clergy itself, he is to be preferred, otherwise a foreigner shall be elected; so that, however, the honor and regard due to our beloved son Henry, now king, and soon, God grant, to be emperor, which we have seen proper to show to him and to his successors who may personally apply for it, be not diminished. If a proper election cannot take place in Rome, it may be held anywhere else.[156] In the year 1061 another synod was held, in which it was distinctly stated that the mere fact of election in the foregoing manner placed the elect in possession of plenary apostolic authority; consequently, the emperor’s confirmation was excluded, in the sense that without it the election was invalid. From this period, although the struggle was not yet over, the Papacy was completely emancipated from any kind of subjection to the empire. Alexander II., successor to Nicholas, did not communicate his election to the court; and although St. Gregory VII., glorious Hildebrand, did do so, it was partly from prudence in view of the excitement in Germany occasioned by the setting up of the anti-pope Cadolaus in resentment for his predecessor’s neglect, and partly from his sense of honor, lest it should be thought (since he had taken a principal part in enacting the statute of Pope Nicholas) that he availed himself of an advantage which he had himself created—artfully, as suspicious-minded persons might think—in anticipation of one day ascending the papal chair. He was the last pope who ever informed the emperor of his election before proceeding to be consecrated and enthroned. The great Catholic powers still continue to exercise a measure of influence in these elections, but of a purely advisory character, except in the case of those few which enjoy the privilege of veto, or the esclusiva, as the Romans say. At the Third General Council of the Lateran, held in the year 1179 by Alexander III., a most important advance was made in the manner of holding the elections. The right of the cardinals to elect, without reference to the rest of the Roman clergy or of the people, was affirmed, and a majority of two-thirds of their votes required for a valid election. This law was readily approved by the bishops and members of the council, and incorporated in the canon law, where it is found among the decretals of Gregory IX.[157]

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

HOW STEENWYKERWOLD WAS SAVED.

I.

A few straggling lights gleamed pale and fitfully through the stormy mist as the travellers came to the foot of the principal street in Steenwykerwold on the night of December 23, 1831. The wind howled fiercely and the place was apparently deserted; no one was found to brave the force of the sleety tempest save Floog and his companion, and the weather-beaten, broken-nosed “Admiral” that once did duty as figure-head for a Baltic trader of that name, and now stood sentinel at the door of Mathias Pilzer, the innkeeper, scowling defiance at the elements. The hail had drifted and accumulated in heaps against outlying angles of walls, and filled the narrow gutters. The progress of the travellers, which the storm had impeded, was now interrupted altogether and they came to a dead halt. The prospect was indeed discouraging, and the cheerless gloom of the situation seemed to enter into the soul of the boy; for he made a sudden movement towards a street doorway which afforded a little shelter, and, pulling his woollen cap tightly down over his eyes, began to cry.

“Ferret,” said his companion, “if you don’t stop that blubbering I’ll take you back again to-morrow to paint dolls at Mme. Gemmel’s; and see,” he added somewhat more soothingly, as he caught the flicker of a candle through Pilzer’s window, “here we are at the inn.”

The Ferret, thus threatened and consoled, brushed away his tears with his sleeve, emitting a muffled grunt. He had commenced with a howl, but, as if finding the pitch too high, he lowered it suddenly and ended with a sort of guttural, fractured sob; then seizing the other by the skirt, in this order of procession they reached Pilzer’s.

Boreas, Euroclydon, Eolus! whew, you gusty deities, your rude familiarities are the reverse of endearing, and we, alas! have not discovered the secret of propitiating you. Yet you deepen the enchanted halo encircling the ruddy fireside by the very force of contrast, as you wail dismally at the door, rattle the window-pane, or shriek down the chimney in your baffled efforts to effect an entrance.

The fatigue of their journey was soon forgotten by the wayfarers, their misery giving way to the placid emotions caused by an anticipated enjoyment of the warmth and well-earned repose so near at hand.

There was much to study in these two, because there was so little to discover. The elder was a man whose appearance guarded with sphinx-like obstinacy the secret of his age. He might be thirty or he might be sixty—no one could tell, and it was abundantly evident that few cared. He was tall and spare, with features which, if remarkable at all, were rendered negatively so by the absence of all salient characteristics, except a certain peculiarity about the eyes, one of which was brown, and the other, the left, a weak, watery gray. Such was Floog, the only name by which he was known; if he ever had any other it is buried with him.

The other member of the duo, of whom you have had a glimpse already, was nicknamed “The Ferret,” by what authority I cannot say—probably according to the accommodating law of contrariety, for there was nothing pertaining to him at all suggestive of that sprightly little quadruped. The ideal curve of beauty was straightened and flattened into obtuse angles in his contour in a way to make old Apelles or Phidias lament, however prized he might be as a subject for the pencil of Teniers. His features, too, were wanting in the seraphic beam of Fra Bartolomeo’s cherubs. Nevertheless, in form and feature he was sufficiently quaint to make one laugh at and love him. At a little distance he resembled a well-stuffed pillow on short legs. On closer view a head was discernible, something like those sometimes seen on old-fashioned door-knockers. Large, puffy cheeks, half-hiding a pretty little turn-up nose, a pair of small but bright blue eyes, no eyebrows, but an enormous mouth, and still more enormous chin—these belonged to a face in hue and texture very like putty, and formed altogether a combination which, if not very beautiful, had this counterbalancing attraction: that it was somewhat out of the commonplace.

But no delineation of pen or pencil could do justice to his expression. The wells of laughter and of tears, assuredly close beneath the surface, were for ever commingling in his organization; and so evenly were the external symptoms balanced that my grandaunt, a close observer, who had seen him often (and from whom, by the way, we had most of these details), could not for the life of her tell whether he was going to laugh or to cry at times when, in fact, he had no desire or intention to do either, so indeterminate was his habitual and passive expression.

The wooden hands of Pilzer’s Dutch clock pointed twenty-five minutes past eleven as these itinerants entered. Mine host was half-sitting, half-reclining in a large, square, straw-bottomed chair just inside of and facing the glass door that separated the travellers’ parlor from the front part of his premises. On hearing them enter he slowly roused from his semi-lethargy, and, taking his long pipe from between his lips, eyed the new-comers with a dubious glance, as if not quite satisfied whether they were customers or cut-throats, when Floog, drawing nearer to the glass door, brought him within range of that gentleman’s mild eye and reassured him. Floog on his part hesitated with an embarrassed air, and looked cautiously around, as if he had got into a coffin-maker’s shop by mistake. Presently he plucked up courage, and beckoning The Ferret, who stood sniffling at the front door, to follow him, advanced and knocked timidly at the dividing door.

The presiding genius of the “Admiral” was a very Machiavel of innkeepers. An experience of twenty-seven years had taught him a system of deportment toward, and treatment of, his customers measured and regulated—a sort of mental gradient, of which the gauge was the prospective length of his guest’s purse; and, to do him justice, he seldom erred in his calculations. On opening the door and confronting the strangers it was plainly visible that he was about to commence at zero in his welcome; for there was little prospect of pecuniary reward in the appearance of the man, his speculative gains being rendered still more doubtful by the additional allowance of a liberal discount for the appearance of the boy. His first word of chilly greeting removed all misgiving at one fell swoop; for, true to his system, at zero he began.

“What do you want at this time o’ night?” Just then he caught sight of a large portmanteau or travelling-wallet which Floog on entering had deposited on the floor. It was a favorable diversion, for no sooner had Pilzer espied it than his scale ascended two or three degrees, and, without waiting for an answer to his first inquiry, he added in a slightly altered tone: “What can I do for you?”

“I want lodging for me and my nephew,” said Floog bravely, and with a cheerful disregard of syntax. “We can pay for it; we’re not tramps.”

“This is a lovely night, and a pretty hour of this lovely night to come looking for lodging,” said the innkeeper, with facile irony, at which he was an adept; “but if ye are respectable, and can prove it, and let me know what brings ye here when all honest folk is abed, I’ll see what I can do.”

If Floog considered the last part of this speech with reference to its applicability to the maker of it, he kept his thoughts discreetly to himself.

“We are strangers in the town. We arrived from Arnhem an hour ago, and this is the only public-house we can find open. This boy’s father, Mynheer Underdonk, the merchant, died in Amsterdam last Thursday, and they sent me a letter to bring the boy, and make no delay, as they want to make a settlement for him. You see,” he went on, growing confidential, “my brother left home eight years ago and no one knew what became of him. His poor forsaken wife died, and I took care of the orphan.”

All this he uttered rapidly, with few pauses, as if he had learnt it by heart. So he had. Alas! poor Floog, thou wert no hero, not even morally; but shall we, entrenched in a castle of virtue, thrown stones at thee? No, albeit there was no more truth in thy story than suited thy own purposes.

II.

The Ferret was of ancient and noble lineage. There, that secret is out. Frank like himself, his historian scorns the subterfuge of keeping it till the end for the purpose of giving éclat to his exit, as they do in romances and on the stage. He was descended from Adam and Eve. This I am prepared to maintain in the face of the world, learned or unlearned. If any one wishes to be considered as descended from an oyster or an atom, we who are not so ambitious shall not cavil at their genealogy, but hope they find their protoplasms subjects of pleasant reflection. As for my hero, he was of a different breed. Whether the bars in his escutcheon were dexter or sinister did not concern him and need not concern us. Heraldry, in fact, disowned him; therein, however, heraldry was no worse than his own father. In his tenth year he was taken from the Asylum for Foundlings and indentured to Mme. Gemmel, who kept a manufactory of toys at Arnhem. On the day of his departure he went out into the large paved yard surrounded by an unbroken line of low stone buildings—his well-known and familiar playground, the only Arcadia he had ever known. Now that he was to bid it and his childish companions a long good-by, he felt irresolute and the farewell stuck in his throat. He tried hard to be brave, while little Hans, his inseparable playmate and bedfellow, stood regarding him with a sullen scowl, as if he considered it a personal insult to be thus suddenly left alone. The poor Ferret was entirely at his wits’ end and quite dumbfounded. Another look at Hans broke the unutterable spell; for he saw stealing down the chubby cheek of that smirched cherub a big tear, marking its course by a light streak on his smutty little face. Gulping down his sobs and forcing back the tears that now suffused his own eyes, he laid his hand lovingly on the shoulder of little Hans, and, bending down until their faces were on a level, he looked at him, and said in a voice broken by varying emotions and the poignant sorrow of childhood:

“Don’t—don’t cry, Hans; and when—and when I earn a hundred guilders I will come back for you, and we will have lots of puddin’ and new clothes, and I will buy you a pair of new skates.”

Then taking from his trousers’ pocket all his treasures—a large piece of gingerbread and a small old knife with a broken blade—he pressed his little friend to take them, forcing them into his unresisting hand, looked around once by way of final adieu, and ran through the passage that led to the front hall, where Mme. Gemmel’s man was waiting for him, and left poor little Hans bellowing as if his heart would break.

The moral supervision exercised by Mme. Gemmel over her new charge was radical. Its cardinal principles were, first, the duty of obedience and gratitude, and, secondly, the healthfulness of abstinence. These principles she inculcated by precept and enforced in practice by prescribing due penalties for their infraction. The good lady taught her apprentice, by every means within her power, that his life-long devotion to her service would ill repay her for the inestimable blessing she conferred in removing him from the Foundling Asylum and taking him under her own fostering roof. She was mindful of his health, too, for among her sanitary tenets was one to the effect that butter is injurious to immature years; and this she was in the habit of persistently enforcing for the special benefit of her charge. Inasmuch as temptation is dangerous, especially to the weak, she prudently adopted preventive measures by removing at once the temptation and the butter whenever he appeared at meals. So well did he profit by her discipline that after six months’ involuntary practice of it he determined to run away.

In spite of these drawbacks, in spite of the discipline and the dry bread, he made famous progress at his trade, and felt an artist’s glow of enthusiasm whenever he finished to his satisfaction the staring blue eyes and carmine cheeks of his waxen beauties. He felt, Pygmalion like, able to fall in love with them, could he but find the Promethean secret—not, indeed, that his thoughts ever took the classic shape, for he had never heard of the old Grecian fable; these were only the vague and undefined feelings of his heart. True it is he had little else to love, so that his affections, being narrowed down to the dolls, increased for them in the ratio that it diminished for their owner.

Yet there was one golden hour in his leaden existence—the hour of nine post meridian, when he was dismissed to bed. Although behind her back he sometimes made faces at madame, and even went so far as to set up an image of her for the perverse pleasure of sticking pins in it, he forgave all at bedtime. After saying his prayers he would, with all the ecstasy of which his phlegmatic nature was capable, jump into his straw pallet, bound to solve an abstruse but agreeable problem which had engaged his thoughts nightly since his advent in his new home—viz., What to do with his first hundred guilders when he had earned them? But he never got much beyond the disposal of a twentieth part of the sum. That much he generously devoted to little Hans; but before he could decide whether the latter should have the skates, a miniature ship, a new jacket, or unlimited gingerbread, or all of these good things together, his fancies and finances became entangled. Hans’ face shone with guilders; gingerbread sailors, in blue jackets, floated serenely away in a big ship till quite out of sight; anon they trooped rapidly past his entranced eyes, now scurrying all together, now slowly one by one; then there was a blank; again starting into view, the last fleeting image swept softly down the dim vista, fading—fading—gone! and he was a king in happy oblivion.

Thus time passed tardily enough with The Ferret, the all-absorbing thought of his waking hours now being how to escape.

Among the customers of Mme. Gemmel was one who had had several business transactions with her. This was a peripatetic showman, the delight of gaping children at country fairs. His entertainment consisted of music (mangled fragments of opera airs on a weazened key-bugle) and his wonderful and versatile puppets. These latter, when they had become too well known as hunters and huzzars, he would transform into knights and ladies, or Chinese mandarins, as circumstances might require or fancy suggest. The transforming process was very simple; it consisted merely of supplying them with new costumes and coats—of paint—at Mme. Gemmel’s.

This worthy was none other than our friend Floog. Even such as he have their place in art. They are pioneers who lead to the base of an æsthetic temple whose dome is elevated in circling azure, surrounded by golden stars.

In the practice of his art, The Ferret it was on whom now devolved the duty of transforming Floog’s automatons and kindred jobs. Whether owing to the satisfaction he gave, or to the occult, and often unaccountable, influences governing our sympathies and antipathies, certain it is that Floog had taken a violent fancy to him, and determined to entice him away at the first opportunity. The showman’s moral sensibilities were, as has already been intimated, somewhat flexible, and yielded too readily, I am afraid, to the exigencies of the situation.

Alas! how rigid are the inexorable verities of history. I cannot picture him as I would—not even as a half-formed Bayard, who, if not quite sans peur, might be at least sans reproche; but as I had no hand in the formation of his character, I am not the apologist of his delinquencies. Did he recognize the violation of a right in his contemplated procedure? Oh! no; he placed his motive on a high moral pedestal, triumphant, unassailable—the interests of humanity, the welfare of the boy. He never told us how far his own welfare entered into his calculations. He felt, therefore, no scrupulous qualms as to the rectitude of his determination. What puzzled him was the how. Of that, however, he had no notion. Indeed, his thoughts upon the subject, so far from assuming a practical shape, were rather the pleasant emotions experienced in the contemplation of a cherished project, leaving out of sight the means of its attainment, even the possibility of its realization. A few days previous to his appearance in Steenwijkerwold he left his puppets to undergo the customary metamorphosis at Mme. Gemmel’s, his head full of the pleasing fancy of securing The Ferret as a travelling companion and assistant. More than all this, he came to regard him with a rapture akin to that of an enamored lover for the mistress of his heart.

The short winter day was closing in misty and chill around Arnhem. Away in the northwest the sun was setting through yellowish fog into the gray cold sea; the restless wail of the wind was heard now and again, presaging a storm. It was about half-past four o’clock in the afternoon of this same day that Floog, undaunted by the threatening aspect of the weather, and pensively whistling his musical programme by way of rehearsal, arrived at Mme. Gemmel’s. He found, upon inquiry, that his puppets were not quite finished. Wouldn’t he wait? She expected them ready in a few minutes, and escorted him to the workshop in the third story, where they found The Ferret as busily engaged as his chill nose, his numb fingers, and the light of two tallow candles would allow. His mistress, after an authoritative command to her subordinate to make haste and finish his work, went down-stairs, leaving Floog to direct the work as he might see fit. The Ferret was shy by nature and by reason of his forced seclusion, and though the interruption disconcerted him a good deal, he made pretence of continuing labor without appearing to notice his visitor, whom he had several times seen, but never spoken to. Floog, after eyeing him a moment, asked if he was cold. The answer, though not quite courtly, was sufficiently explicit: “Yes, I am.” “Why don’t you work down-stairs in the back room, where ’tis warmer?” A frown passed over the boy’s face, but he made no reply. “Here,” said Floog in a kindlier tone, and, taking from his pocket a handful of lozenges, offered them to The Ferret, who hesitated a moment, looking at the donor, and then took them with a “Thank you, sir.” In that moment the child’s heart was gained and a deep sympathy established between the two, reciprocal, self-satisfying.

Floog was no more a diplomat than a hero; for his next proposal was illogical, and would have been startling but for the peculiar circumstances that rendered it acceptable. “Run away from Mme. Gemmel and come with me,” he said. The Ferret did not hesitate this time, but answered eagerly: “I will; I hate Mme. Gemmel. Let us go away now.” This ready acquiescence staggered Floog, who, not being prepared for it, was at a loss how to proceed. Gathering all his faculties to meet the requirements of the crisis, he tried to devise some means of escape for The Ferret; but the more he pondered the more undecided he became, till at length, in sheer desperation, he said: “When Mme. Gemmel sends you home with the puppets to-night we will go away together.” With that he hurried down-stairs, paid for the puppets, asked Mme. Gemmel if she would send them to his lodging, stating that he would want them for an exhibition early the next day. This the obliging lady promised to do, whereupon Floog took his departure, his agitated manner escaping the notice of the doll-maker, who, although she had the vision of a lynx for money, to everything into which money did not enter as a factor was as blind as Cupid. Less than two hours after The Ferret, Floog, and the precious puppets were all in the mail-coach, rattling along for freedom and Steenwykerwold.

As not unfrequently happens, mere chance afforded a better opportunity than elaborately-concocted plans would have done; for when, by appointment, The Ferret came, Floog precipitately, and without taking time to think of their destination, hurried with him to the coach-yard, where he learned that the night coach going north was ready to start, and secured passage for Steenwykerwold, whither Mme. Gemmel would be little likely to follow. So they arrived in the manner already related, amid hail and storm.

III.

After a storm comes a calm. Who was it that enshrined that remark in the sanctity of a proverb? This is like saying that day comes after night—a truism that most of us will believe without the aid of any proverbial philosophy. If the calm comes not after the storm, a person disposed to be critical might ask, When does it come? We will leave the solution of this problem to interpreters as profound as the proverb-maker, and follow the fortunes of Floog and The Ferret.

Calm had succeeded storm as they turned their backs to the hostelry of Mijnheer Pilzer and bade adieu to its professional hospitalities. Not the listless calm of summer skies, of dreamy fields and waters. Clear and cutting, the icy air of morning quickened the nerves and caused the blood in livelier currents to tingle in the veins, so that even the sluggish Ferret, wincing, heightened his pace to a sturdy trot to keep abreast of Floog. The sun was up, burnishing the chimney-pots and sharp gables of the tall, bistre-colored houses, and converting into rare jewelry the fantastic frost-wreaths that adorned their eaves. Early as it was, the Nieu Strasse was astir with pedestrians. The shop-windows, already unshuttered, were decorated gaily with ivy and palm. Unusual bustle and activity were everywhere discernible; and why not? Was it not Christmas Eve and fête-day at Van der Meer Castle?

It was a beautiful and time-honored custom at Van der Meer Castle on every Christmas Eve to give a party to all the children of the neighborhood. Rich and poor, lofty and lowly, all were welcome. But although all were welcome, all did not come. The children of the rich, and those who had the means of indulging in the season’s festivities at home, mostly kept aloof, or were made to keep aloof, lest they should incur by implication a suspicion of that fearful malady, poverty; for the light of nineteenth-century civilization had penetrated the by-ways of the world, and even Steenwykerwold had caught some of its oblique rays—those that distort instead of illuminating, by which poverty is made to appear as the sum of all social crime. Well, then, the poor children for many years had had the party and banquet all to themselves, and such, in fact, was the desire of their present entertainer.

The proprietor of the place and inheritor of its wealth and traditions was Leopoldine Van der Meer, who had been left an orphan in early childhood. I saw her once, and can never forget that sweet, serene face; for it is ineffaceably stamped on my memory. Although time had then added another score of years to her term of life, and sprinkled with silver the bands of dark-brown hair smoothed on either side of her placid forehead, still it dealt gently with that gentle lady, as if the old reaper had thrown down his reluctant sickle, unwilling to mark his passage by any tell-tale furrow, but softly breathed on her in passing, lulling her into a more perfect repose. At the time when the incidents I am relating took place, however, she was young and fresh and fair beyond expression. Her features, clear and well defined, possessed the delicate tracery and perfection of outline that sculptors dream of. Her air and carriage, her every gesture, from the movement of her shapely head to the light footfall, all queenly yet unaffected, might have inspired the genius of Buonarotti when he painted his wonderful Sibyls, while the gentle, half-shy, liquid gray eyes, tenderly glancing from behind their silken-fringed lids, would have graced the canvas of Murillo.

These external graces were but tokens of a kindly heart and true soul—a nature that imparted a breath of its own sweet essence to all who came within the charmed sphere of its influence. The festival looked forward to with such ardent longings by the young ones was now near at hand. It was Christmas Eve.

The festival was held in the spacious banqueting-hall of the castle—an oblong apartment, across the upper end of which extended a gallery for musicians, reached by a balustraded stairway on either side. The walls were gracefully festooned with wreaths of bright evergreens gemmed with haws and scarlet berries. In the centre stood a large table, upon which was placed a gigantic Christmas tree, sparkling with a thousand colored crystals and loaded with every variety of toy.

Floog, who was acquainted with the annual custom, desirous of recompensing his youthful friend, made haste to conduct him thither. The Ferret needed neither introduction nor credential, his age and appearance being sufficient passports. He was kindly welcomed and ushered in. The grand hall, beaming with lustrous lamps and adorned with varied decorations, dazzled his eyes. The splendor, the music, and the toys nearly overpowered him, and he stood as if fixed in a trance, so like a brilliant dream did it all seem, which a stir, a breath might dispel. Gradually recovering his dazed faculties, he began to revel in the thrilling sense of its reality—yes, real for himself as well as for the rest.

When the children were all assembled they were marshalled into ranks two deep, the girls first, and marched twice round the room, singing. It was a simple Christmas carol, the refrain familiar to most of them; for it had been sung on similar occasions by similar choirs from time immemorial, and is, I hope, sung there yet:

“Christmas time at Van der Meer, Love, and mirth, and pleasant cheer; Happy hearts from year to year Hail each coming Christmas.”

If any misgivings had crept into their minds that they were to undergo the trying ordeal of a regular school drill for the delectation of patronizing visitors, their apprehensions were soon quieted. With the song ended all the formality. They appreciated their freedom, made the most of it, and abandoned themselves to unrestrained fun in uproarious hilarity. The Ferret caught the infection. Though not quite recovered from the fatigue of the last twenty-four hours, he forgot it, forgot his little cares, forgot his solitude, forgot all in the blessed dissipation of the hour. Unfortunately, he outdid himself.

Floog had meanwhile betaken himself to the nearest tavern, intending to come for his little friend when the festivities were over. He did not retire to bed, but paid for a lodging on a settee in the tap-room. In a few minutes he was sound asleep. How long he slept he did not know, but some time during the night he awoke with a sudden start. A bell was pealing wildly in the still night air. A man partially dressed, his heavy shoes in his hand, dashed past and out into the street. Immediately there was commotion, and the sound of voices was heard in loud and eager discussion. In another moment the tap-room was full of men. Floog hurriedly arose, and, joining the excited group, they all went out. When they came to the triangular opening formed by the confluence of three streets—The Square, as it was rather inappropriately called—they were met by a crowd of men and women as anxious and excited as themselves, and all evidently at a loss what to do or whither to proceed.

Louder and more clamorous the bell rang out its portentous notes; fitfully and frantically it rang in the ears of the now aroused populace. All at once it would stop suddenly, but for a moment only, as if pausing to take breath and gather fresh strength; then it would recommence wilder than before, producing an effect weird and terrifying. It was the old alarm-bell at Van der Meer Castle.

This bell was very ancient, and it hung in a tower behind the castle, connected with it by an arched causeway. It was placed there in feudal times to call together the vassals and adherents of the place in cases of raid or invasion, if for no worthier purpose; and in later times a superstition attached to it that its reawakening portended some calamity, the nature of which, not being specifically stated, was left to conjecture, and gave scope to the prognostications of the wise-acres. Yes, these would say, with the self-complacent air of oracles, when the bell rings it will ring the death-knell of our liberties, and Holland will pass to an alien race. This was the interpretation generally received and accredited by those who had faith in the tradition—a goodly number, which included almost all the old inhabitants. On the other hand, many among the junior members of the community ridiculed the whole thing, scoffed at the prophetic legend as an old woman’s tale, and, spurred perhaps by what they termed the foolish credulity of the elders, who professed an abiding belief in it, they rushed to the opposite extreme, even to the extent of doubting, at least of denying, the very existence of the bell. At any rate it had long ago fallen into disuse, and those who heard it now heard it for the first time.

In the market square this old civic story was anxiously revived and earnestly discussed, while the ominous import of the ringing was speculated upon with troublous forebodings, even by the sceptical, and its inharmonious clangor added tenfold significance to its history. In the midst of the tumult the crowd swayed with a sudden movement, and presently began to waver and divide, as a stalwart form appeared, forcing a passage, and shouting with a persuasive vigor heard above the din: “To the dike! to the dike!” It was Peter Artveldt, the ship-carpenter. His words and example had the effect of an electric shock on the panic-stricken multitude. Shaking off their stupor, they followed him through the town, echoing his cry, “To the dike! to the dike!” and, gathering strength as they proceeded, soon reached the dike, half a mile beyond the northern limit of the town.

Imagination had diverted their fears, not allayed them; and, singular as it seems, no one thought of the dike until the voice of the ship-carpenter like a thunder-clap sounded a warning of the real danger. Up to that moment the dike was to them, as it had been for generations, the firm and effective bulwark of the land.

Their worst fears were realized. The water was flowing through several fissures in the dike, noiselessly stealing in upon the land, until it had flooded the ground up to the cemetery palings. This was not all nor the worst. A hasty survey disclosed the appalling fact that at one point the force of the storm had sapped the foundation; some of its stones, having been displaced, were lying loose in the soft sand and ooze. An instant revealed their peril and the imminence of the danger; had they been but half an hour later nothing could have averted their fate—Steenwykerwold would have been as effectually and irretrievably swallowed up by water as old Herculaneum was by fire, and sadder the story of its chroniclers.

However, it was not a time for reflection, but for action. With such implements as in their haste they had been able to provide themselves after the real nature of the danger became known, they set to work with a will, aided by the invigorating example of Artveldt, who with heroic energy put forth his strenuous powers and directed all their movements. In less than ten minutes they had felled four or five of the cemetery trees; breaking through the gate, they dragged these to the dike, making an effective temporary barrier to the advance of the cruel waters. Yet to guard against a possible recurrence of danger from a renewal of the storm or any untoward accident, until the damage should be permanently repaired, an organized force was appointed, divided into squads of eight, whose duty it was to watch constantly, relieving each other every six hours. These precautions completed, the multitude, in the delirious joy of their deliverance, grew wild with delight and manifested symptoms of frantic disorder. Here again the ascendent spirit of Artveldt made itself felt. “Brothers,” said he, “we have finished a brave night’s work; let us not undo it by making fools of ourselves. No; we will go peaceably to our homes, and a grateful country will say: ‘They were as orderly in the hour of triumph as they were brave in the hour of peril.’ Posterity will keep sacred your memory and look back with grateful eyes to this day, and every future Christmas will be happier for your deed.”

After this speech they were ready and willing to obey him. He now ranged the men in line of march, requesting them not to break rank until they reached Van der Meer Castle, where it was agreed they should disperse; then, with a long, full cheer, they returned triumphantly through the town, and Steenwykerwold was saved.

After having been hospitably entertained at the castle, and thanking Lady Leopoldine for the timely warning whereby the threatened disaster was averted, they gave a parting salute—three hearty cheers—and then, as agreed upon, quietly dispersed.

At that very time there was commotion within the castle. The eventful night was yet to be made memorable by another incident, as yet known only to its inmates, having been wisely withheld from the knowledge of the men who stemmed the fateful waters.

The ringing had some time ceased. Now, every one supposed that Lady Leopoldine had caused the bell to be rung, knowing or divining their danger; but such, in fact, was not the case. She no more than the rest mistrusted the safety of the dike. You may imagine, then, her terror when first she heard the appalling sound. Like a summons from the grave it smote her ear. Was it a summons from the grave? At first she could scarce refrain from thinking that it was, so strange and startling on the pulseless air of night fell the unfamiliar peal. Again she believed herself the victim of some wild hallucination. She rose at once and summoned the servants.

It was no illusion—they had all heard it; they could not choose but hear, and it was while listening in agonizing suspense that the summons of their mistress reached them. It was obeyed with more than customary alacrity. They all rushed pell-mell into the hall. Lady Leopoldine instantly dismissed her own fears and allayed theirs, and caused a vigorous search to be made.

The astonishment and alarm of the household will perhaps be more readily understood when it is remembered that the bell was entirely inaccessible. The tower was about sixty-five feet high, of somewhat rude construction. Walls of large, rough stones to an altitude of sixteen feet formed the base. Inside of these walls heavy oaken buttresses were placed, which had the appearance of strengthening them, but which in reality formed the support of the bell suspended above and hidden in a curious network of trellised beams. No appliances for reaching it were visible; and how it got there was a mystery. Indeed, the ringing of the bell on that night, as well as the bell itself and all its appurtenances, were regarded as very mysterious; and we may well excuse the simple-minded people, not yet imbued with modern materialism, if they conceived the whole affair to be the work of superhuman agency.

No one had entered the causeway from the house, it was evident; no trace of disturbance could anywhere be discovered. Two of the men, the coachman and his assistant, braver than the rest, volunteered to go into the passage and thoroughly examine the premises. Providing themselves with lanterns, they went round to the old door in the rear of the tower. One glance convinced them that no one had recently gone in that way. The bolts were firm in the sockets, wedged tight by the rust of a century. With much exertion they were forced back, the door was unfastened, and the men entered. The damp, chill air caused them to shudder, and their first impulse was to beat a precipitate retreat. Pausing in doubtful perplexity of their next movement, afraid to advance, and ashamed to go back, they stood near the door, which they had considerately left ajar, fearing, yet hoping for some perceptible excuse to run. None came. The silence was broken only by the flutter of some startled bats aloft; the dingy walls alone met their scrutinizing gaze as they peered cautiously around, the glare of the lanterns shooting sharply-defined rays of yellowish gray light through the humid gloom. The first feeling of nervous trepidation past, reason asserted itself; they grew accustomed to the gloom and began to explore the passage deliberately and carefully. After having traversed it the entire length without making any discovery, they were about to retrace their steps when their attention was arrested by some fragments of mortar or plaster lying loosely on the flagged pavement about four feet from the further end next the house. These had the appearance of having recently fallen from the wall. Here was a probable clue. With renewed interest they now proceeded to examine the wall, and were rewarded by finding a small door, level with its surface and nearly concealed by a thin coating of plaster. On forcing it open they were surprised to find another passage, parallel with the main one, but so narrow as to admit of entrance only by single file. Another door, as secret as the first, opened from this narrow passage into a sort of recess behind the stairway, which, it will be remembered, led to the gallery in the banqueting-hall. The recess was known to the occupants of the castle, but never used by them. Its original purpose may have been a subject of momentary conjecture, but they did not trouble themselves much about it, being content, if they thought of it at all, to consider it an eccentricity of some former proprietor. Least of all did they dream of its communication with a hidden passage to the bell-tower. Following the passage back to the other end, their surprise was greatly augmented by the further discovery that, instead of opening into the main enclosure, like the large passage, as they naturally expected, it terminated in a sort of square sentry-box, enclosed at all sides except the top—in reality a large wooden shaft. It was no other than what appeared from without to be a combination of four solid beams. In it hung the bell-rope. At the bottom lay the bell-ringer, The Ferret, exhausted and insensible.

They carried him out into the hall. The mistress of the mansion sent at once for a physician, and, gently lifting his head, with delicate hand she chafed the poor pale brow and applied restoratives. Soon the doctor came, but his services were not needed.

Another morning dawned. Again the slanting daybeams pierced the misty levels. The vapor of earth, as it felt the ray, was dissolved into purest ether, and, restoring to earth its grosser particles, ascended calmly to its native sky. Thus, too, The Ferret’s Christmas carol, begun on earth, was finished in heaven, and another voice on that happy Christmas morning was added to the celestial choir singing, “Glory to God on high, and on earth peace to men of good will.”

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

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1877.

There is little beyond the Russo-Turkish war that will mark this year apart from others in the annals of universal history. Questions, national and international, that we have touched upon time and again come up now unsettled as ever. It is tedious and profitless to go over well-trodden ground; to repeat reflections that have already been repeated; and to attempt a solution of problems, social, political, and religious, that are still working themselves out. We purpose, therefore, in the present review to follow up a few of the broad lines that have marked the year and given to it something of an individual and special character. If these are very few, perhaps it is the better for mankind. The more nations are occupied with their own affairs the better it is for the world at large.

To begin with ourselves. We had a very vexed and very delicate problem to solve—no less than to determine, on the turn of a single disputed electoral vote, who was to be our President. The circumstances that created this difficulty were dealt within our last year’s review; they are in the recollection of our readers. On the casting of a single disputed vote lay the election to the Presidency of the United States. Such a contingency, accompanied as it was by peculiarly aggravating circumstances, had never before arisen in the history of this country. The wisest were in doubt what to do; the country was in a fever of expectation. The republic was on trial in itself and before the world. The written lines of the Constitution were found inadequate to meet so unlooked-for and peculiar a matter. It was not the mere fact of one disputed vote that was to turn the scale. There were many disputed votes, which rested with States whose administration was not above suspicion. Only in the event of all of these turning in favor of one of the candidates could the Presidency be awarded to him. Any one of them going to his opponent—who, as far as the votes of the people went, had a decided and unmistakable majority—would have settled the question at once. There was room and occasion for grave doubt on both sides. By mutual agreement of the representatives of the two parties that divide the country, a national court of arbitration, supposed to be, and doubtless with reason, above suspicion, was appointed to inquire into and decide upon the electoral returns. The court was chosen from both parties. It so turned out that a preponderating vote lay with one party. It might have rested with the other. It was a matter of accident; and it is to be hoped that, if not exactly a matter of accident, it was a matter of honesty that divided the court on each moot point into strict party lines, with, as final result, an award of the Presidency to Mr. Hayes, the Republican candidate. There the matter rested. The court had discharged itself of the very delicate task imposed upon it, and there was nothing left the country and the rival parties to do but accept a decision of its own creation, which might have gone the other way, but did not. It was the shortest way, perhaps, out of an immediate and pressing difficulty. It was none the less a strain on the Constitution and on the conscience of the people—a strain that could not well be stood again. The republic cannot afford to hand this settlement down to posterity as a lawful and satisfactory precedent. The right way in which to regard it is as one of those unforeseen accidents that occur in the history of all peoples, that adjust themselves somehow for the time being, and that stand as a warning rather than a guide to future conduct.

The country honestly and wisely accepted the decision. Of course there were sore feelings; there would have been sore feelings in any case; yet men breathed freely when what was a real, a painful, and a dangerous crisis was over. There are men—sensible and patriotic men, too, as well as a vast multitude neither patriotic nor sensible—who are ever ready to despair of the republic when events do not turn out exactly as they had predicted or desired. Let them take comfort. The republic is not yet dead; and it seems to us very far from dying. In other days, and perhaps in other peoples to-day who enjoy the privilege of a monarchical government, such a question would have resulted in a war of dynasties. The dynasty of Mr. Hayes or of Mr. Tilden troubles us but little. The disaffected may bide their time. They still hold their votes, and it is for them to see that they are not robbed of them. Mr. Hayes has taken to heart the lesson of the last elections, which pronounced not so much against a party as against the administration of his predecessor. The present administration has thus far, in the main, contrasted well with that which went before it. The President seems to be a man of right impulses and feeling and possessed of a good judgment. He has discarded many embarrassing associates and evil allies—political parasites who battened on the life-blood of the state. If his moral vision is only broad enough to see that he is the President not of a party, but of a great people, with varied wants and some sore troubles and internal difficulties that need very cautious and delicate adjusting; if he honestly and persistently aims at doing right, the people, regardless of party, will be with him and support him. Thus far he has manifestly striven to do well. His beginning has been good. Trials will doubtless come. He has already shown himself too good for many influential men in the party that voted for him. If he only continues to disregard and brave all pettiness, he can safely turn from partisans to the people, and the people know how to judge and value honesty—a quality that it was coming to be thought had almost died out of politics.

There have been some indications of a revival of business; but such a revival, to be sure and general, must be slow. Our people have not yet recovered from the demoralizing effect of the rush of good-fortune which they so foolishly squandered. They look for miracles in finance and business, for a revival in a day. This cannot well come. The way for general prosperity, and that even of very moderate dimensions, must be paved by a return to general honesty in commercial dealings and in private life. Public honesty can alone restore public confidence, and public honesty is a matter of growth, education, and the apprehension and following of right principles. It can only come from faith in God and a sense of personal responsibility to God, as true faith in man can only come from true faith in God. The religion that constantly impresses this upon men’s minds is the religion that will preserve and save from all dangers not this republic only but every government. These feelings, penetrating the hearts of the people, will best solve the vexed questions between labor and capital, between black and white and red and yellow. For a right sense of personal responsibility to God necessarily involves a right sense of personal responsibility to one another, of the duties we owe to society, of the duties we owe to the state. This country of all others is open to the free workings of religion. Indeed, it is as open to the devil as to God; and if the devil, according to some, seems to get the best of the battle, it can only be because “the children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light”; because Christians are not really and wholly true to Christ, and by their lives do not show forth the faith that is in them.

THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.

In Europe the event of the year that calls for most attention is the war between Russia and Turkey. On this subject we can say little or nothing probably that will not have already suggested itself to others. All have watched the progress of the painful struggle from day to day; have formed their own conclusions as to the manner in which it has been carried on on both sides; as to the necessity of such a war having taken place at all; as to its probable results to both parties and to Europe at large.

At the time of our last review war between Russia and Turkey was thought imminent. We then wrote—and we may be pardoned for quoting our own words, as some of them, at least, seem to us to apply equally well to the present situation—as follows:

“If we may hazard an opinion, we believe that there will be no war, at least this winter. As for the alarm at the anticipated occupation of Constantinople by Russia, while—if the Russian Empire be not dissolved before the close of the present century by one of the most terrific social and political convulsions that has ever yet come to pass—that occupation seems to lie very much within the order of possibilities, we doubt much whether it will occur so soon as people think.... It would seem to us difficult for Russia to occupy Constantinople without first mastering and garrisoning Turkey, and Turkey is an empire of many millions, whom fanaticism can still rouse to something like heroic, as well as to the most cruel and repulsive deeds.”

Those words seem to us to have forecast fairly enough the general aspects of the war. The war was declared because Russia burned to go to war—Russia, or the Russian administration. The invasion of Turkey by Russia was not a thing of the past year. It was foreordained. It was dreaded from the close of the war in the Crimea. The only question with the other powers was how long or by what means could it be staved off. That Russia would invade Turkey as soon as she thought she could do so without much danger of outward interference and with good prospects of success was probably a fixed thought in the minds of all men who chose to give a thought to the matter. For almost a quarter of a century has Russia been girding herself for a fight that had become an essential part of her national policy. Within that period, under the wise guidance of Prince Gortschakoff, she has more than repaired the terrible losses sustained in the Crimean war. She grew stealthily up to a power and a status unexampled in her history. She guarded her finances, lived within her means, prospered, refused steadily to enter into any embarrassing European complications. She saw the European alliance that had crushed her in 1854 hopelessly dissolve, and a new and friendly power rise up and take the lead in European affairs. As a military power she was looked upon as having only one superior, or rival perhaps, in the world, and that her friendly neighbor. So strong was she, and so singularly had every change in European politics told in her favor, that when her opportunity came, with a word, a beck, a stroke of her chancellor’s pen, she snapped asunder the iron gyves forged for her and laid on her by a united Europe, and no power dared whisper a protest. All the world saw whither she was drifting. She was drifting to the sea, stretching out her giant arms to clasp for ever those golden shores that she claimed as hers by destiny. The hour of destiny struck at last. The strifes of exhausted nations and the jealousies of others left her alone to deal with the power that held those shores and that to Russia was an hereditary foe. She proceeded cautiously to the last. She did all things with becoming decorum. She invited the nations to a conference, held in the Turkish capital, to determine once for all what was to be done with the Turk, while she mobilized her armies in order to give effect to her peaceful protest.

What the conference of European diplomatists did, or rather did not do, is now matter of picturesque history. “Death before dishonor!” was the ultimatum of the Turk. “Death, then, be it,” said Russia, and the new “crusade” began.

It has been a sad “crusade” for both parties, a disastrous one for Russia and the Romanoffs, even though there can be little doubt as to the final victory of Russia. What we may call the great Russian illusion has been dispelled by this war. It was speedily discovered that the feet of the giant who was running so swiftly and surely to the goal of his ambition were of clay. Why, victory invited him, danced before him, strewed flowers in his path. It was a very race with fortune. To a great military power half the battle was won before a single engagement worthy of the name had been fought. But it has stopped at that half. Russia is still knocking at the gates of Plevna, and even when Plevna is opened, as it will be probably soon, the inglorious victory will have been so dearly won that Russia herself may, with too much reason, be anxious for the peace which she wantonly broke.

Fortune was too good to Russia at the opening of the war. Her smiles begat an overweening confidence. The destruction of a stubborn and warlike race was looked upon as a thing of a few months, as a game of war. Reverses came fast and thick—reverses that were invited. Comparative handfuls of splendid soldiers were sent to destroy armies entrenched in natural fortresses. Then leaked out a fatal secret. Russia had everything but generals and competent military officers, or, if she had them, they were not with her armies, or were not allowed to take the lead. The dress parade to Constantinople was speedily and effectually checked, and Russia is to all intents and purposes as far from that city to-day as she was in the summer.

The details of the campaigns must be looked for elsewhere. We can here only look at results. There are two or three reflections regarding the war itself which seem to us worthy of attention as affecting other interests than those immediately engaged in the contest.

In the first place, the fact of the war having been declared at all showed the powerlessness of Europe to shape or deal with grave questions of international interest when any one strong power chooses not to be advised, coerced, or led. This practically places the peace of Europe in the hands of any power. For instance, there is no means of preventing Germany from declaring war against France to-morrow, should the German government so will. Early in the year, and at the invitation of Russia, the leading European powers sent their representatives to Constantinople to prevent, if possible, the outbreak of this war. These were doubtless experienced diplomatists. There is no reason to doubt that all of them—save, perhaps, the Russian representative, General Ignatieff—wished honestly and strove by every means in their power to prevent, or at least stave off, the war. They failed, because it was meant by the strongest there that they should fail. The only argument to sway Europe to-day is the sword.

Thus the representatives of united Europe, backed by all the vast resources of their empires, could do nothing to prevent a war which at the outset looked as though it incurred the gravest consequences to Europe; and it may incur them still. Why was this? Simply because there is no such thing as a united Europe. The family and comity of European nations was, as we pointed out last year in dealing with this very subject, broken up by the Protestant Reformation. The catholicity of nations, which in the order of events would have become an accomplished and saving fact, from that date yielded to selfish and narrow nationalities which made a separate world of each people, bounded by their own domain. But humanity is greater than nationality, and the world wider than a kingdom—a truth that will never be felt until one religion plants again in the leading nations of the world the great unity of heart and soul that God alone can give.

As for Russia, however, the tide of events may turn; she has lost more than she will probably gain even by victory. Not in men and money and material alone has she lost, but in morale and prestige. The czar may return in triumph to St. Petersburg, but his victorious ranks will show a grim and ominous gap of something like a hundred thousand of his bravest men, lost in less than a year against a foe whom Russia despised, and thousands of whom were sacrificed to incapacity. A careful estimate made in September last set the daily cost of the Russian army at about $750,000. That figure must have since increased; but take it as an average, and spread it over eight months, and we have the enormous sum of $184,500,000 as the cost of the campaign from May to December. Loans must be raised to meet such expenditure, and loans are only obtained at high interest.

Victories bought at such prices are dear indeed. Taking the Russian victory for granted, it is likely after all to prove a barren one. The Turk is an impracticable foe, and, though the signs of his exhaustion are multiplying, he has made such a fight as, by force of arms at least, to vindicate his title to national existence. Indeed, his terms are apt to go up instead of down. Loss of money is nothing to him, for he has none to lose. His empire was bankrupt before the war. For trade or commerce he cares little. His life is easy and simple. He cares for little more than enough to eat, and a little of that seems to satisfy him. His fatalism robs life of the charm it has for other men. He would as lief die fighting as not, and he would sooner fight the Russian than any other foe. You cannot reason with men of this kind. They see one thing: that single-handed they made a very good fight against a most powerful antagonist; that they have hurt him badly, even if they have been worsted. The whole struggle can only be likened to an attack by a giant on a poor little wretch who was thought to be half-dead. If it takes the giant six months to thrash such an antagonist; and if during the fight the giant gets something very like a sound thrashing himself from his puny foe; and if, when both are pretty well exhausted, he succeeds in throttling the pugnacious little chap at last, the verdict of the world will be that there is something the matter with the giant, and the self esteem of the little fellow will rise proportionately.

Of course it is idle to speculate on the end. Russia has lost so heavily that she may insist upon very tangible fruits of victory. On the other hand, the war has been such a butchery that humanity cries out against it, and the European powers will undoubtedly strive at the first opportunity to make a more effectual appeal than before to both the combatants. Peace rests on this: How much will Russia ask? How much will Turkey concede? How much will the jealousies of other powers allow Russia to take?—questions all of them that are sure to be asked, but which we confess our inability to answer.

FRANCE.

The armed struggle in the East has scarcely attracted more universal attention than the civil struggle in France. France is trying to solve problems that touch her very life, and they are problems in which all men have a personal interest. The French questions are eminently questions of the day and of the age. The struggle going on there is one between the elements of society. MacMahon, Gambetta, “Henri Cinq,” “Napoléon Quatre”—these are but names. The fight is not on them and their personal merits or demerits. It is at bottom between the men who find the “be-all and the end-all here” in this world, and the men who believe that there is a God who made this world for his own purposes, who is to be obeyed, loved, and served, and according to whose law human society must conform itself, if it would fulfil the end for which it was created, have happiness in this world, and eternal happiness in the next.

The first class is not restricted to the men and women who figured in the Commune. These only compose its rank and file, and their sin is less, for multitudes of them sin through ignorance. It embraces also the men of the new science, the professors in the atheistic universities; statesmen of the Falk and Lasker type; preachers of the Gospel as expounded by Dean Stanley; philosophers and scientists, like Darwin or Herbert Spencer, like Huxley and Tyndall, like, descending a grade, Professor Fisk or Youmans; women like some we know here at home, who tread the platform with so masculine a stride; the men of “progress” such as Brigham Young was, such as, in a more intellectual sense, John Stuart Mill was, such as “tribunes of the people” like Charles Bradlaugh, or his friend M. Gambetta, or Garibaldi, are; poets like Victor Hugo or Algernon Swinburne. The men who have the teaching power in the secularized and secular universities of the day, who shape a purely secular education, who edit too many of our leading newspapers, who preach atheism or blasphemy from pulpits supposed to be consecrated to the service of Christ, are equally members of this party with the outcasts of society and the avowed conspirators against order. This it was that gave its significance to the late French elections; that induced men to study so carefully the name, character, antecedents, and political color of each man elected; that caused to be telegraphed on the very day of the elections the long files of the deputies to England, to Germany, to Austria, to Italy, even to these distant shores. Why, such a fact as that last mentioned is unexampled. For the time being the world centred in France.

This is a dangerous pre-eminence for France. The country is for ever in a fever. It is in a constant state of crisis. Ministry after ministry is tried, found wanting, and thrown aside. The truth is the parties cannot coalesce. There is a barrier between them that it seems cannot be overthrown. The elections decided nothing. They left the country and parties in much the same condition as before. As a matter of fact the conservatives, if any, gained, but the gain was too small to indicate the will of the country. We doubt if the country has a will beyond the desire to be at peace, which the contentions of its own parties alone threaten. M. Gambetta, the leader of the radicals, is for ever clamoring for a republic. Well, he has a republic; why not make the most of it? He has certainly as good a republic as he could make. The difficulty with him is that the republic which he wishes to lead must be founded on the negation of Christianity. In France the dividing lines between creeds are very clearly drawn. Protestantism counts for nothing there, and the little that there was of it has gone to pieces. Gambetta’s bête-noir is “clericalism”—i.e., Catholicity. He would abolish the Catholic Church, not merely as an adjunct of the state but altogether. No Catholicity must be taught in the schools; that is a vital principle with him. The pope must have nothing to say to Catholics in France. The clergy must receive no pay, scanty as it is, from the state. No such thing as a free Catholic university is to be tolerated. The children of France are to be brought up and educated free-thinkers, and be made to turn out true Gambettists. In a word, the foundation of M. Gambetta’s scheme for the regeneration of France is to abolish the Christian religion there. Irreligion is to be the corner-stone of his republic.

This is a pleasing prospect for French Catholics, and it may be necessary to remind our able editors who denounce “clericalism” so lustily, and see no hope for France but in the republic of M. Gambetta, that there are still Catholics in France; that the bulk of the nation is Catholic. It is a pleasing prospect, we say, for them to contemplate the suppression of their religion at the word of M. Gambetta. Is it very surprising that the oracle of the new republic should only bring hatred on the very name of republic to men who can see in it, as expounded by its oracle, nothing but the most odious tyranny? It was John Lemoinne, if we remember rightly, who in the anti-Christian Journal des Debats said, on the retirement of Mr. Gladstone from office, that religion lay at the bottom of all the great questions that move the world. If that be so, and it is so, why not recognize the fact? Must the French republic which M. Gambetta advocates and our republican editors on this side advocate be first and above all an irreligious despotism? Must it begin with religious persecution? M. Gambetta says that it must.

We are not accusing him wrongfully. His own words express his meaning plainly enough. It must be borne in mind that the epithet “clericalism,” in the mouths of French radicals, means Catholicity. Every French Catholic who believes in and practises his religion is a “clerical”; so every Catholic who believes and does the same all the world over is, in the mouths of anti-Catholics, an “ultramontane.” If there is one lurid page in all history that sears the eyes of humane and sensible men, it is that of the French Revolution—the most awful revolt, save its offspring, the Commune, against all order, human and divine, that the world has witnessed. Yet “the French Revolution,” and none other, is M. Gambetta’s oriflamme.

Just on the eve of the elections he addressed an immense meeting at the Cirque Américain in Paris. “Amongst those present,” says the correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, “I observed the most prominent members of the various groups of the Left. When the great orator of the evening (M. Gambetta) appeared, he was received with a shout of welcome, renewed and continued for several minutes. There were only two cries issued from every lip: ‘Vive la République!’ and ‘Vive Gambetta!’ ... On the latter rising to speak he was received with another storm of cheers.”

Well, and what had he to say to this enthusiastic assembly and to the leading deputies of the Left? We can only find space for a few sentences, though the whole speech is instructive, as giving the character and aims of the man:

“What is at stake?” he asked. “The question is the existence of universal suffrage and of the French Revolution (Loud cheers). That is the question.” This declaration, which was so uproariously cheered, needs no comment. He made a little prophecy, that was unfortunate for him, regarding the returns of the elections. The prophecy turned out to be false, even though M. Gambetta assured his friends by saying: “I should not risk my credit with you five days before the event on a rash statement.” “The country will say,” he thundered on, “at the forthcoming elections that she wants the republic administered by republicans, and not by those who obey the voice of the Vatican.” He appealed to the example of this country, where he said, with brilliant vagueness, “law has taken the place of personal vanity, and conscience that of intrigue.” We accept the example. There are millions of good enough republicans in this country who certainly “obey the voice of the Vatican” as faithfully as any “clerical” in all France, and who find that voice agreeing admirably with their republicanism. Indeed, that same voice has recently, with justice and openly, proclaimed that in the republic the Pope is more Pope than in any other country; and we have yet to learn that the republic has suffered any hurt from that declaration.

“There is no principle,” said M. Gambetta, “that binds together the three parties which are now opposed to us, and the nation will do justice to their monstrous alliance. There is but one binding force, and that is called clericalism. Those parties wanted a word of order to rally a formidable army against us; they found it in Jesuitism.” And he closed his speech by saying:

“I feel that what Europe fears most is that France should again fall into the hands of the Ultramontane agents. I fear that the universal suffrage may not take sufficient account of surprise and intimidation. We must look this question in the face, and be able to say to Europe, pointing to clericalism, Behold the vanquished!”

As we said, M. Gambetta made a little mistake in his prophecy. Catholicity is not dead in France; Catholics are not a small fraction of the people, and in the government of the country of which they form so important a part they must be taken into account. They will not and cannot submit to have convictions which are sacred to them disregarded, to have necessary and national rights trampled under foot at the will either of M. Gambetta or of anybody else. He assumes altogether too much. What did the figures of the election show? As M. de Fourtou pointed out in his speech in the Chamber of Deputies, November 14, 1877: The Opposition had flattered itself that it would return with four hundred, and yet it lost fifty votes. “It required an astonishing amount of assurance for the Opposition, after such a check, to pretend to claim power in defiance of the rights of the Senate.”

“The Opposition,” he continued, “had obtained 4,300,000 and the Government 3,600,000 votes, France thus dividing herself into two almost equal parties. Instead of striving to oppress the one by the other, it would be better to seek a common link to bind themselves together. Candidates presented themselves to be elected in the name of a menaced Constitution, the public peace in jeopardy, and in the name of modern liberties and civil societies. But if the Opposition only asked for that, it had no adversaries; if it asked for something else it had no mandate. (Applause from the Right.)”

There is no denying the force of this reasoning. The parties in France show themselves almost equal, and the only hope of governing the country is by mutual concession and good-will. M. Gambetta must let the church alone, if he is so very anxious for peace.

Frenchmen not blinded by passion might have taken warning from the attitude of Germany and Italy previous to and during the elections. These two powers—for Italy has now become a sort of tender to Germany—were earnest for the success of the party led by Gambetta. Why so? What sympathy can Prince Bismarck possibly have with Gambetta? What sympathy could he be supposed to have with a republic of the Gambetta stripe, of the red revolutionary stripe, as his next-door neighbor, while he so dreads his own socialists? The cause of his new-born sympathy for a red republic, or a republic of any color, is not far to find. It was the same sympathy that he had with the Commune during the siege of Paris. He knows Gambetta, and has had a taste of “the tribune’s” effective generalship and governing qualities. He was in France when M. Gambetta made that famous “pact with death” of which we heard so much and so little came. He knows thoroughly the elements that make up the strength, the very explosive strength, of M. Gambetta’s party, and there is probably nothing he would better enjoy than to see the fou furieux at the helm of state once more. A few months of the Gambetta régime, and Prince Bismarck might say of France, as he said of Paris, “Let it fry in its own fat.” France is now a most dangerous foe to Germany—negatively so, at least. She is growing more dangerous every year. Every year of quiet is an enormous gain to her. She is vastly richer than Germany. She can stand the strain of her immense army far more easily than Germany. She is winning back something of the old love and admiration of the outer world, which she had lost on entering into the war with Germany. She is patient, laborious, industrious, desirous of peace with all the world, and day by day becoming more able to maintain that peace even against Germany. But a revolution in France would destroy all this and throw the nation years behind. And so sure as Gambetta attained to power a revolution would follow; i.e., if he adhered—and there is no doubt that he would—to the programme of a republic which he has sketched in such bold colors. Once in power, once the strong but quiet hand of Marshal MacMahon was removed from the helm, the ship of the French state, with or without Gambetta’s will, would go to speedy wreck.

That is why Prince Bismarck so carefully encouraged the Gambetta faction. That is why his press thundered against a “clerical” government in France. That is why the Italian press took up the cry, as it explains in great measure the mysterious comings and goings between the courts of Berlin and the Quirinal. That is why, if France would abide in safety, she must retain her soldier at the head of affairs, and hasten during the next few years of his term to heal her internal discords and become one heart and one soul. Marshal MacMahon has attempted nothing against the republic that was confided to his safe-keeping. There is yet time, before his term of office expires, for all Frenchmen to come together and shape their government so as to ensure peace, freedom, and order in the future. If they cannot do this, the republic is hopeless in France. It will go out as its predecessors have gone out within a century, only to make room for a new usurper.

GERMANY.

There is every year less likelihood of a renewal of the dreaded war between Germany and France. France does not want to fight. Even if Germany did want to fight she must reckon on a far stronger and more dangerous foe than she encountered in 1870. Competent military critics, like the writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, whose articles on the French army attracted such wide and deserved attention, assert that France, though probably unequal to an attack on Germany, is rather more than able to hold her own against attack. A stronger critic yet establishes this fact. In his famous speech in the German Parliament last April, in favor of the increase of one hundred and five captaincies in the army—an increase that was bitterly opposed—Count Von Moltke said:

“What the French press does not speak out, but what really exists, is the fear lest, since France has so often attacked weaker Germany, strong Germany should now for once fall upon France without provocation. This accounts for the gigantic efforts France has made in carrying through within a few years the reorganization of her army with so much practical intelligence and energy. This explains why, from the recent conclusion of peace till to-day, an unproportionately large part of the French army, chiefly artillery and cavalry, is posted, in excellent condition, between Paris and the German frontier—a circumstance which must sooner or later lead to an equalizing measure on our part. It must also be taken into consideration that in France, where the contrast of political parties is even stronger than with us, all parties are agreed on one point—viz., in voting all that is asked for the army. In France the army is the favorite of the nation, its pride, its hope; the recent defeats of the army have been condoned long since.”

“The total strength of all these [the French] battalions,” he said in the same speech, “in times of peace amounts to 487,000 men; whilst Germany, with a much larger population, has but little over 400,000 under arms. The French budget exceeds the German by more than 150,000,000 marks (shillings), not including considerable supplementary sums that are there required. Even so wealthy a nation as the French are will not be able to bear such a burden permanently. Whether this is done at present for a distinct purpose, in order to reach a certain goal placed at not too great a distance, I must leave undecided.”

That speech alarmed Europe at the time. Yet it was only a plain statement of facts which it is as well for Europe to look in the face. It may seem strange that under the circumstances we should feel so sanguine about the preservation of peace between these two armed and hostile nations. But both want peace, and both are too strong to fight. Of course the unexpected may always occur. France does not disguise her purpose of revenge, and she means to “mak siccer” next time. But the gentle hand of Time softens the deepest hatreds; and if even this enforced peace can only be prolonged the war-fever may die away. Politics and administrations will change in both countries. Prince Bismarck will not live for ever. The French had just as bitter a resentment against England after Waterloo. The resentment died with the generation that bore it; and only for the evil legacy left by Prince Bismarck to the empire—the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine—we could fairly hope for better feeling between the two peoples at least within a generation.

The smoke of battle cleared away, Germans are beginning to look around them and investigate civil affairs in a spirit not at all pleasing to a military administration. The word of command is no longer obeyed so blindly as before. Even the cabinet does not move to the tap of Prince Bismarck’s drum as promptly as it was wont. Perhaps, after all, the chancellor did not gain so very much by his bitter prosecution of Count Arnim. There have been some notable resignations within the year, and rumors even, partially confirmed, and again renewed, of the chancellor’s own resignation. The opposition increases at every election; and the response of Catholics to the men who make vacant the sees of their bishops is to return a stronger number of representatives to the Parliament at each new election. The social democrats do the same, and altogether the policy of blood and iron appears to be in strong disfavor.

Even the “orthodox Protestants” have at last openly revolted against the Falk laws, which were good enough for Catholics, and right in themselves so long as the orthodox Protestants did not feel them pinch. They see at last that such laws strike at all religion; that a generation brought up under them would have no religion at all; and that if they would retain the congregations who are so rapidly slipping from their grasp and melting away, they must strike out those laws from the calendar.

The persecution of the Catholics goes on unrelentingly, but we have no doubt that better times are in store. The Catholics, as we pointed out, are gaining in the Parliament. The administration is weakening in unity and in the confidence of the country. Poverty is pressing upon the people. The emperor, in his speech from the throne early in the year, was compelled to allude to the continued depression of trade and industry. He might very easily have given one great reason for a large share of that depression in the vast armaments which he finds it necessary to maintain at a ruinous cost of men, money, and labor to the country. As recently as last November the London Times, which is certainly a friendly critic, in treating of “Prussian Finance,” took occasion to say: “The exaction of the five milliards was thought to crush for ever the growing wealth of France, and to be almost a superfluous addition to the abundant exchequer of Germany.... At least the state was rich for a generation to come. Five years have not yet passed since this huge mass of wealth was transferred, and already we find bankruptcy almost the rule among German traders, and hear cries rising on all sides of the hardness of the times and the impossibility of bearing much longer the crushing weight of taxation. In the hands of the government the French milliards seem for the most part to have melted away and left budgets which vary only in the shifts by which expenses are coaxed into an equality with receipts.”

The conclusion at which the writer arrives is a very suggestive one, and one that it would be well for Germany to take to heart:

“It would be better that Germany should be content to remain for a year or two not quite prepared to meet the world in arms rather than that her citizens should find that the country so impregnably fortified offers them no life worth living. A man does not buy Chubb’s locks for his stable-door when his steed is starving.”

Granting that the general peace of Europe is preserved during the next year, it would not surprise us at all to see a complete change of administration in Germany, and a consequent relaxation in the laws against Catholics. We do hope for this. Even Prince Bismarck must now see that the persecution of the Catholics was, in its lowest aspect, a political blunder. He miscalculated the faith of these German Catholics. The beating of his iron hammer has only welded and proved and tempered that faith, while the world resounded with his blows and all men saw that they were ineffectual. Thus has the very cradle of the Protestant Reformation borne noblest witness in our unbelieving age to the greatness, the strength, the invincibility of the faith and the church that Luther dreamed he had destroyed, out of Germany at least. Here is the result, as pictured by an adversary of the Catholic faith, within the past year: “It pleased Prince Bismarck—whether, as he himself alleged, in consequence of the council or not—to undertake a crusade against the Roman Catholic bishops and clergy which, to the vast body of their co-religionists all the world over, and to many others also, had all the look of downright persecution. They were challenged, not for submitting to the Vatican dogma, but for maintaining what they had always been accustomed to regard, before just as well as after the council, as the inalienable rights and liberties of their church. Only one course was open to them as ecclesiastics or as men of honor—to resist and take the consequences. Some half-dozen bishops have accordingly been fined, imprisoned, or deprived; and several hundred—we believe over a thousand—priests have incurred similar penalties. Whether the policy embodied in the Falk laws was or was not a wise and a just policy in itself is not the point. If we assume for argument’s sake that it has all the justification which its promoters claim for it, the fact remains equally certain that no greater service could well have been rendered to the cause of Vaticanism than this opportune rehabilitation of the German bishops. The bitterness of the antagonism provoked by the Falk legislation may be measured by the startling news recently given in the German papers, that an alliance, offensive and defensive, is being formed between the Catholics and democratic socialists, who can have hardly a single idea in common beyond hostility to the existing state.”—Saturday Review, February 24, 1877.

THE CATHOLIC OUTLOOK.

Of other states there is little that calls for special attention here. Italy is linked with Germany, but Italy can scarcely be regarded as a very strong ally. Its alliance, however, is useful and necessary to the leader of the conspiracy against the Catholic Church—the conspiracy of the kings, into which some have entered in a half-hearted way like the Emperor of Austria, others with the most determined resolve like Prince Bismarck and the German emperor. These powerful men are doing all they can to destroy the Catholic Church; and undoubtedly they impede her growth, and harry and harass her in a thousand ways. It is easy to say that this is the best thing that could possibly happen to the church; that persecution is her very soul; that suffering begets repentance, and chastisement purity of life. That is all very well and true, but there is another aspect to the matter. Catholics have worldly rights as well as heavenly. They are here to live in this world, and to live happily and freely, and to do their work in it. No prince or government introduced them into life; no prince or government escorts them out of life. No prince, or government, or state can absolutely claim human life as theirs. Life is a free gift of God, to be used freely. Government is not divine, save in so far as it conforms to the divinity. Men are not chattels and tools to be used as things of no volition. The government of a people is only a human institution erected for the people, by the people, and of the people. It cannot lay claim to superhuman power, and where it does it is an infamous assumption. The numen imperatorum is more than a myth; it is a devil. The “divine Cæsar” is but a man, and generally a very disreputable man. The assumptions of many modern states to absolute rule over man—states that for the wickedness of those ruling them have been turned topsy-turvy time and again by the subjects whom they absolutely ruled—is a return to paganism, and a very artful return. Obey us, it says, and we will set you free—free from the Christian God and the laws that go against your nature. Obey us, and you need bow the knee to no God; you need have no religious belief or practice; we will abolish sin for you; you shall marry and unmarry as you please, and as often as you please; you shall do what you like and have no one to gainsay you. Fall down and worship us, and all the kingdoms of the world are yours.

This is only a true reading of the pet measures of modern governments: of the divorce court, of civil marriage, of civil baptism, of schools into which everything but God may enter. And this is the drifting of the age: the Gambetta party in France, the revolutionary party in Italy, of which Victor Emanuel is the regal tool and ornament; the Bismarckian and Falk party in Germany; the Josephism of Austria; the “free” thought of all lands. It is this that is in conflict, eternal conflict, with the Catholic Church. It calls itself liberalism; it is the tyranny of paganism. It does not threaten the Catholic Church alone. It only threatens that openly, because it feels it its necessary foe; it threatens the world and carries in its right hand the social and moral ruin of nations. There is no possible modus vivendi between it and men who believe in Christ; and men who believe in Christ form the bulk of all civilized peoples. There will be no peace in the world, no peace among nations, until religion is free to assert itself. While the creeds of Christendom are still divided there must be freedom for all—freedom to adjust their differences and come back once again to the lost unity for which all honest men sigh. Politics are the affairs of a day; religion an affair of Eternity to be settled in Time. It must have freedom to work; and the attempt to restrict and restrain that freedom is the secret of more than half the troubles that afflict mankind.

This freedom is all that the head of the Catholic Church demands. He has no other quarrels with princes than this. He blesses and loves Protestant England, for it recognizes this freedom; he blesses and loves this country, for it also recognizes this freedom. The wonderful reign of Pius IX. will, in after-time, be most memorable for this: that in a deafening and confused time, in a time when all things were called in question and all rights invaded, his voice and vision were for ever clear in upholding the most sacred rights of man, in detecting and exposing what threatened them, and in maintaining the truth by which the world lives, at all hazard and in the face of all sacrifice. The truth of which he is the oracle is the faith in God that makes men free—faith in the undying church founded by the Son of God, in its work and its mission among men, in the present and the future of a human society spreading over the world and built upon that faith. And the world has recognized this. It recognizes in the Pope, not because he is Pius the Ninth, but because he is Pope and head of the Church Catholic, the centre of this society, the head of Christendom; for Christendom is wider than nations; it embraces them in its arms; they are children of it, and the Pope is their spiritual father. Is not this truth plain? Whither have the eyes of the world been turned during the year? Less to the bloody battle-fields of the East, less to the hearts of European nations and the courts and cabinets of kings, than to the sick bed in the Vatican. The gaze of many has been that of brutal intensity; the gaze of many more, and those not all Catholics, has been one of affectionate and tender regard. Speculations as to the future are not in place here. The Pope, of course, will die some day. He has stood the brunt of the battle. He has lived a great life, given a great example, and done great things for the church of God. Not a stain, not a breath or whisper of reproach, mars that long career of mingled triumph and suffering. He has witnessed strange events. He has seen the church discarded by all the powers that were once her faithful children. He has seen the sacred territory of the church invaded and torn from his grasp. He sees himself in his old age and at the close of a stormy life imprisoned in his own palace. He has seen the world and the princes of the world do their worst against the church of which he is the earthly guardian. And yet he sees the church spreading abroad, growing in numbers and in virtue, borne on the wings of commerce and carrying its message of peace and good-will to all lands. There is no faltering in the faith. His eyes have been gladdened, even if saddened, by as noble confessors, of all grades, rising up to testify to it as the church in her history of nineteen centuries has ever known. When he obeys the last call of the Master he has served so well, there will pass from this world the greatest figure of the age, and as holy a man as the ages ever knew. But his work will not pass with him. That will remain, and the lesson of his life will remain to the successor, on whom we believe that brighter times will dawn—a brightness won out of the darkness, and the sacrifice, and the storm braved by the good and gentle man who so resolutely bore Christ’s cross to the very hill of Calvary and lay down on it and died there.

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

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

MONOTHEISM. The Primitive Religion of Rome. By Rev. Henry Formby. 1 vol. 8vo. London: Williams & Norgate; New York: Scribner, Welford & Co. 1877.

This is a very interesting and, in some respects, a learned work; but we are fain to confess that we have been disappointed in it. If the author, instead of attempting to show that the worship of the one true God was the early religion of Rome, had contented himself with proving it to have been professed by the primitive Gentile nations in general, we should agree with him, and thank him for unfolding in our English language the incontrovertible truth that polytheism and idolatry are but corruptions of great primeval traditions collected, preserved, and handed down by Noe, and that heathen mythology can be made to bear witness to the original idea of the unity and spirituality of God. This view of the religious errors of the ancients has been held up by several eminent writers, and particularly by two who deserve to be rescued from an unjust oblivion—by Monsignor Bianchini (1697) in La Storia Universale provata con Monumenti e figurata con Simboli Antichi; and by Abbé Bergier (1773) in his Origine des Dieux du Paganisme. While we do not accuse our reverend author of a want of modesty precisely in stating his prime opinion about the monotheism of the second king of Rome, we do think that he writes a little too dogmatically and as though he had discovered some historical treasure-trove wherewith to enrich his arguments; whereas no new documents or monuments whatever have been brought to light to throw a different or brighter ray upon the character of Numa Pompilius, in connection with whom, moreover, he seems to us to confound idolatry and polytheism. We confidently believe that the Cœleste Numen of Numa, on which so great stress is laid, like the Deus Optimus Maximus of Tully, or the Divûm pater atque hominum rex of Virgil, was nothing more than another form of man’s continual, almost involuntary, protest against the falling away of the human race from the worship of the Creator, but practically did not betoken more than a recognition of one among many greater than his fellow-gods. While Numa forbade the worship of idols in Rome, and consequently professed a less corrupt error than did many contemporary rulers, he never asserted the unity or, we prefer to say, the oneness of God. He was a prolific polytheist, multiplying divinities and introducing new superstitions among his people. Father Formby has brought up nothing in his favor unknown to Arnobius, Orosius, St. Augustine, and Tertullian. This last writer, although he absolves Numa from the crime of idolatry, distinctly charges upon him a many-parted god: “Nam a Numa concepta est curiositas superstitiosa” (Apol. xxv.)

Our author’s present work is an amplification of a smaller one published in pamphlet form two years ago, in which he shows the “city of ancient Rome” to have been “the divinely-sent pioneer of the way for the Catholic Church.” On this subject we cannot too closely agree with him, or sufficiently thank him for turning towards our students and illustrating for them a side of Roman history which is so important. Our own studies have always pointed in the same direction, and we cannot better conclude this notice of Father Formby’s work and show our sympathy with him than by a brief extract from our commonplace book, made up many years ago in Rome itself:

“The celebrated Gallo-Roman poet and statesman, Rutilius Numatianus, was much attached to the false ancient divinities of Rome and no small help to the political party of Symmachus, which so stubbornly fought St. Ambrose and the Christians. The following lines from his Itinerarium (i. 62 et seq.) are truly beautiful and express a grand idea, but one that is still grander in another sense than his; for if a heathen understood it to be a blessing in disguise upon the conquered peoples of the earth to be brought under the domination of Rome on account of the prosperity and civilization that accompanied her rule, how shall not a Christian admire the action of divine Providence, preparing the world for the New Law, and applaud those triumphs that brought so many countries through the Roman Empire into the Church of Christ. Of Christian less than of pagan Rome we shall interpret the poet’s sentiment:

“‘Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam; Profuit invitis, te dominante, capi; Dumque offers victis patrii consortia juris Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat.’”

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ALMANAC for 1878. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.

This annual, neat, compact, and perfect in all its mechanical arrangements—the labor of many busy and well-stored minds condensed into a portable form—has just been issued. To say that it equals its predecessors, which have found so much favor with the public, would be doing it great injustice. In every respect it is far superior, and shows palpable evidence that its conductors, appreciating the growth in public taste as well as the increasing desire for reliable information on important Catholic subjects, have left no effort untried to satisfy the wishes of their readers. This is particularly noticeable in the illustrations, which we consider to be not only good pictures but genuine works of art. The portraits of Archbishop Bayley, Bishops Von Ketteler and De St. Palais, and the venerable Jesuit Father McElroy are not only excellent likenesses of those deceased prelates, but the best specimens of wood-cut portraiture we have yet seen on this side of the Atlantic. The other engravings, of which there are about a dozen, are alike creditable to the artist and suitable for the pages of such a publication. The reading matter, however, will probably most attract the attention of the majority of purchasers, many of whom will doubtless wonder where a great portion of it could possibly have been discovered. Thus, in addition to the lives of the ecclesiastics above mentioned, and biographical sketches of the venerable Sister Mary Margaret Bourgeois, Frederic Ozanam, Columbus, and others, we have an elaborate History of Printing, a description (with fac-similes) of “The Earliest Irish Madonna,” accounts of the Libraries of the Bollandists and of the Eremites of York; an archæological sketch of the oldest churches of the world, an explanation of the antique Cross of St. Zachary, a résumé of the labors of the Franciscans in California, and a well-digested mass of astronomical, chronological, and statistical information which cannot help proving of incalculable value as matters of reference.

EVIDENCES OF RELIGION. By Louis Jouin, S.J. New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.

There is nothing more gratifying to Catholics who watch the progress of their religion in this country than to find that the church in the United States is beginning to supply her own literature, and more especially her polemical literature, which she needs most of all. Within the last few years several controversial works and books of instruction have been written in this country which are far better adapted to our people than the standard works of foreign authors; and the time, we trust, is not far distant when we shall be fully supplied with a well-adapted course of polemics of our own, and be no longer dependent on the writings of men in lands which are often more or less out of harmony with the American mind. The Evidences of Religion is one of the books of which we stood most in need, and the wonder is that it was not written long before. Perhaps, however, it is as well that no one attempted it before Father Jouin; for we doubt if any other attempt could have been so entirely successful.

The book is a marvel of condensed matter and thought and argument. In its 380 octavo pages are summed up the philosophical treatise De Certitudine and theological tract De Locis Theologicis; and it contains in addition a refutation, short, sharp, and decisive, of the latest errors in philosophy, politics, and religion.

Christianity rests on facts, not on mere theories. The science of the day pretends to deal with facts, and in every case to accept them, so that in our controversies with the pseudo-science of the times there is nothing more important than to bring out clearly and strongly the facts on which the certainty of the Christian faith rests. This Father Jouin has done, and in his book we have the whole groundwork on which Christianity is based spread out before us in perspective; the outline is complete, though of course, in the limited space which he allowed himself, he has not been able to bring out each detail in full. Yet he assures us in his preface that nothing essential has been left out, and we have verified his assertion. Altogether this is just the sort of book, in our opinion, that is needed to combat the errors of the age, and to serve as an antidote to the poison of rank infidelity and materialism with which the very atmosphere around us is charged.

The author tells us that he designs the work more especially as a text-book for students in the higher classes of our Catholic colleges, and we sincerely hope that it may be adopted in every Catholic college throughout the country. Our Catholic instructors fully realize the importance of giving their students a thorough grounding in the evidences of their religion, and Father Jouin’s book in the hands of a good professor can be made the basis of a thorough course of such instruction.

Not alone to students in colleges do we recommend the study of this work, but to every intelligent educated Catholic, who should investigate the reasons on which his religion is founded, and be able to answer for the faith that is in him. Let our Catholic lawyers and doctors and business men take it up, and they will find in it sufficient to convince them of the reasonableness of their creed. It will furnish them, moreover, with conclusive arguments against the absurd theories and false views of religion which are being advanced every day in their hearing.

The greatest enemy that the Catholic Church has to contend with, both without and within, at the present day, is ignorance of her true position and teaching, and we eagerly invite and encourage every study and investigation that may in any way help to dispel it.

It is to be regretted that so valuable a work has not been brought out in a worthy manner. It is neither well printed nor well put together.

THE NEW VESPER HYMN-BOOK: A companion to The New Vesper Psalter; containing a collection of all the hymns sung at Vespers throughout the year (classified according to metre), set to music, either for unison or four voices, with accompaniment, and including the best of the plain chant melodies, together with the words in full, and the versicles and responses proper to each hymn. The whole compiled and edited by Charles Lewis, Director of the Cathedral Choir, Boston, Mass. Boston: Thos. B. Noonan & Co.

At the present stage of the revival of Gregorian Chant, the true song of the church, we can commend this little work as one which will doubtless be found useful in many churches whose organists are unable to harmonize the chant or the singers to read its proper notation. We wish, however, that the editor had given all the hymns as found in the Vesperale, as the musical airs which are substituted are not worthy to supplant the original melodies. The style of notation is that usually adopted in translations from the old form of four lines and square notes. Could not the editor have done better, so as to give to those unaccustomed to plain chant some idea of its movement and expression? There is no mark given to designate accented from unaccented notes, and, lacking this, we defy any one who is not familiar with the traditional movement of a phrase to give its true expression.

We think the spacing of notes and phrases as given in the old style should be preserved—that is, the notes upon each syllable should be printed close together, and a wider and distinct space left between syllables and words. An intelligent system of writing plain chant upon the modern musical staff is yet to be invented. We have been told that in some places the Tonic Sol-Fa system is being attempted, with what success we have not learned.

LOTOS FLOWERS, GATHERED IN SUN AND SHADOW. By Mrs. Chambers-Ketchum. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1877.

Mrs. Chambers-Ketchum is already known to the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD through her poems, “Advent” and “A Birthday Wish” (appearing under the name of “Twenty-one” in the present collection), published in its pages during the present year. Her verse is pure in thought and written out of a woman’s heart full of love and enthusiasm. With true Southern fervor she revels in the luxuriant flora of her home, and in the landscape of all her pictures she takes a dear delight. Even so unsightly an object as a Mississippi steamboat-landing grows picturesque under her hand, and do we not feel soft Italian air as we read?—

“Peaceful stand The sentinel poplars in their gold-green plumes Beside the Enzo bridge. Where late the hoofs Of flying squadrons scared th’affrighted land The soft cloud-shadows chase each other now O’er violet gardens.”

As with many another poet, the ease with which Mrs. Chambers-Ketchum writes is at times a snare, leading her to accept too readily a hackneyed term or word, surrendering after too slight a struggle to the tyranny of rhyme. In her verse, also, there is sometimes a lack of smoothness that would set despair in the heart of the faithful scanner.

Was it because our ears were sick with a certain slang of “culture” that, when we stumbled over Krishna in the “Christian Legend,” we felt a strong desire to banish these Indian immortals to that Hades where languished the gods of Greece until Schiller called them forth to run riot in the field of religion as well as of art? And is not the term “legend” a strange misnomer, for the New Testament narrative of the raising of Lazarus? For Mrs. Chambers-Ketchum’s verse is essentially Christian and womanly, and even so short a notice of it would scarcely be complete without a mention of “Benny,” who, with his kitten and his “baby’s sense of right,” is already dear and familiar to the mothers and children of our whole country, whose kindly hearts will surely give to Benny’s mother their sympathy in his loss.

SURLY TIM, AND OTHER STORIES. By Francis Hodgson Burnett. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.

Unfortunately for our first impression of the merit of the little volume of which “Surly Tim” is the initial story, we began our reading with “Lodusky,” attracted to it by the locality of the tale, its hill people and dialect being a loadstone to us, but lately returned from similar surroundings. But as even in our mountain Edens we find the trail of the serpent, so in “Lodusky” we seemed to be treading the familiar path of moral irresponsibility and the tyranny of personal magnetism, and we craved the flaming sword of the archangel to put the evil to flight.

Nor did our impression grow fairer on turning to “Le Monsieur de la Petite Dame.” But in “One Day at Arle” and in “Seth” we welcomed truly the author’s strong and exquisite pathos. In these pictures of the sorrow of the laboring classes the author draws with a pencil full of feeling, working under a sky whose hue is the leaden monotone of modern French landscape painting; a break of sunshine here and there, but the light seems to fall, after all, on earthly stubble and the dumb, almost soulless faces of patient cattle that know nothing beyond their daily furrow and the mute, faithful service they bear a kindly hand at the plough.

We are reminded of the pathos of Robert Buchanan’s North-Coast verse, and we close the little volume sadly, almost as if all human sorrow wherein is no Christian joy stood at our threshold, asking from us an alms we had no power to give.

REPERTORIUM ORATORIS SACRI: Containing Outlines of Six Hundred Sermons for all the Sundays and Holidays of the Ecclesiastical Year; also for other solemn occasions. Compiled from the works of eminent preachers of various ages and nations by a secular priest. With an introduction by the Rt. Rev. Joseph Dwenger, D.D., Bishop of Fort Wayne. New York and Cincinnati: Fr. Pustet, Typographus Sedis Apostolicæ. 1877.

This publication is to be continued in monthly parts, each part containing the outlines of two sermons for each Sunday and holiday for one quarter of the year. There will be four volumes of four parts each, so that when the work is completed there will be eight sermons for each occasion.

It will, if it fulfils the promise of this first number, be the best and most complete collection of the kind ever published so far as we are aware. It hardly needs to be said that plans of sermons such as are here given are very much more valuable to a preacher than the actual sermons themselves; for there are few who can give with much effect the words of another, to say nothing of the trouble involved in committing them to memory. The sermons of great pulpit orators are indeed extremely useful and deserving of study as models of style; but a few will answer that purpose as well as a thousand.

The work is in English, being designed principally for use in this country. It is most earnestly to be hoped that it will receive the liberal support which it certainly deserves.

NICHOLAS MINTURN. A Study in a Story. By J. G. Holland. 1 vol. 12mo. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.

We prefer Dr. Holland’s stories to his essays. He possesses fine descriptive powers; his genial humor captivates the reader; his power of analysis is searching. No one can read Nicholas Minturn without recognizing the author’s ability to lay bare the vices and follies of the various classes with whom his hero is brought in contact. In doing this, however, Dr. Holland is apt to forget their redeeming virtues. This is his great fault as a novelist. He lacks the power to vitalize the subtle traits that appeal to our humanity. There is no bond of union between his people and us. He is unable to centralize our interest. When disaster overtakes the ocean steamer there is not a single figure to start out from the group and wring a groan of compassion from us. We listen to the wailing of despair and the shriek of terror with as much apathy as if it arose from a distant battle-field. In all other respects the story is far superior to the great mass of light literature.

THE ETERNAL YEARS. By the Hon. Mrs. A. Montgomery, author of The Divine Sequence, also The Bucklyn Shaig, Mine Own Familiar Friend, The Wrong Man, On the Wing, etc. With an introduction by the Rev. S. Porter, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1877.

The Eternal Years is a republication of a series of articles from THE CATHOLIC WORLD. A number of thoughtful readers of our magazine have expressed the great interest with which they have read those articles and their desire to know the name of the author. They will be pleased to see that they are now published in a volume under their author’s name. On the Wing will be remembered as having been one of the most popular of the series of sketches taken from scenes in European life and incidents of travel which we have from time to time published. Mrs. Montgomery possesses a very versatile talent as a writer, and passes with facility “from grave to gay, from lively to severe.” Whatever she writes is always both instructive and pleasing.

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHER’S MANUAL; or, The Art of Teaching Catechism. For the use of teachers and parents. By the Rev. A. A. Lambing, author of The Orphan’s Friend. New York: Benziger Brothers. 1877.

Father Lambing has done for Sunday-school teachers what M. Amond, the curé of St. Sulpice, and Father Porter have done for those engaged in the sacred ministry of the pulpit.

This manual, written in a clear and popular style, supplies a need that should have been more felt than it was. It gives those in charge of Sunday-schools a true idea of their very important mission, a deep sense of the responsibility that rests upon them, points out the various qualifications necessary for the faithful discharge of their duties, and contains many useful instructions which will aid them in becoming effective catechisers.

IZA: A STORY OF LIFE IN RUSSIAN POLAND. By Kathleen O’Meara. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.)

This book, by a lady who since its first appearance has become distinguished in the higher walks of literature, has been republished at a very seasonable time, when the Eastern war, and the novel pretensions of Russia to be considered the friend and protector of oppressed nationalities, have once more called public attention to her barbarous treatment of the gallant Poles. The scenes are laid in Poland; the characters, which are few and clearly drawn, are Polish or Muscovite, and the plot, though simple and natural, is well and artistically wrought out. The theme of the whole story is the oppression of the Polish nobility by the shrewd, keen, and unscrupulous agents of the czar, wherein the generous, high-spirited and confiding patriotism of the one class is strongly contrasted with the accomplished villainy of the other. Though the superstructure is, of course, a work of pure fiction, it is based on well known historical facts. The entire work is written with great care and accuracy as to names, places, costumes, and local customs, the situations are highly dramatic, and the moral effect produced on the reader is healthful and salutary.

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

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

The attention of readers will be directed to the advertisement of complete sets of THE CATHOLIC WORLD and THE YOUNG CATHOLIC as suitable and valuable Christmas presents. Bound volumes of THE YOUNG CATHOLIC make the very best present that could be offered to children. The reading matter is interesting, the illustrations are really excellent, and the puzzles and charades afford unfailing amusement for the long winter evenings.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD is now in its twenty-sixth volume. It constitutes a library, and a most valuable and varied library, in itself. In it is everything that could be desired. Theology and philosophy have their departments, filled by men of known and recognized competence, master minds indeed in those higher sciences. The literary articles and reviews are acknowledged by the secular press to be unsurpassed in power, grace, and strength. The polemics of the day find their true solution in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, which has told upon the non-Catholic mind in this country as no other magazine or publication has been able to tell. There is an abundance of fiction and light literature in its pages, a fiction that has known how to be interesting without being dangerous, and good without being dull. Many stories that have already made their mark in the literary world and won deserved fame for their authors began by passing through the columns of this magazine. All the leading and absorbing questions of the day are taken up and discussed in it by men thoroughly equipped and fitted for so important a task. Indeed THE CATHOLIC WORLD may fairly claim to be a channel through which the very best Catholic literature of the day, in all its forms, passes, a guide to and in all the questions of the day, and a compendium from year to year of all that is best and most worthy of attention in the higher sciences, in physical science, in politics, in literature, and in art. His Eminence the Cardinal has recently kindly taken occasion to “congratulate the Catholics in America on possessing a magazine of which they may be justly proud,” and trusts “that they will contribute their share to make THE CATHOLIC WORLD still more useful to themselves and to the Church at large.” No words could add strength to this commendation and appeal; and it is to be hoped that Catholics will take both to heart. No intelligent Catholic in this country should be without a magazine that is peculiarly and designedly his own. Yet are there thousands of intelligent persons who are without it, who probably do not know of its existence. It is for those who do know it and appreciate it to make it known among their friends. Taken in the very lowest sense, no man has yet complained that in THE CATHOLIC WORLD he did not receive the full, and more than the full, value of his money.

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

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXVI., No. 155.—FEBRUARY, 1878.

CEADMON THE COW-HERD, ENGLAND’S FIRST POET.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation contains nothing more touching than its record of Ceadmon, the earliest English poet, whose gift came to him in a manner so extraordinary. It occurs in the 24th chapter: “By his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. Others after him attempted in the English nation to compose religious poems, but none could ever compare with him; for he did not learn the art of poetry from man, but from God, for which reason he never would compose any vain or trivial poem.” ... “Being sometimes at entertainments, when it was agreed, for the sake of mirth, that all present should sing in their turns, when he saw the instrument come towards him he rose from the table and retired home. Having done so on a certain occasion, ... a Person appeared to him in his sleep, and, saluting him by his name, said, ‘Ceadmon, sing some song for me.’ He answered, ‘I cannot sing.’” Ceadmon’s song is next described: “How he, being the Eternal God, became the author of all miracles, Who first, as Almighty Preserver of the human race, created heaven for the sons of men, as the roof of the house, and next the earth.” ... “He sang the Creation of the world, the origin of man, and all the history of Genesis, ... the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection of our Lord, and His Ascension.”[158] Ceadmon’s poetry is referred to also in Sharon Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons; and Sir Francis Palgrave points out the singular resemblance of passages in Paradise Lost to corresponding passages in its surviving fragments. To the history of Ceadmon Montalembert has devoted some of the most eloquent paragraphs in his admirable work, Les Moines d’Occident—see chapter ii., vol. iv., page 68.

Sole stood upon the pleasant bank of Esk Ceadmon the Cow-herd, while the sinking sun Reddened the bay, and fired the river-bank With pomp beside of golden Iris lit, And flamed upon the ruddy herds that strayed Along the marge, clear-imaged. None was nigh:— For that cause spake the Cow-herd, “Praise to God! He made the worlds; and now, by Hilda’s hand He plants a fair crown upon Whitby’s height: Daily her convent towers more high aspire; Daily ascend her Vespers. Hark that strain!” He stood and listened. Soon the flame-touched herds Sent forth their lowings, and the cliffs replied, And Ceadmon thus resumed: “The music note Rings through their lowings dull, though heard by few! Poor kine, ye do your best! Ye know not God, Yet man, his likeness, unto you is God, And him ye worship with obedience sage, A grateful, sober, much-enduring race That o’er the vernal clover sigh for joy, With winter snows contend not. Patient kine, What thought is yours, deep-musing? Haply this— ‘God’s help! how narrow are our thoughts, and few! Not so the thoughts of that slight human child Who daily drives us with her blossomed rod From lowland valleys to the pails long-ranged!’ Take comfort, kine! God also made your race! If praise from man surceased, from your broad chests That God would perfect praise, and, when ye died, Resound it from yon rocks that gird the bay: God knoweth all things. Let that thought suffice!”

Thus spake the ruler of the deep-mouthed kine: They were not his; the man and they alike A neighbor’s wealth. He was contented thus: Humble he was in station, meek of soul, Unlettered, yet heart-wise. His face was pale; Stately his frame, though slightly bent by age: Slow were his eyes, and slow his speech, and slow His musing step; and slow his hand to wrath, A massive hand, but soft, that many a time Had succored man and woman, child and beast; Ay, yet could fiercely grasp the sword! At times As mightily it clutched his ashen goad When like an eagle on him swooped some thought: Then stood he as in dream, his pallid front Brightening like eastern sea-cliffs when a moon Unrisen is near its rising.

Round the bay Meantime with deepening eve full many a fire Up-sprung, and horns were heard. Around the steep With bannered pomp and many a dancing plume Ere long a cavalcade made way. Whence came it? Oswy, Northumbria’s king, the foremost rode, Oswy triumphant o’er the Mercian host, To sue for blessing on his sceptre new; With him an Anglian prince, student long time In Bangor of the Irish, and a monk Of Gallic race far wandering from the Marne: They came to look on Hilda, hear her words Of far-famed wisdom on the Interior Life: For Hilda thus discoursed: “True life of man Is life within: inward immeasurably The being winds of all who walk the earth; But he whom sense hath blinded nothing knows Of that wide greatness: like a boy is he That clambers round some castle’s wall extern In search of nests—the outward wall of seven— Yet nothing knows of those great courts within, The hall where princes banquet, or the bower Where royal maidens touch the lyre and lute, Much less its central church, and sacred shrine Wherein God dwells alone.”[159] Thus Hilda spake; And they that gazed upon her widening eyes Low whispered, each to each, “She speaks of things Which she hath seen and known.”

On Whitby’s crest The royal feast was holden: far below, A noisier revel dinned the shore; therein The humbler guests partook. Full many a tent Glimmered upon the white sands, ripple-kissed; Full many a savory dish sent up its steam; The farmer from the field had driven his calf; The fisher brought the harvest of the sea; And Jock, the woodsman, from his oaken glades The tall stag, arrow-pierced. In gay attire Now green, now crimson, matron sat and maid: Each had her due: the elder, reverence most, The lovelier that and love. Beside the board The beggar lacked not place.

When hunger’s rage, Sharpened by fresh sea-air, was quelled, the jest Succeeded, and the tale of foreign lands; But, boast who might of distant chief renowned, His battle-axe, or fist that felled an ox, The Anglian’s answer was “our Hilda” still: “Is not her prayer puissant as sworded hosts? Her insight more than wisdom of the seers? What birth like hers illustrious? Edwin’s self, Dëira’s exile, next Northumbria’s king, Her kinsman was. Together bowed they not When he of holy hand, missioned from Rome, Paulinus, poured o’er both the absolving wave And knit to Christ? Kingliest was she, that maid Who spurned earth-crowns!” The night advanced, he rose That ruled the feast, the miller old, yet blithe, And cried, “A song!” So song succeeded song, For each man knew that time to chant his stave, But no man yet sang nobly. Last the harp Made way to Ceadmon, lowest at the board: He pushed it back, answering, “I cannot sing:” Around him many gathered clamoring, “Sing!” And one among them, voluble and small, Shot out a splenetic speech: “This lord of kine, Our herdsman, grows to ox! Behold, his eyes Move slow, like eyes of oxen!”

Sudden rose Ceadmon, and spake: “I note full oft young men Quick-eyed, but small-eyed, darting glances round Now here, now there, like glance of some poor bird, That light on all things and can rest on none: As ready are they with their tongues as eyes; But all their songs are chirpings backward blown On winds that sing God’s song, by them unheard: My oxen wait my service: I depart.” Then strode he to his cow-house in the mead, Displeased though meek, and muttered, “Slow of eye! My kine are slow: if I were swift my hand Might tend them worse.” Hearing his steps the kine Turned round their hornèd foreheads: angry thoughts Went from him as a vapor. Straw he brought, And strewed their beds; and they, contented well, Down laid ere long their great bulks, breathing deep Amid the glimmering moonlight. He, with head Propped on the white flank of a heifer mild, Rested, his deer-skin o’er him drawn. Hard days Bring slumber soon. His latest thought was this: “Though witless things we are, my kine and I, Yet God it was who made us.”

As he slept, Beside him stood a Man Divine and spake; “Ceadmon, arise, and sing.” Ceadmon replied, “My Lord, I cannot sing, and for that cause Forth from the revel came I. Once, in youth, I willed to sing the bright face of a maid, And failed, and once a gold-faced harvest-field, And failed, and once the flame-eyed face of war, And failed once more.” To him the Man Divine, “Those themes were earthly. Sing!” And Ceadmon said, “What shall I sing, my Lord?” Then answer came, “Ceadmon, stand up, and sing thy song of God.”

At once obedient, Ceadmon rose, and sang, And help was with him from great thoughts of old Within his silent nature yearly stored, That swelled, collecting like a flood that bursts In spring its icy bar. The Lord of all He sang; that God beneath whose hand eterne, Then when he willed forth-stretched athwart the abyss, Creation like a fiery chariot ran, Inwoven wheels of ever-living stars. Him first he sang. The builder, here below, From fair foundations rears at last the roof, But Song, a child of heaven, begins with heaven, The archetype divine, and end of all, More late descends to earth. He sang that hymn, “Let there be light, and there was light”; and lo! On the void deep came down the seal of God And stamped immortal form. Clear laughed the skies, While from crystalline seas the strong earth brake, Both continent and isle; and downward rolled The sea-surge summoned to his home remote. Then came a second vision to the man There standing ‘mid his oxen. Darkness sweet, He sang, of pleasant frondage clothed the vales, Ambrosial bowers rich-fruited which the sun, A glory new-created in his place, All day made golden, and the moon by night Silvered with virgin beam, while sang the bird Her first of love-songs on the branch first-flower’d— Not yet the lion stalked. And Ceadmon sang O’er-awed, the Father of all humankind Standing in garden planted by God’s hand, And girt by murmurs of the rivers four, Between the trees of Knowledge and of Life, With eastward face. In worship mute of God, Eden’s Contemplative he stood that hour, Not her Ascetic, since, where sin is none, No need for spirit severe.

And Ceadmon sang God’s Daughter, Adam’s Sister, Child, and Bride, Our Mother Eve. Lit by the matin star, That nearer drew to earth, and brighter flashed To meet her gaze, that snowy Innocence Stood up with queenly port. She turned: she saw Earth’s King, mankind’s great Father. Taught by God, Immaculate, unastonished, undismayed, In love and reverence to her Lord she drew, And, kneeling, kissed his hand: and Adam laid That hand, made holier, on that kneeler’s head, And spake; “For this shall man his parents leave, And to his wife cleave fast.”

When Ceadmon ceased Thus spake the Man Divine: “At break of day Seek thou some prudent man, and say that God Hath loosed thy tongue; nor hide henceforth thy gift.” Then Ceadmon turned, and slept among his kine Dreamless. Ere dawn he stood upon the shore In doubt: but when at last o’er eastern seas The sun, long wished for, like a god upsprang, Once more he found God’s song upon his mouth Murmuring high joy; and sought a prudent man, And told him all the vision. At the word He to the Abbess with the tidings fled, And she made answer, “Bring me Ceadmon here.”

Then clomb the pair that sea-beat mount of God Fanned by sea-gale, nor trod, as others used, The curving way, but faced the abrupt ascent, And halted not, so worked in both her will, Till now between the unfinished towers they stood Panting and spent. The portals open stood: Ceadmon passed in alone. Nor ivory decked, Nor gold, the walls. That convent was a keep Strong ’gainst invading storm or demon hosts, And naked as the rock whereon it stood, Yet, as a church, august. Dark, high-arched roofs Slowly let go the distant hymn. Each cell Cinctured its statued saint, the peace of God On every stony face. Like caverned grot Far off the western window frowned: beyond, Close by, there shook an autumn-blazoned tree: No need for gems beside of storied glass.

He entered last that hall where Hilda sat Begirt with a great company, the chiefs Down either side far ranged. Three stalls, cross-crowned, Stood side by side, the midmost hers. The years Had laid upon her brows a hand serene, And left alone their blessing. Levelled eyes Sable, and keen, with meditative strength Conjoined the instinct and the claim to rule; Firm were her lips and rigid. At her right Sat Finan, Aidan’s successor, with head Snow-white, and beard that rolled adown a breast Never by mortal passion heaved in storm, A cloister of majestic thoughts that walked, Humbly with God. High in the left-hand stall Oswy was throned, a man in prime, with brow Less youthful than his years. Exile long past, Or deepening thought of one disastrous deed, Had left a shadow in his eyes. The strength Of passion held in check looked lordly forth From head and hand: tawny his beard; his hair Thick-curled and dense. Alert the monarch sat Half turned, like one on horseback set that hears, And he alone, the advancing trump of war. Down the long gallery strangers thronged in mass, Dane or Norwegian, huge of arm through weight Of billows oar-subdued, with stormy looks Wild as their waves and crags; Southerns keen-browed; Pure Saxon youths, fair-fronted, with mild eyes (These less than others strove for nobler place), And Pilgrim travel-worn. Behind the rest, And higher-ranged in marble-arched arcade, Sat Hilda’s sisterhood. Clustering they shone, White-veiled, and pale of face, and still and meek, An inly-bending curve, like some young moon Whose crescent glitters o’er a dusky strait. In front were monks dark-stoled: for Hilda ruled, Though feminine, two houses, one of men: Upon two chasm-divided rocks they stood, To various service vowed, though single. Faith; Nor ever, save at rarest festival, Their holy inmates met.

“Is this the man Favored, though late, with gift of song?” Thus spake Hilda with placid smile. Severer then She added: “Son, the commonest gifts of God He counts his best, and oft temptation blends With powers more rare. Yet sing! That God who lifts The violet from the grass as well could draw Music from stones hard by. That song thou sang’st, Sing it once more.”

Then Ceadmon from his knees Arose and stood. With princely instinct first The strong man to the abbess bowed, and next To that great twain, the bishop and the king, Last to that stately concourse ranged each side Down the long hall; and, dubious, answered thus: “Great Mother, if that God who sent the song Vouchsafe me to recall it, I will sing; But I misdoubt it lost.” Slowly his face Down-drooped, and all his body forward bent As brooding memory, step by step, retracked Its backward way. Vainly long time it sought The starting-point. Then Ceadmon’s large, soft hands Opening and closing worked; for wont were they, In musings when he stood, to clasp his goad, And plant its point far from him, thereupon Propping his stalwart weight. Customed support Now finding not, unwittingly those hands Reached forth, and on Saint Finan’s crosier-staff Settling, withdrew it from the old bishop’s grasp; And Ceadmon leant thereon, while passed a smile Down the long hall to see earth’s meekest man The spiritual sceptre claim of Lindisfarne. They smiled; he triumphed: soon the Cow-herd found That first fair corner-stone of all his song; Then rose the fabric heavenward. Lifting hands, Once more his lordly music he rehearsed, The void abyss at God’s command forth-flinging Creation like a Thought:—where night had reigned, The universe of God.

The singing stars Which with the Angels sang when earth was made Sang in his song. From highest shrill of lark To ocean’s deepest under cliffs low-browed, And pine-woods’ vastest on the topmost hills, No tone was wanting; while to them that heard Strange images looked forth of worlds new-born, Fair, phantom mountains, and, with forests plumed, The marvelling headlands, for the first time glassed In waters ever calm. O’er sapphire seas Green islands laughed. Fairer, the wide earth’s flower, Eden, on airs unshaken yet by sighs From bosom still inviolate forth poured Immortal sweets. With sense to spirit turned Who heard the song inhaled those sweets. Their eyes Flashing, their passionate hands and heaving breasts, Tumult self-stilled, and mute, expectant trance, ’Twas these that gave their bard his twofold might, That might denied to poets later born Who, singing to soft brains and hearts ice-hard, Applauded or contemned, alike roll round A vainly-seeking eye, and, famished, drop A hand clay-cold upon the unechoing shell, Missing their inspiration’s human half.

Thus Ceadmon sang, and ceased. Silent awhile The concourse stood (for all had risen), as though Waiting from heaven its echo. Each on each Gazed hard and caught his hands. Fiercely ere long Their gratulating shout aloft had leaped But Hilda laid her finger on her lip, Or provident lest praise might stain the pure, Or deeming song a gift too high for praise. She spake: “Through help of God thy song is sound: Now hear His Holy Word, and shape therefrom A second hymn, and worthier than the first.”

Then Finan stood, and bent his hoary head Above the Scripture tome in reverence stayed Upon his kneeling deacon’s hands and brow, And sweetly sang five verses, thus beginning, “Cum esset desponsata,” and was still; And next rehearsed them in the Anglian tongue: Then Ceadmon took God’s Word into his heart, And ruminating stood, as when the kine, Their flowery pasture ended, ruminate; And was a man in thought. At last the light Shone from his dubious countenance, and he spake: “Great Mother, lo! I saw a second Song! T’wards me it came; but with averted face, And borne on shifting winds. A man am I Sluggish and slow, that needs must muse and brood; Therefore that Scripture till the sun goes down Will I revolve. If song from God be mine Expect me here at morn.”

The morrow morn In that high presence Ceadmon stood and sang A second song, and manlier than his first; And Hilda said, “From God it came, not man; Thou therefore live a monk among my monks, And sing to God.” Doubtful he stood—“From youth My place hath been with kine; their ways I know, And how to cure their griefs.” Smiling she answered, “Our convent hath its meads, and kine; with these Consort each morning: night and day be ours.” Then Ceadmon knelt, and bowed, and said, “So be it”: And aged Finan, and Northumbria’s king Oswy, approved; and all that host had joy.

Thus in that convent Ceadmon lived, a monk, Humblest of all the monks, save him that slept In the next cell, who once had been a prince. Seven times a day he sang God’s praises, first When earliest dawn drew back night’s sable veil With trembling hand, revisiting the earth Like some pale maid that through the curtain peers Round her sick mother’s bed, misdoubting half If sleep lie there, or death; latest when eve Through nave and chancel stole from arch to arch, And laid upon the snowy altar-step At last a brow of gold. From time to time, By ancient yearnings driven, through wood and vale He tracked Dëirean or Bernician glades To holy Ripon, or late-sceptred York, Not yet great Wilfred’s seat, or Beverley:— The children gathered round him, crying, “Sing!” They gave him inspiration with their eyes, And with his conquering music he returned it. Oftener he roamed that strenuous eastern coast To Yarrow and to Wearmouth, sacred sites, The well-beloved of Bede, or northward more, To Bamborough, Oswald’s keep. At Coldingham His feet had rest—there where St. Ebba’s Cape That ends the lonely range of Lammermoor, Sustained for centuries o’er the wild sea-surge In region of dim mist and flying bird, Fronting the Forth, those convent piles far-kenned, The worn-out sailor’s hope.

Fair English shores, Despite the buffeting storms of north and east, Despite rough ages blind with stormier strife, Or froz’n by doubt, or sad with sensual care, A fragrance as of Carmel haunts you still Bequeathed by feet of that forgotten saint Who trod you once, sowing the seed divine! Fierce tribes that kenned him distant round him flocked; On sobbing sands the fisher left his net, His lamb the shepherd on the hills of March, Suing for song. With wrinkled face all smiles, Like that blind Scian upon Grecian shores, If God the song accorded, Ceadmon sang; If God denied it, after musings deep He answered, “I am of the kine and dumb”;— The man revered his art, and fraudful song Esteemed as fraudful coin.

Music denied, He solaced them with tales wherein, so seemed it, Nature and Grace, inwoven, like children played, Or like two sisters o’er one sampler bent, One pattern worked. Ever the sorrowful chance Ending in joy, the human craving still, Like creeper circling up the Tree of Life, Lifted by hand unseen, witnessed that He, Man’s Maker, is the Healer too of man, And life his school, expectant. Parables— Thus Ceadmon named his legends. They who heard Made answer, “Nay, not parables, but truths;” Endured no change of phrase; to years remote Transmitted them as facts.

Better than tale They loved their minstrel’s harp. The songs he sang Were songs to brighten gentle hearts, to fire Strong hearts with holier courage, hope to breathe Through spirits despondent, o’er the childless floor Or widowed bed, flashing from highest heaven A beam half faith, half vision. Many a tear, His own, and tears of those that listened, fell Oft as he sang that hand, lovely as light, Forth stretched, and gathering from forbidden boughs That fruit fatal to man. He sang the Flood, Sin’s doom that quelled the impure, yet raised to height Else inaccessible, the just. He sang That patriarch facing at Divine command The illimitable desert—harder proof, Lifting his knife o’er him, the seed foretold: He sang of Israel loosed, the twelve black seals Down pressed on Egypt’s testament of woe, Covenant of pride with penance; sang the face Of Moses glittering from red Sinai’s rocks, The Tables twain, and Mandements of God. On Christian nights he sang that jubilant star Which led the Magians to the Bethlehem crib By Joseph watched, and Mary. Pale, in Lent, Tremulous and pale, he told of Calvary, Nor added word, but, as in trance, rehearsed That Passion fourfold of the Evangelists, Which, terrible and swift—not like a tale— With speed of things which must be done, not said, A river of bale, from guilty age to age, Along the lamentable shore of things Annual makes way, the history of the world, Not of one race, one day. Up to its fount That stream he tracked, that primal mystery sang Which, chanted later by a thousand years, Music celestial, though with note that jarred (Some wandering orb troubling its starry chime), Amazed the nations—“There was war in heaven: Michael and they, his angels, warfare waged With Satan and his angels.” Brief that war, That ruin total. Brief was Ceadmon’s song: Therein the Eternal Face was undivulged: Therein the Apostate’s form no grandeur wore: The grandeur was elsewhere. Who hate their God Change not alone to vanquished but to vile. On Easter morns he sang the Saviour Risen, Eden regained. Since then on England’s shores Though many sang, yet no man sang like him.

O holy House of Whitby! on thy steep Rejoice, howe’er the tempest, night or day, Afflict thee, or the craftier hand of Time, Drag back thine airy arches in mid spring; Rejoice, for Ceadmon in thy cloisters knelt, And singing paced beside thy sounding sea! Long years he lived; and with the whitening hair More youthful grew in spirit, and more meek; And they that saw him said he sang within Then when the golden mouth but seldom breathed Sonorous strain, and when—that fulgent eye No longer bright—still on his forehead shone Not flame but purer light, like that last beam Which, when the sunset woods no longer burn, Maintains its place on Alpine throne remote, Or utmost beak of promontoried cloud, And heavenward dies in smiles. Esteem of men Daily he less esteemed, through single heart More knit with God. To please a sickly child He sang his latest song, and, ending, said, “Song is but body, though ’tis body winged: The soul of song is love: the body dead, The soul should thrive the more.” That Patmian Sage Whose head had lain upon the Saviour’s breast, Who in high vision saw the First and Last, Who heard the harpings of the Elders crowned, Who o’er the ruins of the Imperial House And ashes of the twelve great Cæsars dead Witnessed the endless triumph of the just, To earthly life restored, and, weak through age, But seldom spake, and gave but one command, The great “Mandatum Novum” of his Lord, “My children, love each other!” Like to his Was Ceadmon’s age. Weakness with happy stealth Increased upon him: he was cheerful still: He still could pace, though slowly, in the sun, Still gladsomely converse with friends who wept, Still lay a broad hand on his well-loved kine.

The legend of the last of Ceadmon’s days:— That hospital wherein the old monks died Stood but a stone’s throw from the monastery: “Make there my couch to-night,” he said, and smiled: They marvelled, yet obeyed. There, hour by hour, The man, low-seated on his pallet-bed, In silence watched the courses of the stars, Or casual spake at times of common things, And three times played with childhood’s days, and twice His father named. At last, like one that, long Begirt with good, is smit by sudden thought Of greater good, thus spake he: “Have ye, sons, Here in this house the Blessed Sacrament?” They answered, wrathful, “Father, thou art strong; Shake not thy children! Thou hast many days!” “Yet bring me here the Blessed Sacrament,” Once more he said. The brethren issued forth Save four that silent sat waiting the close. Ere long in grave procession they returned, Two deacons first, gold-vested; after these That priest who bare the Blessed Sacrament, And acolytes behind him, lifting lights. Then from his pallet Ceadmon slowly rose And worshipped Christ, his God, and reaching forth His right hand, cradled in his left, behold! Therein was laid God’s Mystery. He spake: “Stand ye in flawless charity of God T’wards me, my sons, or lives there in your hearts Memory the least of wrong or wrath?” They answered: “Father, within us lives nor wrong, nor wrath, But love, and love alone.” And he: “Not less Am I in charity with you, my sons, And all my sins of pride, and other sins, Humbly I mourn.” Then, bending the old head Above the old hand, Ceadmon received his Lord To be his soul’s viaticum, in might Leading from life that seems to life that is, And long, unpropped by any, kneeling hung And made thanksgiving prayer. Thanksgiving made, He sat upon his bed, and spake: “How long Ere yet the monks begin their matin psalms?” “That hour is nigh,” they answered; he replied, “Then let us wait that hour,” and laid him down With those kine-tending and harp-mastering hands Crossed on his breast, and slept.

Meanwhile the monks (The lights removed in reverence of his sleep) Sat mute nor stirred such time as in the Mass Between “Orate Fratres” glides away, And “Hoc est Corpus Meum.” Northward far The great deep, seldom heard so distant, roared Round those wild rocks half way to Bamborough Head; For now the mightiest spring-tide of the year, Following the magic of a maiden moon, Had reached its height. More near, that sea which sobbed In many a cave by Whitby’s winding coast, Or died in peace on many a sandy bar From river-mouth to river-mouth outspread, They heard, and mused upon eternity That circles human life. Gradual there rose A softer strain and sweeter, making way O’er that sea-murmur hoarse; and they were ware That in the black far-shadowing church whose bulk Up-towered between them and the moon, the monks Their matins had begun. A little sigh That moment reached them from the central gloom Guarding the sleeper’s bed; a second sigh Succeeded: neither seemed the sigh of pain: And some one said, “He wakens.” Large and bright Over the church-roof sudden rushed the moon, And smote the cross above that sleeper’s couch, And smote that sleeper’s face. The smile thereon Was calmer than the smile of life. Thus died Ceadmon, the earliest bard of English song.

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

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

CONFESSION IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.[160]

The subject of confession has of late been brought prominently before the British public. We need hardly say that a storm of indignation has been raised. Parliament has been called upon to put a stop to a practice which is generally believed to be quite at variance with the spirit of the Church of England, and many of the bishops have publicly condemned it. It may, however, be doubted whether any effect has really been produced; for as long as clergy are found who claim the power of forgiving sin, and as long as people feel the need of absolution, it is certain that confession will be practised.

A Catholic must necessarily look on confession, as existing in the Anglican communion, with feelings of a very mixed nature. On the one hand it is impossible not to appreciate the sincerity and humility evinced by those who voluntarily seek what they believe to be a means of grace. It is hard to doubt that the habit of self-examination and of watchfulness naturally resulting from confession must have its value; above all, it seems as if we might fairly hope that the spirit of obedience and the faithfulness in acting on conviction will be rewarded by fuller light and knowledge.

On the other hand, it is equally impossible to shut our eyes to the great dangers which beset confession among Anglicans. In the first place, there is the absence of all sacramental grace; secondly, of training, and even of theological knowledge, in the clergy; and, thirdly, those who use confession are in an exceptional position, which of itself is fraught with peril to the soul.

Of course no Catholic supposes Anglican clergymen to have true orders. Confession in the English communion is simply a conversation between two lay people on some of the most important subjects that can occupy the thoughts of human beings. There may be on either side sincerity, piety, and earnestness, but sacramental grace there is not. Relations so close between two souls are certainly not without peril; we do not speak of the danger to morals which the Protestant party constantly insists upon, and whose existence we cannot altogether deny, but of the tyranny on the part of the minister, and of the unreasonable obedience yielded by the penitent to a self-appointed guide.

Those who have looked a little into their own hearts, and who have reflected on the subtle influences which have told on their characters, must feel that dealing with another soul is no light matter; that the chances of doing harm are many and great; and that special graces are needed by those who are called to so sacred an office. The need of training, too, is obvious; he who is to be the physician of the soul ought to be as well acquainted with moral theology as a physician should be with medical science. Among the clergy of the Church of England there is an absolute want of theological knowledge. It would be hard to mention an Anglican book on any subject connected with moral theology. Anglican clergymen, even where they have learnt to believe many of the dogmas of the Catholic faith, are, generally speaking, ignorant of the difference between mortal and venial sin. Hence results a spirit of severity on the part of the confessor which tends to produce scrupulosity and depression in the penitent. Converts have declared that the first time they heard Catholic teaching as to the nature of sin it seemed to them the most consoling doctrine possible.

It is true that of late years some Catholic manuals have been translated and “adapted” to the Anglican use. In the recent controversies regarding the Priest in Absolution some of the leading High-Church clergy have proclaimed their ignorance of the book, and have asserted that experience had taught them all that they could learn from its pages; but while they were gaining their experience what became of the poor souls who were the subjects of their study? In the Catholic Church a person cannot be said in any way to distinguish himself by going to confession; he does what has to be done if he would save his soul. Among Anglicans, although the practice is now pretty widely spread, the case is very different; the man or woman who goes to confession occupies a somewhat exceptional position, and is more or less considered as a support of the church, as one of those through whose influence that church is gradually to be reformed and restored.

It is hard to get at statistics as to the actual strength of the extreme High-Church party, and even among those who call themselves High Church there are many shades and differences of opinion; the amount of notice which it has attracted is due rather to the adoption of practices unknown in the Church of England, and to the earnestness and activity of its clergy, than to the great number of its adherents. If we were to count one-tenth part of the members of the Church of England as High Church we should probably be overshooting the mark; and of these it is by no means to be assumed that the greater number go to confession. Personal inquiry in at least one so-called centre of ritualism has led us to believe that it is the practice of a mere minority.

We believe that the practice of confession may be said to be pretty nearly universal in the case of the Anglican religious communities (which are about thirty in number). Many people living in the world are accustomed to go to confession weekly or fortnightly, and in some few London churches the practice is probably followed by the majority of the congregation; children are trained to it from their earliest years, and it is boldly proclaimed to be the “remedy for post-baptismal sin.”

As far as we can gather from the testimony of those who have confessed and heard confessions as Anglicans, we should say that confession is often an actual torture to the soul; that penances are often imposed altogether without proportion to their cause; that a kind of obedience unknown among Catholics is claimed and is rendered. This, after all, is the great danger. It will never be known till the last day how many souls have been kept out of God’s church by the authority of their Protestant “directors.” A director finds that one of his penitents begins to think that the Catholic Church has claims worthy, at least, of being examined. At once active works of charity are proposed as a remedy; all reading of Catholic books, or intercourse with Catholic friends or relations, is forbidden; the director is not afraid to say that leaving the Church of England is a sin against the Holy Ghost, and furthermore will promise to answer at the last day for the soul that, in reliance on his dictum, suspends all search after truth and blindly obeys. The moment of grace is too often lost; the soul holds back and will not respond to God’s call. Too often those things which it had are taken from it, and the sad result is an utter loss of faith.

A Catholic’s interest in the working of the Anglican Church is solely in reference to the work of conversion. Those who in one sense are said to come nearest to the Catholic Church are often in reality the furthest off; for they believe Catholic doctrines not because they are proposed by a divine authority, but because they consider them reasonable, or find that they are in accordance with the testimony of antiquity. Their religion is as much a matter of private judgment as that of the Bible Christian; the difference lies in the fact that the ritualist exercises his private judgment over a more extended field than the other.

An Anglican who goes to confession must be an object of great anxiety to a Catholic friend. In such a case, at least where the practice has been voluntarily and earnestly adopted, we feel that God is calling that soul to his church; that he has awakened in it a sense of need, a craving for the grace and aid which, generally speaking, are only to be found in the sacraments. We can hardly doubt that, if that soul is true to grace, it will ere long be in the one true fold; but the position is one of peculiar difficulty, and the temptations which beset it are of no common kind. Minds of a weak order naturally yield to anything that bears the semblance of lawful authority; the conscientious fear to go against those whom they believe to be wiser and better than themselves; a peace of mind often follows the confession of an Anglican. Perhaps it is the natural result of having made an effort and got over what is supposed to be a painful duty; perhaps it is a grace given by God in consideration of an act of contrition. How is the poor soul to discern this peace from the effect of sacramental grace? So the very goodness of God is turned into a reason for delay and for resting satisfied.

Hitherto we have looked on the subject of confession in the Anglican communion chiefly from the side of the penitent; the case of the clergy who hear confessions is widely different and is beset with many difficulties. Generally speaking, the only question arising in the mind of the penitent would be: Can I get my sins forgiven by going to confession? Of course the reality of the absolution turns primarily on the validity of orders; strange to say, a vast number of the laity of the Church of England are contented to take the validity of the orders of their ministers as an unquestioned fact. The clergy naturally are most positive in the assertion that their orders are valid; as the nature and the necessity of jurisdiction are alike unknown to the ordinary Anglican mind, the matter seems pretty clear. The laity in the Anglican body are not in any very definite manner bound by the Prayer-book or by any of the authorized documents of that body; there is nothing anomalous in the idea of Anglican lay people, especially women, going to confession without even asking themselves whether the practice is in accordance with the mind of the communion to which they belong. Moreover, High-Church Anglicans are avowedly bent on improving their church; their church is not their guide or their mother, but rather an institution which has so far fulfilled its purpose but imperfectly, and which, by a judicious process of reformation, they hope to assimilate to an ideal existing in their own minds. Many conscientious Anglicans would therefore deem any objection founded on the evident want of encouragement of their views by their church as quite irrelevant. The Church of England does not forbid such and such a practice, they would say; we are convinced that it is in accordance with the teaching of antiquity, that it is useful, and therefore we encourage it.

The clergy, however, are bound not only to follow the voice of individual conscience, but to keep certain solemn promises by which they have voluntarily bound themselves. Even if a clergyman be fully convinced that he possesses the tremendous power of the keys, it does not necessarily follow that he should feel at liberty to exercise it at all times or in all places. We do not go at all into the question of Anglican orders, except to remark in passing that it seems strange that the majority of the clergy should give themselves so little trouble on the subject; they know that, to say the least, grave doubts as to their position are entertained by Christendom in general, and yet it is very seldom that any one of them takes the same trouble to investigate his orders that a reasonable man would take in regard to his title-deeds, if a doubt were thrown on them. We believe that the feeling which we once heard expressed by a clergyman said to be High Church is not very uncommon; being told by a friend that there were serious reasons for doubting Anglican orders, and consequently Anglican sacraments, he made no attempt to defend them, but simply remarked: “I don’t suppose that God would let us suffer for such a trifle.” To make the position of the Anglican clergy clear to our readers, we must begin by citing from “The Form and Manner of making Priests” the solemn words which a Protestant bishop, “laying his hands upon the head of every one that receiveth the order of priesthood,” pronounces over him:

“Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God, and of his holy sacraments: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

By the thirty-sixth canon of the Church of England, published and confirmed in 1865, it is required that the following Declaration and subscription should be made by such as are to be ordained ministers:

“I, A. B., do solemnly make the following declaration: I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and to the Book of Common Prayer, and of Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons; I believe the doctrine of the United Church of England and Ireland, as therein set forth, to be agreeable to the word of God; and in public prayer and administration of the sacraments, I will use the form in the said book prescribed, and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority.”

An Anglican clergyman, again, pledges himself at his ordination to minister the doctrine and sacraments and the discipline of Christ as our Lord hath commanded, and as this church and realm hath received the same. The subject of confession is mentioned three times in the Book of Common Prayer, which, as our readers may perhaps be aware, is the only authorized formulary of devotion possessed by the Church of England. There is no separate ritual for the clergy; the Common Prayer is the one comprehensive whole and is in the hands of everybody.

In the exhortation which is appointed to be read on the Sunday immediately preceding the celebration of the Holy Communion, and which, by the way, a great many regular church-goers seldom or never have heard read, the concluding paragraph runs as follows:

“And because it is requisite that no man should come to the holy communion, but with a full trust in God’s mercy, and with a quiet conscience; therefore if there be any of you, who by this means, (i.e., by self-examination and private repentance,) cannot quiet his own conscience herein but requireth further comfort or counsel, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned minister of God’s word, and open his grief; that by the ministry of God’s holy word he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting of his conscience and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness.”

The next occasion on which we find confession in the pages of the Prayer-book is the Visitation of the Sick. A rubric lays down the “priest’s” duty in these words:

“Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which confession the priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort: Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences; and, by his authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Lastly, in the twenty-fifth of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, which are subscribed by all the clergy, we read:

“There are two sacraments, ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel—that is to say, baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Those five commonly called sacraments—that is to say, confirmation, penance, orders, matrimony, and extreme unction—are not to be counted for sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the apostles, partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures; but yet have not like nature of sacraments with baptism and the Lord’s Supper, for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.”

As the Church of England has but one authorized book of devotion, she has but one book of instruction; her Homilies are declared, in the thirty-fifth of the Thirty-nine Articles, “to contain a godly and wholesome doctrine and necessary for these times,” and it is directed that they should “be read in churches by the minister diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the people.”

The Homilies are not read in churches; in fact we believe it would be safe to assert that they are hardly ever read anywhere, and we might almost suppose them to be obsolete, were it not that every candidate for orders signs the statement that they are “necessary for these times.” The second part of the Homily on Repentance says:

“And where they (the Roman teachers) do allege this saying of our Saviour Jesus Christ unto the leper, to prove auricular confession to stand on God’s word, ‘Go thy way, and show thyself unto the priest,’ do they not see that the leper was cleansed from his leprosy, before he was by Christ sent unto the priest for to show himself unto him? By the same reason we must be cleansed from our spiritual leprosy—I mean our sins must be forgiven us—before that we come to confession. What need we, then, to tell forth our sins into the ear of the priest, sith that they may be already taken away? Therefore holy Ambrose, in his second sermon upon the 119th Psalm, doth say full well: Go show thyself unto the priest. Who is the true priest, but he which is the priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech? Whereby this holy Father doth understand that, both the priesthood and the law being changed, we ought to acknowledge none other priest for deliverance from our sins but our Saviour Jesus Christ, who, being our sovereign bishop, doth with the sacrifice of his body and blood, offered once for ever upon the altar of the cross, most effectually cleanse the spiritual leprosy and wash away the sins of all those that with true confession of the same do flee unto him. It is most evident and plain, that this auricular confession hath not the warrant of God’s word, else it had not been lawful for Nectarius, Bishop of Constantinople, upon a just occasion to have put it down.

* * * * *

“Let us with fear and trembling, and with a true contrite heart, use that kind of confession which God doth command in his Word, and then doubtless, as he is faithful and righteous, he will forgive us our sins and make us clean from all wickedness. I do not say but that, if any do find themselves troubled in conscience, they may repair to their learned curate or pastor, or to some other godly learned man, and show the trouble and doubt of their conscience to them, that they may receive at their hand the comfortable salve of God’s word; but it is against the true Christian liberty, that any man should be bound to the numbering of his sins, as it hath been used heretofore in the time of blindness and ignorance.”

Such are the scanty devotional and dogmatical utterances of the Church of England on the subject of confession. The only other instruction given to her clergy in regard to their duties as confessors is to be found in the one hundred and thirteenth canon, which treats of the presentment of notorious offenders to the ordinaries. Parsons and vicars, or in their absence their curates, may themselves present to their ordinaries

“All such crimes as they have in charge or otherwise, as by them (being the persons that should have the chief care for the suppressing of sin and impiety in their parishes) shall be thought to require due reformation. Provided always, that if any man confess his secret and hidden sins to the minister, for the unburdening of his conscience, and to receive spiritual consolation and ease of mind from him; we do not any way bind the said minister by this our Constitution, but do straitly charge and admonish him, that he do not at any time reveal and make known to any person whatsoever any crime or offence so committed to his trust and secrecy (except they be such crimes as, by the laws of this realm, his own life may be called into question for concealing the same), under pain of irregularity.”

As far as we can gather, the belief of the Church of England on the subject of confession may be summed up in the following propositions:

1. Penance is not a sacrament, but

2. Her ministers have the power of forgiving sins.

3. This power is exercised after confession made by the penitent.

4. But such confession is not to be made, save in case of serious illness or of great disquiet of mind.

5. The absolution of the priest is not the ordinary means by which sins are forgiven.

6. The penitent is to be the judge in his own case. If he feels very much in want of confession, he may have it; if not, he is to do without it. His own feeling is the only rule in the matter.

We think our readers will admit that the above statements are in no way an unfair summary of the teaching of the Church of England as represented by her formularies. Certainly they give no warrant for the assertion now made by the High-Church party that confession is the ordinary remedy for post-baptismal sin, or to the practice of frequent and regular confession which is now so widely advocated and followed. Confession is evidently, according to the teaching of Anglicanism, what it has been well called by an Anglican, a “luxury.” How, it may be asked, can men who are pledged to teach and maintain the doctrines of the Church of England act in direct opposition to the instructions which she has given them? We do not maintain that those instructions have the appearance of being all the expression of the same convictions. There is an apparent discrepancy existing amongst them; they are not consistent with each other. But the one broad fact is plain as daylight: they do not countenance the present action of extreme Anglicans. Lookers-on constantly ask, Are these men sincere? Why do they not “go over to Rome”? Are they not traitors in the Anglican camp? To these questions we can only reply: We judge not; each individual must stand or fall to his own master; but we cannot hesitate in saying that ritualism as a system is dishonest, and that the position occupied by its adherents is the most untenable that any man can undertake to defend.

If we seek for the reason why men whom we are ready to believe upright and honorable act in a manner which is apparently absolutely incompatible with their solemn engagements, it may perhaps be discovered by a consideration of one of the chief characteristics of the Church of England.

St. Paul speaks of the church of Christ as “the pillar and ground of the truth.” The Church of England is essentially a compromise. Some of her dignitaries even look on this as her glory: the High-Churchman can find his belief in the Real Presence supported by her catechism, but the Low-Churchman has the black rubric, which is equally strong in favor of his opinion; her prayers are for the most part preserved from the days of Catholic piety, and her Articles bear the impress of foreign heresy; she prays against “false doctrine, heresy, and schism,” and devotes one of her Articles to the assertion that all churches have erred. Her clergy are required to accept anomalies and inconsistencies; and we cannot but do them the justice to say that they accept them with great equanimity. Every one has something to get over: the High-Churchman could wish some things altered, and the Low-Churchman would be glad to see others omitted; the result seems to be that every one subscribes with a kind of laxity which, if it does not imply a want of honesty, at least betrays an absence of accuracy and of definite conviction. Subscription to articles and formularies seems to sit very lightly on the Anglican conscience; it is a mere means to an end.

But the Anglican clergyman not only pledges himself to the doctrines of the Prayer-book and Articles; he also promises obedience to his bishop. Here is something apparently definite. In the voice of a living bishop there can hardly be the same scope for diversity as the pages of the Prayer-book afford. Generally speaking, the Anglican bishops condemn the practice of confession; if they were really rulers in their communion there can be no doubt that the High-Church party would long since have been extinct. As a fact, the Anglican does not obey his bishop; at this very moment one of the leading High-Church clergy of London has definitely and deliberately refused to obey his bishop by removing from his church a crucifix and a picture of Our Lady, which he believes tend to promote devotion among his flock.

For the reasons which lead conscientious men to disobey the ordinary whose godly admonitions they have engaged with a glad mind and will to follow, and to whose godly judgments they have promised with God’s help to submit, we must again look to the peculiar theories of the Church of England. It is hardly necessary to say that the Church of England does not in any way or under any circumstances claim infallibility; nay, more, she goes out of her way to deny its very existence. One of her Articles asserts that the churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome have erred in matters of faith, and another follows up this assertion by the kindred statement that general councils may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining to God. She indeed daily professes her belief in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, but she does not inform her children where and how the voice of that church is to be heard. She constantly asserts the authority of Holy Scripture, but she recognizes no authority competent to interpret Scripture in a decisive manner. Under the influence of such teaching it is not surprising that there should exist in the Church of England two theories regarding authority in matters of faith. One is that there is no authority save Holy Scripture. Everything must be proved by Scripture; and as there is no one necessarily better entitled than another to explain Scripture, this virtually amounts to a recognition of the right and duty of private judgment to its fullest extent. The other theory is based on belief in the One Catholic Church. It admits that our Lord appointed his church to teach men all truth; it believes that the voice of the church in primitive times was the voice of God; it doubts not that at a former period the church was guided by the Spirit of God, but it holds that supernatural guidance to be in abeyance; it recognizes no living voice of the church; it looks forward with a vague hope to the reunion of Catholics, Greeks, and Anglicans, and the possibility in such a case of a general council being held, whose decisions would bind all Christendom. In the meantime the church is dumb, if not dead, and all that can be done is to turn with a reverent mind to the study of antiquity, to an examination of what has been handed down from the days of pure and undoubted faith. This last is the theory of the High-Church party in general. To their mind a bishop is a necessity; he is required for the conferring of orders and for giving confirmation; he is not the centre of sacrificial power in his diocese, nor the source of jurisdiction; he is not a teacher in any other sense beyond that in which they are themselves teachers; their obedience to him is not an obedience to one whom our Lord has set over his flock with a special charge to feed his sheep as well as his lambs; it is an obedience rendered to one who is officially a superior—an obedience which has no direct reference to God, and which is constantly evaded (it may be in perfect good faith) on the principle that “we ought to obey God rather than man.”

Another cause which has probably much to do with the apparent inconsistencies of the High-Church Anglican clergy is the fact that they are in a great many cases absorbed and overwhelmed by an amount of active work which leaves little leisure for the serious examination of their position. It is admitted on all sides that the last century was a period of spiritual apathy and deadness as far as the Church of England was concerned. The movement of the past forty years has not been merely in the direction of Catholic doctrine, but it has also led to a renewal of zeal, to energy and self-sacrifice, which we cannot but appreciate. The poor, the young, the ignorant, and the fallen are cared for with a charity whose root is, we trust, to be found in the increased knowledge of the life and of the love of our Lord. But even works of mercy have their snares; a man who is toiling night and day among the outcast and the poor of great cities, who sees the results of his labor in the reformed life of many a wanderer, and who also sees pressing on him needs which he can never fully satisfy, must be sorely tempted to turn a deaf ear to all such questionings as would stay his course. He hears people’s confessions, and he sees them turn to God and lead better lives; naturally he concludes that all is right, and he resents any interference with a practice which is apparently so salutary.

We have now given a short and, we hope, a fair idea of confession as it exists at present in the Anglican communion. We must add, for the information of those who have not had the opportunity of watching the progress of events in England, that the practice of confession was unknown, or almost unknown, in the Anglican communion until about five-and-thirty years ago. It was one of the first fruits of that turning back to the old Catholic paths which by God’s blessing has led so many souls into the Church. The movement still goes on; it has passed through different phases, and year by year it brings one after another to the very threshold of their true home; they enter in and are at rest, and find the reality of all that they had hitherto sought and longed for.

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

MICHAEL THE SOMBRE.[161]

AN EPISODE IN THE POLISH INSURRECTION, 1863–1864.

It is a trite remark that every age has produced its heroes, its saints, and its martyrs; but there are few amongst us who have sufficient discernment to recognize them when they cross our path in life. “Should we know a saint if we met him?” asks Father Faber. And so if we were to meet the heroine of this tale, quietly working in her own village or busy with the ouvroir for young girls she has just established in her province in France, we should be far indeed from guessing that we saw with our own eyes a woman who had equalled, if not surpassed, Joan of Arc in heroism, devotion, and courage, and who had done deeds which would be incredible, if not attested by a multitude of living witnesses.

She was born in one of the departments of France unhappily annexed during the war of 1870–71. Having lost her mother in infancy, she was brought up by her father, an old officer under Louis XVIII. and Charles X., who educated her entirely as a boy. At twelve years of age she was a complete mistress

of the art of fencing, riding, shooting, and other manly accomplishments. Then, fearing lest she should be altogether unfitted for the society of those of her own sex, her father suddenly determined to send her to a convent, where her extraordinary cleverness soon enabled her to conquer all difficulties, and she made the most rapid progress in every branch of study. A vein of earnest Catholic piety ran through her whole character, coupled with an equally earnest devotion to her country and her king.

We do not know what family circumstances induced her father to part for a time from a child on whose education he had lavished such thought and care. But at eighteen we find her established in Poland as an inmate of one of its noblest families. After two years thus spent, during which she acquired a thorough knowledge of the Polish and German languages, she returned to France and had the melancholy consolation of nursing and assisting her father in his last moments; after which she was entreated to return to the Countess L—— in Poland, and become the adopted child of the house, to which she consented. So that, when the insurrection in that country broke out in 1863, “Mika,” as she was affectionately called by the whole family, rejoiced in the opportunity it afforded her of repaying the debt of gratitude she owed to those who had been as her second parents, by a devotion which was ready to sacrifice life itself in their service.

It is an episode in this war which we are about to give to our readers, and which we think will be doubly interesting at the present moment, when all eyes are fixed on the terrible struggle going on in the East. The story is told in the heroine’s own words.

* * * * *

It was on the 22d January, 1863, that the Poles, in little bands of ten or twenty men, met by a cross raised in honor of Kosciusko in the palatinate of Radom, and made a vow to deliver Poland from the Muscovite yoke or perish in the attempt. Let those who blame them remember the intolerable persecution which they had patiently endured for years—a persecution which deprived them of their faith, their language, their rights as citizens, and all that men hold most dear.

On the 24th they marched on Miechow, having no other arms than scythes and sticks and old-fashioned fowling-pieces. Led by inexperienced chiefs, who, in their ardor, fondly imagined that patriotism and a holy cause would carry the day against military tactics, they were foolish enough to attack, in broad daylight, a strong body of Russians, well armed and superior to them in numbers, who occupied an almost impregnable position on the heights above the town. The result may be easily imagined. The Poles were repulsed with heavy loss, and the Russians, who delight in celebrating their triumphs by a bonfire, burnt down the town and massacred all the Poles who came within their reach.

Ten of the Polish wounded were secretly brought to the castle, where we had established a subterranean ambulance. It was my business to dress the wounds of these poor fellows, assisted by a holy nun, the Mother Alexandra, who played too important a part in my future history not to be mentioned here. The Count L—— did not approve of the insurrection and considered it hopeless from the first; but he would not abandon his brave peasants. Towards the 30th of this month our couriers gave us warning that the Russians were aware of the wounded men being under our care, and that they were marching on the castle for the purpose of burning it down. The count refused to fly, saying that his place was amongst his own people at Syez, of whom he had always been both the father and protector. But he called me into his counsels, and implored me to carry off his wife and children and his sister-in-law (who lived with us) to Mislowitz, a little manufacturing town on the frontier of Silesia and Poland. After all it was a false alarm; and after a fortnight’s exile, which anxiety and fear had doubled, a letter from the count recalled us. We had nearly reached the end of our journey when we were attacked by a mob of Russian fanatics, who endeavored to seize the carriage. I was on horseback at the head of the little cavalcade, and I managed by means of my revolver to keep these miscreants at bay. The coachman profited by this moment’s respite to lash his horses into a gallop, by which means we escaped the ambush and reached the castle in safety.

But our tranquillity was not destined to be of long duration. About a fortnight later eight insurgents of the legion called of “Despair” sought refuge in our house. We concealed them as well as we could; but in the middle of the night notice was sent us that the Russians were on their track and had discovered their hiding-place. We hastened to send them off to a part of the forest where a cavern had been prepared to receive any such fugitives. They reached it in safety, but unhappily were betrayed by a peasant to whom the secret had been confided. The exasperated Russians again threatened the castle; and again the count insisted on our flight. On our way an alarm was given of some sort which so terrified the coachman that he threw down his whip and fled for his life, leaving us and the carriage at the mercy of the four horses, which were strong beasts and very fresh. Luckily, they stood still for a moment, and, as I was used to driving, I reassured the countess and jumped on the box. Hardly, however, had I taken the reins than the wheels of the carriage became wedged in the sand. I jumped off the box, and, seizing one of the leaders by the bridle, urged him forward with all my might. The animal made so violent an effort that he threw me down and dragged me some twenty paces; but as I held on for dear life, he ended by stopping, and, the carriage being thus released, we went on as fast as we could, continually in dread of pursuit, till we reached the house of Countess N——, who received us with the warmest kindness and hospitality. Our stay here, however, was not of long duration, for my poor friend, the Countess L——, was in an agony to return to her husband, who had been left alone in the castle; and so, at the risk of being again captured, we returned to Syez. Fortunately, this time we had no alarms on the road, and the joy of the family at their safe reunion was as great as their thankfulness.

But our happiness was short-lived. Although the count did not take any part in the insurrection, it was well known that his sympathies were with his people, and this was sufficient to make him a marked man with the Russian authorities. At last we heard from undeniable authority that his arrest had been determined upon, and that he had been already condemned to Siberia. Then followed a heartrending scene—his wife and children (whose whole future would have been wrecked had his deportation been carried into effect) imploring him to take refuge in Germany, where he had a small property, and to remain there till the storm was past; while he clung tenaciously to his old home and to his duties as a proprietor during the struggle. Finally, he yielded to our tears and entreaties; but before leaving he sent for me and solemnly commended his wife and children to my care. I swore to defend them or to die in the attempt. It was agreed that we were to watch our opportunity, and, if possible, obtain an escort so as to cross the frontier and rejoin the count as soon as we could. Three days only after his departure we received intelligence that the Russians were close to our gates and were going to insist on a domiciliary visit. I flew to the count’s private room and commenced making an auto-da-fé of every compromising letter or paper I could find and of all suspected newspapers. Whilst I was fanning the flames the count’s sister came in, and, seeing what I was about, exclaimed with horror:

“O Mika! for God’s sake stop. You don’t know what you are doing. All Arthur’s gunpowder is hidden and stowed away in that chimney!”

I was almost paralyzed with fear, but I said:

“Fly for your life and get the countess and the children out of the house.” And then, with a fervent ejaculatory prayer to God, I tore the burning papers out of the grate before the flames had had time to ignite the gunpowder, which, luckily for me, had been carefully done up in packets and placed in a metal box. I managed to drag the papers into another fireplace, and had time to see that they were all burnt, and to conceal the tinder, before the Cossacks surrounded the house and summoned us to open the doors. Their officers made the most minute examination of everything, but found nothing that they could lay their hands on, and went away disgusted, while I escaped with a few trifling burns on my hands and arms.

A few days after this scene Mme. de I—— and I were sitting talking in the room where we generally met and waited before dinner, when the countess came in with an open letter in her hand and looking more sad and pale than usual. “What has happened?” we both exclaimed; and I added, smiling: “Are we condemned to the knout? Or do the Russians reserve us the honor of a hempen collar?” But my dismal pleasantry produced no response, and the poor lady silently came and sat down by me, taking my hand. After a pause she said:

“Mika, I have been unwittingly guilty of a great indiscretion. You know how miserably anxious I am for news of Arthur’s safety. A servant whom I had sent to the post, in hopes of finding a letter from him, brought me back this one; and, full of my cruel anxiety, I tore it open without looking at the address, being fully convinced it came from him.”

“Well?” I inquired, as she hesitated to go on.

“Well, this letter was a terrible disappointment. It wasn’t from Arthur at all, or for me, but for you, and from your own family, who, dreading the consequences of this sad insurrection, insist on your immediate return to France.”

“Is that all?” I asked, smiling.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I only read enough to find out my mistake, and I was so absorbed by my own anxiety that I hardly took in the meaning of the words at first.”

“But that is not what I ask,” I rejoined. “I want to know what there was in that letter which makes you look so sad.”

The countess’ eyes filled with tears. “I own, Mika, that the thought of losing you breaks my heart. You know, at the first moment of alarm, Miss B—— and Fräulein F—— left the children and returned to their homes. I fancied you would follow their example; but seeing you so brave and so ready to share in all our dangers, I had been completely reassured, until God allowed this letter to fall into my hands.”

“And what have you concluded from that letter?” I asked rather coldly.

“I have made up my mind, Mika, that it would be the height of selfishness on my part to strive to induce you to stay on with us in a country where desolation and terror reign supreme; where we are not safe from one moment to the other; where neither human nor divine laws are respected, and where even ladies are not spared the lash or the stake. Yesterday, as you well know, Countess P——, for having worn mourning for her brother, who had been massacred by the Russians, was flogged publicly in the market-place and hanged afterwards. Fly, then, my dearest Mika, while there is yet time. Already you have done far more than your duty. You have risked your life over and over again for us. I cannot, I must not, exact any further sacrifice. Leave us, Mika, leave us to our sad fate, and may God be with you!”

Here the poor wife and mother hid her face in her hands, and I saw great tears coursing down her cheeks through her clasped fingers. Mme. de I—— and the children, who had come in during the interval and had heard their mother’s words, clustered round me and cried too. When I could command my own voice I turned towards the countess and said: “Dearest madam! seven years have now elapsed since I first became an inmate of your home. When I arrived here, Poland, if not happy, was at least at peace, and I reckoned you among the limited number of the truly happy ones on this earth. You received me (I, whom a deep sorrow had driven from my native land) as a friend, as a child, as a sister; and this affection and consideration for me have never failed for a single moment. When the insurrection broke out your English governess left you; and I think she was right. A sacred duty was laid upon her—that of supporting her old mother, who lived entirely on her earnings. As to Fräulein F——, that is quite another matter. I expected she would go away on the very first alarm. With Prussians devotedness does not exist. I believe they have tomatoes in place of hearts! As for me, I have only one brother in the world, and he is good enough to think of me only when his purse is empty. I have, therefore, not the same excuse as Miss B——, still less that of Fräulein F——; for if I chose to live independently, the little fortune left me by my father would be enough for my wants. If I returned to Poland after his death it was to find the same disinterested love and affection I had left there. I have found more than a duty to fulfil: I have a debt of gratitude to pay; and I thank God for the portion he has assigned to me.”

“But your family?” again urged the countess, whose face began to brighten.

“Since my father and sister died,” I replied, “I do not consider I have any family claims. Now, listen to me, contessina,” I continued, clasping her two hands in mine. “God has put into my heart an inexhaustible treasure of devotedness and tenderness. He has given me likewise unusual courage and strength; and now I thank him that he has also given me the occasion to employ these, his gifts, in your service. Your husband is in exile; you are threatened in your home, in your children, in your property, and by everything around you; and you could imagine for a moment that, under such circumstances, I should go and abandon you! Thank God! that there never has been a stain yet on our family name, and my father, an old soldier, impressed upon me, from a child, the strongest feelings of duty and honor. I swear, therefore, in the sight of God, that as long as this war lasts your country shall be my country, your children shall also be mine, and as long as my heart beats not a hair of your dear head shall be touched! When happier days arise for Poland, and peace shall be restored, then, but not till then, I shall remember that France is my country, and that I have left well-beloved tombs on her soil.”

The countess threw her arms round me in a close embrace and cried on my shoulder. Mme. de I—— looked at me with the sweetest smile. “Thanks, Mika,” she murmured in a broken voice. “I never believed for a moment that you would leave us. You!”

The children seized hold of my hands and covered them with kisses. It was a moment of the purest happiness I had known on earth.

In proportion to the progress and extent of the insurrection the cruelty of the Russians increased. Every day brought new vexations or fresh tortures. We lived in constant fear, and our position became really insupportable. Almost every noble family in the neighborhood had fled and left the country, and we should long before have followed their example had it not been for the great distance we were from the railroad. The count had arrived safely at Dresden, whence he wrote imploring his wife to join him. But we were at least forty versts from the nearest station, and to go there without an escort would have exposed us inevitably to fall into the hands of the Russians, who had lately ranked emigration in the category of crimes of high treason. And how was it possible to form an escort? The peasants, in the pay of the Raskolnicks (or old believers), would refuse to march, and the servants would, in all probability, have betrayed us. In vain I racked my brains to find some way out of this difficulty, and every day the danger became more imminent. Providence at last had pity upon us, and disposed events in a way which became eventually the salvation of those so dear to me.

Every evening, when the rest of the family were gone to bed, I went alone into the library to answer letters, verify the steward’s registers, and look after the accounts. In the absence of the count there was no one to see after these necessary duties but myself, and I looked upon them as my right. One night, when this work had kept me up later than usual, I heard some one knocking at the door. It was past midnight. I rose to open it, very much surprised at any one coming to me at that hour, and all the more as no servant would venture into that part of the house at night, as it was reported to be haunted. What was my astonishment at finding the countess herself outside the door in a pitiable state of agitation.

“O Mika!” she exclaimed, almost falling into my arms as I led her to a seat, “I am in the most horrible perplexity and anxiety. I have just received an entreaty to send a despatch instantly to General B——, my husband’s oldest and dearest friend. He is encamped with his squadron at Gory, on the property of Count Dembinski; and he does not know that eight hundred Russians are in the immediate neighborhood and have laid an ambush to surprise him. This despatch is to warn him of it; for he has only three hundred men with him, who will all be cut to pieces, if he should not be warned in time. Who knows? perhaps already it may be too late. But you, Mika, who are always so clear-headed—can you suggest anything? Can you advise me what to do?”

“But the man who brought this despatch,” I exclaimed—“where is he? Why cannot he go on instantly to Gory?”

“Alas! it is impossible,” replied the countess. “He has just galloped seven leagues without stopping to take breath, and his horse dropped down dead at the entrance of the village. The poor fellow himself is half dead with fatigue and exhaustion.”

I thought for a minute or two, and then said:

“Leave the despatch with me. I will go and rouse the steward, and between us we will find some one who will undertake this perilous mission.”

“Do you really think so, Mika?”

“Yes, I am sure of it,” I replied.

“Oh! what a weight you have lifted off my heart,” said the countess joyfully. “Go at once, dearest child. I will wait for you, and not go to bed till I have heard the result of your consultation.”

When the countess had gone back to her own room a terrible struggle arose in my heart. I had studied the peasants and servants well enough to know that in such a moment of extreme danger not one of them was to be trusted. The steward himself did not inspire me with much confidence; and, besides, he was the father of a family. On the other hand, the lives of three hundred men hung upon the delivery of this message. I knelt down and prayed with my whole heart for guidance. When I rose my resolution was taken. The hour was come for me to pay my debt of gratitude towards this Poland which had become so dear to me, and perhaps in this way alone could I save the family to whom I had devoted my life. I wrote a few lines to the countess, and then went and woke my own maid.

“Marynia,” I said, “in half an hour, but not before, you must take this note to the countess, who is sitting up for me. And if to-morrow, when you get up, I am not come back, you must take another letter to her, which you will find on my chest of drawers.”

“But, Holy Virgin of Czenstochowa!” exclaimed the poor girl, “you are not going out at this time of night?”

“Yes; I am starting this very instant.”

“But then I will wake the whole house. I won’t have you go alone at this hour.”

“No, you will stay quiet,” I said to her in a tone which admitted of no reply, “and in half an hour you will do what I have told you.”

So saying, I left Marynia to her lamentations and went out. The first thing I had to do was to put on a man’s dress—I had received permission to do this from Rome in case of an emergency like the present—and then, taking my pistols, which were always ready, I went to the stable and picked out the best horse I could find, which I saddled myself, blessing again the education my father had given me, that made me independent of any assistance.

The road which I took passed in front of the castle. There was a light in the countess’ room where she was waiting for me. Good, gentle, loving woman with a child’s heart! Twice I saw her shadow pass and repass across the curtain, and twice my heart failed me. This feeling only lasted a minute; but this minute might have been a century for the agony concentrated in it. There to the left was the old castle which held those two young women so dear to me, and those children whose birth I had witnessed and who loved me so tenderly. To the right stretched the road that was to lead me—to Siberia, perhaps, or to a sudden and violent death. If at this thought my heart failed me, and if for a moment I hesitated, God will, I hope, have forgiven it. At twenty-four years of age one does not fling away life without one look back. I stopped my horse instinctively, fully realizing the almost foolhardiness of my attempt. But then my thoughts reverted to those three hundred brave fellows whose lives I held, as it were, in my hand, and, with a sigh which was more like a sob, I dug my spurs into my beautiful “Kirdjcali,” who bounded into the air with surprise and pain, and commenced galloping at a furious pace along the road—a pace I did not even try to check, for it seemed to relieve my bursting heart. Now and then I had to lie down on his mane to take breath. But by degrees the cold and calm silence of the night, and the satisfaction of feeling that I was accomplishing a great and sacred duty, restored my peace of mind. I checked the pace of my horse, and after about three-quarters of an hour came to a thick fir-wood, through which I was quietly ambling when Kirdjcali stopped suddenly, and I instantly perceived the cause. On the edge of the wood, about five hundred paces off, a great fire was crackling, round which were grouped a number of men and horses. It was either a Russian or a Polish patrol; but in either case my situation was a critical one. I had no “safe-conduct” papers, and no password save for General B——. I should be taken for a spy and hanged without form or ceremony. What was to be done? Go back? That would be the height of weakness. Take another road? There was no other. Yet to go on was undoubtedly to run the risk of falling directly into their hands. Again I lifted up my whole heart in prayer; after all I had God and the right on my side, and so I decided to venture it, feeling besides that my good Kirdjcali had the legs of a race-horse and could beat almost any other animal, if it came to a chase. The moon, which till then had guided my path, was suddenly hidden behind a thick cloud that concealed me from the enemy. I made my horse walk, and, lying flat on his neck, I went on to within fifty paces of the Cossacks (for they were Russian Cossacks) without their dreaming of my vicinity; for the soft sand deadened the sound of my horse’s feet. All of a sudden Kirdjcali threw up his head and sniffed the wind with ever-widening nostrils. And then what I most dreaded came to pass. He recognized some companion of the steppes and gave a loud neigh, which was answered instantly by a hurrah from the children of the Don, who were on foot in a moment. Making the sign of the cross, I dug my spurs once more into my poor Kirdjcali’s flanks, and passed like a flash of lightning before the astonished Cossacks. “Stoj!” (stop) they cried with one voice. My only answer to this summons was to urge on my steed to still greater speed. Then they had recourse to a more active means of arresting my course. Two flashes lit up the darkness of the night, and one ball whistled past my ear, grazed my head, and cut off a lock of my hair close to the temple; the other passed through a branch of a tree some paces before me. But Kirdjcali flew like the wind, and I was soon out of the reach of pursuit. As soon as I dared I stopped him to let him breathe; five minutes more of this furious pace, and the poor beast would have dropped down dead.

By the time I had reached General B——’s column it was three o’clock in the morning.

“Who goes there?” cried the sentinel.

“Military orders,” I replied.

“The password?”

“Polska è Volnoszez” (Poland and liberty). He let me pass, and I was received by M. D——, one of the general’s aides-de-camp. I gave him the despatch, which he hastened to take to his chief. Hardly had he left me, and before I had time to rejoice at having accomplished my mission, when a discharge of musketry, accompanied by the savage Russian war-cry, was heard to the left. In spite of the fearful speed of my ride, I had arrived too late! The enemy had almost surrounded the little camp. A few minutes sufficed for the general to throw himself into the saddle and place himself at the head of his column.

“First squadron, forward!” he cried in a stentorian voice.

Not a man stirred.

“Second squadron, forward!” The same result. The poor fellows, worn out with fatigue, exhausted from hunger, and totally unprepared for this attack, remained, as it were, paralyzed. To me this first moment was terrible; and those who boast of never having been afraid the first time they take part in a battle either deceive themselves or they lie. It took me a few minutes to master my emotion; but Kirdjcali too made a diversion by furious bounds and neighing, which proved that for him also this was the first baptism of fire.

Seeing the demoralization of his soldiers, the brave general made a desperate charge in the very midst of the enemy’s ranks, followed by a handful of dragoons under the orders of Count K——. I followed his movements with my eye in a mechanical sort of way, when all of a sudden I saw the unhappy general staggering rather than falling from his horse, while an infernal hurrah of triumph burst from the Russians. Then all my fears vanished. I thought of my father, and all that was French in my blood was roused. I seized a sword that lay close by, and turning towards the troops, who were still hesitating and wavering, I cried out: “Cowards, if you have allowed your chief to be murdered, at least do not let his dead body bear witness of your shame by leaving it in the hands of your enemies. Come on and rescue it, and wash out in your blood the stain you have set on Polish honor!”

Saying those words, and recommending my soul to God in one fervent aspiration, I threw myself impetuously into the strife, followed by all the soldiers, whom my words had roused from their stupor. The whistling of balls, the smell of powder, the cries of the dying and the dead, and more than all the savage howlings of the Russians, threw me into a sort of mad rage and furious excitement which made me insensible to anything but a longing for vengeance. Every time I rose in my stirrups to wield my sword a man bit the dust. I felt a sort of superhuman strength at that moment, and never ceased to strike till I saw the Poles driving the defeated Russians completely out of the camp, from whence they fled in the utmost disorder. I woke then as from a horrible nightmare, and felt an inexpressible disgust and horror at the sight of the dead and dying bodies of horses and men all round me weltering in their blood. At that moment an orderly officer galloped up to me.

“Sir,” he exclaimed, “the general desires you to come to him immediately.”

“Your general!” I exclaimed joyfully. “Why, I saw him fall with my own eyes. He is not dead, then?”

“Not yet; but his wounds are mortal, and I fear there is no hope of saving him.”

I followed the officer hastily to a tent where the poor general was lying on a camp-bed. His face was literally hacked with sabrecuts; one ball had gone through his chest, and the surgeon, who was bending over him, was trying in vain to stanch the blood which was escaping in a black stream from this gaping wound. I took off my cap and bowed low before the dying hero.

“Sir,” he said in so weak a voice that I had to bend down my ear close to him to be able to hear, “I do not know you, and I do not remember ever to have seen you before; but whoever you may be, may God bless you for what you have done this day! You have saved my troops from dishonor, and me from having my last moments embittered by the cruelest sorrow I could ever have experienced.”

At this moment a rush of blood from his mouth threatened to stifle the dying man. When he had a little recovered he spoke again:

“Whence do you come, and what is your name?”

“I am French, and my name is Michael,” I replied, blushing deeply. Here the general drew off a ring from his finger. It was a signet-ring used throughout the war as a password of command.

“Take this,” he said, “and swear to me not to leave my troops till the Central Committee have sent another officer to take my place. This is the last request of a dying man, and I feel sure that you will not refuse it to me.”

I hesitated an instant. How reveal my secret and explain my anomalous position at such a moment? The general, striving to raise his voice, reiterated his dying entreaty:

“Swear not to leave them!”

I felt I could not resist any longer.

“I swear it, general, but on one condition: that your soldiers consent to serve as escort to Countess L—— from her château to the frontier, as she wishes to escape with her children and rejoin her husband, who is in exile.”

“What! Countess L——, Arthur’s wife?”

“The same, general,” I replied; “and it was to implore your protection for her in her hour of need, as well as to convey to you the information she had received of the Russian ambuscade, that determined me to accept this dangerous mission.”

“Thanks, my child—thanks for her and thanks for me. Gentlemen,” he added, turning to his officers, who, silent and sad, were standing at the other end of the tent, “you will obey this young officer until my successor be appointed from headquarters. This is my last order, my last prayer. And as long as he, though a stranger, fights at the head of your column, you will not again forget, I hope, that the cause for which you are fighting is a sacred one, the most holy of all causes, for it is the cause of God and your country.”

The officers hung their heads at this tacit reproach—the only one addressed to them by the hero whom they had allowed to be slain in so cowardly a manner. After another fainting fit the general made me a sign to draw close to him. I knelt down by his side. “If death spares you,” he said, “go and tell my poor mother how I died. Console her, and try and replace me to her; for I am the only thing she has left in the world.”

Here tears filled his eyes, which he turned away to hide his emotion from his officers. The surgeon had just finished dressing his wounds, but he shook his head sadly as he rose. The general perceived the movement and said:

“My poor friend! you have given yourself a great deal of trouble, and all for nothing; but I am just as grateful to you.”

The surgeon wrung his hand, too much moved to speak. Then I took courage and said:

“General, when the doctor of the body can do no more, and science is exhausted, a Christian has recourse to another Physician.”

“You are quite right, my child,” replied the good general gravely; “and I have no time to lose, for I feel my life is ebbing away every moment.”

He made a sign to one of his aides-de-camp, and whispered his instructions to him, which the latter hastened to obey. He returned in a few minutes with a young Capuchin, who was the chaplain of the corps. The officers left the tent, and I was about to do the same when a sudden thought struck me.

“One word more, general. I want three days to make my arrangements and get my kit ready.”

“Take them, my son; but do not be away longer, for when you return I shall be no more here.”

“Not here, perhaps, but in a better world,” I exclaimed. “God bless you, general! I cannot replace you, but I may perhaps be able to show your troops how those should fight and die who have had General B—— for their leader!”

“Thanks, my child, and may God bless you! Adieu!”

I pressed the hand which the dying man held out to me with respectful tenderness; and then, hurrying from the tent to hide my emotion, I obtained a “safe-conduct” passport, and, remounting my horse, stopped at the best inn I could find in the next village, and wrote a few lines to Countess L——, not to tell her of the extraordinary position in which I had been placed or the fearful events of the past night, but to reassure her, and bid her to hold herself in readiness for a speedy departure, as an escort had been promised for her. Thence I rode as fast as I could to the convent of the Bernardines at Kielce, and asked to see Father Benvenuto immediately—that eloquent preacher and holy confessor who had lingered for twenty years in a Siberian dungeon. He was my confessor, and at this moment of all others in my life I needed his advice and guidance. Fortunately for me, he was at home, and I instantly told him all that had happened, and of the almost compulsory promise which had been extorted from me by the brave and dying general. The good old father listened in silence, and then said:

“My child, what you have done is heroic and great; but if you were to return to the camp, and had to bear alone this terrible secret, it would crush you with its weight.”

“But, good God! what can I do?” I exclaimed. “Must I give it up and forfeit my word?”

“No; because God, in permitting these extraordinary events, had evidently his divine purpose for you. You must return and fulfil your vow, but you must not go alone. More than a month ago I asked permission of my superiors to be allowed to carry the consolations of religion to our brave troops in the field. This permission I received yesterday; and so I can at once precede you to the camp, and when you arrive will be your safeguard and protector.”

An enormous weight was taken off my mind by this proposal. I thanked him with my whole heart, and he then insisted on my going to sleep for some hours; for all that I had gone through had nearly exhausted my strength. After a good night’s rest I woke, refreshed in body and relieved in mind, to ride to Breslau, where I completed my military equipment and then returned to the camp.

[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]

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

A FINAL PHILOSOPHY.[162]

The war waged by modern thought against supernatural revelation in the name of the so-called “advanced” science is looked upon in a different light by Catholic and by Protestant thinkers. Catholic philosophers and divines look upon it as a noisy but futile effort of modern anti-Christianism to shake and overthrow the mighty rock on which the incarnate God has been pleased to build his indefectible church. They know, of course, that they must be ready to fight, for the church to which they belong is still militant; but, far from apprehending a coming defeat, they feel certain of the victory. God is with them, and, on God’s infallible promise, the church whose cause they serve is sure of her final triumph. Protestant divines, on the contrary, hold no tokens of future victories, and look upon infidel science not as an enemy whom they have to fight, but as an old acquaintance, and a rather capricious one, whom they must try to keep within bounds of decency, and from whom they may borrow occasionally a few newly-forged weapons against the Catholic Church. Some sincere Protestants, considering the tendency of scientific thought to destroy all supernatural faith, saw, indeed, the necessity of resisting its baneful incursions; but their resistance did not, and could not, prove successful. Protestantism is the notorious offspring of rebellion; it is not built on the rock; it has no claims to special divine assistance; it cannot reckon but on human weakness for its support; it is supremely inconsistent; in short, it is no proof against the anti-Christian spirit of the age, and, what is still more discouraging, it is fully conscious of its progressive dissolution.

These considerations and others of a like nature kept continually coming to our mind as we were perusing the pages of the singular work whose title stands at the head of this article. The great object of Dr. Shields is to reconcile religion with science by means of what he calls final philosophy.

In the introduction to the work the author points out the limits and the topics of Christian science; the logical, historical, and practical relations of science and religion; the possibility of their reconciliation, and the importance of their harmony to science, to religion, to philosophy. The work is divided into two parts. The first part is a review of the conduct of philosophical parties as to the relations between science and religion; whilst the second part propounds and explains the philosophical theory of the harmony of science and religion, as conceived by the author. The first part opens with a chapter on the early conflicts and alliances between science and religion, where the author investigates the causes of the present disturbed relations between religion and science, and traces them from the dawn of the Greek philosophy to the Protestant Reformation; describes the conflicts of philosophy and mythology in the pre-Christian age; the wars of pagan philosophy against Christianity in the first centuries of the present era; the alliance of theology with philosophy in the patristic age; the predominance of theology and the subjugation of philosophy in the scholastic age; and, lastly, the revolt of philosophy against theology in the age of the Reformation.

In a second chapter he describes the modern antagonism between science and religion, the conflict in astronomy, in geology, in anthropology, in psychology, in sociology, in theology, in philosophy, and in civilization.

The third chapter, which fills more than two hundred pages, describes the modern indifferentism between science and religion, under the name of “schism” or “rupture” in all the branches of science already enumerated—viz., the schism in astronomy, in geology, in anthropology, etc., to which is added the schism in metaphysics.

In the fourth chapter the author examines the modern eclecticism between science and religion: eclecticism in astronomy, eclecticism in geology, and so on through the other branches of knowledge already mentioned.

The fifth and last chapter describes the modern scepticism between science and religion: scepticism in astronomy, in geology, in anthropology, and in all the aforesaid branches of human knowledge, with a conclusion about “effete religious culture.”

The second part of the work, though much shorter than the first, is divided also into five chapters, of which the first aims to show that philosophy is the natural umpire between religion and science, wherever they are in conflict; the second expounds and refutes the positive philosophy; the third examines and criticises the absolute philosophy; the fourth states that final philosophy, or a theory of perfectible science, may bring about the conciliation of positivism and absolutism; and the last offers a sketch of the ultimate philosophy, the science of sciences, derived scientifically from their own historical and logical development, and whose characteristic features the author thus glowingly describes in the closing sentence of his work:

“The summary want of the age is that last philosophy into which shall have been sifted all other philosophy, which shall be at once catholic and eclectic, which shall be the joint growth and fruit of reason and faith, and which shall shed forth, through every walk of research, the blended light of discovery and revelation; a philosophy which shall be no crude aggregate of decaying systems and doctrines, but their distilled issue and living effect, and which shall not have sprung full-born from any one mind or people, but mature as the common work and reward of all; a philosophy which, proceeding upon the unity of truth, shall establish the harmony of knowledge through the intelligent concurrence of the human with the divine intellect, and the rational subjection of the finite to the Infinite reason; a philosophy, too, which shall be as beneficent as it is sacred, which in the act of healing the schisms of truth shall also heal the sects of the school, of the church, and of the state, and, while regenerating human art, both material and moral, shall at length regenerate human society; a philosophy, in a word, which shall be the means of subjecting the earth to man and man to God, by grouping the sciences, with their fruits and trophies, at the feet of Omniscience, and there converging and displaying all laws and causes in God, the cause of causes and of laws, of whom are all things and in whom all things consist; to whom alone be glory” (pp. 587, 588).

These are noble words. It is certain that our age is in great need of a philosophy at once catholic and eclectic, as the author very wisely remarks. But it is our firm conviction that if Dr. Shields had studied our great Catholic authors, he would know that there is a philosophy and a theology which does already all that he wishes to do by his projected final philosophy, and much better too. We praise his excellent intention; but we do not think that his project has any chance of being carried out in a proper manner. We even doubt if a new system of philosophy can be found so comprehensive, coherent, impartial, and perfect in all its parts as to justify the high expectation entertained by the author.

This new system of philosophy cannot be the product of infidel thought, as is evident. Hence none of the advocates of advanced science can have a part in the projected work, except as opponents whom philosophy shall have to refute, or as claimants upon whose rights philosophy has to pronounce its judicial sentence.

Nor will the new system be the product of Catholic thought; for we Catholics are under the impression that the world has no need of new philosophical systems. As for us, we have a philosophy of admirable depth, great soundness, and incomparable precision, which has ever successfully refuted heresy, silenced infidelity, and harmonized the teachings of revelation and science to our full satisfaction. This philosophy can, indeed, be improved in some particulars, and we continually strive to improve it: but we are determined not to change its principles, which we know to be true, and not to depart from its method, which has no rival in the whole world of speculative science.

Who, then, would frame and develop the new and “final” philosophy? Free-thinkers? Freemasons? Free-religionists? These sectaries would doubtless be glad to dress philosophy in a white apron, with the square in one hand and the triangle in the other; for, if the thing were feasible, they would acquire at once that philosophical importance which they have not, and which they have always been anxious to secure, but in vain, by their united efforts. But then we are sure that they would only develop some humanitarian theory calculated to flatter the sceptical spirit of the age, and to merge all creeds in naturalism and free-religion; and this, of course, would not do, for the “final philosophy” should, according to Dr. Shields’ view, maintain the rights of supernatural revelation no less than of natural reason.

Should, then, the great work be abandoned to the hands, industry, and discernment of the Protestant sects? Men of talent and men of learning are to be found everywhere; but as to philosophers, we doubt whether any can be found among Protestants who will be honest enough to draw the legitimate consequences of their principles, when those consequences would imply a condemnation of their religious system. In other terms, if the work were to be entrusted to Protestant thinkers, one might, without need of preternatural illumination, boldly predict that the whole affair must end in nothing but failure. What can be expected of a Protestant thinker, or of any number of Protestant thinkers, whether divines or philosophers, but an inconsistent and preposterous tampering with truth? Protestantism lacks, and ever will lack, a uniform body of doctrines, whether philosophical or theological; it has no head, no centre, no positive principle, no recognized living authority, no bond of union; it has only a mutilated Bible which it discredits with contradictory interpretations; it is neither a church nor a school, but a Babel confusion of uncertain and discordant views; and it has no better foundation than the shifting sand of private judgment. On what ground, then, can a Protestant apologist force upon modern thought those shreds of revealed truth which he claims to hold on no better authority than his own fallible and changeable reason? And what else can he oppose to the invading spirit of unbelief? Alas! Protestantism is nothing but a house divided within itself, a ship where all hands are captains with no crew at their orders, an army whose generals have no authority to command and whose soldiers have no duty to obey. Such a House cannot but crumble into dust; such a ship must founder; and such an army cannot dream of Christian victories, as it is doomed to waste its strength in perpetual riots, unless it succeeds in putting an end to its intestine troubles by self-destruction. It is evident, then, that “final philosophy” cannot be the product of Protestant thought.

Dr. Shields seems to have seen these difficulties; for he holds that such a philosophy must not spring full-born from any one mind or people, but mature “as the common work and reward of all.” Here, however, the question arises whether this mode of working is calculated to give satisfactory results. When a number of persons contribute to the execution of a great work, it must be taken for granted that, if their effort has to prove a success, they must work on the same plan and tend in the same direction, so that the action of the one may not interfere with the action of the other. If all men were animated by an intense love of truth, and of nothing but truth, if they all could agree to start from the same principles, if they were all modest in their inferences, if they were so humble as to recognize their error when pointed out to them, and if some other similar dispositions were known to exist in all or in most students of science and philosophy, Dr. Shields’ plan might indeed be carried out with universal satisfaction. But men, unfortunately, love other things besides truth and more than truth: they love themselves, their own ideas, and their own prejudices; they ignore or pervert principles; they defend their blunders, and even embellish them for the sake of notoriety, and they are obstinate in their errors. On the other hand, we see that an ignorant public is always ready to applaud any philosophic monstrosity which wears a fashionable dress; and this is one of the greatest obstacles to the triumph of truth, as error grows powerful wherever it is encouraged by popular credulity. Thus error and truth will continue to fight in the future as they did in the past. The history of philosophy is a history of endless discords. The wildest conceptions have ever found supporters, and charlatanism has ever been applauded. The only epoch in which error had lost its hold of philosophy, and was compelled to retire almost entirely from the field of speculation, was when theology and philosophy, bound together in a defensive and offensive alliance under the leadership of the great Thomas Aquinas, so overpowered the Moorish philosophers and confounded their rationalistic followers that it was no longer possible for error to wear a mask. Then it was that the principles of a truly “final” philosophy were laid down, faith and reason reconciled, and false theories discredited. And it is for this reason that the disciples of error, who after the time of the Lutheran revolt have never ceased to attack some religious truth, style that scholastic epoch a dark age. Dark, indeed, for error, which had lost much power of mischief, but bright for philosophy, which had triumphed, and glorious for Christianity, which reigned supreme. If any age must be called dark, it is the one we live in, owing to the numbers of ignorant scribblers, unprincipled men in responsible positions, and illogical scientists who disgrace it.

This state of things is the product of free thought, which has disturbed and nearly destroyed the harmony of all the sciences, and all but extinguished the light of philosophical principles. The idea of employing free thought as an auxiliary for the defence of philosophy is so preposterous on its very face that none but a sectary or a sceptic could have entertained it. It must be pretty evident to all that such a course is like introducing the enemy into the fortress. Introduce Draper and Büchner, Tyndall and Moleschott, Haeckel and Darwin, Huxley and Clifford into the parlor of philosophy, and you will see at once how utterly mistaken is Mr. Shields if he reckons on them for his great work; you will see with what self-reliance, arrogance, and intolerance they condemn everything contrary to their favorite views. Tell them that they must help you to make a “final philosophy” which shall reconcile Scripture and science, Christianity and human reason. What would they think of such a proposal? Would they condescend to answer otherwise than by a sneer? But let us admit that they will favor you with an honest answer. What will they say?

Draper would probably remark that philosophy cannot undertake any such task, as the conflict between religion and science has its origin and reason of being in the nature of things, which is unchangeable.

Büchner would laugh impertinently at the idea of a God, a Scripture, and a religion.

Tyndall would have nothing to do with the scheme; for modern science cannot shake hands with revelation without encouraging a belief in miracles and in the utility of prayer—both which things science has exploded for ever, as conflicting with inviolable laws.

Moleschott would object that revelation and science are irreconcilable, at least, as to psychology; for the study of physiology has made it clear that thought consists in a series of molecular movements, and he is not willing to renounce this new dogma of science or to modify in any manner his view of the question for the sake of a new philosophy.

Haeckel would indignantly protest against the scheme, for there is no philosophy but the Evolution of species and the Descent of man; and he would turn to the great Darwin, his respected friend, for an approving smile.

The great Darwin would then smile approvingly on his loving and faithful disciple, and remark that Logic, for instance, which is believed to be a part of philosophy, and his Descent of man are on such bad terms that it would be but a waste of time to attempt a reconciliation between them, so he would let them alone.

The talkative Huxley would gladly second Mr. Darwin’s resolution by the further remark that a logic or a philosophy which cannot be weighed in the balance of the chemist, or be verified by the microscope, or be illustrated by the series of animal remains preserved in palæontological museums, has no claims to engage the attention of the noble scientists present in the room.

Clifford would scout the idea of a philosophy enslaved by theological prejudices. For free thought cannot come to terms with theology; it must combat it in the name of progress and civilization with all available weapons, and with an ardor proportionate to the grandeur and importance of the cause.

This sketch, which is certainly not over-colored, might be enlarged almost indefinitely by the introduction of other living or dead materialists, pantheists, atheists, theists, idealists, free-religionists, etc., whose discordant views would have to be either accepted, reformed, or refuted, as the case may be. John Stuart Mill and Comte, Bain and Spencer, Kant and Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, Hume and Hobbes, and a host of other minor lights of heterodox thought, would have to be harmonized, if possible, or else condemned and forgotten. But let the dead rest in peace and suppose that none but living thinkers are to be consulted. A dilemma presents itself: either Dr. Shields and his co-operators get the best of fashionable errors, and reject them, or not. If not, then a final philosophy reconciling revelation with science will be out of the question. If yes, then the final philosophy will be denounced by the evicted party as a mass of unscientific and à priori reasoning, a counterfeit of mediæval metaphysics, a tardy and clumsy attempt at resuscitating the discredited notions of a slavish and intolerant past. Newspaper writers, pamphleteers, lecturers, and professors would sneer at your final philosophy, as they now sneer at the scholastic doctrine; and the ever-increasing mass of sciolists, who think with the brains of others, would take up the sneer and propagate it even to the ends of the world. Thus science and religion, so long as human pride and human obstinacy are not curbed by the keenest love of truth, will remain antagonistic, and the present war will continue in spite of the “final philosophy.”

Dr. Shields very explicitly declares that he believes in God, in Christ, and in the Bible. For this we cannot but praise him. Yet his book leads thoughtful readers to suspect that his faith is still undeveloped, uncertain, indefinite, and, as it were, in an embryonic condition. In fact, religion and science, as he conceives, are still at war, and revelation must yet be reconciled with reason by the aid of final philosophy; and this final philosophy is a thing of the future. What will he believe meanwhile? What will all other Protestants believe? Must they adopt a provisional scepticism? This is, indeed, what most of them do; nor can we see that any other course is open to them, if they are waiting for the final philosophy. But, since “without faith it is impossible to please God,” how will they be saved? The question deserves an answer.

There is a science which teaches that man’s soul is not immortal, not spiritual, not even a substance, but only a molecular function, which cannot survive the body. Must Dr. Shields’ disciples remain uncertain about this point of doctrine until the final philosophy is published? And there is a science which maintains with the greatest assurance that what we call “God” is nothing more, in reality, than nature, or the universe and its forces and laws. Must we suspend our judgment on this all-important subject on the plea that final philosophy has not yet shed its brilliant light on the question? And there is a science, too, which contends that the human will, though long believed to be free, is nevertheless determined by exterior and interior causes according to a law of strict physical necessity which admits of no exception. Ought we, then, to consider ourselves irresponsible for our deliberate actions, till the final philosophy shall teach us that we are not mere machines, and that the freedom of the human will has at last been reconciled with the general laws of causation? To our mind, a Christian divine cannot for a moment admit that such a provisional scepticism could be recommended as a healthy intellectual preparation for the attainment of truth. Nor could a Christian divine fancy for a moment that a provident God has hitherto left mankind without sufficient light to understand and solve such capital questions as we have mentioned, and many others whose solution was equally indispensable for the moral and the religious education of the human race. The truth is that mankind has been endowed from the beginning with the knowledge of the principles of moral science, the laws of reasoning, the precepts of religion, and the eternal destiny of the just and the unjust. This knowledge was transmitted from fathers to sons, but was soon obscured by the surging of turbulent passions and a proud desire of independence. The human family soon emancipated itself from the moral law, and learned to stifle the voice of conscience by false excuses and by worldly maxims. Nations fell into polytheism, idolatry, revolting superstitions, and barbarism. Indeed, a few pagan philosophers, still faintly illumined by the remnants of the primitive tradition, attempted the reconstruction of human science; but they were only partially successful, and their names became famous no less for the errors with which they are still associated than for vindicated truths. Even the Jews, who were in possession of an authentic record of the past, and could read the Law and the Prophets, often adopted pagan views, or at least mistook the spirit of their sacred books by a too material adherence to the killing letter. At last Jesus Christ, God and man, the light that enlightens the world, the new Adam, the divine Solomon, came, and brought us the remedy of which our ignorance and corruption had so much need. He gave us his Gospel of truth and life, and not only restored but increased and perfected the knowledge of divine and human things; he founded his church; and he appointed, in the person of his vicar on earth, a permanent and infallible judge of revealed doctrine. The two hundred and odd millions of Christians who recognize this infallible judge know distinctly what they ought to believe. They need not await the decisions of any “final philosophy” in order to be fixed on such questions as the origin of matter, the creation of man, the liberty of the soul, the existence of a personal God, and the worship acceptable to him. And as to the scientific questions, these millions very naturally argue that any theory which clashes with the doctrine defined by the church bears in itself its own condemnation, whilst all the other theories are a fit subject of free discussion by the rational methods. This is our intellectual position in regard to science; and we venture to say that even Dr. Shields could not find a better one either for himself or for his pupils and friends. But he, unfortunately, does not belong to the true and living church of Christ; he belongs to a spurious system of Christianity, which countenances intellectual rebellion, and which, after having imprudently fostered free thought, is now at a loss how to restrain its destructive influence. Hence he is anxious to be on good terms with all free-thinkers, in the hope, we assume, that, by yielding in a measure to the spirit of infidelity, some arrangement may be arrived at, equally acceptable to both sides, by which Protestantism, as an old but now useless and despised accomplice, may be left to die a natural death. Thus the “final philosophy” of Dr. Shields, so far as we can judge from the details of his work, will put in the same balance God and man, revelation and free thought, wisdom and folly, with the pitiful result that we have briefly pointed out.

Final philosophy, as conceived by our author, can be of no service to the Catholic, and of no great benefit to the Protestant, world. At any rate a truly “final” philosophy has scarcely a chance of seeing the light in the present century, especially through the exertions of Protestant divines. The century to which we belong, though famous for many useful discoveries, is even more conspicuous for its great ignorance of speculative philosophy. In the middle ages, which were not half so dark as modern thinkers assume, there was less superficial diffusion of knowledge, but a great deal more of philosophy. Giants, like St. Anselm, Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, had collected, sifted, and harmonized the philosophical lore of all the preceding ages, refuted the errors of a presumptuous pagan or heretical science, shown the agreement of revelation with reason, reconciled metaphysics with theology, and made such a body of philosophical and theological doctrines as would, and did, satisfy the highest aspirations of deeply-cultivated intellects. It is men of this type that could have written a “final” philosophy. But who are we men of the nineteenth century? Are we not mere pigmies when compared with these old masters? Where do we find profound metaphysicians and profound theologians? Some, of course, are to be found in the Catholic Church, which alone has preserved the traditions of the ancient intellectual world; but we do not think that any one of them would consider himself clever enough to write a “final” philosophy. And should such a competent man be found, who would care for his doctrine? Scientists would certainly not bend to his authority, as they only laugh at metaphysics, nor to his arguments, which they would scarcely understand; and unbelievers would probably not even listen to him, as they would be afraid of being awakened from their spiritual lethargy.

On the other hand, to expect that a Protestant divine, or a body of Protestant divines, will be able to compose such a final philosophy as Dr. Shields describes in the passage we have quoted is the merest delusion. Not that there are not able and learned men in the Protestant sects, but because the Protestant mind is trained to look at things in the light of expediency more than of principles, and, besides other disqualifications already referred to, it sadly lacks the jewel of philosophical consistency. Dr. Shields, who holds, as we gladly recognize, a prominent place among the learned men of his own denomination, is by no means exempt from the weaknesses of his Protestant compeers. For example, he is apt to confound things which should be distinguished, and to draw consequences which go farther than the premises; he frequently yields to partisan prejudices; he makes false assumptions; he seems ready to sacrifice some religious views to modern thought; and he misrepresents or misinterprets history. A few references to his book will suffice to substantiate this criticism.

Thus, in the very first chapter of his work he says that in the first age of Christianity there was on the side of the church “an apparent effort to supplant philosophy” (p. 31); and to prove this he alleges that “the apostles had scarcely left the church when there sprang up, in the unlettered class from which the first Christians had been largely recruited, a weak jealousy of human learning, which, it was claimed, had been superseded in them by miraculous gifts of wisdom and knowledge.” This statement is captious. From the fact that the first Christians, guided by the wisdom of the Gospel, had come to despise the absurd fables of pagan philosophy, it does not follow that they rejected human learning, but only that they had common sense enough to understand and to fulfil the duties of their religious position. On the other hand, to imagine that “the unlettered class” could have thought “of supplanting human learning” is as ridiculous as if we pretended that our carpenters and blacksmiths might conspire to supplant astronomy. The author adds that “Clement of Rome was held by his party to have enjoined abstinence from mental culture as one of the apostolic canons,” that “Barnabas and Polycarp were classed with St. Paul as authors of epistles which carry their own evidence of imposture,” and that “Hermas, as if in contempt of scholars, put his angelical rhapsodies in the mouth of a shepherd.” We scarcely believe that these three assertions will enhance the credit of Dr. Shields as a student of history. Clement was himself a theologian and a philosopher; “his party” is a clumsy invention; “apostolic canons” never condemned mental culture; St. Paul’s epistles bear no evidence whatever of imposture; and, as to Hermas, it is well known to the learned that he put his instructions in the mouth of a shepherd, not that he might show his “contempt of scholars”—for he himself was a scholar—but because his guardian angel, from whom he had received those instructions, had appeared before him in the garb of a shepherd.

The author says (p. 33) that in the age of the Greek Fathers “there was a false peace between theology and philosophy; and religion and science, in consequence, became more or less corrupted by admixture with each other.” This statement is another historical blunder.

“The doctrines of St. John were sublimated into the abstractions of Plato.” This, too, is quite incorrect.

“The Son of God was identified as the divine Logos of the schools.” By no means. The Logos of the schools was only a shadow as compared with the Son of God; the Logos of the schools was an abstraction, whereas the Logos of the Fathers was a divine Person.

“Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, the two Gregories, Chrysostom, and the two Cyrils did scarcely more than consecrate the spirit of the Academy in the cloisters and councils of the church.” This statement has no need of refutation. The works of all the Fathers here mentioned are extant, and they eloquently protest against the slander. But Protestant authors are anxious to show that the Catholic Church was corrupted from its very first age; and to do this they do not scruple to gather lies and misrepresentations from all accessible sources, to transform history into a witness to facts that never had an existence.

“Philosophy,” continues the author, “became not less corrupted through its forced alliance with the new theology.” Who ever heard of a new theology in the patristic age? or of a theology with which philosophy could not make an alliance, except by force, and without being corrupted?

“If philosophy gained somewhat on its metaphysical side by having its own notional entities traced up to revealed realities as the flower from the germ of reason, yet it lost quite as much on its physical side through a narrowing logic and exegesis which bound it within the letter of the Scripture, and turned it away from all empirical research; and, consequently, even such crude natural science as it had inherited from the early Greeks was soon forgotten and buried under a mass of patristic traditions” (p. 34). From this we learn that logic, according to Dr. Shields, “narrows the physical side of philosophy,” and exegesis opposes “empirical research”! Is it not surprising that such assertions could find a place in a work which purports to be serious and philosophical? And as to the “crude natural science” of the early Greeks, which was a confused mass of conflicting guesses, does the author believe that it had a right to the name of science? or that it commanded the respect of theologians? or does he think that the Scripture has not a literal sense, which contains more truth than all the crude natural science of the early Greeks?

“In geology the speculations of Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, tracing the growth of the world from water, air, or fire, were only exchanged for the fanciful allegories and homilies of Origen, Basil, and Ambrose on the Hexaëmeron, or six days’ work of creation.” Dr. Shields has just complained that the Fathers bound science “within the letter of the Scripture”; and he now complains of Origen abandoning the literal for the allegorical sense! Such is his need of quarrelling with the Fathers. We may grant that some of Origen’s allegorical interpretations were rather “fanciful”; but since such interpretations were generally rejected even in his own time, it is difficult to understand how they could supersede the speculations of philosophers. As to St. Basil and St. Ambrose, however, no one who has studied their works will dare to maintain that they have indulged in fanciful theories. Of course they were not professors of science but of Christianity; nor were they obliged to forsake Moses for Anaximenes or Heraclitus, whose theories were nothing but dreams. Geology, as a science, was yet unborn; and we are certain that, had the Fathers embraced the theories which they are denounced for ignoring, Dr. Shields or some of his friends would have considered the fact as equally worthy of censure. Such is the justice of certain critics.

“In astronomy the heliocentric views of Aristarchus and Pythagoras had already given place to the Ptolemaic theory of the heavens.” This does not prove that the Fathers have corrupted astronomy; it shows, on the contrary, that the false system of astronomy originated in what was then considered science. It is to false science, therefore, and not to false theology that we must trace the false explanation of astronomical phenomena.

“In geography, the corruption of natural knowledge with false Biblical views became even more remarkable, and the doctrine of the earth’s rotundity and antipodes which had been held by Plato and Aristotle, and all but proved by the Alexandrian geometers, was at length discarded as a fable not less monstrous than heretical.” We wonder how it could have been possible to prove “by geometry” the existence of men at the antipodes, and we still more wonder how could the doctrine of the earth’s rotundity, which is a Scriptural doctrine, be discarded as a monstrous and heretical fable by men familiar with the teachings of the Bible. But what is the fact? Did any of the Fathers suggest that the words orbis terræ, which are to be found in many Scriptural texts, could be understood to mean anything but the earth’s rotundity? Or did any of them maintain that the earth’s rotundity was a “false Biblical view”? The author replies by quoting the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas Indicopleustes, who teaches that the earth is flat. But we answer that Cosmas was not a father of the church, and that his work has never been considered “a standard of Biblical geography,” as the author assumes. The theory of this monk was not the result of “theological” learning, as Dr. Shields imagines, but the offspring of Nestorian ignorance and presumption. Nor does it matter that Cosmas cites “patriarchs, prophets, and apostles in its defence as doctrine concerning which it was not lawful for a Christian to doubt” (p. 35); for we know, on the one hand, that there is no monstrosity which heretics are not apt to defend obstinately with Scriptural texts, and on the other that the theory of the Indicopleustes made no fortune in the Christian world; which further shows that the theological mind was not “inwrought” with any such fancies as the author pretends to have swayed the doctors of the Catholic Church. We know, of course, that our old doctors did not admit that the antipodes were inhabited by men; but this scarcely deserves criticism, as it is plain that before the discovery of the new world no serious man could take the responsibility of affirming a fact of which there was not a spark of evidence.

The author adds: “At the same time all the issuing interests of this paganized Christianity could not but share in its hybrid character. Its piety became but a mixture of austerity and license.” He then says that the Christian ritual “was a mere medley of incongruous usages”; that “the sign of the cross became a common charm as well as a sacred rite”; that Pachomius organized monasteries and nunneries as sanctuaries of virtue “amid a social corruption too gross to be described”; that “Christian and pagan factions contended for supremacy in the Roman senate”; that “the Lord’s day was observed by imperial edict on a day devoted to the god of the sun,” etc., etc.; and he winds up his survey of the patristic age by the remark that “the patristic type of Christian science has been likened to a twilight dream of thought before the long night-watches of the middle ages” (p. 35, 36).

It would be useless to ask Dr. Shields how he has ascertained that Christianity was “paganized,” and that the sign of the cross had become a “charm”; he would tell us simply that these gems of erudition have been culled by him from Protestant or infidel books. As to the “mixture of austerity and license” nothing need be said, for the contradiction is glaring. That the social corruption was “too gross to be described” is not astonishing, as the world was still more than half pagan; but to connect social corruption with the monasteries and nunneries organized by St. Pachomius, in order to denounce them as a mixture of austerity and license, is a proof not only of bad taste, but of bad will and of want of judgment. The author forgets to tell us why the Christian ritual should be called “a mere medley of incongruous usages”; and yet, as our present ritual does not substantially differ from that of the patristic age, it would have been easy to point out a few of such usages, were it not that their incongruity is only a crotchet of Protestant bigotism. That the Lord’s day was observed “by imperial edict” may indeed seem scandalous to free-thinkers and free-religionists, but not to Protestant doctors; for they must know that in Protestant countries the Lord’s day is still observed by a law which has the same power as an imperial edict. But Protestants are perhaps scandalized at the Lord’s day being kept on the “day devoted to the god of the sun” instead of the Sabbath; and from this they argue that the Church of God has been utterly corrupted and paganized. If so, then they should either prove that the Lord’s day, the day of Christ’s resurrection, was the Sabbath, or denounce Jesus Christ himself for doing on the day “devoted to the god of the sun” what he ought to have done on the Sabbath. O the Pharisees! We cannot wonder if they despise the “patristic type of Christian science” as a dream when we see how shamelessly they strive to misrepresent the most glorious ages of Christianity, and to turn truth itself into poison.

The few quotations we have here made, and the remarks we have appended to them, are far from giving an adequate idea of the partisan spirit and unreliable statements with which Dr. Shields has filled the first part of his book. What we have given is only a small sample of the rest, and was extracted from three pages. Were we to extend our criticism to only ten pages more, we would find matter enough for a volume. Our author, as nearly all Protestant authors, characterizes the scholastic age as one of philosophic bondage. Theology subjugates philosophy: “The church is the only school; orthodoxy the one test of all truth; the traditions of the Fathers the sole pabulum of the intellect; and the system of Aristotle a mere frame-work to the creed of Augustine.” Peter Lombard “narrowed the circle of free thought by putting the authority of the church above that of Scripture”; Alexander of Hales “rendered the thraldom of the intellect complete by systematizing the patristic traditions or sentences with Aristotelian logic.” Alas! we know only too well that Protestantism detests logic as much as the patristic traditions. But, then, why should a Protestant D.D. undertake to harmonize philosophy and theology? Is there any philosophy without logic, or any theology without patristic traditions?

Thomas Aquinas “dazzled all Europe”; but Duns Scotus “proceeded to evaporate the distinction of Aquinas in a jargon which defies modern comprehension.” This does little credit to modern comprehension; for the jargon of Scotus is nothing but the Latin tongue adapted to philosophical use. “Philosophy,” at this time, “could only succumb to theology.” “In logic any deflection in mere form as well as matter was enough to draw down the anathemas of the church.” Roscellin “was arraigned as a tritheist,” William of Champeaux “was pursued as a pantheist,” Abelard “was forced to cast his own works into the fire, and condemned to obscurity and silence.” It is evident that these facts, and others of a similar nature, must fill with horror our liberal Protestants and all free-religionists, just as prison and capital punishment fill with horror a convicted criminal. But if Dr. Shields condescends to examine the doctrines of Roscellin, William of Champeaux, and Abelard in the light of Scripture, as they are faithfully portrayed in reliable works (such as St. Thomas’ life by Rev. Bede Vaughan, for example), he will see that all three were guilty of heresy, and that they richly deserved the treatment to which they were subjected. We cannot, of course, enter here into a discussion of such doctrines; we merely state that they have been fully examined and debated in the presence of the interested parties with all the calm, patience, and impartiality which characterize the proceedings of the Catholic Church.

As to the singular notion entertained by Dr. Shields, that philosophy “could only succumb to theology,” we wish to tell him that no man can be a theologian unless he be also a philosopher; whence it follows that philosophy and theology are naturally friendly to one another, and, if they ever happen to disagree, they do not fight like enemies, but they state their reasons like good sisters equally anxious to secure each other’s support. Philosophy is like a clear but naked eye; theology is the same eye, not naked, but armed with a powerful telescope. Will Dr. Shields maintain that the eye succumbs when it sees by the telescope what the naked eye cannot discover? Yet this is the idea latent in his notion of philosophy succumbing to theology. What succumbs to theology is not philosophy, but error masked in the garb of philosophy. The author himself tells us that “reason and revelation are complemental factors of knowledge, the former discovering what the latter has not revealed, and the latter revealing what the former cannot discover.” This is exactly what we were saying; for the science of reason is philosophy, and the science of revelation is theology.

We would never end, if we were to follow our author through the five hundred and eighty-eight pages of his book. We only add that the theological and philosophical erudition which he parades throughout the whole work has been derived from the same baneful sources from which Dr. Draper collected the materials of his History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, and deserves the same heavy censure. The late Dr. O. A. Brownson, when Dr. Draper’s work was published, said of it: “The only thing in Dr. Draper’s book that we are disposed to tolerate is his style, which is free, flowing, natural, simple, unaffected, and popular. Aside from its style, the book cannot be too severely censured. It is a tissue of lies from beginning to end. It is crude, superficial, and anything but what it professes to be. It professes to be a history of the conflict between religion and science. It is no such thing. It is a vulgar attack on Christianity and the Christian church, in which is condensed the substance of all that has been said by anti-Christian writers from the first century to the nineteenth.” We do not say that Dr. Shields’ intention has been to attack Christianity in general as Dr. Draper did; he, on the contrary, professes to labor for a reconciliation of Christianity and reason. But, good as the intention is, the book will do as much harm as that of Dr. Draper. Its style is as good, to say the least, as Dr. Draper’s, and its subject-matter is well distributed and orderly developed; but these and other good qualities, instead of redeeming its numerous misrepresentations of truth, make them more dangerous by adding to them a charm against which the average reader can ill defend himself. Besides, Dr. Draper’s work, owing to its shameless infidelity, disgusts the Christian reader and makes him unwilling to swallow the poison it contains; whereas Dr. Shields’ book has such an attractive title, professes such a reverence for Scripture, and displays such an earnestness and ingenuity in the holy task of reconciling religion with science, that the unsophisticated reader (the Protestant reader in particular) will follow him, not only with great pleasure, but also with great docility and deference, till he persuades himself that religion is now in such a state that it needs to be purified by philosophy, and that reason must be made the umpire between revealed and scientific dogmas. The consequence is that the author’s “final philosophy” will serve the interests of rationalism rather than of religion. The more so as the author shows himself well acquainted with the errors of modern thought, some of which he exposes and refutes in a truly philosophical spirit, and with a talent and ability of which we see few instances in modern thinkers. We have been particularly struck by his powerful handling of positivism and absolutism, not to mention many other topics which he has treated in a very fair and intelligent manner. Had he not taken his stand on the shifting ground of Protestant opinions, he might have achieved a very meritorious task. He speaks of catholic views, catholic philosophy, and catholic spirit as something indispensable to carry on the much-desired conciliation of natural with supernatural knowledge. But what can the word “catholic” mean on the lips of one who does not listen to the Catholic doctors, and who is a stranger to the Catholic Church? His “catholic” spirit cannot but be a spirit of compromise, and a kind of rationalistic eclecticism, ready to accept only so much of revelation as men will condescend to authorize on a verdict of their fallible reason, and no less ready to sacrifice and ignore as much of it as human reason cannot explain or harmonize with natural science. It is evident that such a spirit can lead to nothing but religious scepticism. And this should convince even Dr. Shields that his “final philosophy” will never achieve a success. The Catholic thinker, if he had to compose a final philosophy, would place himself on much higher and much securer ground; he would first range in a series all the truths which the Catholic Church has defined to be of faith; he would then range in another series all the demonstrated truths of the natural sciences, and all the principles, axioms, and propositions of philosophy which are generally received by the different schools; he would next inquire whether any proposition of this second series clashes with any of the truths contained in the first series; and, as he would be unable to find any truth of science or of philosophy conflicting with any revealed truth, he would conclude that the world is not just now in need of a final philosophy for settling a conflict which has no existence except in the imaginative brains of scientific charlatans. Dr. Shields may think that this course is not calculated to secure the alliance of religion and science; but let him read the magnificent article published by Dr. Brownson in his Quarterly Review (April, 1875), on Dr. Draper’s pretended history of the conflict between religion and science, and he will see his mistake.

The “final philosophy,” as we have already remarked, will be of no use to the Catholic world. Protestants may, perhaps, relish it all the more. But no class of men will, in our opinion, be more gratified with it than the sceptics, the free-thinkers, and the enemies of supernatural truth; for they will not fail to see that to set up philosophy as “umpire” between religion and science is to make men distrust the doctrines of religion, and to prepare, though with the best intentions, the triumph of religious scepticism.

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

A GREAT BISHOP.

In writing the lives of saints their biographers often forget that they are writing history, and telling the part which a wise, strong, and manly character bore in that history. William Emmanuel von Ketteler, the late Bishop of Mayence, might by many be reckoned among saints, so holy was his life and so like the primitive Christian ideal. But he has another claim to fame, as one of the greatest modern champions of order against socialism, and of the church against organized godlessness. The “iron bishop,” the “fighting bishop,” were nicknames given him by his foes, and, though given in hate and derision, they unconsciously set forth one side of his powerful character. A man of his reach of mind, however humble, could not have taken a less prominent part and position in the struggle of principle against license of which the present religious disturbances in Germany are the type. It fell naturally to his share to be the speaker and standard-bearer of the cause of church liberties, and the representative of the episcopal order. His legal studies and experience, as well as his hardy habits and magnificent physique, seemed to have prepared him and pointed him out among all others for the championship of his party, including all the bodily fatigue and mental anxiety incident to such a leadership. He was as thorough a man as he was an ideal bishop and exceptional orator, and this manliness, physical and intellectual, was the basis of his simple and grand character. His chosen motto, “Let all be as one,” is no bad interpretation of the leading ideal which he tried through life to realize: church unity and Christian loyalty, served by the whole round of his exceptional and perfectly-developed faculties. Before setting forth the fruits of his special studies, and examining his life and personality from the point of view most important in this century of social strife, we purpose giving a short biographical sketch of the Bishop of Mayence.

He was born on Christmas day, 1811, at Münster in Westphalia, of a noble family, one branch of which, embracing the doctrines of the Reformation, had in the sixteenth century migrated to Poland and become hereditary dukes of Courland, and a second, remaining German and Catholic, had been distinguished by giving more than one member to the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. His own branch, the third, known as that of Alt-Assen, was worthily represented by his father, a stern, faithful, and upright man, an uncompromising Christian, and a moralist of what our easier age calls the “old school.” As in every great character, there was something of the soldier in Baron Frederick von Ketteler of Harkotten, and this streak was reproduced in at least two of his sons, William and Richard. His mother, Clementina, Baroness von Wenge of Beck, was a woman of superior character, as it is noticed that the mothers of remarkable men almost invariably are, and one of the bishop’s biographers is certainly entitled to dwell as he does, with special force, on the fact of the home-training of young Ketteler having had more real influence in shaping his character than either the schooling he got at the cathedral school of Münster until he was thirteen years of age, or the atmosphere of the Swiss Jesuit College at Brieg, where he studied until he was eighteen. The two most conspicuous traits in the youth were his passion for hunting and sport of all kinds, athletic games, Alpine climbing, and all exercises requiring hardiness and disregard of wind and weather, and his earnest and unobtrusive piety. He was spared the trial through which so many noble natures pass before fully identifying themselves with the spirit of the church, whose letter they have been early taught to obey: he experienced no time of doubt, of wavering, of temptation, and the modern sore of unbelief never seems to have even come near his mind. From a youth passed in alternate study and sport and a free, out-of-door life he grew to a manhood serious and industrious, with a routine of work always hallowed by early prayer and daily attendance at Mass, and a social position in his native town, as counsel or referee for the government, which was, if not fully worthy of his talents, yet sufficiently honorable as the beginning of a professional career. His university life had, like that of most young Germans, been marked by one duel, which seriously displeased his father, and his military obligations had been discharged, according to the laws as they then stood, by his service as a “one-year volunteer” in the local militia. His legal career seemed assured, though there were many among his early friends who foresaw that his entering the church was not unlikely. The incident that determined this change was the outbreak of Cologne in 1838, when the first note of the coming ecclesiastical troubles was sounded by a municipality that went to the length of imprisoning the archbishop, Clement von Droste-Vischering; the friend of Stolberg, and the primate of the Rhine provinces.

Ketteler, never averse to Prussia, in whose mission to Germany he believed, even up to the late Falk or May Laws which tore away the veil, could, nevertheless, not reconcile himself to serve any longer a government that allowed such violations of personal freedom and of the principles which underlie that freedom. In the autumn of the same year he went to the Münich Theological College and began his ecclesiastical studies. Among his professors were Döllinger and Görres, and others whose fame is less European but scarcely less great in Germany itself; and among his fellow-students Paul Melchers, the present Archbishop of Cologne, who, like himself, had been a lawyer of great promise. Coming at the age of twenty-seven to study among a body of whom many members were hardly more than boys, it may have been a hard task to preserve humility and charity; yet the verdict of his fellow-students, summed up by one of themselves, was to the effect that Ketteler’s simplicity and good-nature were in every way as marked as his intellectual superiority. These qualities came out again later in his intercourse with his country parishioners, each of whom, peasants as they were, he treated with the cordiality and respect of a neighbor and an equal. He was no demagogue, and had no theories save the everlasting theories of the Gospel and the church; but, as is usually the case, his practice with his social inferiors went far beyond the noisy and deceiving show of equality made by professional agitators. After four years’ study in Münich he devoted one year more to theological subjects in the episcopal seminary at Münster, and received holy orders in 1844, when he was sent as curate to Beckum, a small town in Westphalia. He was then thirty-three, and had reached half his allotted years; for it has been noticed that his term of service as priest and bishop was also thirty-three years. The coincidence of his last illness having lasted thirty-three days also struck many persons who are fond of these calculations.

At Beckum, where he was associated with two other young priests (one of whom, Brinkmann, is now Bishop of Münster), he led a life as near as possible to one of his ideals—still unfulfilled in practice, but only postponed in his mind because of more urgent and present needs—the life in common of the secular clergy. He and his fellow-curates lived in a small house, where each had one room besides the common gathering-room, and one purse for all uses, whether personal or charitable. He and Brinkmann founded a hospital during their short stay, and this grew afterwards to very satisfactory proportions; but Ketteler had opportunities of proving himself a good nurse under his own roof, where his third colleague was often bedridden for months at a time. His public ministry, however, never suffered, and his assiduity at the bedside of his sick parishioners and in the confessional at all times, in season and out of season, were remarkable. If all priests would reflect how momentous, nay, how awful, is the responsibility incurred in this matter of ever-readiness to hear a man’s confession, they would less seldom deviate from the self-sacrificing example which Bishop Ketteler gave consistently throughout his life. His zeal in this particular was not inferior, however, to his care of the schools which in his public career so distinguished him; and both led his diocesan after two years to remove him from Beckum, to a full parish, that of Hopsten.

His life here was a repetition of the life at Beckum; his ministry was so efficacious that the spiritual life of the parish resembled a permanent “mission,” or revival, and his active charity had a large field for exercise in the famine and the fever which visited his people during his incumbency. It is related of him that, his sister coming to visit him at Hopsten, he proposed to take her to see some of his friends in the neighborhood, and accordingly took her to his poorest people, begging for each a gift sorely needed, which resulted in her emptying her purse so effectually that she had to borrow money for her journey home. He provisioned his parish during the famine, and got his rich relations to help him in the work; and in the fever, besides his gifts of food, bedding, and medicines, and his regular offices as their pastor, he literally became his people’s physician and nurse.

It was no wonder that he should so have won the respect and trust of his neighbors that, even in that very Protestant borough of Lengerich, of which his parish formed part, he was unanimously returned as deputy to the Frankfort Parliament in 1848. It was here that he first came publicly before Germany as an orator and a statesman, and that he made that famous speech at the funeral of the Prussian delegates, Lichnowsky and Auerswald, murdered during the riots, which has become the most popular and widely known of any of his discourses. After his retirement from Parliament, and his attendance in the same year at the first meeting of the Catholic Union at Mayence, he was asked to give a course of lectures in the cathedral on the social and political problems of the day. It is said that Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, besides free-thinkers, crowded to hear these eloquent and exhaustive lectures, and that the competition for seats was a fitting type of the intellectual stir they made in the city. His physical endurance was no less marvellous, and added much to the impressiveness of the discourses, delivered in close succession, with a full, melodious, resounding voice under perfect control of the speaker, and carefully husbanded, so that neither enthusiasm nor emotion should drive it into shrillness or sink it into huskiness. That year saw the preacher transferred to the provostship of St. Hedwige’s Church in Berlin, which he occupied only for ten months, but long enough to win the love of his city congregation as he had that of his country parish. His younger brother, Richard, who had left the army to become a priest, succeeded him at Hopsten, but left the place later to become a Capuchin; he was long known as Father Bonaventure. In 1849 Provost Ketteler was chosen Bishop of Mayence, after a stormy election and dispute in the cathedral chapter. The first nominee, Doctor Leopold Schmid, professor of theology at Giesen, the local university, being, on grounds of “undue influence,” strongly disapproved of by a large minority of the canons, they and their opponents of the majority agreed to a re-election and to an appeal to the Holy See, upon which, out of the three names sent in, the Pope chose the provost of St. Hedwige. He was not consecrated till July, 1850, by the archbishop of Freiburg, assisted by the bishops of Limburg and Fulda. Thenceforward one may say that his life was entirely a public one, so intimately was it connected with the living and burning questions of the time. Each year the crisis between church and state seemed to draw nearer; and, if one may say so, the gap between the two has become complete since the promulgation of the May Laws. In this struggle, which lasted all through his episcopate, the state certainly proved the aggressor, for the lukewarmness of German Catholics in the last generation was a proverb; and Ketteler succeeded to a diocese in very different order from the one he has left. Things were working, or rather lapsing, into the hands of the church’s enemies, had they been wise enough to wait and watch; by hurrying matters they roused the spirit of Catholics, and raised against themselves a zealous band firmly attached to their faith and determined to vindicate its rights and liberties.

Of this band Bishop Ketteler, whether as deputy, pamphleteer, lecturer, or spiritual guide, was practically the head. His first works in Mayence were, on a wider scale, the repetition of those in Hopsten. He instituted reforms and amendments in every department; gathered the clergy together in yearly retreats, during which the exercises of St. Ignatius, which he held in high esteem, were made the basis of instruction; founded several Capuchin convents for the purpose of giving missions, especially in the country, and one Jesuit college, on the occasion of whose establishment he had to bear the brunt of a determined journalistic opposition; set up schools and an orphanage for girls under the care of the Sisters of Mercy, an asylum for repentant women under the nuns of the Good Shepherd, a refuge for servant-maids out of employment, a community of Poor Clares to visit and relieve the poor in their own homes, a Boys’ Orphanage, Boys’ Reformatory, and Boys’ Refuge, several unions and brotherhoods to keep the people together and preserve them from the snares of irreligious associations—notably a Working-men’s Catholic Union—and last, not least, a school taught by the Christian Brothers, which soon won such golden opinions that Protestants by scores withdrew their children from the communal schools and placed them under the new teachers. With rare liberality a Lutheran clergyman was allowed free access to the school to teach these children the religion of their parents. The bishop’s care for, and personal visitation of, the hospitals also reacted on the management of these institutions, so that they were more than ever well conducted during his episcopate. Though his enemies, despairing of finding other sins to lay to his charge, accused him of undue harshness as a taskmaster in the things he required of his clergy, this body itself never found fault with his zeal for discipline and austerity. He counselled nothing which he did not perform and, indeed, far surpass; for, unlike many bishops, estimable and even holy men, he did not consider his rank as exempting him from the most ordinary duties of a priest; he sat as many hours on regular days in the confessional as any country curate, and his daily Mass at five o’clock was always said in the cathedral instead of a private house-chapel—that is, until the last four or five years of his life, when old age made this indulgence necessary. He preached almost incessantly; the Sundays in Lent and Advent always in his own cathedral, other Sundays alternating with his clergy, and in the evenings of Sundays and week-days alike in any church, chapel, or even hall, where he was asked to further any good cause. His confirmation and church-visitation journeys were remarkable; he returned to the rightful custom of confirming, no matter how few the candidates, separately in each parish, instead of lumping many parishes together in one central ceremony, and this in order that he might gain a personal knowledge of each place, its needs and workings. On these occasions he would give a preliminary introduction on the eve of the confirmation, then hear confessions far into the night or morning, say Mass early, and confess again till he preached the sermon and administered the sacrament; in the afternoon inspect the schools, catechise the children, and visit any sick persons there might happen to be; conduct the evening service himself and preach a second time, the intermediate moments being passed again in the confessional or in private intercourse with any one who asked for special advice or comfort.

His daily life at home was as simple, hardy, and frugal as it had been at Beckum: he rose at four and worked incessantly, yet finding time, besides his Breviary, to say the rosary and the office of the Third Order of St. Francis every day. Add to this his writings, his minute supervision of the ecclesiastical machinery of his diocese, his conferences with political leaders, his necessary journeys or excursions, besides his frequent undertaking of the duties of the archbishop of Freiburg after the latter grew too infirm to go on long confirmation rounds, and it will be easily seen that he was far from an ordinary man. In virtue of his office he was entitled to a seat in the Upper House (in the grand-duchy of Hesse), with the right of sending a representative, if he chose, which he did, sending one of his canons, Dr. Monsang, who, among other things, distinguished himself by voting for the freedom of the Jewish religious bodies, in the matter of internal reform, from state interference, and for their right to receive state aid, provided they themselves solicited it. In the German Reichstag, however, where Bishop Ketteler represented the borough of Tauberbischofsheim, he sat in person, and was numbered among the members of what was known as the Fraction of the Centre, of whom Windthorst, his friend, was and is the leader. During the two German wars, 1866 and 1870, he, though deploring the civil nature of the first, according to the tradition of the greater part of the Westphalian nobility, leaned to the side of Prussia, in whose mission to unite Germany his belief never wavered, and whose influence in things purely political he always upheld. His very patriotism and enlightened views in this direction made his firm stand against the Prussian aggression on the church of more weight and importance—a fact which his enemies fully appreciated and often tried to make capital of, dubbing him as inconsistent with himself. Every one will see how one-sided this view was.

He was so far modern in his ideas that he claimed not to have lost any of the rights of a citizen by becoming a priest; but the way in which he used those rights, civic and parliamentary, roused the anger of men whose interpretation of the same principle led them to see in a priest nothing more than a military serf of the empire. He never claimed for the church any privilege or any exemption, only the full meed of liberty due to any other corporation; the exception need not be in her favor, but should not be directed specially against her. The state and the church were separate bodies, indeed, and well for the latter that such a doctrine could be conscientiously held; but the very separation involved perfect autonomy for the church, and forbade any interference on the part of political authorities, while her influence in social questions was to be exerted only through her direct influence on individuals; for a state under bondage to the church never occurred to him as desirable. Meanwhile, he labored to carry out his ideal of internal church government, a noble and primitive one, based upon the importance of parish organization and of the thorough efficacy of the parish clergy, to whom the religious orders, in his view, were to act as helpers and subordinates. To the disuse of ancient church laws and customs he attributed the troubles that have often come upon the church in all times; for he held her discipline, and even her ritual, to be no less than her doctrine under the direct guidance of the Holy Ghost. This alone would have made him a reformer in a lax and lukewarm age, when it was the fashion for Catholics themselves to join in mild or witty reflections upon their own faith, and to remain outwardly in conformity with that faith only by habit and by intellectual sluggishness. But this, joined to his powerful zeal in matters more prominent and public, made him specially the leader of a spiritual revival among the people of his city, his diocese, and Germany at large. It was not in vain that he sat in the see of St. Boniface; and when he encouraged the celebration of his predecessor’s eleventh centenary, it was fully as much to stir up the zeal of his people for church liberty as to honor the memory of the great missionary. His five journeys to Rome on various solemn anniversaries, and notably that on the occasion of the Vatican Council, were the only other incidents of his life that remain to be noticed; on his way back from the last, in 1876, when the Holy Father received him with special marks of esteem and rejoiced to have him as a witness of his “golden” anniversary, Bishop Ketteler fell ill at Alt-Oetting, a shrine where he had encouraged and taken part in many a pilgrimage. He could get no farther than the Capuchin convent of Burghausen, where he died on the 13th of July, of typhoid fever; on the 18th he was buried in his own cathedral amidst the lamentations of his clergy and people. The country people, to whom he had always had a special leaning, and who knew him as familiarly as his own canons did through his frequent presence at and ministry in the great Rhine pilgrimages, were loud in their expressions of grief; all felt that they had lost a father, but those whose chief concern was in temporal matters felt also that a great speaker and thinker had departed. Of his style, his mode of thinking, and the zeal, always burning yet never intemperate, which he brought to his work even so early as 1848, one can judge by the famous passage of his speech at the funeral of Lichnowsky and Auerswald at Frankfort: “Who are the murderers of our friends? Are they the men who shot them through the breast, or those who clove open their heads with their axes? No, these are not the murderers. Their murderers are the principles which produce both good and evil deeds upon the earth, and the principles which produced this deed are not born of our people. I know the German people, not, indeed, by the experience of conventions, but by that of its inner, daily life.... I have devoted my life to the service of the poor people, and the more I have learnt to know them the more have I learnt to love them; I know what a great and noble character our German people has received from God. No, I repeat it: it is not our noble, our honest German people who are answerable for this wicked deed.... The true murderers are those who, before the people, seek to bring into contempt and to soil with their low ribaldry both Christ, Christianity, and the church; those who strive to efface from the heart of the people the healing message of the redemption of mankind; those who do not look upon revolution as a sad necessity under certain circumstances, but erect revolution into a principle, and hurry people from revolution to revolution; ... those who would take from the people the belief in the duty of man to command himself, to curb his passions, and to obey the higher laws of order and of virtue, and would, on the contrary, make laws of those passions and therewith inflame the people; those men who would set themselves up as lying gods over the people, in order that it may fall down before them and worship them.”

Ketteler’s first well-known speech on social subjects was delivered on the 4th of October, 1848, at the original meeting of the Catholic Union at Mayence—a body whose “congresses” have been held yearly since that time, and have been distinguished by speeches such as those of Montalembert, Dupanloup, Manning, Döllinger, before 1870, and others whose names are public property. His subject was “The Freedom of the Church, and the Social Crisis”; and says one of his biographers, “It is no mean testimony to his far-sightedness that he already foresaw and took part in the importance of the social question.” His lectures in the cathedral took in such themes as these: “The Catholic Doctrine of Property,” “Rational Freedom,” “The Destiny of Man,” “The Family, based on Christian Marriage,” “The Authority of the Church, based on Man’s Need of Authority.” Of the impression these discourses made on all classes we have spoken already. To show how liberal were his views on the form of government, it may be mentioned that it was one of his axioms that it mattered little who ruled, but much how he ruled. All forms of legitimate government were practically alike to him, though his own ideal for Germany was a revival of the old unity of confederation, with the equal representation of the burghers and of the peasantry by the side of the clergy and nobility; but the manner in which the government, no matter what it called itself, dealt with weighty questions of morals was in his view a touchstone. It will be seen from this that if his foes delighted in calling him the most ultramontane of ultramontanes, they had no reason, politically speaking, to call him retrograde, absolutist, or even monarchist. In fact, it seems as if one might sum up his political character thus: a citizen of a free imperial city of the middle ages, imbued with the keenness of sight and the versatility of tongue peculiar to the modern European politician.

In 1851 and 1852 a new phase of unbelief, dubbing itself “German Catholicism,” did its best to bewilder the mind of Catholic Germany, and the bishop plainly warned his people against it, saying: “Though I should incur hereby the reproach of intolerance, I must warn you against ‘German Catholicism,’ for it denies the Godhead of Christ, revelation, and redemption, and makes itself a god according to its own fancy.” In 1852, in his Lenten pastoral, he touched upon the connection between this belief and political radicalism; also upon the common reproach of rebellion against authority or of flattery towards princes which these new philosophers were constantly bringing against the church. “When the church,” he says, “advises the people to submit to the civil power, she is thus attacked: ‘See the flatterer of princes, the protectress of all abuses, the willing instrument of the oppression of the people.’ When, on the other hand, she reminds the state of its obligations, and, under certain circumstances, proclaims that God is to be obeyed rather than man, the spirit of deception cries out: ‘See the rebel, the seeker after undue authority.’” In 1873, when a new attack was made on religion by the establishment of communal schools, he resisted, by writing and preaching, “these institutions which contradict all the principles of religion, disturb Christian education, contradict and confuse the understanding and the nature of childhood, and damage all the interests of the Christian family.” In 1851, when every government in Germany had been more or less remodelled, and many fetters of old prescription and prejudice had been shaken off by the revolution of 1844, the bishops of the Upper Rhine province came together at Freiburg, and presented a memoir on church relations with the state to the neighboring rulers of Hesse, Würtemberg, Baden, and Nassau. No notice was taken of it, and two years later it was repeated with almost the same result, save that in Hesse the grand-duke and his prime minister, Dalwigk, called a convention in 1854, and established the liberty and autonomy of the church upon a legal basis. Ketteler’s pamphlet in the same year, three months previous to the convention, had some influence on the course of affairs; it was on “The rights, and the right to protection, of the Catholic Church in Germany, with special reference to the claims of the episcopate of the Upper Rhine and the present struggle,” and may be summed up in this quotation from it: “The rights of sovereignty are doubtless holy. They belong to God’s ordinances, and are therefore of God; but those indefinite, boundless, unhistorical, unfounded rights of sovereignty stand exactly on a level with the equally indefinite, boundless, unhistorical, unfounded rights of humanity. They are distorted images of lofty truths, and are born of the same fallacy as absolutism. Once face to face with them, the church must either allow herself to be ravaged or must begin a struggle for life and death.”

However well known and widely spread were Ketteler’s influence and writings, the latter partook of the local and circumstantial nature of most political writings: they were not solid, dignified, technical treatises of theology, nor popular and “taking” books of devotion, but the outcome of present necessities, quick and vigorous protests against injustice, weapons specially adapted to the ever-shifting warfare between socialism and religion. His pamphlets were mostly short, terse, and to the point; he slept in his armor and was always on the watch. He speaks of his work in this direction with great simplicity to Prof. Nippold, of Heidelberg: “Besides my spiritual ministry in my diocese, I follow and observe all the movements of my time, and cannot help meeting with all the injustices which men do to one another, not always, indeed, of malice prepense, but often through misunderstandings, prejudices, and false representations. Then, if I can spare time from my work, I make an effort towards clearing up those unfortunate misunderstandings....” But though he spoke and felt thus modestly about his important part in the questions of the day, we know how impossible it is for a man of his stamp not to rise to his natural level. He was born to be a leader, and neither necessity nor humility could block the path to political prominence. Such a man, weighted with even more absorbing work than his, would have made time for occupations so naturally fitted for him; such a mind, even had it been in a less robust body, would have overcome disease and weakness, and wrested from them the power to make itself known. A list of a few of his writings will show how universal was his watchfulness: Can a believing Christian be a Freemason? The True Foundations of Religious Peace. The Defamation of the Church by the Tribune. The Right of Free Election of the Cathedral Chapter. Germany after the War of 1866. The Fraction of the Centre at the First German Reichstag. Catholics in the German Empire. Freedom, Authority, and the Church, considerations upon the Great Problem of the Day. The Labor Question and Christianity. Liberalism, Socialism, and Christianity. The General Council and its Influence on Our Time. The Doctrinal Infallibility of the Pope after the Definition of the Vatican Council.

What he has said and written on the social question, including the subjects of marriage, the family, education, and the relations between capital and labor, even most of his opponents judge to belong to the quota of wisest utterances extant on the subject. His gift of opportunity, or of speaking always to the point, has been noticed already. Here is what a German contemporary says of it: “The bishop did not devote himself to journalism as a profession, for he looked upon his ministry as immeasurably more precious and higher than political influence. But he used it as a weapon at every important turning-point of contemporary German history, when dangers threatened the moral order of German society, and when the rights of the church were violated and her institutions hampered; and precisely because his writings sprang from instant necessities or the peculiarities of the day, they were, in the noblest sense of the word, timely—not productions of labored pulpit-wisdom, but the forcible words, piercing through bone and marrow, of a powerful voice sounding the battle-cry of a mind-conflict; of a man whose keen and far-sighted look measured the heights and depths of the mind-disturbances of his day, and shared heartily in the joys and sorrows of his time.”

It is worth while to notice his usual method in these earnest pamphlets. It consisted, as a rule, of taking his opponents’ own arguments or “accomplished facts” nakedly as they stood, and carrying them on to their strictly legitimate but startling consequences. Yet, in the whole course of his polemical writings, he carefully abstained from the least personality. In this he might with advantage be taken as a model by most schools of political pamphleteering. Soon after his speech at Frankfort his fame as an orator was already held so high that it suggested the following poetical portrait of him by Bede Weber, in a work entitled Historico-Political Sketches. This is almost a literal translation:

“The parish priest of Hopsten has a tall and powerful figure, with sharply-cut features, in which speak a fearlessness impelling him irresistibly to ‘do and dare,’[163] joined to an old Westphalian tradition of loyalty to God and church, to emperor and realm. To his discerning spirit the German nation, in its unity, its history, and its Catholic traditions, is still living and strong. Luther and Melanchthon, Charles the Fifth and Napoleon, the Peace of Basle and the cowardly Pillersdorf, are nothing in his eyes but passing shadows over the black, red, and gold shield of the German people. From the blood of General Auerswald and of Prince Lichnowsky, from the murder of Lamberg and Latour, the roses of hope spring only more obstinately for him, and his tears hang on them only as the pearly dew of the dawn of German freedom, German loyalty to the faith, and German order. He bears the great, brave German people, with the everlasting spring of its virtues, in the innermost depths of his heart, and from this union, or rather identification, flows the peculiar pride of his address, which, in the evil seething of elements in the ‘days of March,’ still points out the means of building up the cathedral of the German Church sooner and more beautifully than the cathedral of Cologne. Therefore was it that his words impressed his hearers with a resistless might. When I think of the orator Ketteler, I see before me a thorough man, who can awake fear in many a heart, but whose individuality is in itself a right to do so.”

Most of his bitterest opponents in the Reichstag acknowledged his power in speaking, and respected the fearless use he made of his position to remind them of their duties as men, Christians, and lawmakers; and when circumstances made it impossible for him to combine his duties as deputy with his dignity as bishop, and caused him to retire from his place, his party felt the loss of his voice as much as his adversaries rejoiced in their deliverance from a parliamentary “Son of Thunder.” His lectures and sermons, even on ordinary days and stereotyped subjects, were always startling and mind-compelling by the manner in which old truths were handled and new meanings brought out therefrom; while his open-air preaching at pilgrimages, where he was often heard by ten thousand people, bore an equally powerful and peculiar stamp, and, though his thoughts were then clothed in simpler language, they lacked none of the breadth which distinguished his more finished speeches.

In a monthly magazine edited at Mayence by the bishop’s friends Heinrich and Monsang, both dignitaries of his cathedral chapter, is a review of his life which gives a prominent place to his opinion on the importance and seriousness of social questions:

“He was deeply and firmly convinced that political and social problems are so inseparably connected with religious questions that any one aiming at defending religion from a high stand-point and in a comprehensive manner cannot indifferently pass by these problems.”

A newspaper generally opposed to his political views, the Catholic Voice (or “Opinion”),[164] speaks in the same sense:

“One of the most noteworthy traits in the life and works of Bishop Ketteler is the lively interest which he took, by deed, word, and writing, in the social question. It is precisely in this direction that most misunderstandings take place. But we would remind the public that the attitude of the bishop towards this problem was wholly shaped by his Catholic principles and his priestly duties. Nothing was further from his mind than the wish to use the needs of the laborer as a basis for political agitation, or to carry out any chimerical theories of a general millennium. He took a part in the labor question, because he saw in working-men the victims of so-called liberal lawgivers, and because he found it his duty as a pastor to care for the poor. These high and noble motives were not always appreciated, but working-men themselves have repeatedly testified their confidence in him, and after his death were published many gratifying tributes from the same source.”

The sense in which he took part in this question is again impressed on the German public by means of the article from which we have quoted before—namely, that it was determined by personal experience and a sensitive consciousness of his duties as a priest.

“What he wrote and did concerning this subject proceeded not from mere theoretical interest, still less from political reasons, but from Christian love and brotherly feeling towards the people, especially the poorer classes, and from the ardent wish to further their eternal and temporal welfare, as well as to save them, together with the whole of society, from the terrible chaos towards which we are being hurled, if the old maxims and practice of Christian charity and justice do not prevail against the principles of modern liberalism and pseudo-conservatism.”

In his political prominence, and his fearless handling of questions often, under specious pretexts, withdrawn from the allowed limits of clerical oratory, Ketteler seems to invite a comparison with Dupanloup, the Bishop of Orleans, who, having fought in the earlier struggle for freedom of education in France, has lived to take part in a struggle more vital and less local—that of the whole field of Christian doctrine in arms against systematized revolution. Occasion naturally moulds the men it needs; the material of such characters is always present, but in the church, as in the world, “mute, inglorious Miltons” and “village Hampdens” die and leave no mark. This explains the rush of talent to the rescue of every cause seriously imperilled by its successful adversaries; among others the cause of the church, under whatsoever persecution it may chance to suffer. This also explains the present superiority, as a body, of the German episcopate. In the first quarter of this century the reconstruction of society in France, and the reorganization of the church on a basis less majestic but more dignified than that of the ancien régime, brought about the same bristling of great gifts greatly used around the threatened liberties of the church. In Poland, during the two insurrections which this century has witnessed, heroes rose up naturally wherever there was a priest or a bishop; in the late French war, and its sequel, the Commune, the martyrdoms and Christian stoicism of 1793 were repeated and nearly surpassed, while the present more tedious, less brilliant struggle of the church in Germany has called forth men of iron will and fathomless patience to resist, legally and passively, an active, goading injustice. In countries where there is no need for it there is less of this public display of unusual powers; bishops who might be statesmen remain simply administrators, priests who might be heroes remain obscure pastors; in literature it is research, learning, theology which take up their leisure time, not public speaking or political writing; the silent, healthful life of the church goes on, without struggle and hindrance, and work is done indeed, but it seldom becomes known beyond a small local circle. And even this happens only under the shadow of suppressed hostility to the church, such as there exists at present in almost every country; for there have been times when, splendid as the outward position of the church has been, or seemingly unfettered her organization, there was at the core a spiritual drowsiness which was far from honorable. Such a period came before the first French Revolution; another earlier, before the German Reformation; another later, before Catholic Emancipation in England; and another before the late Prussian church laws in Germany. There was either security or sovereignty; no shade of persecution; at most a polished indifference or a scornful toleration, and hence no revival, no earnest, quick-pulsing life.

We have omitted to mention one of Bishop Ketteler’s most important undertakings—that of the theological institute in Mayence, to replace the education given to the clergy at the local university of Hesse, Giesen. The grand-duke heartily approved of the plan of restoring to the episcopal seminary the whole training of the diocesan clergy, instead of the taking on, as a secondary branch, of a chair of theology to Giesen; and the bishop was enabled to carry out his plans in this matter, and to leave behind him a body of priests, zealous, loyal, whole-hearted, and imbued with his own spirit.

Ketteler was in every sense a great man, and no less a man of his age. He accepted everything as it legitimately stands, with no hankerings after the old order of things, no political, or rather romantic, longings after forced revivals of bygone conditions; but he took his stand firmly on the principle that the church has her own appointed and immutable place in every successive system, and ought to stand by her claim to this place. This is the basis whence every member of her army should in these days fight her battles, and, taking up the new weapons, make them his own. Ketteler has shown them the way.

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

THE OLD STONE JUG.

A TALE OF THE NEUTRAL GROUND.

A century ago on the post-road to Boston, and sixteen miles from the city of New York, stood a tavern called the Old Stone Jug. It was a one-story building of dark-colored stone, with a single window fronting upon the highway—a quaint, lozenge-shaped window, of thick, dingy glass, through which the sun’s rays penetrated with difficulty. The chimney, battered by two generations of northwest winds, sagged considerably to the south; a frowning rock rose close behind the house; and altogether the Old Stone Jug wore a sinister appearance, which tallied well with the stories told about it. A band of Indians had come in the night-time and massacred the first family who dwelt here; a peddler had been seen to enter the doorway and never been heard of afterwards; a cavern of fathomless depth was said to connect the cellar with the rock; and certain it is that no one who had made this spot his home had either remained long or prospered there, except Peter Van Alstyne—better known in the township of East Chester as Uncle Pete—who kept the tavern at the opening of the Revolution.

But he did well; the poorer his neighbors became, the more light-hearted did he grow and the richer, and all because the fox which prowleth about in the dark was not cunninger than Uncle Pete.

His wife was dead, but he had a daughter named Martha, who kept house for him, and whom he tenderly loved and strove to bring up in his own principles—namely, to be all things to all men. “For these are critical times,” he would say, “and who can tell, child, which side will win?”

Martha was just twenty years of age, and, if not what we might call a handsome girl, had something very attractive about her. She was tall and graceful and abounding in spirits. She knew everybody for miles around, and everybody knew her; and if the more knowing ones shook their heads and looked a little doubtful when they spoke of Van Alstyne, all agreed that Martha was a fine young woman.

The only member of the household besides herself and parent was a diminutive negro boy christened “Popgun.” And at the moment our tale begins Popgun is perched on the topmost limb of a wild-cherry tree hard by, Martha is in the kitchen making doughnuts, while the publican is standing in the middle of the road gazing up at the sign-board which hangs immediately above the entrance—and, considering that he painted it himself, ’tis not a bad work of art. Here we see King George with a crown on his head; at the royal feet crouches a lion, and around the two figures, in big red letters, are the words, “God save the King!”

He was still contemplating the features of his sovereign when a shrill voice cried down from the sky, “Be ready, sir.” In an instant Uncle Pete’s face lost its tranquil expression, and putting his hand to his ear, so as to catch well Popgun’s next warning note, he listened attentively.

In another minute came the voice again: “‘Lisha Williams, sir, on Dolly Dumplings.”

“Ho! Then I must be brisk, for the mare travels fast,” muttered Van Alstyne, hastening toward a ladder which lay a few yards off in readiness for these occasions. In less time than it takes to relate the sign-board was turned round, and, lo! in place of King George and the lion behold now George Washington, holding in his hand a flag whereon are thirteen stripes and thirteen stars, and circling the picture are the words, “God save our Liberties.”

“Child, here’s ‘Lisha coming,” shouted Uncle Pete, thrusting his head into the doorway.

“Elisha! Indeed!” exclaimed Martha, letting drop the cake she was rolling in her hands. “Oh! how glad I am. Haven’t seen the dear boy for an age.” Then away she flew to make ready for her lover, or rather for one of her lovers. And now, while the girl is putting on another gown, let us speak a few words about the horseman who is approaching.

Elisha Williams was a young man of five-and-twenty, with sandy hair and blue eyes, and whose father owned a farm half a mile east of the inn. He and Martha had been friends from childhood, and when at length the time came for him to think of matrimony there was no lass whom he desired more for his wife than Martha.

She was a girl after his own heart: not demure and timid and silent as a tombstone, but brave and full of fun; he had even known her to pursue and kill a rattlesnake; and she was as fond of a horse as he was himself.

When news came of the fight at Lexington Elisha openly took the patriot side, bought Dolly Dumplings of Martha’s father (a mare so given to kicking and jumping fences that, although of unstained pedigree, Uncle Pete was fain to part with her), and now he is one of the most daring troopers in the Continental army, and is known far and wide as The Flying Scout.

But Elisha was not the only one who courted Martha. He had a rival named Harry Valentine, son of Doctor Valentine, the most notorious Tory in East Chester; and this caused Elisha not a little anxiety. For, although Martha always received him very cordially when he paid her one of his flying visits, and seemed pleased to hear of his exploits, she never would listen when he said anything harsh of the Tories.

Elisha’s heart was beating quite as fast as her own when presently he reined in his foaming steed before the tavern door. Martha was standing on the threshold, looking, in his eyes, never so bewitching. Between her fingers she held a lump of sugar for Dolly Dumplings—she seemed to care only for Dolly; her long, luxuriant brown hair, which flowed loose down her shoulders, had a spray of wild honeysuckle twined through it—you might have fancied she had been wandering through the woods, and that the flowers had got tangled there by accident. Her cheeks were slightly tinged by the sun; but what of it? They were plump, healthy cheeks, adorned by two pretty dimples; and Elisha, who loved cherries, felt his mouth water when he looked on Martha’s lips.

“How is my Martha?” he exclaimed, sliding nimbly off the saddle.

“Your Martha, indeed!” answered the girl, tossing her head; then with a smile, as he caught both her hands: “Well, I’m alive and well, and—”

“Not at all pleased to see me, eh?” interrupted Elisha.

“Delighted to see you,” she added, a sweet pink blush spreading itself with the quickness of light over her face.

“Really? Truly? ‘Pon your honor?” cried Elisha, squeezing her hands tighter.

“Come inside and let’s have a talk,” said Martha, trying to free herself from his grasp. But she only half tried; and when presently they were seated side by side he was still holding fast to her right wrist.

“What delicious flowers!” observed Martha, looking down at a nosegay which the youth had stuck in his belt. “Wild-flowers give no such perfume.”

“These are for you,” said her lover, presenting them to her. “They came from Van Cortlandt’s garden. I spent last night at the Manor. Van Cortlandt is a patriot, and is not ashamed to offer a farmer’s son hospitality.”

“How delicious!” said Martha, bringing the nosegay to her nose. “Colonel Delancey’s hot-house plants cannot surpass them.”

“Delancey! The Tory! The Cowboy chief! What do you know about his flowers, Martha?”

“Harry Valentine brought me a magnolia from there a few days ago,” replied Martha frankly.

The other murmured something to himself, then burst out: “Confound and hang the Tories!”

Martha was silent a moment, then remarked: “Well, however much you dislike them, I hope you will not harm Harry Valentine, if he ever falls into your hands.”

“It being your wish, I will always aim a mile above his precious head,” returned Elisha.

“You are a good fellow—a real good fellow; just the same as you always were,” continued Martha tenderly. “Oh! I often think of our old frolics together, Elisha.”

“Do you, really? Well, Martha, I often think of them too. What happy days those were!”

“Yes, much happier than these. O Elisha! you can’t think how changed everything is since this dreadful war began. Not a sloop sails up the creek now; no carriages pass along the road; no bees, no husking parties—everybody is gloomy. First this man’s barn is burnt, then that man’s; and chickens and horses and cattle are stolen. In short, between the Skinners and the Cowboys poor Westchester County is fast becoming a desert.”

“Well, for all that it is a glorious war, and will end in freeing us from England,” said Elisha, thumping his fist upon his knee.

“Ay, to be sure it will. God save our liberties! Hurrah for the Continental Army!” cried Uncle Pete, waddling into the house. Then, as he opened a cupboard which contained a number of bottles of rum and cherry-bounce: “Tell me, ‘Lisha, how you like Dolly Dumplings.”

“Like her? Why, Uncle Pete, she’s just the best animal that ever was shod. Nothing can catch her—not even the wind.”

“Right, my boy! Colonel Livingstone, who imported her sire from England, and who sold the mare to me five years ago, declared that she has in her veins the blood of the Flying Childers, and you know he ran a mile a minute.”

“Father, Popgun is calling,” said Martha, with a disturbed air.

“Is he?” And Van Alstyne hurried away as fast as possible; but before you could count ten he was back again.

“Too bad, ‘Lisha,” he said, “that you must quit us so soon—hardly time to take one drink. But some enemy’s cavalry are in sight and they’re on a trot.” Then out he went again to fetch Dolly Dumplings.

“Well, dear boy, may the Lord watch over you and keep you safe!” spoke Martha, in a tone of deeper feeling than she had yet evinced toward her lover. The latter gazed earnestly in her face a moment, then said: “Must I bid good-by and depart in uncertainty? O Martha dear! tell me what I so long to know: will you be my wife?”

Her response was: “Elisha, I love the brave, and the bravest shall win me.”

“Then, by Heaven, I’ll be a hero!” cried Elisha. These were his last words; in another moment he was gone. But ere Dolly Dumplings had galloped fifty paces the sign-board was turned round and King George came once more in view.

“Who are they, pa—Hessians or real Britishers?” inquired Martha calmly; for she knew they could not overtake Elisha.

“Hessians, I believe,” replied Van Alstyne.

“Detestable creatures!” exclaimed the girl, withdrawing into the house.

“Don’t say that, child. They’re as good as any soldiers who fight for the king; and if they halt here they’ll leave more than one guinea behind them.”

And so they did, for they were a party of very thirsty and hungry men who shortly arrived; and for the next hour and a half the Old Stone Jug was as busy as a bee-hive. Many a bottle of spirits was emptied, every doughnut and pie was devoured; and in consideration of his being a staunch loyalist they paid Uncle Pete without grumbling, albeit the score was rather high.

“They’re gone at last—what a blessing!” said Martha, while her father was counting over the money to make sure it was all good coin.

“Why, how foolish you talk!” said happy Uncle Pete.

“Well, father, I’m in earnest. I don’t dislike real Britishers or Tories; but these German mercenaries I do detest.”

“Bah! bah!” growled Van Alstyne. “Perhaps to-morrow we’ll have a band of Continentals or some roving Skinners; then perhaps, day after, ‘tother side may visit us again. Why, child, I’m getting rich out of this war.”

“Take one side or the other,” returned Martha, shaking her head. “I’d rather be fair and open, even if we made less money.”

“Humph! We’d be in a pretty fix if I did that, child—a pretty fix. Why, this tavern wouldn’t stand a week, except for my double-faced sign-board; whereas now George Washington might be entertained here and depart highly edified, and so might King George. The only unpleasantness would be if they both happened to come at the same time. And so, child, you ought not to be finding fault.” Then, after pausing long enough to take a chew of tobacco: “And besides,” he went on, “’tis not easy in this world always to see the clear path we ought to follow. Why, you yourself are in a fix; and I don’t wonder at it, for in this township I can’t name two honester, jollier more manly fellows than ‘Lisha Williams and Harry Valentine. And if I were a girl with those two boys for sparks, I believe I’d jump into East Chester Creek, so that neither of ’em might be disappointed.”

Here Martha’s merry laugh rang through the house; then, taking Elisha’s bouquet in one hand and Harry’s magnolia in the other, she stretched forth her arms and stood exactly half-way between the two love-gifts, and said: “Well, yes, I am in a fix.”

“And a very, very sweet fix,” mumbled Uncle Pete, rolling the quid about in his capacious mouth. “Many a young woman might envy you.”

“Well, I do wonder how long it will last. I must decide one of these days.”

“Don’t be in a hurry, child. Wait; have patience. If we are beaten and forced to remain colonies, marry Harry Valentine; if we secure our independence, then choose ‘Lisha. For ’twill go hard with the party that’s beaten; their land will be confiscated.”

“Dear, darling flowers! How delicious you are!” said Martha, bringing the magnolia and the nosegay together and pressing both to her lips; and she kept kissing them and smelling them, and smelling and kissing them, till at length her father said:

“Humph! they’ll soon wilt, if you treat the pretty things that way.”

“Oh! I’ll get fresh ones afore long,” answered Martha. “However, I will put these in water. They may as well last a few days.”

But a week went by, and then another week, without bringing again either of her suitors. The weather was delightful, for it was early June. The summer heat had not yet begun; and if it were not for war, ruthless war, how fair all nature would have appeared! But although the meadows were spangled with dandelions and buttercups, the woods scented with dogwood blossoms, and the air full of the melody of bobolinks and orioles, the people of East Chester were more depressed than ever. Bob Reed’s mill had just been burnt by the Cowboys; in revenge the Skinners had scuttled a Tory sloop anchored in the creek; while some miscreants had even made an attempt to fire St. Paul’s Church in the village. But, sad as all this was, nothing caused Martha Van Alstyne so much distress as the doings at the Old Stone Jug. For two whole nights she was kept awake and bustling about, attending to the wants of a set of profane marauders who belonged both to the British and American side. These villains, sinking all difference of opinion, would occasionally unite to rob friend as well as foe;[165] and it was to the Old Stone Jug they carried their plunder, which Uncle Pete would hide in the cavern behind the house.

“Well, don’t blame me, child,” said Van Alstyne. “Remember how I am situated. Why, if I had refused to conceal those bags of gold I’d like enough have been hung forthwith; for among the men who were here last night and the night before are some of the greatest scoundrels in America.”

“Well, I am going to choose my husband afore long,” answered Martha—“either Elisha Williams or Harry Valentine; and then you must abandon this tavern and come live with me. For if you stay here—”

“O child! I sha’n’t stay after you’re gone. But why marry so soon? Why not wait a while?—at least, until we see what Burgoyne does with his army, which is large and well appointed. He may sweep everything before him; and if he does, then you’ll see your way much clearer, and I’ll be the first to tell you to wed Harry Valentine.”

Martha shook her head: “I’ll give my hand to the bravest, father, no matter which side he is on. And it is because they are both so good and so brave that I hesitate.”

“Well, now, child, if you’re not careful you may cause the death of ’em both. Ay, ’tis hard to say what wild, foolhardy deed they may not attempt in order to win you.”

“Do you think so?” exclaimed Martha, pressing her hand over her heart and turning pale. This thought had not occurred to her before. But it was too late. She had already told each wooer that the bravest one should have her.

The girl was inwardly lamenting her folly when a voice from the cherry-tree cried: “Be ready, sir.” And immediately she and her father listened with all their ears for the next call.

“Red-coats!” shouted Popgun in about three minutes.

“All right,” said Uncle Pete, and off he went to get the ladder. But quick Martha checked him, saying: “Why, father, the sign-board is all right for Britishers.”

“Oh! so it is,” ejaculated Uncle Pete; then, with a grin: “The fact is, child, I’m so used to turning it round and round—first to King George, then to George Washington, then back again to King George—that I’m afraid some day I’ll make a mistake, and I’ve half a mind to give you charge of it.”

“If you do I’ll either nail the sign fast to the house, or else take it away entirely,” answered Martha.

Her parent was still laughing at this innocent, unbusiness-like speech when the British dragoons arrived, and at their head was Harry Valentine.

Harry was a very different looking man from Elisha Williams: not only was he clad in a brilliant scarlet uniform, but he had more refined features and courtly manners, which seemed to confirm the view that Martha’s father held—namely, that the most genteel people were Tories. And now, while Harry clasped the hand of his sweetheart, the latter forgot altogether Elisha’s freckled but honest face, his sandy hair and homespun coat, with naught to distinguish him from an ordinary citizen save a black cockade and eagle feather in his hat, and she thought to herself: “Was there ever such a magnificent wig as my Harry’s! ’Tis powdered to perfection! Dear, darling boy!”

“Ah! there is the magnolia I gave you,” said Harry, smiling, as they entered the little sitting-room, where Martha passed most of her time when not engaged in the kitchen.

“How fresh it looks! Yet ’tis a good while since I brought it.”

“An age,” returned Martha, eying him fondly.

“And what pretty flowers those are yonder!” he continued, looking toward the other end of the mantel-piece.

“None could be prettier,” said Martha in a quiet voice, yet she felt the blood stealing over her cheeks.

“From Reverend Doctor Coffee’s garden, perhaps?”

“No indeed! They were given me by one whom nobody can come up to—one who keeps ahead of everybody. Now guess his name!”

“Oh! I know—that Skinner, Elisha Williams,” said Harry with apparent indifference, but inwardly groaning.

“He is not a Skinner, any more than you are a Cowboy. You are both in the regular armies,” said Martha; then, laying her hand on Harry’s shoulder: “And, Harry, I hope, if Elisha is ever your prisoner, that you will treat him kindly.”

“For your sake he who in your eyes is ahead of all the rest of the world shall have not a single one of his red hairs injured,” answered Harry, making a low bow. “But might I venture to ask what valiant exploit has Elisha performed that you say he is ahead of me, his open, determined, but honorable rival?”

“O Harry! your dear brains are running away with you,” said Martha. “You speak hastily. I only meant that Dolly Dumplings is so fleet that not a trooper in the king’s army can catch Elisha. That is all I meant.”

“Is that really all?” exclaimed Harry, giving a sigh of relief.

“Yes, upon my word it is.”

“Well, Elisha must look out,” continued the young man, his countenance beaming once more. “He must not presume too much on the fleetness of his steed; for a hundred pounds reward has just been offered to whoever will capture Dolly Dumplings.”

“Indeed! A hundred pounds!” exclaimed Martha. “Well, for all that Dolly will still continue to show you her heels.”

At this Harry laughed, then said: “Martha, I hope the next time you see me I’ll have a decoration; we expect stirring events soon.”

“O Harry! pray don’t be rash,” said the girl. “Do, do take care of yourself.”

“Stop no preaching, dear Martha. I love you too much to heed the bullets. You remember you said the bravest should possess you; and you are a treasure worth shedding blood for.”

“Oh! did I say that?” Here she pressed her hand to her brow. “Well, yes, I believe I did. But I was a fool, for who can be braver than you and Elisha? Who can doubt the courage of either of you?”

“Well, then, precious Martha, why not decide at once between us? Oh! I assure you ’tis a great trial for me, this long uncertainty.”

When he had spoken these words Martha turned her eyes upon Elisha’s nosegay, which, despite the water, was beginning to fade; then from the flowers her eyes dropped to the floor, while her heart throbbed violently. Then, looking up, she was on the very point of uttering something of vast moment, when, lo! a bullet crashed through the window, whizzed close by her head, and buried itself in the wainscoting, half blinding her with whitewash and mortar.

Immediately there was a great stir and confusion in the bar-room, where Harry’s company were drinking and smoking their pipes.

Quick the troopers were on their feet and rushing pell-mell out of the house, while their horses were pawing the earth and neighing furiously, for “whizz!” “whizz!” “whizz!” like so many bees the balls were flying past them.

“Good Lord! here they come, and close upon us!” gasped Uncle Pete, shaking like an aspen leaf as he glanced up the highway, then looking toward the sign-board. Would he have time to make the sign change front? Momentous question! And on the American cavalry were coming—a whole regiment—on, on, at full speed. But, rapidly as they approached, the Britishers were too quick for them; every man of the latter was already in the saddle, and Martha, although seeing but dimly, was giving Harry’s hand a parting squeeze, heedless of the danger she was in and deaf to his urgent entreaties to withdraw.

“No, no, I’m not afraid,” she said. Nor did she retire until he had pressed his lips to her cheek; then back she flew into the house.

Scarcely had Harry put spurs to his horse when Uncle Pete—his movements happily hidden by a cloud of dust—sprang up the ladder, turned the sign-board round in a jiffy, then, pulling from his pocket a bit of chalk, drew it thrice across George Washington’s benign visage. After which down he came, or rather down he tumbled; the ladder was hastily flung aside, and through the doorway after Martha he ran, shouting: “Smash the bottles, child! Smash a lot of ’em!”

Poor Martha, who was cleansing the mortar from her eyes, was filled with amazement at these words. Had her parent suddenly lost his wits? Ay, surely he had, for he was already hard at work breaking bottle after bottle, and by the time Colonel Glover’s regiment, which pursued the enemy only half a mile, drew up at the Old Stone Jug, two pounds ten shillings would not have made good the damage which Uncle Pete had wrought to his own property.

“God save our liberties, and the devil take King George!” cried Van Alstyne as the American colonel dismounted; then, pointing indignantly at the sign-board: “Look, sir, what the British villains have done! Look!”

“Ay, disfigured our noble commander-in-chief,” answered the officer.

“But now come, sir, and see what they have done inside,” continued Uncle Pete, foaming at the mouth.

In a few minutes the tavern was crowded with officers and soldiers heaping maledictions upon the British for having destroyed so much excellent rum; the whole floor was reeking with spirits.

But Uncle Pete, in consideration of his loyalty to the American cause, recovered all he had lost, and more too; for the cavalry-men made the inn merry until the day was well-nigh spent. And when at length they departed there was not a more contented citizen in the township than Peter Van Alstyne.

“What a narrow escape we had!” he said to Martha when they were once more alone.

“Very; and we may thank God ’tis all over without one drop of blood being spilt,” answered the girl.

“Well, no, ’tisn’t quite over yet,” added the publican; then, going to the door, he shouted: “Popgun, come down.”

Popgun obeyed, but his movements were slow; he moved like one who has the rheumatism, and he took double the usual time to descend the tree.

“I say, you little black imp,” growled Uncle Pete as soon as the boy got within reach—“you little black imp, you fell asleep on your perch to-day. Now, don’t lie; you did, and you’re ‘sponsible for the broken bottles, and the disfigured sign, and the bullets in the wall. Ay, you’re ‘sponsible for every penny’s worth of damage, and now I’m going to punish you.”

“O massa! please don’t make me dance a hornpipe,” said the unhappy boy, whining and wringing his hands. “Don’t! don’t! I’ll never fall asleep again—no, never.”

“Well, it’s a hornpipe I’m going to make you dance; and now begin.” So saying, Uncle Pete lifted up a stout ox-gad and brought it down with all his might on Popgun’s legs. The blow was followed by a piercing cry. Martha implored her father not to strike him again, but Van Alstyne was deaf to her appeals for mercy, and during several minutes Popgun continued to hop about like a dancing bear, and you might have heard his screams as far as East Chester village.

Finally, Uncle Pete having broken the whip over the poor child’s legs, Martha, who was truly vexed at such cruelty, led Popgun into the kitchen, intending to console him with something good to eat. But Van Alstyne, who knew how soft her heart was, said:

“Martha, I positively forbid you to give him one mouthful of sweetmeats, and not a single doughnut or tart. Obey me!”

The girl made no response, but, having fastened the kitchen door and brushed a tear out of her eye, bade the little sufferer sit down; then said: “Now, mind, you are to have no sweetmeats and no tarts and no doughnuts, so here’s some honey and a corncake.”

Popgun looked up in her face, and Martha was not a little surprised to see him recovering so rapidly from his terrible castigation; so broad was his grin that every one of his gleaming teeth was visible.

“I’d like to dance a hornpipe every day, Miss Martha,” he said, “for I love corncake and honey.”

“Do you? Well, then, you shall have plenty.”

But before the urchin began his feast he whispered: “Miss Martha, you won’t tell anybody if I tell you a secret, will you?”

“Of course not,” answered Martha, who was anxious to please him, and thus make amends for the barbarous treatment he had received.

“Well, then, Miss Martha, look here.” And Popgun stooped, and, turning up the rim of his light linen trowsers, revealed underneath a pair of cowskin breeches about a quarter of an inch thick; and these breeches had proved a good friend to him, for he had danced many a hornpipe.

“Oh! fie, you naughty boy!” exclaimed Martha; and she was strongly tempted to take away the honey-jar. But after reflecting a moment she burst into a laugh, while Popgun tried to laugh too, but did not succeed for the honey which filled his mouth.

Never had Martha known so much anxiety as during the four months which followed Harry Valentine’s last visit. Neither of her lovers came to see her. Never had they stayed away so long before; and whenever any one arrived at the tavern with news she would listen with rapt attention and a sinking heart, fearful lest she might hear that some evil had befallen them. Often and often Martha would turn from her spinning-wheel to gaze on the flowers they had given her—poor faded flowers, but more precious now than diamonds in her sight; and instead of keeping them far apart, Martha set the nosegay and magnolia near together—so near that she might circle them both in one fond embrace.

It was an anxious, trying summer, too, for the patriots. Washington was suffering defeats in Pennsylvania; two important posts on the Hudson River—Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton—were captured by the British; and Congress had fled from Philadelphia to York. Nothing seemed likely to rescue the cause of independence from utter ruin, save the army under General Gates, which was marching to meet Burgoyne; and every breath of rumor from the north was eagerly listened to.

“A crisis is approaching, child,” Uncle Pete would say, “and I guess you’ll be able to select your husband afore the next moon.”

But Martha had grown too down-hearted to heed what her father said, and more than once he found tears in her eyes.

By and by autumn came—rich, ripe, golden autumn. But in many an orchard the apples were left unpicked, for the young men were gone to the war and the old folks had no heart for the labor. The blackbirds were flocking, and Martha would watch them as they took wing for the south, and she felt toward the little birds as never before; for perhaps in their long journey they might pass over Harry and Elisha; in New Jersey, in Delaware, in Maryland, or even in the far-off Carolinas, they might see their camp-fires, might hear the cannon booming.

“Sweet birds, you will come back in spring-time,” she sighed. “Will Harry and Elisha come back?”

“Child, here is something that may cheer you up,” said Uncle Pete one October evening. The girl looked round, and, lo! he had a letter for her. Martha’s hand trembled as she took it.

A century ago people did not write as often as nowadays; indeed, comparatively few knew how to read and write. Hence it was not so very strange that Martha was unable to tell at a glance from whom the letter came. Was it from Elisha? or Harry? or from some comrade of theirs imparting sad news?

Few moments in life are more big with keen suspense than the moment between the breaking of a letter’s seal and the reading of the first line, when the missive is from one very dear to us and far away. This interval of time—brief as three heart-throbs—may prove the boundary-line where happiness ends for ever and dark days begin, or it may set us smiling as Martha is smiling now; therefore let us peep over her shoulder and learn what the glad tidings are:

“I am coming in three days, dearest Martha, to take you to St. Paul’s Church and make you my darling wife. Now, don’t say nay. I implore you not to break my heart. I have won two decorations, and am a major, and in all America nobody loves you more truly than your devoted

“HARRY VALENTINE.”

Although an exceedingly short letter, it required some little time for Martha to spell it all out; and when she did get to the end she was in such a flurry that she could barely speak when Uncle Pete asked what was the matter.

“O father! Harry Valentine says he will be here in—in three days to marry me. And—and he has won two decorations, and he is a major, and I don’t know what to think about it.”

“Humph! he has risked his life twice for you, has he? Got two decorations! Well, that ought to count a good deal in his favor.”

“Well, yes, it ought, father.”

“And do you know, child, there is a rumor flying about that Gen. Gates has found Burgoyne too strong for him, and that he is retreating. Therefore, all things considered, I think you may bet on King George and marry Harry.”

“O father! how little you understand me,” exclaimed Martha with a look of reproach. “I may seem a flirt, a coquette, but I’m not. My heart is not like your sign-board, and I have suffered more than you imagine from not being able to decide between Harry and Elisha, who love me so truly, and each of whom is so worthy of my love.” Then, pressing her hands to her bosom: “Poor heart!” she cried, “what must I do? Oh! tell me, what must I do?” Then, hastening into the sitting-room, where she kept the nosegay and the magnolia, she put her lips to Elisha’s withered love-gift, then carried it off, leaving the magnolia alone in its glory. But ere Martha reached the window, where she meant to fling the flowers away, the glass which held them slipped from her quivering hand, and in an instant it lay shattered at her feet.

“Well, really, child, you do astonish me,” said her father the afternoon of the day when Harry Valentine was expected. “You can’t sleep, you’ve lost your appetite, and all because ‘Lisha’s posy dropped on the floor. Why, what nonsense!”

“Well, yes, it is silly,” said Martha. “One of the two I will wed, and I have made up my mind it is to be Harry, and I doubt not Elisha will live fifty years and be happy too. Any one might let a glass break.”

“Ay, ay. I’ve smashed scores of ’em, child, and never knew any ill to follow—except once, when I stumbled and fell on top of the broken bits and cut my finger.”

Martha now made a strong effort to dispel the sense of approaching evil which for three days had been haunting her, and during the next hour she kept in good spirits. She had on her best gown, there was a flush upon her cheeks, and every few minutes she would go to the foot of the cherry-tree and ask if Harry Valentine were in sight.

“No, miss,” answered Popgun the last time she put the question to him. “But there is a man in the cedars yonder making signs; I guess he wants to speak with you or master. He looks like an Indian.”

Martha did not hesitate to go herself and see what the stranger wanted; and after the latter had spoken a few words to her and she turned to leave him, the bright color had fled from her face and she trembled.

A half-hour later a cavalcade of gay horsemen arrived at the tavern, and, as we may imagine, Van Alstyne wondered very much why his daughter was not present to greet Harry Valentine. He searched all through the house for Martha; he called her name, but she did not answer. Where could Martha be?

In the meanwhile Harry, directed by Popgun’s finger, which pointed to the woods, had set out in quest of his love.

And Martha was soon found; but not, as the young officer had fancied she would be, gathering chestnuts or wild grapes by the brookside, by Rattlesnake Brook, where he had first met her five years ago—oh! never-to-be-forgotten day, when she was just emerging from girlhood and the first down was on his chin. But now Harry found her kneeling upon a mossy rock, praying. And when at the sound of footsteps Martha rose up and flew into his arms, although transported with delight to meet her again, and to feel she had yielded him her heart at last—that heart which it had taken so long to win—nevertheless a pang shot through him when he discovered a tear on her cheek; ’twas easy to kiss the tear away, but why had she been weeping? He asked the question, but Martha only shook her head and said:

“Remember, dear one, the promise you once made me: if Elisha ever falls into your hands, you will do him no injury. Remember.”

And now evening has come, and a jovial party is assembled in the Old Stone Jug. Uncle Pete bestirred himself as never before to do his guests honor; he could scarce remain quiet a moment. The best his house afforded he gave without stint, and ’twas a free gift. Uncle Pete intended that his future son-in-law should long remember the hospitality of this autumn evening.

Martha was the only one who did not make merry. She sat close beside Harry Valentine, her eyes resting on his manly, sunburnt face; she seemed ready to devour him with her eyes, and spoke very little.

But ever and anon she would withdraw her hand from his and go peep out of the window. It was when she had done this for the third time, then come back and placed her hand within his again, that Harry observed in a tone of surprise:

“Why, my beloved, what is the matter? Your hand is grown suddenly cold as ice.”

“Is it?” said Martha nervously. There were other words quivering on her lips, but she held them back. In after-years she bitterly lamented her silence at this critical moment. It was late, yet not too late—the moon was still a quarter of an hour below the horizon—and when Harry noticed her agitation, if she had only been frank with him, how different might have been the whole current of her after-life—how very different!

And now the sky in the east is growing rapidly brighter, and Martha’s heart is throbbing faster and louder—so loud that Harry might almost have heard it. But ’twas not necessary for him to hear the beating of her heart in order to discover her growing distress. Martha was leaning back in the chair, her cheeks were become as cold as her hand, and her eyes strayed from his eyes to the window in a wild, fearful way; then, looking at him again, she seemed about to say something, but did not, and Harry was really becoming alarmed at the strange mood she was in, when the tavern door was suddenly flung wide open, and, as it swept round on its hinges, a small, black hand passed swiftly over the table. In an instant the candles were extinguished, and in the pitchy darkness which followed Martha found herself borne away in somebody’s arms.

“Now, Martha, you’re mine,” said Elisha Williams exultingly, as he bounded like a deer up the road to the spot where he had left his horse.

“Be true to me, Martha. Mount! and we’ll hie to the Jerseys together.”

What the girl’s feelings were just at this moment ’twere not easy to describe. In her ears came deafening uproar from the Old Stone Jug—quick commands; the neighing of steeds; a voice cried, “Fire!”

Then—well, she must have swooned; for when next she became conscious of anything, Martha found herself seated on the saddle-bow, Elisha’s arm supporting her, and Dolly Dumplings galloping at terrific speed along Cusser’s Lane.

And here let us say that the very first thought to enter Martha’s mind was a glad thought. Ay, her dark presentiment in regard to The Flying Scout had proved utterly untrue, and she even laughed aloud when presently she told Elisha what her fears for him had been. Whereupon he cried: “Me dead! Ha! ha! No indeed! Hurrah for Independence and Martha Van Alstyne!”

Then, while his voice was echoing through the woods which lined the road on either side—frightening an owl and rousing a partridge out of its sleep—Elisha went on to tell the great news of Burgoyne’s surrender. “I was present, my love,” he said. “I saw the British colors lowered. Hurrah for Martha and Independence! Hurrah! hurrah!”

But swift as was Dolly’s pace—her tail, back, and nose formed one beeline—it was none too swift, and she needed all the blood of her grandsire, the Flying Childers, to save her from being overtaken. On, on at a furious rate Harry Valentine was coming. He led the pursuit; his friends were close behind him. And now, we may ask, did Martha remonstrate with Elisha? Did she urge him to draw rein?—to surrender her to the one whom she had consented to wed on the morrow? No, indeed. Elisha’s astounding boldness in stealing her away from her home when surrounded by a score of armed men drowned every other thought; verily, he was the boldest of the bold. The bracing night-air, too, was like wine to her throbbing veins, and the moonbeams shimmering through the trees lent a weirdness to the scene which prevented Martha from thinking calmly about anything. She felt as if bewitched. Dolly Dumplings appeared like a ghostly steed; Elisha was a wizard knight bearing her off to his enchanted castle; and not for all the world would she have slipped off the saddle to go back to the Old Stone Jug.

But great changes often come unawares, and in a few minutes everything changed. It happened thus: lying in the middle of the lane, directly in front of old Isaac Cusser’s house—from whom the lane takes its name—was a cow, and between the cow and the stone wall opposite the farmer had piled a load of salt hay. Now, had there been a little more light, Dolly Dumplings would have discovered the animal in time and jumped over her. But the trees just at this spot threw a broad shadow across Dolly’s path, and naught was visible until the mare got within a stride of the obstacle. Then she swerved violently to one side, and in another moment Martha found herself rolling over and over in the hay.

Needless to observe that Elisha did his utmost to stay the course of Dolly Dumplings. But, once past the cow, Dolly had instantly resumed her headlong gait, and she went quite a distance ere she was brought to a halt.

Poor Elisha! he knew well that Martha was lost to him; yet he did not hesitate to return—to approach within easy pistol-shot of where Harry Valentine and his friends were assembled round about the young woman. The farmer, too, had come out with a lantern, and Elisha, plunged in despair, could distinguish the figure of Martha standing upright, and he could hear her voice, and even fancied she was laughing! Was this possible? No, no! Elisha would not believe his ears; and he called to her to be true to him—that he would never love another.

“Martha, Martha, I will always love you,” he cried.

“Save yourself! Do! do! Make haste!” came back the response to his words; and Elisha was slowly turning Dolly round when the crack of a pistol rang through the forest; ’twas followed by a sting in his breast; and while the mare continued her flight Elisha’s life-blood trickled down upon the saddle and left red marks along the road.

But, although desperately wounded, The Flying Scout was not going to be captured, and faithful Dolly, who heard the clatter of hoofs behind her, flew on swifter than ever. It was the firm belief of Elisha’s pursuers that he would turn to the right after leaving Cusser’s lane and take the way to Tuckahoe; for the bridge across the Bronx River, a half a mile on his left, had been destroyed. Although aware of this fact, Elisha nevertheless had the audacity to turn Dolly’s head toward the stream; and down the hill which led to it Dolly plunged, a dozen bullets whizzing by her. Would the Scout venture such a leap? From bank to bank was farther than any horse had ever been known to spring. But blood will tell—Dolly’s grandsire was the Flying Childers—and now like a bird she rose into the air, and, lo! to the amazement of the enemy, Elisha was landed upon the west side of the Bronx.

Here, as they abandoned the chase, let us go back to Martha Van Alstyne.

It is the morrow morning, and we find her once more under her father’s roof, making ready to repair with Harry Valentine to St. Paul’s Church; for she has promised to become his bride, and she cannot break her word. Yet at this the eleventh hour Elisha holds the first place in Martha’s heart; she openly rejoices to hear that he escaped, and even twits her affianced husband for not having been able to catch Dolly Dumplings, whereupon Harry good-naturedly admits that not another steed in America could have cleared the Bronx at one leap.

“’Twouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Martha said to herself, as they were about to set out for the village, “if Elisha dashed up to the very church-door and carried me off a second time. But then,” she added after a moment’s reflection, “it is not likely to happen; no, I must banish him from my heart as soon as possible and love Harry alone.” Here she threw her eyes upon her betrothed and in all the lovely autumn landscape nothing was more lovely than those two faces as they met.

But although Martha was struggling hard to conquer her greater love for Elisha, ’twas a difficult battle she was waging with herself.

There are embers which will live and glow despite the ashes we heap over them; so even now, while her eyes were searching into Harry’s eyes, while her smile was answering his smile, Martha’s countenance fell anew and she recoiled from him. ’Twas at this very moment Popgun’s voice cried out:

“Dolly Dumplings’s in sight!”

This startling announcement was more than Martha could bear without the deepest emotion. Quick she looked up the road; the astonished Uncle Pete and all the others did the same, while the girl stretched forth her hands to welcome the one who was approaching. Her heart was in her throat; every limb of her body quivered. On, on galloped the mare.

In less than two minutes Dolly dashed into the midst of the party gathered in front of the Old Stone Jug. And what a spectacle did she present! She had no rider, and the red marks which stained the empty saddle were blood-marks! Oh! surely they were. The wild look, too, and the fierce neigh of poor Dolly told plainly enough that something horrible had occurred.

It took Martha but an instant to decide what to do, and, breaking loose from Harry and her father, who were vainly striving to calm her, she sprang upon the saddle; then, turning to Harry Valentine with an expression pen cannot describe, “Marry you!” she cried. “No, not for the kingdom of England!” And away she galloped.

In a remote corner of the graveyard at East Chester is a tombstone with the following inscription carved upon it: “Here lie the remains of Martha Van Alstyne, spinster, who departed this life in the year of grace 1838, aged 81.” These few words tell the rest of our story. Martha, when she discovered that Elisha Williams had been killed, never married; and although no man knows Elisha’s burial-place, his name is not forgotten, and the bridge which spans the Bronx River at the point where Dolly Dumplings made her wonderful leap is called Williams Bridge.

As late as 1840 the ruins of the Old Stone Jug were visible on what is now known as Schieffelin’s Lane; Rattlesnake Brook still flows on, but the rattlesnakes have long disappeared; and here and there stands an aged tree beneath whose shade Martha and Harry and Elisha used to play together in the days when George III. was king.

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

BROTHER AND SISTER.

Happy those turtle-doves that went, my Queen, With you to the temple—tho’ to death they went. Could they have known, they had been full content To give their little lives. And well I ween Your pitying hand caressed them; and, between The turns you took with Joseph (favored saint!) At carrying Jesus, you would soothe their plaint, And hold to your heart their bosoms’ silver sheen. But cherish more my sister-dove and me: Carry within your heart, and all the way, Our souls to the true Temple. Offered so, They cannot perish—no, nor parted be: For He whom you presented on this day Whom you present His own must ever know.

FEAST OF THE PURIFICATION, 1876.

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

CHRISTIANITY AS AN HISTORICAL RELIGION.

II.

To know the true genius of Christianity is the same thing as to know the true destiny of man, and the actual order of Providence by which he is conducted to its fulfilment, through the state of his earthly probation. The true destiny of man is supernatural; his end is beyond the earth and the present life, which is the place and period of origin and transit only, where he has his point of departure, his impulse of direction, the beginning of the movement which is to draw a line of endless length on the absolute duration and absolute space of eternity and infinity. The actual order of Providence, within the infinitesimal limits of time and extension which bound man’s earthly existence, is exclusively determined, as to its ultimate end, to this eternal and infinite sphere of being, where man shares with God, according to the mode and measure which is possible to his finite nature, the “total, simultaneous, and perfect possession of interminable life.” This is precisely what is meant by eternal salvation, final beatitude, union with God, and all other terms of similar import. Any temporal good, in comparison with this, is trivial. It cannot be an ultimate object of God’s providence, and ought not to be regarded as an end by a rational man. These are the suppositions, the præcognita, from which all Christian philosophy must take its initial movement. Dr. Fisher enunciates, therefore, one of the axioms of Christianity when he says that in the design of the divine religion given by God to mankind, “the good offered is not science,” or, as is evidently implied, any other temporal good, “but salvation.” The original right to this salvation and to the means of attaining it having been forfeited in the fall and restored only through Christ, “the final cause of revelation is the recovery of men to communion with God—that is, to true religion.” As a consequence from this, “whatever knowledge is communicated”—and, equally, whatever other good is communicated for human perfection in this present state—“is tributary to this end” (p. 3). The whole of human history before the Christian epoch, in general, and specifically the whole inspired history of patriarchal and Judæan religion, being a record of events looking towards the coming of the Son of God to the earth, the learned professor proceeds logically in making the statements which follow:

“Christianity is the perfect form of religion. In other words, it is the absolute religion, ... the culminating point in the progress of revelation, fulfilling, or filling out to perfection, that which preceded.... In Jesus religion is actually realized in its perfection.... In Christ the revelation of God to and through man reaches its climax.... In Christianity the fundamental relations of God to the world are completely disclosed.... Through Christ the kingdom of God actually attains its universal character.”[166]

Many passages scattered throughout the entire work of Dr. Fisher repeat, confirm, or amplify these general statements of his fundamental conception of Christianity. Thus, he says that it “proposed the unification of mankind through a spiritual bond” (p. 42); that it brings God near “to the apprehension, not of a coterie of philosophers merely, but of the humble and ignorant” (p. 189); that it “made human brotherhood a reality” (p. 190). “From his first public appearance Jesus represented himself as the founder and head of a kingdom” (p. 443), and this kingdom “was to be bound together by a moral and spiritual bond of union” (p. 444). Moreover, “his kingdom was to act upon the world, and to bring the world under its sway” (p. 456); it was to “leaven human society with its spirit, until the whole world should be created anew by its agency”; “a world-conquering and world-purifying influence,” destined “for the accomplishment of a revolution, the grandest which it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive—it being nothing less than the moral regeneration of mankind” (ibid.)

The idea which lies at the foundation of all these statements is nothing else than that which St. Ignatius has made the basis of his Spiritual Exercises, and which is fully developed in the meditations on fundamental Christian principles which are placed at the beginning of the series for a retreat in books like the Raccolta of Father Ciccolini. On these principles is founded the whole system of instructions given to ecclesiastics and religious during their retreats, by which they are formed for the sacerdotal or religious life or renovated in the spirit of their state. The very same form the basis of the sermons preached at the beginning of missions given to the faithful in churches, “On the End of Man,” “On the Value of the Soul,” “On the Necessity of Salvation.” That man is the only being on the earth who is an end in himself, and that all other creatures, together with all arrangements of divine Providence respecting this world, are for him; that the chief and ultimate end of man is his eternal salvation, and that everything else is intended as a means for attaining this end; is the doctrine inculcated and preached in all Catholic spiritual books and in all sermons, in all theological treatises, and expositions of Catholic philosophy which profess to explain the fundamental relations of the natural to the supernatural order. Any other idea of Christianity than this is unworthy of its Author. It is a very low and childish view which represents the perfection of humanity in respect to the political, social, and intellectual spheres of the earthly and temporal order as the direct object of the mission and work of Christ in the world. Præterit figura hujus mundi. That which is transitory cannot be an ultimate end.

There is nothing permanent and having an eternal value on the earth except the spiritual perfection of the human soul and whatever appertains to it or is inseparably connected with it. The regeneration and perfection of men in the spiritual and divine life is necessarily the only direct and primary object of the theandric work of Christ as the mediator between God and mankind. His kingdom is in the soul, his reign and conquests are in the spiritual realm. St. Augustine explains that difficult statement of St. Paul, that the Son will finally deliver up his kingdom to the Father, by means of this Scriptural conception of the nature of his kingdom. This kingdom is the multitude of the saved, the complete number of the elect, in whose glorification the special work of the Son as creator and redeemer reaches its consummation and attains its final end. The kingdom is delivered up when these souls, in whom the reign of Christ is perfectly and for ever established by grace and divine love, are united with the divine essence in the beatific vision. The initial and temporal conditions of the eternal kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of heaven, disappear, of course, in the fulfilment; as his human childhood, life, death, and resurrection were transient states or events, as the whole of human history is transient. In its initial state the kingdom of heaven on the earth is a preparation for its perfect state, which it contains in germ and principle, and with which it must necessarily have a similitude of nature. It is therefore only a truism to say that the kingdom of Christ is spiritual and its bond of unity spiritual. We may even say that the whole universe is a spiritual empire and its bond of unity spiritual. Physical beings, in the ontological order are metaphysical, and in the order of cognition are logical. All the transcendental predicates, which really express only phases of the same idea; being, unity, truth, and good; are, in an analogous sense, predicable of God and of everything which has or is capable of having existence. God is a spirit, and the ideal of all beings is in his intelligence. The [Greek: Logos] [Greek: endiathetos], in the bosom of the Father from eternity, and the [Greek: Logos] [Greek: prophorichos], uttering the creative word whose effect is in time, whose intelligible expression is in all creatures, are one—the Word of God. There are material substances and forces, but their origin is spiritual; their essence and existence are the expression of thought; the space in which they move has its foundation in the essence of God; they are an adjunct of the spiritual world, and are subordinated to it with a view to the same end. There are temporal and contingent things, but their duration has a fixed relation to the absolute duration of God, and to his eternal, immutable decree and foreknowledge. Though some things are trivial and worthless by comparison with others, and every being is infinitely less than God, yet nothing is absolutely trivial or worthless, and every finite thing has infinite relations. Bodies are infinitely inferior to spirits, yet they are infinitely superior to nothing, and not only the grand bodies which express in magnitude and number an image of the immensity of God, but grains of sand and the minutest molecules, are terms of divine Omnipotence, and their being presupposes and imitates the being of God. God formed the body of the first man out of the dust of the earth before he breathed into him the living soul, and he will awaken all human bodies to an everlasting life from the dust of the universal tomb of humanity. The Word assumed not only a rational but also a corporeal nature into hypostatic union with the divinity in his own person, and arose bodily from the sepulchre to glorify matter as well as spirit, and make it a gem eternally lustrous and sparkling with divine splendor. God came to this small solar system, a mere point in the milky way, to this minute planet, to the insignificant country of Judæa, to the little village of Bethlehem, to the narrow cave of the Nativity, to the humble cottage of Joseph and Mary, and was born and brought up the son of a humble maiden under the guardianship of an obscure artisan. The future and eternal kingdom of heaven with all its splendor, which was only made that it may serve as a reflection of the glory of the Incarnate Word, has its origin from these mere points in time and space. Things which, isolated and in their mere physical quantity, are almost nothing receive an infinite value through their relations. Nude first matter, apart from form, is, as St. Augustine says, “fere nihil—a being not-being.” Yet it seems to be rigorously demonstrated that the active force of every material element is capable of attracting or repelling other elements in an infinite sphere of space around its centre. The visible universe, considered as having a mere isolated existence and motion in space and time, is not much, compared with even one finite spirit—is fere nihil. The intellectual creation, considered as isolated within the bounds of nature, finite, actually existing only in one indivisible now of time, which by its gliding from a beginning point on an endless line never actually draws more than a line of finite duration, compared with the infinite possibility is not much more. All creation, even supposing that God continued to extend and multiply it for ever, could never become anything which would not be infinitely less than absolute space and duration. On the lower surface of things which faces the nothingness out of which they came they participate in not-being and resemble nothingness. In their negation and privation, they are not. On their upper surface which faces the being above them they participate with all being, even the highest. That which is lower touches by its highest point that which is lowest in the higher, and so from the bottom to the top. The physical universe has a sufficient reason of being in the intellectual universe, the intellectual in the spiritual, and the spiritual at its apex touches God by the union of the highest nature—the created nature of the Word, with the uncreated, divine essence. The universe, notwithstanding its intrinsically finite and contingent being, receives thus a mode and order of relation to the infinite and eternal being, giving it a species of divinization which extends to its least and lowest parts. Therefore we say that the whole universe is a spiritual empire and its bond of unity spiritual.

This world is a garden of God, set apart for the planting and growth of human souls. The garden of Eden, which God planted and beautified as the residence of the first parents of the human race, is a type of the ideal earth as it was conceived in the mind of God. The redemption, in its ideal form, is a work for the restoration of paradise on earth, under a modified condition suited to the fallen state of man, and in its actual results is an approximation to this idea. The growth of human souls in the regenerated and spiritual life is its end, and the only thing of absolute importance in the sight of God. The Creator himself came on the earth in human form expressly for the sake of fulfilling this divine intention of bringing souls to the completion of their growth in a perfect likeness to himself. It is needless to quote his own distinct and solemn affirmation of the value of the soul, and the worthlessness of the whole world beside, in comparison with its highest spiritual good. His great work in humanity may therefore be fitly summed up in the terse and succinct formula of “moral regeneration,” provided that these terms are so defined as to give them an adequate extension and comprehension. The whole plan of God in creating the universe, and elevating it through the microcosmical being man by the Incarnation, must be kept in view; and the nature of the regeneration to be effected must be so understood as to justify the necessity of the stupendous and multiplied means employed by the divine wisdom in bringing it to actual accomplishment. The universe, and this little epitome of creation which is man’s world, as well, is complex and composed of heterogeneous parts. The problem of man’s destiny and of the end proposed in the plan of the divine creator and redeemer of human nature is, therefore, necessarily complex. If it is expressed in a ratio of simple terms, these terms must be virtually equivalent to a great number and a great variety, corresponding to the complex reality which they denote and signify. A simplification of our ideas which is not the result of a combination of all the elements that ought to enter into composition, but is produced by the suppression of some, is a work of destructive and not of constructive philosophy. If we interpret, therefore, that spiritual doctrine which we have laid down in the beginning of this argument too literally and exclusively, we make a misinterpretation of the sense of Holy Scripture and of the writings of the saints, and manufacture for ourselves a false and absurd doctrine.

A philosophy which aims to give the spirit a complete riddance of matter, and of the whole world beside spiritual existence in its purest and most immediate relation to God, may arrogate the name of spiritual philosophy, but it is a counterfeit spiritualism. If God desired that we should get rid of matter, and had no other aim except to produce purely spiritual being in his own likeness and in participation with his own pure essence, he would never have created anything except spirit, and he would have made it at once in that state of perfection which he willed it to possess. If this perfection were limited to the order of pure nature, nothing more was requisite than to create a multitude of intellectual beings naturally endowed with the intelligence and felicity conformed to their essence. If they were to be elevated to supernatural perfection in the beatific vision of God, one act of divine power and love would suffice to place them at the first instant of their creation in the term of being, the ultimate perfection, the everlasting felicity in the possession of the sovereign good, to which they were destined. There is no necessity for probation, gradual progress, or any sort of conditions precedent, in order that created spirits may be made perfect in cognition and volition, either natural or supernatural, in any finite degree and grade of existence and beatitude which God may choose in his pure goodness to communicate. Still less is there any reason, on the hypothesis of such an end in creation as we suppose, for the existence of matter and corporeal beings. Matter and body cannot help purely intellectual beings to attain their proper intelligible object. The light of glory, and the direct illumination which gives the spirit an immediate intuitive vision of the divine essence, cannot be conjoined with any material, corporeal medium or organ. Why, then, did not God create angels only, and, if he desired to elevate creation to the hypostatic union with himself, assume the angelic nature? The only possible answer to this question is derived from the manifestation which God has made, through his works and through his word, that his plan of creation included something besides the natural and supernatural communication of glory and beatitude to created spirits. It was his will to create the corporeal, visible universe in connection and harmony with the invisible and spiritual world. It was his will to place man in the middle-point of all creation, and to give him a complex essence composed of rationality and animality, that he might unite in his substantial being the highest with the lowest—ima summis. Moreover, the creating Word assumed this nature as microcosmical, that in humanity he might elevate the entire universe and bring it in his own person to its acme.

Even this might have been accomplished instantaneously, without probation, without the long procession of second causes, without the efforts and the pain which the struggle toward the ultimate end has cost the creature, and to which the Incarnate Word subjected himself when he became obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis.

Why the long process from the chaos at the beginning toward the consummation of the end which has not yet been attained? The only answer to this question which can possibly be given is that God chose to make the creature concur to its own glorification by the way of merit, and to bring the utmost possible effect out of created causality. This is the reason for the probation of the angels and of man; for the full scope given to free-will, notwithstanding the incidental evil which through this avenue has rushed in upon the fair creation of God; and for the choice of the most difficult and painful way of redemption and restoration through ineffable labors and sufferings.

The regeneration of humanity must, therefore, take its character from the supernatural destiny of man, his complex nature, and the relations in which it places him to the complex plan of God which takes in all the parts of the universe, from the lowest to the highest, and gives the utmost possible play to the action of created causality. Its chief end is to prepare human souls, through the grace and fellowship of Christ, to share with the other sons of God, the holy angels, in the glory and beatitude of the Incarnate Word in the kingdom of heaven. Included in this end of beatification in God, which is essentially the same for all spiritual beings who attain it, are the distinctive grades of glory, gained through grace and personal merit, in an ascending scale from the souls of infants to the soul of Jesus Christ, by which the celestial firmament is decorated. This beatitude in the vision of God certainly does not exclude the secondary and natural beatitude arising from the knowledge and enjoyment of the creatures of God, and this must therefore be a secondary and subordinate end in the divine plan. Intellectual cognition and volition are not organic acts of human nature; and, therefore, if we believe in the bodily resurrection of our Lord and of the saints to a glorified corporeal life, we must admit the existence in the divine plan of some subordinate end, in view of which man was created as a composite being, and in view of which, also, the Word assumed the composite human nature, which is complete only by the union of the spiritual and material substances. The glorified body no doubt receives a reflected lustre from the glorification of the soul. But its glorified senses cannot be the organs of anything more than an elevated and sublimated sensitive cognition and enjoyment. The term of their action is the physical, visible creation to which human nature partially belongs; and therefore the final end of man is partially identified with the final cause for which the vast and everlasting visible universe was created. The Incarnate Word touches this visible, material realm of his creation by the bodily part of his human nature. The what and the wherefore of this almost infinite realm of nature we do not pretend to understand. It is certainly not a mere jeu d’esprit of Omnipotence, a causeless or transitory spectacle to excite the babyish wonder of the human race not yet out of its nursery. It belongs to the great sphere of the divine plan, a segment of one of whose great circles is human history on this earthly planet. As we cannot demonstrate the problem of this sphere and its great circles, we cannot completely solve the problem of man’s destiny on the earth. It is an enigma, a mystery. And, above all, the question Cur Deus Homo? the what and the wherefore of the Incarnation, is an enigma, a mystery for human reason, only obscurely manifested to faith. Christ in history, universal history as having its mot d’enigme in Christ, must consequently present to the believing and enlightened mind of the Christian student an object of investigation and thought which he cannot hope to understand and know adequately, much less to comprehend. Whatever we can know must be learned by the manifestation which God makes of his wise intentions through his word and his works, the instruction which he deigns to give us by experience, reason, and divine faith.

For what is man being educated on the earth, and what did his Creator intend to bring him to when he came down in person, after a long series of precursors had prepared the way before him, to teach and to do that which could be entrusted to no mere creature, whether man or angel? The manifestation of Christ in the history of mankind on the earth will make known the answer to this question to all intelligent beings when this history is completed. But this will be only at the day of universal resurrection and final judgment. Until that day arrives there can only be a gradual and incomplete disclosure and justification of the ways of God to men, which are unsearchable and past finding out by human wisdom. The Eternal Word, who created all things, and directed all nations on the earth by his providence before he assumed human nature and died on the cross for their salvation, has not ceased, since his Incarnation, to carry on his work, or confined his care to a small number elected out of the mass of mankind. Nature has not been substantially or totally depraved by the fall, or become the property of Satan. The Incarnation is not a mere device and contrivance, to which God was forced to resort because he could not otherwise pardon the elect, and substitute for the eternal punishment which was due to them an eternal reward due to Christ, and transferred to them without any personal merit of congruity or condignity. The plan of God for salvation through Christ is not a mere segregation of a certain number of individuals from the world, that they may devote themselves exclusively to their sanctification by purely interior, spiritual acts—waiting until death shall release their souls from a bodily existence which is a mere degradation, and a world which is utterly accursed and given over to the dominion of the devil. Such ideas are exaggerations and perversions of Christian doctrine. They necessarily provoked a reaction and revolt in the minds and hearts of men whenever they were taught; and there has been, consequently, a perpetual effort, among Protestants who were not willing to abandon Christianity altogether, to find some kind of rational religion which can plausibly assume to be the pure, original Christianity of Christ. But by eliminating or altering and diminishing the mysteries and supernatural elements of Christianity, they change its nature and reduce it to something so ordinary and commonplace that its divinity is lost. The ideal Christianity becomes a sort of peaceable, orderly, moral, well-educated society, in which as nearly as possible all men enjoy the comfortable and respectable mode of life belonging to the gentry of England, and the poorest class are as well off as the ordinary inhabitants of a pleasant, old-fashioned New England village. That there is something attractive about this picture we will not deny. But we cannot think that the production of a state of merely natural well-being in society, of commonplace human happiness, even supposing it founded upon religion, sanctified by piety, and tending toward a more perfect happiness in the future life, was the real, ultimate end which our Lord had in view when he founded the church. The old idea of a millennium which used to prevail among the Puritans of New England had something in it very beautiful; but it was only a beautiful dream, never destined to be realized in this world. The philosophical dream of a golden age, to be attained by progress in science, civilization, political and social reform, is still more futile. The doleful and terrible wail of the pessimist philosophers and poets of Germany, which begins to find an echo over all the civilized world, would be the outcry of a despair justified by the whole history of mankind, were it not for the light which faith casts across the gloom, and the solution of the dark enigma of life which is given by the cross on which Jesus died, exclaiming, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The drama of human history is grand and terrible and tragic. It has scenes and episodes which have a character of quiet, delightful, and joyous comedy, but it is a tragedy; it has been so from the first, and will be the same to the end. The Son of God came on the earth in the very crisis of human history, and his human life was a tragedy, ending in a sublime triumph, but a triumph won by sorrow, conflict, and conquest. All that was tragic in previous history culminated in him, and subsequent history can be nothing else than the last act of the tragedy hastening to the dénoûment, and preparing the way for the second coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven, with great glory, to achieve his final triumph. The Apocalypse of St. John, in which all things that were to come to pass in the last age of the world passed before his entranced spirit in a series of sublime and awful pictures, shows that this horoscope is true. What for him was a vaticination is for us in great part a retrospect, by which it is historically verified, so far as the scroll of time has unrolled itself, and by which the similar character of that part which is still in prospect is surely foreboded.

Christianity is an historical religion. It is the outcome of all previous history, and its inspired documents alone, in which the genealogy of its founder is traced back to Adam, and the record of the origin of the human race preserved, give us authentic history of the most important facts which underlie all the great events and movements of the world. This history connects the beginning of human destinies with the earlier and higher sphere, where the history of the intelligent creation begins—with those great events, the trial of the angels, the rebellion of Lucifer, and the commencement of the warfare whose seat was transferred to the earth by the successful ruse of the serpent in the temptation of Eve. In the expulsion of our weeping parents from Eden into the outside world, humanity was led by a counter strategic movement upon the new battle-field, where Satan was to be vanquished in fair and open war. All the demons, reinforced by all the traitors and deserters they could gain from among men, were allowed to pit themselves against the sons of God and the holy angels, and against the First-begotten Son himself when he came in the infirmity of human nature, as the captain of salvation, to become perfect through sufferings and to lead his brethren by the same arduous road to glory. Redemption and salvation consist essentially in liberation from the servitude of Satan; victory in the combat against that mass of false maxims, evil principles, and wicked men called the world, those low and vicious propensities called the flesh, and the seducing spirits sent forth by Satan to draw men into his rebellion against God. Human society was organized under the law of redemption, in the family, in the social, and in the political community, in religious communion, in order to reconstruct fallen humanity; to repair the ruin effected by the devil; to oppose a barrier against his further aggressions; to consolidate a perpetual force of resistance and warfare against him; and to be the instrument of the Son of God, the creator and redeemer of mankind, in effecting the final subjugation of the rebellion inaugurated and carried on by Lucifer. The division of nations, the colonization of the earth, the foundation of states, of industry and commerce, of art and science, of culture and civilization, is a divine work. Everything good in humanity is from the Word, the predestined Son of Man. The Book of Wisdom says that it was the delight of the eternal wisdom to be with the sons of men, and the early Fathers dilate on what is expressed in the German word Menschenfreundlichkeit, better than in any equivalent English term, as an attribute of the Logos. That admirable sentiment of the Latin poet, Homo sum, et nihil humani alienum a me puto, may be most appropriately ascribed to the divine Person who joined the human nature to his uncreated essence in an indissoluble marriage. The devil is the author of nothing on the earth which has real being and life, but only of error and sin with their logical consequences—that is, of intellectual and moral perversion, of ruin, decay, and death. His kingdom is a graveyard and a realm of darkness beneath it. The kingdom of the living is the kingdom of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father through the Son. The power of Satan on the earth is gained by the invasion and treasonable surrender of the cities and fortresses founded by the rightful King of men, and consists in the influence which he usurps in the affairs of men, in the schism and heresy by which he breaks the unity of human brotherhood in Christ. The apostasy, the false religions, the corrupted ethics, the degenerate institutions of the old heathen world were schisms and heresies against the primitive revelation and the patriarchal unity of mankind in one true doctrine, worship, and discipline. The foundation of Judaism was a measure which the Lord adopted to oppose a bulwark against universal apostasy, to preserve the treasure of revelation and grace, and to prepare the way for a more perfect organization of the universal religion. Without abandoning the other nations, he concentrated his special providence upon Israel. And even here the history of his own special kingdom and peculiar people is altogether different from what our human reason and sentiments would expect and wish for, and especially so in reference to the epoch when the Messias appeared. We cannot understand it, unless we recognize the universal law pervading the divine plan, by which almost unlimited play is given to free-will; the conflict of the powers of good and evil permitted to run its course; victory and salvation are achieved by labor, combat, and suffering; the world and humanity are set apart as a battle-field, between the Son of God, with his brethren by adoption among angels and men, on one side, Lucifer, with his army of apostate angels and men, on the other—a battle-field on which the everlasting destinies of the universe are decided for eternity.

After this long and circuitous digression we may direct our attention now on the specific nature of Christianity as an historical religion, and consider what organization Jesus Christ gave redeemed humanity in the universal church, how he embodied the absolute, universal religion, what means he adopted for achieving the work of the moral regeneration and eternal salvation of mankind.

The work undertaken by the Incarnate Word in person is evidently the continuation of that which he began through his ministering angels, his prophets, and his other human agents, and by far the most difficult and important part of the entire plan of God. Passing over his principal theandric work of redemption, we must affirm the same with equal emphasis and certainty of that which is supplementary to it, and by which it is extended to its term. In assuming human nature the Son of God assumed all its temporal and eternal relations; he grasped and drew into himself universal humanity and the whole creation. His first and direct object was the glorification and beatification of human souls in God, but his action toward this end drew into its current and impelled by its energy all things connected with and subordinate to this highest and purely spiritual sphere of his creative wisdom. The action of Christ in history after his resurrection is necessarily more complex, more far-reaching and universal, more manifest and immediate, more obviously dominant and victorious, more evidently bearing on the final and eternal consummation of the divine plan in the universe through the destinies of man and the earth, than it could have been before that glorious and decisive event. Christianity, as an historical religion, must have more comprehension in its actual development than in its inchoate state before Christ. While it remains true that it is characteristic of the pure and perfect religion taught by the mouth of its divine Author to lead men to an interior, spiritual life, to the contemplation and love of God, to a paramount desire and effort for the salvation of the soul, and to bring this way of union with God in loving, spiritual brotherhood among men down to the level of the lowly and the poor in all natural goods, this idea does not require an exclusion of other and different aspects of the same religion. The specific good proposed and placed within reach is salvation, and not science, art, civilization, political order, social well-being, national development, the natural progress of mankind, the production of a brilliant series of great men, extraordinary works and events in the temporal order. The empires and cities, the grand monuments, the intellectual masterpieces, the entire array of results produced by human activity, and all the splendor and felicity of the men who in outward seeming are the most favored and fortunate, are transient; they return to the nothingness from which they came. Nevertheless, they may be made tributary to something higher and more durable, and what is substantial and indestructible in and under these evanescent forms may survive and reappear, like the mortal part of human nature, by a future resurrection. There is no reason, therefore, why Christ, the Incarnate Word, in effecting the regeneration of the human race by means and instruments which are natural and human, yet not purely natural and human, or standing alone in their nude and finite essence, should not take hold of all human things and relations and subject them to his own special service. There is no reason why he should not have secondary and subordinate ends indirectly connected with his one principal and ultimate object. There is no reason why Christianity, though not identified with and merged in human affairs, should not be in intimate relations with them all. In fact, there is every kind of reason to the contrary, and as an historical religion it cannot be regarded in any other light. It must be in continuity with its own past on the same lines. The same constructive principles must pervade religion in all ages. The same law of curvature must be verified in every segment of the circle, and all the diameters must be equal. Unity is essential to universality. The superior courses of stone in the building must correspond to the inferior, and rest upon them and upon the foundation. Christianity as an historical religion must be of equal dimensions and similar structure to the substratum furnished by the pre-Christian universal history, where, so to speak, its sub-cellar, crypts, and basement are covered, and in great measure buried in inexplorable obscurity, beneath the walls of its colossal architecture.

When we consider Christianity as a religion in the precise and restricted sense, and the church as a strictly religious society, we cannot identify the Christian Church and religion so completely with Christianity in the wider sense as to confound the central nucleus with its environment and atmosphere. We must distinguish, accurately and carefully, those things which are really distinct, though not disunited and separate from one another. Religion is well defined by Mr. Baring-Gould as consisting essentially in dogma, worship, and discipline. The church is its organic embodiment. The absolute and universal religion must of course throw off what was proper only to a state of inchoate and imperfect development, and the church must be freed from what was proper only to a partial and national organic constitution. This is a doctrinal certitude with an actual verification in history. It is needless to prove that our Lord never thought of making Christianity a mere extension of Judaism, and of founding a universal kingdom which should be an enlargement, co-extensive with the world, of David’s monarchy, with the institutes of Moses and the religious ceremonial of Solomon’s temple as the model of its civil and ecclesiastical polity and its ritual of worship. It is equally unnecessary to prove that the divine Master thought as little of going back to the more ancient and simple dispensation of patriarchal religion. This would have been a regression instead of a progression; a dwindling and dwarfing of humanity into a second infancy instead of its expansion into adult proportions, similar to the absurd imagination of Nicodemus in respect to the process of regeneration. The absolute, universal religion, by virtue of the law of continuity in growth, must necessarily retain all that which pertained to the essence and properties of religion as such—that is, of religion generically and specifically considered in respect to human nature in a state of probation; a lapsed condition; and in the way of restoration, through the redemption with its law of grace, as revealed by God from the beginning. All pertaining to its integrity and to its accidents, in so far as any such appurtenance is suited to human nature in all ages and nations—giving greater perfection, adaptation to its end, and power in its operation to religion—must also be considered as permanent for a sufficient reason, viz., that its cause and motive are general and persistent, though it may undergo modification and be subject to variation. Natural religion is preserved in revealed religion, the patriarchal in the Mosaic, and all these in the Christian religion. Precisely how much has been preserved, how much modified or altered, and in what way, how much dropped as obsolete in Christianity considered as an historical religion, must be determined historically. We know, however, before we examine the historical documents of Christianity, that, unless God manifests in his actual providence a determination to derogate from constant and general laws by introducing an entirely miraculous dispensation, we shall surely find in historical Christianity certain features absolutely requisite in a human religion. There are such features or characteristics which in their generic ratio are known with certainty, prescinding from any information given by the actual, objective manifestation which Christianity presents in its history. It must be adapted to human nature—that is, it must be a religion suitable to a being who is not a pure spirit, or one united to a body by accidental, extrinsic, and temporary relations, but who is composed of soul and body in his specific and permanent essence. It must be adapted to the conditions in which human nature exists in its earthly stage of progress toward perfection—that is, suitable to men who are in multifarious relations with one another in the family, in society, in the state; relations both amicable and hostile, relations of similarity and of opposition, relations of great complexity and variability. It must be adapted to the character of the divine Person from whom it proceeds; as the Son of God and the Son of Man, united with the Father in one essence by the Holy Spirit; hypostatically united within his proper personality subsisting in two distinct natures, by the same Spirit; sanctified in soul and body by this life-giving Spirit; and by the same Spirit sanctifying, and uniting in himself to the Godhead, redeemed humanity. It must be adapted to the temporal and eternal end for which it is intended—that is, suitable for the instruction, sanctification, unification, temporal and eternal salvation of all mankind, in all nations and ages; for the work of regeneration, individual, social, political, intellectual, moral, and physical, as an absolute, universal, world-conquering power.

In order to meet these requisitions, its spirit and body must be essentially and indissolubly united; it must be organized in a perfect and unequal society of universal extension, sovereign independence, complex and irresistible forces. It must have both divine and human attributes, and be vivified by the divine Spirit. It must be inseparably united with its head and throughout its members, indefectible, immutable, and endowed with the plenitude of graces, gifts, and powers merited by Jesus Christ for mankind and sufficient for the production of the highest degrees of human virtue in the greatest possible variety. It must be supreme, and have all things subordinated to its own end, controlled by its influence, subservient to its purposes as instrumentalities of its dynamical action.

As the absolute world-religion, its dogma, worship, and discipline must vastly transcend the initial revelation, elementary ritual, and propædeutic order of Judaism. There is a kind of foreshadowing of all these features of the kingdom of Christ in universal history, and there are abundant types and prophecies of it in the history and inspired documents of the patriarchal and Judaic dispensations. We need only to confront the idea of Christianity, derived à priori from the consideration of the plan of God manifested in his works and word before the time of Christ, with the actual, historical Christianity, in order to give this idea distinctness, and to add the last complement of certitude to our judgment that it truly represents the reality. Wherever we find existing as a concrete, historical fact that which realizes in the fullest and the highest sense the predictions of the prophets; that which fulfils in the most perfect manner the anticipations of history; that which is the most worthy of the stupendous miracles culminating in the resurrection; that which corresponds in magnitude and grandeur to all the great works of God; that which gives the most sublime significance to the destiny of man; that which magnifies in the most wonderful way the power and love of God and the object of the Incarnation—there we behold, with all the evidence which moral demonstration can furnish, the genuine, absolute religion, manifest before our eyes as historical Christianity. Facts interpret prophecy, confirm and consolidate the conclusions of reason, determine the sense of much that is ambiguous in the disclosures of revelation. The test of history is therefore safe and conclusive in respect to the genuine essence and nature of Christianity.

The application of this test shows that Catholic Christianity, which alone can claim unbroken, unaltered historical continuity and universality from the apostolic age, is the genuine and absolute religion of Christ. Any other species is unknown to history as an historical religion. The Catholic faith, worship, and discipline manifest themselves in the church of apostolic succession at the earliest period in which this church is clearly and distinctly visible through the medium of historical testimony. There is no resource for those who call in question the identity of Nicene Christianity with the apostolic religion, except in the obscurity of the century immediately following the death of St. John, and in the indistinct, incomplete, and, as considered separately from the traditional supplement and commentary, partly ambiguous records, allusions, and testimonies, in respect to some parts of Christian doctrine, worship, and discipline, of the New Testament. The nobler class of modern Protestant writers admit in a general sense the historical continuity of the essence of Christianity in the Catholic Church, placing their own restrictions on the definition of that which is essential as distinguished from the non-essential, as well as from abnormal modifications. Those who are not of the semi-Catholic school are obliged to seek for some tenable ground on which to maintain their claim of fellowship in essentials with the universal church, in a theory of transition from apostolical to ecclesiastical Christianity during the period lying between the close of the first and the end of the second centuries. The hinge of the question is the institution of the episcopate, as a distinct and superior grade of the Christian presbyterate, with hierarchical authority. We do not propose to discuss the proofs from Scripture and the most ancient historical records of the apostolic institution of the episcopate, and of what is called the apostolic succession of bishops, as a principal and immutable part of organic Christianity. This controversy has been exhausted by the able writers of the high-church school. Professor Fisher presents but little in addition to what has been urged by the advocates of parity, and fully answered in several works easily accessible to English readers, though his manner of presenting his case is such as to make the most of it, and shows both critical ability and a candid spirit. A rejoinder ought to be minute and critical like the argument itself. As we have not at present time and space for this, we prefer to pass it over altogether. Our line of argument leads us to consider some deeper and more universal and at the same time more obvious and easily apprehended principles of bringing the Catholic and Protestant theories of Christianity to an historical issue.

The essential nature of Christianity as represented by one of these theories is specifically different from what it is as represented by the other. According to the latter theory, the essence of the Christian religion is something exclusively spiritual and individual. The exterior organization is not in vital and substantial unity with it, but is an habiliment, an extrinsic instrument, a vehicle, or a separate medium. One who considers that faith, the way of salvation, spiritual union with God in Christ, are in a separate and independent sphere, very naturally and logically considers that questions of ecclesiastical organization and government are of inferior moment; that symbols of doctrine, forms of worship, and modes of discipline are not matters of perpetual and universal obligation as founded on divine right and law. Such a question as that of episcopacy must, therefore, appear to him as among the non-essentials; and even supposing that he admits the certainty or probability that it is the apostolic form, he will see no reason why it should be necessary to the being of the church, or even to its well-being, or why Christians should be divided in fellowship on account of matters merely belonging to exterior order and indifferent forms.

According to the former theory, the spiritual and corporeal parts, religion and the church, are after the model of human nature and the Incarnation, in vital, essential, and perpetual unity. The church is the way of salvation, the body of Christ vivified by his Spirit, the medium of union with God. Christianity is a sacramental religion. The episcopal order has been established and consecrated by Jesus Christ to possess and transmit the plenitude of sacerdotal grace and power received from him as a gift; to preserve and transmit the faith, sacramental grace, the pure oblation of Christian worship, the discipline of the New Law in Catholic unity.

A Christianity of the first species, loosely organized in an imperfect society, could never have been transmuted into the second species. The specific Catholic Christianity, hierarchical, dogmatic, sacramental, liturgical, is the historical Christianity of the period of the first six œcumenical councils, and appears at the Council of Nice, in the person of the great Athanasius, in all parts of the earth, in all the saints and doctors, in all writings and all monuments, pointing backward to the past, the era of martyrdom, the period of foundation and of apostolic labor, as the origin and source of its doctrine, discipline, and worship. A transmutation of species in Christianity like that which the Protestant theory supposes is rationally impossible. There is the additional impossibility to be taken into account of such a great and universal change having occurred without leaving its records and traces in history. Christianity is an historical religion, and the historical Christianity is identical with Catholicity. It is the absolute and universal religion which has manifested itself as a work which only divine power could have produced, in the history of the past; in present history it is showing before our eyes its supernatural and divine character; and the fulfilment of its end in the final consummation and triumph of the kingdom of Christ will finish the last chapter of the Revelation of Christ in History.

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

“THERE WAS NO ROOM FOR THEM IN THE INN.”

Foot-sore and weary, Mary tried Some rest to seek, but was denied. “There is no room,” the blind ones cried.

Meekly the Virgin turned away, No voice entreating her to stay; There was no room for God that day.

No room for her round whose tired feet Angels are bowed in transport sweet, The Mother of their God to greet.

No room for Him in whose small hand The troubled sea and mighty land Lie cradled like a grain of sand.

No room, O Babe divine! for thee That Christmas night; and even we Dare shut our hearts and turn the key.

In vain thy pleading baby cry Strikes our deaf souls; we pass thee by, Unsheltered ‘neath the wintry sky.

No room for God! O Christ! that we Should bar our doors, nor ever see Our Saviour waiting patiently.

Fling wide the doors! Dear Christ, turn back! The ashes on my hearth lie black— Of light and warmth a total lack.

How can I bid thee enter here Amid the desolation drear Of lukewarm love and craven fear?

What bleaker shelter can there be Than my cold heart’s tepidity— Chill, wind-tossed, as the winter sea?

Dear Lord, I shrink from thy pure eye, No home to offer thee have I; Yet in thy mercy pass not by.

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

THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE.

A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE CHAPEL AT MONAMULLIN,” “THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU,” ETC., ETC.

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